Yesterday we brought you all the hot Worldwake cards making a splash in Standard. Today we’re bringing you a list of the cards that were hot in Legacy (some so hot they sold out).
When in doubt, burn your opponent out! It is an adage that stretches all the way back to the first players to crack Lightning Bolt and Fireball in the same booster pack and have a lightbulb suddenly flash into existence above their heads. For many players, when it comes to Legacy a Burn deck provides a cheap means of entry into the sometimes pricey format. The best part is that it’s competitive, and essentially a puzzle-like combo deck (or a long math equation). Can you combine Flame Rift, Lightning Bolt and Fireblast enough times to kill the opponent while keeping the board clear with Flamebreak? If you can, you’ve got yourself a tournament winning strategy for under $100!
Blue is a popular color in Legacy, and this weekend bore that out loudly. But it wasn’t staples like Force of Will selling at a brisk pace, but sideboard hate cards. Mindbreak Trap is a great solution to storm based combo decks, or any combo deck seeking to win through casting multiple spells in a single turn. Back to Basics is a great sideboard hate card for the Island-heavy Merfolk deck. Thanks to its lack of basics it’s perfectly positioned to abuse Back to Basics, locking down its opponent’s lands while playing its own penalty free! And Kira, Great Glass Spinner? She goes a long way towards making sure your opponent has to try extra hard to take out your creatures. Kira and Mindbreak Trap were so popular this weekend they actually sold out entirely.
Of course, if Blue is a popular color amongst players, plenty of people will be trying to hate it out. Enter Choke. The green enchantment has been the preferred method of hate for blue mages for years and years. At one time it was even comboed with Root Maze to make sure every Island an opponent played was tapped, indefinitely. Like Back to Basics for Merfolk, Choke is a one-sided Stasis that lets you take the reins against a blue mage.
Two archetype-specific cards seeing a resurgence this weekend are Flame-kin Zealot and City of Traitors. The Zealot is a popular target in Dredge decks. Combined with Bridge from Below and Dread Return, you can create a massive amount of tokens in a single turn, then reanimate Flame-kin Zealot to Crusade them and give them haste. Not a bad turn. As for City of Traitors, a popular accelerant since its first printing, the City may have received an influx in popularity this weekend thanks to reports of a Monobrown Stax deck doing well at Grand Prix-Madrid. That tournament, which featured the Legacy format as well, concluded its first day and a half of play before competitors had to show up this morning (thanks to time zones).