When Armageddon’s been locked and loaded
I will come back for you
Bane — Swan Song
I’ve been thinking a lot this month. I haven’t really played a lot of Legacy in the last few weeks, due in no small part to my time being incredibly constrained by the man — namely school, work, and other “Not Fun” things that are sure to keep you stressed all day, and awake all night. Unfortunately, that means I missed the opportunity to make another road trip to Virginia, and a good sized tournament that went along with it. It’s always tough to see your friends and teammates make a trip without you, especially when it’s something you enjoy as much as a Legacy tournament trip. Still, I’ve been thinking. Shadowmoor is on the horizon, and with the Prerelease this weekend (or last weekend by the time you read this), the gears are already turning in the minds that scope the new sets for Legacy technology. I’m quite pleased with the first looks, and there seem to be a wealth of cards that at the very least have potential to see some competitive Legacy play. Today, I’d like to focus on a would-be contender that’s created quite the buzz for itself in the Legacy community, Swans of Bryn Argoll.
Within the first hour of the card being spoiled, a two-card combo that potentially wins the game on the spot was contrived. As Swans turns any burn spell into a draw spell, hitting your own Swan with a Chain of Plasma allows you to continually draw three cards, and discard one to chain the Chain onto the Swans again. This loop lets you draw your whole deck. You end the loop by chaining the Chain at your opponent. Even if they chain it back to your Swan to draw three cards themselves, the damage has been done. You’ve now drawn your deck, and can use a spell like Conflagrate (discarded to the Chain of Plasma) or Lightning Storm, to make use of your 40 card hand to win the game. In essence, this is a two-card win-now combo, with a total mana cost of 6. Certainly there are other combos like this one available in Legacy — Mana Severance/Goblin Charbelcher, Illusions of Grandeur/Donate, Mizzium Transreliquat/Time Vault, etc. However, these combos have an issue that isn’t present with the Chain/Swan combo — each one contains pieces that are effectively dead without the other half of the combo. This is something that makes the Chain/Swan combo fairly unique. You have an evasive, efficiently priced threat and a removal spell as the two pieces. Drawing one without the other can be situationally marginal, for certain. However, neither is an inherently dead draw on its own.
So we have a combo. What do we do with it? There are, at the very least, two unique approaches that can be taken. The first is the strict combo route. Accelerate into early Swans with the ability to tutor for it and the Chain, and protect them with a combination of discard and countermagic. This would consist of some number of Dark Rituals/Rite of Flames, Chrome Moxen, and Simian Spirit Guides to feed the combo and allow you the mana post-Chain to play the Conflagrate or Lightning Storm. Although there were some lists that initially adopted this plan, it quickly became apparent that the pure combo route was ineffective, and basically slower and more vulnerable than the storm combo decks already out there. So the second strategy was formed from the idea of controlling the game until the combo could win. Here’s an example list from mtgTheSource.com member Dominic Lodovichetti, that’s based largely on Steve Sadin list of Flash from GP Columbus.
URg Swan Song
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll
4 Chain of Plasma
2 Lightning Storm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Counterbalance
1 Red Elemental Blast
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
3 Mystical Tutor
1 Pyroclasm
1 Krosan Grip
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Forest
3 Island
4 Lotus Petal
This list is pretty solid — it has a powerful disruption engine in the form of Counterbalance paired with Sensei’s Top, which, when paired with the fetch lands, allows you to rapidly dig for the combo pieces. It uses Mystical Tutor both as a means to find Chain, as well as to tutor up spot removal spells and answers to cards that may be preventing you from finding the win. It utilizes the Lotus Petals as both a means to accelerate out the win and as free mana to cast the Lightning Storm post-combo. All of these things add versatility to the deck and allow it to play more successfully around potential hate it may face.
On the other hand, the build above is particularly narrow in terms of strategy. There’s really no backup plan, other than beating down with Swans. I haven’t tested Dom’s list enough to know how much of a problem this is, but it makes me hesitant to pursue such a list. If you look closely to the particulars of the cards within the deck, you’ll note the similarities between that deck, and this one, that Alix and Jesse Hatfield used to stir things up at the third Running Gagg tournament, held in upstate NY early this year:
UGr Moon Thresh
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Predict
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Portent
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Counterbalance
2 Blood Moon
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Fledgling Dragon
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
3 Island
1 Forest
The major differences, aside from some mana changes, are the threats used to win the game. The question we ultimately need to ask ourselves is whether the combo is actually compact and versatile enough that it’s worth sacrificing some speed and consistency to move more toward a Threshold shell, and if we do so, is it really needed in the thresh deck to begin with? It’s no small question. The list from the Hatfields has proven itself in tournament play. It works very well on its own, without the combo finish. Is the combo simply win-more when put into the shell of what already stands heads and shoulders above the rest as the dominating deck in Legacy?
I certainly hope not, as I think the combination of the Swan Song and Thresh concepts forms a stronger Swan Song deck, not a weaker Thresh deck. Here’s my attempt at making the lists blend:
UGr Bird Ensemble — Adam Barnello
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
4 Counterbalance
3 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll
2 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain of Plasma
1 Lightning Storm
3 Lotus Petal
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
4 Tropical Island
2 Island
With this list, you get the benefits of the efficient ground game of Threshold along with the explosive finish of Swan Song. You need to sacrifice some of the cantrip package from thresh to be able to make room for the combo, but don’t forget — Swans turns your Lightning Bolts into Ancestral Recalls. You’re basically pre-boarded against the decks that will look to disrupt the combo by shutting down your Swans — most likely through non-burn removal. The backup plan of Goyfs and Geese is utilized like it is in Cephalid Breakfast — it’s meant primarily as a distraction from your ultimate game plan of Swans, and forces your opponent to commit their resources to handling the green guys while you assemble your win.
Time will tell if it’s truly worth the diluting of the combo package to add the backup plan to the deck, or if Dom’s approach will be more consistent. I know this much — this is one of the most resilient combos I’ve seen in some time, and it’s exciting to see how much impact it has on Legacy.
The other topic I’d like to touch on is the new errata on Mox Diamond. As this change is literally only relevant to Legacy — Mox Diamond’s restricted status in Vintage makes it unlikely to see play, especially when you have real Moxen — it’s important that we take a few moments to consider what it means to have the card “fixed.”
First of all, the new errata for those who haven’t seen it:
If Mox Diamond would come into play, discard a land card instead. If you do, put Mox Diamond into play. If you don’t, put it into its owner’s graveyard.
{oT}: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
The key change in function from the old errata to the new is that you no longer get two-for-one’d if your Mox gets countered. You also have the ability to play the Mox without a land in hand, if you want to increase storm, or get an artifact in the graveyard, or what have you. I’ve literally seen a game lost because a player drew Mox Diamond with an Ensnaring Bridge in play, couldn’t play it, couldn’t find a land to pitch to it, and was promptly beaten down by two Goblin Piledrivers. This new wording prevents scenarios like that.
Overall, it’s an excellent fix to a card which should see more play than it actually does. It’s now a safer card to play, and you don’t need to be as nervous about the one-land, Mox Diamond hand. Hopefully this means we’ll start to see some decks which would like the acceleration of a Mox, but don’t want to sacrifice the card advantage of Chrome Mox start playing it. The biggest drawbacks to the card — the reliance on drawing a land and its vulnerability to countermagic — have been reduced in a profound way. It’s likely that this can expand the range of decks able to utilize Mox Diamond much further than we’ve seen in the past. Traditional control decks like Landstill, which run a significant amount of mana sources anyway, could utilize this as a means to play around any Blood Moon effects, as well as a way to get Counterspell online turn 1, or drop a turn 1 Standstill before their opponent even gets to play their first land.
That’s it for this week, guys. I intend to run the testing gauntlet with Swan Song, and I’ll be sure to report back on how it goes. Until then, enjoy the new Mox Diamond, and remember — keep your stick on the ice.
Adam