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Legacy's Shadow

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The best deck in Modern makes its way to Legacy. People have tried playing Death's Shadow before, but the combination of Swords to Plowshares and Terminus has typically been a little overbearing, not to mention getting locked out of your best threat by Counterbalance plus Sensei's Divining Top. That said, the recent banning may open up a new opportunity to go big with Death's Shadow, though you’ll have to be careful to ensure that you can effectively race the Delver of Secrets decks.


Gurmag Angler
The combination of Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith is an absurd way to power you Death's Shadow. Add to that the ability to utilize powerful cantrips like Brainstorm and Ponder, the most efficient interaction in the format of Daze, Spell Pierce, and Fatal Push, and you’ve got quite a deck on your hands. We’ve already seen that fast pressure and efficient interaction is a winning recipe in Legacy. The question is what makes this better than the other variants of Delver of Secrets. The answer might just be Reanimate or Unearth. While other decks will be trying to cantrip into new copies of Delver of Secrets or Gurmag Angler, you can just find a reanimate for your 8/8 Death's Shadow to put your opponent back under substantial pressure.

The interesting thing about this deck is how dynamic the games are going to be against other aggressive decks. Much like in Modern, you can get your life total very low, but if your opponent can sneak in a few points of damage, you can just die. Finding a balance between making your Death's Shadow large enough to apply pressure and force your opponent to hang back is still an important skill.

It’s not clear whether this deck is too cute in a format with Deathrite Shaman and efficient burn spells, or whether the raw size of your creatures is enough to take over midrange and tempo mirrors. That said, it’s great to see that void left by Sensei's Divining Top is leading to experimentation in the tempo archetypes. I don’t know if Death's Shadow has what it takes to dominate Legacy the way it does Modern, but I’m excited to watch people find out what it can do.


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