Reid Duke's Take on The Impact of the Grief Banning

Introduction and Background red duuk reacts to the BNR announcement next on Eternal dles extreme thank you to all the Duro Maniacs that support the show if you want to get adree content and extra free content you can go to and Phil how's it going man Zach can you believe they didn't unban sensei's divining Top This is a travesty what are we even doing here are we done are we tapping out no I think we we have a B&R announcement with us today is the one and only Reed Duke Reed before we dive in to what your take is on the B&R announcement last time you were here approximately a year ago it was during bow Master on bow Master Bonanza and we were talking about ways to to tackle this meta at the time and I brought up the card reap which is you Reby cards out of your graveyard equal to the number of black permanence in opponent controls you got such a kick out of that you inspired me to get this beauty right here oh that is cool for those who can't see or listening to the audio you got to start watching the video this is an altered reap that is bringing joy to Reed's eyes and joy and Reed's eyes brings joy to mine eyes there's nothing I love more about playing Eternal formats than busting out out like an obscure Corner case type card like that that is the the pure joy you know Reed it's it's funny that you mentioned pulling out obscure cards because I'd like to show you this altered compost for the black meta game we're about to walk into there you go so speaking of new metag games we just got a new BNR let's dive into it Eternal dles is proud to be sponsored by moxfield moxfield is the best magic the Gathering deck building website on the internet you can create share and find decks from command to Legacy and even fan supported formats like premodern and old school you can see all of our decks on our MOX field follow the links below to stay tuned yeah yeah go on fil go I was gonna say the ban for legacy was grief and that's it was that good enough was that enough for what we were hoping for was it uh the correct call Reed well the key takeaway is there's always next year Phil for a possible Sensei talk unbanning like the Mets you know they restricted they restricted ö Saga in vintage they can do the same in Legacy and then give us top yeah modern Horizon's 12 on the way um so ban and grief was it enough uh good question um I'm sure there's going to be a lot of you know a lot of hot takes and opinions out there and you know the the number one thing is like we'll put it to the test and we'll see what people come up with you know out there in the trenches um so I I always like to you know proceed with caution when there's a shakeup because it's really really difficult to predict you know the second order third order effects of of banning a big card from from the top deck what's what's gonna um shake out but I will say going in this is what I was afraid was gonna happen uh you know like I I I uh watched all the content that you guys put out um you heard here in the last content yeah great educational stuff um you know I've been talking to people I've been monitoring the conversations I've been playing playing every once in a while myself and so the the latest development that I was hearing was that some elite players were like maybe not even main deck and grief in their blue black decks anymore and that's I mean maybe that's kind of like an inbred thing where it's okay you know grief is slightly suboptimal in the exact mirror match but it's really good against everything else um but anyway the the conclusion you know any however you want to interpret that is the blue black and grixis and mono and whatever these decks are still going to be really strong even without grief so it's always a little bit deflating when you highly anticipate a change to the format and there's a Banning and then you show up the next day and it's like oh I still got paired three out of four rounds against blue black X um so that that's kind of the fear uh here but at at least the play patterns will be different um and there's a hope that you know maybe some strategies that were being uh held in check by the existence of grief might have a little more play Reed I know uh hindsight's 2020 here uh initially uh this this episode came came about because you were one of the people we we reached out to but sort of timing missed on uh having you on the uh like large what does everyone think episode that we had um if I had gotten to you before the Bandon restricted announcement what what would your picks have been well I probably would have told you you know here's a category of staple cards that are played in the blue black decks choose two you know pick pick your favorite two to to ban um with you know psychic frog being one that lots of folks are talking about I think you could have taken an alternative approach of banning reanimate people might have not been happy about that for a variety of different reasons but you know this was definitely the expected you know I don't think I think you you would it would have been a Bad Bet to say that grief would was gonna still be legal this week um and that is in there's kind of two two things that a Bandon can address right there's medic game imbalance and there's play patterns so this reminds me a little bit of remember when they banned ragavan however many years ago that was three three years ago something like that it wasn't really that ragavan was the best card in the Delver deck or that it was unbeatable or or you know this and that it was more like we were all just sick of people winning the die roll and having volcanic island ragavan days like Impact of Banning Grief in Legacy that play pattern was so unhealthy and unpleasant that it's like okay like let's just make the format better by taking that away and probably grief reanimate is in that category where even if things shake out and blue black psychic frog is still the best deck you at least get to play some Legacy you know you brainstorming you're pyro blast and you're doing this and that as opposed to with the grief scam draw you just threw up your hands it's like okay it didn't even matter what cards I brought today because I wasn't gonna get to cast them anyway and that that's a bad feeling yeah um I think there's there's a couple there's a couple things about this ban and restricted announcement that I think are worth sort of bringing into the Forefront one is the fact that they're changing how and when the announcements happen uh I I'll just read that part real quick uh it's clear that the timing of the June 24th band instr announcement was poor so much so that we notified the public ahead of time that we would not be making any changes to Modern so that players could appropriately plan for the Pro Tour which was certainly not ideal moving forward uh they're going to be aligning the band restricted announcements with the RC and rcq Seasons um so how do how do you feel about that that as a statement it's it's a good it's a good statement I approve of that statement you know you know I've been actually you know participates in those events you know yeah I've I've played on the pro tour and the surrounding circuits for a long time and I've lived through like a lot of different attempts at Banning cadences and I can never remember a time that people were happy yeah you know it's always like oh we wanted more advanced notice or now we have the advanced notice but now we have to play with the the lame cards for too long you know so it's nothing's ever perfect and I definitely respect that they have a tough job and they're trying to get closer to what the fans want and I think this is a step in the right direction but you know spoiler alert it's still not going to be perfect and there's going to be issues that come up the next time too so I want to just uh flip the coin here because the talking about like the pick two option from the blue black X decks uh to go uh talking about reanimate I know a lot of people have talked about psychic Frog as an option uh we are the Heretics over here that are talking about uh getting rid of days but is there anything that you thought and and also like I'm the guy who who's constantly you know on the front porch of watsi yelling for a Sensei toop on band but is there anything on the band list that you thought would have been reasonable to come off that would have impacted Legacy um like of course like there's things like squirrel's Nest or whatever that could come off that's not really going to change the Paradigm on anything but there are a couple of cars that were in the conversation now that psychic frog was in the conversation of like oh maybe we up the power level by unloading some stuff as opposed to like hitting a Target that is part of the new Del days Wasteland shell as we usual was where was your stance on that was that um something you would have considered uh a healthy option to explore or do you think it's cool to like leave stuff on the bandless where it is and then just add more stuff to try and get the format course corrected I think it's awesome if a card comes off the band list uh especially if it's a you know kind of a nostalgic card that people have wanted to play with so one um and I know that your previous episode has a lot of you know interesting takes and suggestions about this stuff um but one that kind of stuck out to me um was it maybe Koval said unban mind Unbanning Old Cards for Novelty and Excitement twist which is like that I don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea like like I said earlier it's really hard to predict you know what's going to happen second order third order effects from from changes to the band list so I'm not saying like this is a good idea but that is the type of card that me as a longtime player I would be like cool I've never played played in a tournament with mind twist and that's going to be a novel experience for me you know so that's like an example of where they could look for a win um like you said like the what is it EarthCraft squirrel nest like whatever you know I could take it or leave it um uh but I probably wouldn't build that deck if they if they unbanned it on day one somebody would and they and they'd have a good time and that's cool um but yeah I I think it's great to always reexamine and see if there's old cards to come off the band list you don't see them do that too often um probably for a variety of reasons you know you can imagine internally it's hard it's probably hard to justify like putting resources to test a card that could be unbanned um not to mention reprint policies and stuff like that that like stop EarthCraft from coming off the band list I think something along that same axis of putting resources to test because obviously they they don't have enough resources to test Legacy as it is let alone test potentially making a change to come off of the band list do you think that how do you feel watsi is in terms of how aggressive they are or how conservative they are with uh how they approach bands because it seems like there was anything from we could have seen anything ranging today from just the ban of grief which is what happened to a range of like you know four or five cards and have reasonable Arguments for it which would have been pretty aggressive but like where where do you stand on how watsi do you think watsi is too conservative too aggressive um with when it comes to Banning should do you think that there should be more time for course correction for the format as new sets come out like a modern Horizons or a bloomo in recent times um what are your thoughts I'm just glad we're getting any attention at all really you know as as Legacy in and vintage players um it probably makes sense for them to use a light touch uh in in our case because you know most of us have been around a long time we have a tendency to be kind of like setting our ways you know standing on front porches yelling about Sensei divining top whatever it might be who do that do that um so there's probably like the risk of going overboard is probably more in your face than the risk of of not doing enough and uh Legacy and vintage are usually pretty slow well relatively speaking I should say relatively slow to adapt and change and so even taking one card out of the ecosystem you know that might make it kind of like fun and interesting and exciting for a few months before they they have a chance to reevaluate so strategically it makes sense to me uh you know I I wouldn't have been against a huge shakeup in the form of either Bannings or unbanning but um I think this is like about probably the the Cadence we can expect I feel like they've gotten much more conservative uh even speaking about unbanning ever since they had to reband gorei gravet troll from Modern they were like yep we we've made that mistake We're not gonna get bitten again you know so I maybe I can put in perspective if if if you guys or some of the listeners like don't play the the newer formats but a lot of the talk on your video from last week was people going okay well you know we're going to ban some stuff from the blue black deck but then we got to worry about what's going to be the next best so are we Banning up the beanock are we Banning some elrazi stuff or you know this and that um stuff from the Delver deck so in Pioneer there were basically three really good decks and they banned two of them leaving the is it Phoenix Deck with treasure crws untouched so it's like pretty obvious to everyone who plays Pioneer that is is it Phoenix is going to be the best deck but that is Balancing the Meta and Self-Balancing Formats illustrates like that they they are not using this predictive um what would you call it like uh getting ahead of it preemptive Bannings there it's like okay we're going to ban the cards that are a problem now then we'll see if is it Phoenix is a problem and maybe address it the next time but they're not trying to guess what the best of the remaining decks is going to be and hit that having not touched Pioneer for a while my guess is that they're like yeah that's fine we we if if there's one clear deck at least people can kind of hate it out you know like when there is when there is a deck to a go-to deck at least like there's a there's a rebalance of the meta so people can actually decide like oh that's what my sideboard is gonna be about right well so that's that's that's great like that usually indicates a healthy format and there was a time prior to the whole Demir you know scammin nator era where one of the best decks was just plain old classic black red reanimator right it's a great deck it's really scary wins game one a lot but it's like if you're sick of losing to reanimator you could just put seven graveyard hate cards in your sideboard and that's good that's a self-balancing you know setup for for a format that could reach an equilibrium and deir gaminator was not that like that deck was too well-rounded where there was no OB you couldn't you know you couldn't put two cards in your deck and change a bad matchup to a good matchup because they were going to take the cards away from you they're going to counter them they were G to have a backup plan you know whatever it might be so that's when it's scary is when a deck is not attackable and has too many you know too much resiliency too many backup plans yeah having like a deck that is is ostensibly a combo deck that also is uh Tempo deck at the same time is it was very rough to to go up against to totally yeah given that we uh have come to the consensus that watsi isn't using a predictive stance because it's impossible to predict without s's divining top in the format I I I actually want to be I want to skew us towards predictive because we got EU coming up or EU ew coming up uh in the next couple of months across three weekends in North America the uh pra is it it's Prague again and then in Tokyo so read couple of questions a are you going to any of them and B what's the best deck what what are we playing man what how do we win in this thing okay well I am really hoping to make it to the the United States one um you know going to a different continent is usually a little outside my scope these days but um I think Eternal weekend is like pretty much the most fun event on the magic calendar so I I really hope I can make it in November and uh the two Decks that I played last year are still around um so I played grixis Delver in Legacy and that's a pretty reasonable pick for you know a top tier strategy once once uh grief is banned um and I played doomsday in vintage which didn't even use Ur aaga anyway so um yeah I mean might just might just run it back very few changes are are you gonna run it back are you are you gonna run doomsday with you didn't have for Ponder last year right no you know doomsday is is it's kind of everything's hitting just right where it can use Ponder uh unrestricted it doesn't care about r a saga going um there's even you know you could play psychic frog in doomsday either main deck or sideboard if you want to do that so there's it's a it's a it's a good time to be a combo player and then speaking of psychic frog if we run back grix of Delver what is the new what I got I got these cards man Deck Choices for Upcoming Tournaments I got these two alter dream card s that I I have to bring in against these these black decks how what is the new what would where would you start post ban going into this format let's say you were going to uh play some Legacy tonight and you're bringing grixis Delver what's your spread of uh threats at this point are you are you on full scope of Delver are you moving away and playing both bone master and psychic frog are you playing like the full Suite of both are you playing a hedge of a combination between them across the 75 depending on the matchup where's your head at it's a good question um the last time I played was I don't know well the last time I played an event with grix s Delver was five or six or more weeks ago and I didn't play psychic frog which in retrospect was a pretty bad error um but I am a huge fan of dragon Ridge Channeler I'm a huge fan of bow Masters Delver is you know not what it used to be but I still do value being able to get on the board for one Mana I mean that's that's really like the thing that I like about grics about Delver in Legacy is that all your cards cost zero or or enough of your cards cost zero or one Mana that you can get an advantage in that way or you know not be too sad if you lose the die roll whatever it might be um so yeah something's got to go to to make room for frog but I'm still a big believer in orcish bow Masters when I was learning grixis Delver it it was like there was grixis and there was teamer and nobody really knew what was better and I my I was like okay I'm going to play a few matches with grixis and if orcish bow Masters doesn't really impress me then I'm going to switch to teamer and then within three matches I was like okay this card is just yeah so busted there's no way I'm registering a deck without it how do you feel about nether go as another one that's a good one uh yeah I mean I would like to try that it lacks the special power of being blue which is one of the things that you know structurally makes Delver really good in that deck is it's like hey if have to have a a weakest or most situational card at least you know you can staple it to your force of will in the late game and and that works um but nether I'm sure has has a place and um especially if it's like a lot of blue red X decks then having something with greater than three toughness is cool that was my go-to uh thought with when I thought that I was I was 100% on the board of like bow Masters was going so I was like 12 one drop. deck like give me bow Masters Dragon gr Chandlers nethero and psychic frog and let's just Jam um so you thought that was your prediction Zach was it was going to be bow Masters and uh I I thought I thought it would be a little wider than Bo bow Masters and grief I I was I was going for I think five cards uh with what I what I wanted what I thought was they would they would do Bow Masters in grief um and I'm so I'm somewhat surprised that bow Masters is still in the meta just after they've talked about it so much and it still has sort of that same share um but yeah I figured it would it would go so I thought like I you know I got my set of nether go I'm ready uh in in the event that uh in the event that something happens I don't think any any emergency bands are going to happen between now and uh Eternal weekend and and the next ban is going to be after Eternal weekend so you know we can we can take uh heart and knowing that what we're getting for Psychic Frog and the Meta this for those tournaments I will be what's what's going to be played in those tournaments Reed uh in your opinion because when you were like I played bow Master instead of psychic frog and think that that was a mistake a lot of the people that we on the cast last uh episode and you know the goings on after the band announcement today where it was only grief have really had a Keen Eye on Psychic Frog as a card with a Target on its head where are you on Psychic frog are you in the same space as those people who want it gone or are you thinking that it's just you know the new toy that people have to adjust to I actually don't have that many reps with it so it's possible that it's like even better than I than I'm envisioning uh I think the analogy to dread horde Arcanist is a pretty good one where it's like okay you know two manac card that if it gets to survive and attack you're probably winning the game disproportionate amount of the time it's hard to kill with removal um the Saving Grace and this is almost weird to say a Saving Grace is it can get pyol blasted but you know that invites another question of like do we want to go down the path of being back to people main decking multiple pyrro blasts like is that a healthy format but um you know that that I guess I guess to put that a different way a card like psychic frog would be really oppressive in that it survives all the red based removal but at least red has the other weapon against it in pyro blast so you know it's like black gets fatal push white gets sorts of flashers and all the other stuff um so there are a variety of weapons to fight it so I'm hoping it just shakes out to be like this is the Premier threat but people have weapons against it instead of uh you know just being super dominant yeah I I mean a lot of people called out for for oo back in the day and now it's like one of those cards that you're just like this is part of the meta you know I'm still calling for it man it's fine I get it out of here supped G I have a question based on the that like you just reminded me of the times where when power blast is main decal that it's the sign of a skewed format and I'm curious as to the Fatal push caring about CMC 4 or less if it's revolted or two or less that the the something like cmc's is not heralded as uh oh this is a sign of a bad format the way that pyro blast caring about a specific color is and I'm curious if you think that are you of the mind that if powerblast were main deck that that's the sign of a skew format as opposed to just it's another piece of removal that cares about a condition the same way that fatal push does Good Question uh yeah I don't have um I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker Pyroblast and Format Health for me you know I wouldn't be like Oh I'm staying home and skipping the Legacy tournament because there's too many pyro blasts uh but certainly in an idealistic like utopian world all five would be represented and people would be able to play whatever deck and strategy they want and if you're seeing I mean look thinking back on the times that I've played main deck pyro blasts it's like almost like a hubris thing where it's like hey if somebody's playing a non-blue deck I'm just gonna beat them anyway and that's not Health spoken like a junk player well yeah like card two cards anyhow right yeah the worst was when it dig through time and treasure Crews were legal where it's like okay yeah if you're playing white green creature deck I'll I'll have these dead cards but I'm just gonna draw seven more cards than you and it won't even matter Oh Daddy and dues are gonna get in the comments they're getting in there yeah I'm gonna be CH I'm gonna I'm sure I'm gonna receive like death challenges to play 2014 Legacy against people's non-blue decks here but uh of the world query players are losing their minds yeah yeah well they have to make it to to the like X and two round first you got him go ahead uh so the other the other thing that I wanted to to discuss about this announcement is uh how did you feel about the Legacy part of the announcement the information that they gave us sort of behind the scenes um could you put that in context The Lack of Information about Legacy in the Announcement like what specifically asking about yeah so uh so in comparison you got we got a lot of information about Nadu in the modern a little bit behind the scenes information about grief and about about Nadu and how they felt about the Wonder ring you know they really went into detail even talked about necro dominance and psychic frog right here they touch on the concept of talking about uh psychic frog a lot but they uh in my opinion they didn't go far enough to give us sort of their uh uh they didn't do enough fan services is is is what I'm getting at I don't think I think they needed to say hey Legacy players we're thinking about you a little bit instead of just like here's four paragraphs please leave us alone yeah um of course I would like more attention because I'm I love Legacy I'm really passionate about it I think we're we'll all be kind of in a like healthier Minds state if we make peace with the fact that we have to be like pretty self-sufficient like that know like I said earlier I'm thrilled that we got any attention at all um and there's so many formats now and especially that Legacy is not represented on like the pro tour rcq Regional Championship stage um they're they're probably just not going to be super like active or heavy-handed um similar to the in in the way that they will be with the other formats so yeah I would say it would be nice to have more written and more data and more thoughtfulness but um this is kind of what I in line with what I expected and not losing any sleep over it yeah I think that that's the the the reasonable take is we can't lose any sleep over it I think like the thing that I I got hung up on was um where the the line where they say and talked a lot about psychic frog but then didn't delve into any details about what that talk was about or what was the talk that they were considering in that giving just like a couple bullets of like what but when when you say you talk when you when you lend yourself a card you know that like we're we as a community are going to go okay well we were talking about that card what were you talking about were you having similar conversations to what we were having like a little bit of uh insight there but like yeah after the consistency of how they've done these announcements I am also of the mind that like the fact that they are taking any amount of time is more than they actually have to because they could just tell us to you know they could just say grief is baned yeah and then and then The Potential for a Legacy Community Panel they could like literally the entire band announcement like after all these things where it's like we can go on Twitter and and get angry that sense divining top is not where it should be but like at the at the end of the day like they could just write grief is band and then in the actual section where they talk about the format could just say figure it out yeah sure yeah I mean not it wouldn't be great but that's like ultimately they could and we would get the same amount of information that we got here Reed curveball for you here um you mentioned you know you were uh you were happy that we received any attention um how how do you feel I'm going to put you on the spot here how do you feel about a legacy uh p uh Community panel in in the in the realm of something like the popper Community panel I would say I'm open to it you know no no strong opinion um yeah it's that seems like a model that has worked for other formats so we could clearly see that it's working for they didn't even have anything on this list to talk about yeah like I If Legacy is if we're accepting that it's fully divorced from Wizards organized play Network and not touching the pro tour or the Regional Championship or you know some kind of future Grand Prix equivalent circuit uh I actually the name of the new one is escaping me right now series Spotlight series Spotlight series yep Spotlight Series so anyway if it's not if it's like not a Wizards format and they just want to say hey look we can't give this proper attention like we're gonna hand it off to to the community to to manage it that seems like it would could be a logically consistent decision um Logistics behind that not withstanding they have had they have had Legacy tie in the Pro Tour in the past you know as recently as uh 2018 or so so I maybe naively am not fully giving up Hope on that um in which case it probably makes more sense to to have a a formalized um you know waty oversight ban list but on this uh three years before uh we get some sort of Spotlight series that includes Legacy as a possible thing over under three years over under three years that's a probably pretty pretty good lot I was going to say probably nothing in year one yeah but uh I I'll I'll you know naive naive and optimistic I'm nothing if not naive and optimistic so I'll I'll I'll say yes okay he goes Excitement and New Deck Strategies in a Grief-less Legacy under we're going under Zach Zach you can be old man yelling at Clouds me and Reed are GNA be the young strapping Lads going under I I actually will say that I think it's under because what I think they're going to do is they're going to do a spotlight Series teams and that and that will be the thing that they will like they will like shoehorn in Legacy as like oh yeah you can do it with your friends but we're really focusing on Pioneer and modern or something or standard in this you know like uh that would be my guess got in one thing I'm very interested in now that we've had a couple of hours with grief being banned this Brave New World that we now live Brave New World of knowing that you're not going to be forcibly mold to five every game the format's already solved I I'm I'm curious like you know I'm I'm putting my deck together right after uh we get off the call I'm going to finish putting my deck together to play uh Monday Night Magic Legacy uh with in this brand new world and I suddenly even though there's still a lot of potential problems that you know we've been talking about that we'll have to figure out in this new new era before Eternal weekend I am like a lot more excited to play tonight and and Terminus people than I've been in in quite some time and so I'm I'm curious and for for both of you guys now that like we've settled with grief is gone what excites you most about Legacy right now what cards to play what decks maybe come back out of the woodwork because grief is gone so like there's new uh spots for like how to attack The Meta potential metag game um or the fact that like these blue black X decks no long have four new slots to figure out what cards to toy with and how that's going to create a RI effect I'm just curious like where's your head at are you guys excited for anything I've got a good answer and I bet I could give you a hundred guesses and you would not you would not get get my answer but the first thing j people with me I high tide was like oh you know like I I would became interested in high tide when they unbanned mind's desire and that's like a super fun deck not a particularly fun deck to be like tier one or like the most popular deck but it's fun to see it out there every once in a while you know talking about Niche old cards um you have the you put the biggest smile on Marcus's face if he's listening that that you're like oh yeah high tide is the nut and then you're like but not but like tier two and then his well that like let's let that be a symbolic answer for any deck where you're like okay this is never going to be the best deck but it's fun and maybe I can justify it at like a local store level but you were never justifying that when people were double griefing you you know like like some kind of deck that requires setup or you have to sculpt a hand or you have to have some kind of expensive card you know to to resolve in the mid game like it was just not you know you you couldn't even fool yourself that you going to be able to get away with that when when grief was legal but I think there's a lot of room for combo there's a a lot of room for kind of cool synergies and interactions that uh grief was was putting a hard stop on I have I have two this yeah implicit before you uh jump in Zack is the Banning of synergy is interesting yes yes exactly yeah yeah uh my two answers are so I think I might I might experiment a little bit with teamer Delver go go like you know stifle Wasteland days route uh you know play questing Druid of course um so that's that's an option for me but um I I think uh give it a couple weeks and I think a deck that will actually be uh interesting to check out uh because the sideboard slots would have cleared cleared back up is is playing like uh blue dredge like the muo van go like blue Dredge deck because we're losing those slots that people you know by default we're just throwing in against those reanimator decks now we'll see how the meta shakes out and if R reanimator still becomes like the tier one deck then you know maybe people have to keep those in but if you get that you're GNA be able to get some people on on a on like a a deck like that yeah for sure so you want so we got high so Reed are you are you talking about like you want to try out high tide and are excited about it in like casual play or is that something is that kind of combo deck something that you would legitimately consider for an event like ew well you know there's a like a burden of proof that I would have to actually get out there and win some games with it before I would I would register it for a big tournament but um you know a general concept of competitive magic at least the way I organize my own thoughts is if you're if you're really trying your hardest to win you know that's one thing and you're going to choose one category of decks but if you want to be like 95% competitive like hey I showed up to Monday night Legacy and I went three in one you know like that's a cool fun experience and you could try a pretty wide range of strategies to to be able to get there um so that that's kind of the the area where I'm looking for like health and diversity is can I at least justify it in uh you know the second highest level competition where is it worth wasting a Monday night over yeah exactly exactly you know it's can I can I can I can I take some games off of the top the top decks even if I'm not better than 5050 and then in that vein I have uh one last question that I want to ask about it's it's a pressing thing that uh we've all want wanting to know a two-sided question what is the what type of deck are you most happy to play against from an experience standpoint and which decks currently in the format are you the least in uh happy to play against and I asked that through the lens of everybody who sat down and got double griefed it's not necessarily that grief was too good but it's that the experience was miserable and so I'm curious to know where on on where is your spectrum of like your your oh I'm gonna have so much fun playing this matchup versus I'm gonna have so so little fun playing this matchup that currently exists it's a great question so the number one the the the number one factor is diversity is is King like that's the reason that you play Legacy is to have a diversity of experiences games can end on turn one or they can go to turn 22 and you you know you win with in treat the Angels or something like that my man uh and then the number two is generally you want a large share of your experiences to be such that you felt your decisions mattered so like okay double I got double griefed again didn't matter what cards I brought like I lose good game or uh you know I got Wasteland or chalice or blood mooned and I only got to play one spell this game those are the types of experiences if you have them over and over and over again it's very disc discouraging and not fun it's good to have that stuff in the format and exp experience it once in a while have to worry about it but um you know more I'm looking for I'm looking to play a game where it's like I played a few turns my decisions mattered what card I kept with my Ponder you know how I attacked and blocked what I chose to put play my removal spell on so in that you know it's like kind of the mid-range versus mid range midrange versus control aggro vers mid-range all those categories of matchups fit that bill and then even like how we talked about black red reanimator sometimes you show up and you lose to reanimator and you're like yeah that's on me I didn't respect the deck enough I didn't bring my surgical Underexplored Cards and Potential in Legacy extractions or my lay line to the void so now I know next time I can structure my deck to be prepared I can make a different decision to have a different result and that's the key that's the key to good gaming is like I I want to know that I can make a different decision to have a different result so that that was pretty long-winded answer but th those are kind of the things that I'm looking for in my legacy experiences I was lying when I said I had uh no more questions I have one more because you're you're talk diversity you're talk you're talk of diversity and and and uh arrange of experiences inspired another question um is it it made me think of conversations that I've had with uh a couple of people since the Banning earlier today and talking about like what cards weren't really ever explored or haven't been explored all that much because uh we just were under the presumption that like grief was what you were going to run into 50% of the time and uh the card that came up was pest control as a card that is just like extremely underexplored like nobody's ever seen this card cast in Legacy which seems weird because it seems like a card that would fit the like that our style of of of where the format is just a two Mana Sweeper for for cheap stuff is there any cards that uh come to mind for you Reed that you think are very much underexplored besides reap and compost uh there's some cool stuff out there for sure um yeah pest control and now I put wrath at the skies in the same category as like those are those read as you know if across the whole span of legaacy Life uh lifespan those would read as really strong appealing cards but they probably just weren't really that good you know that good in in a world of uh grief and troll of kazad Doom and turn one to traxa you know turn to a draa um I'm sure there's a lot more you know like I said mind's desire was unbanned recently there's cool stuff going on with beseech the mirror and like a million different ways you can build storm right now um I haven't I didn't prepare an answer for that question so I'm sure there's a lot that that will come to me after we hang up the call there's definitely a lot of stuff that's being held in check by orcish bow Masters you know namely like every one toughness creature ever printed um and a lot lot of card card drawing engines and stuff like that so that's an example of of a card that's maybe uh stifling creative deck building a bit but another card we talked about uh last time you run which was almost exactly a year ago uh about 12 125 days uh since the last time you were on was uh I think dread Moss Knight was the card that we were talking about oh yeah bosswood dread knight from Wilds of eldrin yep yeah I mean there's there's a lot of talk talk about that concept of like if you're willing to be 95% competitive there's a lot of cool stuff that you can bring um there's a lot of really powerful interesting creatures in the one to three Mana um Range that you know you you could you could try out and mix in a couple copies in in your mid-range deck I actually have a pet card right now it's Carnage interpreter you guys know this one no it's bonucci is gonna get so upset at us for not memorizing every car it's from The carav Manor supplemental like clue product Oh My Gosh and it's two red or black hybrid you discard your hand you make four Clues and uh I like that as like I sideboard it in as like I'm gonna trade off resources in the mid-range matchup and then drop the Hammer as the last card in my hand get the four Clues rebuild from there and then I think it's really cool in particular that you can uh in well in grixis Delver every land casts it and you can play it under a blood moon so if somebody's like I'm gonna lock read out of playing spells you know at least there's can get them with a five five Menace that draws four cards see this is this is where I know where you and I land in this post grief world because you're excited about Carnage interpreter making a bunch of Clues and I'm over here trying to cast tamio meets The Story Circle to make a bunch of Clues that's but that's that's the point that I mean that's what's fun is when everyone can dream and everyone can bring the strategy that's fun for them yeah that'ss that's kind of the a perfect point to end end the show on is like when you can actually when Brewing can happen right and now we live in that we live in that world where like Brewing can kind of happen again um but uh yeah Reed it was awesome having you on I really we really appreciate it uh it's always a blast having having you uh pop on to the show especially for an episode like this we your outro can can you confirm that when you uh sleeve up your deck in play Legacy again that the Singleton col command will be there oh yeah yeah Singleton Colon's command you know blow up that blow up that Chalice of the Void when you need it um but yeah thank you guys for inviting me um like I said I've been listening and sorry I couldn't make it for the pre-b Banning show but I appreciate you giving me another invite and uh well this is just as good if not better for sure yeah it's it's great talking about Legacy and happy gaming to everybody who's excited to play again um I know I am awesome catch you guys next thanks for watching before you go I need some help please subscribe to this Channel and do your part to help sustain the Legacy content ecosystem just subscribing to the channel goes a long way to reminding YouTube that people love and support this format now if you really want to go the extra mile you should think about supporting us through patreon both the links for subscription and patreon are right here and if you're listening on an audio format you can go to patreon.com eternal dles thanks so much for watching