Thursday, July 16th – At the end of my previous article, I said that the Permanent Waves deck might have been an excellent metagame choice. In this article, I start with a discussion of why Permanent Waves is worth considering and playing. Then I discuss my recent attempts to tune the deck, and show some of the results of my recent testing.
Friday, July 10th – There are many decisions a competitive Magic player has to make at a tournament to be successful. There is one key decision, however, that occurs before a tournament, one that limits or expands a player’s ability to win in Constructed Magic. This is the choice of which deck to play.
Monday, June 15th – Whether it be buildings, software, Magic decks, or anything else, to design something is to create a solution for a given problem. An architect’s problem is that he or she needs to design a building that fits the needs of his client. The designers of Magic decks are trying to solve a problem too. Their problem is to create a deck that is capable of winning a tournament.
Friday, December 12th – Since Solidarity and Spring Tide are not really viable in their current form, is their some way to have the best of both decks? To have powerful untap effects and still have access to powerful sorceries such as Merchant Scroll? It seems too difficult to reconcile playing Reset with sorceries, and Solidarity does not look like the place to start, but perhaps there are other ways to untap lands in Spring Tide…
Friday, November 14th – A Legacy tournament was held on October 18, 2008 in Binghamton, New York to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of The Source, a forum dedicated to the discussion of the Legacy format. It turned out to be largest (at least on record) Legacy tournament on the East Coast so far this year.
Wednesday, October 8th – Ad Nauseam is the newest spell to impact the development of Legacy storm combo. Its ability to draw an undetermined number cards opens up the potential that storm combo finally has the card it needs to become the best deck in the format. All the other card advantage spells that have seen play in storm decks either have limits on the number of cards they can draw.
Wednesday, September 10th – In Part 1, we left off with the basics of how to play Eva Green. In this part, we begin by applying those basics against the more successful decks in Legacy. We end the article with some changes that we’ve been testing, and discuss if any of these represent the next evolution of the deck. This article was a joint effort by Dan Signorini and Anwar Ahmad.
Monday, August 11th – Red Death was a Legacy deck based on the Suicide Black archetype. It was a deck built around heavy disruption, efficient creatures, and burn spells. This Suicide variant became untenable after the printing of Tarmogoyf. It was in need of a serious overhaul if it were ever to compete again… This article was a joint effort by Dan Signorini and Anwar Ahmad.
Monday, July 14th – This story begins with an announcement that was posted on The Source by Chris Lennon (Volt) advertising a Legacy tournament in Vancouver, WA. People start discussing the possibility about driving out to the tournament. This suggestion seemed to be joke at first. Driving across the country to play in Magic tournament where even if you win you can’t make more than equivalent of 200 dollars is pure madness. Or is it?
Monday, June 16th – The graveyard is a very powerful resource in Legacy. Many different decks make use of it, for very different purposes. Threshold uses it to fuel Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf. Eva Green cheats Tombstalker into play by delving its graveyard. There are many other examples, but there is one deck in Legacy that relies almost entirely on its graveyard to win the match…
Monday, May 19th – Designing competitive decks is difficult. It requires building something better or at least as good as the best decks in any given format. The best decks represent the gold standard of which any new deck aspires to be. These decks can provide a wealth of information about how to build decks and why their designs work.
The goal of every competitive deck is to win. Not losing is merely a means to that end, but not an end in itself. Each archetype takes a different approach to winning the game. Looking at each archetype in detail will provide insight into how each of them achieves its strategy. There is one particular archetype that will be very different in nature from the others and it deserves more consideration.
The general strategy of Red Death is to play disruption, creatures, and burn to win the game. Its creatures by themselves are not fast enough to win the game against most decks in Legacy. The disruption provides an opportunity to slow down an opponent’s gameplan to allow the creatures to win the game. The burn spells either finish off a player who has a low life total or act as additional disruption by removing creatures. It is the combination of disruption, creatures, and burn that makes Red Death successful.
Have you had the pleasure of watching your Dark Confidant get hit with a Mogg Fanatic and then getting your Scrubland get destroyed by a Wasteland? Only to watch your opponent run you over with a horde of goblins that you have no way of stopping? If you are playing a deck in Legacy that plans to win with creatures, you need to ask yourself one important question – are you playing a threat?
