Ignore it and kill them works best. Seriously, it's just a 3/1.
It'll only be a 3/1 if your opponent is terrible and played zero lords before they reached 3 mana. Highly unlikely. More often than not, you're at least staring down a 4/2 or 5/3.
Garruk, Lord of Beasts2GGG
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior
Play with the top card of your library revealed.
As long as the top card of your library is a creature, Garruk, Lord of Beasts gets +X/+X, where X is that card's converted mana cost.
Exile a creature card from your hand: Regenerate Garruk.
3/2
Next: A commander who gets better the more your opponents try to kill it, but gets worse the more your opponents ignore it.
So I've been playing Legacy for a few years now, and I'm looking for a new deck to build. I currently have ANT fully built, which means I also can basically build TES, Belcher and Dredge for cheap. So I'm looking for a new deck archetype to start getting invested into. In terms of deck style, I enjoy all 3 major archetypes. I'd prefer something that isn't a 4 color mess since Wastelands are extremely prevelant in my meta. I'd also like a deck that isn't linchpinned to one card to win (too many months of playing combo against a Flusterstorm and FoW filled meta). In terms of staples I have to maybe spark some ideas, here's my main list:
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island
1x Badland
1x Bayou
1x Karakas
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Mox Opal
3x Chrome Mox
2x Ancient Tomb
3x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Umezawa's Jitte
2x Pernicious Deed
4x Abupt Decay
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Burning Wish
1x Thoughtseize (with hopefully more in my Theros boxes)
While WotC might not have abandoned Legacy completely, they by no means care about keeping the format alive. With the Reserved List in place, they effectively have shut themselves out of making any money from the format. I truly believe that the only reason they still support it from a sanction standpoint is because of how popular it currently is. Whether the format stays this popular or if prices drive people away, that's discussion for a different thread.
OT, I honestly don't expect an unbanning. Nothing on the list truly seems like it could be healthy to add back to the format. The only card I had thought of would be Mystical Tutor to give combo a bit more help against the aggro heavy lists we're currently running into, but giving SnT access to MT is probably a terrible idea.
In terms of bannings, not much out there is causing grief. DeathBlade is getting somewhat annoying to constantly go up against, but I have a feeling this is more just due to the popularity of the deck and not the power level. In a few months we should (hopefully) see something else take the center stage for a bit.
They did the same thing with the last ones... each new rare or mythic was in only one deck... the commons and uncommons showed up in 2 or 3 of the new decks. I'm not going to bother working out the math but it sounds like they are doing it the same way they did the first batch.
For the first Commander product, there were 51 new cards. Of the 51 new cards, only 11 were shared amongst the 5 decks. Command Tower was in every deck. All of the common "Vow" cards as well as the new uncommon card in each color were in every deck that could support the card. That left 40 new cards (rares and mythics) to be distributed amongst the 5 decks, with each deck getting 8 new cards (2 mythics, 6 rares) that could only be found in that deck.
I've played magic since Innistrad.
I only play online (MTGO).
I play modern and a bit of Pauper.
Never touched Legacy.
I don't love combo or counterspells.
Sell me on legacy from an outsider's perspective?
Current Legacy player here. I formerly used to only play Standard, and I have also dabbled in Modern.
The biggest benefit of Legacy is the stability. As you've seen in Modern, WotC is scared of decks dominating, and they've been banhammering pretty harshly lately. Legacy on the other hand, has been having the opposite effect with cards being unbanned. The last true bannings we had was 2010 when Mystic Tutor and then later Survival got banned (I don't count Mental Misstep in 2011 since it got banned in every format but Vintage). The last banning before that was Time Vault back in 2008.
Since we have such a massive card pool to work with, decks never get truly too powerful. When one deck becomes the top deck, people simply switch over to decks with a better matchup against it, which in turn causes people to switch to decks with a better matchup against that deck, etc. Basically, what I'm saying is it's very rare for the meta to get stale. So while you currently probably hear a lot of complaining about Show 'n Tell, it's not the end of the world deck, and if you simply wait a few months the meta will likely have shifted over to a new deck.
Legacy isn't just a format of insane control decks and combo decks (though they definitely are abundant). Mono Red Burn is a great deck (especially due to the very low cost) that can snatch up wins against other decks less prepared for it. Goblins and Fish (Merfolk) have both gotten pretty beefy boosts thanks to Cavern of Souls. Jund even has made a random splash recently with the release of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay (though the shift seems to be now into BUG which can be a midrange aggro or control deck).
Lastly, though I know the prices on MTGO are much different than paper, the best part about Legacy is the investment stability. As much as I hate to admit it, MTG is definitely an investment. And what drove me away from standard is absolutely what the OP said: I got sick of having to make sure I sold off cards before rotation or before they fell out of favor and tanked in price. That does not happen with Legacy. Unless a card gets banned, card prices are extremely steady, and should you decide to cash out of Legacy, more likely than not you'll either make back all of your money or even come out ahead of the game. Yes there are exceptions and some cards do drop if something gets printed that's strictly better, but overall it's extremely hard to take a loss on value with Legacy.
The more and more I look at the art for these new "slivers", the less and less I like them. I went and pulled out my old sliver EDH deck last night, and it pretty much just confirmed how little I like these.
This might be the kick in the ass that I needed to start learning to do my own alters. You better believe these new cards are gonna get some proper sliver art when I get a hold of them.
So anyone else find it irritating that we have more official spoilers for M14 than we do for MM? M14 releases a month afterward MM does, yet we have gotten just in the last hour 6 new spoiled cards for M14. This doesn't count all the "unofficial" DotP 2014 cards that people found during the PAX demo. As of right now, the only "officially" spoiled MM card is still goyf.
I understand that MM is all reprints and likely geared towards those of us who will buy it regardless of what's in it, but come on. Throw us a bone here.
Actually, we've got 6 now, including two red commons, so it's likely we're looking at a minimum of 20 slivers, unless they decide to restrict the colors.
Those were spoiled as I was typing up the post. Didn't expect them to go crazy spoil happy!
On a side note, I have to say I am not a fan of the new appearances, nor I am I fan of making them 1 sided bonuses. Kinda defeats the whole point of "collective hivemind no matter who owns them". Also dumbs it down quite a bit.
Here's hoping that there are enough slivers to make a constructed playable deck
We've seen 2 at common and 1 at uncommon so far. Signs point to there being enough for a constructed deck. Whether said deck is actually competitive is a different story. So far none of the spoiled ones are exactly power creep-tastic, even with the new "creatures you control" change.
I could see them dedicating 18 cards in the entire set to slivers. 1 common, 1 uncommon, and 1 rare per color, plus a 5 color lord of some sort, possibly a reprint/new version of Metallic Sliver, and then maybe a Hivestone reprint.
Where does it end? I have grown embarrassed over how much my legacy decks are worth. It's not something to be proud of. Cardboard should not be near this valuable. Unfortunately the writing has been on the wall and these recent actions make things clearer. What's the site that tracks the $$$ of a card over time? Can we get links to LED, Force, Jace, Thoughtseize, Karakas? I've debated about cashing out but these sudden price spikes are making the decision easier.
One solution is boycotting SCG; if they are the
ones setting prices, it seems like a logical response.
I was a little skeptical of the whole "SCG increases Legacy prices cause they basically own the format" conspiracy, but this FoW evidence is pretty damning. There has been on reason to up the price up to $100, especially after it just jumped up to $75 last week. They're also the only ones who have done this.
But if Bolt comes back we'll need better creatures!
And this is the vicious cycle.
Personally, I think Lightning Bolt should not be reprinted. We had it in standard for 2 years, it got a reprint bringing down the price as well as allowing it to be a Modern staple. We had Shock for I don't even know how many years, and the environments were just fine with it.
In terms of direct character deaths being depicted, you're right, there aren't many. But here are the few that I know of as well as a few that show events immediately beforehand.
The Mercadian Masques Vendetta depicts Volrath (disguised as Takara) killing Starke.
Gerrard's Verdict is the closest we'll get to Gerrard killing Crovax (he actually cuts him in half in the books).
Likewise, Dark Triumph is the closest we'll get to Crovax killing Volrath (he injects him with flowstone and then has Ertai give the command for the flowstone to disassemble his body).
Phyrexian Tyranny shows Crovax killing Squee (though this is just one of many times, since Squee is immortal).
Squee's Revenge shows Squee overloading the machine Ertai used to heal, killing him.
It'll only be a 3/1 if your opponent is terrible and played zero lords before they reached 3 mana. Highly unlikely. More often than not, you're at least staring down a 4/2 or 5/3.
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior
Play with the top card of your library revealed.
As long as the top card of your library is a creature, Garruk, Lord of Beasts gets +X/+X, where X is that card's converted mana cost.
Exile a creature card from your hand: Regenerate Garruk.
3/2
Next: A commander who gets better the more your opponents try to kill it, but gets worse the more your opponents ignore it.
1x Volcanic Island
1x Badland
1x Bayou
1x Karakas
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Mox Opal
3x Chrome Mox
2x Ancient Tomb
3x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Umezawa's Jitte
2x Pernicious Deed
4x Abupt Decay
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Burning Wish
1x Thoughtseize (with hopefully more in my Theros boxes)
OT, I honestly don't expect an unbanning. Nothing on the list truly seems like it could be healthy to add back to the format. The only card I had thought of would be Mystical Tutor to give combo a bit more help against the aggro heavy lists we're currently running into, but giving SnT access to MT is probably a terrible idea.
In terms of bannings, not much out there is causing grief. DeathBlade is getting somewhat annoying to constantly go up against, but I have a feeling this is more just due to the popularity of the deck and not the power level. In a few months we should (hopefully) see something else take the center stage for a bit.
For the first Commander product, there were 51 new cards. Of the 51 new cards, only 11 were shared amongst the 5 decks. Command Tower was in every deck. All of the common "Vow" cards as well as the new uncommon card in each color were in every deck that could support the card. That left 40 new cards (rares and mythics) to be distributed amongst the 5 decks, with each deck getting 8 new cards (2 mythics, 6 rares) that could only be found in that deck.
Current Legacy player here. I formerly used to only play Standard, and I have also dabbled in Modern.
The biggest benefit of Legacy is the stability. As you've seen in Modern, WotC is scared of decks dominating, and they've been banhammering pretty harshly lately. Legacy on the other hand, has been having the opposite effect with cards being unbanned. The last true bannings we had was 2010 when Mystic Tutor and then later Survival got banned (I don't count Mental Misstep in 2011 since it got banned in every format but Vintage). The last banning before that was Time Vault back in 2008.
Since we have such a massive card pool to work with, decks never get truly too powerful. When one deck becomes the top deck, people simply switch over to decks with a better matchup against it, which in turn causes people to switch to decks with a better matchup against that deck, etc. Basically, what I'm saying is it's very rare for the meta to get stale. So while you currently probably hear a lot of complaining about Show 'n Tell, it's not the end of the world deck, and if you simply wait a few months the meta will likely have shifted over to a new deck.
Legacy isn't just a format of insane control decks and combo decks (though they definitely are abundant). Mono Red Burn is a great deck (especially due to the very low cost) that can snatch up wins against other decks less prepared for it. Goblins and Fish (Merfolk) have both gotten pretty beefy boosts thanks to Cavern of Souls. Jund even has made a random splash recently with the release of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay (though the shift seems to be now into BUG which can be a midrange aggro or control deck).
Lastly, though I know the prices on MTGO are much different than paper, the best part about Legacy is the investment stability. As much as I hate to admit it, MTG is definitely an investment. And what drove me away from standard is absolutely what the OP said: I got sick of having to make sure I sold off cards before rotation or before they fell out of favor and tanked in price. That does not happen with Legacy. Unless a card gets banned, card prices are extremely steady, and should you decide to cash out of Legacy, more likely than not you'll either make back all of your money or even come out ahead of the game. Yes there are exceptions and some cards do drop if something gets printed that's strictly better, but overall it's extremely hard to take a loss on value with Legacy.
This might be the kick in the ass that I needed to start learning to do my own alters. You better believe these new cards are gonna get some proper sliver art when I get a hold of them.
I understand that MM is all reprints and likely geared towards those of us who will buy it regardless of what's in it, but come on. Throw us a bone here.
Those were spoiled as I was typing up the post. Didn't expect them to go crazy spoil happy!
On a side note, I have to say I am not a fan of the new appearances, nor I am I fan of making them 1 sided bonuses. Kinda defeats the whole point of "collective hivemind no matter who owns them". Also dumbs it down quite a bit.
We've seen 2 at common and 1 at uncommon so far. Signs point to there being enough for a constructed deck. Whether said deck is actually competitive is a different story. So far none of the spoiled ones are exactly power creep-tastic, even with the new "creatures you control" change.
I could see them dedicating 18 cards in the entire set to slivers. 1 common, 1 uncommon, and 1 rare per color, plus a 5 color lord of some sort, possibly a reprint/new version of Metallic Sliver, and then maybe a Hivestone reprint.
Warped Researcher depicts a sliver on it.
Here are some of the recent price jumps:
LED - 28% increase is 9 days http://www.mtgstocks.com/card.php?id=10345
Force of Will - 15% increase in 4 days (53% if you count SCG's attempt to raise to $100) http://www.mtgstocks.com/card.php?id=10551
JTMS - 60% increase in 8 days http://www.mtgstocks.com/card.php?id=1589
Chains of Mephistopheles - 120% increase over 2 months http://www.mtgstocks.com/card.php?id=11521
And perhaps the scariest one:
Tabernacle - 40% increase in 3 days at SCG.
I was a little skeptical of the whole "SCG increases Legacy prices cause they basically own the format" conspiracy, but this FoW evidence is pretty damning. There has been on reason to up the price up to $100, especially after it just jumped up to $75 last week. They're also the only ones who have done this.
Shame SCG, shame.
And this is the vicious cycle.
Personally, I think Lightning Bolt should not be reprinted. We had it in standard for 2 years, it got a reprint bringing down the price as well as allowing it to be a Modern staple. We had Shock for I don't even know how many years, and the environments were just fine with it.
The Mercadian Masques Vendetta depicts Volrath (disguised as Takara) killing Starke.
Gerrard's Verdict is the closest we'll get to Gerrard killing Crovax (he actually cuts him in half in the books).
Likewise, Dark Triumph is the closest we'll get to Crovax killing Volrath (he injects him with flowstone and then has Ertai give the command for the flowstone to disassemble his body).
Phyrexian Tyranny shows Crovax killing Squee (though this is just one of many times, since Squee is immortal).
Squee's Revenge shows Squee overloading the machine Ertai used to heal, killing him.
Slaughter shows Crovax about to kill Mirri.
Desperate Gamble show Starke about to stab Maraxus in the back while he is fighting Gerrard.
The Planeshift Terminate shows Darigaaz killing himself to prevent the primeval dragons from killing everyone.
Obliterate shows Barrin killing himself (and most of Tolaria) to stop the Phyrexians there.
Those are the ones that I know of for sure, though obviously I'm sure there are more from later sets.