Legacy compared to vintage

[Smmenen]

I just wanted to post in a place everyone could read and comment on about the most recent GP Lille results:

Out of the 128 day two decks, there were 36 Threshold decks and 32 Goblins with the next best decks putting up 7 copies.

This looks like utter Threshold and Goblins dominance, and it is, but it is worth mentioning that this is analogous to recent vintage results.

Out of 120 top 8 positions from July through October, there were 36 Stax decks and 29 Gifts decks followed by: Control Slaver and Oath at around 14 a piece.

WHen you look at it that way, Gifts/Stax have about the same proportion of top slots in Vintage as Goblins and Threshold do in Legacy.

Just thought I'd point that out. 

[Matt]

The difference is, Vintage has had months without a serious shakeup to figure itself out. Threshold's dominance is relatively new, and the lower power barrier means more of Ravnica is a possible inclusion, so we have more potential cards to sift through from each new set than Vintage (which can rule out so many new cards so easily).

Furthermore, people can start reacting to the new top deck by maindecking Phyrexian Furnace and Withered Wretch and so on - as far as I know, Gifts and Stax are much harder nuts to crack.

We've only just begun to fight Threshold, and there're certainly ample strategies to do that with. If the Legacy format still looks like this in 3 months I will be very surprised.

[kirdape3]

The difference between Legacy and Vintage is actually brutally simple.

Legacy is on a similar vein to most Premiere-level formats in that summoning creatures and attacking is a completely viable strategy.  You don't have to force more degenerate decks to interact with you in the way that you do Vintage.

In Vintage, you have all these Moxen and ridiculous effects like Yawgmoth's Will and Tinker that you have to constantly play around.  A deck is considered 'underpowered' when it tosses around Oath of Druids as late as turn 2 - simply because the win conditions are less efficient than they are in a 'fully-powered' Vintage deck.  Akroma and Razia simply don't race Tendrils of Agony very well.

[Smmenen]

I think you both missed the point of my post: which is that the Goblins/Threshold dominance isn't actually that bad - it is analogous to what Stax and Gifts have done in VIntage.  That's all.

[Matt]

I think YOU missed MY point - which is that the threshold/goblins situation isn't even as bad as gifts/stax, because Legacy's top decks can't just 'broken' their way through hate.

[rvs]

There's no reason to compare Vintage to Legacy, since Legacy is more like Extended. Also, creatures are a very good strategy in Legacy because there are more 'good' threaths than there are answers.

[JACO]

Just because Goblins and Threshold/X placed major numbers in day 2 of 1 EVENT doesn't mean it is dominating. Everybody is looking at the past 2 tournament results way too narrowly, and I hope the DCI doesn't follow this approach.

If the Pro Tour and GP Circuit each had multiple Legacy stops (rather than Extended, for example), you would see things change from tournament to tournament, just as they do for other formats. Remember when Trix was really good, and by far the best deck in Extended circa 2001 (as in, way more dominating than Threshold or Goblins in Legacy)? Alan Comer invented Gro, and then others like Mike Long took over from there, and once their success with it was established, it wiped out Trix like 1 tournament later, without any intervention from the DCI or anything. That is what happens when the metagames is allowed to shift.

Before everybody decrees the dominance of 1 or 2 decks, or archetypes, give the Legacy tournaments a chance to get rolling and the metagame to start shifting, like it does in other formats. It WILL happen if you let it.

[Godder]

Of course things will adapt - there's no reason to ban anything, or even worry about dominance (yet), because the good performances of both were as much a function of numbers as deck strength, as well as a somewhat unexplored format.

The real difference between Legacy and Vintage, as Kirdape and rvs said, is that Legacy is about Men, ways of dealing with Men and ways of disrupting attempts to deal with Men, while Vintage is about Yawmoth's Will - Men don't figure into it much, and even when they do, it's only as some sort of anti-Will deck.

[Dozer]

Of course things will adapt - there's no reason to ban anything, or even worry about dominance (yet), because the good performances of both were as much a function of numbers as deck strength, as well as a somewhat unexplored format.

I hate to open this particular Pandora's Box, but I think Vial seriously needs to be looked into. Pithing Needle was the most sought after card during the GP weekend. 84 Day-2-decks ran Aether Vial, with 32 Goblin decks present. Vial is not only making Goblins a very strong contender, but also an essential part of many other decks. I am not calling for a banning, but Vial is such an enourmous accelerant that it is skewing Magic math. Therefore, it needs to be watched.

On the other hand, Goblins without Vial decks are easy to beat. However, on the trip back from GP Lille, we figured that the presence of Vial Goblins in Legacy is what makes combo decks rare: Goblins is just as fast and much more resilient than the combo decks, which kill themselves much more often than Goblins does.

I agree, though, that the format is not as explored yet as it should/ could be. The control decks are nearly inexistent, and I blame that on Vial. Looking at the Day 2 results from Lille, 8 control decks made Day 2 (and only two of them were blue-based), plus 6 Pikula and 5 Rift decks, totalling up to 19. That is not much, and while Control decks have trouble with threshold, it is Goblins that totally owns them.

So basically, what Control is in Vintage, Aggro is in Legacy and vice versa. That makes a nice complementary format and shows how both can coexist peacefully. Fair enough! And I will continue to work on Mono-U control in Legacy.

Dozer

[forests failed you]

I agree with Steve.

But here is how I arrived at the conclusion.

Stax, Gifts, Goblins, and Threshold all share one thing in common.

They are the decks in their respective formats that Cheat mana costs the most.

That is why they are the most played and most consistent.

That is also the reason that the Ichorid deck was so busted in extended.

[Bardo]

Just because Goblins and Threshold/X placed major numbers in day 2 of 1 EVENT doesn't mean it is dominating. Everybody is looking at the past 2 tournament results way too narrowly, and I hope the DCI doesn't follow this approach.

Word.

As you can see from some preliminary data crunching, Threshold was top dog AT LILLE. That's it. Otherwise, the deck has performed reasonably well, but it doesn't compare with the power of Goblins in the format (well, going back to GenCon) over the course of many tournaments.

Personally, I would chalk Threshold's success at Lille to regional bias. A lot of people were predicting break-out combination decks, so people picked a deck that naturally beats combo. Also, pure aggro (let's say Goblins) just isn't as popular outside of the US. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've thought that Europe, historically, has a far more control/combo bias. If this is true, draw whatever psychological conclusions you please.

At any rate, we don't have enough data to make any deeper comparisons, in my opinion.

[Machinus]

Goblins and Threshold are comparable in power. The difference is that everyone and their dog had the cards for Goblins already, and everyone knows how to beat face with the little green men. Threshold is way harder to play and requires that you own 8-12 dual lands. The more serious the format got (and the fewer random amatuers showed up with their custom sligh tech), the more people played a more advanced and more flexible deck. I tested Bardo's lists in the summer, and since then I have thought that the dearth of Threshold was strange, and that it would likely be corrected. Lille confirms my suspisions that there have been independent factors preventing people from playing a very strong deck.

This is not an anomalous tournament. Threshold is indeed very good.

[Godder]

It would be tough to call a 937-player tournament anomalous, especially in such uncharted waters . Also, being a GP, the coverage of the event means that it will shape the environment, so even if it was anomalous, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.