With the announcement of Legacy Grand Prix, I began in earnest to look at Legacy once more. I watched part of a Legacy tournament at Origins and I searched through the major Legacy forums and Legacy websites. I fully intend on playing in the Legacy Grand Prix, and what’s more, I intend on breaking the format.
I think it is likely that the Legacy Grand Prix are going to be disappointments. I applaud the audacity of doing them, but I think there are two really critical reasons why it is a bad idea. First of all, a huge proportion of the Legacy crowd plays Legacy because they like the casualness of it. Many of the Type One players who are disillusioned by how competitive it has become have turned to Legacy. A Legacy Grand Prix will make Legacy less casual, in some ways, than Vintage currently is. I think that will drive out many of the current Legacy players. Second, the price of key staples is too prohibitive. When dual lands rotated out of Extended, I saw dual lands selling for as little as three dollars. Of course, that was only a brief dip in reaction to the fear that the dual lands would become worthless. Currently, Underground Seas are selling for $38 and most of the Blue duals seem to hover around $30.
One of the reasons is that Vintage is just really popular. People who want to play in these Vintage proxy events are not required to have Moxen, which they can proxy, but they can’t play without dual lands. The most devastating factor is the prize of Force of Will. Its omnipresence in Vintage has steadily driven the price of this Alliances uncommon to nearly the same price as the Blue dual lands. Force of Will is a format-defining card no matter the format.
With the ability to play four Dark Rituals and four Lion’s Eye Diamond it seems impossible to fathom how the format could shake out other than that Force of Will will be either the most played or among the most played cards in Legacy. When 600+ people trying to test for a Grand Prix need four Force of Wills who don’t own them, I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen to the price of the card. It’s certainly possible that it will only go up a little bit, but it seems more likely either that it’s going to rise by a good 30%+ in price, or that people will just give up and avoid the Legacy Grand Prix entirely.
The other thing that makes Legacy seem rather silly from a logistical perspective is the fact that they have tried to ban cards with an eye toward the market value of some cards. For example, Illusionary Mask is banned probably in no small part because it is just too damned expensive. Same with Mana Drain.
This format has a serious problem: it only takes some Japanese genius to come up with an insane deck built around some Unlimited rare and then you’ll have another $100+ card. Just hope that the deck building geniuses don’t find some insane combo around Time Vault or the like. The problem with the format is that it is being built upon sets that simply did not have print runs large enough to support the game. If a deck built around old rares emerges as the deck to play, then the format will be unplayable or another banning will have to take place. With so many amazing and scarce old rares, how long can that last? Like I said, there are serious problems inherent in the format that Vintage can just ignore because we proxy and encourage proxying.
I also think that the claim that Legacy will be closer to Extended than Vintage is hopelessly naïve. This format has four Lion’s Eye Diamond, four Lotus Petal, four Dark Ritual, and you can play cards like: Moat, Abyss, and Reset (a key card to the format’s High Tide deck). The point is that you have ridiculously broken cards begging to be abused and you have insanely powerful old cards that have never nor would they see the light of day in Extended. This isn’t going to be like Extended, it will be like Vintage light. That isn’t a bad thing per se. Vintage right now is so dominated by cards like Force of Will and Chalice of the Void that the insanity is kept well in check and the format is highly tempo oriented so that Fish decks are high performers. [Is it just me, or does Steve sound like Zvi Mowshowitz did when discussing the Pros vs. Vintage a while back? The forums should certainly be good times when Peter Rotten and Co. show up to sound off. – Knut, amused]
Now we can begin to take a look at what is being played in Legacy. I want to encourage everyone to take a look at the most well known website dedicated to Legacy: The Source. Before going about developing, it is a good idea to at least familiarize yourself with what is out there. Specifically, take a look at the metagame forum to get a good idea of what it is that these people who are dedicated to Legacy consider the decks to beat.
I’m sure that I’ll get at least one nasty comment from some Legacy player as a result of this article, and my comments are not intended to be insulting or demeaning, but I’m trying to help shed light on the format. I believe that Legacy is basically in the same position that Vintage was in 2001. In other words, it’s highly unexplored. It isn’t that the people who play the format don’t have a good idea of the metagame and what decks win. They do. The same was true of Vintage in 2001.
The critical difference between Vintage of 2001 and 2005 isn’t the playskill or the popularity (although those are differences). The critical difference is the focus on innovation and design by people like myself. Legacy is extremely underdeveloped in terms of design, but not in terms of metagaming. There are almost no striking innovations in the format. The “Solidarity” High Tide deck with Reset is cute, but there is so much potential for incredible design and tuning. And looking at the forums and the decks to beat and thinking about the work I’ve done in Vintage, I know that I could come up with at least a few serious format benders.
The Legacy Metagame
So let’s talk about Legacy for a moment. What I saw at the Legacy tournaments in Origins looked like neither old Extended nor Vintage. It looked like a bunch of aggro-control and aggro decks. Most of the players were playing a Blue aggro control deck. Rich Shay had just thrown together a GroAtog deck with Accumulated Knowledges, Merchant Scrolls, Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, four Psychatogs and four Quirion Dryads – and he won the tournament. He had Cunning Wish for Berserk in his sideboard. He also was packing Old Man of the Sea (an amazing card in Vintage – good luck getting some, Legacy players) and Submerges in his sideboard. He faced off against Goblins decks, burn decks, and a spate of other Aggro control decks. A teammate of mine made Top 4 with a U/G Madness deck. Others were playing Fish variants and other Blue-based aggro control decks.
The two most commonly played Blue spells that I saw were Force of Will and Daze. Almost no one in that tournament was playing the acceleration that the format permits (Lotus Petal, etc). For that reason, Daze is simply an amazing card. Think about the environment I just described: obviously Daze is going to be a huge bomb when everyone is just playing a land and hopefully a threat a turn.
From what I’ve read on the major Legacy forum discussions, the decks that tend to be winning are Landstill variants, these aggro-control decks and Goblin-based decks.
Two players in this Legacy tournament were running combo. Mike Bomholt was playing a unique combo deck built around Intuition, Dark Rituals, and Lion’s Eye Diamond to abuse Ill-Gotten Gains and Tendrils of Agony. The deck was called Iggy Pop. The other was the well-known two-land “Belcher” deck. I watched the Belcher player for most of the time that I was observing the tournament. As the primary designer of Meandeck Tendrils, I have quite a bit of experience with extremely fast combo decks. I watched the Belcher player make about a mistake a turn and still manage to pull out some wins. Little things like choosing what to imprint on a Chrome Mox can make the difference between resiliency to Force of Will and winning the game or not.
Given the hands that the Belcher player drew in the three rounds I watched his games, I would not have lost a single game. As such, I’d like to begin my exploration of Legacy with an attempt to try and perfect a turn 1/2 combo deck built around Goblin Charbelcher. Since almost no one plays acceleration and since Moxen aren’t in this format, Null Rod and Chalice of the Void are not threats. The only two cards I see a Belcher deck having to deal with are Force of Will and Daze. Daze is amazingly simple to play around. Force of Will is a bit trickier – but if that is the only card we need to be concerned about, we have little to fear.
Optimizing Goblin Charbelcher
So our task is to design and put together the proper Goblin Charbelcher deck. To do that we need to figure out how much room we have to play with.
The start of the deck should be obvious:
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Spoils of the Vault
Those eight cards are the core of any Goblin Charbelcher deck. Spoils of the Vault is a very risky card in that it involves about a 8% chance that you will simply die when Spoilsing for a four-of. However, it effectively doubles the number of Goblin Charbelchers in your deck – something that is absolutely necessary in a deck like this.
Then the mana:
4 Land Grant
2 Dual Lands
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
And there is the mana base. This much of the deck builds itself. The only questionable inclusion is whether Tinder Wall is truly necessary.
Let me explain some of the synergies involved for the unfamiliar.
Land Grant
Land Grant not only doubles here as a Mox, but it fulfills a critical function: it thins your deck. Goblin Charbelcher does damage equal to the number of cards revealed before you see a land. Land Grant removes the chance that you will hit a land (or dramatically minimizes it) making it highly probable that the first “belch” will kill your opponent. The only question is the precise configuration of land you are going to run. Bayou is an auto-include. The question is whether Taiga or Tropical Island should be the second land. That depends upon the colors we settle on.
Lion’s Eye Diamond
This card is the real reason to play this deck. With Goblin Charbelcher in play, this card taps to activate the Belcher and kill your opponent. It also has insane synergy with Spoils of the Vault. Imagine:
Land Grant for Bayou. Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lion’s Eye Diamond. Remove Elvish Spirit Guide from game. Tap Bayou for lack. BG floating. Play Spoils of the Vault naming Goblin Charbelcher. In response, sacrifice a Lion’s Eye Diamond. BBBG floating. So long as you don’t die right there, you win. If you find the Goblin Charbelcher in your top twenty cards, you can play it on the spot and then sacrifice the other Lion’s Eye Diamond to activate the Belcher and murder your opponent.
The inclusion of Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and Lotus Petal should be equally obvious. They enable very early Goblin Charbelchers and work well together. Chrome Mox is a necessary accelerant but probably involves the most difficult decision-making the deck has to offer. Elvish Spirit Guide is simply amazing as well. The only really questionable inclusion is Tinder Wall. However, it is castable off of any of the Land Grant targets and Elvish Spirit Guides. This card adds no stress to the mana base and therefore should be an auto-include. With just a land and a Tinder Wall you can activate a Belcher – so that seems like a solid inclusion.
The problem is that there are 18 slots left to round out the deck. Optimizing Belcher will involve a process of determining how to finish out the deck. There is only one “correct” build. The rest are just weaker, less resilient, less consistent or some combination thereof.
The player I watched had three Goblin Welders in his build. Goblin Welder is strong for several reasons. First of all, it enables you to evade countermagic such as Force of Will with your Belcher. But perhaps the most compelling reason to run Goblin Welder is that it truly abuses your disgusting use of Lion’s Eye Diamond. Chrome Mox is never dead if you have a Lion’s Eye Diamond in play or in your graveyard and a Goblin Welder in play. Lotus Petal can become three mana just like that.
I thought that the DCI learned their lesson about Lion’s Eye Diamond in Vintage. Evidently not. Abuse it while you can.
I think that we can use Duress as our disruption spell of choice.
Brainstorm
I think the key difference between any list I’d play and the list that the Belcher player was playing that I was watching was that I think that Brainstorm is an autoinclude. Lotus Petal + Land Grant makes Brainstorm an amazing play. It makes it that much more likely that you are going to see one of the key eight spells that you need to win: Spoils and Belcher. It also makes it far more likely that you’ll see one of the truly broken spells in your deck: Lion’s Eye Diamond. To make this card work, we probably should fit some number of Chromatic Spheres into the deck. I’m not sure what the right number is, but probably only testing can determine that quantity.
So we add:
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Duress
4 Brainstorm
Other options:
I’ve seen people play with Eladamri’s Vineyard. I consider that card way too symmetrical to be viable. I also saw people playing with Plunge into Darkness. That is a viable option. I’m just not sure how good it is. Other options include Gamble (if you are running Red), Tainted Pact and Seething Song.
I don’t really think any of those options are attractive as just playing with Sleight of Hand and/or Night’s Whisper. I might also want to try one Tendrils of Agony or two, although I’m not sure how functional it would really be.
One other direction would be to add some more creatures like Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise to abuse the ridiculous Culling of the Weak. [I can actually see an aggro Belcher deck like the one that Jim Ferraiolo built for Standard a reasonable option. – Knut] Those cards would have great synergy with Cabal Ritual as well and provide another use for Goblin Welder. But they would probably just make the deck too conditional.
Because I’m simply not sure about the best way to finish this deck out, I’d play with two Night’s Whisper, two Darkwater Egg, and one Sleight of Hand and one Plunge into Darkness. I would take this list, and then tune it. The final six cards were deliberately chosen to facilitate tuning – not to arrive at a predetermined “best list.” It is in tuning that the best list will be determined.
To summarize:
Spells (50)
Now, just to demonstrate how this deck works, I’ll do a few goldfishes:
The first hand that came up on MWS was:
2 Lotus Petal
1 Tinder Wall
1 Brainstorm
1 Spoils of the Vault
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Darkwater Egg
Now, we could wait until turn 2 just to get a bit more stability, but let’s goldfish like we were playing the deck.
I’d play both Lotus Petals to play around Daze and then probably Brainstorm. My Brainstorm sees:
Land Grant
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Cabal Ritual
I’d put back the Tinder Wall and the Darkwater Egg and play Land Grant.
Once you have dug out that Bayou then play it.
Now you can tap the Bayou and the Petal and play Cabal Ritual. BBB floating. Now play both Lion’s Eye Diamonds. Play Spoils of the Vault naming Goblin Charbelcher and blow one Lion’s Eye Diamond in response.
It was the eighth card down. Now play it and bust the other Lion’s Eye Diamond to activate it. Unfortunately, the Tropical Island was the fourth card down and I am sitting with only one mana in play. Nonetheless, if I only had one land in my deck, I would have just won on the spot. This game also demonstrated the value of Brainstorm and made us question the value of the Darkwater Egg. The tuning has begun.
One more goldfish just to show what this deck can do:
Goblin Charbelcher
Tinder Wall
Tinder Wall
Chromatic Sphere
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Dark Ritual
Chrome Mox
This hand has quite a few options.
I can play a Chrome Mox and imprint a Tinder Wall and then play the other Tinder Wall or Chromatic Sphere. Playing the Tinder Wall seems like the better play and I do it. I pass the turn.
On turn 2 I draw: Lotus Petal.
I sacrifice the Tinder Wall and play Chromatic Sphere with R floating. I bust the Chromatic Sphere for a Black mana and draw: another Goblin Charbelcher.
I play Dark Ritual and play Lotus Petal. I then play the Goblin Charbelcher off the Ritual mana and the Red floating from the Tinder Wall. Now I play the LED and activate it. No land in the top twenty cards. Good goldfish! That’s it for now. In the end, this might not even be the right deck despite its brokenness simply because it might just be easier to win using less broken decks because the competition isn’t that difficult. Either way, it’s worth exploring. And the exploration has just begun.