First off I'm new to this forum but not entirely new to mtg but the last time I played competitively was back in the 90's with the odd purchase of a booster pack since then, I just recently decided to come back to mtg to find multiple new formats to play mtg and found it hard to choose just one but since I have always had a great love for dragons I decided to build a dragon Legacy deck since some of the cards I really wanted to play are not allowed in the Modern format, then a idea came to me when I noticed that only 8 or so cards would need to be switched out in order to play that deck in modern, so I continued this idea for the potential of building a Commander deck using the same cards or one of each from what will be a Legacy/Modern deck instead of building three separate decks saving me some money and allowing me to play three different mtg formats with just switching out cards for each format.
I want to know if anyone has tried this before and if so what were your thoughts on it.
P.S. I'm not trying to build super competitive decks, just something to get me a few wins and have fun killing things with dragons in different mtg formats.
Legacy and Modern do work within the same framework of 60 cards per deck and 4 copies per card, but usually the mana base can be quite different due to the availability of the original duals in Legacy. However a modern deck should be Legacy legal for the most parts, so that should work.
Commander on the other hand works differently. You build 100 card decks and only 1 copy per card. You also have a commander (a legendary creature) where you build your deck around. And Dragons are a quite beloved tribal theme for that.
From what you describe Commander might be actually an interesting format for you. It is often played less competitive and often in multiplayer for a more casual experience overall.
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I'm aware of the differences between the three though I have yet to build on the mana for any of the decks yet (I have 40% of what I need for Legacy/Modern that put me back $300 so far), what I want to know is if anyone has tried the concept of switching out cards in a deck to play a different format to sort of cheapen the cost instead of building multiple separate decks.
There's also Burn in both Legacy and Modern, but that archetype wouldn't work in Commander at all. It also puts a lot towards a high tier Pauper deck, though.
I'm aware of the differences between the three though I have yet to build on the mana for any of the decks yet (I have 40% of what I need for Legacy/Modern that put me back $300 so far), what I want to know is if anyone has tried the concept of switching out cards in a deck to play a different format to sort of cheapen the cost instead of building multiple separate decks.
as you become more familiar with formats like Modern and Legacy, you'll come to understand that there's more to them than just "older cards, and not-so-old cards"
the mix if playable cards in each format has meant that the formats have diverged over time and Legacy & Modern look quite different to each other as a result. It's rare for a deck to translate from one format to the other, and when they do, there are often some significant differences.
Modern: more creature-heavy, more mana-intensive and is a format focused around removal, card advantage and managing resources. Cards like thoughtseize are defining pieces of this landscape. 'midrange' decks and aggro decks are generally good, with some mix of combo attempting to subvert the format by running very few creatures and being proactively 'hard to disrupt'. best creatures in the format are a mixed bag, but tarmogoyf, gurmag angler, death's shadow, hollow one, prized amalgam, goblin guide, wurmcoil engine, bloodbraid elf and thing in the ice are rough indicators of the sorts of power level you need to be at before a creature is worth including in your deck. most modern games between two 'decent' decks of relatively equal power will end around turn 5 ish, with some games finishing as early as turn 2 (although that's fairly exceptional and isn't the average for the format). Some decks are designed specifically to just linearly 'race' and try to establish a combo or aggressive start as consistently as possible, to win on turn three, which seems to be the standard for modern in terms of establishing whether a concept is worth pursuing competitively. Modern is completely ruled by fetchlands (e.g. scalding tarn) and shocklands (e.g. stomping ground) in order to construct effective manabases and get good colour-fixing. There are ten of each, with every colour-pair represented, and each fetchland being able to search for most of the shocklands aids consistency but there is a heavy toll on life-totals in Modern as a result.
Legacy: lots of decks in Legacy are built around a specific card (e.g. aluren, high tide) or pair of cards, and as such the format is largely defined by singularly powerful effects and mechanics which drive people towards a certain kind of interaction (counterspells). The best creatures in Legacy tend to be cheaper and more 'lightweight' being deployable early and providing some significant effect when on the battlefield. Emphasis in Legacy is more on the first couple of turns in the game, as decks are more than capable of winning on the first turn, so there's often a stalemate of interaction or counterspell-war or some other form of disruption used early to break apart a combo or sequence. Control decks are 'better' in legacy due to the increased importance of counterspells (e.g. force of will) in the format, and less of a reliance on effects like fatal push (which is one of the more defining cards of modern). decks are generally faster in Legacy, combo is more linear and efficient having the whole plethora of cards to choose from to maximise efficiency. Legacy has far better options in terms of building a manabase and selecting effective lands. Dual Lands (e.g. underground sea) are fetchable, same as shocklands, but don't exact the same toll on life totals in Legacy.
If you're building a 'dragons' deck, I feel like there's probably an option or two in both formats that might get you somewhere, and it's in the archetype of "stompy".
Stompy is a deck-archetype where you run a small selection of 'lock-pieces' that initially disrupt an opponent and slow them down, following this up with a series of hard-to-deal-with and fast threats. "dragon stompy" has actually been a deck in Legacy before, so google that up.
In Modern, pickings are slimmer but you'll probably want to point your eye in the direction of skred which is a loosely dragon-based midrange deck, and a recent medium-tier addition to the format, again called "dragon stompy" (which employs a similar strategy to the Legacy deck, only it uses cards like sarkhan, fireblood).
^ you'll want to google a lot of that. Apologies for not providing links.
one more thing, "stompy" decks use cards like chalice of the void paired with simian spirit guide to enable a disruptive first-turn, and these cards aren't always cheap. Unfortunately, if your strategy is "playing big dudes and turning them sideways" then there aren't a huge amount of options that exist, to provide you with a consistent way to survive long enough to cast them and attack with them. If you do some digging around you'll probably find some helpful decklists and primers. Try this very forum (in the format sections) and also mtggoldfish.com
hopefully that's helpful. None of what i've said really considers cost, so you'll want to factor this in.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I'm hoping to match Lathliss, Dragon Queen and Utvara Hellkite with Dragonlord's Servant Dragonspeaker Shaman to help reduce costs (as those two dragons are token generators of some pretty powerful dragon tokens) plus Quicksilver Amulet Trassic Egg and Cryptic Gateway with Deathrender to help too but its sounding like those may not help as much as I thought if a turn three win is common, I also wanted to match Sarkhan, Dragonsoul Planeswalker with some Proliferate cards to help speed up his "search library for any number of Dragons and put them on the battlefield" ability but it sounds like I still need to do more thinking
I'm hoping to match Lathliss, Dragon Queen and Utvara Hellkite with Dragonlord's Servant Dragonspeaker Shaman to help reduce costs (as those two dragons are token generators of some pretty powerful dragon tokens) plus Quicksilver Amulet Trassic Egg and Cryptic Gateway with Deathrender to help too but its sounding like those may not help as much as I thought if a turn three win is common, I also wanted to match Sarkhan, Dragonsoul Planeswalker with some Proliferate cards to help speed up his "search library for any number of Dragons and put them on the battlefield" ability but it sounds like I still need to do more thinking
So something I didn't really say but still holds true is that magic is a big unsolved landscape of potential. No matter the format, there's potential decks just waiting to be chipped out of the blank marble of the card pool.
Some people get laser focused on the 'top decks' and would suggest you metaphorically pick one off the shelf and play those, and that's a bit too simplistic. But there's a grain of usefulness and truth to it, because looking at what's currently reasonable for a format will definitely give you an idea of what sort of line you have to draw in the sand in terms of general power level. So bear the 'good decks' loosely in mind when you begin to pull together your ideas and brews. But don't feel limited by them.
What's more important than decks is the individual cards. For example, lightning bolt is better than lightning strike and similarly there will be the 'best option' for quite a few individual types of effect. These are cards that you want to prioritise when looking for things like card draw, direct damage, land destruction/disruption and the list goes on.
For instance, your dragon deck will probably want to capitalise on Blood Moon in order to disrupt tricky combo decks, so that your dragons can do the job. Perhaps! There's other options but I think you see what I'm hinting at.
If you played a long time ago, you may have perhaps come across tangle wire decks, which were aggro decks employing the titular card to disrupt an opponent so that they couldn't catch up when put on the back foot. Tangle isn't legal in modern but any sort of 'big aggro' deck in modern needs to use a similar strategy to disrupt and threaten at the same time. A one two punch.
That's not exhaustive but these are probably the best options I can pull off the top of my head that have definitely seen some play. Stormbreath is the best, from what I can tell. path to exile sees a lot of play, so dodging that and fatal push and lightning bolt is important.
Let's go wild though. quicksilver amulet is modern legal. I've seen decks play it, it's weird and unexpected but it occasionally crops up. That could be an avenue to building something fun.
Anyway the thing I always say to people is that modern and legacy are fairly established and have a sort of 'minimum buy-in' in terms of a deck's power level. Brewing can be tough if you're starting out thinking you'll just throw cards together and expect to win games. People spend a lot of time crafting and tweaking certain lists and the format is a complex changeable ecosystem. In one way it's a brewer's paradise but in another way it's a complicated mess to figure out if you're new.
If you have a way of borrowing a deck or an easy way to get a few games under your belt, it's probably worth your time to take your foot off the metaphorical accelerator and spend a little time learning and enjoying the format before diving into brewing your own deck. It's important when brewing for *any* format that you have a decent idea of what people are likely to play, and what you'll see on the other side of the table. That's the info you need, everything else flows from that. Do some reading, watch a stream or two, play some games, have fun! Modern is wild and awesome. There's definitely a place for a dragons deck, it just might not look exactly how you initially imagined =)
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
It would probably be easier to focus on decks that use the same colors, that way there will be a lot of crossover between the manabases in your Modern and Legacy decks.
It is going to look a little different but there were a few cards you mentioned that I was already going to include but I'll be adding more of them instead now, it should be a Modern deck when it's done where I can use the core of it for Commander as well but I have not given up on trying to find a way to bring it into Legacy after reading up on the Tribal Wars Legacy format but there seems to be a little confusion on how to properly build it, most I have read up on it says that 30% the deck needs to be the tribal creatures you intend to build around and there are others who say that 10 cards of the 30% need to be from the Standard set. Anyone know the real official rules to building a Tribal wars Legacy deck?
It is going to look a little different but there were a few cards you mentioned that I was already going to include but I'll be adding more of them instead now, it should be a Modern deck when it's done where I can use the core of it for Commander as well but I have not given up on trying to find a way to bring it into Legacy after reading up on the Tribal Wars Legacy format but there seems to be a little confusion on how to properly build it, most I have read up on it says that 30% the deck needs to be the tribal creatures you intend to build around and there are others who say that 10 cards of the 30% need to be from the Standard set. Anyone know the real official rules to building a Tribal wars Legacy deck?
tribal wars?
wow, that's really obscure. I don't think i've ever come across anyone who plays it. it's like an 'add-on rule' for an existing card-pool (such as legacy, modern, standard etc). It's not something you tend to find people playing, and I think it was retired from MTGO in...2010? although if you've got a playgroup who does, power to you i'm sure it's buckets o' fun!
even so, the 'rules' (such as they are) for Tribal Wars is just that 30% of your deck needs to be comprised of one creature type (elf, human, knight, wizard, eldrazi, shark, squirrel, whatever). That's it. Other than that, you just use the normal rules/banlist for whatever format you're actually piggy-backing off.
so a legacy tribal wars deck just uses the legacy card pool, legacy banlist, but with the caveat that 30% of your deck needs to be the same creature type
likewise, Modern tribal wars would require that you use the Modern card pool and banlist, with the caveat that 30% of your deck needs to be, i dunno demons or slivers or whatever.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
It is going to look a little different but there were a few cards you mentioned that I was already going to include but I'll be adding more of them instead now, it should be a Modern deck when it's done where I can use the core of it for Commander as well but I have not given up on trying to find a way to bring it into Legacy after reading up on the Tribal Wars Legacy format but there seems to be a little confusion on how to properly build it, most I have read up on it says that 30% the deck needs to be the tribal creatures you intend to build around and there are others who say that 10 cards of the 30% need to be from the Standard set. Anyone know the real official rules to building a Tribal wars Legacy deck?
tribal wars?
wow, that's really obscure. I don't think i've ever come across anyone who plays it. it's like an 'add-on rule' for an existing card-pool (such as legacy, modern, standard etc). It's not something you tend to find people playing, and I think it was retired from MTGO in...2010? although if you've got a playgroup who does, power to you i'm sure it's buckets o' fun!
even so, the 'rules' (such as they are) for Tribal Wars is just that 30% of your deck needs to be comprised of one creature type (elf, human, knight, wizard, eldrazi, shark, squirrel, whatever). That's it. Other than that, you just use the normal rules/banlist for whatever format you're actually piggy-backing off.
so a legacy tribal wars deck just uses the legacy card pool, legacy banlist, but with the caveat that 30% of your deck needs to be the same creature type
likewise, Modern tribal wars would require that you use the Modern card pool and banlist, with the caveat that 30% of your deck needs to be, i dunno demons or slivers or whatever.
Here are the precise details for the Tribal Wars format being used on Community Super League:
1/3 of each deck must be creature cards that share a type.10 of your creature cards must be legal in Standard.The Legacy banned list is in effect.In addition, the following cards are banned: Umezawa’s Jitte, Glimpse of Nature, anything that hoses an entire tribe (like Engineered Plague), and anythign else that appears here: http://www.mtgoacademy.com/deckbuilding-rules-and-banned-restricted-lists/#10
Tribal Wars is a casual Magic format that emphasizes creature combat: A player's deck must contain a minimum of sixty cards, and one-third of every deck must be of a single creature type. No sideboards are allowed in tribal formats.
Tribal Wars is based on the Legacy format, so all cards, including promo cards, are legal, with the exeption of this banned list
These are two I have seen and are only 3 and 4 years old
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I want to know if anyone has tried this before and if so what were your thoughts on it.
P.S. I'm not trying to build super competitive decks, just something to get me a few wins and have fun killing things with dragons in different mtg formats.
Commander on the other hand works differently. You build 100 card decks and only 1 copy per card. You also have a commander (a legendary creature) where you build your deck around. And Dragons are a quite beloved tribal theme for that.
From what you describe Commander might be actually an interesting format for you. It is often played less competitive and often in multiplayer for a more casual experience overall.
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
Commander is much more different, but you could put the core of a Legacy/Modern deck into a Commander deck.
For example:
Modern Death's Shadow, Legacy Death's Shadow
Modern Phoenix, Legacy Phoenix
Modern UW Control, Legacy Miracles
There's also Burn in both Legacy and Modern, but that archetype wouldn't work in Commander at all. It also puts a lot towards a high tier Pauper deck, though.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
as you become more familiar with formats like Modern and Legacy, you'll come to understand that there's more to them than just "older cards, and not-so-old cards"
the mix if playable cards in each format has meant that the formats have diverged over time and Legacy & Modern look quite different to each other as a result. It's rare for a deck to translate from one format to the other, and when they do, there are often some significant differences.
Modern: more creature-heavy, more mana-intensive and is a format focused around removal, card advantage and managing resources. Cards like thoughtseize are defining pieces of this landscape. 'midrange' decks and aggro decks are generally good, with some mix of combo attempting to subvert the format by running very few creatures and being proactively 'hard to disrupt'. best creatures in the format are a mixed bag, but tarmogoyf, gurmag angler, death's shadow, hollow one, prized amalgam, goblin guide, wurmcoil engine, bloodbraid elf and thing in the ice are rough indicators of the sorts of power level you need to be at before a creature is worth including in your deck. most modern games between two 'decent' decks of relatively equal power will end around turn 5 ish, with some games finishing as early as turn 2 (although that's fairly exceptional and isn't the average for the format). Some decks are designed specifically to just linearly 'race' and try to establish a combo or aggressive start as consistently as possible, to win on turn three, which seems to be the standard for modern in terms of establishing whether a concept is worth pursuing competitively. Modern is completely ruled by fetchlands (e.g. scalding tarn) and shocklands (e.g. stomping ground) in order to construct effective manabases and get good colour-fixing. There are ten of each, with every colour-pair represented, and each fetchland being able to search for most of the shocklands aids consistency but there is a heavy toll on life-totals in Modern as a result.
Legacy: lots of decks in Legacy are built around a specific card (e.g. aluren, high tide) or pair of cards, and as such the format is largely defined by singularly powerful effects and mechanics which drive people towards a certain kind of interaction (counterspells). The best creatures in Legacy tend to be cheaper and more 'lightweight' being deployable early and providing some significant effect when on the battlefield. Emphasis in Legacy is more on the first couple of turns in the game, as decks are more than capable of winning on the first turn, so there's often a stalemate of interaction or counterspell-war or some other form of disruption used early to break apart a combo or sequence. Control decks are 'better' in legacy due to the increased importance of counterspells (e.g. force of will) in the format, and less of a reliance on effects like fatal push (which is one of the more defining cards of modern). decks are generally faster in Legacy, combo is more linear and efficient having the whole plethora of cards to choose from to maximise efficiency. Legacy has far better options in terms of building a manabase and selecting effective lands. Dual Lands (e.g. underground sea) are fetchable, same as shocklands, but don't exact the same toll on life totals in Legacy.
If you're building a 'dragons' deck, I feel like there's probably an option or two in both formats that might get you somewhere, and it's in the archetype of "stompy".
Stompy is a deck-archetype where you run a small selection of 'lock-pieces' that initially disrupt an opponent and slow them down, following this up with a series of hard-to-deal-with and fast threats. "dragon stompy" has actually been a deck in Legacy before, so google that up.
In Modern, pickings are slimmer but you'll probably want to point your eye in the direction of skred which is a loosely dragon-based midrange deck, and a recent medium-tier addition to the format, again called "dragon stompy" (which employs a similar strategy to the Legacy deck, only it uses cards like sarkhan, fireblood).
^ you'll want to google a lot of that. Apologies for not providing links.
one more thing, "stompy" decks use cards like chalice of the void paired with simian spirit guide to enable a disruptive first-turn, and these cards aren't always cheap. Unfortunately, if your strategy is "playing big dudes and turning them sideways" then there aren't a huge amount of options that exist, to provide you with a consistent way to survive long enough to cast them and attack with them. If you do some digging around you'll probably find some helpful decklists and primers. Try this very forum (in the format sections) and also mtggoldfish.com
hopefully that's helpful. None of what i've said really considers cost, so you'll want to factor this in.
So something I didn't really say but still holds true is that magic is a big unsolved landscape of potential. No matter the format, there's potential decks just waiting to be chipped out of the blank marble of the card pool.
Some people get laser focused on the 'top decks' and would suggest you metaphorically pick one off the shelf and play those, and that's a bit too simplistic. But there's a grain of usefulness and truth to it, because looking at what's currently reasonable for a format will definitely give you an idea of what sort of line you have to draw in the sand in terms of general power level. So bear the 'good decks' loosely in mind when you begin to pull together your ideas and brews. But don't feel limited by them.
What's more important than decks is the individual cards. For example, lightning bolt is better than lightning strike and similarly there will be the 'best option' for quite a few individual types of effect. These are cards that you want to prioritise when looking for things like card draw, direct damage, land destruction/disruption and the list goes on.
For instance, your dragon deck will probably want to capitalise on Blood Moon in order to disrupt tricky combo decks, so that your dragons can do the job. Perhaps! There's other options but I think you see what I'm hinting at.
If you played a long time ago, you may have perhaps come across tangle wire decks, which were aggro decks employing the titular card to disrupt an opponent so that they couldn't catch up when put on the back foot. Tangle isn't legal in modern but any sort of 'big aggro' deck in modern needs to use a similar strategy to disrupt and threaten at the same time. A one two punch.
Good dragons for modern play look a bit like:
That's not exhaustive but these are probably the best options I can pull off the top of my head that have definitely seen some play. Stormbreath is the best, from what I can tell. path to exile sees a lot of play, so dodging that and fatal push and lightning bolt is important.
Let's go wild though. quicksilver amulet is modern legal. I've seen decks play it, it's weird and unexpected but it occasionally crops up. That could be an avenue to building something fun.
Anyway the thing I always say to people is that modern and legacy are fairly established and have a sort of 'minimum buy-in' in terms of a deck's power level. Brewing can be tough if you're starting out thinking you'll just throw cards together and expect to win games. People spend a lot of time crafting and tweaking certain lists and the format is a complex changeable ecosystem. In one way it's a brewer's paradise but in another way it's a complicated mess to figure out if you're new.
If you have a way of borrowing a deck or an easy way to get a few games under your belt, it's probably worth your time to take your foot off the metaphorical accelerator and spend a little time learning and enjoying the format before diving into brewing your own deck. It's important when brewing for *any* format that you have a decent idea of what people are likely to play, and what you'll see on the other side of the table. That's the info you need, everything else flows from that. Do some reading, watch a stream or two, play some games, have fun! Modern is wild and awesome. There's definitely a place for a dragons deck, it just might not look exactly how you initially imagined =)
tribal wars?
wow, that's really obscure. I don't think i've ever come across anyone who plays it. it's like an 'add-on rule' for an existing card-pool (such as legacy, modern, standard etc). It's not something you tend to find people playing, and I think it was retired from MTGO in...2010? although if you've got a playgroup who does, power to you i'm sure it's buckets o' fun!
even so, the 'rules' (such as they are) for Tribal Wars is just that 30% of your deck needs to be comprised of one creature type (elf, human, knight, wizard, eldrazi, shark, squirrel, whatever). That's it. Other than that, you just use the normal rules/banlist for whatever format you're actually piggy-backing off.
so a legacy tribal wars deck just uses the legacy card pool, legacy banlist, but with the caveat that 30% of your deck needs to be the same creature type
likewise, Modern tribal wars would require that you use the Modern card pool and banlist, with the caveat that 30% of your deck needs to be, i dunno demons or slivers or whatever.
Here are the precise details for the Tribal Wars format being used on Community Super League:
1/3 of each deck must be creature cards that share a type.10 of your creature cards must be legal in Standard.The Legacy banned list is in effect.In addition, the following cards are banned: Umezawa’s Jitte, Glimpse of Nature, anything that hoses an entire tribe (like Engineered Plague), and anythign else that appears here: http://www.mtgoacademy.com/deckbuilding-rules-and-banned-restricted-lists/#10
Tribal Wars is a casual Magic format that emphasizes creature combat: A player's deck must contain a minimum of sixty cards, and one-third of every deck must be of a single creature type. No sideboards are allowed in tribal formats.
Tribal Wars is based on the Legacy format, so all cards, including promo cards, are legal, with the exeption of this banned list
These are two I have seen and are only 3 and 4 years old