I just returned from Grand Prix: Columbus, after watching it explode past everyone’s expectations with a gigantic 883 people showing up to slap dual lands and crazy old cards down. But what format were those people really playing? Was Hulk Flash actually – *gasp* – good for Legacy? And what in heck should we ban?So where, oh where, has old Ferrett been? I hate to have missed several weeks of articles, but in this case I have a pretty good excuse: Dental surgery.
Yes, for those of you who don’t read my articles on Magicthegathering.com, I recently had to have not one, not two, but ten teeth extracted from my mouth recently. This was because I had such lousy gums that the bone underneath was eroding — and so while I was under, they sliced upon and resected my gums.
This has not been a pleasant experience. I’ll spare you the fine details, but if I had stitches put into my arm, it would be well on its way to healing by now. Unfortunately, I don’t keep my arm in a dark, moist place and rub applesauce and soup on it several times a day, which means the healing process is somewhat retarded.
But that’s not the real reason I haven’t written. The real reason was that they took my Magic Juice away from me.
I couldn’t drink Diet Pepsi.
I cannot write without Diet Pepsi. As anyone who’s ever seen me at a tournament knows, I attend with a two-liter bottle in tow because I have to have my caffeine. Take away my caffeine, I can’t think — and lo, contrary to what my detractors might tell you, I do need to think in order to write an article. I could barely stare at a screen.
So rather than try to write some kind of weirdo strategy article about a set of new cards that I’m barely familiar with… I punted. Thanks for taking over, Eli, I appreciate it.
Unfortunately, today’s going to be light on strategy, too, and more on discussion. Because while I just returned from a Two-Headed Giant PTQ in Columbus, I’m also still kind of exhausted — and so this is not a tourney report, but a brief impression and a debate.
Actually, three debates. Because there were three questions about Grand Prix: Columbus that are kind of interesting.
Who The Heck Is Playing Legacy?
883 people showed up to play Legacy in Columbus, which astounded pretty much everyone. I would have thought the number of folks wanting to play with dual lands would be in the three hundred-plus range, and others were betting between 400 and 500.
The question, of course, is what percentage of those 883 understood Legacy as we know it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: statistically speaking, if you’re reading my article here on a site that’s not the official Magic site, you are a freak. You are the “superuser,” the person who is die-hard enough to look for daily Magic articles elsewhere and hunt them down. You know Magic better than most people do.
I have no problems admitting that I’m not the greatest player. Among the superusers who routinely attend PTQs and are gunning for that GPT, I’m probably in the middle, or possibly even as low as the bottom third. But among the casual players, the ones who really don’t play that much Magic, I’m above — as I know full well from combing through the submissions telling me what the best card in Future Sight is. I’d be willing to wager that most of you are far better.
And there are two kinds of Legacy:
1) The Legacy as superusers understand it, with a metagame consisting largely of Hulk Flash, Fish, Goblins, with a scattering of CounterSliver, Landstill, and remote hits like Iggy Pop and weird disruption.
2) “Hey, I can play with any cards I own? Cool!”
Don’t underestimate the “Hey, I can play with any cards” factor. A lot of people show up with decks that have no chance of winning, but hey! They can play! Woot!
The big question is what the makeup of the decks was. If the bottom tables were seas of dopey decks with dual lands thrown in, then that means that this isn’t a victory for Legacy as we know it, but rather a sign that there are a lot of players who hate restrictive formats. Then again, if the bottom tables were playing actual (though obviously substandard) versions of classic decks — Goblin decks with, say, Goblin Grenade, or Fish decks utilizing Rootwater Thief — then that means Legacy is a format that has a lot of quiet support.
Wizards won’t go for it, of course. It’s not in their best interests to support a one-investment format that really doesn’t need that many new cards; they like Standard because, well, you have to buy a new damn deck every two years at a minimum.
But if the Legacy format is popular as Legacy, then it might behoove local card shops to begin holding more local Legacy tournaments, as SCG has done. Because card shops are the ones who will profit, and maybe they should begin testing the waters. You know, soon.
When I scanned the bottom 400 tables, I saw a lot of pseudo-Fish and kinda-CounterSliver decks. That may be a good sign for tourney organizers. Or maybe I just dropped by at the wrong time.
Was Hulk Flash Good For Legacy?
This sort of begs the previous question, but if Legacy-as-we-know-it was so popular that it dragged 883 players out of the woodwork, was Hulk Flash responsible for it?
Am I crazy? Hulk Flash scared everyone away! And it did, to be truthful; almost everyone knew someone who was thinking of coming, but dammit that Hulk Flash was unbeatable, so why bother?
But think about it for a moment.
Legacy is not the most well-known of formats. I know, it has its rabid adherents, but the fact is that if you asked most Magic players two months ago what the most popular archetypes were, you would have gotten a blank stare. Not that Christopher Coppola, Doug Linn, and Kevin Binswanger weren’t trying, but the news wasn’t there.
But Hulk Flash shook things up. Suddenly, you had a deck that was big, and explosive, and not too hard to build. And then you had a real whiz-banger of an excitement — suddenly, every major writer had something to say on it! And it changed drastically in the course of the week, shifting from Disciple of the Vault to Kiki-Jiki, and OMG everyone knew!
And in explaining exactly why Hulk Flash was such a monster, you kind of had to explain what the other decks in the format were and why they were having such a problem handling Hulk, which in turn was pretty much a Godsend for Legacy players who might have needed a refresher course on what was up in Legacy.
My take is that Hulk was probably not good for the format’s fun level. But I think, paradoxically, it wound up making the format more interesting because:
1) Suddenly, the Johnnies had a target they knew they had to beat, and:
2) The Spikes had, inadvertently, been given either a) a clear Best Deck to play, or b) a sufficient overview of the metagame that they felt they could tweak a deck to slide in right past Hulk Flash.
I can’t say, of course. That’s gonna sort itself out as time goes by. But I think that, to borrow a wrestling term, Hulk Flash was the heel — the deck you loved to hate.
Are We Too Whiny?
This is the riskiest thing to say in light of a) the fact that Hulk Flash won the whole damn tournament, and b) the fact that I do think that Hulk Flash needs to be nerfed, quick, before the Pacts go online.
But the calls for Hulk Flash to be banned were premature.
As the editor for this site, I’ve noticed that things tend to come in waves. Any change to the face of the card, for example, is met with a huge outcry of how ugly the card style is, followed by hundreds of people each swearing that they will quit Magic because of this ugly card design, and then six months later they’re still around and complaining anyway.
Happens every single time.
Likewise, every time a strong deck is discovered — as in, “A deck that’s damn near impossible to beat” — people everywhere call out for bannings. “That’s too tough!” they cry. “We can’t beat it! It’s gotta be hamstrung!”
This is what I heard with Hulk. I was at my card shop, hanging out in forums, getting the emails. And they all said that Hulk was so ominous that no one could beat it, it would always win on turn 2, there was no deck that stood a chance against Hulk and OMG IT MUST DIE.
Except that when I arrived in Columbus to watch the festivities, Hulk Smash was not that dominant. It was the deck to beat, sure, and a positive menacy on turn 2, but Fish was holding its own against it, and there were other (more limited) decks that worked against it. Duress stripped it of some of that reliability, and it didn’t always get the monster hand, and you had a chance.
Plus, there was room to innovate.
I had a bet with a friend that Wizards wouldn’t emergency ban before Columbus, and I’m glad they didn’t. I think that as a group, Magic players are too prone to kill off the best deck out of sheer terror — they think that if there’s a strong deck, it can’t possibly be undermined by some other metagame call.
Sometimes, they’re right. Tinker should have been banned in Extended, and Affinity needed to be drug out back and whomped with a stick. But for every justified ban, there have been a slew of other decks that were OVERWHELMINGLY UNBEATABLE at the time that got mashed into the dirt with nothing more than a clever counter-strategy or a few sideboard tweaks.
I do think that Hulk Flash needs to get nerfed, because Summoner’s Pact and Pact of Negation will, indeed, make it a little too ridonkulous. Yet every time I hear a groundswell call for BAN THAT NOW BEFORE IT GETS OUT OF HAND, I roll my eyes a little.
Before you try to get Wizards to beat the big bad monster, maybe you should try beating it. Just a little harder.
There’s usually a way.
Next week? My PTQ experience with A Magic Celebrity. Ooo, scary.
Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Here Site Here Guy
You wanna know how tired I am? I’m so tired, I’m not even plugging Home on the Strange. So there. Nyah.