1-3

I went with a new deck for Legacy nights last Friday and...well, here's how it went.

Round 1 vs John on UR Delver

Game 1: I thought I was hanging in there pretty well with a turn 1 Grief that I could Undying Evil.

And for a bit, I was…but eventually Delvers came down, Lightning Bolt did its thing and I regretted having Anointed Peacekeeper instead of Elite Spellbinder. 

Staring down a Murktide Regent (even after I Flickerwisp’d it) and two Delvers meant I was out. No removal to be found and their ability to churn through their deck for answers got me.

Game 2: A slower start but I got a turn 2 Thalia and was able to untap with it. I even managed to save it from Lightning Bold with an Undying Evil!

But this was not to last. He ground through the taxation and I couldn’t produce much pressure. My Mother of Runes was just not doing much here and I eventually fell to a Delver and two DRCs.

Rd 2 vs Trevor on U Affinity

Game 1: Starting on Thalia then Anointed Peacekeeper then kicked Tourach meant I got an advantage he couldn’t overcome.

Sideboarded in 4 Abolish that I wouldn't ever see.

Game 2: He used Urza’s Saga to make tokens and fetch Shadowspear. I was able to Solitude one for an attack but never saw another piece of removal. I conceded when facing 28 attacking power.

Game 3: Thought I had a solid start with a Toruach into Thalia. A Karn arrived and while I was able to attack it to 1, the constructs began to show up and shortly after that, the Liquimetal Coating arrived, leading to a Mycosynth Lattice and I conceded.

Match 3 vs Mike on Red prison

Game 1: The prison elements came out-chalice on zero, Trinisphere, and shortly after that, Goblin Rabblemaster. But I was able to weather it with a Thalia and an Anointed Peacekeeper, then a hard cast Solitude. At 7 life, I cast a was able to use a Flickerwisp to start taking away his tokens and whittle at his life total until I won.

Game 2: I’d sideboarded in the 4 Abolish and two Plague Engineers. Once again, a great start from Mike, with a early Trinisphere. But I cast an Engineer on Goblin on turn 3, which kept his creatures off the board, followed by a kicked Tourach which eliminated his sideboard card, FIrey Confluence. After that, I was able to keep the pressure up until I won.

Round 4 vs Jack on W Hammertime

Game 1: Well, I got run over by a heavily equipped Ornithopter.

Game 2: brought in 2 Plague Engineers and 4 Abolish. We traded back and forth for a bit but I made a critical error when I had mana untapped to Ephemerate my Grief, and didn’t do it in response to a Swords. 

I kinda started to tilt after that, thinking more about the mistake and less about the task at hand, and couldn’t pull things together. Eventually, I ran out of threats and he got a second Urza’s Saga (I’d Abolished the first) and that was that.

Sigh.

Here's the deck:

 Creature

4 Grief

4 Solitude

4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3 Anointed Peacekeeper

3 Tourach, Dread Cantor

2 Flickerwisp

 Instant

2 Feign Death

3 Undying Evil

3 Ephemerate

2 Sudden Edict

3 Anguished Unmaking

 Land

3 Plains

3 Swamp

2 Phyrexian Tower

4 Scrubland

4 Marsh Flats

3 Godless Shrine

1 Volrath's Stronghold

 Sorcery

2 Exhume

3 Duress

1 Emeria's Call

1 Agadeem's Awakening

//  Sideboard

 2 Plague Engineer

 4 Faerie Macabre

 3 Mother of Runes

 4 Abolish

2 Hymn to Tourach

// 2 Land

SB: 1 Agadeem, the Undercrypt

SB: 1 Emeria, Shattered Skyclave

Matt had suggested the Mother of Runes but they didn't do much work for me. I had had Serenity in before Abolish but I removed it thinking I would never get to play it under any deck using Chalice of the Void. I also avoided cards like Loran of the Third Path because I thought people would be metagaming for Initiative decks and using cards like Torpor Orb to blank them. 

Turns out, nobody cares about the Initiative decks. At least, not yet. So the sideboard needs some tweaking and the manabase could possibly use Wasteland and/or Silent Clearing. But, it's a start.

I think I'm going to take next week off; there's been a lot of writing through the holidays and I could use a break! See y'all on the 17th.

Called It

 I'm just going to take a moment here, given what's come up in the This Week In Legacy article at mtggoldfish. 

From the article:

The key question is whether Legacy as a format is fine or not. I think the format is reasonably okay at the moment, and the printings from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty definitely did a small amount of things to help push variances in the format. UR Delver still remains the top deck and I think we expected this after the banning, but there is a lot of things to be doing in the current format that isn't Delver and those decks remain very interesting to me.

Emphasis mine. 

And, just going back to what I said:

I'm going to tell you what the future will be and it's easy: the U/R Delver decks are going to up their Delver of Secrets count to four (some had gone down to as few as two), and then they're going to go right back to the well: True-Name Nemesis, Brazen Borrower, Monastery Swiftspear or Magmatic Channeler, maaaybe Ethereal Forager taking up the slack.

It'll take about a month, so from the outset people might feel "hey, it worked!" and then once the UR players have it figured out, we will be right back where we started.

Because I told y'all so.

Yes, there are other things to be doing in Legacy but the article at mtggoldfish even says that they now expect Murktide Regent to be next on the chopping block. They might be right about that! The card is incredibly good. 

But I refer you back to where I quoted myself. 

Ponder, Brainstorm, Daze, Preordain. 

The format won't truly change until one of those cards is gone-maybe not until two. 

Half-Measures

 The latest Banned and Restricted announcement went out today and...

~sigh~

They banned Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. 

I'm not surprised mind you: that card is very, very good. Almost certainly too good. 

But this isn't going to change anything. That's why I'm bummed out about it.

Even worse was this line:

However, we feel this is a large change and would like to see how the metagame adapts before considering if other changes are necessary.

The threat suite in a U/R Delver deck isn't the problem that people think it is. It's the countermagic-specifically Daze- and card selection suite (Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm). It's been obvious to me as a non-competitive observer, that these cards are the problem. That's the engine. 

I'm going to tell you what the future will be and it's easy: the U/R Delver decks are going to up their Delver of Secrets count to four (some had gone down to as few as two), and then they're going to go right back to the well: True-Name Nemesis, Brazen Borrower, Monastery Swiftspear or Magmatic Channeler, maaaybe Ethereal Forager taking up the slack.

It'll take about a month, so from the outset people might feel "hey, it worked!" and then once the UR players have it figured out, we will be right back where we started.

Because you know what doesn't change in the lists from year to year? 4 Brainstorm. 4 Daze. 4 Ponder. Preordain seems to have been replaced by Expressive Iteration but adding an additional color clearly hasn't disrupted the deck. 

The point is that the Delver decks, which have dominated* Legacy for a decade now, will continue to do so. 

*By 'dominated' I mean: been a constant deck to beat, first or second in the listings of something players have to be aware of, always Tier 1. 

If you want to make "a large change" to Legacy, then some of those four cards have to go. Personally, I think Brainstorm would be the card to really crack the format open, but I concede that the splash damage is too much for people. Players would likely revolt. Daze and Ponder however are just too efficient for what they do. 

I would very much like to see a format without Daze and Ponder. Let Ragavan roll: Legacy is already incredibly efficient at finding answers to threats like this. 

WotC made a bad choice and we're going to be dealing with this again in a few months because the Delver decks won't skip a beat, or they will, being "really good" instead of "oppressive"*...until the next efficient Blue or Red or Black card is printed and we're doing this all over again. 

*Read: "well, at least it wasn't as bad as when Ragavan was there, right?" Except it will be just as bad, players will just have had a break from it.

Oops! All Bears

Someone played a bear deck at the last Legacy GP.

I really love this, for so many reasons. First, because I feel like decks like this-even if they are clearly not tournament worthy-are worth getting out there and are precisely why Legacy is a great format. I don't play Legacy seriously and the reason why is that I like having this massive playground of ideas to tinker with. Taking Legacy seriously means playing the best deck, always and there's a huge chunk of fun that gets overlooked.

Second, I once build a bear deck for my ex-girlfriend. It wasn't quite as tightly themed as this one but many of the cards were the same, as you might well consider for a bear deck. I think I went the Overrun route though and I have to say, that deck had some fun times in it. You could easily find yourself on the end of a massive bear beatdown. Good times.

2-4

Despite the record, I had a pretty good time at the SCG Legacy event last Sunday. This is entirely due to me deciding; Fuck it, let's play some games.

As a result, I never felt too riled up or fell into tilt when things didn't go my way. What's the point? I'm here to play some games. Let's go.

I faced BUG Delver decks twice and lost both of those matchups, in both cases because none of my sideboard cards (Choke and Pernicious Deed) appeared. I would win games-especially games where I was able to establish tempo, usually with discard or Tangle Wire-but if I couldn't get something established, I found myself on the bad end of cheap countermagic.

I also played against two Junk decks, (BWG running Stoneforge Mystic). I lost one of those matchups and this was where the first of my two big mistakes of the day kicked in. It's Match 2, game 2 and I'm at 7 life. My opponent has a Stoneforge with Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice equipped. I have 4 mana, Natural Order, and no creatures.

Draw Khalni Garden, create Plant, Natural Order for...Progenitus. I recognize my mistake shortly after saying "Go," and surveying the board: Progenitus is red and blue, and Sword of Fire and Ice offers protection from those colors. The correct play would have been to go for Sylvan Primordal, destroy Jitte and then begin to wait for a Pernicious Deed.

The Junk deck I defeated? That was how I did it, although it came a little later in the game. My opponent, Adam, was very unhappy about this, grumpily signing his match slip and insisting how terrible this day was, complaining "I eliminate your hand and you topdeck into wins."

Well, that's one possibility or it could be that I kept your manabase to 3 lands maximum, forced you to discard your most potent threats, including Batterskull and Liliana, and you couldn't kill any of my creatures so my Gaea's Cradle stayed active and once I had 7 mana, dropping the topdecked Primordal to destroy your sole source of white mana really was a good idea.

If you're pissed off at the tournament, you should just drop and go home, instead of being a grouch.

I also beat a Miracles deck, again using discard to delay their board presence and Krosan Grip in game 2 to stop Divining Top activations.

My last matchup of the day was against Burn and in again in game 2, I made my second critical mistake of the day: down to 10 life and with Natural Order and two Eternal Witness in my hand, I decide that I should Natural Order, again, into Progenitus. I felt the clock would matter more, and I'd already seen one Price of Progress for 8, so why get Thragtusk?

I am promptly PoP'd down to zero. My opponent helpfully recommended that if he has a full grip, it's always better to go for lifegain and I nod, accepting that I made a mistake, thinking I could put more pressure on him than he could on me.

I think I let Progenitus go to my head; the card is so powerful that I would just presume that if I got it, I'd win. That did happen a couple times during the day but I started to rely on it too much and didn't quite use all my brainpower to get out of the jams I found myself in.

Still, a good day all and all and a good learning experience. I have some solid ideas about where to take this deck in the future, should I want to align myself that way. 

A Conspiracy Draft and The Diversion

Noah got a box of Conspiracy and was willing to draft a 4 person pod so we broke packs and went after it.

Drafting with four people is a different animal, since you really can go mono-colored if you want to; Noah ran a pretty strong mono-Green deck that had just enough color fixing via Secrets of Paradise to run the occasional powerful offshot like Fires of Yavimaya. The other two players both went B/W but only one of them understood that the format was a multiplayer one. This meant that he let cards like Syphon Soul go, while she snapped them up.

I went U/R, because I had a couple Volcanic Fallouts passed my way, and while one player was collecting a ton of artifacts, I was getting Torch Fiend. Eventually, I was able to cast Fact or Fiction and turn a Dack's Duplicate into a Terastodon and that solidified my position for the game.

I think I would have preferred the eight-player draft though, just because it would have made deckbulding decisions a little more challenging. That said, the Conspiracy format has legs and I think will enjoy playing the box that I bought, especially if I can get a full group together.

..........

I got in a game with the Legacy deck, losing 1-2 to a Hypergenesis/Show & Tell combo. I foolishly sideboarded in Pernicious Deed instead of Diabolic Edict in game 3 and lost because of Blazing Archon.

There were also a few test games against Fuz; he piloted WW and Delver (R and B based) and I got trounced hard in the WW games. I've cut Garruk Wildspeaker and Duress for a Progenitus and Inquisition of Kosilek but I think the Sideboard really needs to do bad things to White Weenie. Namely: I need the global reset of Pernicious Deed to appear. It just absolutely has to show up. 

That may mean cutting the Pithing Needles for another Deed, to maximize my chances and perhaps putting in another Thragtusk to give me time and negate the power of Swords to Plowshares.

Another likely necessity? Silklash Spider. The ability to block fliers and kill small nasty creatures like Aven Mindcensor is probably worth the price right there.

To Duress or Not To Duress

Played against Fuz last night with the Diversion deck and he was rolling a W/R/g aggro thing. I won the matchup last night 2-1 but it definitely revealed the limitations of Duress as a discard agent.

I like Duress; I think it's a fantastic card and I think it's always going to have a target. Even against Fuz's deck-a creature heavy one-I was able to knock a Naturalize out of his hand that could have destroyed my Tangle Wire. I need Tangle Wire. Despite Duress's usefulness, I may be holding onto it's power level from a time in Magic when hitting a non-creature spell in their hand was going to be backbreaking. Creatures just weren't as threatening in the time of Urza's Saga.

These days Legacy discard agents that are able to eliminate a problematic creature before it hits the board (think Mirran Crusader or True-Name Nemsis) have just as much value as being able to knock Show and Tell out of their hand. The common denominator: those spells all cost 3 or less, which suggests that Inquisition of Kozilek might be the better choice. Sure, I'm weak to something like Sneak Attack but I'm weak to that anyway and if I can eliminate their acceleration instead, then cards like Tangle Wire can do the rest.

A Diversion

Noah asked me if I wanted to play in the Legacy part of the StarCity Games Open series, late this month.

Why not?

So I started to tinker with my New World Disorder deck (fun fact, I wrote about it twice and didn't seem to miss a beat there so...I think we can extrapolate something about me there). There were other decks but they would've taken a whole lot more reworking and I wasn't really interested in playing a Sneak & Show variant so why not play something I want to? Just with black.

2 Fangren Firstborn
3 Eternal Witness
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Woodfall Primus
3 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Hornet Queen
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Primeval Titan
3 Great Sable Stag

2 Garruk Wildspeaker

4 Natural Order
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Duress

4 Tangle Wire

4 Wasteland
1 Forest
1 Wamp
4 Bayou
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Verdant Catacomb
2 Khalni Garden
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Gaea's Cradle

The Sideboard:
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Krosian Grip
2 Pithing Needle
2 Choke
4 Diabolic Edict
1 Thragtusk

The two big decks at the last SCG Legacy event were BUG/RUG Delver and Death & Taxes (white weenie). They took up 8 of the top 10 slots, with Sneak and Show and Belcher making up the other two.

So the hope is to stack against blue (a bit) by adding in uncounterable spells/pro blue stuff, while using the Sideboard for Pernicious Deed to sweep away hordes, if needed. Diabolic Edict...maybe isn't necessary for the Sneak & Show matchups, which is the only ones I can think of it being there for. Perhaps they should become 3 Duress and add in another Thragtusk, which is a beating against weenie decks.

The Krosian Grip is good against Blood Moon (which I expect to see) Sneak Attack and Aether Vial. Choke is because Blue Decks Suck, but sometimes I think Skylasher and Witchstalker might be interesting choices because one blocks Delver bugs and the other cannot be targeted by White Weenie's removal.

But we shall see. This is what I'm going to run for now and I'll have to hope for the best. 

3 Bits Post PAX

First: I played a very small Legacy event at PAX; 6 players. When we were told that the prize for that event-an uncut foil common sheet from M14-wouldn't be given to us for such a small pool, we'd be given packs instead, OH THE WHINING.

It wasn't many people-two, really-but holy shit were they upset. One person didn't finish his match, simply dropping to get his entry fee ($10) back. There were a couple guys who came in late and tried to register but were denied and again OH THE WHINING. The people who wanted in made it sound like we were suckers for wanting to play. I'm glad they didn't get in, now: they didn't seem like fun people to play against.

The hell with that, man. I just wanted to play some games. I didn't prepare though and it cost me. I was playing an unmodified version of All Nightmare Long, which means it was underpowered and not nearly powered up enough for what I was going to deal with.

My first match was against a Glimpse/Kobolds deck that the pilot admitted was janky. However, I lost the critical game 2 when he stalled out in his combo and had to attack with Signal Pest....and 16 other creatures.Which was fine, except that on my turn, instead of killing Signal Pest, I went for an Ornithopter, so I could get in...4 more damage.

In my defense, the Signal Pest was buried under many kobolds and I could not easily make out what my possible targets were. However, that's the only excuse: I wasn't paying enough attention to the life totals, (I thought his was lower) and I certainly could have paused to really take stock of the board before making my decision. This might have given me time to see what the best play was. 

My final matchup (I got a bye round 2) was against a mono-U wizard tribal deck that existed to counter everything and then watch you commit suicide from sheer frustration. In the 3rd game, I thought I had a decent start with my opening hand having a turn 2 and turn 3 Tidehollow Sculler to play...and his turn 2 went: Island, Chrome Mox removing blue card, Patron Wizard.

And that was that.

Next year, remember cards with Split Second.

Second: remember those two guys who bailed on the Legacy event? Well, with just four of us left and in our final round, the judge said that the prize could be split evenly amongst the four of us, if we agreed to it. We did and I pulled this. So that doesn't suck!

Third: the Theros previews. I am not a fan, so far. Man, every time they decide to emphasize flavor over function, I seem to have issues. Kamigawa, Innistrad, and now Theros. But I'll talk about that next time.

Oh yes: I decided to replace the Still Life in Hexagram for Energy Field. I don't know that it's a good idea, but it certainly seems like a not bad one!

Casual Sighs

We'll just start with this, which I am glad R&D found amusing. Yes, that's my tweet. (Should tweet be capitalized? Damn.) In a moment of irony I have to note that following the #mtg7 thread on Twitter I have realized; 90% of suggestions are not made with the long term survivability of the game in mind, or are just terrible because they are self-centered (I want X, instead of the game needs Z.) So here I am with just that... Anyway; Onward!

I use the Legacy banned list to dictate what is acceptable for me to build. Even though I wasn't breaking Survival of the Fittest when that card was banned, I started playing it in Commander decks, replacing it with Fauna Shaman. So while I am not competitive in Legacy, I keep up with it because it innovates with a card pool that is reflective of what I own.

However, Legacy has it's drawbacks; the synergies are so high that every deck might as well be a combo deck. The upside is that every decision becomes critical but the down is that every game moves either really fast or mind crushingly slow, with the game frequently decided by turn 2. Playing casually means my games move slower but still include aspects of innovation that Legacy brings up.

The other part of Legacy is the critical component that Blue has in the format. So when I see an interesting article like this on cards that the Legacy format could use that focus on Red and White with very little for Green...I think, um, wait!

It's not that the ideas are bad in colors that don't fit. Planeswalkers, stack interactions and library manipulation are all ones I agree with. I dislike the execution of 'Better early game defenses' but I can see the point. I even appreciate that there is a push to make Red and White matter more, as those colors are ones that are frequently less relevant to the format. But only one Green card in the lot suggests that something bigger is wrong, something that goes back to the earliest days of the game, when Green was the worst color and Blue was the best.

This isn't new: part of Magic's problem has always been that Blue is a powerhouse. This is for three reasons:

1. Card draw
2. Stack interactions
3. Affinity for artifacts 

Card draw is the most powerful mechanic in the game. Not to take away from the strategic element of Magic but many, many games can be boiled down to; the person who draws the most cards will win. This is because card draw does two things; a) decreases randomization and b) increases resources. The more cards you see, the more likely it is that you will find the cards you want (decreased randomization) while ensuring you have the mana to pay for it (increased resources).

Black was second in this but Green in recent years has been catching up to Blue in Standard environments. I think it can be fair to suggest that Green even surpasses Blue occasionally-but it is hard to make that case for Legacy. Spreading card draw to every color is only part of the solution, though.

WotC doesn't like to do 'punishing' mechanics, like Underworld Dreams, but I think these kinds of cards can fill vital roles and are important-in addition to being a space to explore in design, even if a limited one. There must be more space to explore there, if on a limited basis.

Stack interactions is probably the most difficult arena to deal with, because WotC (rightly) considers naming the stack on the cards to be inelegant. Nevertheless, it is a place where Blue has near to total dominance and to balance the game out, the other colors are going to have to have ways to strut their stuff a bit. Bind is a great example-that nobody cared about until it was printed in Blue and made better. Yet it was great and in line with Green's color philosophies, as activated abilities tend to come from permanents, not spells. It expanded that color's role, while defining Blue as well-a color that should have trouble with permanents. Alas, it did not seem to to stick.

On the positive front, Red now is getting more 'copy' effects, giving it access to stack interactions, White has been dabbling in soft countermagic for years now but never really given a toehold and Black...doesn't really have anything. However, Black has access to hand destruction, which is probably the second most powerful mechanic in the game so an argument for Black needing stack interactions is difficult to make. Still; Green is left in the cold here.

Finally comes the stuff that nobody seems to talk about; Blue's affinity for artifacts. Going way, WAY back, Blue has been the color that has been best able to access Artifacts to 'shore up' places where the color would naturally fail. This strength becomes more apparent in artifact heavy blocks (Urza's, Mirrodin, Scars) but never really goes away and is, I believe, one of the reasons for continued success in Blue. The color essentially has easier access to an extra color-one that up until Mirrodin, the others couldn't match and post Mirrodin, when White starts to have a thing for Equipment, Blue finds an easy partner to work with.

However, I see time and again when Blue is given access to powerful artifacts, card drawing, and powerful stack interactions, it dominates formats. Over and over.

Now, maybe you don't play Legacy. But if you play long enough, you will probably play Modern. And what Legacy is, Modern will become, unless WotC addresses the Blue problem. Not necessarily by simply nerfing Blue, because the game needs Blue, in order to keep combo decks from running over the whole format, ending games on turn 2. However, I think by rounding out what the other colors do in order to keep decks from strangling everyone from turn 2 on.