Greetings fellow Stormbeard Dragons!
While I didn’t do as well as I had hoped last weekend in Washington DC at the Legacy Open, I ended up in 38th place so I still gained a couple points on two of the three people ahead of me on the Season Three Leaderboard and I had a total blast doing it. I really do love playing Legacy and hope that numbers can help show that the format is popular and continues to get support.
SCG DC
Legacy is a diverse and exciting format. I actually enjoy all Magic formats, even though I was a bit slow to come around on Modern, and really enjoy the split-format events like the StarCityGames.com Invitational and Players’ Championship. There has been a lot of talk recently about cards that people would like to see banned to fix the format. There are a lot of powerful Magic cards in Legacy, some of which are even newer printings. It’s exciting to see a non-rotating Eternal format change because of new releases, and we saw this with Deathrite Shaman, Delver of Secrets and most recently Treasure Cruise (which got banned) and Dig Through Time. I don’t really want to get into talk about banning, but Show and Tell has been atop my list of “most powerful cards in Legacy” for a long time.
I don’t want to spend too much time on Legacy though, since we have Grand Prix London coming up this weekend and it’s Standard, but let’s look at what I played and why.
Creatures (2)
Lands (13)
Spells (45)
As you can see here, the eventual winner’s list is very close to my own. That isn’t too much of a surprise since there really isn’t too much innovation you can make to the deck outside of going to the Burning Wish tri-color build, but it’s still nice to see that I’m on the right track.
I’d like to go over the points of contest in the list and explain my points of view on them.
Some people like to play only three copies of Dig Through Time in the maindeck so that they can have the fourth copy in the sideboard to find with Cunning Wish. I dislike this plan because I view the deck a bit differently than most other people. I’ve talked about it before, but I see and play the deck more as a Dig Through Time deck that happens to win with Show and Tell rather than a Show and Tell deck that plays Dig Through Time. This allows us to play a little bit of a longer game and focus more on sculpting our hand and disrupting our opponents with cantrips and counters while out-attritioning them with Dig Through Time and eventually kill them with Show and Tell.
Don’t get it twisted though. I will just turn-two Show and Tell your behind off and win that way too.
Leading into Grand Prix Lille I spoke with Patrick Dickmann who brought up the potential for Split Decision in the Impulse slot. The idea is that while we are comboing we can Firemind’s Foresight for Brainstorm, Split Decision, and Cunning Wish. When we cast the Cunning Wish we can hold priority and copy it with Split Decision, which allows us to get both Eladamri’s Call and Release the Ants. We can Call for Emrakul, the Aeon’s Torn, Brainstorm it on top of our library, and then kill with Release the Ants. That sequence is pretty neat, but I’ve found that it’s unnecessary and that there are way too many games that I am able to get an Omniscience onto the battlefield and Impulse is the last card in my hand. In those instances, Split Decision is much worse. Once we can cast the first Cunning Wish, simply getting another Cunning Wish along with a one and a two will be sufficient. We also don’t have to have exactly Emrakul, the Aeon’s Torn to kill with Release the Ants – Dig Through Time at eight mana and Omniscience at ten mana will usually be big enough to win all of the clashes and kill them.
You can have some customization with your one-mana disruption spells, but I like to have a total of four. The two configurations I like the most are either four Spell Pierce or a three/one split on Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm. Last weekend I played the three/one split to free up a slot in the sideboard for a third Young Pyromancer and it felt pretty good.
I have seen some people go as low as two which I think is pretty silly. There are a lot of matchups (like Storm and Delver strategies) where our plan should be to aggressively attack their cantrips with our cheap permission.
I have been very impressed with the Young Pyromancer sideboard plan with this deck. In fact, I use it against the mirror, Sneak and Show, Miracles, and I like to bring some number in against any opponent that I expect to see Surgical Extraction out of. I had my first poor experience with it this weekend when Josh Ravitz pummeled me with the Monastery Mentor/Daze version of Miracles; Young Pyromancer just gets outclassed by Monastery Mentor too quickly. We are bringing in some Lightning Bolts (primarily to fight Meddling Mage, but they can also hit Monastery Mentor), but we still need to find them and only have two isn’t very effective when they have four Monastery Mentors. I ended up going down to one Young Pyromancer for the last game and brought in Pyroclasm, but I’m still not sure what’s right.
Moving forward, I think that we will likely need a different plan of attack against the Mentor Miracles decks. Maybe it’s Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but trying to get through a four-mana sorcery-speed threat against Red Elemental Blast, Daze, and Spell Pierce seems miserable. It could be that we want a couple copies of Sulfur Elemental, as it’s very good against Monastery Mentor and the card is great against Death and Taxes. Alternatively, we could try out something like Izzet Staticaster.
I had a Boseiju, Who Shelters All in my sideboard this weekend and was unimpressed with it. It’s mainly for the Miracles and Delver matchups, but the life-loss can be a real thing if we aren’t comboing right away. I did bring it in for the mirror matches that I played over the weekend as a way of making my Dig Through Time uncounterable.
In the past I have played with both of these cards, both either in the maindeck or in the sideboard, but ultimately I decided to skip on them for this weekend. Previously I wanted something that I could “value” Cunning Wish for, so I was using Fact or Fiction. I think that Intuition is likely better in the maindeck, since having to Cunning Wish for it and then Intuition for what you’re looking for just seems cumbersome. We can just Cunning Wish for Fact or Fiction and then cast it the following turn. Any Fact or Fiction that includes a Dig Through Time just seems like a nightmare for our opponent.
All in all, I still think that OmniTell is the best deck in Legacy. Of my losses this past weekend, the only match that felt hopeless was against Reanimator. In game one he naturally drew his Iona, Shield of Emeria, so I was locked out of casting Show and Tell. You can also set up a game state where you Cunning Wish for Eladamri’s Call before you Show and Tell in Omniscience so they have to decide if they want to lock you out of blue or using your Call.
GP London
This coming weekend I get to go on an adventure.
If you would have told me two years ago that I would be signing cards and playmats at events and getting to go on a trip to London for a Seminar, Meet and Greet, and having my likeness rereleased in full art and foil, I would have laughed. I am truly grateful for all the opportunities that I have had through playing Magic, and I really look forward to continuing to make content, stream, and battle as much as possible.
Enough of the tears in my beard though, let’s talk about what really on your mind. Dragons.
Creatures (16)
- 4 Stormbreath Dragon
- 4 Goblin Rabblemaster
- 1 Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury
- 4 Thunderbreak Regent
- 3 Hangarback Walker
Lands (19)
Spells (25)
In my absence, Dragons went and made a Grand Prix Top Eight. There was also an Esper Dragons deck there, but I don’t really count that. Dragonlord Ojutai might be a Dragon, which I respect, but Stormbreath Dragon he is not.
While I was streaming Monday night, I had a lot of people asking me for my impressions of the deck. Honestly, I’ve never been too impressed with the R/B version of the Dragons deck. I always liked the acceleration that you got from green and how punishing Xenagos, the Reveler could be against control decks. I do, however, like the possibility of Hangarback Walker in the deck. One of the issues that the R/B version of the deck had before was a lack of good two-drops. Seeker of the Way and Soulfire Grand Master are both very good, and combined with Crackling Doom most players were swayed to the Mardu side of Dragons, but with the addition of Hangarback Walker we can just stay a true two-color deck.
The consistency that we gain from being only two colors is pretty undervalued. We’re so used to just jamming three colors that it can be a little tough to see, but knowing that we will be able to cast every spell on-curve and double up our cheap spells whatever their colored mana requirements may be is really nice.
The other neat thing about this list is that we see a full four copies of Bile Blight, which until after Pro Tour Magic Origins was a card that we saw almost no copies of anywhere. With U/R Thopters becoming very popular, Bile Blight does a good job and quelling the advantage the deck can gain by going wide. It’s also not terrible against the creature suite in the Mono-Red Aggro deck, and if Hordeling Outburst attempts to make a comeback then we’re already set to fight it.
The one thing that I would change would be moving away from Outpost Siege and just play Chandra, Pyromaster instead. Similar to playing against the red token-based strategies of last format, Chandra, Pyromaster is a huge source of advantage. Killing the 1/1 tokens and generating card advantage with her 0 ability is very strong, I like her much better than Outpost Siege.
The other card that rose in stock in the post-Pro Tour world is Kolaghan’s Command. Being able to kill a creature and an artifact is very big game against U/R Thopters. It’s not even that bad if you are able to kill a creature and a Hangarback Walker. We can also use the Raise Dead mode to value our opponents out by getting back our own Hangarback Walkers, or Goblin Rabblemaster, or Stormbreath Dragon – man that seems sweet!
I really like the R/B Dragons deck, and it’s definitely on my list of things to consider for London this weekend along with Bant Heroic and Abzan Rally.
I really can’t emphasize just how excited I am for this trip. I’ve only been out of the country to play Magic once before, at Pro Tour Nagoya a few years ago, and I’ve always wanted to go to London. The food, the beer, the people… it’s going to be great.
Make sure you get there early on Friday so that you can check out the VS Series Seminar that I will be part of along with Todd Anderson, Tom Ross, Brad Nelson, and Brian Braun-Duin. We will also have a Meet and Greet after the VS Series Seminar where you can get your new tokens signed, be they foil or nonfoil.
I must say, although I’m not biased in any way, that mine is still the best.