Four lands to ten? Don’t tell me the odds!
“That was a rough game. You were pretty short on mana the whole game.”
—Unnamed Opponent, 3k Legacy Event at Jupiter Games, Vestal, NY
My board:
2 Tropical Island, 2 Volcanic Island, Grim Lavamancer.
His board:
8 Islands or Plains, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, 2 Mishra’s Factory.
No, I didn’t win this game. But I had the ability to and wasn’t able to play well enough to get there. How does a deck win when its opponent has more lands on the battlefield and far more powerful spells?
By drawing more spells over the course of a game, even if they are individually weaker.
Neither my opponent nor I had any real way of getting significantly ahead in cards; I could get value from Grim Lavamancer on some of his creatures, while he had Jace and a handful of 2-for-1 creatures that left tiny bodies behind.
Instead of drawing six lands as the game went long… I drew six spells. Spells that interacted favorably against my opponent’s threats.
How did my opponent manage to out-land me to such an outlandish degree? I was running significantly fewer lands in my list; 18 to his 25. And I didn’t think anything was wrong with this.
Legacy decks have historically experimented with the number of lands they run; from as few as zero, one, or two in Goblin Charbelcher combo decks to 43 or more in land-based control decks. Ignoring the clear outliers in both directions, we can look at the real numbers.
Most Legacy decks will run between 16 and 26 lands. This covers the entire gambit, from Tendrils of Agony or High Tide Storm combo on the low end, to Stoneforge Mystic control decks a the high end.
Conversely, these figures mean most Legacy decks will play 34 to 44 spells in a 60-card deck.
Imagine if we created a Legacy deck that traded one for one with every spell cast by an opponent. Thoughtseize? Daze. Snapcaster Mage? Spell Snare. Tarmogoyf? Dismember.
How would this hypothetical Legacy deck manage to win, if all it ever did was trade? By taking advantage of the already identified mana disparity across the format. By running fewer lands and more spells, this deck can topdeck better in the long game and grind out an advantage without running situational means to get ahead, like Standstill or Ancestral Visions.
Creatures (11)
Lands (17)
Spells (32)
Every card in this deck needs to be able to pull its weight at all points of the game. The threats are all designed to win the game on their own and put pressure on an opponent without the need of another spell. There is another unique component to this threat base; all of these cards only cost a single mana (albeit in different colors). One-mana threats have tremendous advantages over two-mana threats because they synergize better with the rest of the deck and enter the battlefield sooner. While this seems like a minor difference in a long Legacy game, a one-mana threat lets more mana be utilized to disrupt an opponent’s game plan while advancing your own.
Grim Lavamancer and Nimble Mongoose are estranged friends; both wanted to abuse the graveyard, but in different ways. It’s okay though, trust me. Our game plan will simply have to morph around whatever threat we happened to draw at the time and what is situationally more powerful. In some matchups, Nimble Mongoose can hang around as a 1/1 while Grim Lavamancer does the heavy lifting, while in others Grim Lavamancer will simply turn sideways for a point of damage while Nimble Mongoose will be getting in for three. Often, there will be enough fuel in the graveyard that Grim Lavamancer can pick off a lonely threat while Nimble Mongoose is still hitting hard. If you have both halves of this pair in play at the same time, be careful you don’t accidentally kill the Nimble Mongoose by letting it be blocked by a two-power creature, then activating Grim Lavamancer on some other target to lose threshold.
The last creature in the deck is the strange being known as “Checklist card.” While I don’t particularly enjoy playing with proxies, the look on an opponent’s face when you cast a Japanese checklist card is well worth it.
Delver of Secrets flips easily in this sort of deck; there are 30 or so instants and sorceries. On top of that, Brainstorm and Ponder can set up Delver of Secrets, and the fetchlands can shuffle away the revealed card if it wasn’t what we wanted to draw.
Delver of Secrets has some interesting play dynamics to it as well. Say we’re playing against Ad Nauseam Tendrils. They Duressed last turn, taking our only Force of Will and leaving us with a meaningless Daze. We look at the top card and see a second Force of Will staring back at us. How fortunate! More importantly, we have a choice: reveal the Force of Will and attack for three or pretend to miss on the Delver of Secrets and just swing with a bare 1/1. This ploy won’t always get there against a better opponent, but it can easily fool a weaker or inexperienced player.
0 Snapcaster Mage
The advantage of this deck, by and large, is the ability to cheat on mana count. With only eighteen or so lands, there simply isn’t the ability to fully capitalize on Snapcaster Mage. Sure, this deck can increase its manabase to the mid-twenties to support Snapcaster Mage, but that requires cutting business spells… and the whole point of playing Snapcaster Mage is to have more business in the deck. Snapcaster Mage will have a home in Legacy somewhere and someday, but it won’t be in this vein of r/U/g deck.
0 Tarmogoyf
I’m playing Green. I’m not playing Tarmogoyf. I’m crazy.
Except I’m not. Tarmogoyf is no longer the sacred cow of Legacy; many decks have relegated it to a Green Sun’s Zenith target or less. In this deck, Tarmogoyf is just a dumb beater. A dumb beater that gets hit by Spell Snare and Swords to Plowshares, losing valuable tempo in the early turns of a game. At two mana, he forces this deck to tap more lands than it really wants to, unless the game goes long.
Even against the degenerate combo decks, where Tarmogoyf can quickly close out a game in chunks of five life, it is at best a turn 3 play to leave mana up for Spell Snare or a risky tap out on the second turn.
The traditional reasons for wanting Tarmogoyf have largely faded into the sunset of American Legacy. Since fewer other decks are running Tarmogoyf, it doesn’t need to trade with them anymore. The printing of Dismember gives non-black and non-white decks the ability to kill all but very late-game Tarmogoyfs in the decks that do run Tarmogoyf. The removal of Tarmogoyf hurts some matchups in the fringe of today’s Legacy format, such as Zoo and Goblins.
4 Force of Will
Despite the inherent card disadvantage of Force of Will and the many matchups where it is sideboarded out, Tempo Threshold is one of the main decks where Force of Will will always be a four-of. Typically, there will be one point in a game where a threat needs to be answered; past the obvious Ad Nauseams, Force of Will hedges against Knight of the Reliquary and can fight over an edict effect trying to defeat Nimble Mongoose.
4 Daze
Daze will always be a three- or four-of in the maindeck, as it slices through the Legacy metagame at a unique angle. Even if an opponent knows you are playing Daze; even if an opponent knows you have a Daze in your hand… it’s still doing its job. Waiting until there are five lands to cast Jace, the Mind Sculptor gives this deck more turns to develop its board state and put an opponent on the back foot with threats.
Daze is significantly worse on the draw than on the play and as such will be sideboarded out a good amount of the time.
4 Stifle
Traditionally, Stifle would be used to counter opposing fetchland activations, putting Tempo Threshold ahead on lands in the early stages of the game. Despite Stifle still fulfilling this role, turning it to fetchlands isn’t always the right play. Oftentimes, their fetchlands can be allowed to resolve unmolested; those aren’t the important triggered abilities in this matchup. Frequently, Stifle will be a utility card destined to turn Stoneforge Mystic into Squire, stop Mishra’s Factory from making itself a 3/3, or turn a Candelabra of Tawnos into a dud.
Stifle can target opposing Wastelands as well, stabilizing an otherwise mana-light hand.
4 Spell Snare
Let’s face it; this is a format centered around degenerate two-drops. Hymn to Tourach, Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Snapcaster Mage, Stoneforge Mystic, Infernal Tutor, Exhume, and Silvergill Adept are all very tempting targets to Spell Snare, across the gambit of Legacy decks. Spell Snare synergizes with the one-drops in the deck to advance our game plan, while at the same time delaying our opponent from putting a threat on the board.
3 Dismember
Dismember is the card I can singlehandedly cite for the renewed playability of Tempo Threshold. Finally, this deck can remove opposing Tarmogoyfs, rather than tapping them down and swinging past them. In conjunction with Nimble Mongoose, Dismember can tag-team to take down bigger foes.
Four life is a small price to pay for Dismember; it’s the equivalent of a single Tarmogoyf hit. Dismember is the only card in this deck that truly uses life as a resource. Dismember also justifies the removal of Fire / Ice, as it and Grim Lavamancer each act as better halves of Fire / Ice.
4 Lightning Bolt
Lightning Bolt is a great way to close out games and deal with Jace, the Mind Sculptor. It tag teams with most other cards in this deck to take down creatures and opponents. Does it really need a justification?
4 Brainstorm, 3 Ponder
The cantrips in this deck can be discussed together; they all help power through the deck, find business spells, and grow Nimble Mongoose and fuel Grim Lavamancer. Brainstorm is of particular importance, as many cards in this deck become far worse as the game goes long, such as Daze or excess lands.
2 Mental Note
Mental Note is a cantrip too… but it does so much more. It shuffles away dead cards from a Brainstorm or Ponder, at the very least. More importantly, Mental Note enables Grim Lavamancer and Nimble Mongoose to sit side-by-side as threats and helps either of them on their own. Mental Note is part of the glue that makes this graveyard deck a possibility.
4 Wasteland
Wasteland handles many of the problematic lands present in Legacy. In this deck, Wasteland can only cast Force of Will, Daze, Dismember, and a handful of sideboard cards.
More restraint is required with Wasteland than has been required in other versions of this deck; Wastelands should predominantly be turned towards utility lands, rather than dual lands. Although situations arise where Wasteland can set an opponent back far enough to be prudent, or take a land-light opponent out of the game entirely, Wasteland is a very difficult spell (or at least, it acts like one) to get full value from.
3 Tropical Island
4 Volcanic Island
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
13 lands seems awfully light… until you realize every spell in this deck costs one mana or has an alternative casting cost. This deck can win quite easily on the back of a single mana. The ten cantrips also aid in finding only one or two lands, keeping the rest in the deck, as flooding out is one of the easiest ways to lose the small advantages this deck builds up.
There is a slight bias towards red mana, as the deck only plays four maindeck green cards and a handful of sideboarded ones. In a game, Volcanic Islands are generally fetched, with Tropical Islands tutored up only when absolutely necessary (say, to cast a creature).
One of the glaring omissions from this deck is two-drops. This allows Tempo Threshold to cheat even more on its land count than it already has. It also makes Spell Snare a completely dead card for opponents in game one, a fact they may not realize until game two or even game three. This virtual card advantage pushes even more advantage towards the Tempo Threshold side of the pendulum.
I suppose some of you want to see a sideboard and maybe some sideboarding advice for the deck?
There is good news and bad news. The bad news: You can only beat what you plan to beat, and you’ll be a dog everywhere else. The good news: Somewhere in red, blue, green, and Phyrexian mana are cards to beat every deck in the format.
Generally, the cards to board out are Daze and Stifle. Force of Will can occasionally be boarded out, but most of the time is still necessary. Even a deck like Zoo, where Force of Will is typically bad, can sideboard Choke or Elspeth, Knight-Errant, which is hard to defeat.
Let me emphasize this again. Figure out the expected metagame for an event, then construct a sideboard based around that. There really is no one-size-fits-all approach here.
Rough / Tumble – Goblins, Merfolk, Elves. Rough / Tumble gets the nod over Pyroclasm because it lets Delver of Secrets live through it, and the matchups where sweepers are boarded in do not have fliers.
Divert – Hymn to Tourach-based decks, in particular U/B. Divert is strong in the early turns and quickly becomes bad.
Ancient Grudge – Generic. Typical artifact removal of choice, since flashback generates value.
Nature’s Claim – If you’re worried about enchantments too, this is the second best bet, with Krosan Grip at about the same level.
Reverent Silence – For the Enchantress player in your life…
Flusterstorm / Spell Pierce – Flusterstorm has been getting the nod from me recently, as it stays live longer against decks like Reanimator. Spell Pierce is really only necessary to stop Jace.
Envelop / Dispel – More situational counterspells can be called for at some point in a metagame’s development. However, right now these spells are too narrow in a sideboard.
Submerge – Knight of the Reliquary, Zoo. Another key piece of the puzzle against Knight of the Reliquary-based decks, Submerge offers a major tempo gain and quasi Time Walk. One of the common plays with Submerge is to wait until an opponent activates Knight of the Reliquary; with the search on the stack, a quick Submerge will send Knight of the Reliquary somewhere in the middle of their deck. Be careful with this ploy; an opponent with a single Forest can sacrifice it to Knight of the Reliquary, forcing you to pay retail on this glorified bounce spell.
Gilded Drake – Knight of the Reliquary, Reanimator. Alongside Submerge, Gilded Drake will trade with a Knight of the Reliquary; a Knight of the Reliquary that is going to be far bigger than the 3/3 an opponent gets in return. Reanimator players will typically tutor up Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to bring back to play. Gilded Drake is one of the few means for RUG to recover from an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite on the battlefield.
Red Elemental Blast – Merfolk, Jace Control, Hive Mind, Reanimator (weak). Winning counterspell wars against blue decks and destroying various Merfolk, Red Elemental Blasts are one of the biggest draws to red.
Propaganda – Goblins, Merfolk, Dredge (weak), Propaganda effects can slow down even the fastest of aggro strategies. It is another tool against faster decks.
Surgical Extraction, Tormod’s Crypt – Graveyard hate is a tricky subject in Legacy, and like most decisions largely based on the expected metagame; Surgical Extraction for Reanimator, and Tormod’s Crypt for Dredge. Wheel of Sun and Moon is too slow to get online, and Relic of Progenitus isn’t particularly effective since it removes all graveyards.
Tempo Threshold is not an easy deck to pilot. There are no “I wins.” There is no “easy mode.” There is no magical Jace, the Mind Sculptor that can keep you in a game that otherwise would have been lost.
Every game is winnable. From the first land drop to the last Lightning Bolt, Tempo Threshold gives you the tools to win any game. The deck will reward players that have the ability to play it well, and punish those who play it poorly.
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