“Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind / Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves / The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach / Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. / Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free / Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands. / With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves.” — Bob Dylan, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
Prefatory Notes.
So, this is one of those rare articles where I sat down in front of my wife’s laptop, started typing and couldn’t seem to pull myself away from the damn thing for a very long time. As such, and at more than 10,250 words, it is my fondest wish that Craig neither vomits with rage nor administers an editorial machete-job to this article. Now that I’ve gone through it a few times, I don’t suggest reading it in one sitting.
Introduction.
In case you haven’t seen it before, the “Questions & Answers with Legacy Adepts” thread is one of the cooler features in the Legacy Forums at TheManaDrain.Com (a.k.a. TheManaLeak). If you’re curious about anything in the format, feel free to ask the Adepts and someone will be sure to give you a thoughtful response, more or less.
One of my favorite answers to a question in that thread is from Matt (MattTheGreat in the forums), an Administrator at TheManaDrain and a teammate of mine:
Pave: I ask this in all sincerity and as one with limited experience of the format: why do you guys like Legacy? What do you consider to be its unique allure?
Matt: “Legacy has the potential to be the greatest format, I think, because it can really test every skill in the game, as opposed to Vintage where there’s relatively little use for combat math, for example. Every strategy is represented and you have to be ready for anything.
“I think if I tried to build a deck for Standard or Extended, I would be plagued by the knowledge that I’m playing with inferior cards. Every time I took 2 from Watery Grave would remind me that I could be using Underground Sea but couldn’t. Every Force Spike would make me think ‘Why isn’t this Daze? Oh, right, Daze rotated out…‘ With Legacy, you know you’re drinking from the top-shelf.
“Mostly though [this is the important part], I like that I can still make an impact on the format. I could never design a deck better than the Standard or Extended pros, and Vintage, to me, seems to be mostly a game of tweaking 2-3 slots in established decks.”
I selected this answer because of the last point Matt makes: one of the reasons to pursue and enjoy the development of the Legacy format is the very real opportunity for random amateurs, such as myself, to construct and develop a deck that can affect the metagame. Even in Standard and Extended, someone can innovate a brilliant design or idea that may become popular via the echo-chamber effect of the Internet or MTGO, but that chance is pretty damn slim. In Legacy, however, making a format-bending deck is an attainable goal.
For the remainder of today’s article, I’m going to share some of the concoctions that I’ve created on the train ride to and from work, at my dining room table and tinkering around on Magic Workstation.
After witnessing the public relations debacle after Anusien’s Pyroclasm.dec article, my attorney advised me to include the following waiver of liability before we get into things.
DISCLAIMER: WITH RESPECT TO THE DECKS LISTED IN THIS ARTICLE, THE AUTHOR MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THEIR FITNESS FOR KICKING ANYONE’S ASS IN A TOURNAMENT. THE DECKS PROVIDED HERETOFORE ARE PROVIDED ON “AS IS” BASIS. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY AMOUNT OF WASTED TOURNAMENT FEES OR EMOTIONAL DISTRESS. FURTHERMORE, PLAYERS OF ANY DECK CONTAINED HEREIN AGREE TO INDEMNIFY, DEFEND AND HOLD THE AUTHOR HARMLESS…
Whoa, my attorney got a little carried away there — she bills by the hour, after all. In short, I’ve taken the followings decks as far as I can before my deadline, so they are by no means the “be all, end all” of Legacy deck construction. Take them in the spirit they’re offered: open-ended projects. Let me know what changes you’d make to these decks in the forums.
I. Aggro-Control Decks
For today’s article, we’ll start with the aggro-control decks, my favorite deck archetype in this game, before moving to some pudgy control decks and ending with my sleek aggro decks.
A. Gro-a-Tog!!!
Not only will we start with my favorite deck archetype in my favorite Magic format, we’ll start with all my all-time favorite Magic deck in forever: Legacy Gro-a-Freaking-Tog!
“Gro-a-Tog!”
By Dan Spero
4 Brainstorm
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Serum Visions
2 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
2 Counterspell
2 Duress
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Dark Confidant
2 Psychatog
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Swamp
Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
4 Hydroblast
1 Ghastly Demise
1 Brain Freeze
1 Misdirection
1 Naturalize
1 Extirpate
1 Berserk
1 Duress
Overview.
As mentioned above, I love, Love, LOVE this deck! It has counters galore, draws cards like a mad man, smashes its opponents with its savagely undercosted monsters and has a nifty toolbox plan with Cunning Wish. It’s also in my favorite colors of the game.
The rate of development is much like that of Threshold: turn 1, fetch a basic Island, cantrip; turn 2, play a guy and then use your control cards for the remainder of the game to force damage through or keep from dying before you can salvage the situation and get back into beatdown mode.
If you find yourself with both a Dryad and a Confidant in your hand on turn 2, it’s not always easy to tell which you should play first. Sometimes you should play the relatively (to the match) weaker creature first if you have good reason to think one of your guys is dead no matter what you do.
Confidant is obviously much stronger against decks where long-term card advantage matters most and life totals are not particularly relevant. Dryad shines in matches where you need to seal the game quickly and is a strong threat against combo decks, where she can be swinging for seven or so damage on turn 5, all while you draw cards, counter threats, etc.
Psychatog can help slow your bleeding or serve as a perfect late-game finisher, especially if you’ve reset the board with Pernicious Deed. In this way, Tog plugs a hole in your strategy where Dryad is not terribly strong with a small hand and Confidant can be downright suicidal if you’re low on life. And on occasion, an early/mid-game Tog can steal the game with the inimitable “Cunning Wish for Berserk; trample your ass to death” plan. It’s always a joyous occasion; a definite cause for champagne and caviar.
Extirpate.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this new card called “Extirpate,” it only received a smattering of publicity when it first appeared on the Planar Chaos Spoiler list. Yeah, when it comes to Internet sarcasm, I need some work.
Anyway, my Gro-a-Tog sideboard was the first place I added Extirpate. I vividly remember “LOL!”ing the first time I plucked it from sideboard and cast it against Scepter-Chant. And I don’t mean that I passively typed “LOL” on my keyboard; no, I literally had a full-on bust-gusting guffaw at the monitor. If you ever want to see a really shifty lump of forty-five or so cards, have a look at a Scepter-Chant list with its namesake Isochron Scepters extracted.
A rough transcript from that game, post-Extirpate:
Bardo: Um, how exactly do you plan to win this game now?
DarkKnight: [pauses] Teferi?
Bardo: Good luck with that.
The last time I remember seeing a card receive as much hype, vilification, and disregard, was the discussion around Pithing Needle. Much like Needle, Extirpate adds another hoop that deck designers have to hop through if they don’t want their new creations to be too vulnerable to a one-mana power-house. As a gambling man, I’d say that Extirpate will find a comfortable niche in Legacy and serve as a periodic reminder that new decks can’t have too narrow or weak a kill mechanism. In any event, the sky is not falling.
For those curious about the word “Extirpate,” and are too lazy to look it up, allow me – since I’m lazy too, but the occasion to put this article together gives me some uncharacteristic motivation:
ex·tir·pate
Pronunciation: ‘ek-st&r-“pAt
Inflected Form(s): -pat·ed; -pat·ing
Etymology: Latin exstirpatus, past participle of exstirpare, from ex- + stirp-, stirps trunk, root
1 a : to destroy completely : WIPE OUT b : to pull up by the root
2 : to cut out by surgery
– ex·tir·pa·tion /”ek-st&r-‘pA-sh&n/ noun
– ex·tir·pa·tor /’ek-st&r-“pA-t&r/ noun
Going by Merriam-Webter, I think Wizards nailed the flavor of Extirpate perfectly. Remember, if someone crushes you with this card, you can always remark that they’re a “lonely extirpator.”
Power versus Synergy.
Thus spake Flores: “Generally I think that you want to err on the side of power over synergy. Power is power. Power — at least when not heavily limited by speed — ensures value.”
Whenever I’ve posted my Gro-a-Tog list on a message board, I’m often criticized for running those maindeck Pernicious Deeds along side my cheap permanents. In the abstract, I agree with these people; but in practice, Deed is braggingly strong in this deck and in the format overall. It also gives you important strategic flexibility as you’ll need to assume a different control or (aggro-control) beatdown role, depending on your match-up.
Also, Legacy is highly random and Pernicious Deed is a fine cure and answer to randomness. A deeper analysis of how and why Deed is strong in the format is beyond what I’m trying to do with this article and I have the feeling that word count for this piece is already going to be beastly. So I’ll only suggest you at least test Deed in almost any deck that can accommodate its mana requirements.
In Gro-a-Tog, more times than not, you’ll see Deed off of Sleight of Hand, Serum Visions or Brainstorm and can always decide if that’s the tool you need in the match-up and/or game-state. In the worst case, it’s an inefficient +1/+1 for Dryad. But Deed is one of the few cards that will let you salvage the games you’re supposed to lose – like a Chalice of the Void set to 1 or 2, against a deck like this, is ball-breaking. Take a look at the curve of this deck and see what sits there. Deed is an efficient answer to that, a battalion of Warrens tokens, cheap combo artifact mana and so on and so forth. (See also, Affinity.)
Strengths.
Like most aggro-control decks, Gro-a-Tog is strong against combination decks with its copious arsenal of efficient disruption and its aggressive clocks. The deck is already pre-boarded with Duress, which can be alternately Stifle if you wish. Against control decks, Gro-a-Tog, like U/G/w and U/G/r Threshold needs to win fast or lose the attrition war. Against control, Gro-a-Tog is the beatdown and needs to make difficult decisions on which spells to fight a counter-war over before its resources are too depleted. Confidant is strong here, since you don’t really care about your life total and you need the extra cards to win, if the game goes long.
The deck also has a number of surprising tricks up its sleeve, with the Deeds and maindeck creature removal, which most opponents will not see coming. The Smothers are a concession to Legacy’s creature-heavy environment and are good for killing the most common and dangerous creatures in the format: every goblin short of Ringleader and Siege-Gang Commander, Arcbound Ravager, Jotun Grunt, Werebear, opposing Confidants and Togs, manlands, Nantuko Shade, Hypnotic Specter, Phyrexian Negator, Meddling Mage, every Zoo creature known to man, Madness’s Mongrel and Aquamoeba, Terravore, most of Angel Stompy’s critters, etc. It’s a list too long to get into here. Ghastly Demise is fine as well and while one can be found in the sideboard for its mana-efficiency, the Black/White, Black/Red and the occasional mono-Black decks in the field are surprisingly common in tournaments and you really need your removal to be effective in those matches.
Gro-a-Tog is even modestly successful against aggro decks, particularly against slower, mid-range decks. Importantly, Gro-a-Tog is the control deck in these match-ups, so it’s necessary to shift the tactical use of the deck’s control cards from protecting your threats to using your counters to keep the game-state manageable. Unless you want to draw out some burn or you think Dryad has a shot at dominating the board, it’s usually best to play Gro-a-Tog in draw-go mode: digging for protection and using Pernicious Deed to grind out a slow attrition-based win. Against aggro, Psychatog is a champ in both the early and late games, with Confidant occasionally being a liability unless you need him to soak up some damage on the board.
One of the cooler mini-combos this deck can produce is the side-by-side magic of Dark Confidant and Quirion Dryad. With the average casting cost of the cards in this deck being a mere 1.45, Confidant places a large amount of cheap draw and disruption spells into your hand to grow Dryad into a monster. After seven or so spells, she’s usually fatal with Cunning Wish for Berserk.
The Brain Freeze in the sideboard is just for giggles against High Tide. If you can get it onto the stack above one of their draw spells mid-combo, it’s hilarious. But “Danger of Cool Things” and all, I doubt it’s better than other anti-combo weapons, such as Stifle, Trickbind, etc. so consider it a metagame slot.
Weaknesses.
A common theme of my deck-building endeavors is that my decks are good against combo and bad against Goblins. It’s true that you can’t win them all; and vis-Ã -vis Goblins, Gro-a-Tog is no exception. The match is not a complete rout, but it is rough times indeed, especially if you’re on the draw for game 1, which means Goblins is on the play for up to two games out of the match.
Fanatics and Incinerators are strong against your vulnerable Confidants and small Dryads, and Goblins can marshal an intensely strong, early, and consistent offense, starting from the first turn. Anyway, this definitely isn’t an auto-scoop match, but I wouldn’t bet on Gro-a-Tog with anything less than 5-3 odds, even with its full sets of Engineered Plagues and Hydroblasts. Odds are you’ll go 1-2 versus Goblins, if you lose the roll; with the odds being much closer to 1-1 if you win the roll. In any case, caveat emptor, but do try this deck out, it’s more fun than a barrelful of monkeys highly skilled in that ancient art of Tai Ji massage.
B. The Trinket Mage Deck
Next up is something I savagely “borrowed” from Extended: Gabriel Nassif “TrinketAngel” from this article by Frank Karsten in early December 2006. (Note that this predates Anusien’s “Pyroclasm Deck” and was developed in parallel to Phantom’s E.R.A. design.)
After I saw the Nassif list, I made a short list of the top decks in the format, the cards they least want to see on the board and then I crammed all of those cards into the same deck. Here’s what I produced in my original brainstorming session:
Goblins: Silver Knight, Pyroclasm / Engineered Plague, Sword of Fire and Ice, Umezawa’s Jitte, Pithing Needle
Threshold: Chalice of the Void, Tormod’s Crypt, Jotun Grunt
Solidarity / IGGy Pop: Meddling Mage, Chalice of the Void, Stifle, counters, Glowrider
Randomness: Umezawa’s Jitte, Engineered Explosives, Pyroclasm, Pithing Needle
As you can see, this is clearly a case of “top-down” deck design.
I’ll bet a similar line of thinking led to the TrinketAngel’s construction. Unfortunately I didn’t see Exalted Angel being playable in this deck without acceleration – as you might see in Angel Stompy with its Ancient Tombs and Moxen – since she’s a bit too slow for this format without some way to power her out quickly.
It’s entirely possible that I made the deck worse by I importing it into Legacy, but it’s been testing fine: in the last week triumphing 2-0 versus Faerie Stompy (“Chalice of the Void on 3!”), 2-1 versus BHWC Landstill, 2-1 versus Goblins and thrashing an assortment of the odd Elf, Sliver and Enchantress decks that people mysteriously love to play in the hinterlands of the MWSPlay network.
“The Trinket Mage Deck [TMD]”
By Dan Spero
4 Meddling Mage
4 Silver Knight
3 Serendib Efreet
3 Trinket Mage
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Pyroclasm
2 Stifle
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
4 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
3 Plateau
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
3 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Academy Ruins
Sideboard
3 Glowrider
3 Jotun Grunt
3 Pyroblast
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Hydroblast
1 Meekstone
1 Pyroclasm
Overview.
Trinket Mage may end up more “cute” than effective, unless I free up the necessary slots for Counterbalance and Sensei’s Diving Top. Regardless, the Trinket Magi are nice to see if you’re in a tight corner and they’re never dead, though never exceptionally efficient either. Academy Ruins with Engineered Explosives, something that will come up a little later in this article, is a sweet mini-combo that makes me smile in a way that may be considered “illegal” in some parts of this country.
The Snow-covered lands were an old vestigial left-over from an earlier attempt to squeeze in Skred and Scrying Sheets. I abandoned the snow sub-theme for reasons that are too obvious to mention, but left the snow lands just to give my opponents that slight “wtf pause” that might have them every so slightly on tilt.
Serra Avenger versus Serendib Efreet.
The comparison of these two creatures is very close. Ignoring Aether Vial for the moment, Efreet is ready to block with his fat butt on turn three and swing on turn 4. Serra Avenger is basically a four-drop that only costs two mana but serves double duty on attacking and blocking. A 3/3 is not so much different than a 3/4 in this format since Lightning Bolt, etc. sees little play – though being able to block a Nimble Mongoose and live to tell about it, isn’t bad. Mana-wise, 2U is not significantly different than WW. Importantly, both are exceptional at carrying a Jitte or a Sword.
Efreet damage adds up, but rarely in a game-breaking way, since the only other self-inflicted damage you’re likely to suffer in this deck is from your fetchland activations and Force of Will, which together averages 3-4 damage per game.
All of this said, the Efreeti in this list are largely a concession to keeping the Blue card count at a suitable level for Force of Will. Seventeen Blue spells is about as low as you can comfortably go, but I like to see at least twenty Blue cards in any of my deck that runs Force of Will.
Strengths and Weaknesses.
The Trinket Mage Deck’s primary strength is in the power and versatility of its cards: Umezawa’s Jitte, Pyroclasm, the best Blue/White control cards in the format, etc. But in its effort to be all things to all decks, it may be spread too thin. It is, however, quite a lot of fun to play and I suggest you take it out for a spin if this seems like your idea of a good time.
As you can imagine, the combo match-up is nothing to brag about—in a strip club for certain, or anywhere else for that matter. The deck is running a set of Meddling Magi, a few Stifles and Chalices, as well as a set of Forces for disruption, but the deck is really lacking the critical mass of counters and meaningful threat density for it to have a comfortable edge against combo. Consequently, the deck is forced to resolve a Meddling Mage as soon as possible and then do its best to get a Trinketed Chalice of the Void into play.
The Goblins match is roughly even, even slightly favorable I think, with Pyroclasm slowing down their hordes and Silver Knight bearing a Jitte being a game-winner. Stifle shines in an unlikely place in this match, countering the triggered abilities of Goblin Ringleader, Gempalm Incinerator, Goblin Piledriver, Siege-Gang Commander, Goblin Matron, Wasteland and every other activated ability in their deck. But Stifle is just one tool and isn’t intended to be a game-breaker, since you’ll still need to contend with whatever created the trigger in the first place (barring Wasteland). However, it’s good for slowing down Goblins by a turn or two, so you can hopefully draw into Pyroclasm, Jitte, etc.
Power versus Synergy, Revisited.
It’s true that Pyroclasm and the Magi, of the Trinket or Meddling variety, do not for a good combo make. Is there a more elegant phrase than “anti-synergy?” Disynergy? MS Word’s proofreader doesn’t care for that one. Importantly, note that Pyroclasm is at its best in the matches where the Magi aren’t the best tool for the job and vice-versa; i.e., Meddling and Trinket Magi are best where Pyroclasm is rarely needed (barring an explosive breeding of Warrens tokens).
The Meekstone in the sideboard is a cute trick and that’s basically what this deck seems to embody: “cute tricks.” In my last article, I suggested that designers focus on consistent decks with an active core strategy, steering away from toolbox plans that end up being fantastic on occasion but mediocre over the long-run and I may have to heed my own advice on this front as well.
Heading off criticism in the forums, remember, this article is about deck successes and failures. Even in the failures, there’s a lot to be learned. “The More You Know.” Etcetera.
C. White-splash Threshold
I don’t ever want to know the total amount of my life I’ve spent writing about and playing this deck, so I’ll keep this portion of the article uncharacteristically short and sweet.
“White-Splash Threshold”
By Dan Spero
4 Serum Visions
4 Mental Note
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
2 Counterspell
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Werebear
4 Meddling Mage
1 Mystic Enforcer
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Windswept Heath
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Plains
Sideboard
3 Hydroblast
3 Armageddon
3 Absolute Law
2 Loaming Shaman
2 Krosan Grip
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Mystic Enforcer
Strengths.
Swords to Plowshares, Brainstorm, Daze, Force of Will, Meddling Mage, Pithing Needle, Armageddon, Engineered Explosives, consistent mana, exceptionally cheap and massive dudes. Smashes combo.
Weaknesses.
Chalice of the Void, Haunting Echoes, Tormod’s Crypt, Leyline of the Void, Jotun Grunt, Perish. Goblin Ringleader and cronies.
The most recent radical change that’s still in development is the inclusion of three Counterbalance and three Sensei’s Diving tops in place of the maindeck Counterspells, Pithing Needles, Engineered Explosives and a single Meddling Mage. Early testing results indicate that the combo match becomes even better – which isn’t exactly what this deck needs, since it’s already favorable.
Sideboarding.
While much has been already said about this deck, I’ll offer a quick sideboard guide for Threshold novices.
It should go without saying that the Blue Blasts are for the Goblins, Burn and Sligh / RDW match-ups. In some very rare cases, you might even board in one or two against High Tide or IGGy Pop if you don’t anticipate a transformational creature-based sideboard. While otherwise dead, Hydroblast will at least pitch to Force of Will, letting your other Blue spells do what they do best (i.e. not get pitched to Force of Will), unlike Swords to Plowshares. Apart from being pitch-fodder, Hydroblast can also serve as a cheap counter to one of TES’s Burning Wishes.
Armageddon, a long-time Threshold staple is for the combo and control match-ups. In a lot of cases, a third-turn Werebear-powered ‘Geddon will be game for a lot of decks, especially if you have another Threshold critter on the board. Armageddon is also godly against slow control decks like Landstill and Rifter.
After I dropped the Tivadar’s Crusades from my beatings with Machinus, I flirted with Dueling Grounds for the Goblins match and then went back to Absolute Law, which is a lot easier on the mana and blanks a lot of Goblins’s trumps; namely, Gempalm Incinerator, Tormod’s Crypt, etc. It’s also great in the RDW match, but not so much against Burn, where most of their damage will be directed at you, not your guys. Sphere of Law is yet another option, though there you’re most likely forced to win with evasion and Sphere can’t protect your Enforcers from Gempalm Incinerator, unlike Absolute Law.
Tactically, Absolute Law opens up two important lines of victory against Goblins. In the first case, if you establish a stable defensive wall of Werebears and Mongeese – even if they’re 1/1 due to a Crypt activations – you’ll eventually reach threshold again and can swing with one attacker for 3-4 damage per turn until your opponent is in range such that an alpha strike through their horde for 10-12 damage will seal the game. Notwithstanding the ground assault, you can also hold the ground with ‘bears and ‘geese and win with Enforcer if you don’t have a critical mass of ground-pounders. With Absolute Law, not even Gempalm Incinerator can take down your mighty flier.
Using the sideboard above, here’s a proposed guiding on boarding versus Goblins:
-4 Meddling Mage
-1 Engineered Explosives
-2 Counterspell
+3 Absolute Law
+3 Hydroblast
+1 Mystic Enforcer
Enforcer seems like an odd and counter-intuitive boarding choice, but from ample experience, he’s one of the few cards that will let Threshold win the games that are otherwise lost.
Honestly, I’m not completely sure how the sideboard should be used to gain whatever percentage points you can eek out against Goblins (Chill?), but I highly recommend players experiment thoroughly if they plan on taking this deck or one of its variants to Columbus next month. I can say that Tivadar’s Crusade is not the way to go about it, given the double-White casting cost against a deck running full sets of Wasteland and Rishadan Port. I’ve been there and it’s no day sipping daiquiris in a Tahiti cabana with your mistress. But then again, few things are.
For those that are curious about my “short list” of anti-Goblins technology, here you go (with some thanks to a few folks in #tmd, like Andy Probasco, for suggestions):
Absolute Law
Blue Elemental Blast
Chill
Circle of Protection: Red
Dueling Grounds
Galina’s Knight
Ghostly Prison
Hail Storm
Heroes’ Reunion
Honorable Passage
Hydroblast
Propaganda
Silent Arbiter
Sphere of Law
Tivadar of Thorn
Tivadar’s Crusade
Volcanic Eruption
Worship
For the last few months, Loaming Shaman has been my graveyard hate card of choice. Since this section is just about the last thing I’m writing in the article, I’m going to hold off talking about Loaming Shaman’s value, vis-Ã -vis Jotun Grunt and Tormod’s Crypt until I get to the Zoo deck way down below.
The last four slots are all metagame dependent and can remain as they are or be used to give +1s to other sideboard cards, such as increasing the number of Goblin and/or graveyard hate slots.
The one constant I’ve had in my Threshold sideboard for more than a year are the 1/1 Explosives/Enforcer slots, since I like having one of each in the maindeck, but don’t see the need for more than that, which would force other maindeck cuts anyway. Explosives is good in the mirror, fast and mid-range aggro and aggro-control decks (like HanniFish and Faerie Stompy) and prison decks like Stax or anything else that would otherwise wreck you with Chalice of the Void, which is an awful beating for this deck.
The two Krosan Grips can be any number of things, but it’s nice to have some direct artifact / enchantment removal, other than your Explosives, which can’t touch Humility, Worship, The Abyss, etc. Split Second comes in handy if your opponent plays Pernicious Deed and passes priority without activating it or in destroying a Solitary Confinement without giving your opponent the opportunity to respond with a counter, etc.
If the Grand Prix were tomorrow, and I could afford the travel expenses to get there and back to Portland, the above list is the one I’d most likely register at the tournament, though I’d continue to tweak the sideboard to the bitter end.
Lastly, one of the cooler Threshold innovations I’ve seen is from Brandon Lepage, who took the 4-color version of the deck to the Top 8 at the Mana Leak Open II (TMLO2) on March 3, 2007. After having his Tropical Islands Extirpated in a previous tournament, Brandon decided to replace one of his Tropical Islands with a Breeding Cool to make sure he’d never be completely without his green mana sources again. If Extirpate in B/w Confidant concerns you, Brandon’s solution is a good one to that particular problem.
(Okay, this is the absolute last thing I’m adding to this “uncharacteristically short and sweet” section: Tarmogoyf, OMG!)
II. Control Decks
Moving away from my faster decks, we comfortably transition into the part of this article where it’s fine to draw a card, pass the turn having done nothing and retain a Zen-like sense of peace and inner-calm. Put on some Aphex Twin or something.
A. VoroshStill
Fun fact: the following deck began its life as a casual U/B/G/W Legacy Highlander deck (ask about it in the forums, if you like), and Vorosh, the Hunter sadly had to be dropped if I wanted to make the deck tournament viable. Big frowns all around, indeed. In case you were unaware, six mana dragons that are easily answered by an extremely popular 1-mana farming spell aren’t exactly “good” in Legacy. But as a flavorful way of describing the color combination of this deck, Vorosh lives in spirit. Cazart.
“VoroshStill”
By Dan Spero
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Stifle
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Smother
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
4 Mishra’s Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Academy Ruins
Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
4 Vinelasher Kudzu
4 Duress
2 Infest
1 Vedalken Shackles
Overview.
Once I dropped the Highlander theme, I shifted the design focus of the deck to retooling BHWC Landstill to the point where I’d feel comfortable playing it in a Legacy tournament. I appreciated all of the things the 4c Landstill deck was trying to do in sixty plus fifteen cards, but its UUBWG operating requirements made me blanch, especially since the deck could only afford to run four measly blue fetchlands and no other mana-fixing, short of Regrowing spent Deltas and Strands with its two Crucibles of Worlds. From my own personal experience with BHWC Landstill, one poorly used fetchland could be a disaster, stranding a painful amount of great cards in hand.
I also knew that I wanted to run maindeck Chalice of the Void to gain some leverage over combo and aggro-control; while Swords to Plowshares, one of the principle reasons to play BHWC Landstill, seemed more of a liability when ‘Chalice for 1′ is such an attractive turn 2 play. Thus I borrowed from my Gro-a-Tog deck and ran the Smothers instead, for the same reasons listed above. Cutting the Monasteries pained me also, so Vedalken Shackles were added as an alternative win condition and to annoy the hell out of aggro decks, which hate to see their dudes stolen and then used to beat them or trade with their other critters.
The end product is something that still needs some development, but is currently my favorite dedicated control deck in the format.
Strengths.
We’ll broach, yet again, the Power versus Synergy debate in the next paragraph, but one of the great things about this deck is how perfectly it can operate under its own Standstills: Crucible of Worlds, Vedalken Shackles, manlands, Wasteland – assuming they’re on the board, sans the lands – offer powerful spell-like abilities without breaking the Standstill. In many cases, unless you’re up against a very quick combo deck or the mirror, you can often drop Standstill onto the board with the knowledge that you’ll draw into manlands sooner or later and that your opponent really wants to get on with their game. And three cards for two mana is as efficient as it gets in this format, next to Brainstorm, which is powerful in a different way.
Getting to the heart of things, the real strength of this deck is the uniformly high power level of VoroshStill’s cards: Pernicious Deed, Chalice of the Void, Vedalken Shackles, Crucible of Worlds, Force of Will, Standstill, Fact or Fiction, Wasteland, etc. Not all of these cards play nicely with each, but each is so exceptionally powerful that it’s easy to overlook their “disynergy.” There’s that word again. If I use it again, ever, I’ll just add it to Word’s dictionary and thereafter think I’m using proper English. Anyway, I’ll once again refer you to Flores’ quote above and underscore that Academy Ruins is stunning in this deck, placing your countered or otherwise destroyed Shackles and Chalices back on top of your library for future use.
Chalice of the Void.
While we’re on the topic, I just want to take a moment to explain how absolutely insane Chalice of the Void is in Legacy. Both the speed of the format and the depth of the card pool conspire to create decks of savage efficiency. Look at that Threshold list above: more than 50% of deck’s spells cost one mana (22 out of 42 spells). “Chalice for 1?” Buon Gioco.
While Threshold is an extreme case, Chalice for two against B/W Confidant (Hymn, Nantuko Shade, Dark Confidant, Sinkhole) is crushing, as is an early Chalice for zero against a deck like TES, IGGy Pop, Belcher or Salvagers, which needs its free artifact mana acceleration to function optimally. As mentioned above, Chalice for three against Faerie Stompy is as hilarious as it is game-breaking. Fighting fire with fire, indeed. Long story short here, Chalice is phenomenal and accounts for a lot of this deck’s strength.
Weaknesses.
Despite how much I love this deck, and how successful it’s been in my hands, I still have this nagging feeling that this would have been a monster deck in 2005 when Storm-combo wasn’t as optimized and many people were playing the unfocused random decks that VoroshStill thrives against.
But of all of the new decks that I’m covering today, I think this may have some potential to make a dent in the format and go on to do good things if adopted by the right people who know how to really optimize it and accurately metagame.
Sideboard.
Before moving on, I thought I’d dissect the sideboard and explain what’s going on there. The Engineered Plagues are obviously for the tribal decks that you’ll occasionally encounter: most notably Goblins, but they’re also gold against Slivers and Elves, which are fairly popular, especially online. The Vinelasher Kudzus fill the “I need a clock for combo” slot and, unlike Quirion Dryad, require no further maintenance once on the board, other than to keep making your plentiful land drops. Note that playing and activating a fetchland is good for two +1/+1 counters and with a Crucible, you can ramp up a massive Kudzu in no time. An alternative to the Kudzu slot is the combo-stomping Phyrexian Negator, which may be a bit of a liability if Empty the Warrens in combo decks remains popular—which I suspect it will, since everything from High Tide/Solidarity to IGGy Pop and TES (The Epic Storm) already play ETW or could fit it in with little fuss.
The Duress are for the combo and control matches, with Infest (or Innocent Blood, Damnation, The Abyss, etc.), being a cost-efficient sweeper against aggro-decks, though you should also consider Decree of Pain, which has the added benefit of not breaking your own Standstill.
B. Pernicious Tog
Since I’m already pushing the U/B/g decks in this article as far as I can, we’d might as well go for broke and do one more. The following deck picks up where one of my articles ended last year.
“Pernicious Tog”
By Dan Spero
4 Brainstorm
3 Fact or Fiction
3 Intuition
1 Life from the Loam
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Cunning Wish
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Engineered Plague
2 Vedalken Shackles
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Lonely Sandbar
5 Island
1 Swamp
1 Wasteland
1 Mishra’s Factory
Sideboard
4 Duress
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Engineered Plague
1 Shallow Grave
1 Naturalize
1 Hydroblast
1 Darkblast
1 Extirpate
1 Smother
1 Berserk
Overview.
Much has been said about this deck, so I won’t dwell on it for long. Basically, the Loam-Tog variants in Legacy, like their Extended kin, are a hybrid combo-control breed of deck that use their control cards to manage early game threats and stymie the efforts of combo decks to go off until it has developed sufficient resources (hand, land, graveyard depth) whereby it swings with its namesake card to inflict fatal damage over one or two attack phases – with the aid of Wonder, Berserk, a Life from the Loam-powered dredge-fest or Fling in the U/B/r versions.
Strengths.
Left to its own devices, Psychatog can generate enormous card advantage from several sources: Life from the Loam/cycling lands, its Facts or Fictions, Genesis, Vedalken Shackles, or even Life from the Loam plus Wasteland and/or Mishra’s Factory (which has also been Treetop Village at some point). Like VoroshStill above, Psychatog runs uniformly powerful game-breakers, if it gets the opportunity to use them.
Provided it can brunt an early creature swarm with its counters, Pernicious Deeds and a Tog on defense, Psychatog’s powerful board control pieces allow it to gain control over most boards, unless something has gone horribly awry.
Against Goblins, the maindeck Engineered Plagues are nothing short of amazing.
Weaknesses.
As I just mentioned, this version of Psychatog is on the slow side and can get behind if your aggro opponent has a few turns to develop their resources in a goldfish environment. Consequently, the deck is reliant on its counters, board control pieces and anti-aggro sideboard cards to stay alive long enough so that it’s more powerful cards can come online and reclaim lost turns.
Also, on account of Tog’s slowness, combo decks can get the jump on the deck and dump 14 goblins onto the board at too early a point in the game to be nuked by Deed. IGGy Pop and Solidarity are also challenge, which is where the sideboarded Duress and Chalices come in to help.
Lastly, this spell called “Swords to Plowshares” is unkind to this deck. Ditto for Extirpate.
Pondering the Changes of “Mr. Teeth.”
Notwithstanding what I said above, note that Kyle Dorgan (“Mr. Teeth”) took Loam/Tog to the finals on Day 1 of Ray Robillard’s TMLO2 last month, where he lost to the first place TES winner and then beat said TES player in the Swiss rounds of Day 2.
Compared with my list, Kyle opted for more counters (Circular Logic and Mana Leak) and card draw (Accumulated Knowledge) in lieu of the incarnations, maindeck Plagues, plus a Brainstorm and a Fact of Fiction from my list. Otherwise, this is the deck I’ve been writing about with occasional changes for the last eighteen months, such as the lone maindeck Wasteland and Mishra’s Factory, as well as the Deeds and Shackles.
The one change I’m happy to see is Kyle’s removal of my techy / awful Drift of Phantasms and Haunting Echoes. Echoes has always been “win-more” (i.e. unnecessary), and while Drift gave you easy access to Deed, Shackles, Tog or a post-sideboard bomb like Perish, it was glacially slow.
In the abstract, Genesis / Drift is a strong mini-combo, but we’re also talking about a tutor that costs 3GUU(!!!) and can only fetch spells that have a cost of exactly three converted mana. Even if Cunning Wish is slow, and it is, it mainly becomes operational when you have the mana to function anyway and that’s at roughly the same point of the game where you want to see Drift of Phantasms (other than as an early blocker); and in the end, Cunning Wish is just more flexible with the beauty of finding Berserk, a flexible sideboard card or one that’s somehow been removed from the game (via Extirpation, Force of Will, etc.)
Perhaps Kyle is right to drop Wonder, but note that its removal makes your Shackles slightly weaker and makes it harder to win with Psychatog outside of Cunning Wish for Berserk. Anyway, I’m leaving my Wonder in the list for the time being.
The Future of Psychatog.
Part of Psychatog’s problem is that it can be tuned in so many different ways that even agreeing upon a list for a vaguely known metagame is difficult. For instance, we can tune Tog to have a favorable aggro and control match-up, but a poor game against combo; or it can be tuned to beat combo and control while giving up its percentages points against aggro. Quite a conundrum indeed.
Maindeck Damnation, Force Spike, additional removal, Zombie Infestation, Nimble Mongoose and / or Werebear will give it a comfortable lead over Aggro; while maindeck Chalice, Duress, additional counters and the like will give Tog a respectable game against the combo decks that have inevitability. There’s a lot of ways to go with this deck that you’ll need to explore if this is what you’re taking to Columbus.
Finally, if you’re going to Columbus with a few byes and decide to take Psychatog, I highly recommend the maindeck Plagues, since you’ll encounter a lot of Goblins at the top tables.
C. Enlightened Rift (“Rifter”)
Switching to something completely different, we’re moving to a deck that eschews my favorite colors: Blue, Black, and Green. Now we’re in the awkward realm of White/Red Board Control. I know what you’re thinking and I agree, but let’s get to that together under the “Weaknesses” section below.
“Enlightened Rift”
By Dan Spero
4 Slice and Dice
3 Rough / Tumble
3 Starstorm
4 Lightning Rift
3 Humility
1 Moat
1 Seal of Cleansing
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Renewed Faith
2 Decree of Justice
2 Enlightened Tutor
4 Secluded Steppe
4 Forgotten Cave
4 Plateau
8 Plains
6 Mountain
We’ll get to sideboard(s) and boarding philosophies a little later.
Overview.
“Rifter” is the Legacy equivalent of the Odyssey-Onslaught Standard White/Red board control deck that Gabe Walls took to Worlds 2003. In Legacy, it has the proud distinction of getting two people into the Top 8 of both Grands Prix: Philadelphia and Lille. A little known fact: “Grands Prix” is the plural of Grand Prix; and, yet again, Word thinks I’m a fool. Bollocks.
Strengths.
Rifter simply mauls aggro decks. Swords to Plowshares are used to contain early menacing threats, while Rough and Moat further slow things down until Rifter can draw into Humility or fetch it with Enlightened Tutor. With Humility on the board and with few decks running maindeck Enchantment hate, the game is all down-hill for the opposition; Slice and Dice, the other sweepers and Lightning Rift aimed at creatures, or more likely your opponent, grind the game to an unrecoverable state. If Humility is not necessary, Eternal Dragon can be used to swing for five damage a turn, or more likely, serve as a recurring source of mana production and cycling damage with Lightning Rift(s), with or without a cycled Decree of Justice to speed the endgame along.
Playing Rifter isn’t all that exciting, but if you’re in the market for an aggro-crushing deck, this is a good one. I’ve seen it reduce grown men to slobbering piles of wuss.
Against control, things become interesting if you get and can keep your Lightning Rifts on the board. Given the “Shock and Draw”* effect from each Rift activation, an early Lightning Rift can place the control deck on a quick clock – not much different than being on the receiving end from one or two Mishra’s Factories. The Renewed Faiths in this match, also helpful against Aggro, are effectively a Time Walk.
Lastly, both aggro and control decks can have a problem if Eternal Dragon gets active, since the thing keeps coming back and can end the game relatively quick with your other damage sources. If you didn’t guess it, Eternal Dragon makes an excellent target for Extirpate; ditto for Lightning Rift.
Weaknesses.
I don’t think I need to draw you a map to show how there really isn’t a better deck for High Tide to be paired against. In this match, Rifter’s the “bye” and you’d might as well being playing with four Balances in your deck, if you catch my drift. Heck, make it five. The deck also runs the off-chance of bringing matches to unintentional draws or match losses at 0-1, since even when Rifter has the game locked, it still takes some time to end things if your opponent doesn’t scoop – even after the writing is on the wall.
As mentioned above, against aggro and aggro-control decks, Rifter has a comfortable advantage. Countermagic is somewhat annoying, but the deck is built around redundancy, especially for the threats that can beat Rifter. And there’s always Abeyance, if you feel you need it.
Sideboarding with Rifter.
There are a few conflicting schools of thought that are worth touching upon at this point. First off, and this is all highly contextual (the environment, your deck and strategy, etc.), most sideboards are built so that sub par cards can be removed from the maindeck and replaced with usually narrow, but contextually more effective cards for games two or three. A classic example of this would be replacing Meddling Mage in U/G/w Threshold against Goblins and replacing them with Blue Elemental Blast or some other hoser. Outside of this one match, the Blast is generally worthless, but against the most popular deck in the format, you can see a compelling logic to include it. In short, a common practice is to use your sideboard to tighten your games against your fairly favorable / unfavorable (+5/-5%) matches, making your cards consistently worth drawing.
An extreme approach to this form of sideboard strategy would be the “Glass Cannon Approach” that I discussed in my Mail Bag piece. In this case, you build your sideboard with the intent of making sure you don’t lose your favorable matches. Remember, being favored might only be a 55-60% advantage.
With this proposition in mind, I present:
The Rifter Sideboard I: The ‘Even More’ Anti-Creature Sideboard (“Glass Cannon Scorched Earth”)
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Aether Flash
3 Meltdown
2 Pulse of the Fields
1 Sacred Ground
1 Moat
Have you seen Aether Flash in play against Goblins? Yikes! Meltdown against Affinity? Gempalm Incinerator against Goblins is just mean, and Sacred Ground, fetchable with Enlightened Tutor, can keep your mana safe from Armageddon and the like.
Another philosophy of sideboarding is to have the confidence that your maindeck is comfortably strong against the majority of decks that you expect to face, so you can afford to pack your sideboard with a host of narrow weapons for your nightmare pairings.
As you can see above, Rifter has quite a few nightmare match-ups that it hopes to never draw; mainly, these are the combo decks. Knowing this and the metagame of the tournament you’re attending, do you construct your sideboard to make sure you don’t lose your favorable matches and gamble that you won’t see your bad match-ups more than once (see Sideboard I above)? Or are you comfortable with the decks you’ll be commonly paired against and can safely ignore these decks for sideboard purposes? If so, you can devote most of your sideboard to the one class of decks that would otherwise wreck you.
With this in mind, here’s a sideboard for those that want some tools to help them beat the otherwise unbeatable:
The Rifter Sideboard II: The Anti-Combo/Control Sideboard
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Glowrider
4 True Believer
3 Trinisphere
I’ve opted for the Glowriders and True Believers in my anti-combo package, since Humility is obviously not going to be part of the game plan and the deck needs some kind of clock to work on the combo deck’s life total. With this plan, you’re hoping your opponent will have to negotiate your progressively more annoying speed bumps before they can get their combo together. Unfortunately, they’ll have plenty of time to do so, which is why the aggro-control decks are favored against combo, since they can put up an annoying amount of resistance while taking big chunk’s out of the combo-player’s life total.
Of course there is a third option, which is to take a comprised position between the “Extreme Anti-Creature” and the “Anti-Combo / Control” sideboards and construct a sideboard like Martin Johannes Brenner’s from the Top 8 of Grand Prix: Lille (Dec 18, 2005).
3 Rule of Law
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pulse of the Fields
2 Boil
2 Disenchant
2 Abeyance
1 Pyroclasm
1 Pyroblast
Still, with Legacy combo decks reaching respectable optimization and their players getting better by the month, I can’t in good conscience recommend anyone take Rifter to any event where you anticipate a sizable contingent of dirty combo players, with the hate-board or otherwise.
III. Aggro
Pantera-time. We’ll conclude this article by spotlighting two of my aggro decks: one respectable, one not.
A. Three-color Zoo
Zoo, Three-Deuce, whatever, has a long and proud pedigree. I like to refer to my own brand of this deck as my “Hangover Solution,” since while there are some difficult in-game decisions, none of them are seizure-inducing and most won’t usually affect the outcome of games you would have otherwise won or lost.
Anyway, this is the kind of deck you can pull out of your sock draw five minutes before you leave for a tournament, with hazy memories of the previous night’s debauchery forgotten or best left unmentioned and still perform respectably.
While the manabase in this deck is insanely expensive, I recommend Zoo to format newcomers, since it’s purely active and a lot of fun to play.
“Three Deuce”
By Dan Spero
4 Kird Ape
4 Silver Knight
4 Watchwolf
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
3 Savannah Lions
4 Rancor
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lightning Helix
4 Fireblast
4 Plateau
4 Taiga
4 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
Sideboard
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Pyroblast
4 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Loaming Shaman
Overview.
You may remember that I briefly listed this deck in my Mail Bag piece when discussing a few things to consider when importing decks from other formats into Legacy. Since that article, I’ve done a little tweaking with the list, mainly adjusting the creature roster to make sure that I only need White (Lions, Isamaru) or Red (Kird Ape or burn) mana on turn 1; and either White (Silver Knight) or Green (Rancor, Watchwolf) for turn 2 to stabilize Zoo’s early-game operating requirements.
Even given the scripted plays, there’s a lot of room to change the game plan, such that a turn 1 Kird Ape; turn 2 Rancor, Bolt the blocker, swing for four sequence is easy to pull off. As much as I liked Skyshroud Elite, he was too unpredictable, even in a format where dual lands and a ton of other non-basics are very common. But mainly I didn’t like to have cards from three different colors competing for first turn action.
Strengths.
The three greatest things this deck has going for it are its consistency, speed and ease of play. I appreciate a complex combo deck as much as the next guy (honestly, not really), but Zoo has a certain reptilian elegance in the way its games play out. This is all owing to the fact, despite the different sounding card names, that it ignores the “rule of four” and, due to the depth of the Legacy card pool, can afford to play the “rule of twelve,” give or a take. Most of the creatures cost one and swing for two (or more with Rancor); most of the direct damage costs one but burns for three or is free and burns for four.
Goldfishing on turn three is not uncommon. Consider:
Turn 1: Taiga, Kird Ape;
Turn 2: Plateau, Rancor, attack for four, Isamaru;
Turn 3: Attack for six; Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Fireblast. Good Game.
That’s twenty damage in eight cards, and another six power still left on the board. I’m simplifying things here a little, but figuring out which lands to play and tap is about the extent of your tactical decisions.
If your opponent puts up resistance to your ground assault with superior forces, you just need to continue to make your land drops and collect a critical mass of burn spells, of which this deck runs sixteen, eight of which cost one mana, four of which are essentially free and the Lightning Helices, at two mana, can help you buy a turn to reach another draw step.
Weaknesses.
While Legacy Zoo can pull off third-turn wins, it rarely does so, since you will have an opponent after all. Most combo decks are just as fast and / or run enough disruption to slow you down, especially if you get a slow draw. Blood Moon is unkind as well, though hardly anyone plays that.
I’m basically proposing the simplified version of the deck and would suggest you give it a shot; though I’m not convinced the W/R/b or W/R/g/b versions that runs black for Cabal Therapy and other anti-combo weaponry isn’t superior.
Sideboarding.
In the W/R/g version of Zoo, I’ve opted for Pyrostatic Pillar and Pyroblast as the weapons of choice against combo. Pyroblast can often buy you a turn, while Pyrostatic Pillar, in conjunction with the burn plan, can make some games unwinnable for combo, especially if they have to pass priority for an effect to resolve. Basically, Pyrostatic Pillar plays into your existing strategy of maximizing damage over a short period of time.
Umezawa’s Jitte, which had previously been Pyroclasm and then Goblin Pyromancer, is too slow for the maindeck but is the anti-aggro card of choice. On the one hand, it serves as a colorless Disenchant for an opposing Jitte that can wreck this deck; with Jitte plus Silver Knight being a practical game-winner in its own right, especially against Goblins.
Loaming Shaman is currently my favorite anti-graveyard tool, since, assuming it resolves against Threshold, it makes all of their creatures instantly awful. Furthermore the Shaman is left behind, after his shovel-work is done, to trump any 1/1 Mongoose or Werebear or go on to trade with a land-bound 3/3 Mystic Enforcer or Fledgling Dragon. That’s basically what Zoo is looking for in its sideboard cards: relevant disruption that doubles as a threat.
Jotun Grunt was considered in the Loaming Shaman slot as well, but the deck rarely has enough juice in its own graveyard to feed the Grunt’s graveyard-gobbling appetite, and you can’t rely on your opponent to do it for you, especially when you hope to have the game wrapped up by turn four or five. Lastly, Shaman has an immediate effect on the game-state, unlike Jotun Grunt, which may hit the board and summarily be sent farming without protest. For instance, if you find yourself being clobbered by an airborne Enforcer and you draw into Jotun Grunt, you’re still dead. However, if you draw into Loaming Shaman and play him instead, the Enforcer will fall from the sky and be prepared to trade with the three-toughness Enforcer / Dragon, or outright trump their other guys. The immediacy of the Shaman effect also makes him useful in the Ichorid and Psychatog match, where Grunt requires a few upkeeps to get up to speed.
By comparison, Tormod’s Crypt is a hyper-efficient tool for removing graveyards, but isn’t a threat in itself. Zoo is looking to do this and beat its opponent bloody, with a freaking shovel to the face and groin!
B. Bardo-Stompy!
We’ll wrap up this epic with one of the worst decks in my repertoire. This is the way the article ends; not with a bang, but a whimper.
“Bardo-Stompy!”
By Dan Spero
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Meddling Mage
4 Silver Knight
4 Serra Avenger
3 Serendib Efreet
2 Exalted Angel
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Aether Vial
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
4 Tundra
5 Snow-covered Plains
2 Snow-covered Island
Sideboard
4 Armageddon
4 Glowrider
4 Jotun Grunt
3 Seal of Cleansing
The demands of narcissism and petty egotism demand that most people will name a deck after themselves at one point or another. Feeling the itch, I figured I’d immortalize myself with a truly awful deck that looks quite different than the incarnation that preceded it: my U/W “AngelFish” from two years ago.
Overview.
Though it has some mild control elements – Meddling Mage, Swords to Plowshares and some equipment – the deck is pretty much a straight-ahead aggro deck. Standstill’s function is a little different here than in Standstill, as this deck uses Standstill for more offensive purposes. A turn 1 Isamaru or Aether Vial is all the incentive this decks needs to drop Standstill on turn 2. The rest of the shell is just trying to force damage through with a series of evasive and cost-efficient beaters, most of which have useful abilities, like flying, first strike, vigilance and the Meddling Mage ability (not yet, if ever, given an ability word).
Ancient Tomb helps accelerate the equipment or an early Exalted Angel; while Aether Vial, usually set on two, can sneak your guys onto the board under Standstill or be used as free mana if your opponent breaks your Standstill on their turn to play more guys.
Strengths.
Goblins and other aggro decks are generally favorable, given the equipment, Silver Knights, card advantage and efficiency of the deck’s threats. Exalted Angel is surprisingly potent too, having a distressing effect on your opponent’s combat math once active.
The deck is brimming with solid turn 2 and 3 plays, so Serra Avenger is not at all out of place here, and besides, Aether Vial can help get her onto the board, despite whatever’s written in her rules text, on turn three.
In the mid / late game, BardoStompy’s equipment and Exalted Angels can dominate the board, if it’s not dead before then.
Weaknesses.
BardoStompy has several Achilles’ Heels: Threshold, due to its weakness to countermagic, short of Aether Vial; Landstill, for the same reason plus their board control package; and combo due to this deck’s slow goldfish rate and the limited disruption it runs. Yep, three heels, two feet – makes you want to sleeve this puppy up tonight, eh?
Still, as awful as it is, this is still one of my favorite decks as it runs most of my favorite cards in a vaguely aggro-shell.
Sideboarding.
Really? Do you care?
Wow, that turned out a little longer than I planned. At some point it occurred to me to split this into two or three articles, but since I’ve already outlined my May and June articles, you wouldn’t see Part 2 until at least July, by which point these decks may look altogether difficult or be completely obsolete. I also wanted to get some new ideas into the public domain for those looking for something different to play at Grand Prix: Columbus—which, don’t forget, is going down on May 19th and 20th. Be there, unless you’re poor or very far away, like me.
After my GP articles, if you want to see any of the decks covered today given a more detailed write-up with mulligan guidelines, match-up analyses, sideboard plans, practice games and alternate builds, let me know. And again, I’d love to hear whatever card suggestions you’d make to the decks I presented today.
That’s it for today. Join me next time when I interview several format experts on their thoughts about the format and their suggestions for Grand Prix: Columbus.
Ciao.
Dan Spero
‘Bardo’ around the Internet
‘Bardo Trout’ in the SCG Forums
Team Reflection
Acknowledgements. Many thanks to my opponents far and wide who unknowingly helped me tune these lists over the past few months, with a particular round of thanks to Dan May (Belzebozo in the forums) for our Friday testing sessions in downtown Portland.
* My apologies for that one; even I feel dirty.