"Please Wizards, if miracles turn out to be too good, ban the miracle, not Brainstorm."

"Brainstorm is probably going to get the banhammer now that they printed Time Walk…"

"Temporal Mastery is an easy ban in Legacy."

In order: they won’t, it won’t, and it isn’t. But I’m telling you last week’s news. We can go back to that later, but a new card crashed through the rumor mill around noon yesterday, looking about as legit as it gets.

Cavern of Souls

For those of us that can’t read Spanish, here’s what the card says:

Cavern of Souls

Land

As Cavern of Souls enters the battlefield, choose a creature type.
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast a creature spell of the chosen type. That spell can’t be countered.

Well. Then. That’s definitely something. First, just to get the negativity out of our systems, let’s come up with all the reasons why this card isn’t going to do a thing to the Legacy format we know and love:

Tribal decks? They all suck.
Wasteland it! Tribal decks don’t play that many non-basics, so my laser-guided Wasteland will always take it out.
They can’t fetch it, and we all know how bad lands you can’t fetch are. Seriously, go buy some Onslaught fetchlands and play some real Legacy.
You can’t play colored spells with Cavern of Souls, so you’re going to get color screwed versus combo and die.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at the best land for Legacy fans since Dryad Arbor. What does it ask you to do?

Dear Players,

Please play a lot of creatures. Preferably they’ll share a creature type. Also, plan on casting a few of them.

Sincerely yours,

Cavern of Souls

The beauty of Cavern of Souls is that it gives you four more effective Aether Vials, if that’s what you’re interested in. The catch, of course, is that you probably want to be playing a creature-based disruption suite, since casting a ton of Tutors and spells isn’t going to maximize your shiny new land.

We should also stand to gain value from having our Boseiju, Who Shelters All protect our creatures from getting countered. Are there any decks that hate getting their creatures countered and that don’t cast a lot of non-creature spells?

I can think of at least two. Before we get to those, though, I want to talk about why I won’t be talking about some other decks that might want Cavern of Souls.

Merfolk

There are a few reasons why Merfolk doesn’t want Cavern of Souls. They play Daze, so they want to maximize Islands. They play a bunch of Mutavaults and Wastelands, so they’re already pretty short on Islands as-is. Beyond that, they play cards like Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Sower of Temptation, Spell Pierce, and Hydroblast, so a Merfolk Cavern isn’t going to do nearly enough for them.

Beyond all that, Merfolk isn’t that worried about its creatures getting countered! Most counterspells aren’t good against Merfolk. The best way to beat Merfolk is by grinding them out with spot removal and Snapcaster Mages, then trumping their remaining creatures with Batterskull.

It takes more than just being a tribal deck to want a Cavern of Souls. For another example, look at…

Elves

Elves is a deck that cares about its creatures getting countered. If you’re ever holding a Spell Snare when Chris Andersen casts an Elvish Visionary, the answer is, "Yes, not close." But even given that, what is Elves accomplishing by making a creature uncounterable?

They bounce their creatures with Wirewood Symbiote constantly, so there will probably be a point where they open themselves up to countermagic on an Elf.
They already don’t play as many duals as they could because getting Wastelanded is a backbreaker against some hands.
They play Glimpse of Nature.

Let’s talk about that last one for a sec. So you’re playing Elves, right? And you have a Glimpse of Nature and a good hand of a bunch of one-drops. You even have an Elf Cavern in play. If you’re casting Glimpse of Nature and your opponent has a Force of Will, they’re going to use it on your Glimpse. You can resolve your Nettle Sentinel no problem, but they’re going to counter your Braingeyser. If they’re countering your Glimpse, what good is your Cavern? It’s a non-basic Forest at that point, right? There are even more reasons, though:

Regal Force isn’t an Elf.
Neither is Wirewood Symbiote, who is the creature you care most about resolving.
Neither is Green Sun’s Zenith.
Neither is Choke.

So it doesn’t look like Caverns is doing a lot for us in Elves, either. So where is it good?

Goblins

Goblins actually cares about its creatures getting countered. One of the best ways to beat a blue deck in Legacy is to resolve Goblin Ringleader’s trigger. Casting Goblin Ringleader off of a Goblin Caverns is a very real way to get ahead of blue decks.

So what does a theoretical list look like? So glad you asked.

Goblins

Drew Levin

Test deck on 04-22-2012

Legacy

Creatures (27)

Lands (24)

Spells (9)

Just your normal, everyday stock list of Goblins.

I mean, except for the part where I cut Goblin Lackey.

Funny story about that actually. Goblin Lackey is really atrociously bad right now, so I cut one of red’s best one-drops ever to add Shock to a Legacy deck. Put the pitchforks away and I’ll explain.

Your basic metagame consists of three decks: RUG Tempo, G/W Maverick, and Esper Stoneblade. Aggro-control, aggro, and control. Want to know which matchup Goblin Lackey is good in?

If you guessed "none of them," you’re right! All three decks play at least four one-mana removal spells, two of them play eight one-power one-drops (I’m counting Maverick’s fetchlands), and the third plays Force of Will. If you’re on the draw, you can get Tarmogoyfed and Stoneforge Mystic’d and Snapcaster Maged, and Maverick has close to a dozen two-drops that don’t give two hoots about Goblin Lackey, so it’s basically a mulligan on the draw.

So…why would you play this card? Still suffering under the delusion that it’s going to do what you want it to do? Maybe…steal a game for you? What if you were playing Tarfire instead?

You could always kill Mother of Runes, you could always kill Delver of Secrets, you could always kill Stoneforge Mystic before it gets Batterskull in play, and you could defend yourself from Umezawa’s Jitte for a turn or two, which is probably all you need to win. You can flip it off of Ringleader and have it do something on turn 5. It’s not a pretty card, but it’s there for a reason. It does the job you need it to do.

A second Sharpshooter is worth the slot, considering the amount of work that guy puts in against Lingering Souls and literally the entire Maverick deck except for Knight of the Reliquary. You are the control deck against all three of the major decks, so having a second Sharpshooter to Tutor up against the white decks is pretty important.

If you believe that Tarfire is worth playing four of and it’s worth having a second Sharpshooter, there aren’t a lot of ways to change this list around. I’m not a fan of adding non-Goblin spells to the deck, since part of why the deck is so awesome is that Ringleader is hard to beat when it draws a bunch of cards. I’ll happily play Shock over Lightning Bolt if it means I get to draw it for free when I cast my hasty 2/2, especially since there aren’t really any x/3s roaming around in need of a Bolting. You really want four Goblin Warchief in a deck that doesn’t have Goblin Lackey in it, so cutting down on those is inadvisable. It’s possible that you could cut the second Siege-Gang Commander, but the card seems pretty tough for Maverick or Esper to beat.

As for the sideboard, I don’t know if it’s worth sideboarding Lackey in against combo. Piledriver performs rather well, so that seems like a good addition. I was thinking about Earwig Squad, Red Elemental Blast, Mindbreak Trap, and several others, but it really depends on what combo deck you’re trying to beat. If it’s Hive Mind, you want Blasts. If it’s High Tide, almost anything has an impact, although you’ll for sure want Lackey on top of whatever hate you’re packing. If it’s Storm, Squads and Traps are best. Cabal Therapy might be worth it if you’re also battling against a lot of Stoneblade, since being able to strip their equipment is a good angle of attack to have.

Beyond combo hate, you’ll want basic stuff like Perish and graveyard hate in the sideboard. It’s probably time for Relic of Progenitus to come back, seeing as how there are now three (!) green creatures that rely on the graveyard to boost their power and toughness.

If you’re interested in taking Cavern of Souls away from a tribal deck, though, there is another option. I have no idea if it’s good or not, so don’t quote me on this too much, but Maverick might have a use for this land. Why Maverick?

The rough idea is that you name "Human" with your land. From there, you can safely resolve Mother of Runes, Thalia, Knight of the Reliquary, Ethersworn Canonist, and whatever other Humans you can jam into your G/W creature deck. The main draw is having uncounterable Thalias and Canonists against combo and having uncounterable Knights against control. Still, I don’t know if it’s good enough to warrant playing any copies of a land that isn’t a Forest or Plains and doesn’t make colored mana for spells, activations, or non-Human creatures.

Enough about Cavern of Souls, though. Let’s get back to talking about Temporal Mastery!

Temporal Mastery

A lot of the discussion I saw on Twitter about this card seemed fairly unrealistic. People were talking about Personal Tutoring for it and setting up a two-card three-mana Time Walk. Others were talking about just playing it in a basic Delver strategy. Still others were talking about playing it in an Esper Stoneblade strategy.

Of all of those, the Esper idea seems the strongest. Why? Because it has ways of taking advantage of an extra turn! It has equipment that gains life or kills creatures, it has Jace to get ahead on the free turn and to put extra Masteries back for more free turns, and it has creatures that it’s actually using to win the game. It has built-in incremental advantages.

Contrast this with a deck like RUG Tempo.

RUG Delver

Drew Levin

6th Place at Star City Games Invitational on 03-25-2012

Legacy

Creatures (12)

Lands (19)

Spells (29)

Sideboard

This is a deck that can theoretically turn a spare Mastery into a few extra points of damage. Let’s say you play two in the deck.

So what? You’re playing a card that lets you press your advantage when you’re winning and cycles when you’re losing. If you draw it in your opening hand, it’s dead until you have a Brainstorm, at which point it goes back to cycling.

This is not a card that breaks formats.

But wait! What about that Personal Tutor deck that can Tutor it up and cast it the next turn? Surely that would be able to abuse a Time Walk!

Well, not really. Temporal Mastery is a means, not an end. If I put a card-disadvantageous Tutor in my deck and cast it and resolve it and resolve the card I Tutored for, I better win. Want to know why? Because if I don’t, I should’ve just played Enlightened Tutor and Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek. Or I should’ve Personal Tutored for Show and Tell. Or Reanimate. Or Doomsday.

You know, cards that are better than Explore. Because what you’re getting from Temporal Mastery in Legacy is a high-variance Explore. Sometimes you have something to do with that extra mana and you can press your advantage, but sometimes you just draw your card, look at your hand, look at the board, and meekly say, "Go."

Nice card.

It’s not getting banned.

Neither is Brainstorm. Get real.

Let’s play a different game. It’s called, "How absurdly hot are you running before Temporal Mastery is a good card?" The way it’s played is very simple: come up with a situation where miracle casting Temporal Mastery is really good, then figure out how unrealistic that situation is. Since most of them involve an active Jace or two flipped Delver of Secrets or a resolved Doomsday for four Masteries and a Laboratory Maniac, the general theme of the game is, "You already won, just play a real card."

Seriously guys, do you need a way to make your Jace, the Mind Sculptor better at Brainstorming? Like, your objective is to play a mythic rare Evermind that splices onto Jace and/or Brainstorm? That’s a bannable card? Come on. That card isn’t even going to change anything.

Seriously, though. How often do you lose after you untap with attackers in a favorable board position and draw a blue card in your draw step? Does it even matter what the blue card is? I mean, so long as it’s not Stifle, you probably just have the game locked up right? It could be Force of Will or Spell Pierce or Brainstorm into more pressure or Ponder or Jace, but you’re not losing once you draw that blue card right?

So why would you cut a card from your deck that you actively want in your hand against certain less-fair opponents (think Reanimator, Storm, High Tide) for a card that you never ever ever want to draw?

And even if you do miraculously draw it against a combo deck, aren’t you still just dead to their combo turn because you cut countermagic for your "Time Walk?"

Alternatively, you cut your removal for the Time Walk and you’re behind on board against a creature deck, so when you cast it you’re literally just cycling it and untapping your lands.

Alternatively, you cut threats for the Time Walk and you have nothing to do with your turn.

Alternatively, you cut lands for the Time Walk and you missed your second land drop because seriously, who cuts lands in Legacy?

Alternatively, you cut cantrips for the Time Walk so your entire deck (including your Time Walk) is less consistent.

Really, how is this working out well for you? If you’re ahead, just play another counterspell. Regular Counterspell will do in a pinch, although I’ve been a staunch advocate of Spell Pierce in recent weeks. If they have an answer to your board they’ll probably just cast it and stabilize, making your Time Walk downright mediocre. If they don’t have an answer to your board, don’t you just win if you draw a counterspell instead of a Time Walk?

There’s a very real opportunity cost to playing Temporal Mastery. When you go to sit down and proxy up your four copies and put them in the nearest blue deck, be aware of what you’d play instead. Figure out if what you’re doing is actually better than Counterspell or Spell Pierce. In this case, I don’t believe it will be.

For those of you going to Birmingham and considering playing RUG, I would cut Vortexes for more anti-Maverick sideboard cards. Following such a dominant RUG performance in Phoenix, people will want to play Knight of the Reliquary. It’s worth being ready for them.

Until next week,

Drew Levin

@drewlevin on Twitter