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Still on Top Without Top

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With the banning of Sensei's Divining Top, Legacy players are struggling to figure out what the new face of Control is going to be in the format. People have started exploring variants of Miracles with Portent or Soothsaying or just tried going deeper on Monastery Mentor to close games out instead of trying to lock them down. We’ve also seen various four-color takes on Leovold, Emissary of Trest midrange decks. But what if I’m a tried and true wu mage and want none of this Baleful Strix nonsense? Kogamo may have put together an exciting control variant that can beat up on both the fast combo decks as well as the Delver of Secrets tempo decks:


Back to Basics
Time and again, Stoneforge Mystic has proven itself as a test for fair decks in Legacy. There are all manner of fair decks that just can’t beat an Umezawa's Jitte or a Batterskull, so Stoneforge Mystic gives you some number of free wins just because your opponent can’t effectively deal with those cards. On top of that, Stoneforge gives you a way to pressure combo decks without tapping out on your turn, as well as racing Delver decks once they’ve burned some of their interactive spells. Consequently, Stoneforge Mystic has always been a great alternative to Monastery Mentor depending on what exactly it is your deck is trying to do.

For many years, Terminus has been the sweeper of choice in wu decks because of its mana efficiency. Costing just one mana and having the ability to play at instant speed makes it easier to fight over your Terminus or have a follow-up Monastery Mentor or Jace, the Mind Sculptor. However, without Sensei's Divining Top to set it up, Supreme Verdict is the best new choice, since it will always get through Daze and Force of Will against Delver of Secrets decks.

The two most interesting cards in this deck are Palace Jailer and Back to Basics. We’ve seen an awful lot of greedy decks in this format, featuring a ton of Ancient Tombs, Grove of the Burnwillows, and four-color nonsense. Back to Basics backed by Force of Will and Spell Pierce is a great way to punish those decks, particularly when you’re playing a two-color control deck with plenty of basics so you have insurance against Wasteland.

Palace Jailer, on the other hand, is a great way to get large creatures like Griselbrand, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, or Gurmag Angler off of the board. At the same time, it gives you an enormous amount of inevitability if your opponent can’t immediately take away your Monarch status. The combination of Snapcaster Mage and Swords to Plowshares can make it awfully difficult for opponents to sneak a hit in, and other control decks may not even have creatures to even try. Once you’ve got a couple of turns of drawing extra cards, your opponents will be hard-pressed to fight through your overwhelming card advantage to take your Monarch away.

If you’re looking for an interesting control variant that can go toe-to-toe with even the most controlling decks in Legacy, this shell is for you. It has a lot of interesting things going on and plenty of ways to trump common strategies combined with an overbearing endgame of Back to Basics plus Palace Jailers.


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