Sam Black takes a page out of the Daily Digest playbook and takes a sweet rogue build through a series of videos! Does this list have what it takes to tear apart Grand Prix New Jersey?
If you’ve been followed the results of MTGO Legacy Daily Events, you may have noticed that there are a few players who keep finishing 3-1 or 4-0 with their unusual pet decks. When a deck is presumably only being played by one player, and that player keeps placing with the deck, you have to wonder if maybe they broke it, especially if their deck is particularly unusual. One example of this is Dapokpok, who places almost every day (as I remember it) with a white soldier deck with a lot of cards several of you have probably never heard of.
Well, those games definitely made this deck look more respectable than I’d imagined. Clearly, not being able to answer any of your opponent’s permanents can be a real problem, but the ability to grind through removal and establish inevitability was remarkable.
Round 2
White hate cards are definitely potent. Things were scary there at points, but the deck definitely forced the opponent to always have exactly the right things, and they just don’t always have it.
Round 3
This felt more like a demonstration of ANT’s strength than the weakness of this deck, though the two are certainly linked. My draws weren’t great, and I settled for suboptimal hate, but my opponent was great at punishing that.
Round 4
Again, it feels like the cards are there that you should be able to beat this deck, but obviously they also have all the answers. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben just doesn’t line up as well as you might like against Lightning Bolt. Smash to Smithereens was brutal, and I’d probably have won from that spot against a build that had Smelt instead, but that speaks more to the suggestion that Smelt might not be the card you want than that this deck should be favored against U/R to me.
Overall, the deck felt impressive compared to how it looks. The creatures look pretty arbitrary, but actually play pretty well for what this deck is trying to do. I certainly wouldn’t say this deck “broke it,” and I can’t really speak to whether it’s just a bad Death and Taxes, but it might be a way to have Death and Taxes-style hate cards without exposing yourself to cards like Sulfur Elemental.
