Flashback to a little over two weeks ago: I was at work in the StarCityGames.com office, and I heard that Matt “Googs” Gargiulo and Gerry Thompson were heading up to Indianapolis for the Grand Prix. They were talking about Legacy and how they wanted to get some testing in. There was a double PTQ weekend literally three minutes from my house that weekend, so I had no intentions of going to the GP. However, I decided that I could use a break from Modern and went over to Googs’s to do some battling that night. I picked up the RUG Tempo deck so that Googs and Gerry could get some games in against it.

I picked up the latest version off of StarCityGames.com, which I thought would be a good place to start. After testing, I found out the deck is awesome. Gerry was playing a similar build but with Ancestral Visions, and Googs didn’t know what he was going to play but was leaning towards U/W Stoneblade.

The RUG deck seemed exactly like what I was trying to do in Modern but couldn’t. It had everything I could ask for in a deckâ€”free counterspells and cheap powerful creatures. Against Nick Spagnolo U/B Counterbalance deck, it had some unbeatable draws.

Now fast-forward to Wednesday of that week. After a scheduling swap, Nick asked if I wanted to go to the GP instead. As much fun as Modern is, I knew playing in this Grand Prix would be much more rewarding. I did more testing with Nick that night and came to the conclusion that I just wanted to make the deck as consistent as possible.

I added the fourth Stifle and Daze; doing so put me down to one Snapcaster Mage left. I felt with only eighteen lands in the deck if I were to ever play against a deck with Wasteland, the Snapcaster Mage was usually an Ambush Viper.

Legacy is a format where predicting what you’re going to play against isn’t always the easiest. I imagined that the three major decks would be Maverick, RUG, and Stoneblade. I added another Spell Snare over the last Snapcaster and was ready. When I got to the site Saturday morning, I talked to Jason Ford who told me to play Forked Bolt instead of Chain Lightning. I didn’t have time to test it, but seemed good in theory against the three decks that I expected. Spoiler: throughout the entire tournament, whenever I cast Forked Bolt to kill a creature and deal one damage it was a strict upgrade from Chain Lightning.

Here’s what I registered:

RUG Delver

Kenny Castor

2nd Place at Grand Prix on 03-11-2012

Legacy

Creatures (12)

Lands (18)

Spells (30)

Sideboard

I had two byes for this tournament and tried to get games in with my deck against any deck that I could. I found Dan Jordan with his Maverick deck, and we decided to duke it out. We played roughly ten games; I ended with a solid record of 1-9… Did I just register this deck??? But it was too late; I already registered it. No turning back now!

When round 3 pairings went up, my blood started pumping. I began by beating a Stoneforge Faeries deck and didn’t lose a game until Round 6.

In round 6, I kept:

I was on the play and started off with Delver; he played Wasteland and got me. I ended up not drawing another land and lost the match very quickly.

At this point, I thought to myself that I should’ve played another land in the deck like so many of other lists online. I kept telling myself that all I had to do was win two more rounds, and I could make Day 2.

I sat down for my next match; I kept a hand of…

…after the first with a hand of no lands. I feel like this deck can mulligan a lot better than most decks in the fact that it can stick an early threat and run with it. Going back to my match, my opponent played turn 1 Volcanic Island; I wasted it away. The same thing happened on turn 2. Now for turn 3 he played Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, and Show and Tell… The next card was no surprise…yep, Emrakul. Welcome to Legacy.

Not having played much Legacy, I didn’t know initially what a turn 1 Volcanic Island could mean. I had assumed I was playing the mirror! I ended up taking the match and going on to win the next.

Going into the last round I was a lock for Day 2, and I just wanted to win to end the day with a solid record. The pairings went up, and I was paired against none other than David Ochoa. He asked me if I’d like to draw the last round. Now, if you’re 7-1 in a format where someone just put an Emrakul in play on virtually the first turn the round before, and you’re paired against one of the ten best players in the room and they offer you a draw, the only thing you can do is accept. Also, as I was walking around earlier in the day, I noticed that most of the decks that were going to time and drawing were combo (mainly High Tide). I could only imagine my matchups in the draw bracket would be excellent, especially after sideboard with Counterbalance, so having a draw wouldn’t be that bad at all.

Day 2 started bright and early, and I was ready to battle. I won my first three rounds of Day 2 and felt unstoppable. I felt like boarding out Stifle and Daze on the draw was often the right thing to do, since those cards are very easily played around after an opponent knows they’re in your deck.

Now it was round 14, and I was paired against none other than Dredge. I knew that this was going to be tough; Dredge is one of those decks that can power through just about anything, especially since I only had three Surgical Extractions for the matchup. However, if you’re able to Lightning Bolt one of your creatures to get the Bridges out of there that can sometimes be enough. I might change the Surgical Extractions in the sideboard to Tormod’s Crypts if you expect more Dredge. I got the match in three games with him luckily mulliganing to four in game 3.

Quarterfinals

Top 8 time! I got paired against a friend of mine, Caleb Durward. It was the mirror match, and it can be found here.

There was a time in game 2 where I had a Counterbalance in play, and he had played Stifle on my Wasteland. I didn’t want to trigger the Counterbalance since he could’ve freely resolved his Sensei’s Divining Top if the path was clear. We played a good two games, and I took down the match.

Semifinals

In the semifinals I was paired against High Tide. I had only played against this match once after going into the draw bracket earlier in the tournament. I boarded out my Wastelands and my burn spells to bring in Counterbalance, Sensei’s Divining Tops, Surgical Extraction, and some Red Elemental Blasts. We ended up going to game 3, and one of the worst things that could’ve happened actually happened.

My opponent played main phase Meditate. I thought to myself, “Now I can’t possibly lose; I have Sensei’s Divining Top and Delver of Secrets in play with Force of Will as backup.” He played a Ponder after the Meditate, and I was thinking of what I was going to do on my next turn. I took my turn, flipped my Delver, and attacked. I played another Delver and passed.

My opponent then untapped and cast Defense Grid, which I immediately Forced so I could cast Stifle on his Candelabra of Tawnos…

WAIT! I was supposed to get another turn from the Meditate! Was this really happening? I’d been playing well the entire tournament; was I really going to throw it and several hundred dollars down the drain?! Even the judge watching the match didn’t notice until after a spell was played.

The head judge came over and said that we couldn’t go back as the game had progressed too far. My entire tournament seemed to go out the door, and I gave my opponent four extra cards for nothing! Could we really not back up after a single spell was cast? What would you have done? I freaked out. I was scared that the past 16 rounds had come to this.

However, after review the head judge backed us up to my additional turn. I apologized for my freak-out. I was pretty out of it, but I managed to take the game and the match.

Finals

The finals were a very close three games, with a timely draw of Perish off the top for my opponent in game 2, but he did play to his out and got there. In game 3 my opponent had his Jace, The Mind Sculptor at twelve counters. I drew a Brainstorm with Lightning Bolt and Daze in my hand. I drew Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, and Stifle and put back Lightning Bolt and Daze. I figured my opponent would fateseal me again so he wouldn’t have to bin his Jace, playing around Stifle, and I could Bolt it in one more turn to kill it. He didn’t; I Stifled the Jace and he tapped out for another. If I only would’ve kept the Daze, I might have had a shot at the match.

Sideboarding

This is how I typically sideboarded against decks I played throughout the tournament:

I have also thought about bringing in another Top to get more action cards if you think the matchup is going to go long.

RUG

-3 Daze
-4 Stifle
-4 Force of Will
+3 Counterbalance
+2 Sensei’s Divining Top
+4 Submerge
+1 Pyroblast
+1 Red Elemental Blast

Dredge

-3 Spell Snare
+3 Surgical Extraction/ Tormod’s Crypt

Overall, the deck I played was very solid; I only lost seven games over the course of eighteen matches. I would probably cut the Sensei’s Divining Top out of the maindeck for another land. Also, Thought Scour in the maindeck helps make Nimble Mongoose better earlier, and it can also help if you find yourself Brainstorming with no fetch land to shuffle away the cards you don’t want. I think now that people see that the version of this deck that did the best maxed out on Stifle and Daze that they’re going to be more proactive against those cards. Cutting one of each can make room for Thought Scour.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you at StarCityGames.com Open Series: Baltimore featuring the Invitational!