What is the relative strength of the different formats?

[Shake]

What do you think the relative strength of the various formats are?

This question occurred to me while reading the main MTG site last week and the article about what Magic would be like if there was only one format.  Like most of the week it occurred to me that they took an uncreative doom and gloom approach.  So I wondered if there was a way to handicap the formats against each other.  The first step to such an idea is to find what the handicap of the formats would be.

Much of the list is intuitive, but I’m curious about what you think are the particulars, and if I forgot any format.  I’m just postulating this on average unmetagamed decks.

Vintage
Legacy
Tribal
Highlander
Extended
Prismatic
Peasant
Standard
Skittles
Block Party

[jcb193]

An interesting exercise.  I think highlands could very well be 2nd best though.  There is an ungoldy amount "of substitutive" cards in T! highlander, and never underestimate the power of power 9. 

[ReAnimator]

yeah i'm pretty sure just like the guy above me said, that highlander is probably the second best, i can't really see a powered T1 highlander combo or control deck droping too many games to any legacy deck. With so many tutors and ridic bombs like balance it would probably be able to out muscle just about any other format. The only reason legacy would be third is cause they dont' have those things to work with (bombs and good tutors).

This is a fairly tough exercise, cause a lot of the time you can't really tell the power level of things that well relative to other formats, I remember a few years ago extended was way faster and more broken than T1 (4x tinker 4x minds desire).  Also how much metagaming is involved or sideboards? You could probably tune a hate deck in one format to beat another but does that really get you anywhere? If you just take the 'best' deck from any format and put them in the ring unboarded and unmetagamed you would probably get a really weird winner like clamp affinity or something else fairly broken.
Also It really matters what you pit against each other, if it is one on one best deck from format 1 vs best deck from format 2 you might not learn anything, but if you put the 3 best decks from one format against the 3 best from another it will change the outcome, you need to define the criteria.
For example Legacy vs T1
one on one
Gifts >> Goblins

3 on 3
Gifts, Ichorid, UB Long (not neccessarily the best 3 but a good sample)
vs.
Thresh, Gobos, HighTide/Iggy
Who knows what would happen (I'd still bet on T1 probably)


here is my guess

Vintage
Highlander
Legacy

Extended
Prismatic
Standard
Block Party
Peasant
Tribal (T2 or legacy?)

Skittles -> Don't know never played it.

I think the first 3 are easy, but everything else can be really volitile, for instance i wouldn't really want to take a prismatic deck up against ClampAffinity, or even peasant burn or peasant high tide, but overall i think prismatic with an unlimited budget would probably be really powerful just not very consistant.

[Jacob Orlove]

Also note that Skittles decks become *very* different when you're building them for a non-skittles metagame. It's hard to say where they rank for sure, though, because it's not clear what the baseline for any of the rotating formats is supposed to be.

And yes, T1 Highlander beats almost everything else, especially since those other formats don't even have Force. It's super broken.

[Shake]

I though about the meta-game question.  I suppose it would just be simmilar to choosing a deck for an undefined format, like extended just after a rotation.  Or in a wide open format like the present extended or standard.  In those cases you'd just pick the most powerful deck that you can and tune your sideboard to be transformitive, or easily adjusted to take on aggro or combo.  Control seems weak in what would be the most open format possible, a format of formats.

Look at the critical turn for each format, the level of possible disruption.  Another way to determine power level would be the invitational auction style.  What is the lowest life and starting hand that you'd take to choose a format, if you could play any deck in that format once you've chosen it?


For example, grading by critical turn and disruption.

Vintage; Critical turn of 1-2, heavey disruption.
Highlander; I don't know, I supose it would be the same as vintage.
Legacy; Critical turn of 3-4 with disruption, 2 without.
Extended; Critical turn of 4 usually
Prismatic? I have no idea how a prismatic deck would goldfish, what the level of disruption in the format is, and I imagine it would lose points to inconncistancy.
Standard; 5
Block Party? I think most of these decks go off on turn 5 or 6.
Skittles; I think the average one's critical turn would be 5-6
I have no idea about peasent.  The last time I looked at it, it seemed pretty broken because of skull clamp.
Tribal is wierd.  Goblins is tribal, are there any other legacy tribal decks that go off on turn 3-4? ELVES!?

How many cards can goblins start with and still beat a standard deck?  If vintage had a handycap of 3 cards and 15 life, is there a deck that could still beat standard at 7 and 20?  What about extended?

If solidarity goes off on turn 3-4 with seven cards and a good player, and I've found it goes off on turn 5 or so at 4 cards, does that mean that 4 or so cards might put legacy on par with standard?