After playing Snapcaster Mage for ten rounds of Legacy against gauntlet decks ranging from Dredge and Reanimator to Merfolk, Zoo, U/W, and B/W, I feel comfortable telling you that Snapcaster Mage is a better Legacy card than Dark Confidant. I’m sure many of you will disagree, so let’s compare the two.
In a deck built to gain advantage from Dark Confidant, you have to cast your 2/1 in your main phase, pass the turn, have him live, have them take their turn, have him live, untap, and get to “gain value”—in this case, draw a card and maybe lose some life for the privilege. It’s generally advisable to cast Dark Confidant on an early turn of the game, since advantage from Bob is measured by how many turns he survives. If he’s in your hand, he isn’t doing anything for you.
In a deck built to gain advantage from Snapcaster Mage, you don’t want to cast him on turn two, when they haven’t had an opportunity to Spell Snare or Lightning Bolt or Swords to Plowshares anything you’ve done. You can cast him at instant speed. When you cast him, you will not only “gain value” from the 2/1, you will gain the exact value you want to. Bob wants you to play discard spells—after all, you want to protect him from removal, plus he’s black, so mise well—whereas Tiago wants you to play counterspells—you want to counter something they do twice, plus he’s blue, so why not play some of the best cards in the format? This looks kind of even, right?
The difference is actually enormous when you factor in Riptide Laboratory. Riptide Lab is what makes Snapcaster Mage’s value spike in a Stage Three endgame scenario—you know, the ones where you have around ten lands each and not much in the way of action. If you have ten lands with a Riptide Laboratory and a Snapcaster Mage, and they have ten lands and a Silvergill Adept or a Tarmogoyf or a Dark Confidant, you’re way ahead. In this situation, your Snapcaster Mage is a five-mana instant-speed Recoup with buyback that fogs a creature if you want it to. It can be a Flametongue Kavu if that’s what you need right now. It can lock a combo opponent out of a game by flashing back Stifle and Spell Snare. Dark Confidant could just reveal an endless stream of lands, and you could die to their Tarmogoyf. It could reveal all of your Hymn to Tourachs and Thoughtseizes as they peel their one spell per turn and cast it, effectively negating your “advantage.” Bob could reveal a four-drop, a three-drop, and a Force of Will and you could die because you got attacked twice earlier in the game. Snapcaster Mage will never do you like that.
The only question I had as I flew out of Nashville was “How am I going to build the best Snapcaster Mage deck in Legacy?” I knew I would have to beat Dredge, Reanimator, and U/W multiple times, and it couldn’t hurt to find a way to not lose to Knight of the Reliquary as well.
My initial inspiration came from Eric English, who wrote a tournament report about his first-place finish at a Jupiter Games tournament here. For those who don’t know, Jupiter Games is very likely the store in the United States that attracts the most Legacy talent for every tournament. I cut my teeth there, back in the day. Notable attendees include GP champion James Rynkiewicz, Bryant Cook, Alex Bertoncini, Adam Barnello, and Eli Kassis, among many others. These are not easy tournaments to win, and so I sat up and took note. His list, for those of you who don’t want to keep tabbing back and forth, is below.
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (21)
Spells (25)
This list was already on my mind when Gerry IMed me last Tuesday to talk about the state of blue control in Legacy. He asked me what I thought of my Counterbalance deck from Nashville. I told him that I liked it, that I got flooded a little too much, and that I wanted to cast Sensei’s Divining Top in the blue mirror.
He told me that he wanted to play a ton of basic lands and cut Jace, the Mind Sculptor for Fact or Fiction so that he wouldn’t lose an early land to Wasteland and so that he could Snapcaster Mage people a ton. I told him that at that point—the point where you have a ton of basics and are going super long anyway—Snapcaster Mage is no longer your best card, but is simply another value card in your long-game control deck. Sure, it’s good, but so are Vedalken Shackles, Cryptic Command, and other blue million-drops.
I wanted to play a deck that played the game in such a way that Snapcaster Mage was actually the best use of its mana on any given turn. In order to do that, I had to want it both early and late, which pushed me toward a control deck that wanted to grind people out with Snapcaster flexibility and recursion. After all, if I’m always two-for-one-ing my opponent with Snapcaster Mage and I have Brainstorm to fix my balance of spells to lands, I can play either a land-destruction game with Wasteland and Stifle or a long game with Spell Snare, Counterspell, Vendilion Clique, and Snapcaster Mage into Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Gerry and I split when it became clear that he was still interested in making Ancestral Vision happen. He criticized me for considering Stifle, stating multiple times over the course of the weekend that “Stifle is one of those cards that you can draw on turn five and just be dead because your card does nothing.” I asked him if he had played Stifle much in Legacy, and he reminded me that he had played it in his BUG deck from SCG Open: Pittsburgh. Still, I had spent most of spring 2011 playing Stifle, and I remembered that it did a lot more than its haters gave it credit for. To give you the short list:
- Punishes people for keeping one-land fetchland hands on the draw (or the play, if they just say go after putting it on the table)
- Kills Narcomoeba
- Stops Cephalid Coliseum
- Bricks Animate Dead
- Squires Stoneforge Mystic
- Saves a removal spell against Kira
- Holds off Goblin Ringleader
- Parries Wasteland
- Stunts Wild Nacatl
- Embarrasses Qasali Pridemage
- Buys a turn against Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
- Buys a turn against Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
- Counters the triggered ability of Phyrexian Dreadnought
…more on that last one in a sec.
“What does your deck DO? You don’t have a way to take advantage of the tempo you can create from Stifle/Wasteland early, you don’t have anything that blocks, and your land drops are worth more than theirs because of Riptide Laboratory, so you should probably just have Mishra’s Factory over Wasteland anyway. This isn’t a coherent deck.”
You know what? All of those criticisms are right. Gerry had a ton of very good reasons to dislike my deck. The way in which I came to my Sunday 75 was not based on the solid theoretical bases that he employs to build his decks. My Snapcaster Control deck is neither the best possible tempo deck nor the best possible inevitability control deck. For reference, the list:
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (25)
I knew I didn’t want Grim Lavamancer in my Snapcaster Mage deck, since it’s not like I’m cracking that many fetchlands and Wastelands nor having that many creatures die. I knew I would want spells in my graveyard more than I would want to activate Grim Lavamancer, so having both creatures in my deck was not a reality.
I also felt that Tarmogoyf wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing in a lot of matchups. As it turned out, I was wrong, but let me explain how I got there so you can understand why you might not want them in your deck for some sideboard games. I thought I was going to play against a lot of Reanimator, Storm, and U/W Stoneforge. Against none of those decks do I want Tarmogoyf. He’s big, dumb, and eats Swords to Plowshares for breakfast, Jace’s -1 activation for lunch, and Snapcaster Mage-flashbacked Swords to Plowshares for dinner. It was not a card I envisioned being good for me in a meaningful way. Sure, there were matchups where I wanted to block creatures and where my Lightning Bolts and Dismembers would be overworked—Dredge, Zoo, B/W, and so on—but those matchups seemed more like the exception than the rule.
The reason I felt that I didn’t need Tarmogoyf was that I was also drawing on AJ Sacher U/R Control deck from Charlotte for inspiration. His list is below.
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (26)
Although I started with Eric deck as an idea, I moved far closer to AJ’s deck for a template. Where both players had Grim Lavamancer to control creatures, though, I knew I wanted four Snapcaster Mage and two Riptide Laboratory. I had one in Nashville, didn’t draw it as much as I wanted to, and so decided that I wanted two.
Since I didn’t have Tarmogoyf, I didn’t really need green, right? Well, not quite. I knew I wanted options on sideboard cards (flashing back Ancient Grudge, for example), so I would still want at least one Tropical Island. When I came back to AJ’s list after determining that I didn’t want Tarmogoyf in my maindeck, I realized that Trinket Mage for Phyrexian Dreadnought was exactly the interaction I needed to tie together my matchup against non-white, non-black decks.
The problem with Stifle is that it’s a high-variance card. Sometimes, you play against a ton of three-color decks that can’t help but lose to Stifle and Wasteland. Other times, you play against Merfolk five times and want to flip the table every time you draw a Stifle. Phyrexian Dreadnought goes a long way toward helping you out against Merfolk, as it’s a way to kill them very quickly once you’ve Flametongue’d their first couple threats. Having Trinket Mage in my deck as another way to grind people out seemed pretty strong—he’s a Wizard; he trades with Mishra’s Factory; he defends Jace; and he tutors up “the kill” against Merfolk.
Trinket Mage gets Sensei’s Divining Top, which is the card I want in blue mirrors the most. In my games against blue decks in Nashville, it was Top and not Counterbalance that would win games for me. This has been true for as long as Top and Counterbalance have been played in Legacy, but it bears repeating: Sensei’s Divining Top is the card that is killing you, not Counterbalance.
I didn’t mind having an Engineered Explosives as a generally good hedge in a three-color Trinket Mage strategy. After sideboard against Reanimator and Dredge, I had six very live cards (three Surgical Extraction, two Trinket Mage, one Tormod’s Crypt) and four insane follow-ups to Surgical Extraction (flash it back for free with Snapcaster Mage). I was close to adding Pithing Needle, but I realized that there was absolutely nothing I wanted to Needle that was played in the format. I did end up adding a Seat of the Synod, though, both as a way to make Civic Wayfinder into Jace, the Mind Sculptor happen and to give me Choke insurance, since that card is all sorts of problems for this deck.
Once I made those decisions, I realized that I just never wanted to tap mana on my main phase for the first few turns. As a result, I didn’t want Mishra’s Factory, since at least part of the job of Mishra’s Factory is to attack. If I can just attack with Vendilion Clique or Snapcaster Mage and keep all my mana up to maximize combinations of Riptide Lab activations + recasting Snapcaster + flashing back spells + casting spells from my hand, why would I ever want to tap two lands to deal them two damage? Let’s not even get into what happens if they kill my land while I’m trying to sneak in a few points, as that’s a pretty big disaster. No, sir, I would much rather have Wasteland. I never have to activate it when I don’t want to; I get to kill Mutavaults uncounterably; and I can even beat up on people who have the misfortune of getting manascrewed in the control mirror!
After determining that I wanted 4 Wasteland and 2 Riptide Laboratory, I started figuring out how many blue sources and red sources I needed to make sure I could have UUR on turn three. I referred back to AJ’s list and found a lot of things that I liked—nine fetchlands, five dual lands, and three basics. I knew I would want another blue source, since I had Counterspell and Snapcaster Mage into Brainstorm or Spell Snare, whereas he had Daze and Fire / Ice. Gerry convinced me to add another land (beyond the one I was already adding) and to cut Academy Ruins, which got me to my nine-fetch, five-dual, three-basic, six-colorless, one Seat manabase. Still, we weren’t done yet.
My sideboard was still up in the air when I sat down to battle the Legacy Challenge on Saturday. For that tournament, I was sideboarding my second Tropical Island as a 25th land and playing four Volcanic Island maindeck. When I showed Gerry, he told me off for wasting a sideboard slot, arguing that I didn’t need all four Volcanic Islands anyway. I took his advice, cutting the fourth Volcanic to add the second maindeck Tropical and replacing the sideboard Trop with a third Surgical Extraction. As luck would have it, I boarded my Surgical Extractions in almost as much as my Red Elemental Blasts, so that swap was a pretty big success.
The four REB/Pyroblast cards in the sideboard are another cornerstone of the deck. As I put it to Glenn Jones on Sunday morning, “If Pyroblast is as good as I think it is, then I have the best Snapcaster deck in the format. If it’s not, then my deck is pretty bad.” I boarded in the Blasts in seven out of ten matches. For those of you who think that the two/two split doesn’t matter, it does—if I were playing U/W Stoneforge against this deck, I’d board in a Surgical Extraction or two if it meant I could KO all of their REBs. It’s an entirely avoidable blowout, so keep the split as it is.
Before I get into what I would change for next week, a quick aside on tournament preparation:
A lot of people mail in articles on how you need sleep before tournaments, how you should do X and Y and Z and this will give you a better shot at being successful, and how important eating is during a tournament. Let me offer the other side of the argument: every time I’ve had lunch in the middle of a tournament, I’ve lost the next three rounds. I’m not arguing that the two are causally related, since I’m not in the habit of intentionally throwing matches in the middle of a tournament. I am saying that, for me, eating in the middle of a tournament correlates strongly with a losing record afterwards. Why could this be? Perhaps going from hungry to satiated causes a shift in my mentality and implodes my desire to win. Perhaps eating breaks my focus and causes me to pay less attention to the next match, instead creating thoughts of happiness about how great that sandwich was. Regardless, I didn’t eat lunch mid-tournament for the first in months and succeeded. Most likely, it means nothing. Still, examine your mindset before and after you eat during a tournament. How much do you want to win after you eat? How focused are you? Are you playing at the same level? If you’re worse off for having eaten, it might be advisable to stick to water until you don’t have to play a round. After all, the best reward for a round spent drawing into top eight is a nice, leisurely walk to grab some dinner.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to this list:
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (25)
Given that Calosso won the tournament with Tops and Counterbalances, you can count on at least a few people playing those eight cards next weekend. They might not be Delving or Lavamancing, but they will take the success of a Counterbalance strategy as an indicator that it’s okay to break out the artifacts and enchantments again. Conversely, U/W lost both semifinals to Red Blast decks, so expect either an exodus from U/W or a shift in how U/W is built away from blue trumps (Jace, Vendilion) and toward white and colorless trumps (Elspeth, Shackles). No matter what, though, Krosan Grip’s stock just shot up. Nature’s Claim, while cute, is definitely just worse. I wish I had played Ancient Grudge on Sunday, but I wouldn’t recommend Claim or Grudge for Kansas City.
The major decision that you have available to you is whether or not to cut the Trinket Mage package in favor of maindecking Tarmogoyfs. This changes the deck significantly. You can’t play Sensei’s Divining Top against control decks; you can’t tutor for Engineered Explosives against Zoo; you need a third Tropical Island over the Seat of the Synod; and you can’t tutor for Dreadnought against Merfolk. Your manabase gets more vulnerable, since you need Volcanic Island + Tropical Island early against Wasteland decks. In fairness, you’ll be in those spots anyway after sideboarding, but you won’t have a tutorable 12/12 with trample as a backup plan. You lose the ability to tutor for Tormod’s Crypt against Dredge and Reanimator.
If you do add Tarmogoyf, you will end up cutting 2 Trinket Mage, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Sensei’s Divining Top, Engineered Explosives, and Seat of the Synod for Tropical Island, 4 Tarmogoyf, and either a Lightning Bolt, Dismember, Vendilion Clique, or Jace, the Mind Sculptor. You’ll also get to have five more sideboard slots, since you’re losing Tormod’s Crypt. I would suggest starting with at least two pieces of graveyard hate, since cutting Trinket Mage drastically reduces the angles you have in terms of attacking Reanimator and Dredge. I still don’t know which side of this question I’m going to come down on, but for anyone considering playing this deck in the near future, it’s a question worth weighing carefully.
For those of you who aren’t considering playing this deck in the near future, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you. Today’s article was going to be the first of many articles going into great depth on a single deck in the Legacy metagame.
Since I had this deck to write about, though, you can find my article about how to build G/W Maverick for a variety of metagames right here on Monday! Don’t worry, Savannah owners, I’ve got you covered on this one. For those of you who have questions about how to evolve Snapcaster Mage in Legacy, feel free to hit me up on Twitter or in the comments.
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Until tomorrow,
Drew Levin
@drew_levin on Twitter