[Fedoras of Salvation] - White Knights ITT

[Jack]

I guess it might be on MTGO, where recruiters aren't hard af to find.

[Lightning_Dolt]

It's been winning and top 8ing opens.

[Valdarith]

Pffft. As if.

Guess my jank ass clerics are tier 2.

I hope you're joking. Painter has been consistently appearing and winning the top 8 of Legacy events for awhile now.

[Jack]

I love that deck. It's probably the only thing without blue in it that I'd actually play in Legacy.

[Dechs Kaison]

Pffft. As if.

Guess my jank ass clerics are tier 2.

I hope you're joking. Painter has been consistently appearing and winning the top 8 of Legacy events for awhile now.

I am joking, but only because of ignorance. I don't know the landscape well enough. I know Sneak and Show (and variants) is the deck to beat. I know several Storm variants are strong, as are some Delver or Goyf based aggressive things. Dredge wins games by accident.

Those are the decks I'm aware of that are doing well. I'd love to hear you fill in the gaps for me where I'm wrong.

[Valdarith]

Pffft. As if.

Guess my jank ass clerics are tier 2.

I hope you're joking. Painter has been consistently appearing and winning the top 8 of Legacy events for awhile now.

I am joking, but only because of ignorance. I don't know the landscape well enough. I know Sneak and Show (and variants) is the deck to beat. I know several Storm variants are strong, as are some Delver or Goyf based aggressive
things. Dredge wins games by accident.

Those are the decks I'm aware of that are doing well. I'd love to hear you fill in the gaps for me where I'm wrong.

I actually think Delver decks are the decks to beat, UWR being the best. They're positioned very well against the degenerate combo decks of the format (Sneak Show, ANT, Reanimator) due to their access to counterspells, play the most efficient cards in the format, and can go from being highly defensive to putting on a fast clock within a turn. If I were to take any deck to an unknown meta right now, it'd be UWR Delver (though UR Delver just spiked SCG Knoxville and is the deck I'm actually building in paper).

Honestly Delver has warped the format so much that it's the only real aggressive deck right now. Death and Taxes is the only other deck that comes close, and Maverick simply doesn't see much play.

Painter is so strong because so few decks play basic lands these days. 3-color Delver decks are all the rage right now
and Painter punishes those strategies harshly.

The best combo decks are Sneak Show, Reanimator, ANT, and Elves.

The best aggressive decks are Delver decks and D&T.

The best control decks are Miracles and Imperial Painter.

Honorable mention goes to Shardless BUG and Esper Deathblade.

Really anything can be competitive in Legacy, but these are the decks to beat.

[Dechs Kaison]

D&T gives me the most trouble. Thanks for reminding me about that one.

Elves I never thought of as a problem.

How would painter handle a mono colored deck like mine?

[Jack]

Your deck seems favorable against Painter. You play more creatures, so the late game beat down plan is bad, and you have removal and discard, making the combo harder to pull off.

[Jack]

You also blank our 6 Blood Moons.

[Jack]

And without blue cards, our pyroblasts are worthless without Painter on the field.

[Dechs Kaison]

Yeah, the discard I run really fucks up combo decks. I'm in it for the long game, so they tend to give me the most trouble. Against the aggro stuffs, I tended to just chump block for days. That doesn't work against Batterskull.

[Mcdonalds]

Pffft. As if.

Guess my jank ass clerics are tier 2.

I hope you're joking. Painter has been consistently appearing and winning the top 8 of Legacy events for awhile now.

I am joking, but only because of ignorance. I don't know the landscape
well enough. I know Sneak and Show (and variants) is the deck to beat. I know several Storm variants are strong, as are some Delver or Goyf based aggressive things. Dredge wins games by accident.

Those are the decks I'm aware of that are doing well. I'd love to hear you fill in the gaps for me where I'm wrong.

I actually think Delver decks are the decks to beat, UWR being the best. They're positioned very well against the degenerate combo decks of the format (Sneak Show, ANT, Reanimator) due to their access to counterspells, play the most efficient cards in the format, and can go from being highly defensive to putting on a fast clock within a turn. If I were to take any deck to an unknown meta right now, it'd be UWR Delver (though UR Delver just spiked SCG Knoxville and is the deck I'm actually building in paper).

Honestly Delver has warped the format so much that it's the only real aggressive deck right now. Death and Taxes is the only other deck that comes close, and
Maverick simply doesn't see much play.

Painter is so strong because so few decks play basic lands these days. 3-color Delver decks are all the rage right now and Painter punishes those strategies harshly.

The best combo decks are Sneak Show, Reanimator, ANT, and Elves.

The best aggressive decks are Delver decks and D&T.

The best control decks are Miracles and Imperial Painter.

Honorable mention goes to Shardless BUG and Esper Deathblade.

Really anything can be competitive in Legacy, but these are the decks to beat.

D&T is not an aggro deck, I mention this for your benefit as the people who play that deck will go out of their way to make sure you understand that telling you with all the tact and subtlety of a baseball bat to the face

[LP, of the Fires]

I nearly got out my bat actually, but figured it would be best to just ignore it.

[Dechs Kaison]

Right, D&T is a control deck, isn't it?

I had much better luck against it the last time I played. I just held my Cabal Therapy until after they tutor'd.

[hamfactorial]

D&T is a prison deck, as I understand it. It can be mistaken for aggro, since it's mostly creatures and lands, but it wins through mana denial and grindy card advantage engines.

[Dechs Kaison]

Prison is a subset of control, right?

[hamfactorial]

Yes indeed

[Valdarith]

We're arguing semantics here. D&T is an aggro-control deck. It runs Vial for goodness sakes. It's a glorified hatebear deck.

[hamfactorial]

Yes but it runs AEther Vial in a controlling way!

:neckbeard:

[LP, of the Fires]

We're not arguing semantics, you're just wrong.

If you try to play D&T in any aggressive manner, your going to lose a lot, plain and simple.

I swear, the only people who fully understand the deck are dedicated pilots, and Europeans.

[Col. Khaddafi]

Yes but it runs AEther Vial in a controlling way!

:neckbeard:

for future reference we actually have that emoticon: : neck :

[hamfactorial]

Oh man, that's my new favorite after

[Valdarith]

We're not arguing semantics, you're just wrong.

If you try to play D&T in any aggressive manner, your going to lose a lot, plain and simple.

I swear, the only people who fully understand the deck are dedicated pilots, and Europeans.

It is semantics because we need to define aggression. Obviously you don't go all out balls to the wall with this deck, but let's be honest with ourselves here. It IS an aggro-control deck.

[Dechs Kaison]

So is my deck aggro-control? Or just aggro? I have a cute little synergy kind of thing, too, but I don't think that counts as combo.

[LP, of the Fires]

We're not arguing semantics, you're just wrong.

If you try to play D&T in any aggressive manner, your going to lose a lot, plain and simple.

I swear, the only people who fully understand the deck are dedicated pilots, and Europeans.

It is semantics because we need to define aggression. Obviously you don't go all out balls to the wall with this deck, but let's be honest with ourselves here. It IS an aggro-control deck.

I think you have a fucked up definition of aggro control then. Though to be fair, something like 99% of players have fucked up
definitions of archetypes in my opinion which is in no small part why I consider most players bad at magic.

The decks gameplan at the most basic level is play either vial/mystic or thalia in the first 2 turns of the game, then do nothing but dismantle your opponents deck for a billion turns. There's a lot of games where I fetch batterskull, then it just sits in my hand for x turns as I wasteland/port repeatedly because you you just want to harass the opponents resources for the whole game.

[Valdarith]

Aggro-control is an archetype that uses cheap, cost-efficient threats along with disruption to get an early lead on the board and hold that lead. Black decks sporting Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach, etc are examples of this. Delver is the most recognizable form of aggro-control in Legacy, sitting more in the middle of the spectrum classically with UR variants being more toward the aggro end. D&T is at the controlling end of the spectrum.

[Valdarith]

We're not arguing semantics, you're just wrong.

If you try to play D&T in any aggressive manner, your going to lose a lot, plain and simple.

I swear, the only people who fully understand the deck are dedicated pilots, and Europeans.

It is semantics because we need to define aggression. Obviously you don't go all out balls to the wall with this deck, but let's be honest with ourselves here. It IS an
aggro-control deck.

I think you have a fucked up definition of aggro control then. Though to be fair, something like 99% of players have fucked up definitions of archetypes in my opinion which is in no small part why I consider most players bad at magic.

The decks gameplan at the most basic level is play either vial/mystic or thalia in the first 2 turns of the game, then do nothing but dismantle your opponents deck for a billion turns. There's a lot of games where I fetch batterskull, then it just sits in my hand for x turns as I wasteland/port repeatedly because you you just want to harass the opponents resources for the whole game.

Read my most recent definition of aggro-control then. Would you not agree that D&T is a deck that uses cheap, efficient threats alongside disruption to achieve the game plan you described? I understand that "aggro" tends to imply the speed at which a deck operates, but that's why I think the term "aggro-control"
in general is a bit ambiguous.

[hamfactorial]

D&T in LP's hands is a Blademaster with Wind Walk in your peasant line. (WC3 reference for Z)

[DroppinSuga]

[hamfactorial]

[DroppinSuga]

:CFBZ:

[LP, of the Fires]

We're not arguing semantics, you're just wrong.

If you try to play D&T in any aggressive manner, your going to lose a lot, plain and simple.

I swear, the only people who fully understand the deck are dedicated pilots, and Europeans.

It is
semantics because we need to define aggression. Obviously you don't go all out balls to the wall with this deck, but let's be honest with ourselves here. It IS an aggro-control deck.

I think you have a fucked up definition of aggro control then. Though to be fair, something like 99% of players have fucked up definitions of archetypes in my opinion which is in no small part why I consider most players bad at magic.

The decks gameplan at the most basic level is play either vial/mystic or thalia in the first 2 turns of the game, then do nothing but dismantle your opponents deck for a billion turns. There's a lot of games where I fetch batterskull, then it just sits in my hand for x turns as I wasteland/port repeatedly because you you just want to harass the opponents resources for the whole game.

Read my most recent definition of aggro-control then. Would you not agree that D&T is a deck that uses cheap, efficient threats alongside disruption to achieve the game
plan you described? I understand that "aggro" tends to imply the speed at which a deck operates, but that's why I think the term "aggro-control" in general is a bit ambiguous.

Aggro control generally revolves sticking a threat and protecting it while either protecting the threat, or disrupting the opponent along the way. Either way, it focuses on the threat. You see this in delver. It plays a dude, any dude really and wins by being a half-step ahead the whole game. Delver is also the only deck I'd label as aggro control.

Death and taxes doesn't give a shit about the threat. It cares about the control, same as stoneblade variants which are also control decks that just happen to play creatures. In legacy, your stoneforge mystic doesn't make you aggressive, it just means your win con cost's 2/4 mana instead of six. Faeries is similarly a control deck in Modern and in Old Standard. It had aggressive draws, but really, the games it dominated involved doing nothing
but sitting on it's 2 mana win-con and disrupting the opponent the whole time until you reached profitable race math and killed your opponent in 2 alpha's.

A more appropriate label For D&T would be midrange board control for people unfamilar with prison decks because it takes over in the midgame by having board presence, but even then, that's not accurate because since you lack library manipulation and/or actual good creatures, you're more relying on the power of your lands and the disruptive creatures to lock your opponent out of being able to do ANYTHING. Vialing in phyrexian revokers naming fetchlands, resolving thalia against 90% of legacy decks, batterskull holding back aggressive creatures, etc.

The winning generally involves opponents conceding after you've mangara'd they're board, karakas'd their emrakeul, or succusefully waste/port locked them out of the game. VERY rarely do you win off the backs of your mirran crusader/jitte combo or serra avenger beatdown.

[Kaitscralt]

[deck]Kurgan Gifts[/deck]
Creatures
3 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers
3 Liliana of the Veil

Instants
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Doom Blade
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Go for the Throat
1 Hero's Downfall
4 Mana Leak
1 Putrefy
2 Smother
3 Spell Snare
2 Think Twice
1 Thirst for Knowledge

Sorceries
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Life from the Loam
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Raven's Crime
1 Worm Harvest

Lands
2 Breeding Pool
3 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Watery Grave

Sideboard
1 Bojuka Bog
n1 Consume the Meek
1 Damnation
1 Dark Blast
1 Deathmark
1 Dispel
1 Drown in Sorrow
1 Duress
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Golgari Charm
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Negate
1 Pithing Needle
1 Shadow of Doubt
1 Thoughtseize
[/deck]

Beating everything that isn't Pod.dek easily.

You're LYING!

[Dechs Kaison]

You can't actually vial in a Revoker naming fetchlands.

[LP, of the Fires]

bad example. I was thinking of the storm matchup where you can do it naming lotus petal and for some reason fetches came it. Revoker+thalia really puts a number on storm game 1 though as you're incentivized to play the petals so that thalia doesn't wreck you and that plays into revoker. Kinda like the supreme verdict jace trap that control presents aggro.

[TubeHunter]

so is wild guess good in burn or what?


And what about the new pillar bear?

(The trials of somebody who played std for the first time in 2 months)

[Khaospawn]

My opinion is wasted in this conversation. I only know how to tap Mountains and turn dudes sideways. Admittedly, I'm a simple player, but I'm the best there is at what I do.





*snikt*

[Khaospawn]

Also....

[Valdarith]

I understand what you're saying, LP. I agree that midrange control is a better description. To be honest there are a lot of ways to break down archetypes in Legacy. Aggro, aggro control, aggro combo, combo, combo control, control. It just depends on how far down the rabbit hole we want to go.

[Kaitscralt]

Also....