A year ago I started playing Legacy. And in the past year I've noticed an interesting trend: I always seem to place/do better in Legacy than any other format.
So far in just one year of playing Legacy I have gone 9-6 in a legacy open and 5-2-1 in a classic (as well as placing in countless side-events).
I have never had anywhere close to those results in either standard/modern. It might come of as a strange question... but I ask to see if anyone else has had a similar situation.
I'm trying to understand how I can apply my strengths in legacy to the other formats in order to increase win percentages.
I play Imperial Taxes in Legacy. I "try" to play Grixis/UWR control in modern and other control variants in standard.
Thanks for your input!
This doesn't give nearly enough information to be useful. It could be you are playing decks that work better to your style of play, it could be that you work better with more options, or you're good with non interactive combos that ignore your opponent completely. If you mention what decks you play in legacy you can get help porting similar types of decks into modern to see if you can replicate your success.
This doesn't give nearly enough information to be useful. It could be you are playing decks that work better to your style of play, it could be that you work better with more options, or you're good with non interactive combos that ignore your opponent completely. If you mention what decks you play in legacy you can get help porting similar types of decks into modern to see if you can replicate your success.
My bad. I updated the above post. I play Imperial Taxes in Legacy.
I experience the same phenomenon. I attribute this to the fact that I find Legacy to be a much more skill intensive/skill reliant format. Yes, there's always the element of luck in Magic, but Legacy is a format where playing a single one mana spell at the exact wrong time can spell defeat by creating an opening. I mean, where else can an opponent make the mistake of casting a 'Goyf on T2, using their only mana, then die to a lethal storm count staring at the Spell Pierce in hand and a tapped tropical island on their field?
Really, Legacy players will punish you for the most innocent of mistakes that, only after you play the format, do you realize how egregious they are. Standard and Modern are more forgiving, making a single error won't typically cost you the game on the spot. Old Standard Jund featuring Bloodbraid Elf/Blightning had a reputation for being an extremely forgiving deck that allowed for multiple mistakes for example. Basically what I'm driving at is that Standard/Modern have more variance. Naturally, the best players in these formats also make few, if any mistakes, but they aren't always able to capitalize on other's mistakes as often or punish them as hard when they do as in Legacy. Also, given that there is less variance in the decks, mean that you're not nearly as likely to show up to an event being the only player packing a given deck, in standard, three or more people may be playing basically the exact same deck as you, which, at that point, the only thing left in your control is how much better you are than them, which is mitigated by how much luckier they are than you. They might not be the best pilot, but they might get paired up against better matchups than you. In Legacy, however, the deck variance is so great it's almost impossible to have a contingency plan for everything you could face in a day. Sometimes you bring Storm and run into MUD, and sometimes you bring Miracles and run into Lands and sometimes you bring Burn and run into Death and Taxes. In standard and modern, you can usually have a contingency plan/sideboard for most, if not all the decks that exist, and your opponent probably has something that they can bring in against you. You face a lot more targeted hate in these formats, and in Legacy, sometimes your opponent just didn't find room in the sideboard for 4x Leyline of Sanctity as you open up a handful of bolts and fireblasts.
TLDR: Hate in standard/modern is more likely to exist against you and target you, mistakes in these formats are not usually game ending and it's more difficult to punish your opponent severely for making them; even if you are the better player, you may not always be able to capitalize on it. In Legacy, the power level of cards is so high, capitalizing on an opponent's mistake more often than not equals a win.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
On a large legacy tournament, a player can coast by because they're pitted against sun-optimal decks, or decks that what the player can afford, not the ones they want.
Seriously, look at the decklists of largish tournaments. You will see some really oddball decks and card choices. If you have an established deck, you can get very far.
Of course, it also means that you will also meet decks that you never thought you'd play against and wind up wiped out.
And I know quite a number of standard players who genuinely think that eternal players have little to know skill, so if you play even somewhat decent standard you will clean house in legacy.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
On a large legacy tournament, a player can coast by because they're pitted against sun-optimal decks, or decks that what the player can afford, not the ones they want.
Seriously, look at the decklists of largish tournaments. You will see some really oddball decks and card choices. If you have an established deck, you can get very far.
Of course, it also means that you will also meet decks that you never thought you'd play against and wind up wiped out.
And I know quite a number of standard players who genuinely think that eternal players have little to know skill, so if you play even somewhat decent standard you will clean house in legacy.
Just like to say I think this is a bigger part of it than a lot of legacy players realize. I am a self-admitted mediocre player at best, but I usually do fairly well at legacy. While I'd like to say it's my mad skills, it's probably that a lot of opponents have sub-optimal lists or brews, or they are people borrowing a deck from a friend, or they're new to their deck and therefore otherwise not skilled. I usually lose to the people who play every week with the same deck. I also usually play loam pox, which can be frustrating to play against and is nothing like anything in standard or modern, and it throws people off.
In modern on the other hand, I tend to do way worse, even when I'm playing something tier 1. I think it's because there's just way more people in the room also playing Tier 1 or 2 lists and who know what they are doing.
It's not that modern is more skill-intensive, it's just that the players around me are more highly skilled.
or they are people borrowing a deck from a friend, or they're new to their deck and therefore otherwise not skilled.
This cannot be overstated. Legacy rewards deck fluency much more than Modern or Standard do. You can't just slap together a tier 1 deck, playtest it for a bit, then take it to a big event and hope to do well, because outside of matchups hugely lopsided in your favour, you're likely to get rolled by someone who's been playing the same deck for literally years and knows its every intricacy and line of play in excruciating detail. The smaller the card pool and the less diverse the options, the more you get rewarded for other factors. There's a reason that it's good advice for someone who wants to go to a Legacy event but isn't familiar with the format is "put together a linear combo deck like Belcher, goldfish with it until you're comfortable, and pray variance is on your side."
I've taken a solidly tier 2 Legacy deck (Jund, because I like my decks to be a value grind) to multiple top 8s at large events, but have had relatively minimal success in other formats, and that's because of the peculiarities of how Legacy works as a format. With formats like Standard, tiers mean much more because a high tier deck can have a solid game against most if not all of the field (as well as being able to sideboard against a higher proportion of your bad matchups), but in Legacy, a tier 2 or even 3 deck can just come out of nowhere and spike an event more easily than in narrower formats.
The best comparison I can think of is that if formats were RPGs, then Legacy would be Dark Souls—not the most difficult per se, but having a fairly demanding learning curve right from the get-go and a low tolerance for foolish mistakes.
In legacy it is far more important to be comfortable with your deck than to play a tier 1 deck. Of course if you are very comfortable with a tier 1 deck it improves your odds of top 8'ing a tournament more.
Come across a lot of people back when I played who were just borrowing a deck from a friend who had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they played against me on storm combo. Misplays against storm can and do cost you the game. Heck, misplays in legacy in general are usually far more punishing than in other formats because the powerlevel is so much higher than modern and standard. Wasteland is so much more powerful than anything you can do in modern and standard with ease and if you don't play around it in legacy it can actually just win the game by itself by landscrewing you for the entire game.
I wouldn't say a lot of legacy players are bad. I'd say the ratio of good players to bad players is the same across all formats. In general people are bad at magic or at least the bad players outnumber the good players by a vast margin.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
I wouldn't say a lot of legacy players are bad. I'd say the ratio of good players to bad players is the same across all formats. In general people are bad at magic or at least the bad players outnumber the good players by a vast margin.
The definition of "good" in Legacy is a much higher bar because the format is so unforgiving to play mistakes and errors. If you can correctly pilot a deck in Legacy, without making any mistakes, you're doing better than a larger percentage of players. It's not that the ratio of "good to bad players" is different, it's that the bar for a "good" player is set much higher in Legacy, so if you happen to be a good player in that format, you're outgunning a larger number of people from the get go, in a format where a single mistake costs the game.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
If you can correctly pilot a deck in Legacy, without making any mistakes, you're doing better than a larger percentage of players.
Here's an example to illustrate that concept. You play a turn 1 fetchland against an unknown opponent. In Modern, you can choose to fetch something tapped or untapped, get a specific shockland if you're in more than two colours, etc. You're safe to hold off if you want to see what your opponent's doing first. In Legacy, you have those concerns too, but you also have to consider whether your opponent is on a deck that'll Stifle your fetch if you hold off (and such decks may well Time Walk you by playing a fetchland and passing, threatening a counter-fetch into Stifle all throughout your second turn if you attempt to use that land), or a deck that'll throw a turn 1 Blood Moon at you, and even past that, you have to consider how likely it is to be hit by Wasteland and weigh that against being able to cast all your spells.
Games can be lost by fetching the wrong thing on turn 1, even before anyone casts any spells. And the player may not even realize it.
If you can correctly pilot a deck in Legacy, without making any mistakes, you're doing better than a larger percentage of players.
Here's an example to illustrate that concept. You play a turn 1 fetchland against an unknown opponent. In Modern, you can choose to fetch something tapped or untapped, get a specific shockland if you're in more than two colours, etc. You're safe to hold off if you want to see what your opponent's doing first. In Legacy, you have those concerns too, but you also have to consider whether your opponent is on a deck that'll Stifle your fetch if you hold off (and such decks may well Time Walk you by playing a fetchland and passing, threatening a counter-fetch into Stifle all throughout your second turn if you attempt to use that land), or a deck that'll throw a turn 1 Blood Moon at you, and even past that, you have to consider how likely it is to be hit by Wasteland and weigh that against being able to cast all your spells.
Games can be lost by fetching the wrong thing on turn 1, even before anyone casts any spells. And the player may not even realize it.
I don't think this demonstrates the previous point very well. In the dark if you wait and get stifled or you fetch and get Wastelanded those aren't in anyway mistakes. Stifle is a seldom played card so maybe one could argue it's a mistake to even play around it in the dark but otherwise that example is just about luck.
I'd argue it's not really "luck" causing a loss if, say, you fetch a dual, get Wasted, then you're off a mana for an important turn later, or if you fetch a basic and wind up with colour problems. In both cases, you made a decision that wound up being incorrect. Magic is all about making decisions based on imperfect information, so outside of situations where variance is the only thing killing you (keeping a decent hand and then proceeding to draw nothing but land, for instance), there's something you could've done better but didn't, or factors you could've weighted differently but didn't. I've played a lot against things like Delver, Stoneblade, D&T, and other grindy decks, and it really is the little, unassuming things that cost you the game in those matchups.
I'd argue it's not really "luck" causing a loss if, say, you fetch a dual, get Wasted, then you're off a mana for an important turn later, or if you fetch a basic and wind up with colour problems. In both cases, you made a decision that wound up being incorrect. Magic is all about making decisions based on imperfect information, so outside of situations where variance is the only thing killing you (keeping a decent hand and then proceeding to draw nothing but land, for instance), there's something you could've done better but didn't, or factors you could've weighted differently but didn't. I've played a lot against things like Delver, Stoneblade, D&T, and other grindy decks, and it really is the little, unassuming things that cost you the game in those matchups.
No, I mean your example was about fetching or not to fetch with an unknown opponent. That IS luck based. There is no skill involved with just that information.
I'd argue it's not really "luck" causing a loss if, say, you fetch a dual, get Wasted, then you're off a mana for an important turn later, or if you fetch a basic and wind up with colour problems. In both cases, you made a decision that wound up being incorrect. Magic is all about making decisions based on imperfect information, so outside of situations where variance is the only thing killing you (keeping a decent hand and then proceeding to draw nothing but land, for instance), there's something you could've done better but didn't, or factors you could've weighted differently but didn't. I've played a lot against things like Delver, Stoneblade, D&T, and other grindy decks, and it really is the little, unassuming things that cost you the game in those matchups.
No, I mean your example was about fetching or not to fetch with an unknown opponent. That IS luck based. There is no skill involved with just that information.
Not entirely true. While Legacy is indeed a varied format, there are certain cards that gain and ebb in use as the meta shifts. Right now, for example, there is a pretty decent chance I can safely fetch on T1 since I know that Stifle is not nearly as popular as it used to be. Just like in game, where you sometimes hedge your actions based on what you know you have remaining in the deck to draw, you can make an educated decision in probability derived from studying the format and what's active. This is especially true in later rounds when opponents are less and less likely to be playing fringe decks and less popular cards, making your educated guess off of information that is more accurate as the tournament progresses. Two, three years ago, you'd be met with perhaps 50/50 odds your opponent was playing stifle, these days it's probably closer to an 85% chance they're not.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
There is skill involved. You make a decision to or to not fetch based on how much stifle/wasteland would hurt you that game prior to your opponent playing a single card. You could be flooded so getting your fetch stifled on purpose might be the correct play as crazy as it sounds. Same goes for wasteland you could purposefully fetch a dual in the hopes that they waste it so you get another draw step towards gas. Things are rarely cut and dry in legacy in terms of the decisions you can make in an entire game.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
No, I mean your example was about fetching or not to fetch with an unknown opponent. That IS luck based. There is no skill involved with just that information.
If they have an Underground Sea or Volcanic Island untapped, I would definitely think twice before Fetching. That's using knowledge of what kind of decks play certain cards.
Not entirely true. While Legacy is indeed a varied format, there are certain cards that gain and ebb in use as the meta shifts. Right now, for example, there is a pretty decent chance I can safely fetch on T1 since I know that Stifle is not nearly as popular as it used to be.
Also: Local metas. Depending on what area you're in, there may be a number of diehard Delver players who've never given up their deck, and as a result are frighteningly good with it. If you scout out an unfamiliar meta or talk to people more familiar with it, then you might discover that a deck may not be as out of favour there as you first thought based on more global information.
But in reality, the whole "am I walking into Stifle?" thing is only one aspect of the point I was making (you could also argue that these decisions don't matter as much playing with or against most combo decks, for instance, though that just kicks the can down the road because there are other decision points that are equivalent in nearly any deck). Currently, you may not be as likely to be Stifled, but you could still get aggressively Wasted if you fetch a dual, or you could wind up with mana problems if you try to stick to fetching basics. Fetching the wrong dual could cut you off having enough of a given colour later on, especially if mana denial comes into play (hugely relevant against decks like D&T where that's their game plan against decks that make these kinds of decisions). They're just things that don't factor as much into newer formats despite being game-deciding in Legacy.
I'm no expert and you may not like what i'm going to say but as an objective point of view, ill be blunt.
Playing legacy is playing what has already been proven to be good...there is always place for improvements but basically you go on the internet, read what are the typical best deck, you choose the one you feel like playing with and spend a lot of money getting those cards and you'll even throw in a few changes to your liking to make your own. Budjet wise, the one that spend more money than the average people will tend to increase their fortune (chance of winning)
Playing standard is playing what has yet to be proven, you need yo be more creative, figure out combos that hasnt been shown and base your deck odds on the few expension part of Standard. Price of cards are in reach of most people so injecting massive money doesnt have as much impact as in Legacy. Requires a lot of playtesting.
your standard and modern environments are more competitive than your legacy one
That is the shorter, and very accurate version of what I was trying to say. Most legacy scenes really aren't that competitive (even when 75% of the room is running top tier decks), because most of the players at most shops (even legacy shops) aren't half as good as they think they are, and anyone who's somewhat decent and legacy experienced will stomp the newbies. Big events are similar, it's just that the "skilled" player at the LGS might be the "newbie" at the big event.
This is sort of how I've seen things work:
- The best legacy players are the ones who have played the most legacy for the longest amount of time.
- The best modern players are the ones who stick to a single deck every week.
- The best standard players are the ones who are both able to play competitively several days a week and willing to spend whatever they have to get the best cards the minute they come out.
Our store switched to proxies before the proxy ban and two standard grinders hopped over to legacy and got first and second in their very first tournament with full proxy decks. Legacy players think they're special little snowflakes and tapping a turn 1 land wrong loses the match but they can't come down to modern or standard and perform with any kind of skill.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves. Playing the right deck and having a strong understanding of your lines of play matters more than the format.
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
This is sort of how I've seen things work:
- The best legacy players are the ones who have played the most legacy for the longest amount of time.
- The best modern players are the ones who stick to a single deck every week.
- The best standard players are the ones who are both able to play competitively several days a week and willing to spend whatever they have to get the best cards the minute they come out.
I wouldn't always say this is the case. There are several players at my lgs who say that I am the best player of 40-60 players that play modern there. I have been known to play a different deck every week for a bit, although admittedly there are around 4-5 decks that I really play well and I usually use those at competitive rel. Modern is my fun format and my competitive format, so I have to mix it up a bit. It is really the only format that I play for the most part, so I have to get all of my kicks there.
With regard to legacy, I did very well in the beginning. I now believe a lot of that was luck since I haven't really been able to play often and have posted only a 50% win ratio in my past 4 events, spanning 7 months. I just don't get to play legacy as often as I wish, so it's part of the reason that I am more unfamiliar with the interactions.
Our store switched to proxies before the proxy ban and two standard grinders hopped over to legacy and got first and second in their very first tournament with full proxy decks. Legacy players think they're special little snowflakes and tapping a turn 1 land wrong loses the match but they can't come down to modern or standard and perform with any kind of skill.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves. Playing the right deck and having a strong understanding of your lines of play matters more than the format.
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
I have a bit of an issue with this. Firstly, there are pro players that are known for being only average at limited, despite being much better than the average pro at constructed. Pro players have their own strengths and weaknesses. To say that they are all very good at limited is a fallacy. I know limited all star players who have beaten pro players mostly by knowing the format since the actual technical play is very good as a pro.
Standard players have a smaller pool to worry about, including a smaller "pool of played cards," which will inherently make it easier to guess what's coming. Also some aspects of the game are non aspects. There is no land destruction to play around, nor combo to consider and that's only the brief part of it. Kudos to the standard players at your lgs for doing so well. Something like that would be very unlikely to happen at a legacy event played for thousands of dollars worth of cards. Sorry, it's just what I've seen.
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Our store switched to proxies before the proxy ban and two standard grinders hopped over to legacy and got first and second in their very first tournament with full proxy decks. Legacy players think they're special little snowflakes and tapping a turn 1 land wrong loses the match but they can't come down to modern or standard and perform with any kind of skill.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves. Playing the right deck and having a strong understanding of your lines of play matters more than the format.
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
Just out of curiosity, have you personally played Legacy?
No, I mean your example was about fetching or not to fetch with an unknown opponent. That IS luck based. There is no skill involved with just that information.
If they have an Underground Sea or Volcanic Island untapped, I would definitely think twice before Fetching. That's using knowledge of what kind of decks play certain cards.
You missed the whole point. I said IN THE DARK. There is no land on opponent's side of the table. I've played Legacy for many years and travel to large GPs across the world that video has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
your standard and modern environments are more competitive than your legacy one
That is the shorter, and very accurate version of what I was trying to say. Most legacy scenes really aren't that competitive (even when 75% of the room is running top tier decks), because most of the players at most shops (even legacy shops) aren't half as good as they think they are, and anyone who's somewhat decent and legacy experienced will stomp the newbies. Big events are similar, it's just that the "skilled" player at the LGS might be the "newbie" at the big event.
This is sort of how I've seen things work:
- The best legacy players are the ones who have played the most legacy for the longest amount of time.
- The best modern players are the ones who stick to a single deck every week.
- The best standard players are the ones who are both able to play competitively several days a week and willing to spend whatever they have to get the best cards the minute they come out.
I think this is kind of the argument I'm making, but differently. The reason your local Legacy LGS's crew is not necessarily competitive is because the bar is so much higher to be competitive at a professional level. This is because the format is just plain more complex and skill intensive. I mean, I've been playing Magic for 20+ years, Legacy for 6 or 7, and when I sit down at a large Legacy event with truly competitive players, I feel like I just barely deserve to be sitting at that table. Sitting down for any other format, I feel like I've got a pretty fair shot. Hell, I've beaten some Pros at the last GP I went to (my first time ever getting paired with them) and felt like they had a pretty fair fight coming their way. My battle might have been a little uphill, sure, but I didn't feel completely outclassed. But the people who are truly good at Legacy are simply incredible players. There are so few people at this level of play that getting the experience to learn from them is a fairly rare opportunity for most, and so there's no chance that most LGS players can get to that level, even if they are the best at their store or locale. I recognize that I'm a pretty good player by most standards, but I also recognize that I'm no "pro" and on any other given day of the week I could have had my face smashed in by the pros I beat one day at one event.
Decklists in legacy are honed killing machines with access to some of the best cards ever printed, and the number of free wins due to manascrew or colorscrew (barring getting your lands blown up by Wasteland and sometimes Sinkhole) just aren't there nearly as often as standard. With Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm, the odds of winning because your opponent failed to find any of their deck's namesake cards is also diminished. The decks are consistent and very good at what they do, and if you fail to interact meaningfully and correctly, you will die because the decks do not stumble nearly as often.
1) The reason the best Legacy players are the ones who have been playing it the longest is because grasping the complexity of Legacy is not an overnight thing. It is a high skill format that doesn't just involve learning how to pay your deck, but how 10+ different decks operate, and what that means to your deck's gameplans. It takes experience to look at someone's T1 land play, and realize what they're playing, and what the worst cards for you to have to fight against are, when they come down, and how that affects your gameplan. In standard, you have to figure out how to deal with what, 4, maybe 5 Tier 1 decks at any given time, and a smattering of variants of those? And some of those decks can't meaningfully interact with you until T3? In Legacy, as a Storm player, you see "Plains, go" on T1 and you know you'd better figure out real quick how to kill someone or make 14 goblins, because there's up to a 40% chance the next turn's play is a Thalia and that's a problem.
Additionally, the longer you play a deck, the more experience you get with making it do things you never realized it could do until you needed it to. It never occurred to me to use Brainstorm/LED/Gitaxian Probe to cast an Empty the Warrens that was stuck in my hand until I had to do it one day. Standard decks just don't typically approach that level of complexity; you typically learn all of a deck's tricks during its standard lifetime and then it rotates. In Legacy, sometimes decks get new tricks (everyone got to learn how to use Past in Flames for example). Seeing the evolution of a deck throughout the years helps provide a greater understanding of the deck by knowing its history.
2) See 1), but to a lesser extent since Modern is also non-rotating and offers more complexity than standard. Well, kind of, there always seems to be a dominant deck in Modern until something gets the banhammer. Legacy has several different dominant decks and any given day of the week a tier 1.5 deck can sometimes just wreck face. Standard, when balanced, tends to have 4-5 solid archetypes/builds, and miscellaneous variants of the basic shells unless it's jacked up and it's cawblade/affinity vs cawblade/affinity. The list of Tier 1 decks in Legacy, however, is far larger, and you don't see tier 1.5 lists show up that often in professional Standard Top 8s.
3) This is probably true, but does not equate to direct skill; again, hand that standard player Quad Lasers or ANT and throw him into a Legacy event. He'll do far worse than handing the Legacy player Bant Company and throwing him into a standard event. There's simply more things taken into account at any given moment when choosing playlines in Legacy and the format makes you very good at taking everything possible into account. In standard, of course, there's MUCH less to take into account, so it's a good deal easier to put those skills to use with a high degree of proficiency.
Our store switched to proxies before the proxy ban and two standard grinders hopped over to legacy and got first and second in their very first tournament with full proxy decks. Legacy players think they're special little snowflakes and tapping a turn 1 land wrong loses the match but they can't come down to modern or standard and perform with any kind of skill.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves. Playing the right deck and having a strong understanding of your lines of play matters more than the format.
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
Nice blanket statement. Totally argues your point. I don't consider myself a "special little snowflake" and did quite well for myself when I chose to exert effort in Standard/Modern. I loved standard when there were decks that awarded high levels of playing skill. Caw-Blade is a deck a lot of people really, really hated due to its dominance, but it only dominated in the hands of someone who could pilot it well, as opposed to say, Shard block Jund, which was "hurhurhur, BBE into Blightning GG" every single game. Admittedly, Caw Blade was an oppressive deck filled with good cards, but it only rewarded those who played it with skill. Problem with it was that it was nigh unbeatable when this happened. But honestly, Standard got to the point where I no longer cared so much about winning as much as I cared about winning with something that was actually fun to play, even if it was a more uphill battle. Chromantiflayer was fun, as was Theros block Enchantress, and I even had a Master Biomancer brew back in original Innistrad that got some notice from people on MTGS who tested it and found it hilariously fun and powerful. My point is that saying "Legacy Players act like they're special little snowflakes but can't perform in any other format is downright wrong."
This is typical of the ignorance I'd expect from someone who has no grasp of the importance of changing the entire execution of your gameplan based on the land someone drops on T1, and makes sweeping assumptions based on sour grapes than actual experience. If you're going to be condescending, you should try getting a pillar to stand on first when you decide to talk down to people. That's not a jab, that's me trying to provide a helpful life tip.
Good job, your LGS has two standard players who can make a full proxy Legacy deck and win with an unlimited and infinite card pool access in a format that probably far fewer people at your LGS have any kind of experience with, let alone any experience on a truly competitive level. I'm not really sure what your point is here, other than an attempt to back up an incendiary comment?
See, I don't play Legacy to justify the expenditure of my deck, I don't need to. I acquired most of the cards before the massive price spikes hit because I felt playing with cards on the Reserve list offered a stable, one time investment as well as the opportunity to play with cards I loved in my high school days, in addition to being regarded widely as one of the most competitive scenes out there. Just because a deck is worth $2k doesn't mean someone actually spent $2k on it, and people play Legacy for more reasons than to justify the money they spent on it.
Whether you like it or not, different formats exercise and value various types of skill and luck differently. Limited is not exclusively a luck based format, skill just comes in a different form. There is no skill in limited in trying to figure out the metagame because there obviously isn't much of one, your opponent could be playing almost anything. However, there is a great deal of skill in deck construction from scratch, particularly with sealed. Draft, naturally, has its own skill of being able to draft well to begin with. And then luck takes the form of what did you actually open in your sealed pool? I won't lie, the GP where I beat my first pro matches was at least in part due to the fact I had a really good sealed pool. I felt at least one of my opponents did indeed have better technicals than me, but I also knew my deck was good and I had built it well, and it paid off. But I don't think my play skill and deckbuilding would have carried me as far if I'd had crappier cards.
In constructed formats, luck still exists, obviously, but it's knowing how to make yourself lucky. Figuring out the odds of your opponent holding Force of Will or figuring out the odds of what you're drawing next turn being relevant or game ending. Recognizing and playing to your outs. Knowing what to name with a blind Cabal Therapy. These are all things that we can always make educated guesses about, but sometimes we're just plain wrong. It doesn't mean the decision was wrong, it just means the outcome was. We do this in every format to some extent, but denying that luck exists is as equally incorrect as saying that a format is luck based. Good players acknowledge the role that luck plays, and can separate bad luck from bad plays. You don't want to change the way you play when it truly was luck that beat you, but you don't want to make bad luck your scapegoat for losses where you made the wrong choice.
Our store switched to proxies before the proxy ban and two standard grinders hopped over to legacy and got first and second in their very first tournament with full proxy decks. Legacy players think they're special little snowflakes and tapping a turn 1 land wrong loses the match but they can't come down to modern or standard and perform with any kind of skill.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves. Playing the right deck and having a strong understanding of your lines of play matters more than the format.
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
Just out of curiosity, have you personally played Legacy?
I'll give you a hint of based of the number of posts this person has in Legacy related content over the course of their membership here, it's between 1 and 3. Clearly someone who knows what they're talking about in legacy related matters and is in the utmost position to pass judgement on all the "special snowflakes" that play the format. At least if you roll back into my post history, you can actually tell that I've played other formats
So far in just one year of playing Legacy I have gone 9-6 in a legacy open and 5-2-1 in a classic (as well as placing in countless side-events).
I have never had anywhere close to those results in either standard/modern. It might come of as a strange question... but I ask to see if anyone else has had a similar situation.
I'm trying to understand how I can apply my strengths in legacy to the other formats in order to increase win percentages.
I play Imperial Taxes in Legacy. I "try" to play Grixis/UWR control in modern and other control variants in standard.
Thanks for your input!
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
My bad. I updated the above post. I play Imperial Taxes in Legacy.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
Really, Legacy players will punish you for the most innocent of mistakes that, only after you play the format, do you realize how egregious they are. Standard and Modern are more forgiving, making a single error won't typically cost you the game on the spot. Old Standard Jund featuring Bloodbraid Elf/Blightning had a reputation for being an extremely forgiving deck that allowed for multiple mistakes for example. Basically what I'm driving at is that Standard/Modern have more variance. Naturally, the best players in these formats also make few, if any mistakes, but they aren't always able to capitalize on other's mistakes as often or punish them as hard when they do as in Legacy. Also, given that there is less variance in the decks, mean that you're not nearly as likely to show up to an event being the only player packing a given deck, in standard, three or more people may be playing basically the exact same deck as you, which, at that point, the only thing left in your control is how much better you are than them, which is mitigated by how much luckier they are than you. They might not be the best pilot, but they might get paired up against better matchups than you. In Legacy, however, the deck variance is so great it's almost impossible to have a contingency plan for everything you could face in a day. Sometimes you bring Storm and run into MUD, and sometimes you bring Miracles and run into Lands and sometimes you bring Burn and run into Death and Taxes. In standard and modern, you can usually have a contingency plan/sideboard for most, if not all the decks that exist, and your opponent probably has something that they can bring in against you. You face a lot more targeted hate in these formats, and in Legacy, sometimes your opponent just didn't find room in the sideboard for 4x Leyline of Sanctity as you open up a handful of bolts and fireblasts.
TLDR: Hate in standard/modern is more likely to exist against you and target you, mistakes in these formats are not usually game ending and it's more difficult to punish your opponent severely for making them; even if you are the better player, you may not always be able to capitalize on it. In Legacy, the power level of cards is so high, capitalizing on an opponent's mistake more often than not equals a win.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Seriously, look at the decklists of largish tournaments. You will see some really oddball decks and card choices. If you have an established deck, you can get very far.
Of course, it also means that you will also meet decks that you never thought you'd play against and wind up wiped out.
And I know quite a number of standard players who genuinely think that eternal players have little to know skill, so if you play even somewhat decent standard you will clean house in legacy.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Just like to say I think this is a bigger part of it than a lot of legacy players realize. I am a self-admitted mediocre player at best, but I usually do fairly well at legacy. While I'd like to say it's my mad skills, it's probably that a lot of opponents have sub-optimal lists or brews, or they are people borrowing a deck from a friend, or they're new to their deck and therefore otherwise not skilled. I usually lose to the people who play every week with the same deck. I also usually play loam pox, which can be frustrating to play against and is nothing like anything in standard or modern, and it throws people off.
In modern on the other hand, I tend to do way worse, even when I'm playing something tier 1. I think it's because there's just way more people in the room also playing Tier 1 or 2 lists and who know what they are doing.
It's not that modern is more skill-intensive, it's just that the players around me are more highly skilled.
This cannot be overstated. Legacy rewards deck fluency much more than Modern or Standard do. You can't just slap together a tier 1 deck, playtest it for a bit, then take it to a big event and hope to do well, because outside of matchups hugely lopsided in your favour, you're likely to get rolled by someone who's been playing the same deck for literally years and knows its every intricacy and line of play in excruciating detail. The smaller the card pool and the less diverse the options, the more you get rewarded for other factors. There's a reason that it's good advice for someone who wants to go to a Legacy event but isn't familiar with the format is "put together a linear combo deck like Belcher, goldfish with it until you're comfortable, and pray variance is on your side."
I've taken a solidly tier 2 Legacy deck (Jund, because I like my decks to be a value grind) to multiple top 8s at large events, but have had relatively minimal success in other formats, and that's because of the peculiarities of how Legacy works as a format. With formats like Standard, tiers mean much more because a high tier deck can have a solid game against most if not all of the field (as well as being able to sideboard against a higher proportion of your bad matchups), but in Legacy, a tier 2 or even 3 deck can just come out of nowhere and spike an event more easily than in narrower formats.
The best comparison I can think of is that if formats were RPGs, then Legacy would be Dark Souls—not the most difficult per se, but having a fairly demanding learning curve right from the get-go and a low tolerance for foolish mistakes.
Come across a lot of people back when I played who were just borrowing a deck from a friend who had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they played against me on storm combo. Misplays against storm can and do cost you the game. Heck, misplays in legacy in general are usually far more punishing than in other formats because the powerlevel is so much higher than modern and standard. Wasteland is so much more powerful than anything you can do in modern and standard with ease and if you don't play around it in legacy it can actually just win the game by itself by landscrewing you for the entire game.
I wouldn't say a lot of legacy players are bad. I'd say the ratio of good players to bad players is the same across all formats. In general people are bad at magic or at least the bad players outnumber the good players by a vast margin.
Currently Playing:
Retired
The definition of "good" in Legacy is a much higher bar because the format is so unforgiving to play mistakes and errors. If you can correctly pilot a deck in Legacy, without making any mistakes, you're doing better than a larger percentage of players. It's not that the ratio of "good to bad players" is different, it's that the bar for a "good" player is set much higher in Legacy, so if you happen to be a good player in that format, you're outgunning a larger number of people from the get go, in a format where a single mistake costs the game.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Here's an example to illustrate that concept. You play a turn 1 fetchland against an unknown opponent. In Modern, you can choose to fetch something tapped or untapped, get a specific shockland if you're in more than two colours, etc. You're safe to hold off if you want to see what your opponent's doing first. In Legacy, you have those concerns too, but you also have to consider whether your opponent is on a deck that'll Stifle your fetch if you hold off (and such decks may well Time Walk you by playing a fetchland and passing, threatening a counter-fetch into Stifle all throughout your second turn if you attempt to use that land), or a deck that'll throw a turn 1 Blood Moon at you, and even past that, you have to consider how likely it is to be hit by Wasteland and weigh that against being able to cast all your spells.
Games can be lost by fetching the wrong thing on turn 1, even before anyone casts any spells. And the player may not even realize it.
I don't think this demonstrates the previous point very well. In the dark if you wait and get stifled or you fetch and get Wastelanded those aren't in anyway mistakes. Stifle is a seldom played card so maybe one could argue it's a mistake to even play around it in the dark but otherwise that example is just about luck.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
No, I mean your example was about fetching or not to fetch with an unknown opponent. That IS luck based. There is no skill involved with just that information.
Not entirely true. While Legacy is indeed a varied format, there are certain cards that gain and ebb in use as the meta shifts. Right now, for example, there is a pretty decent chance I can safely fetch on T1 since I know that Stifle is not nearly as popular as it used to be. Just like in game, where you sometimes hedge your actions based on what you know you have remaining in the deck to draw, you can make an educated decision in probability derived from studying the format and what's active. This is especially true in later rounds when opponents are less and less likely to be playing fringe decks and less popular cards, making your educated guess off of information that is more accurate as the tournament progresses. Two, three years ago, you'd be met with perhaps 50/50 odds your opponent was playing stifle, these days it's probably closer to an 85% chance they're not.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Currently Playing:
Retired
If they have an Underground Sea or Volcanic Island untapped, I would definitely think twice before Fetching. That's using knowledge of what kind of decks play certain cards.
Watch this game to see what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mDVLp5rOXc
Also: Local metas. Depending on what area you're in, there may be a number of diehard Delver players who've never given up their deck, and as a result are frighteningly good with it. If you scout out an unfamiliar meta or talk to people more familiar with it, then you might discover that a deck may not be as out of favour there as you first thought based on more global information.
But in reality, the whole "am I walking into Stifle?" thing is only one aspect of the point I was making (you could also argue that these decisions don't matter as much playing with or against most combo decks, for instance, though that just kicks the can down the road because there are other decision points that are equivalent in nearly any deck). Currently, you may not be as likely to be Stifled, but you could still get aggressively Wasted if you fetch a dual, or you could wind up with mana problems if you try to stick to fetching basics. Fetching the wrong dual could cut you off having enough of a given colour later on, especially if mana denial comes into play (hugely relevant against decks like D&T where that's their game plan against decks that make these kinds of decisions). They're just things that don't factor as much into newer formats despite being game-deciding in Legacy.
Playing legacy is playing what has already been proven to be good...there is always place for improvements but basically you go on the internet, read what are the typical best deck, you choose the one you feel like playing with and spend a lot of money getting those cards and you'll even throw in a few changes to your liking to make your own. Budjet wise, the one that spend more money than the average people will tend to increase their fortune (chance of winning)
Playing standard is playing what has yet to be proven, you need yo be more creative, figure out combos that hasnt been shown and base your deck odds on the few expension part of Standard. Price of cards are in reach of most people so injecting massive money doesnt have as much impact as in Legacy. Requires a lot of playtesting.
Modern is a mix of both
That is the shorter, and very accurate version of what I was trying to say. Most legacy scenes really aren't that competitive (even when 75% of the room is running top tier decks), because most of the players at most shops (even legacy shops) aren't half as good as they think they are, and anyone who's somewhat decent and legacy experienced will stomp the newbies. Big events are similar, it's just that the "skilled" player at the LGS might be the "newbie" at the big event.
This is sort of how I've seen things work:
- The best legacy players are the ones who have played the most legacy for the longest amount of time.
- The best modern players are the ones who stick to a single deck every week.
- The best standard players are the ones who are both able to play competitively several days a week and willing to spend whatever they have to get the best cards the minute they come out.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves. Playing the right deck and having a strong understanding of your lines of play matters more than the format.
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
I wouldn't always say this is the case. There are several players at my lgs who say that I am the best player of 40-60 players that play modern there. I have been known to play a different deck every week for a bit, although admittedly there are around 4-5 decks that I really play well and I usually use those at competitive rel. Modern is my fun format and my competitive format, so I have to mix it up a bit. It is really the only format that I play for the most part, so I have to get all of my kicks there.
With regard to legacy, I did very well in the beginning. I now believe a lot of that was luck since I haven't really been able to play often and have posted only a 50% win ratio in my past 4 events, spanning 7 months. I just don't get to play legacy as often as I wish, so it's part of the reason that I am more unfamiliar with the interactions.
I have a bit of an issue with this. Firstly, there are pro players that are known for being only average at limited, despite being much better than the average pro at constructed. Pro players have their own strengths and weaknesses. To say that they are all very good at limited is a fallacy. I know limited all star players who have beaten pro players mostly by knowing the format since the actual technical play is very good as a pro.
Standard players have a smaller pool to worry about, including a smaller "pool of played cards," which will inherently make it easier to guess what's coming. Also some aspects of the game are non aspects. There is no land destruction to play around, nor combo to consider and that's only the brief part of it. Kudos to the standard players at your lgs for doing so well. Something like that would be very unlikely to happen at a legacy event played for thousands of dollars worth of cards. Sorry, it's just what I've seen.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Just out of curiosity, have you personally played Legacy?
You missed the whole point. I said IN THE DARK. There is no land on opponent's side of the table. I've played Legacy for many years and travel to large GPs across the world that video has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
I think this is kind of the argument I'm making, but differently. The reason your local Legacy LGS's crew is not necessarily competitive is because the bar is so much higher to be competitive at a professional level. This is because the format is just plain more complex and skill intensive. I mean, I've been playing Magic for 20+ years, Legacy for 6 or 7, and when I sit down at a large Legacy event with truly competitive players, I feel like I just barely deserve to be sitting at that table. Sitting down for any other format, I feel like I've got a pretty fair shot. Hell, I've beaten some Pros at the last GP I went to (my first time ever getting paired with them) and felt like they had a pretty fair fight coming their way. My battle might have been a little uphill, sure, but I didn't feel completely outclassed. But the people who are truly good at Legacy are simply incredible players. There are so few people at this level of play that getting the experience to learn from them is a fairly rare opportunity for most, and so there's no chance that most LGS players can get to that level, even if they are the best at their store or locale. I recognize that I'm a pretty good player by most standards, but I also recognize that I'm no "pro" and on any other given day of the week I could have had my face smashed in by the pros I beat one day at one event.
Decklists in legacy are honed killing machines with access to some of the best cards ever printed, and the number of free wins due to manascrew or colorscrew (barring getting your lands blown up by Wasteland and sometimes Sinkhole) just aren't there nearly as often as standard. With Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm, the odds of winning because your opponent failed to find any of their deck's namesake cards is also diminished. The decks are consistent and very good at what they do, and if you fail to interact meaningfully and correctly, you will die because the decks do not stumble nearly as often.
1) The reason the best Legacy players are the ones who have been playing it the longest is because grasping the complexity of Legacy is not an overnight thing. It is a high skill format that doesn't just involve learning how to pay your deck, but how 10+ different decks operate, and what that means to your deck's gameplans. It takes experience to look at someone's T1 land play, and realize what they're playing, and what the worst cards for you to have to fight against are, when they come down, and how that affects your gameplan. In standard, you have to figure out how to deal with what, 4, maybe 5 Tier 1 decks at any given time, and a smattering of variants of those? And some of those decks can't meaningfully interact with you until T3? In Legacy, as a Storm player, you see "Plains, go" on T1 and you know you'd better figure out real quick how to kill someone or make 14 goblins, because there's up to a 40% chance the next turn's play is a Thalia and that's a problem.
Additionally, the longer you play a deck, the more experience you get with making it do things you never realized it could do until you needed it to. It never occurred to me to use Brainstorm/LED/Gitaxian Probe to cast an Empty the Warrens that was stuck in my hand until I had to do it one day. Standard decks just don't typically approach that level of complexity; you typically learn all of a deck's tricks during its standard lifetime and then it rotates. In Legacy, sometimes decks get new tricks (everyone got to learn how to use Past in Flames for example). Seeing the evolution of a deck throughout the years helps provide a greater understanding of the deck by knowing its history.
2) See 1), but to a lesser extent since Modern is also non-rotating and offers more complexity than standard. Well, kind of, there always seems to be a dominant deck in Modern until something gets the banhammer. Legacy has several different dominant decks and any given day of the week a tier 1.5 deck can sometimes just wreck face. Standard, when balanced, tends to have 4-5 solid archetypes/builds, and miscellaneous variants of the basic shells unless it's jacked up and it's cawblade/affinity vs cawblade/affinity. The list of Tier 1 decks in Legacy, however, is far larger, and you don't see tier 1.5 lists show up that often in professional Standard Top 8s.
3) This is probably true, but does not equate to direct skill; again, hand that standard player Quad Lasers or ANT and throw him into a Legacy event. He'll do far worse than handing the Legacy player Bant Company and throwing him into a standard event. There's simply more things taken into account at any given moment when choosing playlines in Legacy and the format makes you very good at taking everything possible into account. In standard, of course, there's MUCH less to take into account, so it's a good deal easier to put those skills to use with a high degree of proficiency.
Nice blanket statement. Totally argues your point. I don't consider myself a "special little snowflake" and did quite well for myself when I chose to exert effort in Standard/Modern. I loved standard when there were decks that awarded high levels of playing skill. Caw-Blade is a deck a lot of people really, really hated due to its dominance, but it only dominated in the hands of someone who could pilot it well, as opposed to say, Shard block Jund, which was "hurhurhur, BBE into Blightning GG" every single game. Admittedly, Caw Blade was an oppressive deck filled with good cards, but it only rewarded those who played it with skill. Problem with it was that it was nigh unbeatable when this happened. But honestly, Standard got to the point where I no longer cared so much about winning as much as I cared about winning with something that was actually fun to play, even if it was a more uphill battle. Chromantiflayer was fun, as was Theros block Enchantress, and I even had a Master Biomancer brew back in original Innistrad that got some notice from people on MTGS who tested it and found it hilariously fun and powerful. My point is that saying "Legacy Players act like they're special little snowflakes but can't perform in any other format is downright wrong."
This is typical of the ignorance I'd expect from someone who has no grasp of the importance of changing the entire execution of your gameplan based on the land someone drops on T1, and makes sweeping assumptions based on sour grapes than actual experience. If you're going to be condescending, you should try getting a pillar to stand on first when you decide to talk down to people. That's not a jab, that's me trying to provide a helpful life tip.
Good job, your LGS has two standard players who can make a full proxy Legacy deck and win with an unlimited and infinite card pool access in a format that probably far fewer people at your LGS have any kind of experience with, let alone any experience on a truly competitive level. I'm not really sure what your point is here, other than an attempt to back up an incendiary comment?
See, I don't play Legacy to justify the expenditure of my deck, I don't need to. I acquired most of the cards before the massive price spikes hit because I felt playing with cards on the Reserve list offered a stable, one time investment as well as the opportunity to play with cards I loved in my high school days, in addition to being regarded widely as one of the most competitive scenes out there. Just because a deck is worth $2k doesn't mean someone actually spent $2k on it, and people play Legacy for more reasons than to justify the money they spent on it.
Whether you like it or not, different formats exercise and value various types of skill and luck differently. Limited is not exclusively a luck based format, skill just comes in a different form. There is no skill in limited in trying to figure out the metagame because there obviously isn't much of one, your opponent could be playing almost anything. However, there is a great deal of skill in deck construction from scratch, particularly with sealed. Draft, naturally, has its own skill of being able to draft well to begin with. And then luck takes the form of what did you actually open in your sealed pool? I won't lie, the GP where I beat my first pro matches was at least in part due to the fact I had a really good sealed pool. I felt at least one of my opponents did indeed have better technicals than me, but I also knew my deck was good and I had built it well, and it paid off. But I don't think my play skill and deckbuilding would have carried me as far if I'd had crappier cards.
In constructed formats, luck still exists, obviously, but it's knowing how to make yourself lucky. Figuring out the odds of your opponent holding Force of Will or figuring out the odds of what you're drawing next turn being relevant or game ending. Recognizing and playing to your outs. Knowing what to name with a blind Cabal Therapy. These are all things that we can always make educated guesses about, but sometimes we're just plain wrong. It doesn't mean the decision was wrong, it just means the outcome was. We do this in every format to some extent, but denying that luck exists is as equally incorrect as saying that a format is luck based. Good players acknowledge the role that luck plays, and can separate bad luck from bad plays. You don't want to change the way you play when it truly was luck that beat you, but you don't want to make bad luck your scapegoat for losses where you made the wrong choice.
I'll give you a hint of based of the number of posts this person has in Legacy related content over the course of their membership here, it's between 1 and 3. Clearly someone who knows what they're talking about in legacy related matters and is in the utmost position to pass judgement on all the "special snowflakes" that play the format. At least if you roll back into my post history, you can actually tell that I've played other formats
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave