Playing legacy decks in vintage is going to be kinda like playing modern decks in legacy or standard decks in modern. You'll be able to win some games, but you're going to have to feel pretty good about those games because you're going to lose a lot more.
Reanimator is not going to do very well in vintage, mostly because everyone's already packing a ton of graveyard hate for dredge. This is replaced by the Oath decks in vintage that don't depend on the graveyard. Infect and Elves are generally going to be a turn too slow, in addition to being very vulnerable to Mental Misstep. Death and Taxes is the closest to a tier 1 vintage deck that you're going to get, except that without the moxes and lotus, you're always going to be a turn behind and you don't really have any way of making it up.
If you're going to try to take a deck to a vintage tournament without any power 9, bazaars or workshops, I think you're best off with a creature based control deck like Merfolk or some kind of UR Delver Young Pyromancer list. You're still going to lose a lot of games from not having Ancestral Recall and Time Walk and the missing moxes and Lotus, but at least you get to pack a bunch of blue cantrips and a bunch of Forces and Mental Missteps to stop what your opponent is doing while you cast your cheap creatures and you won't always be behind. Something like these:
It doesn't matter how you stack the Primeval Titan trigger and the Valakut Triggers, the Primeval Titan trigger won't even be placed onto the stack until after the Warp World has finished resolving, at which point the Blood Moon will already be on the battlefield. Then, when the Primeval Titan trigger resolves and gets the lands, the Valakuts will all be mountains, and won't trigger.
For me the thing about Oath of Nissa is it makes me wish we could use it's other ability better. Unfortunately none of the planeswalkers in our colors are really things we want to play with.
That sounds awful, Nahiri is good in jeskai, because it runs tons of counterspells and removal spells to protect her and is a control deck. Our deck is aggro midrange, we want to be pushing our opponent with quick big creatures.
I actually think that Nahiri would be good in this deck, if we could cast it reliably. Jeskai defends it with counterspells and removal, and Eldrazi would defend it with big creatures, scions and Thought-Knot Seers. The problem is that it costs R and W mana in a deck where we want at least 7 to 9 lands that produce neither for planeswalkers, and Noble Hierarchs don't produce the red either.
A big part of the reason why the best Eldrazi deck is bant and not naya or abzan is because Hierarchs are bant, so the white and the blue come at much less cost than red and black. And, I don't think that adding 4 Oath of Nissas or Birds of Paradise instead of Noble Hierarchs is worth it to make Nahiri easier to cast. Nahiri is particularly good in Jeskai because they were lacking win conditions, but Eldrazi has no problem closing out games.
People would probably be ok with it but they'd feel really out of place in an eternal product since the eternal formats don't really use them. They're really only iconic in modern magic so Modern Masters is a better place for them.
The problem with EMA is that every land cycle other than the ABUR duals and the fetch lands feels out of place, since no other cycle sees anything other than very fringe or budget play. After the original duals and the fetches, the land cycle that sees the most play is the future sight cycle with Grove of the Burnwillows and Horizon Canopy, although the other 3 see no play whatsoever, and they both see a lot of modern play. Miracles has played a mystic gate in the past, to play around Choke a little. People are suggesting some of the really terrible pre-modern dual land cycles but they see even less play than something like the shocks or the filters.
On the EMA number crunch thread, it's been pointed out that there is still room for the shocklands, which, if they're in the set, would seem to indicate that they're here to replace the ABUR duals in a new unreserved legacy. Whether such a new format (which I'll call unreserved here) is in the works for paper or not, I'm interested in what effect this would have on MTGO.
Legacy and Unreserved would be very similar formats (burn would be stronger in unreserved, the no basic land 3 colour decks like Shardless BUG would become worse, ANT would probably become TES, other decks would get a little stronger or a little weaker). But, for the most part, the metagames would have essentially the same decks. And, given that Legacy as it stands now on MTGO is viable but not overflowing with players, it would be bad to split the community into two.
So, if Unreserved is introduced in the paper world, to alleviate problems with the reserved list, what happens on MTGO? Does everyone just keep playing Legacy on MTGO? Or does Unreserved replace it? Or do they live side by side, despite the fact that they're very similar formats?
I'd rather not have this turn into a discussion of whether such a thing would happen in the paper world. If the shocks are in EMA, it seems clear that it will, and if they're not it doesn't seem very likely at all, and we'll find that out in the next few days.
I'm a long time twin player, and I really like the Goryo's/Kiki/Jace interaction. Here are a few thoughts of mine:
Part of the reason Twin was so good was that we eventually learned that being all-in wasn't nearly as good as always threatening the turn 4 win, while just beating down or playing control most of the time. In the case of this deck, we're threatening an instant kill on turns 3 and 4 from the graveyard, and from turn 5 from hand. You especially want to be able to side most of the graveyard interaction out, so keeping it to a minimum is ideal. One of the strengths of a deck like this over Grishoalbrand or Storm is its ability to transform into a control deck after sideboard when opponents are siding in hate.
We definitely want some loot effects other than Jace, but Tormenting Voice is a very weak magic card, and not what you want to be doing on turn 2 or 3. A couple of Faithless Looting seem really good, because if you can't find a Jace you use Faithless to find one, and if you already have a Jace, you can loot it away and flash it back later for value. Grixis has a lot of 2 for 1s that can easily make up for the card disadvantage, like Electrolyze, Cryptic and Kolaghan's command.
I think we definitely want at least one Cascade Bluffs to facilitate hardcasting Kiki on turn 5, and it comes at very little cost over a Sulfur Falls.
Minamo seems super sweet as a way to protect the combo in the face of removal (untap Kiki in response to the removal). Goryo's helps with this a lot, because we can do this on turn 4 with Minamo up. Also, obvious synergy with Jace on turn 3+.
We definitely want some more interactive cards, and 1-ofs are going to be really strong because of all the dig (Serum Visions, Jace, the Faithless Lootings). I think that Kolghan's command, Terminate/Murderous Cut, Remand, Cryptic Command, Electrolyze and the discard are all good candidates that can bail you out of otherwise unwinnable games if you can find them. Especially when you flash them back with Snapcaster/Jace.
There's some tension between Jace's flashback and Snapcaster's flashback, because Jace happens at sorcery speed. For Jace, you don't really want counter spells, but in the old Twin deck, a lot of the power came from being able to Remand into Snapcaster Remand into another Remand into Cryptic. Discard into flashback discard can be powerful sometimes, but a lot of other times, it doesn't do what you want (because Inquisition is missing the important cards, or the life loss from Thoughtseize is too much). Finding the right balance between discard/removal/counterspells will take a lot of exploration and will also likely depend on the meta.
But in general, filling your deck full of powerful 1 to 3 mana cards that are really flexible is how you win games of modern, so this is a super interesting approach to the post-Twin metagame.
Under the old daily entry fee and payout structure, dailies were positive EV for win rates of 50% as long as pack prices were above something like 2.75 tickets. For a while, packs stayed between 3 and 4 tickets so even win rates around 50% could slowly grind out value. Of course people slowly realized this and people started playing a ton of constructed to get that value, which is what tanked pack prices down to 2 tickets.
Under the new system there aren't any such subsidized events so you need a win percentage in the 55 to 60% range to break even. This isn't super difficult if you play a good deck well, but if you're choosing a deck for budget reasons it's not likely that you'll be able to hit the necessary win rate to be positive EV.
So my advice would be to pick a format where your budget can buy one of the best decks. Then, once you win some tickets, your budget goes up and you can maybe afford a more expensive format. Any suboptimal deck choices due to budget will lose you some percentage points off your win percentage which will cost you money in the long run. I don't think there are any budget decks that can come even close to a 55% win percentage in leagues or eight mans in any format.
In your budget the only format where you can afford a best deck is pauper. Standard and modern best decks are all at least 200 tickets and for modern it's more like 400 or 500.
Expected value on the contents of the legendary cube prize packs is around two tickets and the packs themselves sell for around two tickets. So opening or selling them is about the same. This is different from draftable packs because eventually someone has to open them for no value but the contents. I also expect the value of the contents and the packs themselves to bottom out in a week or two as more of them are won in the cube drafts.
So, if you went 3-1, 4-0, 3-1 you would have won 12 packs and 720 play points. But, it cost you 360 play points to enter those three dailies, so you're net positive 360 play points. That's 3 free dailies or 2 free normal drafts (and I guess something like 1.5 modern masters drafts). And you've won something like 47 tickets worth of packs (because packs are going to stick around the 3.9 mark from now on), which you can use to improve your decks.
If you can keep up a consistent 83% win percentage, it's true that you're going to have a massive surplus of play points, but you'll also be making a little over 10 tickets per daily, only counting the packs. If you're this good at constructed, then presumably you'll also crush the limited events which means you can easily convert these into boosters via limited (you'd have to play two drafts for every three dailies, at your rate). If your win percentage drops to something more like 60 to 70%, which I think is about the highest you can go in constructed over the long term, then I think that the math says that you'll have little to no surplus of play points. Any surplus could still easily be converted to boosters via limited, but if your win percentage is 70%, it's more like one or two drafts per ten dailies.
Reanimator is not going to do very well in vintage, mostly because everyone's already packing a ton of graveyard hate for dredge. This is replaced by the Oath decks in vintage that don't depend on the graveyard. Infect and Elves are generally going to be a turn too slow, in addition to being very vulnerable to Mental Misstep. Death and Taxes is the closest to a tier 1 vintage deck that you're going to get, except that without the moxes and lotus, you're always going to be a turn behind and you don't really have any way of making it up.
If you're going to try to take a deck to a vintage tournament without any power 9, bazaars or workshops, I think you're best off with a creature based control deck like Merfolk or some kind of UR Delver Young Pyromancer list. You're still going to lose a lot of games from not having Ancestral Recall and Time Walk and the missing moxes and Lotus, but at least you get to pack a bunch of blue cantrips and a bunch of Forces and Mental Missteps to stop what your opponent is doing while you cast your cheap creatures and you won't always be behind. Something like these:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/488354#online
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/497105#online
I actually think that Nahiri would be good in this deck, if we could cast it reliably. Jeskai defends it with counterspells and removal, and Eldrazi would defend it with big creatures, scions and Thought-Knot Seers. The problem is that it costs R and W mana in a deck where we want at least 7 to 9 lands that produce neither for planeswalkers, and Noble Hierarchs don't produce the red either.
A big part of the reason why the best Eldrazi deck is bant and not naya or abzan is because Hierarchs are bant, so the white and the blue come at much less cost than red and black. And, I don't think that adding 4 Oath of Nissas or Birds of Paradise instead of Noble Hierarchs is worth it to make Nahiri easier to cast. Nahiri is particularly good in Jeskai because they were lacking win conditions, but Eldrazi has no problem closing out games.
The problem with EMA is that every land cycle other than the ABUR duals and the fetch lands feels out of place, since no other cycle sees anything other than very fringe or budget play. After the original duals and the fetches, the land cycle that sees the most play is the future sight cycle with Grove of the Burnwillows and Horizon Canopy, although the other 3 see no play whatsoever, and they both see a lot of modern play. Miracles has played a mystic gate in the past, to play around Choke a little. People are suggesting some of the really terrible pre-modern dual land cycles but they see even less play than something like the shocks or the filters.
Legacy and Unreserved would be very similar formats (burn would be stronger in unreserved, the no basic land 3 colour decks like Shardless BUG would become worse, ANT would probably become TES, other decks would get a little stronger or a little weaker). But, for the most part, the metagames would have essentially the same decks. And, given that Legacy as it stands now on MTGO is viable but not overflowing with players, it would be bad to split the community into two.
So, if Unreserved is introduced in the paper world, to alleviate problems with the reserved list, what happens on MTGO? Does everyone just keep playing Legacy on MTGO? Or does Unreserved replace it? Or do they live side by side, despite the fact that they're very similar formats?
I'd rather not have this turn into a discussion of whether such a thing would happen in the paper world. If the shocks are in EMA, it seems clear that it will, and if they're not it doesn't seem very likely at all, and we'll find that out in the next few days.
But in general, filling your deck full of powerful 1 to 3 mana cards that are really flexible is how you win games of modern, so this is a super interesting approach to the post-Twin metagame.
Under the new system there aren't any such subsidized events so you need a win percentage in the 55 to 60% range to break even. This isn't super difficult if you play a good deck well, but if you're choosing a deck for budget reasons it's not likely that you'll be able to hit the necessary win rate to be positive EV.
So my advice would be to pick a format where your budget can buy one of the best decks. Then, once you win some tickets, your budget goes up and you can maybe afford a more expensive format. Any suboptimal deck choices due to budget will lose you some percentage points off your win percentage which will cost you money in the long run. I don't think there are any budget decks that can come even close to a 55% win percentage in leagues or eight mans in any format.
In your budget the only format where you can afford a best deck is pauper. Standard and modern best decks are all at least 200 tickets and for modern it's more like 400 or 500.
If you can keep up a consistent 83% win percentage, it's true that you're going to have a massive surplus of play points, but you'll also be making a little over 10 tickets per daily, only counting the packs. If you're this good at constructed, then presumably you'll also crush the limited events which means you can easily convert these into boosters via limited (you'd have to play two drafts for every three dailies, at your rate). If your win percentage drops to something more like 60 to 70%, which I think is about the highest you can go in constructed over the long term, then I think that the math says that you'll have little to no surplus of play points. Any surplus could still easily be converted to boosters via limited, but if your win percentage is 70%, it's more like one or two drafts per ten dailies.
And I missing something?