Today I’m going to skip the chatter and get right down to business.
Let’s talk about Legacy.
I’ve been playing the format for about a year now, and there’s one thing I don’t understand about the current metagame. Why have people stopped playing Shardless BUG? When I first started getting into Legacy, Shardless BUG was all the rage. It was putting up results all over the place, from the SCG Open Series to the Invitational. Nowadays all I hear is people saying that Shardless BUG doesn’t have what it takes to throw down with the big decks of the format.
Before I go any further, here’s a basic version of Shardless BUG for those of you who are unfamiliar with its awesomeness:
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (21)
Shardless BUG is about as close to playing a control deck as you can get in Legacy. The basic idea of the deck is to play the cheapest and most efficient threats and disruption possible and use the combination of Shardless Agent cascading into Ancestral Vision to accrue card advantage. Sounds sweet, right? Yet at every Legacy tournament I go to now, I hear people refer to the deck as unplayable.
Well, I’m here to tell you that the haters are dead wrong and that Shardless BUG is still one of the best decks in the format. You’re missing out big time if you continue to keep it off your radar.
Let me explain.
To truly understand why the deck is still great, let’s start by debunking why people think it has become bad. The answer lies solely on the shoulders of everyone’s favorite Merfolk Rogue:
This little Progenitus wannabe is the reason that everyone started to gravitate away from Shardless BUG in the first place. You can’t Abrupt Decay it! You don’t want to play your own copies because you don’t have Equipment to put on it! People began to move toward decks similar to Shardless BUG like Esper Deathblade that can play their own copies of True-Name Nemesis and use Stoneforge Mystic to make sure they pack a punch. Sounds reasonable, right?
Wrong.
If You Can Beat ‘Em, Don’t Join ‘Em
Sure, you can’t use cards like Abrupt Decay or Maelstrom Pulse to kill True-Name Nemesis. You know what you can use them to kill though? Cards like Batterskull, Umezawa’s Jitte, and any of the other Equipment people try to put on True-Name Nemesis to actually make it good. There’s more than one way to fry a fish after all.
That being said, with a little tuning you’ll find that Shardless BUG is one of the best suited decks to actually deal with True-Name Nemesis.
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (21)
Unfortunately, some unforeseen issues are preventing me from traveling to Charlotte for the Invitational, but if I were going, this would be the exact 75 I would register for Legacy. Let’s talk about some of the changes from the original list and why they make True-Name Nemesis something to laugh at.
First off, you have a few ways to snipe the Merfolk before it even hits the battlefield. Hymn to Tourach, Thoughtseize, and sometimes even Liliana of the Veil can do the job of stripping it from your opponent’s hand. If they manage to get past this first line of defense, you have Force of Will waiting in the wings to stop True-Name in its tracks. If it somehow does find its way into play, the -2 ability from Liliana does a great job at getting around the 3/1’s protection shield.
Things get even better after sideboard. You get to bring in the third Liliana of the Veil, the fourth Force of Will (depending on the specific matchup), and most importantly three copies of Golgari Charm. In general, Golgari Charm is absurd and one of the most underrated cards in Legacy. It offers so much versatility for so little investment. The -1/-1 effect kills everything, from True-Name Nemesis to most creatures an Elves deck will throw at you. The enchantment destruction is essential for killing cards like Rest in Peace, and you would be surprised at how often you can blow people out in combat by combining the regeneration shield with Baleful Strix. While none of these effects would be worth a sideboard slot individually, getting access to all three of them from one card is invaluable.
The other big change from the original list to this one is the shaving of Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Once thought to be the best thing since sliced bread, Jace just doesn’t pull his weight like he used to. While he’s still a great win condition in certain matchups, he’s one of the few things that’s actually vulnerable to an unequipped True-Name Nemesis.
Versus The Rest
Now that we’ve established that True-Name Nemesis is in fact not the end of Shardless BUG, we can look at the deck as a whole again. Clearly beating True-Name Nemesis isn’t the only thing you need to do to win in Legacy, so what else does Shardless BUG have going for it?
Let’s see how it lines up against a simple checklist of what makes a deck good in Legacy:
Does it do something powerful?
While cascading into Ancestral Vision might not come with the tagline "win the game" attached to it, it often comes close. Every successful Legacy deck does something unfair, and Shardless BUG is no exception.
Can it disrupt combo decks and put on a fast enough clock to win before they recover?
Shardless BUG comes equipped with a powerful discard package backed by Force of Will to give you game against any combo deck in the format. After you’ve stopped them from comboing off the first time, you can either keep them locked out of the game with Liliana of the Veil or use Tarmogoyf to rapidly deplete their life total.
Does it play the best card in Legacy?
Is that four copies of Brainstorm I see? Yep, looks like this one checks out.
At this point I assume I’ve done a fair job of convincing you of the viability of Shardless BUG. However, before you grab the deck blind and take it into battle, let me give you a big piece of advice. There is one tricky aspect to the deck, and I’ve seen it be the downfall of many aspiring Shardless BUG players.
Sideboarding Misconceptions
For whatever reason, Shardless BUG has the most misunderstood sideboard plan I’ve ever seen. Sure, it’s simple enough against combo—you bring in as much disruption as possible while taking out slow and clunky cards like Baleful Strix and Abrupt Decay. It’s against the other fair decks that people seem to have a problem.
First off, let’s talk about Hymn to Tourach. The way the games play out against a deck like Esper Deathblade, both players are throwing out threats and answers until they each run out of resources. Due to this, the games tend to be long and drawn out and often come down to topdeck wars. Although Hymn can give you a head start on the attrition war in the early game, drawing it in the late game when you need an impact spell can be backbreaking. Because of this, I feel it’s correct to take the discard spell out after game 1 and rely on your individually powerful cards to win the attrition battle.
However, keeping in a couple copies of Thoughtseize is much more reasonable, especially on the draw. Being able to snipe the hard to answer Batterskull from your opponent’s hand is worth the risk of having a dead draw or two in the late game.
The next culprit on the list is even worse than Hymn to Tourach. I’m talking about Force of Will. Almost every person I talk to seems to think Force of Will is the very first card you’re supposed to take out in the fair matchups. Their reasoning behind this comes down to the attrition war I explained earlier. The misconception is that when you are fighting an attrition war that spending two of your cards to negate one of theirs is not where you want to be. While this may hold true for most decks, it’s the exact opposite for Shardless BUG.
First of all, you have something the other decks don’t: Shardless Agent + Ancestral Vision. In fair matchups, you have more than enough time to safely suspend Ancestral Vision, and even if Shardless Agent doesn’t cascade into it, it’s still going to hit something relevant (especially with Hymn to Tourach out of your deck) and generate card advantage. Sure, the other fair decks can generate pseudo-card advantage with Brainstorm, but it’s not quite the same as drawing three cards outright.
Second, the other decks have something you don’t. They have haymaker cards like Batterskull. You can kill Stoneforge Mystic, but they’re going to have ample time to hit their fifth land drop and cast Batterskull the old-fashioned way. When they do, you’re going to want to have more ways to stop it than a single Maelstrom Pulse. Similarly, just like they’re going to have enough time to hard cast their five-mana spells, you will often get to a point where you can hard cast Force of Will as well.
Due to both the card advantage you generate with Shardless BUG and how important it is to keep your opponent’s high-impact cards in check, you should always leave Force of Will in against fair decks. This applies to any Deathrite Shaman, Delver of Secrets, Tarmogoyf, or Stoneforge Mystic strategies. You can keep the fourth one in the board except when playing against U/W/R Delver. That deck is jam packed with so many high-impact cards that you’re going to want to have as many ways to deal with them as possible.
Not to mention that Force of Willing people when they don’t expect it is extremely satisfying.
Disgruntled Esper Deathblade Opponent: "Wow, I can’t believe you won. I never lose this matchup. You’re so lucky you got to Force of Will my [insert powerful card here]. Don’t you know that’s not even supposed to be in your deck post-board?"
Me: "Hue hue hue."
While sideboarding nuances might seem negligible at first, in a format like Legacy making even the smallest decision right or wrong has a huge impact on your win percentage. Plus in any tournament you’re going to play more sideboarded games than game 1s.
At the end of the day, Shardless BUG is an all-around great deck and a force to be reckoned with in the current Legacy metagame. If you like making a lot of decisions, having control over the flow of the game, and getting rewarded for tight play, I highly recommend you give it a try. Although I won’t be playing in the Invitational myself, I expect to see some of the loyal Shardless BUGers slugging it out deep into the tournament.