Howdy, and welcome to my new column, Legacy’s Allure! In StarCityGames.com quest for an even better gaming experience, I was approached about writing a weekly Legacy article series and I happily accepted. In short, you’ll be reading a lot more from me, and hopefully you’ll get a different sense of the energy that draws me to Legacy as well as other pursuits in my life.
I’m looking forward to weekly columns because they provide for a more in-depth look at new and familiar cards alike, more precise dissections of strategy and a robust discussion of the format in general. I, admittedly, was also a little envious that writers like Zac Hill had the opportunity to spin stories about their lives into amazing Magic lessons. For example, perhaps my biggest passion in life is cooking. Much like Magic, to get to truly great levels, you have to get the technique down, the terminology of the field memorized and applied, and the creativity to make something of all of it. You also have to scrub a lot of pots and pans along the way…
I have two books in arms reach of me, both cookbooks. They’re odes to the pig: Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast: Nose To Tail Eating and Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie (which is essentially meat curing and sausage making). Mario’s Babbo is on the coffee table, and Grigson’s classic French cookbook Charcuterie (different one!) is on the nightstand. They all focus on taking things slowly, using the best ingredients, and most of all, being prepared for what you’re about to do. Some recipes take days, weeks, months or even, like jamon iberico, the famed Spanish cured ham, years to complete. It’s that preparation and dedication that perennially drives both world-renowned chefs and Magic professionals to success.
With Grand Prix: Chicago coming up so soon, we’ve only got a few weeks to cook our decks into tournament winners. Part of the preparation work is understanding what our decks are capable of, but a good deal of it is also understanding what we’re up against. In light of this, today I’ll be discussing three common Legacy cards and how to play with and against them.
Let’s start with an easy and ubiquitous one: Daze. It turns up in just about every deck packing Blue, even in decks like Mono-Blue Permission styles that might traditionally want to make land drops. There are three reasons for this: Daze stops some of the strongest early threats in the format; the cost of playing Daze is marginal, with high rewards; and it is truly demoralizing to have a key spell Dazed.
When playing Daze, we often want to point it at the first thing that it can hit. This could be the Ponder or Nimble Mongoose coming from the opponent, or it could be Mystical Tutor or another strong one-drop. However, it has been my experience that it’s better to hold the Daze for the two-drops from the opponent. That mana cost is populated by Tarmogoyf, Counterbalance, Dark Confidant, Goblin Piledriver, and so on. All of these are stronger than just about any first-turn play that isn’t Goblin Lackey, and it’s just better to hold the Daze for that spell instead.
Not only do you get sharp card economy by stopping the better spell, but you’ll often have opponents walking right into your Dazes, especially if you did not Daze their Wild Nacatl on the first turn. This plays into that third factor, the demoralization of the opponent with Daze. You want them to think that you ripped it off the top of your deck, which makes you lucky and makes your hand even better. Now I’m basically a scientist at heart and I don’t buy into the idea of lucky dice, unlucky lands, good omens, or anything that a haruspex reads in sheep entrails. But a lot of Magic players do believe in luck or get on tilt, and the psychological advantage is not to be minimized by a competent player.
As the game goes on, Daze’s stock drops tremendously (by the by, I’ve begun studying FOREX markets on my own — fascinating!) and you want to ditch it with Brainstorm or hold it for Force of Will. Don’t be so hasty throwing it back though, especially if your opponent is playing a deck that tends to use all of its mana every turn. For example, Enchantress uses as many resources as it can get to lock up the board by casting and drawing every turn; a Daze on the 5th turn is unexpected and powerful. It’s very strong after a Brainstorm, where an overthinking opponent might think you have put it back. Two Dazes are also not awful later in the game, as most players can play around one Daze but completely ignore the possibility that you could be holding two.
A player facing an opponent with Daze has some serious choices to make regarding when to play his spells. I have seen my matchup percentages against Daze-packing decks dramatically improve by simply waiting a turn and playing my spells one turn later. The net effect is that your spells resolve and you don’t get punked by Daze, with the payment of having to slow your game down to play spells effectively. On the upshot, you’ve blanked an opponent’s Daze for essentially the rest of the game by doing this. The one exception is Goblins, which should play as fast as possible, Dazes be damned. Otherwise, this is a healthy and strong strategy, especially if you are playing a deck with little early disruption. I wouldn’t suggest the tactic if it had not shown me such incredible matchup turnarounds.
When sideboarding a deck that contains Daze, it really does matter whether you’re playing or drawing. On the draw, you effectively give up two land drops to Daze something, owing to starting second. When confronted with this, seriously consider whether the opponent’s early game is strong enough to merit them having three lands to your one if you have to Daze. Often, Daze is the first card I side out in this situation. Similarly, when playing against a Daze-packing opponent, make a guess whether they have sided out their Dazes and then capitalize on this if you have a good read.
Often found alongside Daze, Standstill is another Legacy staple that causes a lot of headaches for players. In this case however, most are based on its timing rules. My most succinct explanation is this: if something gets played, Standstill triggers. If something gets played again in response to that played spell, Standstill triggers again and again until it finally gets a chance to resolve. It will resolve only once, as it is sacrificed as part of its resolution. This means that if you cast a spell and then try to Stifle the Standstill, your opponent will thank you for targeting them with the Ancestral Recall. The Standstill trigger also includes Isochron Scepter and any other card that says “play” on it. Further, you cannot Krosan Grip a Standstill for any profit. Basically, it’s stuck on the table until someone does something about it.
So what do we do about a Standstill on the table? If we’re the player that cast it, hopefully we’re seeing the benefits of slowing the game down through dropping more lands, attacking with animated Mishra’s Factories or getting in some damage with a creature we cast earlier. If we’re facing it down on the other side, we’ve got to do some on-the-fly calculations about whether it’s better to ride it out or break it now.
In an ideal world, we break Standstill with a threat. We could also Wasteland our opponent’s lands and hope we can manascrew them for a few turns while we build up. Otherwise, we’d hope to break the Enchantment with something like Thoughtseize, taking whatever juice they just drew. Unfortunately, players are often in a situation where the Standstill player will get substantially more benefit from it remaining on the table than we will.
In situations like these, we can sometimes punish the opponent for playing a Standstill by preying on their false hope. In earlier years of Legacy, Landstill players would often cast Standstill while holding a Force of Will, figuring that they would draw a Blue card off the Enchantment and stop what the opponent was attempting. However, the decks often ran only a minimum of Blue cards to support the counterspell, and so they wouldn’t draw the Blue card that powered an answer for the eventual game-ending threat. If you sense that your opponent would have a slim chance of having a Blue card and a Force post-Standstill, go for the gusto with a big target spell.
There are also times when you can turn Standstill into Cephalid Coliseum. If you have the opportunity to in a game, you can wait until the opponent has seven cards in hand and then cast a spell in their endstep. They draw up to ten cards and have to discard down to their original seven. By all means, you want to break it with something innocuous at this point. If the opponent Forces your spell, they free up space in their hand for the cards they just drew. Deny them this benefit if at all possible.
Finally, you can bait someone who plays Standstill on you if you can get them excited and greedy about countering a spell you play. Remember that Standstill triggers every time a spell is played. I have had several instances in tournaments where I have broken Standstill to cast a spell, and the eager opponent responds with Force of Will before they let the Standstill resolve. At this point, you explain to them that you’ll be drawing and call a judge (because nobody actually believes that they just gave you three cards). You can bait opponents into this kind of mistake by being eager yourself, bantering and making the card you play seem very important. Agonize over the play for a little bit if you want to. You want them to think they automatically have to counter it, so it’s a natural reaction when you actually cast the card. Likewise, if you are playing Standstill, be absolutely sure you let it resolve before you do anything when an opponent breaks it with a spell.
To finish, let’s look at Stifle, a card that’s been on the rise for months. It’s either a superstar or not worth an actual card slot, depending on what your opponent is playing and how well they play around it. In the early game, Stifle often hits a fetchland to cripple a player’s mana development. How can you avoid this? There’s a really common play that you can look out for if you’re playing against typical Blue decks packing Stifle. They’ll play a land and then on their second turn, a fetchland. During your turn, that player will cast an end-step Brainstorm, hoping to shuffle away their cards with their fetchland. Wait until they have broken their Flooded Strand and then activate your fetchland, getting it in while they have no mana. This is often enough to soften Stifle’s impact and keep you in the game. A typical tell is the opponent playing a one-drop on their second turn, such as Sensei’s Divining Top or Ponder, where they probably could have played it on the first turn. This signals that they’re possibly keeping Stifle open.
Stifle gets much worse later in the game if its most common targets are fetchlands. Against an opponent supporting four colors or more, it’s still wise to Stifle their searchers if you think they’re getting around color screw, but it’s often better to just hold the Stifle. Not only can it be put to work with Force of Will, it can randomly ruin someone’s plan if their Engineered Explosives, Pernicious Deed or Vendilion Clique doesn’t do what it was supposed to. Past turn four or so, I play very conservatively with my Stifles and hold onto them for serious opportunities to make lasting impacts on the board, instead of hoping to landscrew my opponent. Much like Daze, an unexpected Stifle can be a critical psychological blow to the opponent. It also protects against marauding Wastelands, so it’s economical to hold one if you fear Wasteland more than you benefit from fuzzing an opponent’s land drop.
I hope you’ve come away from this article with a stronger understanding of these common Legacy cards. Join me next week as we look at other opportunities for maximizing your tournament experience!