Right now, Legacy is a format of Griselbrand versus everyone else.
Right now, Griselbrand is winning.
The legendary Demon has won two of the last three SCG Legacy Opens in two very different strategies: Sneak and Show and Reanimator. One uses Show and Tell, along with Sneak Attack, to put a Griselbrand from one’s hand into play. The other uses Entomb and Careful Study (or Hapless Researcher) to put a monster six feet under before casting a Reanimate or Exhume.
At this point, there are only two real deck selection options for the SCG Invitational: play a Griselbrand deck or play a deck that beats the ever-loving hell out of a Griselbrand deck. If you don’t care about beating the Griselbrand decks, enjoy playing the SCG Standard Open on Saturday.
It’s three days before the Invitational starts, and I don’t know how to consistently beat a Griselbrand.
To be fair, this has happened the last three times Wizards printed a game-changing fatty.
First, it was Natural Order for Progenitus. People "discovered" Perish and Edicts, and everything was okay.
Then, it was Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. For the most part, people have figured out that Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Edicts, and Wraths are good enough against the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Now, it’s Griselbrand. The problem that Griselbrand presents is that, unlike Progenitus and Emrakul, he actually protects himself. The prevalence of free countermagic—Daze, Misdirection, and Force of Will—means that when someone tries to kill Griselbrand, they have to beat not only your hand but also the top fourteen cards of your deck.
Let’s say you want to be The Bad Guy this weekend. What are your options?
Creatures (8)
Lands (19)
Spells (33)
You’ve seen this list enough by now, but I really don’t think the maindeck can get much better unless the Misdirections have gotten worse.
Getting an edge in the mirror should be a big priority—you can do this with some combination of Vendilion Cliques, Jace, the Mind Sculptors, Red Elemental Blasts, and Through the Breaches.
Beating Maverick might be an issue if they’re loading up on Karakas (as per my last article), but you can always next level them with Tsabo’s Web, which kolds a bunch of Maverick’s mana base and stops them from locking you with Karakas. Just don’t use Cursed Totem to deal with Qasali Pridemage…your Griselbrand will not appreciate the gesture.
This deck is the level zero of the format. It’s a straightforward blue combo deck with a ton of countermagic. People will be ready for it, people will have hate for it, and people will still lose to it. If you’re okay with that, I recommend it.
If you want to get a bigger edge in the Show and Tell mirror, perhaps you’ve considered cutting your Show and Tells?
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Lands (18)
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When you look at ways to win a mirror match, it’s important to consider what mirror match you’re fighting. If you only ever frame the Sneak and Show mirror in terms of Sneak Attacks and Show and Tells, you miss the bigger picture: the mirror is actually about Griselbrand.
A good way to start winning mirrors is to do some key element of the matchup better than the other player. Does the mirror reward speed at the expense of a more resilient end game? Does the mirror reward proactive disruption over reactive protection? Are there unexploited zones that you could use to win a mirror match?
These sorts of questions would lead a smart player (like Reid Duke) to understand that Entomb + Reanimate or Exhume is an asymmetrical Show and Tell that comes down a turn earlier.
He would understand that discard-based disruption is good at creating windows in which he can resolve key spells against a counter-heavy opponent.
He would understand that once he resolves a spell putting Griselbrand into play, almost nothing else matters.
He would understand that Sneak and Show decks don’t interact with the graveyard, so no Sneak Attack player is going to focus on the graveyard when it comes to metagaming for the mirror match.
As a result, Reid won the tournament with Reanimator, doubtlessly beating several Sneak and Show players on the way to the top.
I have no idea whether this is a good weekend for Reanimator. If everyone decides to play four Tormod’s Crypts and some Surgical Extractions in their sideboards, you’re going to have a bad time. If people keep trying to beat Nimble Mongoose, you’re in luck because Engineered Explosives and Perish don’t do anything against you.
If you’re expecting a ton of Sneak and Show and you happen to be packing Show and Tells of your own for sideboard games, Reanimator is a decent place to be. There’s a lot of sideboard-dependent variance that I don’t like about playing Reanimator, but if you can get past that, it’s a very strong deck that only got better with the addition of Griselbrand.
If you’re in the market for a brew, I found this beauty on MTGTheSource:
Creatures (4)
Lands (15)
Spells (41)
- 4 Tendrils of Agony
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Cabal Ritual
- 4 Show and Tell
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 Dark Ritual
- 3 Lim-Dul's Vault
- 4 Lotus Petal
- 2 Chrome Mox
- 4 Ponder
- 1 Preordain
- 3 Flusterstorm
Sideboard
This is the first Griselbrand deck I’ve seen that doesn’t need to attack to win, which is an attractive prospect. Even if your legendary Demon is going to get Karakased, you can still just kill your opponent with Tendrils of Agony.
With that out of the way, I don’t think the deck is very good. It has less protection, less disruption, and less speed than Reanimator or Sneak Attack. It can’t just kill someone on turn 1 or 2 like a normal Storm deck since it doesn’t have Lion’s Eye Diamond or Infernal Tutor. Instead, it somehow has more dead cards than Hive Mind or Dream Halls, which is a fairly impressive feat.
I wouldn’t recommend this deck, but this innovation has showed us just how far we should be pushing Griselbrand. It’s pretty clear that he is the best legend in Legacy and is very likely the single best card to cheat into play. Given that truth, how good is Hive Mind with Griselbrand? Dream Halls with Griselbrand? We already saw Dredge with Griselbrand win the SCG Legacy Open in Orlando. I don’t believe we’ve reached the limit of what we can do with a flying, lifelinking, legendary 7/7 Yawgmoth’s Bargain.
Let’s say you don’t want to play Griselbrand, though. Drawing seven is for jerks; what you’d rather do is stop them from having their fun! What’s the worst possible way you could go about trying to slay Demons?
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Lands (19)
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Sideboard
If I were inclined to play RUG Delver this weekend, it would look a lot like Matt Costa list. The maindeck I played in Nashville was two cards off of this list (+2 Spell Snare, -1 Scavenging Ooze, -1 Force of Will). He has Mind Harness where I would have Cursed Totem, but that’s a reasonable debate to have.
What I’m not debating is whether or not to play RUG Delver. I’m not playing the deck this weekend.
Why would I dismiss the format’s best tempo deck three days before a tournament when I’ve admitted I don’t know what I’m playing yet?
Two very simple reasons:
- Nimble Mongoose is awful. It is awful against Sneak and show, it is awful against Reanimator, it is awful against Maverick, it is halfway decent in the mirror, and it is great against the U/W Stoneforge decks that can’t ever beat a Show and Tell in their entire lives.
- Tarmogoyf is not much better. It is awful against Sneak and Show, it is awful against Reanimator, it is mediocre at best against Maverick, it’s the best card in the mirror, and it is a lightning rod for Spell Snares and removal spells against the U/W Stoneforge decks that no one should play but plenty of people will anyway.
So that leaves Delver and his 29 secrets. Delver is your best card against Maverick, Show and Tell, and Reanimator. It’s one of your best cards against the garbage U/W decks. It’s your best clock and the reason why you have a puncher’s chance against any combo deck—sometimes you just draw it and flip it on turn 2 and they die on turn six.
So what am I to do? Brew, right?
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Lands (20)
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Or "More Bugs and Less BUG," if you’re a fan of stupid deck names that don’t tell you anything about the deck. Legacy aficionados will recognize this as an update on Team America with more fliers and one less color. Given how bad green is right now and given how good blue is right now, why play a slow, plodding green threat when a fast, evasive blue one will do a much better job?
As I’ve said a million times before, Vendilion Clique is where you want to be. No, I’m not getting paid to sell Vendilion Cliques. Yes, the card really is that good right now.
Tombstalker is due for a return in Legacy currently. Since Delver decks rarely close before turn six, they often need a way to turn a four-turn clock into a two-turn clock without tapping out of all their mana. RUG Delver players would claim that Tarmogoyf does that, but Tarmogoyf is typically a 3/4 against combo—Tombstalker is a 5/5.
Beyond that, Tombstalker also doesn’t care about Knight of the Reliquary. None of the deck does. Everything flies. Why would you care about a slow, grindy card like Knight of the Reliquary when you have eight three-power fliers and three five-power fliers? So long as you remember to hold a Wasteland for their Maze of Ith, you’ll win your races.
Sneak and Show should be comically easy for you. You have twelve counters and eight ways to interact with their hand. Compare this to RUG Delver, which has twelve counters and zero ways to interact with their hand, and you start to see why I don’t want to play RUG Delver.
Granted, RUG Delver does get to sideboard in three whole Red Elemental Blasts, but you have room to sideboard in four cards against creature-light strategies since your Snuff Outs will be dead. You could play Duress, if you were so inclined.
RUG Delver, on the other hand, doesn’t really have room to cut all of its Bolts against Sneak and show, so it occasionally skips a draw step against combo in their deck with zero ways of getting ahead on cards. I know which deck I’d rather play on Friday.
If you want to play Maverick, check my previous article for a reasonable starting point. You’ll probably end up cutting Garruk and Elspeth because you’re fairly unlikely to play the Maverick mirror match in an SCG Invitational field, but they’re equally good against the people who will play some creature-heavy garbage deck and try to dodge combo for eight rounds.
If you want to play Stoneforge Mystic, I’ll repeat myself again: don’t. You have a ton of dead cards against Show and Tell, Mystic into an equipment isn’t even good against Maverick, Jace isn’t even good against RUG, and Lingering Souls is a literal do-nothing.
We live in a tempo-driven world nowadays. As cards’ power levels amp up, formats get faster. The best removal spell in Standard right now is a glorified Unsummon. People are playing actual Unsummon in their Delver decks. People have asked me about Vapor Snag in Legacy. You do not have time to cast Midnight Haunting in your main phase when your opponent can cast a sorcery for 2U that wins him the game.
If you really want to play Stoneforge Mystic, you have to be more tempo-oriented. As bad as my U/W Temporal Mastery deck looks, it’s a lot better than trying to be some grindy U/W Control deck that has no trumps in any matchups anymore.
Sure, you’re still going to tap out for Geist of Saint Traft on turn 3 just like you tapped out for Lingering Souls on turn 3, but the difference is that you’re much more likely to win the game if you get to untap with Geist.
For those two of you who want to know what my thoughts on Storm are, I was messing around with this for a while back when I was trying to beat both RUG and Sneak and Show:
Lands (15)
Spells (44)
The idea here is that you grind them down early with black disruption. You sculpt a hand of Cabal Ritual + Infernal Tutor + Lion’s Eye Diamond with multiple lands in play and a ton of business in your graveyard.
By forcing trades early with your discard spells, you add a lot of value to your Cabal Rituals, which will end up winning you the game. I cut Grim Tutor and Ad Nauseam because you want a lot of games to go long, so taking a few hits will happen. Your real path to victory, then, is Past in Flames to flash back your graveyard and re-Infernal for your Tendrils.
The Burning Wishes got in once I realized that I was ice cold to a Thalia or Green Sun’s Zenith for two out of Maverick. Rather than retool my deck to be more all-in on a turn 1 or 2 kill via Ad Nauseam, I just added another degree of resiliency. This change necessitated moving the fourth Infernal Tutor to the sideboard, as you can’t recur a Burning Wish with a Past in Flames and thus can’t kill your opponent by flashing back your Tutor for a Tendrils of Agony.
The actual sideboard is pretty straightforward: you want to be able to Wish for cards that win the game—thus Tendrils, Flames, and Infernal. You also want to be able to Wish for cards that directly stop you from winning the game— thus Infest, Thoughtseize, and Eye of Nowhere.
The rest of the sideboard supports two gameplan shifts: four Surgical Extraction for graveyard-based decks and two Ad Nauseam + two Chrome Mox for games where you need to aggressively combo on turns 1 and 2.
With that said, would I play Storm at this Invitational? No. You know me too well for that. I only hope that I have a sweet deck to show you on Friday morning. If that ends up being the case, check the coverage throughout the weekend for a video of the deck tech. I don’t know what it is yet, but I can promise that it’ll be spicy.
See you in Indianapolis!
@drewlevin on Twitter