“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.“
Rene Descartes
Do you want to know why Goblins wins so much of the time in spite of the wide range of answers to the deck’s strategy? Goblins is extraordinarily good at being the beatdown. Goblins players and deckbuilders say, “Sure you may have the answer, but if you don’t, I’m going to win.” You know all those games where people say, “If I had just drawn X, Y or Z, I would have won”…? Goblins won those games! This is part of why people say that there are no wrong threats, only wrong answers. Not only do you have to have the answer in your deck, but you also have to draw it and cast it in time. The Goblins player says, “If you have it, you have it, but I’m going to make you need it.” This is the same principle that allows Goblin Charbelcher to win in Vintage; most of the time your opponent just does not have the answer! New builds of Goblin Charbelcher and Legacy’s The Epic Storm take this one step further with alternate routes of victory. In a demonstration of threat versus answer theory, Belcher says “You may have it, but if your answer is Force of Will, I will just win with Empty the Warrens or Goblin Welder.” TES even runs Tomb of Urami to force the opponent to leave in Swords to Plowshares. But that Swords to Plowshares is pretty miserable against Tendrils of Agony.
So what does this mean for you? Take a clue from the decks that are winning and play offensively. Make the opponent have the right answer at the right time. Threshold wins when its opponent cannot deal with large creatures and countermagic. What is significant in deck development is that the traditional Legacy decks, things like High Tide, Goblins, Threshold and Landstill, are all built around synergy. The promising Legacy decks that are emerging are built around power. Increasingly I find that I just want to position my decks so they cast the most powerful cards I can find. If the opponent does not have the answer, I win straight out. And in the case of counterspells, even if they have the Force of Will or Counterspell, I steal a resource from them (cards in the case of Force, tempo in the case of Counterspell) and get to untap and do it again. The point is that those cards are even more difficult to deal with Goblin Lackey, such that you often win if you resolve one. Have you ever seen an opponent successfully recover from Devastating Dreams plus Life from the Loam?
The other thing I find an affinity for are large creatures, especially Green ones. Very few non-combo decks actually have answers if you plan to just throw 3/3s, 4/4s, and 5/5s. This is a logical extension of the principles I established two articles ago with my Pyroclasm deck, and perhaps the same principle that makes Angel Stompy so spicy. The main idea here is that the decks with large creatures sculpt the flow of the game. If you can position the field such that your opponent has no good attacks or blocks, you basically win the game. This is equivalent to Wonder advantage in U/G mirrors of old, where one player successfully seizes the beatdown and control roles.
This article is going to talk about board control and aggro-board control strategies. In my last article I claimed that aggro-board control is the new aggro-control, and I really think it is. This is because where Threshold has to run things like Force of Will, Counterspell, and Daze, other decks get to run impressive spells like Pernicious Deed or giant creatures. I just find that having to run counterspells eats away at your resources for minimal gain. You play Force of Will and trade two cards for one, or play Counterspell and have to give up massive amounts of tempo. By contrast if you just play powerful spells and tap out every turn, you are going to bury your opponent in cards simply because each one of your cards is worth more than one of theirs. It is amazing how well something as powerful as a 5/5 creature or as unassuming as a 0/5 Wall can affect the tempo of the game; even if they run Swords to Plowshares they have to set that play up before they can play Magic on even terms. I have two decks that I have been working on while formulating the theories in this article, and I am going to present them to explain the concepts. These are not finished decklists, and while they are strong cores to build a deck around, they are presented here more as theory than netdecks.
The first deck is Aggro-Loam, tuned to play control. Thanks to Josh Silvestri for providing the Extended decklist that established the core of the deck:
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wasteland
3 Taiga
3 Badlands
3 Bayou
1 Grave-Shell Scarab
4 Terravore
4 Wall of Roots
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Seismic Assault
2 Smother
4 Burning Wish
2 Duress
2 Devastating Dreams
3 Smallpox
3 Life from the Loam
The sideboard is not set yet, but will include things like the fourth Life from the Loam, Nostalgic Dreams, Devastating Dreams, Duress, Cabal Therapy, Shattering Spree, Hull Breach, Tsunami, and Perish.
This specific build is not tuned, and while I suggest it as a strong starting point for deck development for the Grand Prix, I cannot in good faith recommend it as a pure netdeck. It is important to note that even with all the control cards, you actually position yourself into the beatdown role in almost every matchup except for Goblins. Every non-combo deck in the format has a huge vulnerability to Pernicious Deed; the principle risk with the card is that you never live long enough to use it. The deck alleviates these concerns with Smother, Smallpox, and Wall of Roots at two mana. Things like Pernicious Deed and Smallpox put tons of pressure on the midrange decks to win before you blow them off the map.
I built this deck because the cards are that good; just about every card in the deck is either a bomb or a mana source. The sole exception to this is the two maindeck Smother which proved a necessary evil to avoid losing to turn 1 Aether Vial, turn 2 endstep Vial out Goblin Lackey. Pernicious Deed is exceptionally saucy because it provides a maindeck answer to Aether Vial without having to play junk like Putrefy.
The deck is based around three cards: Devastating Dreams, Life from the Loam, and Burning Wish. Life from the Loam fixes your mana and draws cards, which I hear is good. Loam is the most powerful draw engine in Legacy; when you consistently outdraw Accumulated Knowledge and Fact or Fiction, you know you have a keeper. The traditional drawback is that Loam is slow, but unlike Psychatog decks you have a lot of tools like the amazing Wall of Roots. Almost no deck can beat a resolved Devastating Dreams for most of their board. Goblins can occasionally but they can never beat the second one, and you just have to be careful not to give Threshold seven cards in the graveyard; state-based effects are not checked until the resolution of the spell.
Burning Wish is actually the most difficult part of the deck. At this point I am no stranger to Burning Wish control decks, but the problem is finding the right cards to put in the sideboard. Things like Pyroclasm, Haunting Echoes, Persecute and others seem nice, but you really have to be critical in cutting away the chaff and finding the best tool for the job. For example, you could theoretically Wish for Haunting Echoes to beat up on Threshold, but Perish does the same job as well as stalling for time in the midgame.
So how can I get away with calling this deck a beatdown deck? Sure it only has eight win conditions in the maindeck, but that is not the point. Against Goblins you realistically have to play the control deck: removing Aether Vial, clearing the board and stabilizing before you can blow them away. Against every other deck you basically keep casting bombs until one resolves. Against decks without counters you basically just steamroll them: step one: find Life from the Loam, step two: Devastating Dreams them for their board and recover faster. Against decks with counters, you assemble Life from the Loam and then just start playing threats until they either run out of counters, destroy their hand with Force of Will alternate cost, or let one resolve. Realistically what chance does a creature deck have going long against a deck with Life from the Loam and Pernicious Deed? Originally I played Dark Confidant in the slot now occupied by Wall of Roots, but that version of the deck would just lose the easy games where they would open turn 1 Fanatic, turn 2 Rishadan Port, turn 3 Rishadan Port, turn 4 Goblin Ringleader. With Wall of Roots the deck can jump a step towards its fundamental turn.
I am going to present a series of plays that I hope will serve as a good example to the principles I will discuss. You ideally start on Wall of Roots, which provides a ton of time against Threshold since a 0/5 stops all their creatures but Mystic Enforcer cold. The first Wish sets up a turn 4-5 Tsunami, which will usually get countered. In the meantime, you get to tap out every turn doing obnoxious things to the board like playing all your lands, Wastelanding them, and filling your hand with juiciness. Nothing they do can match the raw power of Life from the Loam, which means every time they use Force of Will, you dance a little jig for the free card. Eventually they run out of counters and you stick some sort of bomb. They simply cannot compete with Grave-Shell Scarab or Devastating Dreams going long; Threshold’s only hope in the matchup is to win quickly which becomes difficult with Smallpox and Pernicious Deed.
So why this deck in this article? Two factors set it apart that I think are key to doing well in Legacy. The first is proactive disruption: Force of Will takes an extra card and Counterspell steals a lot of tempo away from you by making you hold mana up. It is also much easier to cover your spells with Duress instead of countermagic, but the best part is that you get information to sculpt your next plays. The other significant thing is that it is much easier to play around countermagic than Cabal Therapy or Duress. With tools like Duress or Pernicious Deed you direct the flow of the game, but with countermagic you are at the whim of your opponent. Good luck test spelling around Duress plus Pernicious Deed.
The second thing that puts this in the aggressive camp is that you do not need to be in complete control of the game to win. There is no need to clear the board and swing across with Mishra’s Factories; every bit of control you can leverage puts you farther ahead and eventually you just win. Terravore has trample and Seismic Assault goes straight to the dome, which means that paired with your board clearers, you can just win and almost nothing your opponent does can stop you.
So, here’s the part where I admit the deck has flaws. I have not tested it enough; my testing is mostly with close friends and two-fisted testing on Magic Workstation, which means I do not actually know if I got the mana right. And wow the mana can really be bad in the deck; sometimes you need to learn to not play Duress or cycle turn 1 so that you do not have to set up G on turn 1, BB on turn 2 and RRR on turn 5. Also, there is this problem where you have problems beating combo; so many of your cards that destroy aggro decks do very little to the combo decks. Post-board you get access to all the tools the disruptive decks like Red Death get, but you have to balance the sideboard.
…
This next deck comes from an experience I had while playing Confinement Slide at a local tournament. Normally I hate deck etymologies, but I feel that this one is sort of interesting so I provide it here; if you really want to skip it I won’t be offended. The most recent change was turning some number of Swords to Plowshares into Orim’s Chants, based on my experiences in Extended. In decks with overpowering end games (like my own Solitary Confinement lock), Orim’s Chant fills two roles. It serves as Swords to Plowshares early by stalling the creature from being cast until you can an answer, and it can act as Wrath of God for a turn by stopping the attack. These analogies are not perfect, but I find them illuminating because these are the two cards that were fighting for the slots that Orim’s Chant came to fill in Confinement Slide. My other experience with Confinement Slide was that I almost never just wanted to go all-in with Solitary Confinement; more often I would simply cast 4/4s with a recursion package and Lightning Rift alternate kill until my opponent lost. Realistically what decks in Legacy can keep up with double-digit 4/4s? The only creature that proves remotely scary is Threshold’s singleton Mystic Enforcer. Once I started work, it amazed me how good the creatures available are: you draw principally from Nantuko Monastery, Jotun Grunt, Watchwolf, Iwamori, Ravenous Baloth, Loxodon Hierarch, Anurid Brushhopper and Call of the Herd. The problem was finding the right mix of threats, mana, and disruption.
Increasingly I am becoming convinced that there is an Ancient Tomb aggressive deck that will end up a Tier 1 deck. I am constantly reminded by the folks in #TheManaDrain that Llanowar Elf-fueled decks are vulnerable to the turn 1 Mogg Fanatic, turn 2 Wasteland plan. This implies a heavy colorless commitment but at the benefit of a more consistent acceleration package. You also save slots; Ancient Tomb count as lands where mana elves count at least half as spells. You gain a similar benefit with the use of Nantuko Monastery, which also happens to be the best 4/4 around since it can take down Werebears in combat.
The disruption for this deck fluctuates rapidly; I have been investigating Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void, Pernicious Deed, Mesmeric Fiend (during a time when I flirted with a black splash), Catacylsm, Armageddon, and Orim’s Chant. The problem is that you need relevant threats and you want your disruption to be generally useful; neither of the two artifacts are amazing against Goblins despite being an absolute beating against other decks. Also because you have so many cards that are not threats, the deck is incredibly vulnerable to poor draws, especially because it is very mana hungry. Incidentally I wonder what Constructed players think when I describe a deck that needs to hit four mana by turn 4 as “mana hungry.”
2 Nantuko Monastery
4 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
4 Rishadan Port
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Plains
2 Forest
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Watchwolf
4 Loxodon Hierarch
4 Ravenous Baloth
3 Jotun Grunt
3 Anurid Brushhopper
3 Iwamori of the Open Fist
4 Trinisphere
4 Orim’s Chant
2 Call of the Herd
3 Cataclysm
One of the problems I run into with many of my decks is something I call the Tools ‘n’ Tubbies (TNT) Problem, named after the Vintage German Workshop Survival Deck of the same name. That deck was basically half a Workshop Aggro deck, with Mishra’s Workshop, Juggernaut, Su-Chi and other high-end creatures, and half a RG Survival deck sporting Welder, Flametongue Kavu and similar creatures. When the deck got rolling it was… let’s be honest, it was bad Workshop Aggro. More frequently the pilot would mulligan a hand sporting Survival of the Fittest but with only Mishra’s Workshop for lands. And good luck trying to cast Juggernaut with a fistful of Forests. I use the term to denote any deck where there is a serious risk of not drawing the right half of the deck to pair with each other. A more modern example is many Standard and Extended UrzaTron decks where your opening hands have a tendency to complete the Urza set with only Remand to spend it on, or where you are stuck with Sundering Titan, looking at three lands and a Signet. With this deck there is a tendency to just not get the mana you need; maybe this is a lack of tuning, but I assert there is an inevitable risk running Ancient Tomb and Rishadan Port next to Watchwolf. In the end you just have to decide whether the possibility of turn 2 Iwamori of the Open Fist (LIVE THE DREAM!) is worth the risk.
Speaking of which, the end of my fascination with Prison and Stax decks in Legacy came shortly after I became disillusioned with Wasteland. Two years ago Wasteland was very good, but then Goblins adopted 4 Wasteland and 4 Rishadan Port as standard, and Chris Pikula taught players a very valuable lesson at Grand Prix: Philadelphia. Wasteland just is not as relevant as it used to be. By contrast I find that I like Rishadan Port very much, especially when it upgrades to tapping down Gaea’s Cradle when you were previously using it on a Pendelhaven. Rishadan Port can also tap basic lands, like when they have only Plains to provide White mana. In this deck, it gives you something reasonable to do on turn 2, and personally I like Rishadan Port more than Wasteland.
So what makes this deck amazing? People’s fascination with artifact prison decks (which is partially my fault and I’m sorry) obscured the fact that Trinisphere is just a really good card. If you play a turn 2 Trinisphere on the play, your opponent basically cannot win. Even if the Goblins opponent has Aether Vial out, they are slowed down such that you can match them drop for drop, except that yours are three sizes bigger. The other principle that makes this deck really unique is that every creature is either ahead on the curve at that spot or very good for the cost. How do you lose to Threshold if you land Iwamori? That man eats every single Threshold creature but Mystic Enforcer, and even then you’re in a fine position to race. Never mind the fantastic Cataclysm end-game.
Rule #1) The deck that applies pressure is in a better position. Even more amazing is when you make the opponent have the answer, they have it, and then you play another Terravore / Ravenous Baloth / Goblin Ringleader / whatever.
Rule #2) Large, efficient creatures are powerful. Most Legacy decks are built solely off synergy, but there are a lot of amazing creatures in Legacy. It is trivial to out-attrition creature decks when yours are just three times as good.
Rule #3) Play the best spells. Why would you ever want to trade one-for-one when you could just win the game?
That’s all I have on the subject of board-control in Legacy, but I wanted to address another topic: choosing a deck for the Grand Prix Trials and Grand Prix: Columbus. This was a refinement of my thought process as I choose decks for the upcoming Grand Prix.
Deck Choice for the Upcoming Grand Prix Trials and Grand Prix: Columbus
People choose decks for the wrong reasons; I’ve done it at least twice. Legacy has the onus of being thought of as a casual format, even more so than Vintage (which has been imbued with strong community support and multiple major tournaments). Where Vintage has Waterburies, Power Nines and all kinds of events, Legacy has had few major tournaments. Aside from the two previous Grand Prix tournaments, the StarCityGames.com tournaments are the most amazing thing to ever happen to Legacy, but those are few and far between, and they are concentrated solely in Virginia. Clearly the answer is to have three Grand Prix tourneys a year and a Duel for Duals every month, but that is besides the point. People seem to believe that you can play whatever you want at a Legacy tournament and do well. At Standard tournaments of comparable size you see all kinds of highly tuned and innovative decks, and at Legacy tournaments, sometimes you see Standard decks. Now there are a lot of people tuning and working on decks constantly, but people choose decks on a whim. Here is my guide to picking decks:
Step One: Play Goblins.
And for most of you, that is the end of this section. Goblins should be the default deck choice, not an option for just a few. While I do not think that the relative power levels are comparable, it can be argued that Goblins in Legacy is like Affinity in Standard: you should probably just play Affinity. Goblins has a much better expected match win or Top 8 percentage than every other deck in the format. The other comparison I would draw is Aggro Loam; as Flores is fond of saying on the Top8Magic podcasts, for any tournament there is a best given deck, and Aggro Loam is the second best deck choice. At any given tournament there is a deck that is going to perform the best against the field, but it will almost never happen that Goblins is a bad choice, especially not at a tournament as large as Grand Prix: Columbus (or the bigger Grand Prix Trials).
I can only discern two valid reasons for not playing Goblins. Note that “I dislike Goblins” or “It’s not my playstyle” are not valid reasons; most of the pros play the best deck at a tournament regardless of how they feel. Why? Because it is the best deck!
The first reason is that you have an amazing metagame read. People interested in this topic should read “Metagaming” by Doug Linn (before reading Doug Linn was cool!). An example of this would be the most recent Mana Leak Day 1; apparently there were so few Goblins decks that you could afford to eat one loss against Goblins and play something that crushed the field but lost to Goblins, and in fact one player reached Top 8 with Psychatog employing this very strategy.
The second reason is that you have some amazing tech. Maybe you finally figure out a way to break Survival of the Fittest or Grim Tutor. The important thing here is to test your deck. You might think that your combo works, but when you throw it against Threshold you find it scoops to a Counterspell. Or maybe you cannot deal with Wastelands from Goblins. Whatever. Even more than just testing your deck, take it to a Grand Prix Trial. It is possible you misunderstood the rules or biased the results in your testing.
Earlier today I was asked if it was a good idea to take the same deck to the Grand Prix Trial and to the Grand Prix itself. Sure, why not! The obvious response is that if you think you have the deck best suited to winning the tournament, why wouldn’t you play it? And if you do not think your deck has the best chance of winning the tournament, why are you playing it? I can only conceive two reasons for playing a different deck at the Grand Prix Trial and the Grand Prix itself: secrecy and discovery. But what can people honestly do if you break the format? The trials are around the end of April, which means that the Legacy community has about three weeks to respond to the deck. There is a fair chance that your deck gets dismissed off hand or with only minimal testing, which means you got validation of your deck at no risk. Even if people take your deck seriously, what can they do? It is doubtful that people can learn to play it well enough by the Grand Prix, and most players will be reluctant to devote sideboard slots to a single deck played by a single player. The only way this can backfire on you is if knowledge of your deck and the way it functions is essential to going undisrupted; if you need a player to not counter or kill an innocuous seeming creature before your combo goes off. However, it is unlikely you could keep that sort interaction a secret during the GP itself. There is another valid reason why you would switch decks after the Grand Prix Trial. Maybe your deck sucks! But even in that case, it is better off to give the deck a field test and know that it sucks than to be locked into your deck choice at the Grand Prix and lose quickly. Treat the Grand Prix Trial like Day 1 of a two-day Duel for Duals, where if your initial deck choice fails, you can always play a reliable standby like Goblins or Ill-Gotten Gains.
What about Threshold? I enumerated a list online of decks that I considered strong choices, and that list looked something like: Goblins, UWR Pyroclasm, Aluren, Confinement Slide, Reset High Tide, TES, Iggy, Faerie Stompy. Not all of those are equal choices, and they obviously do not take into account decks that are still in the development phase, but in certain metagames I would not be surprised if those decks took a Top 8 berth or won. But I did not mention Threshold. Until Future Sight comes out, Threshold still does not consistently beat Goblins, which I consider a chief criterion in choosing a deck. There are just too many decks with similar matchups that also beat Goblins for me to recommend Threshold. The U/G/R Threshold list that made Top 8 at the last The Mana Leak Open tournament with Pyroclasm to beat Goblins and Counterbalance to win the mirror has promise, but I do not know enough about yet. This is not to say that other decks cannot win, just that it makes sense to play the deck with the best matchups against the field, and I do not feel that Threshold does that.
Next time: a postcap from the April 28 Grand Prix Trial (either judging or playing), and who knows what else. If you have suggestions for topics or questions you would like me to address, please drop me a line. I can easily answer a few questions in a mini-feature within an article the way I did this week.
Kevin Binswanger
[email protected]
Anusien everywhere