First up, here’s the spreadsheet!
Legacy remains a very fluid format. At every event, so many decks have a shot at the crown that players can easily find one that fits their taste or play style. One of the most exciting developments of the weekend landed in 13th place: Ryland Foster’s Mono Blue Control.
Spells (35)
- 4 Counterspell
- 4 Powder Keg
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 Propaganda
- 4 Impulse
- 3 Vedalken Shackles
- 4 Back to Basics
- 4 Fact or Fiction
- 4 Spell Snare
Sideboard
I will be honest… when looking through decks, I often come across some strange concoctions. I spent a little while on this list trying to figure out how it could win and then dismissed it as a control player just slapping four of each of his favorite cards onto a list, adding Islands and shuffling up like a 6 year old Patrick Chapin. I was wrong. Ryland’s losses on the day finished 7th (John Cuvelier) and 9th (Taylor Raflowitz), and he faced a day full of contending archetypes. Obviously, one performance is not enough to crown this deck a relevant archetype, but it is certainly worth some testing.
Let’s take a look at how the field broke down:
It was a hard day to have a good deck, with only one popular archetype breaking a 60% win percentage (Counter-Top NO Bant). Merfolk and Zoo remain the most popular archetypes, and Goblins increased their presence after their strong showing in Indianapolis.
Merfolk:
The fish continue to be a solid choice for the metagame, largely due to their domination of combo decks and success against Counter-Top builds. The archetype continues to have trouble with Zoo, and Dredge and Reanimator present tough match-ups as well.
Zoo:
Being favored against the other big deck in the format will take you only so far in a format as diverse as Legacy. The Merfolk match-up is clearly in the Zoo player’s favor as is the match-up with Goblins. Unfortunately, unlike Merfolk, Zoo has significantly less resiliency against many of the popular combo decks in the format.
Goblins:
We had plenty of Goblins running around Orlando and, like Indy, one of them wound up in the finals. This time, though, the little red men scampered away with a trophy. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from so little data, but one striking difference from Indianapolis is the match-up with Land. In Indy, Goblins lost all 3 matches, but in Orlando it turned it around to a 3-0-1 record.
Once again, one of the best performing decks on the day just missed the dance. Ad Nauseam decks have been a staple of the Legacy metagame for a long time, but they have yet to have their major breakthrough in the StayCityGames.com Open Series. Lee Steht had the dubious distinction of 17th place at the Orlando Legacy Open; let’s take a look at his deck.
Lands (15)
Spells (45)
A tough match-up with Merfolk isn’t crippling, as the Legacy metagame is diverse enough that it is possible to dodge the fish for a day, but Counter-Top decks provide another obstacle, as will any deck packing a counter magic suite. Ad Nauseam decks, like many combo decks, require a good eye for when you are ready to ‘go off’ and if you are interested in picking up this style of deck, you should check out a primer and put in some time testing or expect to cost yourself a couple of winnable games.
With a month before the next StarCityGames.com Open Weekend in Atlanta on May 1st and 2nd, there is a bit of lag time before I’ll have piles of deck lists to work through, so I am going to follow through on an offer I made in the forums: A detailed breakdown of one archetype complete with all of the lists from Indianapolis and Orlando and results from Richmond, Indy and Orlando in a spreadsheet. Here is where you come in — You get to pick the archetype!
I’m looking forward to the results!