It’s heartbreaking to see zero control decks in the entire Top 16 of a Legacy Open. When there are more Mother of Runes in a Top 16 than Jace, the Mind Sculptors, it’s time to get back to the basics of what makes Legacy so great: grinding people out with absurdly overpowered cards, too-cheap removal, and soft locks.
The thing about U/W Stoneblade, great as the deck is, is that it’s an aggro-control deck. It can’t really be classified as a pure control deck when it gets out-attritioned by a G/W creatures and removal deck. Its Stoneforge Mystic openers lose to a lot of typical Maverick opening sequences, and I don’t think any of us ever want to play a control deck that can’t beat a Mother of Runes.
So what’s a bunch of Brainstorm-loving control mages to do in a time where everyone plans on either going over the top…
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (18)
Spells (30)
…or fighting our good cards in a fair fight…
Creatures (23)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Scryb Ranger
- 2 Aven Mindcensor
- 1 Tarmogoyf
- 1 Gaddock Teeg
- 3 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 2 Qasali Pridemage
- 3 Stoneforge Mystic
- 1 Scavenging Ooze
Lands (23)
Spells (14)
…or beating us in a long game?
Creatures (14)
Lands (24)
Spells (22)
May I suggest starting over on what we think constitutes a ‘good deck?’ It’s fairly clear that everyone, their brother, their little sister, and their grandmother they taught to play Legacy yesterday has a really solid plan against Stoneforge Mystic. Everyone except the grandmother also has a plan against Snapcaster Mage for spot removal. There’s a reason why Mother of Runes is amazing right now: everyone keeps thinking that their “eight” Swords to Plowshares are going to somehow save them from a Knight of the Reliquary when the sad truth is that they’re going to need two just to kill a 1/1. Let’s not even get into what happens if they have a Scavenging Ooze in play and your “second” Swords to Plowshares is your Snapcaster Mage.
It’s time for real board-oriented attrition decks to come back. Gerry recently wrote that Hymn to Tourach is a fine card but that it’s not good in a format where Magic has become about getting onto the board as fast as possible. Green decks are casting Knight of the Reliquary on turn two and can double Wasteland you on turn three if you don’t kill it. Casting Hymn to Tourach in that spot is beyond foolish. Waiting until the next turn for them to cast a Tarmogoyf and a Mother of Runes is similarly unfortunate. So how is a control mage supposed to win in this format if one of the purest two-for-ones in the format isn’t that great?
I have two cards that haven’t seen play in way too long. One of them has recently been brought into a bit of the spotlight by Caleb Durward:
…while the other has just fallen off of the face of the earth in the last couple of months:
These two cards both constitute valid ways of approaching Legacy’s diverse format from a control player’s perspective. But why Pernicious Deed over any other sweeper, and why Ancestral Vision over any other draw spell?
Pernicious Deed is very good against all of the Mother of Runes, Stoneforge Mystic, Green Sun’s Zenith, and Knight of the Reliquary strategies. It doesn’t care what the toughness is on the creatures it’s killing, it doesn’t care how many there are, and it doesn’t care what colors they have protection from. The only thing that makes Pernicious Deed even a little risky is the presence of Qasali Pridemage, who really just hangs around to ruin Batterskull’s day. Still, it’s very possible to back up a Pernicious Deed with an answer—either preemptive or reactive—to Qasali Pridemage.
Of course, Pernicious Deed doesn’t stop every deck in Legacy cold. It does a lot of good work on permanent-based decks, but that doesn’t account for a lot of random combo decks—Reanimator, Dredge to a degree, Eureka, Sneak and Show, Hive Mind—that don’t care if you can Deed for three or four or five. The reason why Ancestral Vision is so great is that it beats a lot of decks that don’t get beaten by Pernicious Deed. If you can resolve an Ancestral Vision against U/W Stoneforge, for instance, it becomes very hard to lose. Here are the ways they can gain tangible card advantage:
- Stoneforge Mystic (+1, but it has to be an equipment)
- Snapcaster Mage (+1, but it has to be an instant or sorcery you can cast this turn)
- Jace, the Mind Sculptor (+DI, but you have to be able to resolve it)
- Elspeth, Knight-Errant (also +DI, but same problem as Jace)
It stands to reason, then, that a very good way of beating them is a combination of Spell Snare, Counterspell, Ancestral Vision, Thoughtseize, and some incidental way of winning. We want Thoughtseize (and probably some other card that disrupts combo decks) so that we don’t end up getting steamrolled by Tendrils of Agony or Jin-Gitaxias like a lot of other mopey board control decks in the format.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a pretty easy addition after you realize that you never want to attrition an opponent out for 20 turns and then cast a Tarmogoyf into their three-card hand. After all, it’s pretty easy to know that the only possible things those three cards could be are removal spells, since you haven’t played a creature this entire game. Why give them more live cards?
If we don’t want to play any creatures in our maindeck, it probably doesn’t make sense to play something like Vendilion Clique that’s only going to be good in exactly the combo matchups. If we’re going to stick to a creatureless control theme, how about looking at the most recent set for inspiration?
Liliana of the Veil does a lot for this deck at very little cost. She gives us another way to beat Emrakul besides Jace, as well as a maindeck out to Progenitus. She’s a removal spell for Geist of Saint Traft, which is becoming more and more played in U/W Stoneblade lists nowadays. She gives us a way to put pressure on Show and Tell combo decks that need to keep cards in their hand in order to win. She gives us a way to keep up with an opposing Jace, the Mind Sculptor that somehow managed to resolve. On the list of “truly irrelevant and comically luxurious problems that she solves,” I suppose that if you suspend Ancestral Vision on the draw and don’t play anything on turn two, she can make sure that you only have seven cards in hand at the end of your Ancestral Vision turn. Finally, she does all of this while enjoying the same immunity to Pernicious Deed as Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
So what commonly considered cards do we not want? Let’s start with the most obvious one: Snapcaster Mage. I think that Snapcaster Mage is at his worst in this deck. The whole point of Snapcaster Mage being awesome is that you gain some amount of value from him. The problem with him in this deck is that your beset removal spells are an enchantment and a planeswalker, your draw spells are a sorcery that you can’t flash back and a planeswalker, and you aren’t planning on killing them with damage. Where’s the value? Sure, you can effectively draw a card and chump something that’s going to come after a planeswalker, but doesn’t Repeal do that? Besides, there are plenty of ways that Snapcaster Mage can end up stranded in your hand in this deck. Why create dead cards in a format that, as noted before, is about efficiently using your mana to create an on-board advantage? No, sadly, Snapcaster Mage is not the best card for this deck.
It is possible that the simple fact that Snapcaster Mage isn’t the best card for this deck means that this deck isn’t the best deck it could be. That is to say, Snapcaster Mage is so good that it might be a mistake to not build a control deck to maximize him. The problem that I have with that approach is that you necessarily rule out using powerful interactions such as Pernicious Deed and planeswalkers; you almost certainly don’t want Standstill or Ancestral Vision; and you definitely don’t want Sensei’s Divining Top or Counterbalance. All of these cards are really good, and it’s possible that the decks that maximize those cards and not Snapcaster Mage are better pure control decks than a deck that would want a Snapcaster Mage. After all, if you really want a Silvergill Adept, it’s a good bet that you’re planning on attacking your opponent. What happens if you don’t want a Silvergill Adept and you just want an Ancestral Recall? Does that desire justify cutting the best Silvergill Adept in Magic’s history?
As mentioned earlier, we don’t really want Vendilion Clique or Tarmogoyf. Both of them are respectable creatures in their own right, but neither of them is worth a card in this deck. We don’t want to care about their removal spells. More aggressive BUG decks of the last year have wanted both Tarmogoyf and Vendilion Clique, but that doesn’t hold true here.
So what does a BUG deck without Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, or Tarmogoyf look like?
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (21)
Spells (33)
The numbers can certainly be tweaked, but don’t change the numbers in the same way that you’d go about changing numbers in a Stoneblade list. Cutting counterspells, for instance, is all well and good in a Stoneblade list—you don’t want your second Force of Will in a lot of games, since you can’t afford the attrition without a reliable draw engine. With this deck, however, I’d probably play six Force of Wills if I could. There are a lot of redundant blue cards in this deck—extra Jaces, extra Visions, Brainstorms once you’ve resolved a Jace—that can be pitched to Force of Will very easily. Given how important it is to not lose significant ground when tapping for a planeswalker or Deed, this deck’s Force of Wills are actually very strong and very necessary.
The Thoughtseizes might confuse some people who view decklists as lists of cards instead of coherent strategies. When I looked at other creature-light or creatureless BUG lists from the last year or two, I noticed that several of them had more than 11 counters and zero discard spells. Some went so far as to try to lock people out with Forbid and Life from the Loam! This deck exists in a format without such luxuries, unfortunately. Forbid is pretty close to uncastable against a field of decks defined by one- and two-drops, and combo decks are capable of beating hands that present two counterspells on turn four. Thoughtseize is a card that looks woefully out of place but serves the important roles of buying this deck a turn or more against combo decks, poking a hole in an aggressive deck’s curve, and stripping a Stoneblade deck of its turn-two equipment.
Since this deck draws so many cards, it becomes desirable to have cheap and efficient ways of trading cards with an opponent on a one-for-one basis. These trades buy both time and inevitability, since an opponent is not always guaranteed to have a threat-dense hand that is effectively immune to a discard spell. Thoughtseize only gets better against controlling decks, too: we can Thoughtseize their Jace or counterspell and then resolve our own Jace on turn four or five in most games, given that we have more counters, more Jaces, and more Thoughtseizes for their counters and Jaces.
When to include Wastelands (and how many to include) is an unsettled question for many blue deckbuilders in Legacy nowadays. The heuristic that Gerry has always preached is that it’s silly to play Wastelands if the value of you having a land is greater than the value of an opponent having a land. I mostly agree with that—after all, Wasteland comes with the opportunity cost of playing few to no other colorless lands, and there are some good manlands running around nowadays. Even if manlands aren’t your thing, Riptide Laboratory is still good business with Snapcaster Mage and Vendilion Clique. So why does this deck want Wasteland?
Wasteland isn’t just about trading lands with an opponent. It’s not just about mana-screwing them, and it’s not just about cutting them off of a color or making them vulnerable to Spell Pierce or Daze in the midgame. Wasteland is a free, uncounterable removal spell for one of the hardest-to-kill threats in Legacy: Mutavault. Or Mishra’s Factory. Take your pick; they’re basically the same thing. My point is, Wasteland lets you not spend a removal spell on their land while also uncounterably protecting you from taking a Sword hit from their manland. To give a common example:
Them: Mishra’s Factory, Sword of Feast and Famine, a ton of other irrelevant stuff including some cards in hand.
You: A bunch of open mana and either Ghastly Demise or Wasteland in hand, your call.
I’d rather have Wasteland every single time in this spot. It lets me play Jace on turn 5 without worrying about whether they have a second Factory to kill my Jace and thus whether I should be fatesealing instead of Brainstorm. It lets me ration my removal against Merfolk a little better. So yes, a land in this deck is worth more than a land in another deck, but Wasteland is still better than Mishra’s Factory for this strategy.
To address your last question: no, sorry, I’m not going to build you a sideboard for this deck. It probably wouldn’t do you any good; it would actively hurt you more than half the time, and I wrote an article about how to make a sideboard just a few weeks ago! To give you a start on making your own sideboard for the deck, here’s the list, for reference…
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (21)
Spells (33)
…and a quick rundown on how this deck should play out in the top tier of Legacy matchups:
Versus G/W Maverick
This deck was created with G/W Maverick in mind. None of the creatures are threatening against you except for their mana accelerators (or Green Sun’s Zenith) and a random Aven Mindcensor in response to a fetchland activation—so just the x/1s, really. The way that they can beat you is with an Enlightened Tutor strategy that finds Choke on your end step and resolves it. Even then, you’re not totally dead, as the non-Islands are there for a reason. Still, they should never be able to stick a Choke, and you should have plenty of ways of dealing with one in your post-board configuration. They could theoretically Knight + Wasteland you out of the game, but you play more lands than they do and should be aggressively killing their Birds, Hierarchs, and Arbors to keep the game on an even footing. After you Deed them on their end step (not their attack step), untapping against an empty board should be game over.
Versus U/W Stoneblade
You’re not a heavy favorite here, but you’re definitely not behind. You have all the tools to win games against them, so long as you slow things down early. Don’t let them keep a Batterskull if you can help it, as their equipment is much more threatening than their creatures.
Above all, however, do not let Elspeth resolve. You have very few ways of answering her, and all of the turns you spend trying to find those answers are turns where they can stick a Jace and end the game. I would advise against tapping out in the early turns until you’ve Thoughtseized them or resolved an Ancestral Vision. Know that a smart player is going to craft their game around resolving an Elspeth and save your Forces accordingly: resolving your Jace or stopping theirs may not be the most valuable thing you can do with your counter. If they’re going to untap with a Jace, of course it’s fine to counter it, but my point is that you have more Jaces than they do and more ways to find yours, so it’s not the end of the world if you lose a Brainstorm on the exchange. Know that they’ll bring in Geist of Saint Traft and Crucible of Worlds after board, so any realistic game plan of yours must involve both ways to rebuy your lands and ways to stop a Geist. They will cut their removal spells, so if you want to get cute and bring in some big dumb idiots, this would be a matchup to do that in.
Versus graveyard decks
You are not favored. Your counters are garbage against Dredge, and your Deeds are garbage against Reanimator. You should take extreme measures to beat these decks. Remember that you have a lot of counterspells, so playing Protect the Queen with a key permanent is not a bad place to be. If you want to sideboard a bunch of big dumb idiots, again, remember that this will likely impair you from dedicating more than three or four slots to graveyard hate. I would advise dedicating six to eight slots to Dredge and Reanimator.
Versus Show and Tell
You have a lot of options here. You can either answer their deck before or after it “goes off.” Understand the risks involved with letting a Show and Tell resolve, as they might Pact of the Titan you. You have a lot of security against Emrakul and Progenitus, so worry more about things like Sneak Attack and Hive Mind. Narrow sideboard cards are fine to bring in so long as they actually win you the game instead of delaying loss by a turn. Stifle is a great example of something to leave out of your sideboard because despite it doing something against both Sneak Attack and Hive Mind, it doesn’t actually do anything against Sneak Attack or Hive Mind. Remember that these decks don’t really play removal and have even been known to play a Jace or two, so Vendilion Clique is a very defensible choice here.
If you have any questions about the deck, sideboard ideas, or any matchups I didn’t address, you can reach me in the forums here or on Twitter. I’ll be judging the Standard Open in DC this weekend and will be playing in the Legacy Open, so don’t hesitate to introduce yourself if we haven’t already met.
Until next week,
@drew_levin on Twitter