This past weekend I played in SCG Open Series: Milwaukee along with hundreds of other players. Unlike anyone else, I played Cartel Aristocrat, Doomed Traveler, and Skirsdag High Priest in both formats. As one commenter implied, I may have a problem.
I made Top 8 of the Standard Open without losing a match with The Aristocrats: Act 2. I’d been uncertain about the deck before the tournament—having not had a great experience with it at the Invitational—but I gave it another try (entirely because I still had it put together) and tweaked the sideboard to help out against Jund, which had accounted for almost all of my losses.
I barely changed my maindeck, which I was extremely happy with, but my sideboard didn’t feel quite right. However, I had Zealous Conscripts, which is what I’d been missing the previous weekend, and that was by far the most important card to have access to. I played:
Creatures (24)
- 4 Skirsdag High Priest
- 4 Doomed Traveler
- 4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
- 4 Blood Artist
- 4 Cartel Aristocrat
- 4 Boros Reckoner
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
I liked the Electrickerys in principle, but I never actually got to use them in the tournament. Intangible Virtue also wasn’t where I wanted to be, and I should have cut it entirely. Obzedat was excellent, as always, and I was still happy with Sorin. Sever the Bloodline didn’t really come up, but I’ve generally been happy to have it in this format. If I played this deck again, I wouldn’t touch the maindeck, but I would change the sideboard substantially. I know that I would play two or three Obzedat, Ghost Council; three Zealous Conscripts; and at least one Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, but I’m not sure about the rest. I think I’d still like to try an Electrickery or two.
Really, though, I think this deck is old news at this point, and Brad Nelson is much more excited to teach you about the details than I am. While my 37th place finish in Legacy was certainly much less impressive, I have a lot more to say about my Legacy deck.
Here’s the deck tech I did at the event:
My list was:
Creatures (28)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 4 Benevolent Bodyguard
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 4 Stoneforge Mystic
- 3 Skirsdag High Priest
- 4 Doomed Traveler
- 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 3 Cartel Aristocrat
Lands (21)
Spells (11)
I built the deck Thursday morning. I was actually trying to build a deck around Teysa, Orzhov Scion and Darkest Hour or Painter’s Servant, but as I pulled cards I thought I might want to play in such a deck and then looked for what to cut to make the deck actually work, I had to cut the whole Teysa engine. It’s pretty normal for me to build around an idea and then evolve the deck away from that idea. It’s important not to get too caught up on your starting point and to allow a train of thought to lead you where it needs to go.
I knew that I’d need to protect Teysa if I wanted to build a deck around her, which is part of what led to the Mother of Runes / Benevolent Bodyguard shell. Benevolent Bodyguard may look like it involved digging really deep, but it was a pretty natural inclusion for me. I’ve been a big fan of the card since it was in Standard when one of my first successful Constructed decks on Magic Online was a Cleric deck based around Master Apothecary just before Onslaught came out. (Obviously, I started building my decks years before I was known for it.)
I’ve been surprised that no one really plays it, and it was excellent at doing exactly what I wanted it to do.
I think Dark Confidant was the primary card that led to the realization that instead of building around a Teysa combo that requires having around five creatures in play at the same time, I could just play a bunch of devastating two-drops and protect them with eight discard spells and eight protective creatures.
I had a strong suspicion that Skirsdag High Priest would attack a lot of Legacy decks from an angle they were completely unprepared for, and I generally found that to be true. Cartel Aristocrat + Doomed Traveler is the best way to set it up in Standard, and it also happens to be among the best ways to do it in Legacy. People always seems incredulous about how many new cards I use, but creatures are just a lot better now than they used to be.
Doomed Traveler is included because of its interaction with Cabal Therapy and Cartel Aristocrat and. Also, Liliana of the Veil is popular, and it’s nice to be able to get a flying creature into play to block other fliers, especially with Mother of Runes, or to equip.
I’d love to have Swords to Plowshares in my deck, but there are several decks in Legacy that it doesn’t do anything against. I really need a critical mass of creatures, so I felt like I had to put it in the sideboard. Having only Jitte as removal definitely felt problematic when my opponents played something like a Dark Confidant or a Knight of the Reliquary and I knew it would be in play forever, but Demons can generally beat any creature with time, so I’m not sure removal is strictly necessary.
My creatures are almost universally terrible on offense, so I need trumps like Stoneforge Mystic and Skirsdag High Priest to actually kill my opponent. Neither of these felt perfect though. It felt like opponents were generally very prepared for Stoneforge Mystic, and even with protection it didn’t win that many games (though it certainly did good work and won a few games). I didn’t have quite enough ways to trigger morbid, so sometimes Skirsdag High Priest would just make it impossible for my opponent to attack. Usually that meant I’d eventually draw a Benevolent Bodyguard or Cartel Aristocrat and win the game, but often my opponent would just be able to kill me with Deathrite Shaman.
I think the biggest mistake I made was including Wasteland. My thinking was that I didn’t need a lot of mana, and since I didn’t have a way to filter cards, I wanted to be able to turn extra lands into spells of some kind. My two-drops also mostly used colorless mana. In practice, I found myself in a lot of Wasteland mirrors where my opponents either had Deathrite Shamans that I couldn’t kill or Stifles and Dazes. I wished my Wastelands were just basic Plains, which ended up being the best card in my deck.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben was outstanding for me against combo and Delver decks, and I wish I’d had a third main in addition to the fourth in the board.
It’s important to understand that this list was much less tuned than my Zombie deck, which is probably less tuned than most other decks in Legacy that have had hundreds of people work on them rather than just me (I know that others have played my Zombie deck and tuned it for their own purposes, but I haven’t really listened to any of them so I don’t think it really counts for much).
I played exactly three matches with this strategy before the tournament and not a single game with the actual list I played in the tournament beforehand.
This deck is very much a work in progress that showed some promise.
Moving forward, I want to start by dropping the Wastelands and lowering the land count. I’m not sure if it should be nineteen or twenty, but I’m going to start at nineteen. I also want a lot of basic lands. This deck doesn’t need many lands, and as long as you have a basic Plains, Wasteland isn’t much of a problem.
I think I want a faster clock, so I’m going to try putting Champion of the Parish back in (I had it in my deck when I was playing on Magic Online because I didn’t own Mother of Runes). Making room is a problem. My solution might be bad, but I’m going to try cutting Stoneforge Mystic and the Equipment.
I’m also adding the fourth Skirsdag High Priest, but I need more enablers, so I’m adding the fourth Cartel Aristocrat and two Orzhov Charms. It feels weird to play Orzhov Charm over Swords to Plowshares, but I think it does a little more against creatureless decks and I really want to be able to trigger morbid with my removal spell. It definitely feels weird to prioritize destroying over exiling, though, especially since costing a black is big problem. There’s a good chance this is wrong, especially if there’s another good morbid enabler.
I also don’t love where I’m at with the discard spells. Cabal Therapy is a lot worse with only Thoughtseize than it is with Thoughtseize and Tidehollow Sculler, but I think I need them even though I’ve been siding out my discard against fair decks. I did that early with Zombies and learned to stop doing it, but I still think it might be right here. For now, I’m sticking with four Thoughtseizes and four Cabal Therapys, but they’re on my watch list.
Before cutting Stoneforge Mystic, Umezawa’s Jitte, and Batterskull, I felt like I wanted another way to gain life. After cutting them, I don’t have any. I think this is a problem, but I’m not sure what the best solution is. Soul Warden, Auriok Champion, and Blood Artist are at the top of my list, but I don’t think they’re quite good enough. Martyr of Sands can kill itself, which is nice, but I don’t think it’s what I want either.
During the tournament, four of my opponents had Engineered Plague, and it was definitely a problem. I considered Honor the Pure as a solution, but that doesn’t save Dark Confidant. It took a long time for me to remember that Shared Triumph is a card, and I’m interested in trying it out in my sideboard.
My most recent build is:
Creatures (31)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 4 Benevolent Bodyguard
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 4 Skirsdag High Priest
- 4 Champion of the Parish
- 4 Doomed Traveler
- 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 4 Cartel Aristocrat
Lands (19)
Spells (10)
It doesn’t have life gain and I want more sideboard slots than I have, but I’m not sure what the best solution to either problem is.
Orzhov Charm, the fourth Doomed Traveler, and the fourth Skirsdag High Priest are the most likely places to make cuts first unless I decide to cut all four Cabal Therapys. But then I’d probably have to make room for them in the sideboard, and that’s also not desirable.
I really want at least one and preferably two Disenchants, I’d like another Perish, and I still want to fit a good way to gain life in somewhere. I’d also love Pithing Needle, but I don’t know how I could make room for it and because of Mother of Runes Phyrexian Revoker might actually be better (since the primary purpose is to stop Sneak Attack).
Also, at Ari Lax suggestion, I’d consider an Immortal Servitude or two in the sideboard, but at the moment it seems worse than Perish.
This is definitely still a work in progress, but while I await further Dragon’s Maze spoilers, it’s a fun deck to try to fix. I’m going to work on it this week, and I’ll probably play it in a local Legacy tournament on Sunday. I hope I can make something of it.
Thanks for reading,
Sam
@samuelhblack on Twitter