Well, Legacy is still in flux after the Khans of Tarkir release, and people are all hyped up over Treasure Cruise. However, finding new ways to abuse the
ability to draw three for a single blue mana isn’t far from all that is going on in the format. As usual, Innovation Spotlight is here to provide you with
a look at this beautiful dark underbelly of the format. I think you all know the drill, so let’s jump right in.
The Darker the Depth
This first list comes to you courtesy of runner up finisher of Prague Eternal this fall, Martin Pelikan:
Creatures (4)
Lands (27)
Spells (30)
- 3 Duress
- 4 Sylvan Library
- 4 Sylvan Scrying
- 3 Pyroblast
- 4 Crop Rotation
- 4 Pithing Needle
- 4 Expedition Map
- 4 Inquisition of Kozilek
Sideboard
It should be reasonably obvious what this deck is trying to accomplish: thaw out Marit Lage as soon as possible and attack for the full twenty in a single
swing. There are two things that are really interesting to observe. The first is Martin’s manabase, which I can only explain as a budget choice – I can’t
imagine how the five color land base plus Copperline Gorges is actually better than a couple of fetches with Bayous, a Badlands, and a couple of Taigas
(let me know if I’m missing something here).
However, performing this well means there might not be an easy way to ameliorate a deck, and given we’re talking about taking second place in a 144-player
event here, and a rather competitive one from my experience playing in the event myself, this is actually quite the good sign.
To finally get to the thing – other than a rare archetype doing really well – that brought me to feature it today, take a look at that number in front of
Sylvan Library. A full four copies of Green’s – slightly weaker – version of Necropotence is something I’ve been waiting to see non-blue players do for a
long time now. The card is already pretty insane just for what it does – often playing out like a green Ancestral Recall that leaves a Mirri’s Guile
behind.
In this deck, the card is pure genius though. With a clock this fast, you can afford to pay the life in almost any matchup. The most beautiful thing
though, is that most of the format has exactly two efficient answers to the Dark Depths combo: Wasteland – which the four maindeck copies of Pithing Needle
are clearly meant for – and Swords to Plowshares. If there’s a Sylvan Library in play when the latter happens, I’m not even sure I could actually be sad
about losing my 20/20. I guess I like drawing cards a little too much for my own good, don’t I?
Demanding Obedience
What happens when Iggy Pop and a mind control helmet team up? This, apparently:
Lands (22)
Spells (38)
- 4 Duress
- 4 Dark Ritual
- 2 Lim-Dul's Vault
- 4 Helm of Obedience
- 4 Serum Powder
- 2 Spoils of the Vault
- 4 Ill-Gotten Gains
- 4 Lotus Petal
- 4 Leyline of the Void
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 2 Gitaxian Probe
Sideboard
While I have no idea how good this deck is, it’s one of the sweeter things I’ve seen anybody do in a while. You use Serum Powder to make it as likely as
possible to hit a Leyline of the Void to put into play on turn 0 and then use your mana acceleration to push out either a Helm of Obedience for the deck to
win as soon as possible or fire off an Ill-Gotten Gains to Mind Twist your opponent while you get to keep the three best cards of your hand around. Even if
it takes a bit to find the Helm to actually win with, you should be very much favored to win at that point.
I could talk about how great having Leyline as maindeck delve hate coincidentally is right now, but honestly I doubt this deck cares too much about
Treasure Cruise. You’re just going too fast, and if they get to go on a Cruise, you’re already very likely to lose the game anyway. However, the downward
swing in cheap interaction that has accompanied Treasure Cruise is a real payoff for a deck as explosive as this one.
The manabase once again seems budgetized – I really wish we could get the dual lands off the reserved list at least – but I don’t think it matters that
much. Underground Sea would be an upgrade over Swamp or Gemstone Mine, but with Spoils of the Vault in the deck you probably don’t want to take damage from
fetchlands anyway.
Finally, I’m not sure what the two different sideboard conversions are about. I don’t see where being able to bring in either the Painter’s Servant combo
or Show and Tell for Grave Titan changes things up enough for me to want to spend all those slots, so that’s where I’d focus my attention if I were to pick
up this deck. Maybe I just don’t understand some hidden weakness here. If you can come up with something, let me know.
Choke Hold
This third list isn’t from any actual Top 8 but one I’ve pulled out of MTGO results. I’ve gone through those lengths because a) it’s a LeJay list and I’m
pretty sure he’s among the better Legacy players on the planet and b) I know he has top 8’ed at least one event with a very close list, I just don’t know
which.
Creatures (9)
- 4 Obstinate Baloth
- 1 Deathrite Shaman
- 2 Courser of Kruphix
- 1 Reclamation Sage
- 1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
Lands (24)
Spells (27)
What we have here is a G/B prison deck that has decided that Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void are in fact the correct answers to the current
metagame, but that the reason they haven’t been performing are the inconsistencies incurred by running a full Sol-land manabase. Instead the deck
accelerates with Green Sun’s Zenith for either Dryad Arbor or Deathrite Shaman and simply accepts that the opponent will be allowed to play one of their
one-drop spells per game. It’s not like Trinisphere is coming down on turn 1 in most other decks either.
The payoff for sacrificing some of the raw power of lands that tap for two is huge though. The thing that has always crippled Chalice decks is that they
are incredibly inconsistent. They need to run a lot of mana – meaning terrible topdecks later in the game – and also fall massively behind when they can’t
manage to hit acceleration early, with all of that being compounded by not having access to effective library manipulation.
This deck, on the other hand, will be quite content drawing its acceleration later in the game – Green Sun’s Zenith is kinda good when you have a lot of
mana. Not only that, the deck is another example of jamming a playset of Sylvan Library, this time with Obstinate Baloth and Courser of Kruphix to keep
fueling it.
The traditional artifact-based mana disruption is complemented by a full four maindeck copies of what I personally consider the most backbreaking
blue-hoser ever printed: Choke. We’ve been seeing more and more maindeck copies of Pyroblast lately, and Choke is taking that one step further. I’ve very
rarely ever beaten a resolved Choke that sticks in play with a deck sporting Islands – and that was without Trinisphere making everything really expensive
anyway. Given the amount of Islands running around, you could already make a case for Choke, however, there is more to it than that.
The mana disruption in these prison decks is mainly meant for Delver and combo decks anyway given that whatever those cards are, they’re usually rather bad
in the non-blue matchups. That means it’s not like you’re truly cutting life cards for your maindeck hate in most cases (not to mention there’s Sylvan
Library to keep them well in the deck when you’re facing a non-Island deck). I also very much enjoy the maindeck copies of Rolling Spoil – go ahead, hover
over it already – because it allows you to kill off one of the lone basic Mountain in U/R Delver decks while also sweeping all the Young Pyromancers and
Elementals that your opponent might have accumulated so far.
Finally the sideboard is clear proof that this is a Green Sun’s Zenith deck. A ton of bullets to fetch out, up to and including a Savannah for the third
color splash so that you can Gaddock Teeg your Storm and Miracles opponents. I love how someone is finally working on taking a long, hard look at the
Legacy card pool to try and eliminate the traditional weaknesses from the Chalice decks. Definitely beats trying to build yet another version of the all-in
Chalice decks that have been losing to their own inconsistencies for years now.
Grix-Is
Well, it looks like I’m not the only one who was looking towards hard control to take advantage of the delve spells:
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (22)
Spells (31)
The basic skeleton of this deck really isn’t anything astonishing, which is fine given that this is a much more traditional deck than the other ones we’ve
been looking at today. Lightning Bolt, Toxic Deluge, and Engineered Explosives provide effective ways to keep the board under control, and a gamut of
countermagic should help to keep the stack the same way.
The two things to really take note of in Nils’ deck are the playsets of Spell Snare and Snapcaster Mage. Concerning the former, Spell Snare seems
incredibly well-positioned at the moment. Yes, there are a lot of things it misses, but the cards it does hit are all key players. It’s one of the few ways
to cheaply stop a Young Pyromancer without giving the opponent the opportunity to produce a couple of valuable tokens; it hits Counterbalance, Stoneforge
Mystic and Infernal Tutor, all key pieces of their respective decks; and will also deal with Chalice of the Void from the haters, at least on the play. Not
to mention it helps out against any leftover Tarmogoyfs, something the deck will have some trouble answering otherwise given its removal suite.
Snapcaster Mage, on the other hand, seems weird on first sight. Doesn’t that card have just terrible synergy with Treasure Cruise? Well, given my
experience with Golddigger, it really isn’t hard to either leave a couple of cards in your yard when you’re delving or to put some there with what you’ve
drawn off of Cruise. Not to mention that Treasure Cruise also conveniently ends up sitting in the yard, giving you a prime target for Snapcaster Mage if
you’re unable to locate the next one once you’ve blown the treasure you’ve collected on your last trip.
I love what Nils has wrought here, and even if I don’t end up giving his exact list a try, he’s definitely led me to reconsider the interaction between
Snapcaster and Cruise. Most decks have a few high value Snapcaster targets for each matchup, and doing some selective removing should definitely make it
possible to keep exactly those around to be used again and again while getting rid of the chaff for three more shots at drawing said good cards. Or maybe I
just like the idea of casting the same Treasure Cruise twice a little too much, who knows?
Stale Format?
With the power level of Treasure Cruise added to the blue cantrip shell, there are those that are once again shouting that Legacy is stale because you’re
“forced to play blue.” You know what? You’re forced to play blue because you’re spending your time complaining instead of working on the format. Did it
really have to take this long for someone to figure out that Green Sun’s Zenith can be both your acceleration and your lategame consistency in a Chalice of
the Void deck? How about someone getting over the bias against multiple Sylvan Libraries in the last ten years the card was legal (it even keeps you from
drawing dead extra copies of itself)?
Legacy is alive and healthy, and innovation is going on and still paying off. Yes, there are a ton of blue strategies running around and succeeding. How
can that be a surprise when at least half the player population is working on actually getting only those decks to work?
The card pool is huge and a ton of tools are lying around not being used because people would rather cast Brainstorm, and now, Treasure Cruise. If that
makes you rage, do something productive and find ways to punish them or keep up instead of crying. Go ahead, think outside the box and find ways to make
other strategies as consistent as the blue decks tend to be or go ahead and try to kill them before they even have time to cast all those much vaunted
cantrips. I guarantee it’s a strategy that’s going to improve your tournament results much more efficiently than complaining will.
And if you’re one of the dedicated blue mages, remember that there’s more to the format than casting Delver of Secrets and Sensei’s Divining Top. We’ve
just gotten ridiculous new tools to play around with so let’s see if there’s something better to do with them than jamming them in the same tired old
shells. Maybe we can actually break the format?