Breaking Through – Legacy’s Lost Cards
Posted by Conley Woods
December 30, 2009 | 
43 comments
2010 looks to be a breakout year for the Legacy format in so many different ways. While the format is hardly new, it has not received the love it deserves up to this point, despite being the star of a few Grands Prix and even appearing at Worlds. This year however, between various 5ks around the country and TWO Grands Prix set to feature the format, Legacy looks to be becoming a man right before our eyes. All of this and that isn’t even entertaining the idea that Worlds may feature the format this year over Extended once again.
Legacy holds a very unique position amongst Magic‘s various formats. Legacy contains a very balanced card pool where basically any archetype can be designed in a competitive manner. This allows each person to effectively take his or her favorite strategy and have a decent shot at winning. Everything from Merfolk and Goblins, to decks with over 40 lands, to Ad Nauseam or Smokestack, literally every deck has a chance at most tournaments. Despite this fact, Legacy as a whole is only partially explored due to its lack of time in the spotlight. As the year progresses, I expect new and exciting archetypes to emerge but that doesn’t mean you should be waiting for those lists to show up before picking up a unique deck yourself. Today I would like to act as a bit of a catalyst and highlight some of the criminally underplayed or non-played cards that Legacy has waiting on its sidelines.
Spells that allow a player to cheat on the mana cost of a spell have always seen play in one fashion or another. Granted Show and Tell is symmetrical but that has hardly stopped spells like Oath of Druids or Exhume from being deck-defining cards. Show and Tell is primarily scary because it forces you to have the permanent you wish to play in your hand, and then it all but guarantees that your opponent will get some benefit from it, even if that bonus is just an extra land drop. That said, its benefits are quite expansive as well; the biggest probably being that unlike most other reanimation style spells, Show and Tell can be pitched to Force of Will. To be fair, this is not option one with the card, but the versatility is nice all the same. In addition, unlike most of the other spells mentioned, Show and Tell allows you to play enchantments or artifacts just as easily as creatures.
At three mana, it is not difficult finding a way to actually play Show and Tell which is a property of other mana cheaters like Dream Halls. Instead, we need to focus on how to A) break the symmetry of the spell, and B) find efficient ways to get spells into our hand that are worthy of being shown off.
Luckily, cards like Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy, and Duress gladly take care of the first stipulation and do so while being valuable outside of any combo or anything. In addition, cards like Unmask also work well as you can pitch extra expensive spells you may happen to have like Progenitus. Speaking of Progenitus, as he is bound to be at least an option for this sort of deck, getting him into our hand is less difficult than you might imagine. Between Brainstorm, Impulse, [card senseis divining top]Sensei’s Divining Top[/card], Ponder, and even the potential inclusion of something like Summoner’s Pact, you should be able to readily have a fatty of some sort in hand. Keep in mind that due to the way Show and Tell works, that fatty could easily be a Mindslaver or Form of the Dragon as well. Other than the high end stuff, this type of deck could pretty easily even support a Counterbalance engine if it was so inclined.
People are well aware of the power of Recurring Nightmare, yet it continues to see so little play that many people have forgotten that it isn’t on the banned list. Survival of the Fittest is still legal and Recurring Nightmare is a perfect pairing with its green brethren. At Worlds 2007, I ran a rock deck in the Legacy portion that had no combos at all, yet utilized Recurring Nightmare as an insane one-of to pull ahead in card advantage and shut out a struggling opponent.
Now while this deck in particular is certainly dated, it simply shows the power of the card and the versatility for which it encompasses. Sure, it is so powerful that insane combos could easily be built around it, but it also can act as a grind-it-out style of card that just buries the opponent in a mass of recursion and card advantage. Even just supplying a deck with a late-game that otherwise wouldn’t exist is more than enough of a reason for Recurring Nightmare to begin creeping back into lists. As the above list demonstrates, Recurring Nightmare hardly needs to be a four-of in order to add substantial value to a deck. Rock decks are often overlooked as competitive decks because they have a bad rap as mid-rangy clunkers that can’t win unless they draw the right answers for the right threats. In Legacy however, the power level of the cards is so high that you are able to attack multiple strategies with a single card.
Look at Pernicious Deed for example, which is in and of itself somewhat of a lost Legacy card. Against aggressive decks, Deed acts as a solid mass removal spell that handles things like Aether Vial or [card umezawas jitte]Jitte[/card] at the same time. Against control decks, you still have a card that is able to remove Counterbalance shenanigans as well as things like Crucible of Worlds or Manabond. Even against combo decks, taking out Mox Diamonds, Chrome Moxes, or [card lions eye diamond]Lion’s Eye Diamonds[/card] while they prepare to Ad Nauseam during their draw step is a huge setback for these decks, as they generally don’t run enough lands to crawl back into a game fast enough after they have lost so many permanents. The bottom line is that a card like Recurring Nightmare can be used in ways not previously explored, which could breathe new life into a powerful but forgotten card.
Fluctuator
My first ever experience with Legacy involved a deck that abused Fluctuator with a ton of cycling guys and Songs of the Damned to push through a ton of mana, finished off with your choice of an endgame including anything from Drain Life effects to Living Death. The tricky part about Fluctuator combo decks is that the deck tends to be clunky without the namesake card in play. This poses the hardest problem but is hardly without some solutions. Tutors are pretty much readily available in this format, so making room for four tutors can’t hurt the consistency of the deck too much once you begin going off, but greatly improve the chances of finding a Fluctuator in the first place. Plus, the deck is inherently made to cantrip every turn, meaning that a Fluctuator should be found no later than turn three or four. Granted this is a bit slow but does allow a nice backup strategy if your main game plan is shot down, unlike a deck like Ad Nauseam.
Of course the other big issue is avoiding the commonly-played graveyard hate aimed at other strategies. The beautiful thing about Fluctuator however, is that you are constantly replacing cards in your hand, and your engine piece is an instant. This allows you to both recover more easily if your graveyard is removed early, or if done late, you can simply throw down some Songs of the Damned (or Crypt of Agadeem, which is a new addition) in response, and proceed to abuse the immense amounts of mana now in your pool. This means you are probably going to want to avoid Living Death-style win conditions to make the deck work more smoothly, but the engine is easily workable, which is the important part. Also, again, because you are running a ton of guys, casting Viscera Draggers, [card disciple of malice]Disciples of Malice[/card], and Street Wraiths, while not optimal, is hardly a roll over and die point just because your combo piece was disrupted.
Blue Stax
White, red, and black Stax have all had their successes in the past, but an often overlooked strategy is combining blue elements to the deck. The number of cards available for such a strategy are quite staggering in fact, most of which are underplayed even in non-prison style decks. Transmute Artifact for example, while hardly an auto-include in this style of deck, still presents us with a nice option as a less explosive Tinker effect. Along the same line of artifact tutoring, [card tezzeret the seeker]Tezzeret[/card] has seen success in almost every format other than Legacy which is quite baffling. While the five mana price tag may be too much to allow it to see play in a Stax-style deck, it again is just another option. Alongside Tezzeret, March of the Machines offers a solid win condition if you are looking to win through combat damage.
Mindlock Orb is perhaps one of the most powerful effects not seeing play right now in Legacy. A Stax deck, looking to abuse City of Traitors and/or Ancient Tomb could easily power out a turn two or three Mindlock Orb, shutting down all of the opponents fetchlands and tutors. Extra copies can even be pitched to Force of Will or Misdirection, making the lock piece valuable even when its not in play. Once again, the Counterbalance/Top interaction could also be added to a blue Stax strategy to provide better game against the combo decks of the format, which white traditionally has difficulty with.
Blue’s biggest issue in a Stax strategy is its lack of mass or spot removal. The only real solutions here are to either rely on artifacts like Powder Keg, Engineered Explosives, or Oblivion Stone or to add a secondary color. White is the most popular color currently used in Stax strategies, as it offers mass removal. A white and blue Stax list is definitely a possibility, but the debate there is whether or not the addition of blue adds enough to weaken the mana base. Blue may be sitting on the sidelines for a while longer as a true Stax option, but cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor could push the idea over the top.
Academy Rector
While Academy Rector has been the central piece of format-warping decks in the past, most people have joined the camp claiming that the card is just too slow in Legacy. While four mana is clearly a lot in a format defined by one- and two-drops, Rector offers a bunch of nice things at its price tag. First of all, four mana will usually get around Counterbalance and Chalice of the Void pretty easily which is a key when those spells are some of the best against traditional Legacy combo decks.
In addition, Rector can naturally play a very anti-aggro game plan. Not only are you utilizing two of the best colors against aggro in black (Cabal Therapy, Bone Splinters etc), and white, but if the opponent finds themselves without a Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile in hand, the simple playing of Rector will halt most ground attacks immediately for fear of triggering the saucy little Squire.
Once again the actual win mechanism is open to a variety of different choices depending on how you are looking to construct your deck. Some options include the very traditional Form of the Dragon, or a new spin could be added to the combo with a Hive Mind/[card pact of the titan]Pact of whatever[/card] combination. Rector is obviously not as blatantly powerful anymore as it used to be, which is of course why it sees essentially no play, but its power is undeniable when utilized correctly which makes the perfect type of sleeper card.
Sleepers
In general, sleeper cards like those above are going to be the easiest to exploit in such a wide-open format. There is not as much barrier to entry as a brand new card that has never seen play, as most of the above have been used in some capacity or another. Instead of actually discovering a card altogether, the trick with sleepers is to actually reinvent them for a modern format. Rector is a good example of this as he pretty clearly won’t work in the same fashion that he used to. Instead, as a deck builder, the task is to now take the power that something like Academy Rector has and harness it in a new way.
Taking this approach allows a deck builder to approach a format with something new and unexpected but proven at the same time. Only Legacy has cards old enough to actually occupy this unique space as cards in Standard or even Extended generally have either not been tried out at all, or have been beaten to death, exploited in every strategy they possibility could fit into. Legacy cards are often forgotten about as time moves forward meaning there are a ton of new cards and interactions to now meld with previous superstars.
Hopefully some of these cards re-emerge as powerful threats once again as the format begins to become more fully explored. With an entire year of Legacy tournaments ahead of us, this seems likely so long as players are willing to think outside of the box a little bit.
Next week we shall turn to Extended and look at the pressing PTQ format as Worlds hardly added much to the format that we saw at Pro Tour Austin. I hope everyone had an excellent holiday season and enjoys the new year that will be here in but a few days. Stay safe and have fun!
Conley Woods
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About This Author
Conley Woods
Conley is known for his love of rogue decks, and his unconventional deckbuilding technique has resulted in numerous success stories. He made Top 8 at Grand Prix Oakland 2010, was the Grand Prix Tampa 2009 finalist, and made Top 4 of Pro Tour Honolulu 2009. &hellip
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Kyle says: December 30, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
I think one the most underated cards in legacy is Survival of the Fittest.
Legacy is awesome because Trinket Mage can find Tops and Cursed Scrolls. I just play Trinket Mage in every deck I can.
MH says: December 30, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
Legacy really isn’t as wide-open as you make it sound. Most of these cards have been tried, and found lacking. (Fluctuator in particular is just terrible, a strictly inferior strategy to a number of combos.)
Jim Varney says: December 30, 2009 @ 11:52 pm
How is it not a wide open format?
There are so many viable archetypes it’s not even funny.
this guy says: December 31, 2009 @ 12:21 am
sacrificing a creature to put a creature into play is not card advantage, just so you know.
harrison baxter says: December 31, 2009 @ 2:00 am
clearly you have never played a deck with recurring nightmare. cards with persist or come into play effects is the card advantage and the fact that bouncing it is part of it’s activation cost means countering it is your only real out once a chain is started. you are mistaken. that card is bonkers.
Kevin says: December 31, 2009 @ 3:44 am
it is when that creature has a card advantage come into play ability…
hudnall56 says: December 31, 2009 @ 4:22 am
@ this guy. It is if you get to do it over and over and over again. Oh, and if the guy you get back is Eternal Witness.
One old Extended deck that I always loved was Thomas Rosholm’s Pattern/Rector deck that included a Recurring Nightmare/Yosei lock. Sounds pretty good in a deck with Rector and Survival.
Trackback MTGBattlefield says: December 31, 2009 @ 4:40 am
Breaking Through – Legacy's Lost Cards…
Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…
GyantSpyder says: December 31, 2009 @ 4:50 am
It is when the creature is eternal witness.
Just so you know.
Shadowsketched says: December 31, 2009 @ 6:02 am
I think blue doesn’t need mass removal in the traditional sense of blowing up everything. It has Propaganda and Tangle Wire, which can lock up the ground from Goblins and other creatures.
MH says: December 31, 2009 @ 7:11 am
Many archetypes is a sign of a healthy format, not necessarily an open one. When you say “wide-open” it makes it sound like you can cobble any old thing together and expect to win some matches and that simply isn’t true (anymore). Back in 2004/2005 the claim that the format was unexplored was true, but it isn’t now. If a card isn’t being used, 98% of the time it’s because it’s been tried and found to be bad, or to lack the critical support necessary to be good.
I mean, I’d love to see a Fluctuator deck that isn’t strictly worse (in multiple ways) to Glimpse of Nature combos, which are themselves a tier-3 or tier-4 strategy more or less strictly worse than Belcher.
Academy Rector isn’t used because:
1. it’s hell trying to resolve a 4cc spell through Wasteland (the most-played card in the format, something like 50%+ of decks will have some of these), Stifle-on-fetchland, and Daze.
2. unless you’re immediately saccing it to a flashback Therapy without passing priority, Swords to Plowshares is by far the most common removal in the format, and Path to Exile is heavily used in one of the best decks (Zoo).
3. Stifle can be found in many, many lists. All three of these cards answer Rector at a huge tempo loss to the Rector player.
4. even if you finally get your enchantment, you think Qasali Pridemage, Trygon Predator, and sideboarded Krosan Grip aren’t waiting to make you look just foolish? Depending on what you get, Pithing Needle might shut you down too.
Amneziak says: December 31, 2009 @ 7:54 am
I would love to rebuild my old blue-red Browse/Soldevi Digger deck. It was so much fun to burn someone out using the same Lightning Bolt over and over or lock him out with the same Pillage.
SKETCH says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:03 am
I had an Academy Rector deck once; we called it Rector-Birth. In extended some years back it was fairly powerful using Academy Rector and Pattern of Rebirth to power out Mythic Proportions on some creature and run over your opponent. If you had the right cards you could pull a forth turn win. In legacy I think this combo could be done a turn or two faster using lands like City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb.
What I'm doing now is running Rector to drop Forced Fruition in play, copy it with Copy Enchantment and then milling their deck with the best mill cards like Glimpse The Unthinkable, Mind Funeral (which has never milled less that 6 cards for me and on average mills about 7 to 12 cards), etc. This work well but still needs some refining. The strategy is to mill of course, but it really get the opponent off guard when you drop Rector, and like you said if they don't have Swords or Path's then forget it, and sac it to Cabal Therapy to put Fruition in play. Now when you mill them they have to really think about countering that spell, loose ten or 7! That's 7 or less spell they can play, and what good is it to have 50 cards in hand if you can't play any of them especially when you have Copy Enchantment in play as a copy of Fruition. You must run Extirpate for cards like Gaea's Blessing, but they can be in the SB. With U/B/W you have access to some of the best color for just about everything. I think after reading your article I may try to add Show and Tell to my list to give me two options of dropping Fruition on the battlefield. Maybe even Counter/Top for extra protection! Mr. Woods you have inspired me! Thank you!
@ MH = there are over 12000 cards in legacy why would you ever think that the format in not wide open? At our casual group we play legacy all the time because of the card pool that is available. Since legacy tournaments are few and far between not much innovation has happened, yet! Although I have many decks that I think could make the cut as competitive decks, with some refining that is. My advice is to go and look at all the legacy cards you can to get a feel of what's out there. If you are a type two player then just look at the older cards. You will be amazed at what you find, unless you are a connoisseur like I am then you will know 99% of the card pool.
@ this guy = I agree with GyantSpyder, you would have to find creatures that offer card advantage to be able to take advantage of this ability. Think of Mulldrifter with along with Recurring Nightmare and a Mulldrifter in the GY.
MH says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:08 am
“I would love to rebuild my old blue-red Browse/Soldevi Digger deck. It was so much fun to burn someone out using the same Lightning Bolt over and over or lock him out with the same Pillage.”
See, that is exactly what I’m talking about. I loved Digger decks back in the day too, but if you bring a Browse deck to the GP or Starcity circuit, well I hope you change your last name to CeroOcho, because you’re going 0-8 for the day.
Now, probably Amneziak is no fool, and was just reminiscing about a beloved old deck. But if you go around giving people the impression that old pets decks are competitive in Legacy, you’re actively misleading them and doing a great disservice.
dowjonzechemical says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:10 am
good call on recurring nightmare. The card is awesome and on the verge of being broken.
MH says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:14 am
“At our casual group we play legacy all the time because of the card pool that is available.”
I think I found your problem right there. Hint: it’s the third word in that sentence. Legacy tournaments might not happen near you, but not everyone is so impoverished.
The card count argument is meaningless, because the definition of “openness” has to do with the cumulative effort and communication between players of a format, not the size of it. Extended has 5000+ cards legal, would you ever be so ignorant to say Extended is half as open as Legacy? (In fact since Extended just underwent a rotation, it’s probably MORE open than Legacy right now.)
Patches says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:33 am
To be honest, Show and Tell and Exhume are the only ones that have a real shot. Turn 2 Iona’s with force back up that can run wasteland/stifle/daze packages seem incredibly powerful. Everything else costs too much to make an impact. Recurring nightmare is a powerful engine, but needs a lot of resources in the mid game. I’d love to play it in extended where you’d have a bit more time and the resource requirement isn’t so dramatic, but Legacy just seems too fast as combo can go off when you play it and control should be set up.
SKETCH says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:41 am
@ MH = This is true about extended and "NO" I wouldn't say that extended is half as open as legacy. But you have to take into consideration about the number of tournament that is run in each of the two types and determine that legacy has fewer tournaments going then extended, at least until 2010. More time has been spent in extended that legacy even with the rotation that happened in extended. Yes we have a casual group that plays legacy, but we are a competitive group and we don't bring trash to the table. We are always trying to improve our game. Legacy just happens to be what we play most because we like to utilize all the cards that we can in our games. We have extended and T2 deck set up; but most are legacy decks.
Depeche Mode says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:50 am
Pattern of Rebirth + Academy Rector decks aren´t exactly unheard of.
More commonly used.
Turn 1: BoP
Turn 2: Nantuko Husk (or Phyrexian Ghoul)
Turn 3: Rector – Sack to Husk, get Pattern on Bop – Sac BoP to Husk, get Symbiotic Wurm – Sack Wurm + 7 tokens to Husk and bash for 22.
Or just win with good Old Pandemonium/Saproling Burst Combo.
This is old extended but it´s the format that resemble most to Legacy.
I don´t think the problem with old decks are what they are missing (in the case of Pattern-Rector only Vampiric Tutor ) the problem is there are so many better answers today.
6-7 Years ago if you were playing for example Trix or Oath (or any deck that relied on Enchantments or Artifacts) you would often have a great game 1 because the numer of answers to your win conditions were often limited to maybe a seal of cleansing or two and for game 2 you could bring in Superman Morphling and just ignore the sideboard hate.
Back then Answers to specific problems were usually very Narrow and relegated to Sideboards 3deuce ran Elvish Lyrists a far from optimal beater and that´s about it.
Today you can just put some Pridemages in your list and keep beating. He might not be the best beater in the world for 2 mana but he´s so versatile it´s worth it and he´s not alone. Creatures are just not beaters anymore and the possiblity to include a number of utility creatures to answer different threaths at a very low cost makes it alot harder to come up with a surprise deck that people don´t have answers for.
3deuce for example is a perfect example of a deck that were not the fastest or strongest deck out there but it ran a number of cards that caused problems for established decks. decks that were alot more powerful the 3d but it still did good. Yes you could build a faster and more powerful beatdown deck but then you´d have a harder time against Trix for example. Today you got Zoo chich is basicly an updated 3D deck, it got answers but it´s also faster then anything else beating down with creatures so for a new deck to compete today you both have to be fast enough to swing it with the best and at the same time be versatile enough that you can beat a number of strategies because that´s the standard of modern top decks. It also mean that alternative strategies are less likely to make it because people will have answers for your questions and unlike good Old Buddy Seal of Cleansing those answers will be able to kill you unless you answer them.
Zadok001 says: December 31, 2009 @ 8:56 am
“Legacy contains a very balanced card pool where basically any archetype can be designed in a competitive manner… Despite this fact, Legacy as a whole is only partially explored due to its lack of time in the spotlight.”
I’m kinda surprised those two thoughts ended up so close to each other in this article, but the obvious connection isn’t made – Partially explored formats tend to be very wide open, precisely *because* they are only partially explored. You don’t think these two facts are connected directly?
matt sperling says: December 31, 2009 @ 9:41 am
A problem that might be worth mentioning is that you have some ideas (and all of us that love to Brew decks do) that are “second best” strategies along the same lines of other better strategies. For example, if you sit down to build a tournament ready fluctuator deck, your goal has to be to make a better combo deck than Ad Nauseum and Reanimator. It could be better because it is more resiliant, faster, or more consistent. But it better be at least one of those things. As for survival/recur, you again need to justify not just playing an entomb/intuition/exhume/reanimate deck. You might say “well Survival and the creatures that go with it allow me to play a non-graveyard based strategy when the opponent’s hate comes in.” That’s fine, and at least now you’re cognizant of what the deck needs to do to have a niche in the format. Your deck will never be better than entomb.dek in the “all out survival/recur” form, so you don’t need to spend much time in that space.
None of this is meant to discourage tinkering with under-used cards. I do it all the time. I have a show and tell into dream halls into Conflux deck list. I have a living plane pyrokinesis deck list. The point is that after I made the dream halls list, I looked at it and asked myself “why am I casting Dream Halls and not Ad Nauseum?” and when I couldn’t produce a satisfying answer, it was time to move on. Having the constraint of “is this any better than existing powerful decks?” in mind saved me time.
Conley says: December 31, 2009 @ 9:50 am
I think the very talk you guys are stirring up is what is wrong with the format, and deck building in general. It is never beneficial to no-sir someones idea via a verbal dispute unless you are positive that time is an issue for that individual. In general ideas should be created and championed verbally but discarded primarily through testing. Of course every card on this list has a long road ahead of it to ever make it into a winning deck, that fact is obvious by the very nature that they are currently not seeing play, so for anyone to add extra pressure on top of that already very staggering reality just does a disservice to up and coming deck builders.
On the other hand, getting ideas out there and swirling around is NEVER a disservice. Any player who takes themselves seriously is going to test these ideas and come to a conclusion all on their own. All the article was intended to do was to get some new ideas out there. Notice that there is a lack of decklists (relevant ones at least) so that players do not simply copy whatever list and bring it to the next 5k with no testing. Breeding ideas is a good thing regardless of whether any of them pan out or not.
The mold of how we think about decks, design decks, accept or deny decks, and ultimately play decks needs to change… article forthcoming now that I think about it lol
Conley says: December 31, 2009 @ 9:54 am
@ Matt Sperling
I agree with you 100% but all of the cards up there are there for a reason as I feel they can be used to explore an area where other decks are lacking.
Recurring Nightmare as I said, should be looked at less in a combo light like entomb etc, and more as a Rock style card.
Show and Tell doesn’t get impacted by the same hate as Ad Nauseum. etc etc etc.
Now whether the benefits of each of those cards outweighs the negatives is up to the individual designer and player, as it should be. For all I know, not a single one of these cards may show up at the next 5k, or every single one could, the possibilities are the important part.
amc says: December 31, 2009 @ 9:55 am
Most people will not have the cards for any up and coming scg-legacy tournies, so what they will do is get what cards they can such as wastelands, maybe some sac lands and some sideboard cards (grips etc) and transpose their extended decks for the legacy environment. And many decks don’t need much change to be good. Blue decks need FoW and thats about it. Land.dec want Tabernacles, but they aren’t absolutely necessary. Burn, affinity, and AIR are laughably cheap to put together.
Being close-minded can cost you, which seems common among legacy players, so don’t nerd-rage when someone trounces you with a $20 burn deck, donate (lawl), or scapeshift combo.
SKETCH says: December 31, 2009 @ 10:00 am
@ matt sperling = The only way to know if your deck is better would be to test it against the decks you think are better than your own and see how things turn out. I have had ideas that I didn't think would be good, then one day someone has won a tournament with a variation of the same deck. So now I test every deck idea just to see if it will work. I like to "Thought Experiment" each deck and theorize it to see if it is a waste of time to proxy out the deck and test it. You can always think of the best hands you get, but what happens when you don't get the best hand. Once again you can theorize what will happen or you can test it and know for sure what will happen. The "Thought Experiment" is nice but it doesn't put up results, only test will provide the answers you are looking for.
matt sperling says: December 31, 2009 @ 10:27 am
@SKETCH
Here’s the thing about brewing up a lot of decks like Chapin and Conley do, you don’t have time to test all of your designs, and certainly not all variations of your designs. You need to be critical of your designs in the design stage so that your testing is focused. Testing may be one way to “know for sure” but it isnt practical to test every list.
Conley says: December 31, 2009 @ 10:49 am
@Matt Sperling
Again, I agree, but with stipulations. Early on as I built decks, I tested everything, over time I developed skills to learn roughly what won’t work before I actually sleeving it up. I still have to come up with a 60 card decklist usually before discarding an idea though. As I said, this was developed through experience, which is something most deck builders have yet to acquire. Testing is still the only “fool proof” (obv not truly fool proof) way to accept or reject ideas.
MH says: December 31, 2009 @ 10:53 am
There is such a thing as analysis, guys. I don’t need to test to find out if Norwood Priestess is a good card. Testing is a very late step, perhaps the final step in rejecting an idea – not the first. 90% of ideas die before ever being shuffled up, and rightly so.
Conley says: December 31, 2009 @ 11:10 am
@MH
Dealing with extremes is not helpful in any sense. None of the cards I suggested are Norwood Priestess. Each card is clearly more powerful, more complex, and has a much more unique effect that is harder to just throw out the window.
Theory and analysis are fine for simple, highly reprinted effects, but even then, some cards are bound to slip through the cracks because a player was unwilling to test a card out. I have literally played with Colfenor’s plans, Thousand Year Elixir, Trash For Treasure etc, at high level tournaments and had success DESPITE the consensus through analysis and theory being that those cards were bad. Analysis may be a time saver, but is also a restrictive poison that leads to the netdeck metagames we are all familiar with…
sti says: December 31, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Needs more survival
A two cost combo engine that can kill them all on its own is pretty powerful.
Conley says: December 31, 2009 @ 11:34 am
Survival is popular amongst players, which is the main reason I left it off. There are so many different Survival decks, from Progenitus combos to Rock style stuff. I know its not as popular as 43 land or Counterbalance, but seemed popular enough that I could leave it off the list.
Adam says: December 31, 2009 @ 11:44 am
Your creativity inspires me Conley. I love reading your articles. Keep up the good work!
GtF says: December 31, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
I think show and tell has the most promise of the ones you listed above, mainly because it is because it is blue so it fits right into a shell that is already very strong (and gets pitched to FOW, as you mentioned).
A couple others off the top of my head that might be interesting:
Goblin Welder
Tangle Wire
Replenish
Amneziak says: December 31, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
I don’t take comments from random naysayers too seriously. It’s that sort of thinking that keeps players net-decking. If I build a Browse deck and go 0-8, so be it. If I make top 8, well then I guess MH will play my deck at the next big event.
MH says: January 1, 2010 @ 10:07 am
@Conley: That comment wasn’t really directed at you. It was meant for the people like SKETCH who are claiming that absolutely everything needs to be tested “to know for sure” and who can’t tell the difference between reasoned debate and just randomly hating on everything to be a dick.
@Amneziak: Ignoring reasoned critiques is certainly the … less-traveled road to success. Good luck with that, I suppose?
MH says: January 1, 2010 @ 10:17 am
Also @Conley: the criticism towards you instead is to not assume that these cards are unexplored by the legacy community. Other than Show and Tell, all of these ideas have been tried and rejected, tried and used, or are being explored (blue stax). And SnT is the exception not because it hasn’t been tried, but because there’s many uses for it that some are bound to be untried.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to try breaking something, try Replenish, which is a card with a lot more promise. It would be nice if there was a decent use for that outside of a 2-of in a lower-tier enchantress deck.
tommy says: January 1, 2010 @ 3:38 pm
another lost card i think is contamination
Amneziak says: January 1, 2010 @ 8:06 pm
@MH: when I hear a reasoned critique, I’ll be sure to pay attention.
kbo says: January 2, 2010 @ 5:20 am
A card i’ve been looking at that hasn’t seen much play is Pox. Seems to fit quite well in eva green, and with loam /deed /sinkhole /top could be just ridiculous. You get goyf therapy ravens crime business too. I’d probably be working on this if there were ever any legacy events in my area, but Pox is one nasty little card. Since pox fails to hit artifacts you can obviously run mox diamond and/or some equipment depending on the deeds. The options are enormous.
Thomas Simpson says: January 3, 2010 @ 10:15 am
i have made the mono bule stax deck. with meditate, tezz, crucible, mox diamond. it was a big waste of time. no one mentioned pox? never mind… forget i said anything…….
Richard says: January 3, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
Does anyone think that Loam + Scroll rack with Intuition support could be a viable draw engine in Legacy?
Pingback 02drop.com » Blog Archive » Archmage Ascension says: March 16, 2010 @ 5:23 am
[...] diverse that there exist interactions that are as yet unexplored. Conley Woods relatively recently wrote an article about Legacy's "lost cards," in which he outlined a theory which basically held the notion [...]
Pingback Rule of Law - Eureka! | ChannelFireball.com says: March 28, 2010 @ 9:00 pm
[...] Woods wrote an article a while back about undervalued Legacy sleepers. He of course couldn't discuss all the sleepers in [...]