(Continued from Part I of this series.)
Now that we’ve established that the current Legacy environment is dominated by three decks (Goblins, Solidarity/Reset High Tide and Threshold), how can you use this information? That is, to what extent is Legacy a “three-deck format” that is ripe for decimation by a well-designed rogue deck?
To answer this, we need to determine how much of the field the top three decks constitute. Here’s the metagame breakdown from the three most recent U.S. Legacy tournaments with fifty or more players:
The Mana Leak Open 2006
(September 10, 2006; Stratford, Connecticut)
50 players
Threshold 11111 11 (7) (13%) * *
Goblins 11111 1 (6) (12%)
Solidarity (Reset High Tide) 11111 1 (6) (12%) *
Fish 11111 (5)
G/B(/W) Control 1111 (4)
Reanimator 111 (3) * *
Affinity 11 (2) *
Landstill 11 (2)
Angel Stompy 11 (2)
B/R Aggro 11 (2)
U/G Madness 11 (2)
Faerie Stompy 11 (2) *
R/G Beatz 1 *
IGGy Pop 1
Ichorid 1
Survival 1
Golden Grahams (Salvagers-Gamekeeper) 1
Clerics 1
Psychatog 1
White Weenie 1
Mono-G Stompy 1
(* Denotes a Top 8 appearance.)
Goblins/Threshold/Solidarity combined: 37%
Everything Else: 63%
While the Big Three were the most played decks at Ray Robillard’s (a.k.a. iamfishman) Legacy tournament, they certainly didn’t make up enough of the field that you can design something that smashes X, Y and Z, but loses to everything else. Well, you can, but don’t be surprised to find yourself 1-2 after the first three rounds.
Such are the perils of Legacy, which is largely an “amateur format,” partly owing to the frequency of events with meaningful prizes and regular support from Wizards Organized Play. While some people take the format as seriously as good sense can afford, in fact a significant segment of the playing community is far more likely to play their pet deck or whatever they have the cards for, than make a real effort of testing against a gauntlet, shelling out money for the cards they need and making a rational deck choice to maximize their odds for the best performance.
Consequently, Legacy is suffering from a serious crisis of identity. Is it a “real format,” or one where you can just throw together your awful Clerics deck and go to a tournament to just have a good time? On account of this, be aware that the x-1 bracket is hodge-podge of the most random stuff imaginable; where if you lose to a good deck early on, be prepared to encounter anything from Secret Force, 2-land Belcher, Enchantress, etc. over the next few rounds.
Whether it was intended or not, Legacy is the fruition of the Time Spiral aesthetic: where all of the great decks from Extended seasons past come back from the dead to settle ancient grudges and face arch-nemeses they haven’t seen in years. Drama aside, be aware that Legacy is either exhilaratingly random or frustratingly random, depending on your attitude.
StarCityGames.com Duel for Duals IV, Day 1
(October 18, 2006; Roanoke, Virginia)
72 Players
Goblins 11111 11111 111 (13) (18%) * *
Threshold 11111 111 (8) (11%) * *
Solidarity 11111 111 (8) (11%) *
Affinity 11111 (5)
Survival 111 (3)
Fish 111 (3)
MUC 11 (2) *
B/W Confidant 11 (2) *
Landstill 11 (2) *
B/R Aggro 11 (2)
Angel Stompy 11 (2)
Faerie Stompy 11 (2)
Aluren 11 (2)
Burn 11 (2)
U/G Madness 11 (2)
IGGy Pop 11 (2)
U/G/W Aggro-Control 1
Belcher 1
43 Land 1
Rifter (W/R Control) 1
R/G Beatz 1
GWB Control 1
Psychatog 1
Snakes 1
Pirates & Ninjas 1 (yeah…) [Yay! – Craig.]
Enchantress 1
U/R Control 1
Braids 1
(* Denotes a Top 8 appearance.)
Goblins/Threshold/Solidarity combined: 40%
Everything Else: 60%
To validate my observation that Legacy is an amateur format, note that someone went to the effort to actually build and play their Pirates & Ninjas deck, which I shall affectionately dub “How to Kill a Mockingbird.”
The StarCityGames.com events are the easiest kinds of events to do a deep analysis on, due to StarCityGames.com commitment of posting all decklists from the event, along with Kevin Binswanger (a.k.a. Anusien) hard work in typing the lists and loading them to the StarCityGames.com database. Thanks, Kevin. Analyzing Top 8 lists alone is a crude method to understand how the format is being approached.
In any case, this is about as close as Legacy gets to a predictable “Real Metagame,” where 40% (29 out of 72) of the players showed up with one of the top three decks.
StarCityGames.com Duel for Duals IV, Day 2
(October 19, 2006; Roanoke, Virginia)
55 Players
Goblins 11111 11111 11 (12) (24%) * * *
Threshold 11111 1 (6) (11%)
Solidarity 11111 1 (6) (11%)
B/W Confidant 111 (3)
Fish 111 (3)
Affinity 11 (2) *
Survival 11 (2) *
UGW Aggro-Control 11 (2) *
IGGy Pop 11 (2) *
Mono-Green Stompy 11 (2)
Angel Stompy 11 (2)
Landstill 11 (2)
43 Land 1 *
IGGy Pop 1 *
Faerie Stompy 1
G/B Aggro-Control 1
Rifter (R/W Control) 1
Welder Survival 1
U/G Madness 1
B/W Prison-Control 1
Confinement Slide 1
B/R Aggro 1
U/W Control 1
Mono-Brown Aggro-Prison 1
(* Denotes a Top 8 appearance.)
Goblins/Threshold/Solidarity combined: 44%
Everything Else: 56%
With one out of five players running Goblin Lackey and friends, Goblins was overwhelmingly the most popular deck on Day 2 of the last StarCityGames.com event, and ended up taking first place, last place and everything in between. Note the deck’s final placement: 1, 2, 7, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 39, 48, 52 and 55th (last place). Goblins’ average placement: 23.5th Place; Median Placement: 16.5. A word of advice: if you plan on attending a serious Legacy event, make sure your deck has a reasonable game one against Goblins and have plenty of support waiting in the sideboard, if you can’t beat them outright.
Going back to the question that started this article, supplemented with knowledge of Legacy inherently unstable “metagame”: how does one go about designing a deck to beat the Top Tier aggro, aggro-control, combo decks and still have a strong enough game against Legacy’s limitless sea of randomness?
It was none other than Chris Pikula, the Meddling Mage himself, that brought to the format his Deadguy Ale (or “B/W Disruption” to those with a fondness for descriptive names). His homebrew took second place at Legacy’s first Grand Prix (Philadelphia), with something that had a strong enough strategic balance to combat randomness and the top tier decks.
Deadguy Ale by Chris Pikula
Second Place, GP: Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
October 12, 2005
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
2 Gerrard’s Verdict
2 Engineered Plague
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Wasteland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author]
1 Tainted Field
10 Swamp
Sideboard:
4 Withered Wretch
3 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Plague
2 Darkblast
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Phyrexian Negator
In the first article in this series, I noted that as good as Engineered Plague seems against Goblins, having three mana available in one of your main phases against a deck running full sets of Wastelands and Rishadan Ports isn’t something you can count on. However, if you’re running your Plagues in the maindeck, and can power them out on any turn – notably, the first – with Dark Ritual mana, this isn’t a concern. And an early Plague is crushing against Goblins, even more so when you have access to recurring Darkblast(s) from the sideboard or support from Cursed Scroll.
B/W Disruption also has a reasonable game against Solidarity/Reset High Tide with its suite of discard (Duress, Hymn, Verdict, Specter) and land destruction (Sinkhole and Vindicate). Though Solidarity can often rebuild since Pikula’s deck puts the opposition on a slow clock; thus Phyrexian Negators replace the maindeck Engineered Plagues post-board – in the case of Pikula’s build.
Against Threshold, B/W Disruption’s land destruction goes a long way to making a land light deck’s day miserable. Being cut off from its support colors is equally devastating, since Threshold’s creature removal and Meddling Mage is in White, whereas its mana generators (Werebear) and beaters are in Green. Consequently, strategic use of the deck’s land destruction can be crushing. Uncastable cards accumulate in the Threshold player’s hand, only to be plucked away by discard. Post-board, B/W brings in Withered Wretch, which is similarly no weekend in the Hamptons with your mistress.
Weaknesses.
When B/W Disruption is firing on all cylinders and is drawing the right cards for the right situation, the deck can be a monster. But like every other deck that runs a large amount of interactive cards, drawing the wrong card at the wrong time is a good way to lose. Top-decking Hymns and Duresses in the mid-game or against a creature-heavy deck is less than good, as is drawing Sinkholes and the like when the opposition has more mana than they need.
The deck is an effort to shift the fundamental turn to turn 2 or 3, and when it can maintain the initiative it will usually do well. But if Deadguy Ale is put on the defensive, the flimsiness of its creatures become painfully obvious, with Pithing Needle being a efficient answer to the rest of the deck’s threats: Nantuko Shade, Cursed Scroll, Wasteland, and Withered Wretch.
The purpose of highlighting Pikula’s deck is to demonstrate how new decks can enter a rag-tag format such as Legacy and have “staying power.” B/W Disruption also embodies another principle that I said I would cover in the previous article: the Secret of Legacy Deck Construction.
Aside: Secrets of the Best Legacy Decks
Almost as an afterthought, Chris observes the following at the end of his GP: Philly report:
I think it is really cool how the deck [Deadguy Ale a.k.a. B/W Disruption] is built around the double-roles that so many of the cards serve. Confidant is a card drawer and a threat. Scroll is creature kill and a threat. Specter is disruption and a threat. Vindicate can be disruption or reactive. Wasteland lets me play 23 lands and not feel flooded when I draw too many. The deck just doesn’t work if I had to play spells that were less versatile.
Though he might not have realized it at the time, Chris has discovered one of the secrets to strong Legacy deck design.
Versatility, Hybridization, and Internal Synergy: these are the hallmarks of the best decks in Legacy.
In a format where answers are more powerful than threats, a function of the Banned list, Legacy decks need a little something special to consistently win. Thus, the best decks in the format rely on strong internal synergies* and cards that work double-duty (i.e. they’re versatile). This is necessary since the format rests on four legs: Goblins, Solidarity, Threshold and Randomness.
(* For instance, Goblins’ tribalism; Threshold’s cantrips/fetchlands; Solidarity’s Remand; Affinity’s, um, Affinity; IGGy Pop’s Leylines, etc.)
As such, it’s not enough to gun for the Big Three and ignore everything else, because the three hundred pound gorilla in the corner that no one talks about and only rarely considers in their testing and deck design will be there to take you down. And the name of this ornery gorilla is “Randomness.” Odds are, you’ll just rationalize your loss to Randomness to “bad luck” for getting paired against a “bad deck.” Whether you like it or not, this is one of the essential qualities of the format at the moment, and Randomness in Legacy is far more prevalent than in any other non-casual format.
Practically speaking, the pressure that these dynamics create is that all new decks have to stand on their own (beating Randomness) and have to either get lucky to avoid or be able to square off against the known Decks to Beat, as well as other powerful and emerging decks. Given the depth of the card pool and the vast amount of unexplored terrain, this is a challenging, though not impossible task.
Since cards need to be versatile, it follows that decks will naturally hybridize (strategic versatility). Conversely, “strategically pure” decks, such as mono-Red Burn, mono-Green Stompy, and Belcher rarely do well in this format. Hybridization, then, is an extension of versatility that encompasses a deck’s entire strategic potential.
End Aside.
After Grand Prix: Philadelphia, Pikula’s B/W Disruption deck took off and still sees regular play. This leads us to a question I’ve pondered for a while: “Where do new decks come from and why do they become popular?” While this is an interesting question, to be honest, I also need a cool segue to transition to the remainder of the article.
After Pikula’s deck made it to the finals of GP: Philly, it immediately began to see a respectable amount of play and continually peppers the Top 8s and Top 16s of large Legacy events. Even now, I think TMD still has it listed as a Deck to Beat, on the grounds that new decks should test against disruption strategies that are built around copious amounts of hand and land destruction.
B/W Disruption is an example of a deck that came out nowhere, in terms of most Legacy strategists and deck developers’ ideas on what good decks look like. Even Pikula’s friends discounted “Deadguy Ale” as garbage. But from one notable placing, the deck achieved respectable popularity.
A rarer form of metagame emergence is where decks achieve popularity from a handful of passionate forum posters writing about their deck and obsessively diligently responding to every thoughtful or half-formed post about a deck’s viability and card choices. Two examples of this phenomenon that immediately come to mind: Faerie Stompy and U/W/B Fish a.k.a. “HanniFish.”
Faerie Stompy
After being chastised in the forums of my last article in this series for lumping Mono-Blue Skies in with Faerie Stompy, I thought it would be wise to hop on a plane and take the red-eye to Jarvenpaa, Finland to discuss the subtleties of Faerie Stompy with the deck’s creator, Jarno Porkka, better known around the Internet as “Eldariel.”
After doing a sixth grade country report on the country, I’ve always had a sort of fondness for Finland, with its pale women, long nights, and reindeer. But this attraction failed to give me a solid command of the exotic-sounding Finnish language. Luckily, Jarno is fluent in English, not to mention a gracious host.
Faerie Stompy by Cody Mannion
4th Place, The Mana Leak Open 2006
Stratford, Connecticut
September 10, 2006
4 Cloud Of Faeries
4 Sea Drake
4 Serendib Efreet
3 Trinket Mage
3 Juggernaut
4 Sword Of Fire And Ice
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Force Of Will
3 Thirst For Knowledge
2 Psionic Blast
4 Chalice Of The Void
4 Chrome Mox
2 Pithing Needle
1 Cursed Scroll
5 Island
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City Of Traitors
1 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Seat Of The Synod
Sideboard:
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Trinisphere
3 Misdirection
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Psionic Blast
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
“Faerie Stompy (FS) is an accelerated Blue/Brown aggro-control deck that is unique to Legacy. The deck is build around the best acceleration in the format to cheat on its mana curve and land count. The deck plays just a single Pithing Needle as its one-drop. But this skewed mana curve allows it to abuse one of the deck’s centrepieces: the crippling Chalice of the Void.
“Chalice is such a potent card in the current field, that Faerie Stompy squeezes in a few extra copies in the form of Trinket Mage. Trinket Mage also provides versatility in tutoring for additional mana, Pithing Needle or a sideboard bomb. One less obvious benefit of having Trinket Mage is that it allows you to cram more stuff in the sideboard as you only need one or two copies of the tutorable card for it to be effective in a match.
“While Chalice is an incredible card, and one of the main reasons to play the deck in the first place, Faerie Stompy isn’t just a ‘Chalice.dec.’ Faerie Stompy abuses the most efficiently cost blue beaters ever printed: Sea Drake and Serendib Efreet. The fliers, along with Trinket Mage, are supported by an arsenal of other tools and weapons, including Force of Will, Sword of Fire and Ice, Umezawa’s Jitte and Thirst for Knowledge. Faerie Stompy even manages to run direct damage in the form of Psionic Blast.
“Faerie Stompy almost plays like a prison deck with 7-8 Chalices and 4 pitch counters, while the rest of the deck is dedicated to reducing its opponent’s life total to zero before he or she can overcome the prison-like elements. Occasionally either the hand or the match-up requires that Faerie Stompy stick to just one strategy, but mostly the deck plays an aggro-control game by thwarting its opponent’s best chances of fighting back while taking huge chunks of their life total.
“One criticism often directed at Faerie Stompy is the lack of a card advantage engine. First, note that Chalice of the Void creates massive virtual card advantage alone by making so many of its opponent’s cards unplayable. Trinket Mage also generates card advantage by being a body and placing a card in your hand. Both Umezawa’s Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice can kill multiple creatures and Sword draws you cards while doing so; while Jitte can “undo” burn spells and other forms of direct damage. This is all without taking into account the pure card advantage generated by Thirst for Knowledge.
Weaknesses.
“The deck’s major strength, its powerful manabase, is its main weakness. While the deck can definitely win with two lands, it really wants three or more mana to get everything running. The deck also needs blue mana, and while it isn’t much more sparse on blue mana than Goblins is in red mana, Faerie Stompy doesn’t play Aether Vial to smooth things out. Thus there’s a need to mulligan hands without colored mana.
“Finally, Faerie Stompy suffers random splash damage from being blue-based. For instance, Protection from Blue is second only to Protection from Red among commonly played Legacy cards (e.g., Goblin Piledriver and Sword of Fire and Ice). Additionally, any deck that runs Red will usually sideboard Red Elemental Blasts and Pyroblasts which become Swords to Plowshares against Faerie Stompy’s creatures – though Chalice for one partially alleviates this problem.”
Jarno summarized the deck well, it’s fun to play, surprisingly powerful and the mana can always be tweaked. I don’t have much else to add, except to say that Chalice is a bitch and Finnish cuisine is weird.
The last deck I’ll cover today is a deck I’ve named “HanniFish,” after the deck’s creator, Hanni Alnimer, lest it become yet another U/W/B aggro-control deck fated to be named after a certain instrumental by Tool.
HanniFish by Fleury Laurent
5th place at a Grand Prix: Kobe, Legacy Side Event
Kobe, Japan
October 22, 2006
4 Dark Confidant
4 Meddling Mage
3 Mother of Runes
3 Jotun Grunt
2 Serendib Efreet
4 Brainstorm
4 Serum Visions
4 Force Of Will
4 Daze
4 Swords To Plowshares
3 Stifle
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Pithing Needle
4 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author]
1 Island
1 Plains
Sideboard:
4 Duress
4 Engineered Plague
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Pithing Needle
2 Disenchant
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
Back when I wrote my article on Legacy Fish, I hadn’t seriously considered the Black splash in a U/W shell. But two things make U/W/B eminently viable: the printing of Dark Confidant, which is worth splashing for black alone, and the persistence of Goblins in the format (i.e. Engineered Plague in the sideboard).
This version of Fish is also notable since its popularity is largely the result of a high degree of forum chatter and Hanni Alnimer’s tireless work in promoting the deck. With a few notable exceptions, public forum discussion rarely gets people to take a deck seriously and run with it. There are other mitigating circumstances such as regional isolation and the frequency of serious Legacy tournaments. But there are a few posters that have apparently made it a mission to promote a deck in spite of the flak. As a moderator of a popular Legacy forum, it saddens me to see so many excellent ideas become public and then pass sweetly into the oblivion fated for all online forum threads. But, really, there aren’t enough major events to capitalize on every strong idea, and, you know, caveat emptor.
As for HanniFish, I think the deck is fantastic. The deck starts with full sets of the game’s best invitational cards, and rounds out its creature package with the Threshold-busting goodness of Jotun Grunt, evasive fat (Serendib Efreet or Serra Avenger) to carry a Jitte and Mother of Runes to make sure creature damage connects or to hold a strong line of defense. The rest of the shell is replete with some of the best cards ever printed: sets of Brainstorm, Force of Will, Swords to Plowshares; additional draw and color fixing with Serum Visions, the strongest “tempo counter” ever printed in Daze and an assortment of disruptive tools such as Stifle and Pithing Needle.
HanniFish’s strategy and rate of development are similar to that of Threshold, where it spends a turn or two casting cantrips to ensure its land drops and committing progressively more powerful creatures to the board while disrupting its opponent with free counters, Stifle and StP. In the mid-game, Jotun Grunt, Efreeti/Avengers, or just an invitational mage wielding a Jitte and supported by a Mother of Runes serves as the coup de grace.
Weaknesses.
Like most other aggro-control decks, HanniFish doesn’t want to face Goblins every round of a tournament, but Umezawa’s Jitte and the set of Engineered Plagues in the sideboard go a long way to making the match manageable. Even Stifle gets a lot of mileage in this match by countering Goblin Ringleader’s “Fact or Fiction-effect,” Siege-Gang Commander’s “instant army” ability, or even in removing Goblin Piledriver’s “Psychatog effect” for a turn. Taking proactive measures for the forums here: note that Stifle counters Piledriver’s ability while it’s on the stack and never directly interacts with the Piledriver itself where its Protection from Blue keeps it safe from Blue effects that target it.
More broadly, Fish – as in every other format – is weakest against pure aggro decks, which can out-aggro the aggro-control deck with creatures of greater power/toughness efficiency and overall threat density. The StPs, Jittes and Mother of Runes certainly help in battling aggro, but it’s often not enough when Fish is drawing 2/1s and 2/2s for 2 mana. Otherwise, this is a strong deck, poised to become very popular, that doesn’t have any true nightmare pairings that are worth talking about.
That’s it for today. Join me next time when I wrap up with some notable combo, aggro and control decks of Legacy.
Dan Spero
‘Bardo’ around the Internet
‘Bardo Trout’ in the StarCityGames.com Forums
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