Hello again, and welcome back. It looks like I have some catching up to do, since I've been gone for the last few months. The last time I was around these parts, the format had entered a rather boring state to think about and had stymied a lot of players and deck-builders. The problem, of course, was the dominance of Survival, which is something I haven't chimed in on since I haven't been around after the banning to comment—but I'll try not to get ahead of myself. The format was pretty boring after the banning, although people were finally willing to really play again, which is better than nothing, and now we're here, but I'm going to comment on a few things in passing before we get to where we are now.

Survival of the Fittest

The writing was dried blood in gruesome yet legible letters sprawled across a bright white hotel room wall. The jury was in as December 20 was approaching; Survival was clearly being banned regardless of conflicting views. It's sad to see one of the pinnacles of the format disappear that way. While I was never an avid fan of the card, it must have felt for some of my friends how it felt for me when I read the Legacy (although at that point it didn't have a name; it was just Type 1.5) banned list and it featured Land Tax.

Overall, I think the banning was very healthy for the format, and many people would agree; however, I'm a member of the camp that would have rather seen Vengevine go over Survival of the Fittest, for reasons I've stated before—but that won't stop me from discussing them again. While there was a non-Vengevine Survival-based combo out there, it didn't have the raw power and awesome backup plan that the Vengevine aggro decks had. Banning Vengevine would allow for a powerful deck to be pitted in the metagame that didn't necessarily dominate the format. Conversely, Vengevine is pretty obviously a card that is only going to see minimal play in the format, and its loss wouldn't eliminate an entire archetype—or impact anyone very much. Sure, years down the road when people look at the banned list, they'll see Survival and it will instantly make sense; if it were Vengevine in that position, people would need to question why some 4/3 had to be banned. It may have been just a temporary solution to a problem that was going to be increasingly growing over time, but it feels still like losing Survival is going to dull the format in a noticeable way for years to come.

For another, deeper look at this subject, I suggest that you check out Chingsung Chang's article Examining the Fundamental Turn.

Time Spiral

Had I started writing a few weeks earlier, I would have said that I messed up the call on Time Spiral. Months and months ago, I analyzed the then-current banned list and identified this as one of the cards that positively couldn't come off that list. At the time, this seemed like a sound statement, and I feel to this day that at the time, it would have been a nightmare. However, it was a bit disappointing when the card came off and everyone, myself included, were quite unmoved by this. They spiked to $40 apiece instantly, but no one I knew wanted them for anything other than resale value. As the card was lulling after being unbanned, I thought back to the article I had written and thought to myself, "I really miscalled that one." Thankfully, Alix Hatfield and a few other players have recently been doing well with Time Spirals, played in the only fashion anyone could really expect them to be played in, a High Tide deck. Now, things probably aren't going to reach the catastrophic proportions that I predicted back when I originally wrote about Time Spiral; in fact, the deck (or iterations of it) will likely never even become a top-tier deck, but I think there will come a day when we will need to reevaluate if this card belongs in the format. Interestingly, I've seen one deck running around that uses Time Spiral in a fashion that isn't also packing High Tide, but that is a bit best delved into another time.

Deckcheck

One of the last things that happened before I stopped writing was the Legacy community adapting to a world without Deckcheck.net. This was something that I'd had concerns about at the time, and it feels like many of them, sadly, came true. With the power of hindsight, it is possible to explain what Deckcheck did and why it was such a great tool for Legacy. Essentially, it allowed for medium- and somewhat large-scale tournaments from around the world to bypass language barriers to communicate on new concepts, exchange metagaming ideas, update changes to the environment in very short amounts of time, and also keep tabs on the health of the format. Being able to quickly aggregate data from thirty-two-player-plus events is quite helpful for most practical Legacy applications, and the site provided a one-stop source for all of this.

My major fear was that without Deckcheck as a resource, the only data to be both readily and easily available to people was going to be that of the Star City Games Open series, which while they are large-scale events that can provide interesting and valuable data, are notorious for being inbred on the development and deviation fronts. There is also the constantly echoed question of player quality at the Legacy SCG events; however, there is generally a concern about player quality at any event with open registration, and Legacy is among the more difficult formats to keep on top of, so it isn't fair to judge too harshly on that point.

Digression aside, it seems now that my fears concerning this became a reality. The Legacy metagame is now largely influenced by the SCG Open series, whereas before, the two existed independently of one another on many fronts. The impact of a SCG Open didn't always have a direct impact on what you would be seeing in a weekly Legacy event, because there were other pools of data to draw information from. However, now it isn't hard to see the correlation on a significantly larger scale between an Open's results and other events that follow it. While it may just be a personal opinion, it feels a lot like the atmosphere of Extended during PTQ season where everyone siphons off the previous week's results. However, we seem to forget that Time Spiral isn't the dominant deck in the format because it wins a single event; the gauntlet of playable decks in Legacy is so vast that no deck can be assured anything when Swissing through the rounds. This is among the reasons that the SCG events provide poor data that is potentially skewing the format based on singular events. This is a lot different than people studying the top decks at Extended PTQs in preparation for their next event, because they are dealing with often times a dozen or more events over a weekend, not a single event.

What I've just described is a trend that I am hoping to see broken, but I don't see it happening until much of the community is able to adopt a replacement for Deckcheck.

Mirrodin Besieged

I wrote one set review back when M11 came out. I was new at that sort of thing; everyone else did it, so I thought it would be worthwhile for me to give my spin on it. I've since changed my mind about doing set reviews; however, it does seem prudent to comment on a few promising or overhyped cards, even if they've already seen play, because this set was so interesting for Legacy.

Mirran Crusader – Initially, I wasn't going to discuss this card, but it is essentially a 4/2 with protection from Tarmogoyf, which is pretty good for the cost, but we don't see any White Weenie strategies appearing, and anything that wants him wants him to cost , but he may be a guy who will someday make a Team America player very unhappy.

White Sun's Zenith – I'd tested this as a Cunning Wish target; it was all right, and I can see some decks using it now and then, but it isn't essential by any means. It's interesting to keep in mind that there exists a feasible, washable win condition, though, in case control enters a better position sometime soon.

Go for the Throat – I wasn't really impressed when I saw the card; being dead to an entire aggressive deck (Affinity) that is getting more play seemed a lot weaker than not being able to hit the two Black creatures in the format, not to mention being entirely dead to some of the scariest Goblin Lackey plays (they all happen on turn one). While you probably are more likely to see Dark Confidant than Affinity in a given tournament, you're probably not playing Go for the Throat over Swords, and if you are, you're probably playing Team America; there's a reason people stopped playing that deck a long time ago. I'm glad that few of the other decks have jumped onto this card, because the fact that it costs 2 mana is huge for this format. That said, the card is pretty good—drastically overhyped, but still pretty good.

Green Sun's Zenith – You couldn't get away from the hype surrounding this card, and in many ways, you still can't. I think it allows some decks to do interesting things, but I'm just not very impressed. I think the "You get to play eight Tarmogoyfs" clamoring will die down when it's seen that the Zenith just isn't ideal for most aggro plans, and it really puts a damper on it when your Zenith is Spell Pierced, which Tarmogoyf is generally immune to. Not to mention the fact that all of this hype is happening at a time when Tarmogoyf just isn't looking as good as it did just a couple months ago. I don't know if this will be a format staple, as it doesn't play well with Gaddock Teeg, but obviously we will see.

Thrun, the Last Troll – I've lost to this guy twice now; as you may imagine, he's really good against control. The problem I see is that I don't know who plays in a metagame where they need a creature they only board in against control at the 4CC mark. It seems that Elspeth or Armageddon is probably a bit better, and both are far less narrow. He's new, so people will keep playing him, but when they realize that there aren't that many places for him to come in, he'll likely come out of boards.

Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas – When this came out, I got pretty excited and built Affinity. I tested it with a bunch of people, and no one was able to beat it. However, no one else was able to duplicate those results. I started playing with it again, and my luck with the deck dried up. I don't know what the best fit for him is just yet, but he'll find a home in Legacy before long—although probably in a rather niche deck.

Blightsteel Colossus – At the end of Round 1 of SCG Indianapolis, the entire room was talking about how a guy lost a match to a turn-two Blightsteel Colossus with Lightning Greaves. For a few minutes, I thought he was pretty good. It took a while for me to finally see him in action, and when I did, that fascination I had from Indianapolis faded entirely. I was impressed that my opponent was able to pay 12 mana to gain 11 life and draw my Plow out of my hand; not many creatures do that for 12.

Sword of Feast and Famine – I'm really happy with this; having two abilities is a lot better than having Sword of Body and Mind, which has an ability and a drawback (milling ten of the opponent's deck is far more likely to lose you the game than win it.)

That covers all of the cards I wanted to comment on from Besieged; now I think we're caught up to where we're at today.

Present Tense

I've covered many of the bases, talking about the SCG Open events' impact on the metagame and the offerings of the new set.

I do want to talk about the SCG events again, though, because while I did say some neutral-to-unfavorable things about them, there is the obligatory echoing of how good they are for Legacy; it has given it a lot of time in the spotlight. It's no accident that Legacy was the other format featured in this events. Star City has seen the changing trends and knew that Legacy was picking up popularity, so it made perfect business sense to include it in this tournament series, which works out for most everyone. I've been to a couple of the events now, and from my limited experience, I had a lot of fun and the tournaments were well-run. Most of the problems that I or any of my friends encountered were mostly on the venue's side, and we overall had very positive experiences except for doing poorly in Indianapolis.

That said, something that shocked me was that Star City was able to hand out byes to their events. I wasn't aware at the time that this rule had been changed. Until fairly recently, it was the policy of the DCI that tournament organizers could not award byes for a DCI-sanctioned event. I know of a few organizers who had big plans that were ultimately thwarted because of this. So, when I started seeing awarded byes on pairings, I was caught rather off guard. With Grand Prix: Providence just a couple months away now, we are likely rapidly approaching the point where Legacy players start to discuss byes, which in the past has been a minefield of a discussion.

I'll state my bias up front: Even as someone who is able to enjoy byes from ratings, for any public event, I'm generally opposed to having awarded byes based on rating. I think the only byes awarded should come from Grand Prix Trials. The reason for favoring trial-only byes is twofold. First, you will have had to play the format successfully in order to be awarded the byes. Second, as the trial system from last year worked, it provides brick-and-mortar stores with an unconventional and in-demand prize. The demand would only rise if byes for ratings didn't exist.

Now, there are dissenting viewpoints on this, and there is a lot to consider. Gerry Thompson recently defended the Star City Games bye system on camera, saying that Star City Games puts a big investment into the players they award byes to, and that it is a draw for the people to come and see their favorite players battle it out in the Top 8. I won't try to quote him on that; I'm paraphrasing, and I hope that I understood him correctly. My issue with this defense, which I've heard time and again (but normally in the context of Grand Prixes), is that when you're watching at home, sure, you'd like to see recognizable names do well, and it gives the company a face, but when you're in an event with these players, they enter the tournament doing better than you. Weaving into a Top 8 when you need to go 8–1 is a lot more difficult than when you need only go 5–1 and instantly have better tiebreakers. (At Columbus, anyone without byes needed to go 7–2 to make Day 2; as you can imagine, 4–2 with three byes is a lot easier.) The other issue is, how many people are influenced to travel to a tournament just to see a pro player? This isn't something I have done marketing research on, nor am I inclined to. I will admit that there are multiple sides to this argument, and I think that each side has valid points.

State of the Metagame

After the banning of Survival, a lot of people assumed that the metagame was basically going to go back to where it was, and in some respects, it did. At the time, I was fielding a lot of questions about what the future of the format was going to look like. I predicted that Zoo wasn't going to make up as big a portion of the pie as it once had. Certainly, it was playable again, but after months of people facing down Survivals, the metagame didn't just snap back. In order for Zoo to do really well, a few things needed to happen: Everyone needed to start playing the deck's favorable matchups, like Goblins and Merfolk, but people needed to stay away from the deck's bad matches, like the builds of U/W control that packed Thopters and heavy control elements and combo. Goblins and Merfolk did reenter the metagame, and in a pretty powerful way, but then we started to see G/W decks looking a lot like Zoo minus the Red cards, packing Mother of Runes and equipment. Show and Tell decks of several varieties showed up, and when people were playing Counterbalance, they were gunning for Merfolk, which splashed over onto Zoo. While everyone was battling on, it just wasn't looking like a 3/3 on turn one was quite as good as it used to be.

A couple of weeks ago, both Drew Levin and Matt Elias talked a bit about where they see the metagame going. Drew saw it as being very cyclical and predictable, and Matt saw great potential for Zoo in the emerging metagame. I feel a bit differently about it, and in closing, I'd like to give a brief synopsis of where I see some of the decks in the metagame.

Goblins – Goblins was allowed a lot of time to pick on Counterbalance and Merfolk decks, and had control of the metagame for some time. Even Junk tends to struggle against it, which is why we've seen a number of Engineered Plagues popping up recently over Pernicious Deeds. If something can be figured out to help Goblins combat the combo matches of both Storm and slower, non-Storm breeds, Goblins can be incredibly well-positioned.

Merfolk – Matt Elias wrote in his piece that he felt Merfolk was one of the worst decks to play in the metagame. I point this out because I feel that Zoo is one of the strictly worst decks to be playing and that Merfolk is perhaps one of the best-positioned decks at the moment—a fast clock that is a nightmare for anyone playing Islands paired with the early and effective disruption to really nail decks like Doomsday, ANT, Time Spiral, Show and Tell, and so forth. In Matt's defense, he wrote about the glories of attacking in a time when it looked like he was the only one that felt that way, and went on to win a SCG Open doing just that immediately, so perhaps he is onto something.

Junk/Rock – There was a long time in which I considered this deck to be one of the big traps of Legacy, but it seems as though now the reach that this mid-range deck has is good enough to grab a lot of wins. The disruption the deck is able to provide is just good enough to take some combo decks out of the game, especially when they're working too hard to get around Spell Pierce. The creatures are big and efficient, and the format isn't at a place where a lot of people are going to try to punish them for playing fairly. I think that this is honestly one of the better options if it can be suited up with the correct pairing of combo and creature hate.

Natural Order Bant – With and more recently without Counterbalance, this has been one of the more surprising decks for me to see people picking up recently. This seems to be the deck that Green Sun's Zenith shines in, as it can function as additional copies of Noble Hierarch (getting Dryad Arbor) and find a copy of a small number of utility creatures. I'm not the biggest fan of the direction that some of these decks are going in, but clearly something is being done correctly.

Show and Tell – I feel that the builds that are pairing themselves with Noble Hierarch and Natural Order are likely a bit better, but there is certainly merit to the builds with Sneak Attack. Drew Levin was recently talking about how they dropped the Emrakul/Sneak Attack plan because of Knight of the Reliquary fetching Karakas and resulting in some pretty big losses. I feel that both of these approaches are more like glorified Blecher game plans, and will sporadically put up numbers in large events, but that it isn't one of the safer decks to take into a tournament, especially in a world of Junk and . . .

Team America – This relic was one of the more surprising decks to see unearthed. The deck had pretty much died out when Noble Hierarch was printed, as it just became too difficult to keep up with the Bant game plan, and even in a world where the Green and Taxes deck is still popular, I am intrigued that this deck is doing so well. I'm not ready to totally discount the deck. When the deck won SCG: D.C., it was predictable that the next event would be filled with players hiveminding that build, which is one of the things that the series is known for. Even so, I do think there is a lot of room for growth in the archetype over the next couple months, and I'll be interested to see how the lists stabilize and to find out if Team America has a solid place in the metagame.

Dredge – It isn't much of a secret that most players have been cutting back on graveyard hate, and with good reason; there are not too many decks that are able to punish you for not having it. However, Dredge has been among the more successful decks in the SCG series. I'm not advocating the deck by any stretch of the imagination, but it is something to keep an eye on. Reanimator is a deck in the same vein that may be poised to seize this gap in graveyard hate.

Of course, the metagame is filled with plenty of other contenders, such as the MUD deck, Painter's combo in its several forms. Affinity has been putting up decent results, and a lot of people are still waiting to see if Elves combo is going to be able to use Green Sun's Zenith. There is a lot of room for development and growth in the format right now, and I don't think the format is going to be quite as easy to forecast as it has been, but in the weeks leading up to the Grand Prix, we are going to see a lot more people looking to the SCG events to get a feel of the metagame.

Conclusion

I tried to cover a lot of bases in one shot today, and I wasn't able to do many of them the justice I'd have liked to, but to get back in the swing of writing, I had to get some thoughts out there. Legacy is at a place right now where there are a lot of exciting things happening, and it's clearly the format that most everyone is looking to play, so it's going to be great to once again share stories and ideas while examining Legacy. I've got an extensive list of topics to cover, and I hope that you'll be back soon to read some of them. Until then, remember that all of the best writers have a catchphrase that goes here:

Christopher Walton

im00pi at gmail dot com

Master Shake on The Source