Silvestri Says – Standard and Legacy Grab Bag
Posted by Josh Silvestri
July 5, 2010 | 
37 comments
Before I begin, I’d like to give a shout out to Lim Teng Chek for winning Singapore Nationals this weekend! I used to chat with the Teng brothers at a number of MTG events here in California and after splitting the 1k with Vengevine Jund, Teng emailed me about playing a modified version of the build at Nationals. After shipping some advice and discussion about the deck, he made his version with [card eldrazi monument]Monuments[/card] and a few other swaps. I really like where he took the deck and was glad to hear that it worked out for him along with a bit of luck along the way.
Lim Teng Chek, 1st, Singapore Nationals
Here’s a little bit of feedback I got from Teng when he posted about his Nats win.
“The list is a bit different from your original list, but maintains that we can live without as much removal and Blightnings in the main deck. The sideboard is also changed up and I audibled to Dragon’s Claw in the sideboard because I heard people were looking for Hell’s Thunders the day before and Thought Hemorrhage never really impressed me.
After going 0-2, I was kinda despondent, especially since I felt the deck was good but thought I didn’t practice enough. Basically, I won because I was pretty damn lucky to be fed well during the drafts, and I had a super hot streak with my constructed deck on day 2.”
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Legacy is an oddity to talk about since I don’t get to play it too often, but I enjoy playing the format a ton online against competent people. Heck, every so often when I get to play some local Legacy people usually have the decency to bring real decks! I’m also fortunate that I have the opportunity to see the thoughts of good players on Legacy instead of purely going off results and open forums. While my views on Legacy aren’t as out there as Max Mccall, I tend to slide toward ‘attacking isn’t that good, why are you playing this awful deck, etc.’ moreso than not.
Now I have a clear preference toward decks that only interact when they need to or otherwise keep it to a bare minimum. It’s a carryover from old Legacy and Vintage play; in any format past a certain power level it becomes rather silly to play the deck trying to get there with 3/3′s and minimal disruption or random donks backed by Force of Will. FOW is so much better in a combo deck than a deck like Merfolk, it isn’t even funny. Look at the other half of the cards combo decks like to play: Thoughtseize, Duress, Orim’s Chant; cards that make Force of Will invalid or useless unless you have doubles. This is why a lot of people laugh when people tell them their main weapon against Combo or Reanimator is going to be FOW.
I can grudgingly respect Zoo players though, since the plan they came up with is not only reasonable, but makes complete sense if you’ve watched a large Legacy tournament.
Zoo Philosophy: Put a lot of pressure on the opponent to actually win the game early and put the onus on the opponent not make any errors while being very forgiving of your own.
Contrast this with a deck I hate and see no redeeming qualities in:
Merfolk Philosophy: Put a slow clock on the opponent, play a bunch of situational disruption and hope the opponent goes for it way too early. Punish you as badly as anyone playing control or combo decks for any mistake involving mana management or the wrong time to employ disruption. Oh, and be super soft to any deck that wants to challenge on a creature front.
This is why I find Zoo to be a completely reasonable choice in the metagame and at least had some respect for it even before the Mystical Tutor ban. Not that a couple of Zoo players beat a bunch of idiots and suddenly the good decks are somehow awful as a result. Anyone who wants to argue this point first has to justify the Zoo players making top eight that fetched the wrong land on turn one, missing their turn one play more than once on the way to top eight. You can’t tell me that Zoo is so much better than everyone else that you can screw something like that up and come out ahead in the long run against competent opponents. I thought Zoo was fine because it was a consistent pressure deck where many other people were playing unstable piles or weren’t comfortable enough with their decks to actually win the game.
As one Zoo top eighter put it:
“I just sat there letting my deck be consistent and watched as everyone else’s piles of crap self destructed. People build their legacy decks for ridiculous upsides that are appealing when you run like god but on the aggregate are abysmal. Every time someone played a Noble Hierarch, Silvergill Adept, or similar garbage against me it was a sick joke.”
The thing people never seem to understand about Zoo doing well is that Zoo has two things going for it. First, it’s by far the most tuned deck in the room and even if someone adds a bunch of bad cards in order to improve it, as long as they leave the base one-drops, Tarmogoyfs and some Paths and burn in the deck they will have an effective Zoo deck. For some reason people also seem more comfortable straight netdecking Zoo builds, probably because any artistic flourishes they add won’t be noticed by people. This means that your untuned or unpracticed deck is going to have a hell of a time beating something that has literally been perfected for years.
Secondly, Zoo is designed to do as well as everyone else lets it: you can have a metagame where Zoo is effectively removed from the format, but that’s only if people really do stick to a gentleman’s agreement to play decks that mash valid creature strategies with non-interactive decks. There are plenty of decks I could think of that aren’t very good, but could beat up Zoo more often than not, the problem being that they are weak vs. everything else. Think GP: Flash but in reverse. Zoo isn’t so heads and tails above the rest of the field that people are willing to sell out to do so.
Somebody brought up some historical point in regards to Merfolk, and that it actually made the finals of a Pro Tour where both Academy and High Tide were legal. Merfolk then got turn two’d out of the game in the Finals against Academy. So what, right? Here’s another funny thing about Pro Tour Academy (PT: Rome): the most represented strategy in the format was Lightning Bolt and Savannah Lions. You had decks that could consistently win on turn two or three with Force of Will back-up, and yet very competent players were still sleeving up these decks based on the idea that they could eat all the counter-decks and Sligh people brought to the table.
So, in some funny historical reference, a bunch of Legacy top eights were just replays of a Pro Tour played out in 1999 except the Academy deck didn’t win all of those.
Meanwhile Merfolk can be summed up like so:
“Game 1: His draw is just beatdown, but my draw is average — so I win.”
For Merfolk to beat a decent or good draw from any other decent deck in Legacy requires it to have a mixture of beatdown and counters, with hopefully an Aether Vial thrown in for good measure. If you don’t have the proper ratio though, you’ve got great odds on just getting run over. Your average draws are literally “3 land, 1 counter, 3 creatures with probably no one-drop’ or ’2-3 land, vial, 2 creatures 1-2 counters’…how impressive. You’ve got 8 one-drops, half of which are purely to make your later drops less of a tempo nightmare. The average draws of Merfolk only beat the crap draws of other people or opponents literally walking straight into counters. The best card in the deck by far is Aether Vial and sadly you can only run four of those puppies.
Speaking of which, if you’re trying to beat Merfolk and aren’t using a creature-heavy strategy, my best suggestion is to focus on stopping Aether Vial first. I cannot tell you how much better the Merfolk strategy is against opposing decks when it has an Aether Vial to play cards and isn’t paying full retail value. Suddenly the all Lord plan comes together a lot faster; you can duck cards like Llawan, Cephalid Empress and just have a more cohesive and effective attack plan in general. Without Vial they’ve got a sweet one spell a turn plan going that might be backed by Force of Will or an obviously telegraphed Daze. Vial ducks or helps minimize the damage of so many cards it’s pretty amazing to watch.
A good rule of thumb in Legacy is that any four mana card that isn’t winning you the game through some degenerate combo or can be cast in some alternative way is almost always wrong to play. Meanwhile, cards that cost three are given a pass, when in reality most of those are also pretty awful and not worth using. The best usage of most three mana cards is to sneak around Counterbalance, hosing somebody, or winning random creature wars that I’m still surprised happen with such frequency. Right now I think Jace, the Mind Sculptor is one of the only cards that can actually justify its mana cost in many decks because of the amount of modes and utility it gives you in one card. It feels like Cryptic Command in Extended: only a few decks wanted it and not as a 4-of, but they made great use of the card as a midgame weapon.
For those focusing on GP: Columbus, my usual complaint and suggestion for people would be that the people playing Reanimator and ANT aren’t spending anywhere enough time getting familiarized with their decks. Before I get shelled on that point about player skill and complicated decks, just stop and think about it for a minute. For some of you, that’s just a good recommendation. When Saito can’t play a deck perfectly"¦ when Matt Nass wins a GP with a complicated combo deck and still averages three or four mistakes a match with ANT. Well then the average Magic player isn’t going to have a real easy time piloting those decks optimally, let alone in matches where you need to minimize any openings your opponents get.
I realize I give Legacy players a lot of flack, but it isn’t without any reason, this is a good example of why.
That was a match playing for top eight contention that Gavin, Dane, Evan and myself all did commentary on. You can look through the video archives and though many aren’t as egregious, there are plenty of other shining examples of punts and shenanigans going on. Or you could watch the quarterfinals match of SCG Open Seattle and see the same thing on one side of the table. Most Legacy players are like this, just in more subtle ways, so this is why the keeps cropping up. There are some people who play competently though, and you actually have to worry about the few that are going to give you major problems by playing their deck near perfectly. As Cedric Philips wrote, everyone gives Meyer a ton of crap for his Dark Ritual screw-up in the finals. However he stopped as soon as he realized he made the error instead of blundering down the road and losing the game for sure.
However, that’s a moot point now since Mystical Tutor got banned and murdered the versions of both combo decks that would be top tier. Are they still around in some form? Oh sure, you will definitely see Reanimator and Storm Combo of sorts at GP: Columbus, but they aren’t going to be worth gunning for the way they would’ve been pre-ban. The takeaway is still going to be familiarizing yourself with the deck, but now there’s a more specific goal in mind. Instead I believe the most important thing to know going into GP: Columbus is the following:
Know exactly what your plan is and how well your deck performs against Zoo, Goblins and Merfolk.
It’s that simple and other than having clean technical play it’ll probably win you more matches than any other piece of advice I could possibly give you. These will easily be the three of the top four or five played decks at the Grand Prix, and Zoo in particular is a practical lock to be the most popular choice post-ban. Instead of trying to worry about the second or third tier of the metagame seeping down, you can focus on what all the zero-bye players / Zoo / budget guys are bringing to the table. For a further explanation of what I mean, think about it like this. At some point during GP Madrid, if you hoped to win, you would have to play someone very competent with ANT, CB or Reanimator. If you were truly confident in your chances of doing well and had byes, then it was a worthwhile consideration to take this into account and perhaps alter your deck accordingly. A few extra cards in any of those matches could make a big difference in post-board play and would be something to really consider.
Instead, with the field flattened out and no clear choices for ringers or pro-level players to just pick up and practice with for a few days before the GP, there’s no need to do such a thing. Other than Zoo and perhaps New Horizons, there’s no clear top tier decks that stick out and in general whatever you’d play in round 3 is the same as round 8 is the same as round 14. At the same time, while I hate Merfolk, if you plan on bringing a Blue deck to the table you’re going to see it around and it can win games so having a plan is paramount.
As for legitimate decks post-ban that I’d actually consider playing, the obvious ones that come to mind are Goblins, Zoo, CB, Dredge and Reanimator. Again, I’m completely sure some Storm combo or something similar like Aeon Bridge, Belcher or something else will pop up and take up some slots. Hell, it wouldn’t even surprise me if people keep working on the old combos and more decks like Aluren, Cephalid Breakfast and decks along those lines pop back up on the radar in small doses. However unless you have some truly innovative build behind them, I’d stick with the first five I listed. Goblins’ worst match-ups went out the window and it has reasonable options against other decks in the field. Someone also might be able to convince me to play New Horizons, but Kyle Boddy won SCG: Seattle with it and still calls it a terrible deck. If the guy who wins the 5k with something says he only won because his opponents were all miserable and that he wouldn’t play the deck again then I’m probably taking that to heart.
Reanimator is weakened, but you can basically play it as is with a few card swaps. The deck is slower and a tiny bit less resilient, but all that really happened is the Zoo match got a lot closer to even and the goldfish was slowed. Here’s just a palette swap of LSV’s list pre-ban to post-ban.
Not too hard, and Intuition also should be tested in these types of builds. Any midrange or Control deck is probably just cold to some combo of Cabal Therapy and Bloodghast coming out of the sideboard in those cases. Point is though that while some people will bury the deck, it remains a reasonable choice.
If you want to ask my why I don’t think Lands is a good choice, that’s fine as well. Lands is only a real deck when nobody prepares for it in any reasonable fashion. Ever see Lands against a Leyline of the Void? It sits there and flails while trying to stay alive and establish a semblance of control while the late-game officially becomes sit there and rot until a Manland bails you out or you draw an answer to Leyline. The Red Leyline in M11 shuts off nearly everything Lands has in terms of defense with the sole exception of Tabernacle. Combo ignores Lands in general and Reanimator can use It that Betrays or Realm Razer to make life miserable for it. Plus, the deck takes forever to win and anyone truly serious about winning can easily slow down their rate of play and really push Lands into a unintentional draw scenario. I’m not talking about stalling either, I mean just adding 5-10 seconds onto tanking or taking an extra shuffle or two. If Lands has to kill an opponent, then it takes years to win two out of three.
Lands is only a great choice against an aggro-infested field if all players forget the deck exists, otherwise it just doesn’t have the raw power to compete against hosers. The rub being that if people don’t pack ways to deal with Lands it’ll stomp all over the decks I think are going to be played en masse and then this paragraph looks rather silly. Don’t be the people ignoring Affinity or TEPS a few years ago in Extended.
Quick Shots
So many Legacy decks feel like they’re made with duct tape and string and absolutely need to draw a key component in a given match for their deck to even function. I say Merfolk is terrible, but at least it can be composed in such a fashion where it has a reasonable shot of drawing dudes, mana and counters. Some Legacy decks are literally blue-screens of death if they don’t draw a random three-of off a whopping four Brainstorm. Make sure the average draw is something you’re comfortable seeing across matches, because the last thing you want is a deck that’s only great when you run like God.
Umezawa’s Jitte is a terrible card in Legacy decks and you shouldn’t be playing it in Zoo. The only reason it even makes it into Merfolk decks is because the deck is awful and actually needs situational answers like Jitte to beat decks like Goblins and other Merfolk decks. Who actually thinks Jitte is good against other Zoo decks when they run a bunch of burn and Path to Exile? Your Jitte just turned into a giant tempo sink and god forbid they bothered to play a Qasali Pridemage against you. You have to invest four mana and get in a clean attack step with the equipped creature for anything relevant to happen. You could hold it back on block, but it won’t salvage a terrible board state and still leaves you wide open to removal. Jitte is a fine card, but most of the decks that play it aren’t going to get any value out of it in the majority of matches.
Standstill is another card many people don’t understand for reasons unbeknownst to me. It’s great in a couple of niche situations and absolutely worthless in a billion others. If you’re comfortable with playing a deck that makes it excellent and moving it around for a legitimate card when it’s dead, the card is fine. I’m not going to argue with Rich Shay or Charles Gordon when they show me a deck shell that takes advantage of Standstill. I know they’ve actually thought it through and have maximized their ways of getting full value out of it. Many of you have not and are playing Standstill in decks where you’re still relying on four Brainstorm to dump them out of your hand and not packing anywhere near enough ways to clear a path for Standstill. If you aren’t getting max value from Standstill in the 35-40% of the time you actually get to use it, then what the hell is it doing in your deck?
Finally just for emphasis: Know exactly what your plan is and how well your deck performs against Zoo, Goblins and Merfolk.
So, that’s my obligatory once a year Legacy article.
Josh Silvestri
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aaron says: July 5, 2010 @ 9:39 pm
I love the standstill point. My favourite thing about legacy is watching people die while stubbornly refusing to break their own standstill because they have no idea how to use it.
javert says: July 5, 2010 @ 9:43 pm
Great article. More of these are needed with real content and brave statements. I really like your Merfolk bashing although I’m not sure if the deck effectively stopped sucking with Coralhelm commander. Right now, the other deck I think it needs severe bashing is Goblins. All its good matchups are also Zoo’s good matchups and Zoo has more reach with burn like Price of Progress and the lightnings and access to more SB cards than the usual monored or RB combination of goblins. Even in the “mirror” matchup Zoo is favored unless the Goblin build is significantly warped to beat Zoo.
karl says: July 5, 2010 @ 9:50 pm
Stacks is in this game boys!
Boland says: July 5, 2010 @ 9:50 pm
god that legacy match is painful
GP says: July 5, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
I agree with whoever said Stax could have a pretty strong meta impact in new legacy.
Todd says: July 5, 2010 @ 10:17 pm
That is one of the funniest legacy games I’ve seen in a while. Almost as good as our local dredge player getting blown out by Hedron Crab, Meloku, Bojuka Bog.
Pat says: July 5, 2010 @ 10:35 pm
Nice article.
Can you elaborate why you think that CB and Dredge are good choices?
In my experience, CB has a hard time with Zoo, Goblins and Dredge. Dredge is also not as favorable against aggro as I like it to be, and I suspect people will be packing slightly more hate because they can reduce their “combo-slots”.
Josh S. says: July 5, 2010 @ 10:56 pm
Pat: I think CB is a reasonable choice because you don’t have to focus so much on beating really strong decks that have different plans than you. Cards that are really good against Zoo, aren’t necessarily good against Merfolk, ANT, Reanimator; you get the idea. When you take away the other linear strategies, then you can devote more space to sealing up the aggro matches until you get the soft-lock online.
Andy Probasco was telling me the other day that essentially the format has been reset to how it was to GP: Chicago (the one him and Nassif dueled in the finals at). Both decks got additional weapons and options, but the format as a whole is effectively being played as creatures vs. blue vs. some combo. Traditional means such as Firespout and increased spot removal remains valid and you don’t have to necessarily play bad cards in your CB deck to get there. Even if CB itself isn’t attractive, then a control shell in the same vein will be (or landstill perhaps ala Charles Gordon SCG seattle list). Josh Guibault’s deck is another option, where it swaps out it’s open slots for the E. Tutor set-up and Thopter Combo. Even just opening up slots for Moat and redundant ‘locks’ to protect against Pridemage is huge.
Dredge is never going to be a sexy pick, but I still think competent Dredge players can deal with the hate coming at them and having a bunch of byes game one is great at such a long tourney. The biggest problem for me was the fact that you couldn’t beat a Reanimator player with Coffin Purge and Blazing Archon. Without that horrendous match it doesn’t look so bad, although as you point out the grave hate may come back to be harmful to Dredge. Leyline and Relics are really annoying, Faerie Macabre not so much.
CalebD says: July 6, 2010 @ 12:06 am
Strong article. I’ve been testing for Columbus every day and this cemented some of my thoughts and brought up a couple things I hadn’t been considering. Nice.
As for gobbos vs. zoo: As the article mentioned, it’s hard to mess up with zoo. A gobblin player’s skill, however, can make a huge difference. I’d rather play against Herberholz with zoo than Turtenwald with gobbos any day.
Simon J says: July 6, 2010 @ 12:35 am
“Plus, the deck takes forever to win and anyone truly serious about winning can easily slow down their rate of play and really push Lands into a unintentional draw scenario”
I’m pretty sure if you deliberately slow down your rate of play then the draw is not unintentional. I’m shocked you appear to be recommending people cheat.
Josh S. says: July 6, 2010 @ 12:54 am
I can slow down my rate of play as much as I want as long as I’m still playing at “a reasonable rate of speed”. In fact the most common error people make is playing pretty fast and then tanking for a few minutes over complicated board states because the rules actively punish you for that. It’s one thing to go from slow to glacially slow, but if you play reasonably quickly, dropping it down a notch isn’t going to phase a judge.
I’m making people aware of the reality of the situation. If you play a slow deck and aren’t a very fast player, this is a likely outcome. The fact is many people are already playing slowly enough that it’s already a reasonable concern. As far as cheating and time goes, hate to tell you but until there’s a way to get a solid 25/25 split on the clock this is always going to be an issue.
Van Phanel says: July 6, 2010 @ 4:07 am
You are wrong Josh. If anybody is actively turning down their speed of playing in order to go to time, they >are< cheating as by the rules. This is still true, even if they play fast enough for the judges.
Intentionally taking advantage of the time limit is cheating, period. I’m clearly not talking about that player being caught, because that is unlikely in most cases but they are still cheating.
You have to see the difference between Slow Play and Cheating – Stalling. The former is what you were adressing in your first paragraph (and for that part I agree), but the latter is a different thing.
Trackback MTGBattlefield says: July 6, 2010 @ 5:38 am
Silvestri Says – Standard and Legacy Grab Bag…
Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…
Lorgalis says: July 6, 2010 @ 5:52 am
“If the guy who wins the 5k with something says he only won because his opponents were all miserable and that he wouldn't play the deck again…” –> That guy must be an arrogant dickhead.
Anyways, nice to see a Legacy article for a change.
David88 says: July 6, 2010 @ 6:59 am
I love how the message in this article is that legacy is filled with terrible players playing terrible decks and all you need to do is be an excellent player with a good deck or good draws and you’ll win.
I can’t see a good way to argue with that since I’ve never seen a worse game of magic at FNM than that video.
dbg says: July 6, 2010 @ 7:55 am
im liking legacy Goblins ALOT ALOT ALOT right now.
its army hits harder than Zoo and with the black splash its got superior anti-combo tools then zoo. it also makes a mockery out of merfolk decks and is the same brutal face smashing aggro deck it always was and will teach the scrubs a lesson about bringing a knife to a gunfight.
failing that i’d just play Reanimator since its obviously still good even if its maybe on average 1 turn slower. that just means you get to work on its slow roll gameplay and increase the disruption/control elements. thats not exactly a bad thing though since the deck has excellent disruption and control.
ANT I feel is the real casualty here. the upside of that deck was always just the pure speed. unlike reanimator, ANT really can’t survive being on average 1 turn slower. if it can’t win on turn 2 then there’s really no hope since at that stage you’re looking at active Counterbalance+Top or something similarly unbeatable.
yeah, for me it would be Goblins by a mile. that deck is looking sweet right now in Legacy.
Josh P says: July 6, 2010 @ 8:11 am
Legacy seems depressing. I have to spend $100s on lands and 100s more on the cards I want to use just to face the same 3 or 4 decks? How many thousands of cards are available? Josh, do you think the problem is that a few cards like the top or vial need to be banned or is there just no creativity?
Marc says: July 6, 2010 @ 8:20 am
No love for Enchantress? If the fast combo decks are slowed down a bit, it looks a lot better…
Also, been having some fun playing a CB/Thopter deck that SB’s in painter/grindstone for the sword/foundry game 2 when people board in all their leylines and extirpates.
Serbitar says: July 6, 2010 @ 8:42 am
“Legacy seems depressing. I have to spend $100s on lands and 100s more on the cards I want to use just to face the same 3 or 4 decks?”
Not only does the article mention (at a quick glance) at least 13 decks (CB/T, Zoo, Merfolk, Goblins, Reanimator, Lands, Dredge, New Horizons, Storm, Belcher, Aluren, Cephalid Breakfast, Aeon Bridge), but there are also countless more… obviously these are of varying prevalence.
Josh P says: July 6, 2010 @ 9:26 am
Here’s what prompted my post, Serbitar:
“Other than Zoo and perhaps New Horizons, there's no clear top tier decks that stick out and in general whatever you'd play in round 3 is the same as round 8 is the same as round 14.”
Sounds like the field should be wide open, but the rest of the article indicates otherwise. He did mention several other strategies — mostly to tear them down. I don’t play Legacy and I’m hesitant to try to invest in it. Playing against Counterbalance just sounds awful. It also sounds like Goblins and Merfolk couldn’t compete without the vial. Did I misunderstand?
Serbitar says: July 6, 2010 @ 9:41 am
I’m not sure. The way I understood the passage, he is saying that in the past you would have to expect to face some decks in the later rounds of the tournament at the top tables, even though not many people play them (just because those decks are good with a skillful pilot, ANT, Reanimator). So, if you want to win the tournament (say with a deck like Zoo), it makes sense to devote specific hate to those matchups, even if they are not common.
Now, post-bannings, there are no decks that stand out in this way (there are no longer deck, for which the propability of facing them later in the tournament is higher than their percentage in the field) – so you don’t have to consider sideboarding for niche decks specifically.
That being said, I think this statement has nothing to do with format diversity. I guess there will be lots of Zoo – but the Legacy format AFAIK is the most diverse format of all MTG. Sure there are decks that are more popular than others, but even they make up only 10-15% of a metagame.
dv8r says: July 6, 2010 @ 10:20 am
living death or patriach’s bidding help the goblin matchup vs zoo a lot… just putting it out there
frank says: July 6, 2010 @ 10:54 am
Been playing for over a decade and just recenlty started going to FNM. Decided a few days ago that I wanted to plunge into vintage play. I’ve been doing a lot of research and just reading vintage articals. Its nice to see your not afraid to call things how you see em. Even still I know that just reading won’t be enough to truely prepare myself for the actual play…besides doing exactly that..playing countless matches and know when to hold back and when to attack ect ect. Knowledge of your decks strong points and weakness is one of the most important things in my opinion. Either way nice read.
Michael L says: July 6, 2010 @ 11:07 am
Goblins is a sick deck even with no vial in play, unlike merfolk. You still have warchief, which feels almost as good, and people have to play super safe vs. you because of the threat of hasty piledrivers. In that case, you can sit back and gather card advantage via matron, ringleader, incinerator, etc. until they run out of counterspells and die.
Against a deck like zoo, just keep tutoring up removal spells (incinerator and warren weirding) find a sharpshooter, and control the board, pulling ahead with ringleader. Goblins runs more “card draw” than almost any other deck in the format, if you can draw out the game, you’ll get ahead and win. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, and as was said above, goblins takes a lot of skill to play correctly. Your cards definitely DO NOT all do the same thing, unlike an straight aggro deck like zoo, and knowing when to play what, what to tutor for, is a skill that only comes with practice. But with that practice, I think Goblins has game versus any interactive deck. Obviously your match against linear combo is pretty bad, like all non-blue aggro decks.
Anusien says: July 6, 2010 @ 11:23 am
Intentionally playing slowly to take advantage of the clock is Stalling. You can be Stalling and not Slow Playing. There’s a big gap between actually Stalling and just clocking out Lands or something. It’s really easy to make plays that force them to spend a lot of time doing stupid stuff because the deck takes a million hours to win anyway.
Josh S. says: July 6, 2010 @ 11:44 am
Josh P: The field is wide open IF you put the work into it. If you want a full list of what I consider viable (not just the best choices) it’d be like 9 decks long. If you make that into a list of decks where somebody has at least a shot of doing well with practice and such, then it’s even more.
Josh P says: July 6, 2010 @ 11:56 am
If there’s one thing that will deter me from playing Legacy is that a lot of these decks will never go away. Players say that is a strength of the format — that your cards will always be legal — but that kind of bothers me. Playing against Lands sounds even worse than playing against Counterbalance. Snore. And they won’t go away? No thanks. A lot of Standard players complain about Jund but at least it will rotate out.
Lyle says: July 6, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
@Josh P: The thing is, though, that (and before I continue, a disclaimer: the only Legacy deck I’ve ever piloted is Dredge) while Lands is probably really unfun to be across the table from, piloting it is probably very difficult and takes a lot of skill and practise. This is why Legacy is better than Standard. If you’re playing Standard, it’s like “Oh hey look, I cascaded Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning, guess I win hurf durf”. In Legacy you actually have to think about things.
Also, if you don’t like paying hundreds for dual lands, play Dredge. That’s why I play it. The whole deck is about $180 on SCG, and less on eBay.
Arc says: July 6, 2010 @ 1:23 pm
Playing slow with the intent of forcing a draw *is* stalling, but there’s two things you need to know about doing so:
1) Assuming your rate of play is decent, it’s going to be almost impossible for your opponent to convince the judge you’re stalling.
2) Draws don’t help you in tournaments. Wins do.
dar482 says: July 6, 2010 @ 2:47 pm
Man Silvestri, I wish you didn’t make me watch that match of Magic. It was excruciating to watch. However, I see that kind of stuff on the Standard portion of the 5Ks too. Just atrocious and slow play all over.
bsnake says: July 6, 2010 @ 3:18 pm
I’ve played Lands for a long long time now. Yes, it is probably very boring, as an opponent, being completely locked out of a game and having no way to come back while lands takes “a million hours to win”. I think it’s a blast! Lands does SO many broken things..
@Lyle: Yes, lands is a very skill intensive deck. I’ve never piloted ANT, but from what I understand you can tell a great ANT pilot from a good one. Same goes for lands. I’ve seen lands pilots make SO many misplays it’s insane (not saying that I don’t make misplays, I’m sure I do, but just not on the same calibur and consistancy as the players I watch). Not going into to many details, but your entire deck is filled with options, and with 7 tutor cards (3 recurring) tutoring for the wrong Intuition bundle or using Tolaria West to transmute into something you really don’t need is done way too much. I used to do that a lot, I learned (and am still learning) how to pilot the deck to the peak potential.
@Josh: Ironically enough, as a lands player, I am not afraid of Leyline of the Void. I am more afraid of getting blown out by a random Crypt, played and cracked, at the wrong time than I am from a turn zero Leyline. The problem with people is they seem to think a turn zero Leyline = scoop for lands and they’re suprised when they still lose. A good lands player can play without a graveyard, just like a good lands player can play without Exploration/Manabond. It’s just that I haven’t seen many lands players that are above mediocre at best. About the only hate that a lands player can’t deal with is a turn 1 blood moon/magus of the moon. While PoP hurts, a lot, you can very easily still win through it as long as you take the proper measures to ensure you have a Zuron Orb in play when it resolves.
Also, another thing going against the deck is that it costs $1500+ retail just for the mainboard, not even including any SB cards. It’s the most expensive deck in the format by far.
Just my two cents.
Josh P says: July 6, 2010 @ 5:29 pm
@Lyle: I’ve heard those complaints against Jund before and they just aren’t legit. Usually they come from people who lose to it (I play Jund, naturally). It has its nut draws just like any other deck, including Dredge. We can debate standard vs. legacy if you want, but they both use Magic cards and the same rules — saying that one is more skill intensive than the other is just silly.
@bsnake: $1500?? w h a t
Zach says: July 6, 2010 @ 7:40 pm
Hi Josh S.
A card I have been concidering in the counter top bant sideboard that is not to my knowledge currently in use is Dueling Grounds. This would come in versus Goblins, Merfolk, Dredge, and any other “creature swarm” strategy.
The counter top bant strategy loses in theory to uncounterable swarms of creatures and this card plus a blocker is a soft lock against those strategies. Enlightened tutor sideboards are a viable option in counter top bant (1-2 copies of E-tutor), so the number of copies of dueling grounds used can be cut down (~2).
Dueling Grounds could obviate the need for firespout and the red splash (which doesn’t seem too good against merfolk decks packing 16 lords as they could outsize your firespout). It also increases the usefulness of Planeswalkers (Elspeth, Jace) and of creatures that provide exalted triggers (Heirarch, Pridemage, Rafiq).
Dueling Grounds doesn’t answer Zoo very well, but 3-4 Threads of Disloyalty in the sideboard fills the role of creating a tempo boost (just like Dueling Grounds does versus Goblins and Merfolk) versus Zoo.
This is one deck that I think can “beat Merfolk, Goblins, and Zoo”.
Thanks for your article.
–Zach
CSeraph says: July 7, 2010 @ 9:03 am
@Josh P: Arguing that decks have equivalent skill dependency because “they both use the same rules and are played with Magic cards” is an absolutely atrocious argument.
Does aggro in general and jund in particular get an unfairly bad rep for being utterly skill-less? Yes, absolutely. But people who have been around for a while will have played enough decks to know that some are very decision-intensive and punishing of mistakes, and some have considerably fewer decisions and/or are forgiving of mistakes. The difference between two decks can be enormous.
@ Josh S: So, given your merfolk comments I’m guessing you’re even more hateful to Death and Taxes? It sees a ton of online top 8 play, but probably largely due to budget constraints in the online format.
bsnake says: July 7, 2010 @ 4:09 pm
Look up a 43 lands list and price it on either SSG or channel fireball. It’s retarded expensive.
Josh P says: July 8, 2010 @ 2:25 pm
@CSeraph: I meant formats, not individual decks, but I can see where you misunderstood me. I stand by my statement though — constructed formats all use magic cards and the same rules. Legacy is not more skill intensive than extended or standard. Really though, even saying that certain decks are more skill-intensive than others is somewhat naive. Yes, some decks seem easier to play than others but what do you do when things don’t go according to plan? That’s where your skill comes in.
Josh S. says: July 11, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
Dueling Grounds isn’t a bad idea. Although taking unblockable 4 a turn still puts you on a pretty short clock when your gameplan is locking the game up and bashing them w/ Goyfs. If you were using the Thopter plan I see it as a better idea.
I like DG, but I just can’t see why you wouldn’t play Moat in most decks.