Video: Young Tokens In Legacy

Today I’m going to demonstrate my latest build of Young Tokens—my Legacy Young Pyromancer / Lingering Souls deck updated from the StarCityGames.com Invitational.

My current list is:

Young Tokens

Sam Black

Test deck on 08-11-2013

Legacy

Creatures (10)

• 2 Snapcaster Mage
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 4 Young Pyromancer

Lands (21)

• 2 Volcanic Island
• 2 Underground Sea
• 1 Tundra
• 1 Tropical Island
• 1 Scrubland
• 1 Plateau
• 1 Badlands
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Scalding Tarn

Spells (29)

• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 2 Intuition
• 4 Cabal Therapy
• 4 Ponder
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 2 Intangible Virtue
• 4 Lingering Souls

Sideboard

• 4 Force of Will
• 2 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Extirpate
• 4 Thoughtseize
• 1 Surgical Extraction
• 1 Geist of Saint Traft
• 2 Wear

This deck is designed to basically do what Legacy decks do: use a lot of cheap library manipulation to find the proper answers to my opponent’s threats while presenting efficient threats of my own.

On to the games!

In the first game here, my opponent just couldn’t beat Deathrite Shaman. In the second, he managed to sneak a Griselbrand into play too early for me to do anything about it, and in the third, Surgical Extraction + Snapcaster Mage made things too difficult for him.

A few big things went right for me in game 1. I found the Lightning Bolt I dug for to kill the Mother of Runes, and he had Sword of Fire and Ice instead of Umezawa’s Jitte. I also think he made a few slightly suboptimal plays. In game 2, he mostly didn’t do things that mattered again because his equipment was Sword of Fire and Ice. The failure to use the Mangara + Karakas interaction didn’t help, but thanks to Lightning Bolt it wouldn’t have changed much.

Game 1 Gitaxian Probe + Young Pyromancer + Cabal Therapy was just too strong. It’s too strong against almost any deck, but it’s particularly obvious against Storm. In game 2, I simply got absurdly lucky to have my Force of Will exactly eighth from the top of my deck where he couldn’t do anything about it.

In game 1, I died without taking an action. Welcome to Legacy. Game 2 Force of Will stopped him from going off safely and pressure from Young Pyromancer forced him to attempt to go off into Surgical Extraction, at which point he couldn’t win. In game 3, I essentially locked him out with Deathrite Shaman and discard while playing around the fact that he could potentially go off at instant speed.

Overall, I think this did a good job of showing Young Tokens’ strength against combo decks (at least when I get a little lucky), but it’s rare that half the decks one faces are blue/black combo. Still, I’m definitely pleased with the recent developments I’ve made to this deck.

Thanks for watching,

Sam

@samuelhblack
twitch/tv/samuelhblack