I would never engineer a Legacy deck to fight control decks. Control has been almost non-existent for over two years now in the format. Note that Stoneblade isn't really a control deck, it peaks on turn 5-6 but can easily be attritioned out if you keep them off Jace.
I would always be gunning for beating two of the following high-level archetypes maindeck: blue-based tempo, aggressive beatdown, midrange, and combo, and then having a decent sideboard focused (but not exclusive to ) beating the other two general archetypes.
If you are looking for a good card to help versus those decks mentioned, I would suggest Snapcaster Mage+removal, Engineered Explosives, Umezawa's Jitte in multiples paired with a couple of Stoneforge Mystics but not the full set since they are trash vs. RUG, and some form of flying creatures to actually connect the Jitte with (Lingering Souls in Esper seems fine).
Force of Will is trash vs. these decks, don't play it.
I would never ever give someone grief at a midsize (30+) or larger competitive REL event with a significant prize pool for playing the best deck for them for the event.
However, when you are dealing with four and occasionally five round, usually local events with low entry fees, regular REL, and smaller prize support, my tone changes dramatically. I've been playing local Legacy events for some time and have berated players (never during matches, and usually after events) for playing non-interactive combo decks frequently when I know their card availability for playing other decks was an option.
I don't feel these decks (biggest offenders-Dredge, Show and Tell combo, Sprial Tide variants) make for a healthy environment for new Legacy players to play in. Each of these decks requires fairly intimate format knowledge and specific card choices to effectively interact with, and even with those things interacting with these decks is still very difficult. I think these decks are bad to overall health of the format in the long term. If my first Legacy experiences were having to figure out how Bridge from Below works and sit through three pairs of Time Spirals in a match I would not want to play the format again. The game they are playing is simply too foreign and broken from the other established constructed formats.
He's way too slow in blue-based midrange/control. You have other maindeck options that are probably better-the colorshifted Drop of Honey (not targeted, kills Mother of Runes), Wrath of God effects or permnament-based hate like Ensnaring Bridge, Humility, and Moat.
For a couple of weeks people thought he might be just the right tech for the Maverick mirror, but that honor now goes to the 'guy with the most gut shots in their sideboard'.
Stoneforge's stock has plummeted over the past month or so. It still has a place in the metagame but Legacy, after almost a year, has for the most part adapted to Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If you recognize that your deck is weak to Stoneforge Mystic strategies, then you can fight it using any of the following common techniques:
*) Prevent it from resolving. Spell Snare is actually a card that is very difficult for U/W to counter profitably.
*) Let them get the equipment, and discard it from their hand before they can put it into play. Have you ever cast Cabal Therapy on an opponent after they cast Stoneforge Mystic in the previous turn? Even if you just take their equipment and trade one for one, they are still up a Squire, and any Legacy deck can beat that.
*) Have a way of dealing with artifacts and enchantments maindeck-Pridemages, Goblin Tinkerer, etc.
*) Kill the Mystic with removal and then use mana denial or soft counters from preventing the equipment from having an impact on the game.
You do not have to have a god hand to interact with a fast Mystic. You do have to have a plan to fight it, and recognize that if your deck is soft to equipment strategies that you reserve additional space in your sideboard.
Show and tell is pretty broken, as it singularly enables dream halls, sneak and show, and hive mind to actually exist in legacy as without SnT those decks are tier 2 at best, tier 4 at worst.
Show and Tell is a flat-busted, extremely degenerate card that has needed the boot since ROE came out two years ago. It is basically a split card that reads on one half "Target opponent loses one life and discards two blue cards" and on the other "add an arbitrary amount of mana of any color to your mana pool".
There's an argument that Intuition is the card that serves as the glue for all of those blue Sol-land combo decks, but Intuition sees play in fair decks doing very reasonable things, and Show and Tell only shows up in degenerate decks that are extremely hard to interact with since they have to be fought on different vectors than fighting Storm or Dredge.
everything I've ever read about it, and I do follow it closely, points to the direction that there is no creativity in deck building as the same mother effing top 4 or 5 decks are played and that is it.
Funny, my Vintage deck that I played in a tournament this weekend had thirteen maindeck cards printed within the last year. ( I placed third in the event )
The metagame for the format is centered around some non-rotating high level strategies but the individual deck instances people play in events feature are very different. The kind of metagame adjustments and 'picking the right deck for the event' are as true in vintage as they are in Standard. This kind of evolution and adaptation points to a healthy Eternal format.
This comment is just to counter your assertion (commonly held) that there is no creativity in deck building, which is completely not the case in Vintage.
As for your proposed format, I don't like it. Weighting cards doesn't work in a format with a variable metagame-card costs in a fixed point system would cause artificial metagame shifts that occur outside of tournament results, new deck technology, and new card printings. Given that the Vintage metagame is actually a balanced and healthy one, this point system is unecessary for format diversity. If there is a format diversity problem introduced by a crippling/overpowered strategy, then there is a current outlet for remediation via DCI restricted list changes.
Who would own the point value weightings? The DCI? How do they determine weights? Would this formula and decision-making be made transparent to the players? Would errors in the original point weightings sour players to the format? Are the actual players of the existing format asking for changes that would be addressed by a point-rationed system?
Just as an aside, when was the last time you played tournament Vintage (complete with Swiss rounds into top4/top8)?
The only exception to that case is if you or your opponent has Jace, Memory Adept around, in which case the extra mana might help get Jace through, but that's a real 10%-ish chance of mattering even in that circumstance.
Long story short-not a real decider in the mirror, but the mirror is fought via ghost quarters and surgicals. For reference, see the Brad Nelson/Charles Gindy feature match (if I recall correctly) from GP Baltimore in the archives (I also think PVDDR had a feature w/ the mirror).
There's a delicate tension between Talisman, Drownyard, and Ghost Quarter in the deck-you can't jam everything colorless mana and expect to not have problems with colors and tapped Drowned Catacombs on some draws. Choosing the appropriate mix is one of the "knobs" you have to fiddle with week in and week out to best fight what is popular.
Good card that's not a stupid ridiculous reanimator target. Modern and Legacy players everywhere breathe a sigh of relief after the twin terrors of Elesh Norn and Jin-Gitaxias from one year ago.
The format rarely requires you to play out Cabal Therapy blind on turn 1 against an unknown opponent. Ideally, you let your opponent make it real easy for you to pick a Therapy target via Delver reveals, Stoneforge Mystic, or other reveal effects. Then you just name that card, then flashback naming something else you saw.
When you don't get that opportunity, then it falls back on format knowledge and game state at that point. If you know, in general, your opponent's deck and think about what your opponent has played and how he/she has interacted with you, then you can very easily hit on the blind therapy.
The main 'gotcha' is Brainstorm in response to Therapy, then I usually try to name high frequency (in terms of deck construction) and low-impact cards since they hide the valuable stuff. Again, that comes down to format knowledge.
If you format knowledge isn't up to snuff I would suggest just running Inquisition over Therapy in deck like B/W and have a couple of Cabal Therapy in the SB.
Personally, I'm expecting a large swath of Burn / Dredge simply because this is a Legacy GP. All those folks chasing PWP or whatnot that just want to grind it as an event probably don't want to drop the cash to play some of the more other-popular decks.
I don't disagree completely, but anyone grinding PWPs enough to travel to a GP is going to be able to pretty much borrow whatever they need from their local network. There's a big jump between card how available/common dual lands are (pretty easy to find/borrow) and how many Candelabras or Moats are around.
If people play Dredge because it is cheap, they will lose bad because that deck needs an experienced pilot to day 2. Burn is a much more likely choice for people looking for a non-interactive deck, but there will be plenty of hate for it and that deck REALLY doesn't like to deal with hate cards.
Here's Sam Black's(22nd) Spirits list, which I beleive Finkel (t8)/Jelger Wiegersma(t8)/Martell(13th)/GerryT(21st) all ran with. I believe I have the list origination recgonized correctly based on Black's tweets and Martell's comments in the booth:
Every game that was streamed had players with usually multiple creatures out. Even the ramp decks had Vapor Snag-proof dudes like Huntmaster of the Fells, and I saw Geists from the humans decks sitting around not doing much or not getting much damage through more than a few times. It's hard to say if this is a low point in the metagame for Geist or if the card has bigger issues with the introduction ofDKA's Lingering Souls/Huntsmaster/Gather the Townsfolk being big players in the meta.
Captain, on the other hand, was beastly almost every time the Lingering Souls Delver decks played him. He filled the role of mirror-buster, serving as an air blocker vs. spirit tokens, and an anthem effect that made blocks very unfavorable.
Not playing equipment was something that raises eyebrows, but look at the number of three drops in the deck - captians, lingering souls, snapcaster (3 mana usually) along with the two maindeck dungeon geists. All of those seem better than equipment for this event (where people everywhere were maindecking equipment hate), though as the metagame shifts and turns over the months ahead I can see equipment coming back in when the time is right.
I think this deck is the "best" deck for the event overall , and am eager to play it. I'd change the numbers around a bit to make it less weak to ramp (especially black/rock style lists like Conley's deck from GP Orlando). Two mana leaks is pretty scary when your opponent has a deck with cards like Inferno Titan or Massacre Wurm.
Note: I'm fine with Brainstorm in the format and don't think it needs banning. Blue aggro-control and control have established metagame predators and combo numbers are low enough to where those predators are viable tournament choices, and the tourney results prove it.
I'm not a brainstorm fan, i'm just telling you that if you ban brainstorm you'll meet combo decks everywhere. And that would ruin the format
Combo gets waaaaay worse without Brainstorm in the format. It's literally the best card in the deck, acting as a effective draw three the turn before they go off and allowing them to shuffle completely dead/redundant combo pieces away and get fresh cards in exchange.
The big balance argument between combo vs. blue control in the context of Brainstorm banning is that a lot of blue decks would start to have to play weaker cards to get to the 20 or so blue cards needed to reliably play Force of Will. The aggro-contro/control decks would likely play Preordain or Ponder, and both are very good cards, though not as good as Brainstorm.
Mystic is fine, it's cheaply answered by Spell Snare and dies to everything. It technically 2-for-1s you on resolution if you use a spell to kill it, but if that was the criteria for banning we'd be calling for the head of Mother of Runes and Hymn , which would be absurd.
I've played Gush in Vintage ever since it was unbanned, even in decks without fastbond, and it would be played everywhere in blue in Legacy if it was unbanned.
Tempo decks want it because it helps topdecks more cheap disruption and is insane with brainstorm, control decks want it becuase it's completely bananagrams with Jace, The Mind Sculptor, and combo decks want it because it's a near-free draw two on the turn they need to go off or lets them set up Lab Maniac doomsday piles when the tendrils plan doesn't pan out.
Dumb card is dumb. Gush earned it's rightful place on the naughty list, right up there with other tier two Vintage-grade offenders like the busted topdeck tutors, Mind's Desire, Necropotence and Memory Jar.
For comparison's sake, Library of Alexandria is a safer card to unban than Gush is, and that card would likely destroy the format, even if LoA's were $3 a piece.
edit: seriously the only reason one could have for unbanning Gush is if you like had a basement full of Gaddock Teegs or something.
Vintage- "The Vintage metagame is healthy". Really? It has one sanctioned event per year and that's a "healthy" format? FoF is one of the best draw spells ever printed, so this could be a game changer, though having neutered Storm by restricting Brainstorm, it may not make a huge impact. Also, when the f**k are they going to restrict Lodestone and Workshop? And ban Time Vault outright; either that or revert its wording back to it being irrelevant. That card is the reason Vintage is dead.
The "one sanctioned event a year" thing has zero to do with the DCI/WotC restricted/ban list developers and their decisions. Fact or Fiction is worse than Jace, doubly so in a Gush-dominated metagame where Jacestorm+Fetchlands+Gush leads into a torrent of broken.
The vintage metagame is well balanced on the three pillars of the format being Tier 1 and a host of viable Tier 2 decks that can easily be adapated and used to win a tourney if the format ever gets too inbred among the Tier 1 decks. It's not the most "model" metagame with really three tier 1 decks, but there's movement in list composition and plenty of metagame shifts. It's not unhealthy. Unhealthy would be if everyone is playing the same thing because it's clearly the best, which they are not.
So very very very much better than Null Rod in Vintage fish decks w/ White in them. Not having your mana denial piece be vulnerable to maindeck shop hate is soooo good.
The Onslaught Cycling Lands Cycle (Barren Moor, Tranquil Thicket, etc.) . These are basically harmless to print for Standard but have huge implications for what you can do with Life from the Loam.
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I would always be gunning for beating two of the following high-level archetypes maindeck: blue-based tempo, aggressive beatdown, midrange, and combo, and then having a decent sideboard focused (but not exclusive to ) beating the other two general archetypes.
If you are looking for a good card to help versus those decks mentioned, I would suggest Snapcaster Mage+removal, Engineered Explosives, Umezawa's Jitte in multiples paired with a couple of Stoneforge Mystics but not the full set since they are trash vs. RUG, and some form of flying creatures to actually connect the Jitte with (Lingering Souls in Esper seems fine).
Force of Will is trash vs. these decks, don't play it.
However, when you are dealing with four and occasionally five round, usually local events with low entry fees, regular REL, and smaller prize support, my tone changes dramatically. I've been playing local Legacy events for some time and have berated players (never during matches, and usually after events) for playing non-interactive combo decks frequently when I know their card availability for playing other decks was an option.
I don't feel these decks (biggest offenders-Dredge, Show and Tell combo, Sprial Tide variants) make for a healthy environment for new Legacy players to play in. Each of these decks requires fairly intimate format knowledge and specific card choices to effectively interact with, and even with those things interacting with these decks is still very difficult. I think these decks are bad to overall health of the format in the long term. If my first Legacy experiences were having to figure out how Bridge from Below works and sit through three pairs of Time Spirals in a match I would not want to play the format again. The game they are playing is simply too foreign and broken from the other established constructed formats.
For a couple of weeks people thought he might be just the right tech for the Maverick mirror, but that honor now goes to the 'guy with the most gut shots in their sideboard'.
*) Prevent it from resolving. Spell Snare is actually a card that is very difficult for U/W to counter profitably.
*) Let them get the equipment, and discard it from their hand before they can put it into play. Have you ever cast Cabal Therapy on an opponent after they cast Stoneforge Mystic in the previous turn? Even if you just take their equipment and trade one for one, they are still up a Squire, and any Legacy deck can beat that.
*) Have a way of dealing with artifacts and enchantments maindeck-Pridemages, Goblin Tinkerer, etc.
*) Kill the Mystic with removal and then use mana denial or soft counters from preventing the equipment from having an impact on the game.
You do not have to have a god hand to interact with a fast Mystic. You do have to have a plan to fight it, and recognize that if your deck is soft to equipment strategies that you reserve additional space in your sideboard.
Show and Tell is a flat-busted, extremely degenerate card that has needed the boot since ROE came out two years ago. It is basically a split card that reads on one half "Target opponent loses one life and discards two blue cards" and on the other "add an arbitrary amount of mana of any color to your mana pool".
There's an argument that Intuition is the card that serves as the glue for all of those blue Sol-land combo decks, but Intuition sees play in fair decks doing very reasonable things, and Show and Tell only shows up in degenerate decks that are extremely hard to interact with since they have to be fought on different vectors than fighting Storm or Dredge.
Funny, my Vintage deck that I played in a tournament this weekend had thirteen maindeck cards printed within the last year. ( I placed third in the event )
The metagame for the format is centered around some non-rotating high level strategies but the individual deck instances people play in events feature are very different. The kind of metagame adjustments and 'picking the right deck for the event' are as true in vintage as they are in Standard. This kind of evolution and adaptation points to a healthy Eternal format.
This comment is just to counter your assertion (commonly held) that there is no creativity in deck building, which is completely not the case in Vintage.
As for your proposed format, I don't like it. Weighting cards doesn't work in a format with a variable metagame-card costs in a fixed point system would cause artificial metagame shifts that occur outside of tournament results, new deck technology, and new card printings. Given that the Vintage metagame is actually a balanced and healthy one, this point system is unecessary for format diversity. If there is a format diversity problem introduced by a crippling/overpowered strategy, then there is a current outlet for remediation via DCI restricted list changes.
Who would own the point value weightings? The DCI? How do they determine weights? Would this formula and decision-making be made transparent to the players? Would errors in the original point weightings sour players to the format? Are the actual players of the existing format asking for changes that would be addressed by a point-rationed system?
Just as an aside, when was the last time you played tournament Vintage (complete with Swiss rounds into top4/top8)?
Long story short-not a real decider in the mirror, but the mirror is fought via ghost quarters and surgicals. For reference, see the Brad Nelson/Charles Gindy feature match (if I recall correctly) from GP Baltimore in the archives (I also think PVDDR had a feature w/ the mirror).
There's a delicate tension between Talisman, Drownyard, and Ghost Quarter in the deck-you can't jam everything colorless mana and expect to not have problems with colors and tapped Drowned Catacombs on some draws. Choosing the appropriate mix is one of the "knobs" you have to fiddle with week in and week out to best fight what is popular.
When you don't get that opportunity, then it falls back on format knowledge and game state at that point. If you know, in general, your opponent's deck and think about what your opponent has played and how he/she has interacted with you, then you can very easily hit on the blind therapy.
The main 'gotcha' is Brainstorm in response to Therapy, then I usually try to name high frequency (in terms of deck construction) and low-impact cards since they hide the valuable stuff. Again, that comes down to format knowledge.
If you format knowledge isn't up to snuff I would suggest just running Inquisition over Therapy in deck like B/W and have a couple of Cabal Therapy in the SB.
I don't disagree completely, but anyone grinding PWPs enough to travel to a GP is going to be able to pretty much borrow whatever they need from their local network. There's a big jump between card how available/common dual lands are (pretty easy to find/borrow) and how many Candelabras or Moats are around.
If people play Dredge because it is cheap, they will lose bad because that deck needs an experienced pilot to day 2. Burn is a much more likely choice for people looking for a non-interactive deck, but there will be plenty of hate for it and that deck REALLY doesn't like to deal with hate cards.
2 Evolving Wilds
3 Glacial Fortress
5 Island
2 Moorland Haunt
1 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
1 Swamp
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Drogskol Captain
2 Dungeon Geists
3 Phantasmal Image
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Gut Shot
4 Lingering Souls
2 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
1 Revoke Existence
4 Vapor Snag
1 Celestial Purge
1 Demystify
1 Dismember
1 Dissipate
1 Divine Offering
2 Dungeon Geists
2 Gut Shot
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Revoke Existence
2 Surgical Extraction
Regarding Geist of Saint Traft:
Every game that was streamed had players with usually multiple creatures out. Even the ramp decks had Vapor Snag-proof dudes like Huntmaster of the Fells, and I saw Geists from the humans decks sitting around not doing much or not getting much damage through more than a few times. It's hard to say if this is a low point in the metagame for Geist or if the card has bigger issues with the introduction ofDKA's Lingering Souls/Huntsmaster/Gather the Townsfolk being big players in the meta.
Captain, on the other hand, was beastly almost every time the Lingering Souls Delver decks played him. He filled the role of mirror-buster, serving as an air blocker vs. spirit tokens, and an anthem effect that made blocks very unfavorable.
Not playing equipment was something that raises eyebrows, but look at the number of three drops in the deck - captians, lingering souls, snapcaster (3 mana usually) along with the two maindeck dungeon geists. All of those seem better than equipment for this event (where people everywhere were maindecking equipment hate), though as the metagame shifts and turns over the months ahead I can see equipment coming back in when the time is right.
I think this deck is the "best" deck for the event overall , and am eager to play it. I'd change the numbers around a bit to make it less weak to ramp (especially black/rock style lists like Conley's deck from GP Orlando). Two mana leaks is pretty scary when your opponent has a deck with cards like Inferno Titan or Massacre Wurm.
Combo gets waaaaay worse without Brainstorm in the format. It's literally the best card in the deck, acting as a effective draw three the turn before they go off and allowing them to shuffle completely dead/redundant combo pieces away and get fresh cards in exchange.
The big balance argument between combo vs. blue control in the context of Brainstorm banning is that a lot of blue decks would start to have to play weaker cards to get to the 20 or so blue cards needed to reliably play Force of Will. The aggro-contro/control decks would likely play Preordain or Ponder, and both are very good cards, though not as good as Brainstorm.
Mystic is fine, it's cheaply answered by Spell Snare and dies to everything. It technically 2-for-1s you on resolution if you use a spell to kill it, but if that was the criteria for banning we'd be calling for the head of Mother of Runes and Hymn , which would be absurd.
Tempo decks want it because it helps topdecks more cheap disruption and is insane with brainstorm, control decks want it becuase it's completely bananagrams with Jace, The Mind Sculptor, and combo decks want it because it's a near-free draw two on the turn they need to go off or lets them set up Lab Maniac doomsday piles when the tendrils plan doesn't pan out.
Dumb card is dumb. Gush earned it's rightful place on the naughty list, right up there with other tier two Vintage-grade offenders like the busted topdeck tutors, Mind's Desire, Necropotence and Memory Jar.
For comparison's sake, Library of Alexandria is a safer card to unban than Gush is, and that card would likely destroy the format, even if LoA's were $3 a piece.
edit: seriously the only reason one could have for unbanning Gush is if you like had a basement full of Gaddock Teegs or something.
The "one sanctioned event a year" thing has zero to do with the DCI/WotC restricted/ban list developers and their decisions. Fact or Fiction is worse than Jace, doubly so in a Gush-dominated metagame where Jacestorm+Fetchlands+Gush leads into a torrent of broken.
The vintage metagame is well balanced on the three pillars of the format being Tier 1 and a host of viable Tier 2 decks that can easily be adapated and used to win a tourney if the format ever gets too inbred among the Tier 1 decks. It's not the most "model" metagame with really three tier 1 decks, but there's movement in list composition and plenty of metagame shifts. It's not unhealthy. Unhealthy would be if everyone is playing the same thing because it's clearly the best, which they are not.