Part of me really wants to do an article about Legacy, what with the Grand Prix coming up and all. Something like I’ve done before but at a macro level. Maybe a Floresian SWOT analysis, for example. I’m sure it would be useful for me to scour the internet for you, trying to assemble a cross-section of decks most likely to make up high percentages of the field, and explain their strengths and weaknesses.
Maybe I’d call it “The Seven Samurai of Legacy (and friends)”, wherein I’d present a tiered look at Legacy that would go something like this:
Top Tier:
Zoo*
Goblins*
Merfolk*
Lands*
Thopters*
NO Bant / Supreme Blue **
New Horizons*
Competitive Tier:
Storm (currently something like TES, Iggy Pop or Fetchland Tendrils)*
Reanimator**
Stax*
Enchantress*
Aggro Loam*
Semi-Competitive Tier:
Survival***
Dredge***
Belcher***
Show and Tell / Hypergenesis / Eureka-style decks***
Imperial Painter***
Legend:
SCG Open Winner = *
SCG Open Finalist = **
SCG Open Top 8 = ***
I might explain that Legacy does actually have the broadest field of decks that are capable of winning any given tournament, even a large one like a Grand Prix, which is part of the appeal of that particular format; I might then go on to explain that I would still put money down on the winner ultimately coming from that top tier set of decks, so that if you’re a gauntlet testing type of person, that’s where you’d want to start. The competitive tier decks are either decks that have lost ground due to DCI shenanigans, or those that attack specific metagames (and are therefore a riskier choice given an unknown metagame, but they are also decks with huge potential upside if you guess correctly). The semi-competitive tier includes decks that tend to perform well at smaller events, or those with very high variance. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to find those decks in the top 8 of any Legacy event, Grand Prix included.
All of those decks in the top tier have won a StarCityGames.com Open tournament over the past 8 months, and some have won more than one, with the exception of NO Bant, which has made the finals twice and has a multitude of top 8s that suggest it is definitely a top-tier strategy (and one that is quite different than Thopters). All of those decks exist in the SCG deck database, and the SCG Open coverage archive has top 16 deck-lists as well as match coverage and deck information going back to last December. So while I could compile that information for you, doing the research leg work and analyzing a projected field — does that go against the point of the article I presented last week (which ended up being thematically similar to several others)?
A lot of people in the forums responded to AJ’s last article by saying something along the lines of, “I’ve heard enough times that I’m terrible — tell me how to be less terrible!”
Okay, I will. Start learning how to do your own research.
Before we start, though, you should know something else: I actually don’t think most of you are terrible at Magic. In fact, this whole idea that only 20 people in the world are good at magic is kind of absurd, by simple English definition.
Here’s one of the definitions of good:
“satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree”
It doesn’t say, “Embodying the qualities of the top .00001%”; quite the opposite, actually. Obviously the average Magic player is, by comparison, terrible compared to the best Pro players. This is kind of like saying your friend who is best at basketball is still terrible compared to Kobe Bryant. It’s a true statement, but does it really “mean” anything relevant? I’m not sure it really benefits anyone when we say a PTQ grinder with repeated top 8s is “terrible” and in fact I think the degree of player skill separating those knocking on the door of the PT, and even low-level pros, from higher level pros is as often networking deficiencies as much as it is anything else. Still, there’s clearly an aptitude gap that exists in Magic. Just like you can shoot hoops 20 hours a day and you’ll never be Lebron James, there is no article that can make you LSV, PV, GT, and on and on. Sometimes people have more aptitude at something than other people do. This also applies to Magic. Nobody can write an article that takes a person of average aptitude for Magic and makes them play like LSV or design decks like Chapin.
What you can do is strive to reach your maximum potential, and leverage your strengths. There are areas where everyone can improve, a lot of which just comes from practice. How do you learn a subject? You study it. You test yourself. You give yourself measurable and actionable goals, preferably time-bound goals so you have something reasonable to try and achieve. Magic isn’t, well, magic — you apply the same concepts that help you get better at anything else. Right?
Studying Results, Understanding Formats
I write a lot of articles about format analysis for Legacy and Vintage because I find that stuff appealing. I have a nearly insatiable desire for decks for those formats. I never want a deck to catch me by surprise, and I want to constantly feel out the metagame and see what decks appear to be on the rise, and which ones are fading, and why. For instance, months ago someone flamed me on The Source for saying Canadian Thresh was a dead deck. It’s not like I just threw that out there to see if it stuck — the deck just wasn’t winning anymore. In some ways I think Legacy evolved beyond that deck in terms of technology and power; not a knock against Canadian Thresh, just an observation on the format. You can get a feel for these things by monitoring results. A year ago Canadian Thresh was one of the biggest players in the format. Today, I doubt anyone is testing against it for the Grand Prix.
Results, results, results. Follow them. Try to understand them — when certain decks disappear, ask yourself if you know why. If you’re not sure, ask other people and see if you can determine a common theme. A lot of what happens in Magic metagames is cyclical. The exact cards change, but the shifts and the underlying metagame adjustments are often quite predictable, should you care enough to look for them.
There is a wealth of information available, in terms of results, here and on the mothership. I’m a fan of Morphling for Vintage and Deckcheck for Legacy (especially for large European events you might otherwise miss).
Think about two of the all-time greats in their field, possibly the greatest of all time, even: Shakespeare and Hitchcock. Both of these men rarely started from scratch, if ever. Instead, they adapted existing works and put their own spin on them. Hitchcock’s films were generally adapted plays or novels; Shakespeare often used well-known source material, and sometimes amalgamated a variety of source items into one piece (folklore, legends, Greek tragedy, history, other plays — he stole from all of them equally). To reiterate something I’ve said before, it is the rare person that is capable of inventing new, original works from scratch; much more common, and where you often fine the most refined and highest quality work, is when someone takes an existing idea and refines it, hybridizes it, or updates it into something that appears fresh, and new, and dangerous, but in reality is just a new spin on something old.
The point here is that a lot of writers on Magic websites are just doing something you’re too lazy to do. They’re looking at results, results, results. They’re compiling, analyzing, and tracking trends, and forming predictive models either mentally or in actuality. Predictive models for some formats are pretty easy — for instance, if I want to beat Meandeck MUD, Dredge, and Drain Tendrils, I would probably turn to Terastodon Oath with eight anti-Dredge sideboard cards. I might further predict that others will reach a similar conclusion, leading me to make subtle adjustments here and there, such as playing an extra Jace and running Strip Mine over Library of Alexandria or Tolarian Academy.
If I expect a Legacy format gearing up for creatures and Counter-Top, I might be inclined to choose a deck outside that axis such as Stax or Lands, or even an anti-creature strategy that gives me a chance to beat blue decks based on unfamiliarity, like Show and Tell / Hypergenesis or Aggro Loam.
All of these decisions hinge upon the fact that you have some understanding of what matters in deck versus deck combat. This goes hand in hand with reading results — in other words, I understand why this deck is becoming prominent and forcing this other deck from the metagame; this card or strategy trumps this one as a general (but not absolute) rule. Over time, this lets you figure out what matters across formats, because Magic metagames tend to repeat.
Enter Random Rant About Legacy
I have a serious concern that the Legacy format is going to bog down into a morass of decks that take forever to win. I’m worried that instead of matches potentially ending in 5 minutes, that we’re instead going to be faced with matches that end with 0-0-1 draws. For example, a lot of people think that Lands may now be the best-positioned deck in the format given the exit of fast combo, should that in fact be the result of Mystical’s banning. The Grand Prix will help make clear how true that really is, because I think a lot of people are sleeping on Tendrils and the deck is still plenty viable, depending on what happens with Counterbalance decks. Similarly, Enchantress can be a powerful deck against any of the creature strategies, but it doesn’t tend to win games all that quickly. Thopters hardly has any win conditions, and one of them is “deck you because I have Academy Ruins and you don’t!” Stax is hardly more “fun” to play against than combo decks, at least in this writer’s opinion. Sure, losing on turn two is rough, but is it better to still be alive on turn 22 with no permanents in play while your opponent finally starts to beat you to death with a Magus of the Tabernacle? Admittedly I love mana denial decks because they were such a huge part of the Magic I grew up with, but that isn’t most people’s experience these days. They get kinda angry about the whole Chalice 1, Chalice 2, Trinisphere, Wasteland lock thing.
If the creature strategies should falter at this Grand Prix, and the top 8 clogs up with decks like Lands, Thopters, Enchantress, and Stax, I fear that we’ll have left a format that was sometimes dangerous in its explosive power, but ultimately balanced, for one that is… well, kind of boring.
Despite what people think, there are Storm decks that are still plenty good enough to prevent this from happening. It could just be a brutal rest of 2010 while things shake out.
The end.
Now, let’s practice catching fish together for a little while.
So you’re saying, okay, I should do more of my own research. I should learn where I can find Top 8 information for the formats that I play, and actively work on understanding why certain decks are popular and/or are putting up strong results. I should try to use that information to understand how formats work, why they change, and try to improve my predictive skills. This will help you in a few ways:
First, you’re less likely to play against a deck with which you have no familiarity at all. Games are won and lost due to one player having knowledge of the other player’s deck. You don’t have to literally test against every deck in a format, because while actual testing helps, theoretical understanding is generally better than no understanding at all.
Second, understanding metagame shifts will help you choose your deck, help you modify an existing deck for better success, and will absolutely help you wield more effective sideboards.
Third, you’ll be less reliant on writers feeding you information, and won’t have to worry about that information being withheld, completely or partially, before large tournaments.
Ultimately, a lot of what makes you better at Magic comes from playing Magic, watching Magic, and reading what the best minds in the game think about Magic. For example, when a deck like Turbo Lands breaks, and suddenly the sideboards of the format begin to warp, and Blue/White starts to recede from the format, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to figure out hey, this may be a good time to pick up a Red deck. By the time you read about it on the internet, though, you’re probably at least a week behind, and once people write about it more, the clock ticks faster as people pick up Red, others sideboard against it actively (having read about it), until such a time that Red’s metagame percentage increases despite a decreasing expected result, and a feedback loop commences whereby people include more anti-Red sideboard cards because they saw so much Red the week before.
This happens over, and over, and over. Think about it. What made people develop a deck like Turbo Lands in the first place? Is that really a “new” strategy?
75 Card Deck Design
The best decks are actually a self-contained set of a group of 60-card decks that are being built out of a static 75-card pool. In other words, you’re not making awkward adjustments to cram in anti-whatever cards that don’t mesh with your main deck, you’re trying to sideboard into a version of your game one deck that has a better match-up against a specific opponent in as organic a fashion as possible.
I posted a Vintage Dredge deck a few weeks ago, both here and on TMD, which sought to attack Oath and Combo decks using maindeck Chalice of the Void and Leyline of Sanctity combined with a few Unmask and a low land count. That deck wasn’t really optimized, nor was it something I’d tested heavily. Or at all. One nice thing about being an Internet writer is I can actually get play-testing done just by suggesting people play a certain deck and then seeing if it wins, and reading other people’s tournament reports. Mind you, I didn’t think that deck was bad — far from it — but I wouldn’t call it optimized. Look at these cards:
4 City of Brass
2 Unmask
4 Chain of Vapor
1 Ichorid
1 Darkblast
4 Nature’s Claim
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Sanctity
That deck essentially had a 51-card main deck and a 24-card sideboard. Why not? You’re probably going to win game one anyway. Take a Vintage Dredge deck and optimize it as best you can with 52 cards. Now add 8 Pokemon cards to fill out to 60. How much do you think you’re giving up in terms of game 1 win percentage. 5%? 10%? Given that we have new cards in the format and are likely to see some metagame changes, I’m not really sure which Leyline is better in the main, or if I should actually move all of them to the sideboard. Is Unmask a main-deck worthy card, or would those slots be better off given to City of Brass and another Nature’s Claim? A reasonable way to try and figure out these questions is to build a deck with a huge sideboard, and try to see which variations of it work most consistently in game one situations. With Dredge, you’re really trying to maximize your chance of winning games two and three, and one way to “cheat” up that percentage is to increase the size of your sideboard by bleeding it over into your maindeck. This is why you’ll often see me running a Darkblast main where many others have a third Golgari Thug, for example. That gives me a 16th sideboard card at almost no cost to my game one efficiency.
Having played with the deck somewhat at this point, I think that it wants a couple more lands in the main to get more reliable use out of Bloodghast, as not having a land on turn two is one of the more common ways for the deck to malfunction. I also really like Nature’s Claim in the main, having lost several game ones to it at this point, because I never expect it even though people are using my own decks against me (so obviously I am not following my own fishing lessons optimally).
Regardless, the actual cards in the deck aren’t going to change outside of possibly adding one more Dakmor Salvage, because the 75 cards are, by and large, correct. The number of disruption cards is going to stay static and the sideboard is set up to have easily moving parts.
Sideboarding isn’t just about getting the latest sideboard strategy from a pro player. Fundamentally, it starts with understanding what you’re trying to accomplish when you sideboard. Players often tune their 60 card decks to the best of their ability, but tack on the sideboard without testing at all, and worse, without considering what cards they’re going to take out. I’ve always found that knowing which cards to bring in is easy — but how many times have you had more cards in your sideboard to bring in than cards you could take out while still have a properly functioning deck? A lot of times, the number of cards a person devotes to a specific match-up is simply more cards than they’ll ever be able to use effectively, wasting sideboard slots.
If you want to win, really want to win, you can’t waste sideboard slots.
There are so few times I’ve ever felt like my deck was right. Not the 60 cards, which I often feel good about, but the full 75 cards. Most of the time, even when I win a tournament, I still feel like something I put in my sideboard was a terrible failure on my part, broken predictive analysis that I strive to improve constantly. Do you ever feel that way?
Additionally, in a format like Vintage or Legacy in particular, tracking the sideboard cards you use (and why) is critically important, because you’re often playing in a similar metagame for many tournaments in a row. I often go back to the well here, I know, but consider a card like Red Elemental Blast. The two cards I least want to see when playing Oath of Druids are Trygon Predator and Mystic Remora, because they’re two cards that make me lose. Of course there are a few others that are obscure that are also hit by REB, such as Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Jace, Tezzeret, and Gifts Ungiven. In terms of versatility, REB has been the key thing that I believe has led me to so much tournament success with Oath. The run that I’ve been on with Oath (going back to September 2009), wherein my worst two tournaments out of eight were X-2s in two six-round events, all involve me playing Red Elemental Blast in my sideboard. Sure, you could point to Iona, and metagame changes, and not be wholly inaccurate, but those two sideboard slots accomplish more, with so little effort, than any number of cards I tried to use before. Despite this, I’m one of the only people to play REB in the sideboard of Terastodon Oath. Hopefully, it will stay that way. I like winning.
Stephen Menendian has written a few articles in which he discusses a highly detailed system by which you can tailor a deck for an expected metagame. He builds multiple versions of a deck, designed to beat a specified opposing deck (i.e. the anti-Merfolk version, the anti-Zoo version, the anti-Combo version), and then hybridizes those decks (or features from them).
The system is pretty cool, but it sure presupposes a lot. First, you have to actually be able to build decks that correctly attack opposing decks; this will seriously test many people’s understanding of what matters in a match-up, as well as what to sideboard, and how. Then, you need to amalgamate this data in such a way that still leaves you with a functional and organic deck. This is really a challenge, in my opinion. I’m not saying the system doesn’t work, but for a lot of people, trying to do this will give you junk results out, because you’re putting junk in.
I like to start on a very basic level.
Essentially, take a deck and examine which cards you know are bad against a specific opponent. Now, try to determine the field you expect and think about how much you can reasonably influence those match-ups through your sideboard. Try to construct a sideboard that at least gives you a slight upgrade over your main against every match-up, but which specifically covers you against the decks you can beat with a reasonable amount of sideboard coverage, OR which covers you against specific cards that are problematic.
Say I have an Oath deck that I like. I feel like the deck is worth playing because I believe it has a positive match-up against MUD, Noble Fish, and that with my experience in the format I have opportunity to out-play opponents running Drain Tendrils, Tezzeret, and Oath. I know that I need 7-8 Dredge cards in my sideboard because of how often the deck is making top 8 in the tournaments I attend.
Now, I need to build a sideboard. I have only 7 or 8 slots to work with, so I need to make sure I get overlap out of my sideboard cards whenever possible (thus, REB against Tezz, Remora, and Noble Fish, or Nature’s Claim for the mirror and Workshop decks). I like to start with the cards that I know are poor against a given opponent, and try to maximize my ability to bring in higher-leverage cards. Even with the Dredge hate, it isn’t just saying, I want 8 cards against Dredge. Rather, it’s saying, I want 8 cards against Dredge, the majority of which need to dodge Leyline of Sanctity. I also need two Pithing Needles to fight back against anti-Oath hate. Additionally I need at least one Tormod’s Crypt because I don’t have many cards against combo and I like 1 Tormod’s in that match-up (so basically 2 Mindbreak Trap, 1 Tormod’s against TPS and the same plus some number of REBs if my opponent is on Drain Tendrils). If I’m running 4 Leyline of the Void due to Leyline of Sanctity, what cards can I take out to make room for the 8 cards I’m bringing in (of which 7 have filled in themselves — 4 Leyline, 2 Pithing Needle, 1 Tormod’s Crypt)?
Well, if I’m on the Leyline plan, I don’t want to take out all of my counters, because protecting Leyline is paramount to victory. I might therefore consider keeping in some number of Mana Drains as maxing out on only two types of counters leaves me more vulnerable to Cabal Therapy, despite the fact that I would probably have boarded out all my Mana Drains in a version that did not play Leyline of the Void, pre-Leyline of Sanctity.
How do you determine which card are good against another deck, and which ones are weak? Again, a lot comes down to just playing games of Magic. For example, Nature’s Claim is probably better against Fish than Hurkyl’s, and you probably want at least one anti-Null Rod card in your deck at all times against Fish. Playing 1 Massacre, 1 Firespout is probably better than 2 of either card specifically to max out your flexibility, especially given Meddling Mage. Playing with Fish against an opponent playing Oath helped me gain a better understanding of the match-up and the way both players tend to win and lose games.
I’ve also learned that when I play Oath, beating Remora is a serious problem. Having access to, say, 2 Nature’s Claim and 2 REB means that I have plenty of one-mana answers available to beat that card, without having to devote a single extra slot to specifically trying to beat it (given that it is a niche card, at this point).
That whole section was sort of rambling, I know, but I find it hard to construct a straight road-map of these things.
I also like to play actual matches when I test, especially close to a tournament when my 75 is close to set, so that I can burn that sideboarding into my muscle memory.
Briefly: mulligans. Start including mulligans in your testing sessions. How can you ever expect to reasonably play in tournaments where you have to mulligan if you never test that way? Taking mulligans in testing will help you understand the bounds of your deck. And how you can ever expect to make informed mulligan decisions without having the contents of your deck memorized is beyond me. Let alone the actively detrimental “understanding” that a lot of people have with regards to basic statistics, or even fractions and percentages.
If your opening hand needs to hit runner-runner just to function correctly, you better have a damn good reason for keeping it. Mulligan lessons are some of the hardest to learn. I actively practice that part of my game, and focus on it constantly to this day. I don’t think it comes naturally to most people.
A lot of the times that you spin bad beat stories, you’re leaving out the part about how you kept a shaky hand because you felt like you could draw runner-runner and failed to do so. If a hand can’t get you there, ship it. Just let it go. There are so many times that opponents are effectively keeping 5 or 6 card hands against you because they’re making their own poor mulligan decisions, so you shouldn’t be afraid to try to work yourself into a better opener.
Anyway, off you go, research some Legacy results and try to build your deck with 75 card deck design in mind, should you decide that you want to recreate an existing deck from the ground, up. Test your deck using actual mulligan rules. Focus on what matters in each match-up and tweak your sideboard as you go. Switch off decks for match-ups that aren’t going as you think they should to see if your plan of attack is flawed. Try to get a read on what makes each of the major decks unique, and why they are viable contenders.
Also: just because I didn’t say you are terrible doesn’t mean that I think you’re good. It just means that I believe that most people that want to have the potential to be good relative to the average or median player (or, at least, better than they are now and certainly better than the average). Part of that is learning where it is worthwhile to put in some work yourself instead of relying solely on others to tell you what to do.
You’ll still be terrible by comparison to LSV and PV, though, so those of you that like to hate yourselves, at least you can hold onto that.
Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x on SCG, TMD, and The Source