NO Bant

Did Gindy play one at the Open? Whatever, it’s just what I need. It’s good against Gut Shot, good for protecting my Geist of Saint Traft.

Now, what to cut? You think how Restoration Angel was clogging up your hand, and four was way too many. Done!

You look through your phone to call Lenny up to tell him about the change, but somehow 40 minutes had passed, and he was back asleep by now.

You put your phone down and turn on the radio. “Somebody I Used to Know” by Gotye is on.

You start to feel something good. You are ready to get crap done.

And just at the best part, you feel your phone vibrate. It’s Grandma; she is concerned and doesn’t fully understand why you would drive over six hours in one day to play Magic (neither do you), but you tell her you’ll be home soon.

She then asks “How’d you do?”

You tell her you got second.

She congratulates you.

You don’t have it in your heart to tell her that all it gets you is a box, meaning that between gas, entry fee, food, and tolls, you’re still down on the day.

You hang up and get back to the drive, as you are just about an hour away.

Tired and out of thoughts, it’s a struggle to make it home. However, the next thing you know it’s 3 AM and you are pulling on to your street.

You run upstairs.

You turn on your computer and load Magic Online. You are all set to go for the 10 AM PTQ.

You are about to head to bed when you see that there are seven in the queue for an M13 Draft.

You join for no other reason than you are a degenerate.

First pick, pack 1, Vampire Nighthawk or Captain of the Watch?

You take the Captain.

Pick 2…

…

…

You rub your eyes and look at the clock: 10:19 AM WTF!!!

You never set your alarm and fell asleep during your draft, missed round 1, and got dropped from the last PTQ of the season. You are enraged, you scream at the top of lungs, and you are tired of this BS.

You slam down your computer screen and leave your house. You don’t know where you are going, and it doesn’t matter. Just some place where there is no Magic.

10:31 AM, you are back in your car driving.

10:49 AM, you feel your phone vibrate again. It’s Lenny asking how round 1 went.

You hang up on him.

You keep driving.

11:25 AM, you realize you are five minutes away from the store you used to play at eleven years ago when you were in high school. You remember you still have your bag in the trunk with your collection. This is it; you’ve had enough, and you are selling everything you have.

11:30 AM, you pull into the parking lot. You walk to the door with your bag hanging off your right shoulder, and you hear “Last call for registration” from the counter.

Out of curiosity, you ask what’s going on.

A younger kid standing to the right of you says, “Vintage tournament for two thousand dollars store credit.”

You can’t believe what you are thinking, but the field looks soft and you want to play. Then again, you don’t have a deck. You take a look around the room and see Chris and Blake, two kids you met yesterday at the PTQ. They immediately ask if you took it down last night. You tell them what happened, and they shake their heads and quickly change the subject.

“What are you playing?” Blake asks.

“I don’t have a deck” is your response.

Chris mentions how their buddy Josh has this built and is willing to lend it out.

Grixis Control

Josh

Test deck on 08-19-2012

Vintage

Creatures (8)

• 4 Dark Confidant
• 1 Blightsteel Colossus
• 3 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (2)

• 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (15)

• 2 Island
• 2 Volcanic Island
• 3 Underground Sea
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Library of Alexandria
• 1 Tolarian Academy
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Scalding Tarn

Spells (35)

• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Brainstorm
• 3 Mana Drain
• 2 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Yawgmoth's Will
• 4 Force of Will
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Hurkyl's Recall
• 1 Time Walk
• 1 Ancestral Recall
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Time Vault
• 1 Merchant Scroll
• 1 Tinker
• 1 Voltaic Key
• 1 Black Lotus
• 1 Mox Emerald
• 1 Mox Jet
• 1 Mox Pearl
• 1 Mox Ruby
• 1 Mox Sapphire
• 1 Repeal
• 3 Mental Misstep
• 1 Flusterstorm

Sideboard

• 2 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Pyroclasm
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 4 Leyline of the Void
• 4 Ingot Chewer
• 1 Ravenous Trap
• 1 Flusterstorm

You can’t turn it down, even though you haven’t played Vintage in about ten years, plus the deck looks like a lot of fun. You pay your thirty dollars, and seven rounds later you find yourself in the Top 8.

In the quarterfinals, you turn 2 your opponent in game 1; then in game 2 you drop a turn 1 Jace. You move on to the Top 4.

You and the others in Top 4 agree to split. In the semis, you are up against Meddling Mage himself (Chris Pikula).

You lose two close games, but you are happy with your result. The day has somewhat turned around. You are about to leave after returning the deck to Josh when Chris introduces you to his brother Brian.

Brian is a casual player, as Magic is his third hobby behind poker and chess. He hands you a Legacy deck that he wants you to take a look at.

“What is it?” you ask.

He replies with, “NO Bant.”

You figure it’s an outdated deck, since Natural Order decks have been off the market for quite some time now. But you say “Sure” and take a look anyway.

He then challenges you to a few games, and he wins over and over again.

U/W Control, Team Italia, Burn, Goblins, RUG—nothing can win against it.

You ask him if he’s ever played this in a tournament before, and he tells you he won a local invitational tournament with it. He even wrote a report on it but never submitted to any site. He hands you his laptop, and you start to read his report on the deck.

“Hey guys! Brian here! Some of you might have seen me around the local shop, but if you haven’t at least I’ve introduced myself now. Anyway, last week was the big Legacy invitational tournament, and I ended up winning the whole thing. In this article, I want to show you guys what I played and talk about each card specific to certain matchups and what role the card has in the deck. So before I go any further, take a look at my decklist.

NO Bant

Brian

Test deck on 08-19-2012

Legacy

Creatures (15)

• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 3 Vendilion Clique
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 3 Rhox War Monk
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 1 Progenitus
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Scavenging Ooze

Planeswalkers (4)

• 4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (20)

• 1 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 1 Island
• 2 Tundra
• 2 Tropical Island
• 3 Savannah
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 4 Misty Rainforest

Spells (21)

• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Swords to Plowshares
• 4 Natural Order
• 2 Ponder
• 3 Green Sun's Zenith

Sideboard

• 2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
• 2 Jotun Grunt
• 2 Ethersworn Canonist
• 3 Relic of Progenitus
• 2 Path to Exile
• 2 Luminarch Ascension
• 2 Spell Pierce

As you can probably see, this list’s starting point was the once popular NO RUG deck, but I decided for the current metagame white would serve more of a purpose against the popular decks.

As of now I would say the most popular decks are RUG, Maverick, Dredge, Merfolk, U/W Control, and Show and Tell, so I will focus on those matchups.

Against those six decks, I think this deck just about even against most of them. None of them will blow it away except for when Dredge gets a nut draw, and even then it can slow them down with a Force of Will or one of the sideboard hate cards it has against them.

On to my card choices!

Let’s start with the lands as they are pretty straightforward. You want enough fetchlands to be able to thin out your deck and have them put to good use with Brainstorm and Jace. You also want enough dual lands, since you are playing a three-color deck; however, since Wasteland, Price of Progress, and Blood Moon all get played, having one of each basic is nice. Also, some decks still run Choke; you may be a blue deck, but you want to make sure it does very little against you and keep it that way. Besides that, the only really unique land is one Dryad Arbor. He is very important to the deck, as he is a great creature to sacrifice to your Natural Order and can be fetched up with a Green Sun’s Zenith or a fetchland.

Now let’s move on the creatures.

1 Scavenging Ooze – He is a nice one-of as so many decks in Legacy are based on the graveyard, and he can become even bigger than Tarmogoyf. Originally I had another Ooze in the board, but I want to try out Jotun Grunt since having a 4/4 guy against RUG is important because it is always out of Lightning Bolt range while keeping their graveyard in check without having to spend any mana. If the Grunt turns out to be not so good then for sure you want another Ooze in the board. Another small advantage is that Ooze is green, but I’m not sure if that’s too important since siding out your “combo” is something that happens fairly often.

3 Rhox War Monk – As I mentioned above about staying out of Lightning Bolt range, War Monk does just that and more. He can come down on turn 2 with the help of a Noble Hierarch and can gain you a ton of life all while you are hitting their life total. On top of all that, War Monk is both green and blue, meaning you can sacrifice him to Natural Order and pitch him to Force of Will. I considered playing four of him and zero Finks, but for now I like the 3-1 split.

4 Noble Hierarch – He is pretty self-explanatory and helps you in so many ways. If I had to pick, I would say the most important role he plays is ramping out all your powerhouse cards such as Jace and Natural Order, but obviously he does more. Fixing your mana, giving you another guy to sac to Natural Order, and pumping your attacker are all just as important given the scenario.

1 Birds of Paradise – This is pretty much another Noble Hierarch, just slightly worse since flying is not that relevant and losing exalted is a drawback. However, you still want another one-mana accelerant, and Birds of Paradise is best for the job.

1 Progenitus – One copy of him is all you need. Obviously he is not what you want in your opening hand, but between Jace, Brainstorm and Vendilion Clique, you can almost always find a way to put him back into your deck so you will be able to search him out with Natural Order. Against decks where resolving a four-mana sorcery might be tough or a deck that you know will have answers to him, don’t be afraid to side him out along with Natural Orders and just become a midrange Bant deck.

1 Qasali Pridemage – He is nice because you can Green Sun’s Zenith him up when you need to take care of an annoying artifact or enchantment. Besides that he is a nice attacker when you go on the aggressive route. If your metagame is full of Counter-Top decks and decks with Stoneforge Mystic, you might want another one in the sideboard in place of a Llawan, Cephalid Empress.

3 Vendilion Clique – Clique has been a staple in most blue decks for a while now, and it fits very nicely in this one. As I mentioned earlier, you can Clique yourself to get rid of a Progenitus to find something you need. Or a more common play is to Clique your opponent instead to take whatever card they may have to stop a Natural Order from resolving. On top of that, it is a great attacker and can end a game quickly with the help of an exalted creature or two.

1 Kitchen Finks —Straightforward, solid creature that is very annoying for some decks to handle.

Now on to the spells!

3 Green Sun’s Zenith – Great card to search up what you need at any given moment, but you don’t want to play four as they can sometimes clog up your hand.

4 Swords to Plowshares – Best removal spell you could be playing. You are not a super aggressive deck so you don’t care about giving your opponent the life, otherwise you would want to be playing Path to Exile instead as most zoo decks do.

4 Brainstorm – Best card-drawing spell in Legacy and allows you to do lots of card searching.

4 Natural Order – The card your deck is built around, but it’s not a necessity to win. It will get sided out a decent amount of the time, but you still want to be playing four due to the power of it.

2 Ponder – Some more cheap card searching to help your draws out. I prefer it over any of the other one-mana card drawers besides Brainstorm.

4 Force of Will – A great card to stop whatever your opponent is doing or to force through something powerful on your side. The card disadvantage doesn’t matter much if you forcing through a Jace or such.

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor – A card that will help you win so many games that you really shouldn’t be winning and another reason why you want to be playing blue. I wouldn’t want to play any less than four as it is a card you almost always want to draw and is the best weapon you have to stop opposing Jaces.

Ok, so there you have it! That was the maindeck I played and the reasons behind my card choices. Now let me talk just briefly about the sideboard.

2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress – This comes in pretty much only against Merfolk, unless there is another blue creature deck out there. Should be changed for something else if Merfolk becomes less popular.

2 Path to Exile – Great against RUG, Elves, or any other creature deck. It’s also fine to Path your own guy in certain situations.

2 Ethersworn Canonist – One of your best options against Storm decks or High Tide. It can come in against other random combo decks like Enchantress or Belcher.

2 Spell Pierce – Good against any control or combo deck and is much needed as you are light on counterspells in the maindeck.

2 Luminarch Ascension – Great against slow control decks.

3 Relic of Progenitus – Much needed graveyard hate for the Dredge matchup. It also comes in against any deck with Tarmogoyf or knight of the reliquary.

2 Jotun Grunt– Same as Relic but also shines against RUG as it should be bigger than all of their guys while doing extra work against Dredge decks.

Well, that’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading!

Take it easy.

-Brian”

You think to yourself, Wow, a fairly decent article. Maybe this kid knows more than I originally thought. You ask him if he wants to talk about Standard, but he says he has to go. Besides, it’s getting late, and you have homework due for sociology class.

Bernard, Bernard, BERNARD!!!

You wake up to, “Did you do your assignment? If not, you are going to fail this class and never get into college unless you ace your final,” from Ms. Irene

Then it hits you: was this all a dream?

You lean over to take out your book from your backpack, but there are no books in there, just a binder full of duals.

Thanks for reading.

Gerard

[Editor’s note: In case you’re wondering, this article was penned entirely by Gerard Fabiano.]