Off the heels of a record-breaking 883-person Grand Prix, I am still processing everything that led up to it… and the results. While some predicted low turnout due to a competing European GP and the problem of Flash, what an event it was!
Flash was an eventuality in Legacy. The cardpool is just balanced enough so that every once in awhile, something new will interact with something really old and we’ll see stupid things. Witness Flame Fusillade / Time Vault. The format will have these things happen again. Flash got a lot of people mad as well; they’d bought cards for other decks, they wanted a format where Blue wasn’t the end-all, or they were just annoyed at combo that consistent being in the format to begin with. I believe it was Talen Lee who said, in counterpoint, something to the effect of that with thirteen years of Magic, of course Legacy is going to be dominated by Black and Blue. That said, I’m sure we’ll be seeing Flash go away and a new format (this time with Tombstalker and Tarmogoyf!) emerge.
(As an aside, Stephen Menendian mentioned to me that our team might have been indirectly responsible for Flash’s removal of errata. You might remember last year when he, Jacob Orlove, and several other teammates worked on getting power level errata phased out of cards, primarily because of Time Vault. The result was a change in policy to revert cards back to what they read like. Next on the list: Void Maw. Yet another reason to hate us, I guess… )
My personal testing began several weeks ago when the Flash combo became recognized as the dominant factor going into the event. Our team started with speedy combo lists involving Elvish Spirit Guides and their Simian kin, then tuning into slower, more disruptive lists. This mirrored the general trend of the deck’s development. Several teammates opted for the Kiki-Jiki kill, while others, including myself, opted for the Disciple of the Vault kill. There was a greater chance of drawing into components, but the kill was far stronger in the face of the expected hate like Extirpate and Extract.
Something struck me about the Legacy community since the beginning of this whole Flash odyssey; the entire deck was developed largely in the open. I was shocked and amazed that, upon realizing how good it was, people actually talked about the deck! Several groups apparently independently discovered the interaction, and in any other format, they would likely have kept very quiet about it. Imagine how the GP would have been different if nobody knew about Flash going in! We’d be talking about it ten years from now, about the people who quietly walked in with the most broken deck in the format and walked out with all the loot.
I have mixed feelings about this all the development being public. My first instinct is "you idiots, look what you gave away." I briefly chatted with fellow StarCityGames.com writers Richard Feldman and Zac Hill as we walked out of the convention center, and we were all amazed at how public this deck’s development was. Tech sharing of this scale simply doesn’t happen in other formats. As the deck developed, we saw the Kiki-Jiki kill include Body Snatcher and Sylvan Safekeeper. These refinements, if kept secret, would have given people quite an edge against the hate. However, it was quickly common knowledge. I can only think that the reason people publicly talked about the deck so much was that they were probably not going to the GP and / or were more interested in notoriety or helping the community than keeping developments secret to profit from. There’s nothing wrong with that, in any case; it’s something I’d never do though, and I’m still somewhat baffled by all of it.
While my team was a little behind the curve in development, others were at the forefront, watching their development be discovered by the public. Team Reflection’s MattH said they “had the Snatcher and Safekeeper tech long before it was public, and imposed a strict moratorium on talking publicly about any aspect of the deck, including answering rules questions about Flash. We were also saddened to watch piece after piece of our tech be developed or leaked, but it was a good time anyway.” Dan Spero, also on Reflection, explained it as “like watching a train accident from the engineer’s cab and not on the eleven o’clock news.”
On the other hand, I’m also grateful for the deck being developed publicly. My team didn’t have to spend as much time thinking of a kill condition, as a perfectly fine one already existed. We could concentrate on refinement instead. I am sure that Flash’s popularity and success at the GP was due to a couple people doing the heavy lifting of figuring out combos, while the rest of the community took what they had and worked off of it. Brian Demars and Patrick Chapin favored a list including Living Wish, Sylvan Library and a substantial wishboard. Brian did very well with his build, but unfortunately, Patrick could not make the event. Megafrowns. Others, including Stephen Menendian, Nick Eisel, and your humble author chose a consistent U/B/g build with Lim-Dul’s Vault at the forefront and a simple gameplan and sideboard featuring Xantid Swarms (COVERED IN BEES!). The other two did well, both making Day 2, while I dropped at 2-2 to join the beer and pizza bracket.
While the development of the deck was public, the discussion on how to beat it was not. Specifically, the Kiki-Jiki combo has a glaring flaw in it and I’ll show you where. When you target Karmic Guide with the duplicitous goblin and sacrifice it in response, the opponent can target it with any removal and it will stop the combo. The reason is that Sylvan Safekeeper and Benevolent Bodyguard both prevent the copying ability from working. Bodyguard will allow the combo to continue if the removal is non-Red, but it doesn’t protect against multiple removal spells, something reasonably expected. One has a somewhat large Feeder to deal with, but most decks can handle that. I’d noticed that people often failed to target at the right time with their removal. There was an information gap between those who played the deck and those who played against it.
Initially, I planned on playing the Kiki version. However, I became more fearful of running into knowledgeable players that I could not bluff past. I’m better at playing cards than playing people, so I couldn’t get people to target my stuff at the wrong time. On the other hand, I watched my teammate Brian Demars bluff enough people to give Obi-Wan a run. Another teammate, Tom Lapille, ran Goblins specifically to blow out Flash players with cycled Gempalm Incinerators at opportune times. The information gap on playing against Flash correctly benefited many people that I knew. Flash being such a new deck added to that, and this illustrates why bringing something new can work in your favor.
Now I’m thinking about how useful the information we gained from the GP is going to be. What does it tell us about Legacy to come? The biggest thing that I can see is that Flash is a totally different deck with Summoner’s Pact and Pact of Negation. The Top 8 decklists aren’t going to be very practical when potentially eight maindeck cards switch around to something more powerful. Whether Flash stays or goes, we have at least another month to play with the deck; perhaps by July 1st, when dirt will likely get shoveled on Flash’s coffin, we’ll have a better idea of how to build it. The sheer diversity of Flash decks at the event showed that several strategies are worthwhile with the deck. It takes time to have a refined list of Flash.
Furthermore, with Flash’s probable departure, I have to wonder whether we will even see better lists of Flash tested and proved in tournament settings. My team isn’t going to be testing the deck anymore, as there are no worthwhile events in June to prepare for. I expect that a lot of other people will feel the same way. If, however, we wake up on June 1st to a bizarro Christmas with David Ho’s freaky dude and snake cat bird bat thing staring back at us, then we’ll see another scramble to get Flash ready for GenCon and the Legacy Championships. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, though.
Check out the Top 8 profiles on Wizards’ site if you have not already. It’s fascinating reading the thoughts of the people who made it to the end. What surprised me most was how little people had prepared for it (Gadiel’s cockiness is gingersnaps-and-dimples adorable!). Golden boy Steven Sadin got the list the night before the event! Only two people expressed actual comprehensive testing. I don’t take this as a slight on the format; practically everyone in the Top 32 could walk into the event having never tested and placed where they did. It comes down to a more elusive concept of latent skill. On the other hand, I’m sure that they also could depend on blowing past bad or casual players up until the end of the day. The Ferrett made an excellent point in an article this week about Legacy drawing out people who just want to play with their casual decks.
The Top 8 shows some fantastic little bits of tech. Sadin is running Reverent Silence on the board. We got that tech from Nick Eisel and I don’t know how known it was, but going in I think it was one of the few cards that hadn’t been discussed publicly. I also wonder whether Michael Belfatto’s Plague Slivers were there because Juzam Djinn is too expensive or if they are part of a nefarious plan to beat the hordes of Countersliver players. I hope Big Plagues landed at least once against a Sliver deck that day.
The Flash decks show some interesting moves as well. Two opt for Quirion Dryads postboard, which seems like a strong plan. Gadiel’s maindeck had enough low-cost cards to make postboard Dryads into a real threat. Sadin’s choice of Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top is downright mean, giving him a real edge over the mirror and bothersome Fish decks. This isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of Counterbalance.
Outside of the Top 8, interesting takes on Flash were in abundance. I was particularly impressed by Adam Barnello (Mr. Nightmare) choice of Razormane Masticore in the maindeck of a Kiki version. Facing down Extract or other nasties from Fish, he could Vault into Razormane or, if he could set it up, Flash a Hulk into Razormane and Sylvan Safekeeper, putting a nigh-indestructible machine gun on the table. He told me it was good to him all day long. I’d tried Pernicious Deeds on the board (far too slow) and a Steal Enchantment over four Leylines, figuring I’d just take the opponent’s Leyline in a mirror, but that situation never came up. Brian Demars told me that the hate on Flash was so intense, he won only four games with the actual combo on Day 1 and carried the rest of his winning record with Living Wish for Meloku.
While there were four pros in the Top 8, there were also 4 complete amateurs, as far as pro points go. This seems healthy. At least, it seems like the pros didn’t come into “our” format, take our peppermint candycanes and sock us in the eye. I hope that the amateurs take their earnings and Pro Tour invite and make it out to Valencia. This is a nice beginning for a pro Magic experience.
Legacy will be going through a cooling-off period from the GP. Naturally, fewer people are going to be interested in the format without a big event to work towards. The awkwardness of a Flash metagame will also shy some people away. We’ll be moving into that time when you wake up after a night of cheap tequila, asking “what happened?” while looking for our pants. We’ll look at just how good Flash is, at what the future will be like after Flash and why we will never go back to a pre-Flash metagame.
The title of this article comes from a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. While I’m trying to look cool and pretentious, I swear it’s topical. The title translates as “the plays are made,” an idiomatic expression similar to “the die is cast,” like when the croupier ends the betting in roulette and we watch the ball fall where it does, unable to change its course and forced to deal with the weal or woe that comes with where it lands. Sartre’s big theme is having to live with our choices while never knowing if they are right or wrong. He takes a glum view, saying that we’re doomed to futility and we’ll never know the truth. This is also the guy who wrote that “hell is other people.” I had the sense about this GP that as Legacy players, so many of us were going to go in and see what happened to the format, unable to change anything at this point. The ball called Flash was circling the wheel and we were waiting to see where it fell.
The truth is that Flash didn’t cripple the event. It didn’t drive people away in large numbers. It seemed from the people I talked to that it was still worthwhile to play in a Flash metagame, if for nothing else than the challenge of playing / beating it. Which brings us back to another one of Jean-Paul’s points – the experience of something is worthwhile in itself, even if it turns out to be an experience not worth repeating. While we may not want to play in other Legacy events with Flash hanging around, what a fantastic experience it was to play with it for awhile! Adding to the absurdity is the fact that potentially little of the information from this GP can pass on to Legacy afterwards. The Pacts are going to change Flash dramatically, so this event and the data that come with it are little more than a curiosity in Legacy’s long run.
Finally, one of my favorite things to do at large events is play Mental Magic with people. It is my most-enjoyed format and it rewards people who play Legacy, thanks to knowing a bunch of old, obscure cards. It plays out entirely differently than any other kind of Magic and the combinations of cards are fascinating. In a game over the weekend, I’d pulled out with Honor the Fallen for 39 life, played Greed, then drew enough cards to cast Overmaster and then Rude Awakening to win. How insane! The format challenges you about how best to answer opposing threats and resources. If you see me at an event, I’m always down for a game.
As always, thanks for reading. Tell me what you think in the forums!
Doug Linn
Team Meandeck
Hi-Val on the Interwebs