It’s been awhile since I’ve played Legacy and even longer since I’ve worked on building Faithless Looting decks. When I last looked at it, I knew I wanted to move away from Zombies, but I hadn’t decided what to do instead. At some point I was having a conversation about Modern and someone mentioned reprinting Cabal Therapy, and I mentioned how absurd it would be with Satyr Wayfinder (and Young Pyromancer, of course). That got me wondering whether that interaction could work in Legacy, which brought me to this deck:
Creatures (17)
Lands (21)
Spells (22)
Round 1
Actually playing against Blood Moon made it abundantly clear that my manabase is quite wrong, so I’m going to fix that moving forward. It’s now:
As for the match, my first hand was pretty bad, and I just lost to Goblin Rabblemaster, which seems pretty impressive given how easily he can be played early in Legacy and how much better it is before turn 3. The second game, things went according to plan. The third game featured some embarrassing blunders as I failed to remember all the different ways in which I couldn’t do anything, but ultimately, I think he just had it. I’m not sure if the best answer would be Banishing Light (which is probably better than Oblivion Ring because it can’t get my stuff, and I think that’s the most important difference), Maelstorm Pulse (which needs two colors to be cast under Blood Moon, but they’re the colors I’d be more likely to have), or Krosan Grip/Nature’s Claim, which would be easiest to cast.
Round 2
The decision to concede game 1 I think was actually pretty close for my opponent. On the one hand, some Thoughtseize decks are very bad against Dredge, and if my hand and/or deck was bad, it would definitely be possible to draw out of it no matter what my opponent had in hand. On the other hand, sideboards tend to be very powerful against Dredge, so there’s a big cost to letting your opponent see that that’s what you’re playing. Still, having taken that many mulligans still makes me think my opponent’s more likely to be Dredge, and as we saw, I hedged that way when sideboarding. In the second game, I got killed before I took a second turn, and in the third game, my opponent mulled to basically nothing again, drew out of it somewhat, but couldn’t really beat my draw anyway (since I spiked my one real hate card on top of a good hand), and then punted.
Round 3
Not the most interactive match, but sometimes that’s just what you get with Legacy. The ability to have some game against the combo decks is why I really like building around the Thoughtseize/Cabal Therapy/Tidehollow Sculler shell, but here it helped that my opponent’s draws just weren’t perfect (sadly, when they are you don’t even always have time to cast Thoughtseize).
Round 4
I think it would have been reasonable to put my opponent on Fireblast and play more cautiously in the first game, but it’s likely that I’m just saying that
because I lost, since giving the burn deck extra turns is definitely pretty bad. I think finding a spot where it’s close and shifting toward more
aggressive is often a better way to hedge than waiting longer.
The second game was simple since my draw was good any my opponent didn’t have lands.
After the third game, you might notice that my opponent said, “terrible player”–the only real mistake I remember making was not adding a black mana before
casting Cabal Therapy, but that was the same turn when my opponent played Volcanic Fallout before allowing my Young Pyromancer trigger to resolve, and my
mistake didn’t end up punishing me at all, so it seems a little hypocritical to call me on that one there. I assume he just meant that he thought my deck
was bad, but I’m sure someone will point it out if I missed something else.
Overall, I like Satyr Wayfinder a lot, and I think this is about the right amount of support. I’m not totally sure about Goblin Bombardment without
Gravecrawler. Bloodsoaked Champion could fit here instead, but I’m in an awkward spot where the only sac outlets I have are two Goblin Bombardments and a
Carrion Feeder (which is there just to have a way to get value off Bloodghast more often, and it’s in over the third Goblin Bombardment because Return to
the Ranks means I’m more likely to have it, since I can find it with Satyr Wayfinder/Life from the Loam and then get it back)–I don’t want to cut them,
because I want to be able to get value out of every land with Bloodghast, but I don’t really want to add more creatures that are great at being sacrificed
if I’m not taking more advantage of that. Maybe the best solution is to cut Bloodghast for some other creature that’s good in this shell. Ideally I want
something I’m happy discarding, but it could just be a creature that costs two, and I could increase Return to the Ranks over Goblin Bombardments.
Maybe maindeck Dark Confidants and a few removal spells is the way to go.