With Grand Prix: Chicago coming up in March, Legacy players will have a huge tournament to prepare for, full of its own challenges and requirements that are distinct from the smaller events that we are used to. Instead of tuning a deck to last five rounds and hopefully a playoff in the Top 8, GP players will have 15+ rounds to do battle in. In this article, we’ll identify and explore five key concepts for GP victory.
Before we go into the specific concepts, indulge me while I riff for awhile on how to decide what to play. Legacy has that lovely deep cardpool with several top-tier and contender decks available for play. There’s no current must-play at the time of publication, so we’ve got some hard decisions to make in what to test and play in the Prix.
In a smaller event, players can, and often do, tune their decks and sideboards to beat what’s in the area. One must only look at a Top 8 decklist to see things like Circle of Protection: Red or the absence of Engineered Plagues, telltale signs of subtle local metagame influences. If there’s a burn or Landstill player doing well locally, you’re bound to see a reflection of that in successful lists, and a wise player will calibrate their deck to beat what they know will show up.
At an event that will draw several hundred people, though, a player is likely to see anything and everything. They cannot pack specific cards to deal with that one guy who always runs Grindstone/Painter’s Servant; instead, a good player will run cards that address a wide variety of problems. This player will want a deck that stands up to fifteen rounds of play and doesn’t crumble in seven. Some Legacy decks can survive like this, others cannot. In this format more than any other, it seems that there are some decks good at winning small events and others good at winning midsize to large events. This dovetails into my first point:
Avoid Decks That Lose to General Hate
In a small event, you can take bets that you’ll avoid playing against a certain kind of deck and use the sideboard spots devoted to that deck to answer something else. For example, I often short myself on Ichorid answer cards in smaller Vintage events because it’s doubtful that I’ll run into it, and I can withstand one loss from the deck and beat other opponents instead with my ample sideboard space.
However, in a large event, strong players run general answer cards that can address a variety of different deckstyles. In Legacy, this list starts with Tormod’s Crypt, Krosan Grip, Stifle, Swords to Plowshares, and Thoughtseize, and goes on from there. A Krosan Grip can come in against Landstill and White Stax and Survival decks all the same, so it’s easy to see why this strategy of sideboard building is effective.
We apply this lesson by asking if our deck will encounter common and inevitable hate cards every round, and whether it can beat them. Dredge immediately comes to mind. Tormod’s Crypt is everywhere in Legacy, along with its friend Leyline of the Void. It’s unforeseeable that a Dredge player can dodge the hate in fifteen rounds of play; they’ll have a bad hand here or there and the opponent will have a good hand. Whether it’s Mogg Fanatic, Leyline, Ground Seal, Tormod’s Crypt, or a whole host of other hate cards, Dredge will have to fight against diverse and powerful stoppers and not make a mistake and draw strong hands. Dredge is much better suited for a smaller event where it can take advantage of the player who doesn’t have a hate card or is inexperienced against the deck.
I’m still undecided on whether Ad Nauseam is a good choice, but whoever pilots it will have to deal with a withering pile of hate. If you’re packing the deck, consider whether you can beat combinations like Meddling Mage & Daze, Duress & Hymn to Tourach, Stifle & Sinkhole, Orim’s Chant & Gaddok Teeg, Thorn of Amethyst & Trinisphere (and so on). Every player will have a strong combo-hate element on their sideboard, so an Ad Nauseam player will be encountering different hate cards every round that they might not know about or be able to overcome. Gadiel Szleifer Peek in his Flash deck was great for the reason that you can see what you’re up against as a combo pilot. Without something like that and the requirement of beating very good combo-hate cards every round, I’m very hesitant to recommend an Ad Nauseam deck to a player who doesn’t have the time to put in substantial testing.
Avoid Losing To Your Own Deck
This means, generally, don’t give up games and matches with a deck that will lose to itself sometimes. For example, 43 Lands must have Exploration or Manabond or it simply cannot hang with the rest of the field. There are certainly going to be times where the deck will mulligan into oblivion looking for one of these cards and start the game with four lackluster cards in hand, playing only one per turn. This situation is far more likely in a large GP-scale event than in a smaller local tournament. I’d stay away from decks that need a specific opening card or selection, such as lands.
Similarly, some decks can lose to their own manabase. White Stax is an example of this. Sometimes the deck will simply not have the mana on hand to cast what it needs to at the right time, and will fall two or three turns behind because it has the all-colorless hand with Ghostly Prison and Armageddon in hand, or has only City of Traitors and Plains for mana development, without a Crucible of Worlds in sight. If you can build White Stax to avoid color screw in fifteen rounds of play plus a playoff, it’s a nice choice. Otherwise, look to other decks.
Some decks get much worse off the back of a single mulligan. Burn is the biggest example of this. The deck attempts to get 20 damage out in the first few turns, because every drawn land is a blank and it needs to see about seven to eight burn spells to win the game. One hand that doesn’t have two mana sources will lead to a mulligan that will put the player very far behind. While getting enough cards to burn someone out is an issue mostly specific to the deck at hand, the general lesson still applies with cheating on land counts. If your deck runs 18 lands, can it afford to mulligan to 6 and see enough lands? Will you just plainly lose if you mulligan to 5? These factors matter greatly in a large event, where in a small event, they are far less important.
Along with avoiding losing to our own cards, we should…
Have a Plan Against Outlier Cards and Strategies
At the GP, you’re likely to face a different deck every round. Especially in the early rounds, you might face something wacky or seemingly odd. Sometimes, they’re enormously successful, like Suicide Black was at GP: Columbus. While it’s foolish to have specific sideboard cards for everything you might encounter, it’s worth having a plan when you see offbeat cards or more rare strategies.
For example, you had better have a plan to beat both Moat and Humility. These cards will undoubtedly show up at the GP and will ruin peoples’ days if they are unprepared. Play against a deck with Humility to get a handle on how players will use it and how you can overcome it. It wouldn’t hurt to have a plan cooked up for how to beat a High Tide deck, even if you don’t expect any. How does your deck handle a 12/12 monstrosity on the second turn? Remember that fortune favors the prepared!
As a corollary, it’s worth it to run decks that are generally strong but have a hard time against outlier cards. Goblins loses quite badly to Sphere of Law, but I wouldn’t expect much of the enchantment at the GP. Goblins is a fantastic choice because a lot of the cards that really hurt it won’t be anywhere around. General sideboard cards like Threaten or Stingscourger can go a long way in a big event, tricking and stopping a lot of otherwise painful creatures as well as offering different methods of winning tricky game-states. I feel similarly about Enchantress, a deck with a hard time against Tranquility effects and Pernicious Deed, but with a strong game against many other decks in the field. This brings us to our next key concept:
Play Decks That Lose To Cards, Not Entire Decks
Can your deck beat a Counterbalance lock from a Next Level variant or Dreadtill? This is going to be a very common situation at the GP, and I shy away from decks that would utilize an engine like Life From The Loam, knowing how easily and permanently Counterbalance will shut it down. I’d fully expect to see Counterbalance in some form at least four times in a 15-round event, so I wouldn’t run something that can have a very bad day in the face of it. This also extends to decks that are soft against combo. If you get a read that there will be a lot of decks you cannot interact with, such as Tendrils of Agony decks, it’s worth it to change to something else if you know that playing against one of these decks twice in a day means you certainly lose.
However, playing a deck that is strong against the field but weak against a card like Extirpate is fine. It’s stronger to hitch your star to the hope that you won’t see a certain sideboard card over the plea that you won’t run into a certain deck. I’m uncertain where a deck like Enchantress or Elf Survival fit in, both of which are objectively strong decks that lose to a handful of specific hate cards, but are dogs against combo. It’ll take more time and work to see if it’s worth a gamble of encountering a bad matchup with a very strong deck.
Finally, we want to…
Have a Lategame Backbreaker
In looking over the GP: Lille lists, you’ll see that most of the decks at the end of the day have between one and three cards that are just brutal to a lot of strategies. I’m not surprised that at the end of such a battle, decks with the ability to play a bomb in a protracted game rose to the top. Think of how many decks just shut down to Moat, Worship, or Recurring Nightmare! While those decks are years old, I think the principle remains the same. In a long event, you want something that will break a stall or give you a huge edge.
These cards can be things like Academy Ruins, giving you a way to Engineered Explosives-lock someone right out of the game, or something like Isochron Scepter, adding more card advantage and a formidable threat in its own right. For GP: Chicago, ask yourself if you have something that can beat the random match where both players have exhausted resources or if you can add a card that will make the game unwinnable for a selection of decks. I suggest being creative about it, too. Consider Planeswalkers like Elspeth to go with your Humility, or Worm Harvest to go with your Loam engine. Can you support a Meloku or a set of Meddling Mages to cut off an opponent’s options? Remember that in a long event, the probability that you’ll stall out or run into any other of a host of problems increases. This, of course, all changes if you have byes…
A Short Discussion on Byes
If you’re going into the GP with byes, it’s worth reexamining these points to see how they change. For instance, you might be playing against three less rounds of combo hate or graveyard hate, so something like Dredge or Ad Nauseam looks considerably more attractive. Similarly, you can construct a more Glass Cannon style deck that only beats a specific segment of the metagame if you’re pretty sure you’ll only be seeing those sorts of decks in Round 4 and beyond.
Two months out from the event isn’t too long to be thinking about what you want to play or discard as a deck. I hope these points on preparing for a large event will shape your testing and ultimately, lead you to the final tables! As always, thanks for reading.