U FAIL @ METAGAME!!1

[SpencerForHire]

Log 1: Defying Inevitability aka Grand Prix Columbus

And to think I was gonna have trouble figuring out what to blog about...

So I have this unusual habit of attempting to prep months before big events so I will do well; only for something silly to pop up at the last moment and spoil it.  In this case, the big speedbump (or roadblock) happens to be Flash Hulk.  This ridiculous little combo looks absolutely Dreadful for Deadguy to surpass, not to mention it will likely be there in force!

So my options are as follows: I can meta-tune Deadguy just to win this damn deck, or I can play Uwb Fish.  As anyone in my area knows, I'd rather play Deadguy over Fish any day of the week, so my first issue becomes finding out the best hate for Flash (short of countering it) and second how can I fit said hate without wrecking my other matchups..  Flash definately has the topdeck game against me which is a most dangerous one.  A few lucky cards unanswered will pull me right out of the winners bracket.  Running cards like Leyline (which hurts with Confidant) are almost dead in all other matchups and maindecking them is almost laughable.

If I can't get that to work (and it's likely I won't be able to) I'll be forced to play Fish.  Fish has roughly the same matchups as BW but in a slightly different role.  I favor Deadguy but Fish works in most of the same situations.  The real concern is the fact that I've been banking on Deadguy and rehearsing it for several months just for this tourney.  You can see where I would be uncomfortable with a swap at this point in the game.

Next time on my personal failings...
I'll talk about my testing against Flash, my decision, and possibly a decklist!

[Mr. Nightmare]

When I'm playing Flash, I don't want to see Deadguy with MD Extirpate over Sinkhole.  Keep that in mind.

[SpencerForHire]

Log 2: Aggro Control, Aggro Control or.. Aggro Control?

So I find myself looking at Fish more and more over Deadguy.  It isn't that you don't have good disruption in Deadguy.  Its the fact that you have no way to stop them from just drawing what they need after you have sufficiently "raped" their hand.  Maindecking Extirpate (which has been brought to my attention many times but thanks to Mr. Nightmare for putting into discussion here) is a very possible option however you are weakening other matches significantly by removing other disruptive elements of the deck.  On top of that it's a two card hate combo with no tutors to ensure you do it.  Even while running 3-4 there are games where you won't see an Extirpate on top of a discard spell soon enough to stop Flash.  I understand this is a limited scenario but in an event with as many rounds as a GP you have to go for the extremist form of consistancy to ensure victory.

What has become more of a question to me over the past week is not in fact Deadguy vs. Fish but instead, Fish vs. Threshold.  Which of these decks has the more relevant matchups against Flash and which can take the rest of the field with ease.  This decision came down to speed.  How fast can Fish kill?  How fast can Threshold kill?  Now the obvious thought is that Thresholds guys are generally bigger.  However in a field that will be 90% Leylines, you now have 1/1's and 2/2's instead of 3/3's and 4/4's. 

So really does Threshold have the faster clock?  Assuming the lack of Leyline, probably, however again we are going for consistancy, and you are gonna run into a fair amount of those bloody black enchantments over the course of two days.  So what does Fish have?  A range of guys from 1/1's to 4/4's none of which require you to have a yard.  Most of which give a very nice ability to help with the matchup, and the bigger ones don't randomly shrink if you suddenly see a Leyline or some silly zero drop artifact.

Besides creatures, you are seeing different forms of disruption from both decks.  Fish features Duress's and Stifles (however who's to say Thresh can't run these babies?)  Threshold has Predict.  Now in a post FS world Predict isn't gonna cut it at all.  However, this isn't Post FS.  You can take away their tutoring and create card advantage at the same time with this beautiful regular from Thresh.  We run into a problem though.  Predict could be potentially dead has a hate card in many games against Flash, and again still you could hit their tutored card, draw a few junk cards and with the consistancy that their deck features they could just as easily topdeck what they need anyways.

Fish seems like the clearly better choice between these two decks.  (And it's a clear choice over Deadguy in my opinion [however that is mostly due to discomfort in playing a deck without FoW in a combo metagame.]).  So now we have to figure out how to solidify the matchup between Fish and Flash without weakening the mirror match (wait? their are going to be other decks there besides flash?) as well as the random jank/aggro matchups (because winning round 1 is important).


Next time, on an all new ER.. I mean AC...
I'll talk about my finalized decklist, why Fish doesn't run Merfolk and the Merfolk that almost made it in...
..and possibly a decklist! (More likely than this time)

[KrzyMoose]

or you can play Fish with a Protean Hulk-Flash kill!!!

In all seriousness, Fish is the best option.  Leylines are everywhere, and they're going to be maindecked in some of Threshold's weaker matchups, ie Goblins (or, what's left of them, at least).  I like BW Confidant, but, as you said, it has the inability to maintain the pressure, and can lack a decent clock. 

There's no reason not to run Fish, and there's no reason to run another deck.  (Unless, of coure, you opt for Hulk Flash).

[SpencerForHire]

So I am terrible at metagame.  Fish was so not the deck to bring (I should have just stuck with BW due to all the testing I had done with it..  In reality looking back at the GP, the decks to bring were:

Deadguy Ale
Goblins w/Tormod's Maindeck
Flash (Disciple Kill)

These three decks wrecked the opposition all day and none of them were really the norm.  There were other Flash/Black/Goblins lists everywhere but these three are the ones that really shined (top 8 or not they were visibly stronger.)

My day 1 was a basic series of bad luck.  Round 1 was my only good match all day..  I played against Machinus (a good guy to be sure) and I was surprised when he started playing Islands..  In fact, he was Sleight of Handng/Impulsing only while fetching for said Islands...  After a joke about him playing Solidarity I began to believe it true from the styling from which his deck played.. With 2x Stifle 1x Spellsnare in hand I stifled fetch number 3 so he couldn't ramp up sufficient mana to High Tide me..  In response he Flashed a Hulk and I knew how the day would end.. 

Game two I had a double daze hand with a confidant which I felt was a sufficient starting hand.. Too bad Flash backed up by 3 land and a Force trumps it..  What a way to scrub round 1..  As dissapointed as I was I was on vacation so I made the best of it and decided to play some more rounds (at least til I had sufficiently destroyed my rating).

Next I was matched against a fellow gent from home playing an Anti-Fish deck.. I don't remember the precise details but I do recall 2x Lavamancer 1x Mom making me look like a fool.  I decided I had to suck it up and play my ass off.  Game two he got me down to 2 before I did much of anything, I stabilized though, and somehow got him down to 3 before another swing from him (to cancel out a swords'd Grunt) and a Lightning Bolt knocked me out of day 2 contention.

Round Thrice I was matched up against some MBC deck piloted by another nice guy, I obviously 2-0'd that match but it was MBC and no offense to him, was not a competitive deck or even close in this format..  He did stay alive for a bit day two with several Consume Souls which he said are "better than Corrupt by far in Legacy".  I believe this gent should be one of the next Bud Light; Real Men of Genious due to his bravery in bringing MBC to such a metagame.  Here's to you oh champion of black mana, you scryer of skeletons!

Lastly I played against good ol Joblins (with a WHITE splash.  The guy was quite quiet but besides that this round was almost close...  A crazy game three (after a close 1 and 2 involving many doods) where he plays the following: Wasteland => Vial, Simian SG => Lackey, ment a quick end to me (after already mulling twice due to lack of land).

At this point I dropped and whined at Doug for a bit while he scoffed at my lack of Flash Hulk as a deck of choice.. I decided this was warranted and just took it.  Later I decidied I realized the correct choice was in fact a Goblins deck with discard and a sideboard that transformed into a Hulk kill... How savage!


I'm aware this is a most random of report but I wanted to make my failings readable so future people will not make this mistake... When a deck is broken, play it.  Goblins and Flash were both fine choices,  a deck with a 2/2 clock that dies to maindeck hate is awful.



Next time...
I'm looking at you Vintage..  Legacy has had it's moment but it's most definately Vintage season..  What am I testing in specific.. Well I'll just say Suicide Virus looks juicy..  Also Ichorid is as gross as ever.  Go-go attack phase!

[Mr. Nightmare]

Hey Spence, nice meeting you this weekend, sorry to hear your day went about as well as mine.  Don't give up on Legacy, I swear the format doesn't usually suck this much!

[SpencerForHire]

Hey Spence, nice meeting you this weekend, sorry to hear your day went about as well as mine.  Don't give up on Legacy, I swear the format doesn't usually suck this much!

I shoulda played BW as all...  So I basically lost to myself... Savage eh?

I'll stick around in Legacy but I'm gonna work on Vintage for a month or two to expand my horizons... Plus looking into Vintage has even given me new ideas for Legacy... So expect juicy updates soon.

[SpencerForHire]

Damn the lack of Juicy updates..  Life has been so busy as of late, so busy in fact that I won't be able to attend the Vintage event in question that I desired to.  This also means a complete lack of time to test Vintage decks..  I will offer this piece of knowledge for you though..  In my research through SCG's database I have found that Yawgmoth's Will is particularly strong..  It's probably a worthy choice in any deck wanting a Storm kill..  There ya go, cat's out of the bag.

What little time I have had for magic has been devoted to testing decks that will be alright in a post Flash-ban metagame.  My primarily deck of choice is Gamekeeper based off a list that Tash so kindly provided for me at the GP.  Although consistency has been an issue as with all previous versions of the deck I have tried, I'm working on tuning it to my liking.  We shall see what we shall see.

[SpencerForHire]

If you haven't been keeping up, I'm not a vintage man.  I'm a Legacy guy.  That being said, what is Legacy defined by these days?  When "Legacy" was born we had Survival of the Fittest, a ridiculous card by any account that basically set you up to win within one or two turns of resolving.  Survival dominated for oh I dunno, let's say a while (Cause frankly it's like 98 degrees out and I'm way too slothy to do much more than type.. aka research).  Well somewhere around the end of Survival decks being recognized as the top dog, the first Legacy Grand Prix was announced.  The format began shift 1.

Shift 1:
Survival of the Fittest stays legal but dies off.
Goblins was legal, Goblins turns out to be a decent deck (who knew?).


Now we all know by GP's end, Goblins was not alone at the top.  Solidarity, Goblins and Threshold were the big decks when the dust died down.  At this point Goblins was still recognized as the best deck and damn was it a good deck.  It had everything every other deck wanted and it did a pretty good job of killing people too.  For the next however months, we witnessed what many address as a mostly "stale" format.  Little was done in the way of actual developement of new decks.  (That isn't completely true but that is how people regarded it.)  Over the next year or so we saw some developement with new sets coming out.  Fish and IGGy got pooped out as prospective better decks.  Toad ranted about Aluren some more.  Blah blah blah TES, Blah blah blah Truffle Shuffle, blah blah other decks that may or may not even make it on the Tiers by different peoples standards...

A-N-Y-W-A-Y-S

We come to Shift number 2.


A whole 2 years late we were at roughly the same format we had prior.  Sure some people (myself included) thought certain decks such as Solidarity were no longer top tier decks (IMO IGGy is just better).  But what really caused the shift was two things.  The introduction of a real tournament and the retardation that is power level errata's and their removal at the most interesting of times.  Now sure I welcomed Flash as much as the next guy.  That little card made this format not a joke for a couple months.  I knew at the point I heard about it, we were looking right over again at PT Tinker.  Fish became not some deck that only me and a few other guys piloted.  It became regonized above Thresh.  On top of that we actually were forced to not play pet decks (Cause you see, Flash decks win).  When all the dust settled everyone was pretty tired of Legacy and most people put it down for a few weeks.  Flash had done the damage and now graveyards were the worst place to collect resources.

Of course then it got banned and we come to the now.  I know you've read plenty of articles but hell, you may just read this one and if you do, you'll hear my guess on how the metagame will turn out, and yaknow what else, I may just be right for once.

Shift 2:
Flash becomes good.  This makes Flash decks... Good.
Decks not running discard or counters become bad.
Goblins... Still works.

.... insert Flash's banning here.

Shift 3:
Flash gets banned.
Fish is still a good deck.
Graveyards aren't good for you any more.

This is where I believe we are now.  At Shift 3.  We have 4 more FoW for combo to play around with (and only combo.  Due to the overwhelming hate at the GP and the likelyhood of people to realize how easy graveyards are to hate, there aren't many graveyard utilizing decks worth playing any more.  This means IGGy is probably gonna be on the downlow for a bit, same with Ichorid (before it even got to use Bridge) and some other stuff that I can't even think of to mention..  Thresh gets to stick by the hair on it's chinny-chin-goyf.   And combo has to start from scratch, where it doesn't need a yard.  When every deck is packing Crypt or Leyline, alot of the decks that were recognized as decent before become awful and we have an all new format.

In the end we needed a GP to jumpstart our format and show us what good we have to come of it.  MoM and Replenish aren't very relevant, Replenish makes Enchantress playable maybe.  MoM is a nother toy Tide could use, if Tide was worth running.. It might be but it just seems too slow.  So in the end, the point I'm trying to make is, Flash was very healthy for the format.  It made everything change for the better and we have much excitement in developement now with some new toys.  Threshold may soon go the way of the Survival deck and so may Tide.  And if you don't agree with me well.. Frankly I don't care and I hate you.*


*My article is based off what I believe to have been the timeline for Legacy, it has no actual dates of reference and some or all of the information may be false.  If you have an issue with this, I hate you.

[Machinus]

Sorry about that round 1. I didn't make day two.

In every other alternate universe I was playing Mountains at the GP. It would be a good guess next time.

[SpencerForHire]

Sorry about that round 1. I didn't make day two.

In every other alternate universe I was playing Mountains at the GP. It would be a good guess next time.

And had I played BW, it might have been entirely different... We both fail @ metagame.  Nice playing/meeting you though.

[SpencerForHire]

This topic has to do with serious discussion for the health of the format.. And trolling.  Let me begin with a background:

I'm sitting in a random channel on MTGO when I noticed a discussion on Legacy and the fun decks to play.  The conversation quickly went to what were good decks to play and their matchups.  Now I may sound like a jackass when I go to some individual and kindly inform them that Faerie Stompy does not have a good matchup against Goblins, Threshold and Solidarity (which I believe the people in the discussion seemed to think was still Tier 1 as far as decks are concerned.) 

From here I entered the conversation fully, talking about the many trumps of a turn 1 or turn 2 Sea Drake and why it really isn't going to win many games.  I explained how Swords to Plowshares pretty much means tempo= Buh-bye and you have spent half your hand in a deck such as this for a net gain of 4 life and an extra card that you could Living Wish for.  Immediately upset, a number of people who disagreed with me began declaring that my statements were false and that their deck had an extremely favorable matchup with the entire Tier 1 (though would not back it up behind that).   I used arguments such as good goblins players such as **** and **** would probably dive for the chance to be be matched against FS in a tourney and immediately I felt the FS player's wrath.

Instead of something like "Well I have tested this matchup thoroughly and I believe otherwise" I was met with "Look at the player with an online limited rating of 1500 telling us he knows all these named players and how special he is."  This unnamed person continued to mock me and explain that due to the fact that my rating was 1500 (my exact rating being in fact being 1576 in limited) that everything I said is false and good people that play magic wouldn't talk to me because of this.  I do believe he may have missed my 1700 constructed rating as well as the fact that Limited on MTGO has very little to do with Legacy in the real world.. But whatever.

The point of this is, academic integrity/honesty.  When reporting deck results, have real findings.  Half the reason our format is so weird right now is we have about a million and one bad decks going around with very few real strong contenders.  Whenever our pet deck is questioned, instead of throwing down testing, putting up real numerical results we instead troll the living shit out of the poor person putting up numbers, arguments and experience to boot.  If you are reading this nameless online troll.  Just remember that where I sought to stimulate discussion, you simply devolved yourself as far as your online personality is concerned and just flung feces into the center of the argument.  Thank you for ruining what could have been a potentially stimulating conversation about metagames, decks to beat and such.

For that unnamed man L2Test, learn some manners,
Then get back to me,

Spence aka Gimbles @ MTGO