legacy delver decks are substantially more powerful on the play. it only makes sense; wasteland, daze, or any of the other soft counters become much more powerful when you have the initiative.
considering all the powerful tools and effects you can open with in legacy id be seriously surprised if play/draw wasnt just as, if not more, influential than it is in modern.
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In my opinion, the decks in Legacy that play Daze are more powerful on the play because they can actually cast Daze on turn 1, but not turn 0.
The statistics that Sicsmoo showed don't surprise me at all. When I play any deck against Tron, I expect to have a tough time if they go first, while I expect to win, outside of my deck completely failing me, if they are on the draw. I literally don't expect to lose on the draw, outside of something like keeping 2 lands and needing to draw a single land to go off, keeping a 4 lander and peeling 4 lands in a row, or something similar.
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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)
In my opinion, the decks in Legacy that play Daze are more powerful on the play because they can actually cast Daze on turn 1, but not turn 0.
The statistics that Sicsmoo showed don't surprise me at all. When I play any deck against Tron, I expect to have a tough time if they go first, while I expect to win, outside of my deck completely failing me, if they are on the draw. I literally don't expect to lose on the draw, outside of something like keeping 2 lands and needing to draw a single land to go off, keeping a 4 lander and peeling 4 lands in a row, or something similar.
That makes sense regarding Daze, that it benefits the person on the play.
With Force of Will, however, it does not matter if you went first or second but it is based on the number of blue cards you have drawn. I wonder just how much of a difference FoW makes in the legacy format in regards to play/draw win %
I think one factor to look at in regards to modern vs other formats, is the number of decks designed to take advantage of being on the play, or more specifically, the formats ability (or inability)to 'catch up'. In Standard, being on the play is definitely a massive advantage to the aggro decks, but rarely are there more than 1 strong aggro deck in a standard format due to the limited card pool. In legacy, there are plenty of decks that try to jam a turn 1 win on the play, but because of force, they can get seriously punished and don't dominate (especially considering how prevalent blue decks are in the format). Modern is definitely unique in that the current format, reactive decks specifically have a hard time being on the draw and recovering from that tempo loss. As a result, you have a large number of decks that can take advantage of this. I'm not sure how this would weight any statistical results, or if it's meaningful, but I think it's worth noting if the format is to change, unless this proactivity is what people (ie WotC) wants modern's identity, then WotC can leverage this and maintain it going forward
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Modern: UWR Breach, UWB Esper control
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
i mean you are basically asking how much FoW matters in legacy. every opinion on the matter ive ever seen agrees that its one of the strongest and most important stabilizing effects in the format. numerous decks can win on turn 1 or 2, and without FoW there wouldnt be much to stop such decks from taking over the format.
if the format is about belchers, oops all spells, tin fins, storm, or whatever other degeneracy; then whomever goes first would be a huge factor in the outcome of games/matches.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Are we getting to the point where most decks should be running Gemstone Caverns to "make up" a part of this tempo loss?
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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)
The Draw-Play mechanic of MTG is inherently terrible, and it all bogs down to the mulligan rule. If you are on the Draw and have to mulligan just once, its like starting the game with a giant handicap for literally no reason. I've thought this for a long time, even haver the scry mulligan rule, but the rule needs to change severely.
I haven't thought about it, and I'm not a game tester for Wizards, so I don't know the solution, but something really needs to change again for mulliganing. The fact that card advantage is not only the most important part of the game, it is also the hardest thing to obtain. The fact that bad luck/ variance that can be super common can cause a minus one card advantage out of the gate so easily, makes no sense that it is implemented in the game.
it always amuses me to see people framing mulligans as some bad thing. you dont have to throw back that crappy hand, you GET to throw back that crappy hand. its instituted to combat variance, and not some symptom of it.
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Because the resources are built into the deck, the range of hands are extremely wide. On top of that, like I said before about how card advantage is so important, the fact that the solution to alleviate bad hands is to give someone card disadvantage is a bad solution imo.
Partial mulliganing like in Hearthstone might be a bad solution, but the game is extremely different. In poker, for example, if you get a bad hand you just fold, essentially losing nothing. In magic, you can literally lose the game outright from one mulligan
i mean you are basically asking how much FoW matters in legacy. every opinion on the matter ive ever seen agrees that its one of the strongest and most important stabilizing effects in the format. numerous decks can win on turn 1 or 2, and without FoW there wouldnt be much to stop such decks from taking over the format.
if the format is about belchers, oops all spells, tin fins, storm, or whatever other degeneracy; then whomever goes first would be a huge factor in the outcome of games/matches.
We know that Force of Will matters quite a bit. But do we have the data to prove that it causes legacy to be less play/draw dependent than modern?
RE Mulligans: I think the mulligan system is fine. If you find that you have to keep aggressively mulliganing, something is likely wrong with the way you built your deck. I suppose it could have used another resource as a cost rather than hand size (life totals come to mind). I am all for allowing a "free mulligan" before taking your first one to 6. That would probably produce fewer non-games.
Play/draw, on the other hand, is fine as long as the format has enough interactive elements. The more resources that are traded, the less play initiative matters. This is why I advocate for more interactive cards to be introduced into modern such as Force of Will, even more playable discard, and so forth. This may be impossible with the way standard sets are designed, but certainly possible with the modern-only set hinted at by the poll in August.
I don't think its interaction that is the best to alleviate the disadvantage of being on the draw, its powerful cantrips. Modern doesnt have turn 1 or 2 combo decks, so there is no real need for Force of Will. Legacy lives on the back of FoW and Brainstorm to find FoW. If it wasn't the case, then Brainstorm would have been banned long time ago. The funny thing is, while consistent turn 2 kills exist in Legacy, interactive strategies usually are at the top of meta in Legacy because of powerful cantrips and interaction.
I don't think its interaction that is the best to alleviate the disadvantage of being on the draw, its powerful cantrips. Modern doesnt have turn 1 or 2 combo decks, so there is no real need for Force of Will. Legacy lives on the back of FoW and Brainstorm to find FoW. If it wasn't the case, then Brainstorm would have been banned long time ago
Powerful cantrips do not alleviate draw disadvantage: player 1 is always going to be ahead in a race to cast cantrips. Draw advantage is only realized after a game of resource trading, because once enough cards are eliminated from both sides, the extran card that player 2 has 1/2 of the time will become much more valuable proportionally to player 1. This is why 8-rack consistently chooses to be on the draw and is the only deck that does so.
Because the resources are built into the deck, the range of hands are extremely wide. On top of that, like I said before about how card advantage is so important, the fact that the solution to alleviate bad hands is to give someone card disadvantage is a bad solution imo.
Partial mulliganing like in Hearthstone might be a bad solution, but the game is extremely different. In poker, for example, if you get a bad hand you just fold, essentially losing nothing. In magic, you can literally lose the game outright from one mulligan
card advantage certainly is important, but i think you are over selling it. it is only one type of advantage, and across the spread of matchups it varies. not to mention other variables such as card quality and sources of virtual card advantage. you even point out how important selection is, because it might not be important to find more cards; just the right ones. this also applies to mulligans.
sure you can lose outright because of mulligans, but you can also win because of them. not sure why you are making it sound like a death sentence.
if tempo is important, particularly in how it pertains to opening moves, then it makes card advantage LESS meaningful because the game can be decided with plenty of resources left in hand.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Anyone think Amulet Titan might be a problem soon? This deck is a stirrings abuser and its literally winning every event in my city with all the pilots making top 8 each event. This deck seems insanely hard to hate explosive and it has a lot of grind resiliency. Thoughts?
I don't think its interaction that is the best to alleviate the disadvantage of being on the draw, its powerful cantrips. Modern doesnt have turn 1 or 2 combo decks, so there is no real need for Force of Will. Legacy lives on the back of FoW and Brainstorm to find FoW. If it wasn't the case, then Brainstorm would have been banned long time ago
Powerful cantrips do not alleviate draw disadvantage: player 1 is always going to be ahead in a race to cast cantrips. Draw advantage is only realized after a game of resource trading, because once enough cards are eliminated from both sides, the extran card that player 2 has 1/2 of the time will become much more valuable proportionally to player 1. This is why 8-rack consistently chooses to be on the draw and is the only deck that does so.
Anyone think Amulet Titan might be a problem soon? This deck is a stirrings abuser and its literally winning every event in my city with all the pilots making top 8 each event. This deck seems insanely hard to hate explosive and it has a lot of grind resiliency. Thoughts?
For me its just another sign that the best decks in the format are the ones that can best abuse the best cantrip available in the format which is Ancient Stirrings. I think eliminate that card and decks like Tron, Amulet, KCI cease to be a problem.
The funny thing is, literally nothing has changed for Amulet, to the best of my knowledge. People wept when it ate a small (considering) ban, and simply gave up on it. Its grossly powerful, even in a Modern that is almost unanimously seen as more powerful than it was years ago when Bloom ate the ban.
I just shake my head...
Anyway, we have 2 Events this weekend, GP (MagicFest??) Oakland and SCG is Team ( Not Unified) Modern, with the weekend after, being Modern.
Cool stuff! We will see if Paper has adapted to Phoenix or if its robust enough to fight through adjustments in the meta.
i think a part of amulet spiking events is related to the lantern case. when a deck has a high skill floor fewer players cant just half-ass it; so the playerbase for that particular deck commands a generally higher skill level than the average player.
of course the deck also has to have the power, however you wanna define it, on the level of other 'tier 1' options.
maybe im just blowing smoke, but i think evidence of this would look something like amulet showing up in fewer numbers in top 16/32 with a generally higher placement than other top tier options.
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true. either way im definitely not categorizing the deck as any sort of problem. compared to other really good decks like tron, gds, bant spirits, hardened scales, storm, kci, arclight, dredge, hollow one, etc, etc; im just not seeing anything that sets it above or apart.
edit: even bgx and uw have main deck tools to punish bounce lands, and UW in particular can easily keep up in the mid and lategame if it comes to that.
tec edge against a deck abusing lands that tap for multiple mana? seems like a sketchy way to adapt lol. ghost quarter seems way better.
hit their search effects, bounce/destroy lands, snag amulet on the way down or before they can make use of it, blood moon, etc.
it does seem well positioned against the type of disruption people are packing. hard creature removal is light so their creature enablers go unchecked. lots of stonys and rips they dont care about. blood moon on a downswing, and less land disruption in general thanks to tron being less present.
i mean its a classic scenario of the meta shifting, and a deck potentially exploiting it. i say potentially because i have no idea if its actually doing well, as was implied by hokerjoker. even sicsmoo said it wasnt blowing up on modo.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I was actually looking at doing that today, its probably underplayed.
My playgroup tested Gemstone Caverns last year. Did not go as well as we had hoped.. as going second is still a disadvantage.. the second disadvantage is we are sometimes forced to pitch a good card to the caverns because there is no extra land to pitch to it.
Well, but who knows.. maybe someday there would be a modern deck that could break this card.
considering all the powerful tools and effects you can open with in legacy id be seriously surprised if play/draw wasnt just as, if not more, influential than it is in modern.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)The statistics that Sicsmoo showed don't surprise me at all. When I play any deck against Tron, I expect to have a tough time if they go first, while I expect to win, outside of my deck completely failing me, if they are on the draw. I literally don't expect to lose on the draw, outside of something like keeping 2 lands and needing to draw a single land to go off, keeping a 4 lander and peeling 4 lands in a row, or something similar.
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)That makes sense regarding Daze, that it benefits the person on the play.
With Force of Will, however, it does not matter if you went first or second but it is based on the number of blue cards you have drawn. I wonder just how much of a difference FoW makes in the legacy format in regards to play/draw win %
I think one factor to look at in regards to modern vs other formats, is the number of decks designed to take advantage of being on the play, or more specifically, the formats ability (or inability)to 'catch up'. In Standard, being on the play is definitely a massive advantage to the aggro decks, but rarely are there more than 1 strong aggro deck in a standard format due to the limited card pool. In legacy, there are plenty of decks that try to jam a turn 1 win on the play, but because of force, they can get seriously punished and don't dominate (especially considering how prevalent blue decks are in the format). Modern is definitely unique in that the current format, reactive decks specifically have a hard time being on the draw and recovering from that tempo loss. As a result, you have a large number of decks that can take advantage of this. I'm not sure how this would weight any statistical results, or if it's meaningful, but I think it's worth noting if the format is to change, unless this proactivity is what people (ie WotC) wants modern's identity, then WotC can leverage this and maintain it going forward
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
if the format is about belchers, oops all spells, tin fins, storm, or whatever other degeneracy; then whomever goes first would be a huge factor in the outcome of games/matches.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)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)Spirits
I haven't thought about it, and I'm not a game tester for Wizards, so I don't know the solution, but something really needs to change again for mulliganing. The fact that card advantage is not only the most important part of the game, it is also the hardest thing to obtain. The fact that bad luck/ variance that can be super common can cause a minus one card advantage out of the gate so easily, makes no sense that it is implemented in the game.
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Partial mulliganing like in Hearthstone might be a bad solution, but the game is extremely different. In poker, for example, if you get a bad hand you just fold, essentially losing nothing. In magic, you can literally lose the game outright from one mulligan
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
We know that Force of Will matters quite a bit. But do we have the data to prove that it causes legacy to be less play/draw dependent than modern?
RE Mulligans: I think the mulligan system is fine. If you find that you have to keep aggressively mulliganing, something is likely wrong with the way you built your deck. I suppose it could have used another resource as a cost rather than hand size (life totals come to mind). I am all for allowing a "free mulligan" before taking your first one to 6. That would probably produce fewer non-games.
Play/draw, on the other hand, is fine as long as the format has enough interactive elements. The more resources that are traded, the less play initiative matters. This is why I advocate for more interactive cards to be introduced into modern such as Force of Will, even more playable discard, and so forth. This may be impossible with the way standard sets are designed, but certainly possible with the modern-only set hinted at by the poll in August.
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Powerful cantrips do not alleviate draw disadvantage: player 1 is always going to be ahead in a race to cast cantrips. Draw advantage is only realized after a game of resource trading, because once enough cards are eliminated from both sides, the extran card that player 2 has 1/2 of the time will become much more valuable proportionally to player 1. This is why 8-rack consistently chooses to be on the draw and is the only deck that does so.
card advantage certainly is important, but i think you are over selling it. it is only one type of advantage, and across the spread of matchups it varies. not to mention other variables such as card quality and sources of virtual card advantage. you even point out how important selection is, because it might not be important to find more cards; just the right ones. this also applies to mulligans.
sure you can lose outright because of mulligans, but you can also win because of them. not sure why you are making it sound like a death sentence.
if tempo is important, particularly in how it pertains to opening moves, then it makes card advantage LESS meaningful because the game can be decided with plenty of resources left in hand.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)For me its just another sign that the best decks in the format are the ones that can best abuse the best cantrip available in the format which is Ancient Stirrings. I think eliminate that card and decks like Tron, Amulet, KCI cease to be a problem.
I just shake my head...
Anyway, we have 2 Events this weekend, GP (MagicFest??) Oakland and SCG is Team ( Not Unified) Modern, with the weekend after, being Modern.
Cool stuff! We will see if Paper has adapted to Phoenix or if its robust enough to fight through adjustments in the meta.
Spirits
of course the deck also has to have the power, however you wanna define it, on the level of other 'tier 1' options.
maybe im just blowing smoke, but i think evidence of this would look something like amulet showing up in fewer numbers in top 16/32 with a generally higher placement than other top tier options.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Spirits
edit: even bgx and uw have main deck tools to punish bounce lands, and UW in particular can easily keep up in the mid and lategame if it comes to that.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)hit their search effects, bounce/destroy lands, snag amulet on the way down or before they can make use of it, blood moon, etc.
it does seem well positioned against the type of disruption people are packing. hard creature removal is light so their creature enablers go unchecked. lots of stonys and rips they dont care about. blood moon on a downswing, and less land disruption in general thanks to tron being less present.
i mean its a classic scenario of the meta shifting, and a deck potentially exploiting it. i say potentially because i have no idea if its actually doing well, as was implied by hokerjoker. even sicsmoo said it wasnt blowing up on modo.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)My playgroup tested Gemstone Caverns last year. Did not go as well as we had hoped.. as going second is still a disadvantage.. the second disadvantage is we are sometimes forced to pitch a good card to the caverns because there is no extra land to pitch to it.
Well, but who knows.. maybe someday there would be a modern deck that could break this card.
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I dont think we are in a place where Tec Edge is a viable solution. Amulet can go off before they have 4 lands.
Spirits