That's going to depend on who we have on, but I've been playing competitive Magic for a while and that's where my contacts are, so that's the show's focus.
Both of the first episodes talked with the players about their finishes, interesting developments in constructed formats, decks they're working on, and thoughts on recent changes by Wizards. The discussion is pretty loose knit, and I'm hoping to keep it somewhat rant and story friendly.
The first week we got Craig Wescoe, the second Brad Nelson, and we'll be live streaming Episode 3 with platinum pro Josh Mcclain tomorrow, Thursday, at 6:30 central from my personal stream twitch.tv/calebdmtg
I'm posting here because I'm looking for feedback and views. Give it a watch and let me know what you think!
Would you say it seemed like your opponent wasn't prepared to deal with early aggression? Or like they didn't respect the threat you were representing on turn 3 (e.g., by not leaving blockers back until it was too late, or by not trying to kill your Crusader immediately)?
I'm trying to understand what you're doing that's making this strategy work. I haven't had a chance to try this approach myself yet, but I've been seeing tons of Rx Heroic aggro (from good players) that sounds a lot like what you describe in your article, and I've only seen it work against decks that were totally unprepared for aggro being viable. The more value-oriented GW and UW Wingsteed Rider Heroic decks have been doing fine, but I haven't seen anyone replicate your success with RW or RG Heroic.
What do you think you're doing (or your opponents aren't doing) that's making it so successful?
My opponent went turn two two drop, turn three three drop, turn four two drop + trick, turn five spear of heliod, turn six play a flyer (representing lethal), left his team back, and died. At one point I had to chump with a token, and he made a block somewhere in the middle that got eaten by a trick. Having multiple enablers that target multiple creatures helped me power through despite my weak start (no threats until turn three).
I'm not surprised that you haven't seen it come together, and a lot of draft groups think it's an eighteen land format (heh). That I was doing something wildly different and having such good results was why I thought it was worth a full article.
Already, someone in the forums mentioned how they forced the archetype, train wrecked a bit, and swept the draft anyway. That's because the deck is doing more powerful things than the rest of the format.
falchionsensei: 10-12 creatures is the appropriate number because most of the deck needs to be filled with enablers to get the engine going. Once it is going, you only need a few threats to close the game. In a normal limited deck, your creatures are trading all the time, requiring a higher number of bodies.
Last night I mulled on the draw and kept a hand full of Coordinated Assaults and Warrior's Lessons. I didn't draw a threat until turn three, an Akroan Crusader, but my opponent still died on turn six despite leaving back ten toughness worth of blockers. During those three turns, I drew five extra cards and generated seven 1/1s.
Reprints don't necessarily decrease the price of cards or make them more available, since they can raise the interest of a format and thus an increase in demand. In the case of Tarmogoyf, the people that cracked one and suddenly became interested in Modern outweighed the number that opened it and sold it immediately, and the price for Goyf actually rose.
If people open cards, they're going to want to play with them, price be damned, and sheer quantity of cardboard is not the only thing impacting the price.
I'm not arguing against reprints, but not reprinting duals and forces, cards that you can still find on whatever site you use to buy cards, will not kill legacy in the immediate future.
Wizards DID reprint a ton of old Legacy staples due to the overlap with Modern. Clique, Goyf, Scavenging Ooze, Bob, etc, and there are rumors of more Modern Masters sets in the future. On top of that, we have a reasonable number of Grand Prix, which is more than we used to get.
Wizards wants us playing Legacy. Any time we're playing Magic is good for them. The only way Legacy will lose all support and die is if it becomes wildly unpopular like Extended did, but there are no signs of that happening.
Speaking of your deck, could you expand on why you choose to run so many 2-3 of's versus a list of solid 4's?
Cards like Birchlore Rangers and Heritage Druid, while sweet when comboing off, are the worst cards in the deck before that. Meanwhile, when you start to combo off you're drawing a pile of cards, increasing the likelihood of drawing your 3 of, and you can always GSZ for a missing piece.
Your other questions can be answered by realizing I played an almost identical list for three tournaments in a row (top eighting twice)
Emrakul also gets around Moat and Glacial Chasm locks. Neither Crossroads nor Mirror Entity can do that. If you think this is never going to happen, ask Caleb Durward how his last SCG finals went.
If I'd had an Emrakul in my deck, I would not have top eighted, much less made it to the finals. Same goes for top eighting the open in St Louis last weekend. One of these cards is a stone mulligan until it's overkill, and one of these cards is the best topdeck in the deck and pulls wins out of nowhere.
Seriously, I figured that out from a few goldfishes with the deck. How is this even being debated? The list that top 32'd in GP Atlanta also followed Chris's shell. At this point, saying "both choices have their strengths and weaknesses" is willful ignorance. Entity is clearly better.
Also: Entity doesn't expose you for a turn. You play a Symbiote, use a mana to make it an elf, then bounce it with its own ability to untap a non-summoning sick elf. Repeat. Then make your non summoning sick elves 500/500s and kill them. The decks that you care about passing the turn to (combo and control) won't have blockers to not die.
what about the sideboard? any updates to it or suggestions? I'm interested in the deck and came up with this side:
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
3 Krosan Grip
4 Force Spike/Spell Pierce (reason i say for spike is it hits all spells)
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Submerge
1 Stifle
A single Llawan isn't very good, as against Merfolk you don't want to have to resolve a Survival for your sb hate to be effective. If you do resolve Survival, you should race them with Vengevines, making Llawan irrelevant. Run 2-3 or zero.
Force Spike is not in the same league as Spell Pierce. Pierce is only there for decks with a very high quantity of spells, like storm decks, show and tell decks, or jace decks. The maindeck is designed to beat creature decks.
Another question for you Caleb... And I know that all plays are dependent on the current goings on of whatever game you are in, but around what turn did you typically slam the jittles down? was it after you had the engine going, when it sort of stalled out, or any other conditions that were typically met that made you to run it into play?
Awesome input, thanks.
Naw. If you have a Survival online, then there are better things to be doing with your mana, with the exception of if the opponent is running multiple hate cards, again like in the second game against Tom Ross. The best time to play-equip Jitte is on turn three when the aggro deck has tapped out for some random dorks so that your guy isn't exposed to path or bolt, and the jitte just swings the game. It's a fantastic use for extra Gaea's Cradle mana, too.
@ Reprobate: Not at all. The ability to fetch out all four Vengevines + a pile of 3/3 wallas makes swords/path not as good. I forced myself to test against Meandeck Countertop before the GP, which runs swords and paths, and this led me to develop a list that is resistant to StP. Also, I found that swords are best used against Noble Hierarch. In Legacy, mana is king.
@ TheKilla: It sounds like you're keeping some pretty gnarly hands. I only keep hands without Survival if they contain turn two Vengevine(s) or multiple instances of disruption: Trygon Predator/Stifle+Waste/Force+Pitch/Daze/Umezawa's Jitte. If your hand has one or less of these things and a pile of madness creatures, it is probably not keepable against an unknown opponent. I played against some of the best zoo (Tom "the boss" ross) and merfolk players in the world with this deck, and only dropped four games to Saito, who is admittedly one of the best players in the world with a list that is much better against me than the lists I was testing vs. Trust me, a brainstorm will not find you Survival often enough. A simple mulligan shows you double the cards, and another chance at the nuts. Also, while a slight splash for, oh, 2 Enlightened Tutors might be good, you're going to need more than 14 critters for a survival deck to function at all.
@twndomn: Yes, it's a metagame call, but 1-what meta doesn't have countertop? and 2-it also serves the purpose of pitching to both force and survival, while keeping the creature count up for jitte and vengevine. If you cut it, I think you have to cut it for another blue creature. If your meta has lots of combo/randomness, then Vendilion Clique is a fine substitute.
@kirk: Thanks for the kind words. Despite its apparent uselessness in the feature matches (I was happy with its presence on the board vs. Tom Ross. The threat of it equipping forced him to leave mana up, slowing him down considerably,) Jitte was pretty sweet most of the time, and did an impressive job of making Aquamoeba look like a good creature. I won two games against zoo and one game against merfolk with it. If you're going into a field with less gobbs/zoo and more countertop/randomness, then sure pull the jittes to the sideboard. At a GP, however, I stand by them in the MD.
@FzGhoul: Don't let garbage get in the way of a good time. I've been winning with crap cards for what seems like forever. Just focus on synergy and what you need to do to win at all times, and the deck will shape up. If you don't care about straight up losing to every combo deck out there, I recommend this GW version that SarcasticRat has been tearing up ML with:
SarcasticRat tried convincing me to switch over right before the GP, and had I done so I never would've top eighted. However, if your metagame doesn't have much combo (like ML's), then this list is pretty sweet.
Josh was gracious enough to put up with over an hour of technical difficulties, so we called his PT team weird and asked him why he plays bad decks.
Both of the first episodes talked with the players about their finishes, interesting developments in constructed formats, decks they're working on, and thoughts on recent changes by Wizards. The discussion is pretty loose knit, and I'm hoping to keep it somewhat rant and story friendly.
The first week we got Craig Wescoe, the second Brad Nelson, and we'll be live streaming Episode 3 with platinum pro Josh Mcclain tomorrow, Thursday, at 6:30 central from my personal stream twitch.tv/calebdmtg
I'm posting here because I'm looking for feedback and views. Give it a watch and let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Caleb
My opponent went turn two two drop, turn three three drop, turn four two drop + trick, turn five spear of heliod, turn six play a flyer (representing lethal), left his team back, and died. At one point I had to chump with a token, and he made a block somewhere in the middle that got eaten by a trick. Having multiple enablers that target multiple creatures helped me power through despite my weak start (no threats until turn three).
I'm not surprised that you haven't seen it come together, and a lot of draft groups think it's an eighteen land format (heh). That I was doing something wildly different and having such good results was why I thought it was worth a full article.
Already, someone in the forums mentioned how they forced the archetype, train wrecked a bit, and swept the draft anyway. That's because the deck is doing more powerful things than the rest of the format.
Last night I mulled on the draw and kept a hand full of Coordinated Assaults and Warrior's Lessons. I didn't draw a threat until turn three, an Akroan Crusader, but my opponent still died on turn six despite leaving back ten toughness worth of blockers. During those three turns, I drew five extra cards and generated seven 1/1s.
bji_again: Hah, fair assessment.
If people open cards, they're going to want to play with them, price be damned, and sheer quantity of cardboard is not the only thing impacting the price.
I'm not arguing against reprints, but not reprinting duals and forces, cards that you can still find on whatever site you use to buy cards, will not kill legacy in the immediate future.
Wizards DID reprint a ton of old Legacy staples due to the overlap with Modern. Clique, Goyf, Scavenging Ooze, Bob, etc, and there are rumors of more Modern Masters sets in the future. On top of that, we have a reasonable number of Grand Prix, which is more than we used to get.
Wizards wants us playing Legacy. Any time we're playing Magic is good for them. The only way Legacy will lose all support and die is if it becomes wildly unpopular like Extended did, but there are no signs of that happening.
Cards like Birchlore Rangers and Heritage Druid, while sweet when comboing off, are the worst cards in the deck before that. Meanwhile, when you start to combo off you're drawing a pile of cards, increasing the likelihood of drawing your 3 of, and you can always GSZ for a missing piece.
Your other questions can be answered by realizing I played an almost identical list for three tournaments in a row (top eighting twice)
Nope, it was just stupid good all weekend. Only match I lost in standard was to the guy with Bant Pod (who also ran elesh norn).
If I'd had an Emrakul in my deck, I would not have top eighted, much less made it to the finals. Same goes for top eighting the open in St Louis last weekend. One of these cards is a stone mulligan until it's overkill, and one of these cards is the best topdeck in the deck and pulls wins out of nowhere.
Seriously, I figured that out from a few goldfishes with the deck. How is this even being debated? The list that top 32'd in GP Atlanta also followed Chris's shell. At this point, saying "both choices have their strengths and weaknesses" is willful ignorance. Entity is clearly better.
Also: Entity doesn't expose you for a turn. You play a Symbiote, use a mana to make it an elf, then bounce it with its own ability to untap a non-summoning sick elf. Repeat. Then make your non summoning sick elves 500/500s and kill them. The decks that you care about passing the turn to (combo and control) won't have blockers to not die.
2 Blasphemous Act
1 Into the Maw of Hell
1 Rage Thrower
1 Charmbreaker Devils
1 Night Revelers
1 Riot Devils
1 Kruin Outlaw
1 Crossway Vampire
1 Brimstone Volley
1 Geistflame
1 Makeshift Mauler
1 Stitched Drake
1 Dissipate
2 Civilized Scholar
1 Deranged Assistant
1 Delver of Secrets
1 Kessig Cagebreakers
1 Prey Upon
1 Butcher's Cleaver
1 Cobbled Wings
Land
1 Shimmering Grotto
2 F
8 M
7 I
A single Llawan isn't very good, as against Merfolk you don't want to have to resolve a Survival for your sb hate to be effective. If you do resolve Survival, you should race them with Vengevines, making Llawan irrelevant. Run 2-3 or zero.
Force Spike is not in the same league as Spell Pierce. Pierce is only there for decks with a very high quantity of spells, like storm decks, show and tell decks, or jace decks. The maindeck is designed to beat creature decks.
Naw. If you have a Survival online, then there are better things to be doing with your mana, with the exception of if the opponent is running multiple hate cards, again like in the second game against Tom Ross. The best time to play-equip Jitte is on turn three when the aggro deck has tapped out for some random dorks so that your guy isn't exposed to path or bolt, and the jitte just swings the game. It's a fantastic use for extra Gaea's Cradle mana, too.
@ TheKilla: It sounds like you're keeping some pretty gnarly hands. I only keep hands without Survival if they contain turn two Vengevine(s) or multiple instances of disruption: Trygon Predator/Stifle+Waste/Force+Pitch/Daze/Umezawa's Jitte. If your hand has one or less of these things and a pile of madness creatures, it is probably not keepable against an unknown opponent. I played against some of the best zoo (Tom "the boss" ross) and merfolk players in the world with this deck, and only dropped four games to Saito, who is admittedly one of the best players in the world with a list that is much better against me than the lists I was testing vs. Trust me, a brainstorm will not find you Survival often enough. A simple mulligan shows you double the cards, and another chance at the nuts. Also, while a slight splash for, oh, 2 Enlightened Tutors might be good, you're going to need more than 14 critters for a survival deck to function at all.
@twndomn: Yes, it's a metagame call, but 1-what meta doesn't have countertop? and 2-it also serves the purpose of pitching to both force and survival, while keeping the creature count up for jitte and vengevine. If you cut it, I think you have to cut it for another blue creature. If your meta has lots of combo/randomness, then Vendilion Clique is a fine substitute.
@kirk: Thanks for the kind words. Despite its apparent uselessness in the feature matches (I was happy with its presence on the board vs. Tom Ross. The threat of it equipping forced him to leave mana up, slowing him down considerably,) Jitte was pretty sweet most of the time, and did an impressive job of making Aquamoeba look like a good creature. I won two games against zoo and one game against merfolk with it. If you're going into a field with less gobbs/zoo and more countertop/randomness, then sure pull the jittes to the sideboard. At a GP, however, I stand by them in the MD.
@FzGhoul: Don't let garbage get in the way of a good time. I've been winning with crap cards for what seems like forever. Just focus on synergy and what you need to do to win at all times, and the deck will shape up. If you don't care about straight up losing to every combo deck out there, I recommend this GW version that SarcasticRat has been tearing up ML with:
http://www.magic-league.com/deck/63087/legacy_t15.html#Vengevine%20Survival11913
SarcasticRat tried convincing me to switch over right before the GP, and had I done so I never would've top eighted. However, if your metagame doesn't have much combo (like ML's), then this list is pretty sweet.