State of Legacy Thread

[Diz]

have reanimator shells been shifting away from the typical fatty packages then?

Kaldra Compleat seems like a great equipment for d and t

With regards to Reanimator, Grief is basically just another Unmask, but in creature form, so it can be reanimated. With regards to the other cards Ulka mentioned, Reanimator has always fiddled with experimental, alternative lockdown cards in some brews, and the Archon is just a value card.

How are you equipping Kaldra Compleat to something? That's a hefty equip cost.

[motleyslayer]

The living weapon on Kaldra Compleat makes a token to equip to and makes the token indestructible but I guess there's plenty of exile based removal. So I guess the equip cost does come up, which will be awkward. Still a pretty good clock on its own. I remember there being discussion on Batterskull being able to bounce itself in a pinch when you need a token

[motleyslayer]

so this is probably a bit of an old discussion at this point, but are any bans warranted right now? I've heard people wanting a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer ban or even something like Daze . Monkey sems good but even if it does get banned, then decks just run the full 4 delver again. Not sure how I feel about other bans though

[drmarkb]

The short answer is yes, there will have to be bans. UR delver is 15 pc of the online meta, which is nuts for a single archetype in a format with so many. Every deck is gunning for it, and those that can't are not seeing play. The question is what gets banned, there is little consensus and the UR shell will be back up and running. Murktide, EI, Ragavan and Daze are all discussed and we are no where near consensus.

[wildfire393]

Ragavan likely needs to die for the same reason that Dreadhorde Arcanist needed to die. It just generates too much incremental value on its own for a cheap threat that slots right into the Delver shell.

The problem is, between Dragon's Rage Channeller, Murktide Regent, and Expressive Iteration, UR is still going to be the best tempo shell without Ragavan, and Tempo will still almost certainly be an outsized, dominating portion of the meta.

A Daze ban is certainly an interesting proposal, it's a card that Delver/Blue Tempo in General uses so much better than any other archetype (with it occasionally showing up in some Show and Tell lists and that's about it). But even without Ragavan AND without Daze I feel like UR Delver is still going to be too strong.

Looking at the banlist stretching back to Innistrad, basically every ban besides Top, Astrolabe, and Zirda has been due to Delver at least in part. Even Underworld Breach had Delver shells that were performing too well. But with the tools UR Tempo has picked up this year, even killing Delver itself wouldn't stop the behemoth, a lot of the decks have been trimming Delvers for recent additions.

It really feels like without 4+ bans, UR Delver will continue to be the top deck in the format for perpetuity. I actually almost wonder if it might be better to *unban* cards that don't fit in the UR Delver shell to give other decks a fighting chance. The problem is, many of those would just be slotted into a list that's super close to UR Delver; Do you want to face down Deathrite Shaman, Ragavan, and DRC all in the same list? And it's not like they're going to unban Top, the cowards.

[drmarkb]

Agree with much of this.
For my money, there is another issue. UR delver keeps combo down, without it the whole format will struggle. With UR delver there is a mega problem. Without it there is a potentially huge issue.
As cards like Prismatic Ending complete a long line of cards like Decay and Borrower, flexible removal, cards like Chalice, Chains, etc. all become easily removed. Add to that an increased number of wishes, and your average combo deck includes ways to beat prison where once they did not. Those prison decks were a big break on combo. UR delver really has that mantle now. New ways of winning like Oracle, new cards with 187 abikities
that interact with Aluren, and new 2 card combos naturally leads to better combo. Doomsday in an environment with no UR delver is nuts. TES is stronger than ever. We simply have a problem in the format that the big bad is also stopping the whole format becoming combo central.
There are no solutions, and with every flexible removal spell every prison piece becomes worse. Without Prison Legacy has issues, and design I killing it, and only the tempo decks hold combo in check. Doomsday vs Miracles us a near bye. I suspect monkey and maybe regent will go, but there will be a bew broken delver deck soon after.

[wildfire393]

Yeah. I think the reason Delver has been grandfathered in with Brainstorm as an untouchable pillar of the format is that a format with Delver playing combo police is better than one without it. Combo decks have to try to play the longer game and devote slots to disruption and counter-disruption if they want to be able to win. Which makes them just barely slow enough that decks like Death and Taxes stand a chance. A format without a blue tempo deck threatening daze-fow-fon plus a fast clock is one in which the combo decks look more and more like Belcher and win on turn 1 60% of the time. Which means that even if the decks aren't all tempo, they're basically all forced into running free countermagic to not die on turn one, so the non-blue decks stop being a viable option at all. Is it really worth killing delver if it means the top decks of the format shrink from delver + resilient turn-3 combo decks + DnT + Various Stompy + Lands + UWx Piles + UBx Piles → just UWx Piles and UBx Piles vs turn 1/2 combo?

Unfortunately it seems like the answer might just be "Legacy is too broken to salvage, RL Cards mean the format is on Life Support anyways, and WotC doesn't care to fix these problems and is fine with it going the way of Vintage". All hail Commander.

[motleyslayer]

legacy being on life support because of cost is a good point as to why it will be allowed to be broken. Ragavan might be the best ban still due to the advantage it generates. Delver being brought back into the deck as another one drop is probably fine.

I'm generally fine with free counters due to the role they play in preventing non-sense

[drmarkb]

What I think could help the format is to make an Angel's Grace type card that actually stops storm- currently the card is an excellent, near unounterable answer to Oracle, and a fog-ish card that buys a turn vs say a delver or burn deck. Sadly, it stops only damage, and thus is useless vs Tendrils etc. Such a card is never going to make it often. So we get hand based answers to storm (mindbreak trap, Orim's chant, and at a push stifle) and permanent answers (3ball, Leyline of Sanctity et al), but Oracle's only answer is effectively permanent based, assuming it gets (a) cast through cavern and (b) protected with a pact it is not getting dealt with any other way other than Torpor Orb/Meddling mage and effects like Necromentia resolving- highly unlikely vs a Daze/Force combo deck. If I could cast an Angel's Grace of card against an aluren deck or storm deck and stop them killing me that turn, and prevent my life ever going below zero, we might be getting somewhere in terms of generically includable answers for sideboards that work against a range of top decks. Without split second/uncounterability, it won't be useful as combo decks involving Oracle are increasingly likely to play stack based answers themselves, as I believe more cobo decks will in future

A few niche designs could actually check combo decks in a post ban delver world- these would not need to be powerful per se but could add tolerance.

An issue is Modern is picking up "Legacy light" cards, and that gives Legacy decks a lot of redundancy- you now get more Forces, more Swords TP etc. and that gives better removal, better stack interaction in a format that is hyper efficient. Net result is permanent hate pieces that are not critters themselves get left behind. Modern looks more interactive and less linear than it once did, Legacy looks, well, less like Legacy and more like Modern but a turn quicker, less colour balance and based on the ludicrous Brainstorm/fetch.


I don't think Legacy is on life support as it (a) is community driven (b) is a still fine format even if much has been lost, and thus will generate proxy events. Competitive Legacy is already dead,tours etc are gone, and big Legacy events are more celebrations, but as a community format it thrives. Cost of cards is not that a huge issue in some ways, - it stops new players getting into it, which WOTC want to ensure, as they do with Modern, but really those blue duals are not needed in huge amounts, and are not unobtainable now. Cards like Force of Will lurk at Solitude Prices, whilst many format staples- Brainstorm, Fetches, Swords, Thoughtseize, Blood Moon, Maze, are dirt cheap and many others - Solutide, Saga, Cavern of S, Chalice etc. are isentical to Modern's staples, and only high in price due to Modern and EDH. Old expensive big hitters- Chains, The Abyss, Moat,Nether Void have become niche- too expensive to reliably cast, outdated by big flyers, or in the case of Chains- an awesome card that happens to be a permanent - thus Ending fodder, whilst Grim Monoliths and Metal workers, Replenishes, Serra's Sanctum etc. have become super niche because their homes are just not that good. Only blue duals, Mox Diamond, LED, and Tabernacle really hit the wallet and constrain deck choice, which might be unacceptable to a new player expecting access to all decks and used to switching, but is actually something many people accept as part of the format this past few years.

Decks like DNT Yorion cost the same as Modern Yorion decks, Burn is cheaper, and many RL cards hover at the same price as those Modern staples. I guess those players who like to swap to the best deck in response to last week's results are screwed by prices, but that is a good thing, they mis-understand the paper format.

t is the rotation of them by MH2 type sets, just like Modern, that in a way cost Legacy more players- they moved into Legacy to avoid huge upadtes to decks, which they have too often thanks to MH type sets.

[motleyslayer]

tbh I feel legacy has way too much community support to actually die, despite the rising cost of RL staples and lack of big events. There are 2 stores within a 90 minute drive from me that run legacy fnm every week. There are also a few stores within that same distance willing to also run weekend events once in a while, just don't have the community locally to support legacy fn.

although I guess there's not a huge price difference between modern and legacy, a lot of the modern horizons 1/2 staples are expensive and probably otehrs too

[wildfire393]

tbh I feel legacy has way too much community support to actually die, despite the rising cost of RL staples and lack of big events. There are 2 stores within a 90 minute drive from me that run legacy fnm every week. There are also a few stores within that same distance willing to also run weekend events once in a while, just don't have the community locally to support legacy fn.

although I guess there's not a huge price difference between modern and legacy, a lot of the modern horizons 1/2 staples are expensive and probably otehrs too

There's a substantial price difference between Modern and Legacy and it's almost exclusively multi-hundred-dollar reserve list cards.

If you look at MTGGoldfish, most of the top Modern decks fall somewhere between $800-1200. Yorion lists are the high outlier coming in closer to $1800, while Burn, Red Prowess, and Belcher are low outliers coming in around $500.

Meanwhile, in Legacy, you have exactly one low-outlier, Death and Taxes, clocking in at $1100, and it's the most viable available deck that doesn't run RL stuff. After that, there's a few things in the $2400-2700 range (Reanimator, 8cast, Painter). with the majority of decks falling between $4000-6000. The high outlier, Lands, is nearly $10,000, with a single The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale making up almost half that.

So on the whole, Legacy is roughly 5x as expensive as Modern. And the budget differences are measured almost entirely in RL cards. The $2400-2700 range lists don't run blue duals, instead having only non-blue duals and stuff like City of Traitors. The $4000-6000 lists run blue duals and/or stuff like Gaea's Cradle, Lion's Eye Diamond, and Mox Diamond. And again, Tabernacle accounts for basically the entire price difference between those lists and Lands (which runs Taiga + Mox Diamond as well). Without those 15 cards (ten duals, Cradle, City, LED, Diamond, and Tabernacle), prices would be a lot more directly comparable to Modern, with the only major outlier being Force of Will.

[drmarkb]

Rl cards stay highly priced, and thus can be sold on. Modern is like a car, drive it off the forecourt and it is worth less than it was. That does not really happen to duals, Cities, Moxen etc.
In other words, your Tabernacle is always able to give you back what you paid, and more, most likely. Modern hot cards of yesteryear have endured price drops- especially if their decks get booted from the meta, so assuming you liquidate all your decks eventually it can be argued that Legacy is cheaper.


A lot of choice in your Legacy build exists based on pricing, we are not seeing much now as relatively few paper events have taken place in 2021 and things are slowly restarting.
Burn and D n T might be cheap, but you can see a couple of recent lists in leagues, paper events, and Challenges of decks dropping pricey cards, for example GW selesnya depths dropping Mox D. Painter can be run on between 0 and 4 City of traitors, can be mono r or white, or shortcake, abd the price difference is 1000 dollars plus, but there is not much performance difference. Unlike Modern, there is a little more variety in lists in Legacy, they do not solidify as much like mist Modern decks do when they coalesce around established lists.

It would be a mistake to take the most popular decks on Goldfish, convert the price to paper, and assume that is representative of the meta. That works for Pioneer, and Modern to a large extent, but Legacy has always had a distinct division between paper and online, one which influences the results put up too, and right now paper is only starting to return. It was not long ago, around the beginning of the pandemic, that the number one depths variant was Rainbow Depths, no duals, no moxen, modern pricing, and this was in part meta related and in part due to more results being pulled from paper. As paper returns, I would expect a few more budget versions to appear, there have been none for a year now nearly. One other factor is the demise of cheap deck enabler Chalice, a recent phenomenon that nerfs other cheaper decks, it might not be a permanent trend. Worth noting too that an off the wall sub tier two deck in Modern is way, way less viable than the equivalent in Legacy. Merfolk is a solid enough paper deck, like both variations of Goblins, all more than capable of winning 50 player events whilst representing 1 pc of the meta.

[motleyslayer]

I feel like the main reason why you're more likely to see the more popular decks online is because the fact that most people just use rental services instead of actually owning decks makes it easier to just switch decks more often. While I've heard a few times a lot of decks are exceeding people's rental limits, switching decks online is still much easier online than it is in paper where you're often restricted by the price of RL cards

[drmarkb]

That is true, but I would still stay that my point stands- Modern is just not 5x cheaper than Legacy, and financially would say it is better to buy into Legacy despite RL prices.

[motleyslayer]

I feel like one difference between modern and legacy is that the MH sets really cause modern to rotate in terms of what's good in the format. While legacy is still impacted by those sets, people will still often still try what they like. I mean maybe that's due to the prices of legacy still

[Diz]

So, how do we feel about the latest bans?

[Dunadain]

Thumbs up from me.

Tbh, I think the White Plume Adventurer hype was starting to die down and I was almost expecting it to avoid the banhammer all together. I still think it's a good ban, but mono-white initiative isn't quite as dominant as I thought it was a couple weeks after the initiative cards were released on MTGO and given the fact that legacy gets very conservative bans I was half-expecting this card to be around for good.

Expressive Iteration should have been banned a year ago, but better late than never.

[drmarkb]

EI needed to go. Card advantage is not what delver should be getting by just doing its thing.
WPA- I would have prefered errata, making the mechanic respond to lifeloss and not combat linked, but am ok with it. I though the meta was adapting.

[motleyslayer]

I believe a friend and I called the EI ban a few months ago.

Has anyone touched much legacy after the ban? I'm on the other side of Canada for work much longer than I expected and didn't bring my legacy with me so won't play paper legacy anytime soon

[drmarkb]

Yeah, I had to take apart mono w initiative, and reconfigure mono w stax prison t run without WPA. No biggie though, the mono W initative goes back to being eldrazi for the time being. It was only a loan deck, and I can still loan out a lot of top decks. Shame there is no obvious mono w deck without it. Think RG or WG or BW initiative could all be ok, but I will wait and see.

[Diz]

Unfortunately, I don't have many opportunities to play Legacy, in general, so, I have not seen the impacts of the bans.

[motleyslayer]

I got super lucky for a while, was playing legacy every other weekly a few months ago. Out in BC, Canada for work for a while and it doesn't look like much of a legacy scene out here