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Main » Articles » Legacy on the Cheap

Legacy on the Cheap

Christopher Walton
Posted on September 1, 2010
 Reddit

Introduction

I've been thinking of something recently: Years ago when Legacy was first taking off, people were always asking me how to get into Legacy without spending too much money. Dual lands topped out at $30 in those days and almost nothing in the format cost more than an Underground Sea. I suggested decks to them that I knew were sub-par but were able to steal games now and then, and they were happy because they could be built for around $40. Before Tarmogoyf, Zoo and Sligh were both budget decks and until Path to Exile both were mostly choices for if you just wanted to have fun at the tournament. Looking back to the days of Mental Note, those were good times and very inexpensive to get started in the format.

Now that Legacy has really picked up, all of the cards with any real scarcity have shot up. At least it shouldn't be too surprising the increase in value of dual lands is linked with the increase of popularity with Legacy. However, recently I had been thinking about a few things. The first is that no one who plays Merfolk wants to be playing Merfolk (The exception here would likely be Saito at the Grand Prix, but Merfolk is still a budget choice) and I think that most people who are piloting it would rather be playing a deck that touches a bit more on the bases of what Legacy is supposed to be about – skill intensive, decision based plays, not just attacking with fish-people and hoping not to play against Mountains. Even if Merfolk is a budget choice, it has been doing exceptionally well. The same is true of Burn, another deck that used to be heralded with White Weenie and Pox as totally non-viable decks. Elves was another deck from that same vein that has has been putting up respectable numbers. Even an Affinity deck made day two at the Grand Prix. Apparently, you don't need to invest a lot of cash into Legacy to enjoy some success with it.

For a long time, Legacy players argued with Standard players about the costs of each format and how even after a single rotation, Legacy was often a much cheaper alternative. At that point in time I knew I was lying, but I also knew that over time not only would it would be the safer bet, but that the more stable cards for Legacy would appreciate in value. This was during a time where Legacy staples far out valued the price of any standard card. It is now the case where staples for Standard have huge price tags that exceed even most dual lands, and the quality of the cards is simply not high enough to cause them to maintain value over time, especially with the advent of duel decks that seem to imply that every Planeswalker is going to be reprinted in a preconstructed deck at some point (except maybe Big Jace). Some years later, Legacy cards have tripled in value where as Shadowmage Infiltrator and Tooth and Nail haven't found much of a home in quite some time, what will become of Primeval Titan and Gideon Jura relative to the value of Tropical Island and Phyrexian Dreadnought?

Foremost, I want to stress this article isn't designed to discuss the long-term viability of the format, this has been a hotly debated topic recently and it is all a moot point to discuss because if people want to play the format, then they will develop viable strategies to work around or in spite of card restraints. Merfolk has been the perfect example of this. What I want to do in this article is show some of the decks that have been successful in Legacy that lack the price tag that is commonly associated with the format. Furthermore this is not an article claiming that one format is superior to another on any grounds, even for fiscal purposes, but to demonstrate that it is possible to enjoy Legacy on a longer-term basis for a comparable investment to a standard rotation.

Decks on the Top End

Before listing any decks, I feel as though I need to extend my definition of budget. For the context of this article, budget is defined as a relatively inexpensive deck that has a solid shot at competing and winning in a Legacy tournament. The first decks I'd like to cover are decks that push the upper limits on what can be considered budget. None of the decks presented should run over $500 retail. Each example given is of a deck that has enjoyed some degree of success recently in Legacy.

Merfolk and Goblins

Merfolk is the cheapest competitive deck to optimize that uses Force of Will. Essentially, the cost of the Merfolk deck is sixteen cards: Force of Will, Wasteland, Mutavault, AEther Vial. The rest of the deck consists of low-end rares and mid-range uncommons. The good news is three of the four highest end cards in the deck are staples of the format that can be reused in literally dozens of decks so this isn't going to be skewed like buying cards for say Aluren, where most of the cards are only going to be playable in that single deck. The excellent news is that Merfolk has been doing incredibly well recently.

Goblins has pretty much been the same deck for the last six years and the value is in four high ticket items as well: Wasteland, AEther Vial, Goblin Lackey and Goblin Piledriver. Goblins has also been doing quite well recently and has a strong track record of performing, so we can likely expect it to stay that course. The issue is that a lot of players feel vulnerable without the safety net that counters or other more direct forms of disruption provided by black. However, Goblins stumbles in many fewer places than these other decks do so the lack of maindeck disruption isn't often the oversight that it seems it would be in theory.

I won't really provide a list for each of these decks as I talk about them quite frequently, but they are the two decks that can be built fairly cheaply that have enjoyed perhaps the most success per dollar. What I will touch upon is the idea of cutting costs in these decks. For Merfolk, not playing Force of Will is simply not an option, it is essential to holding any advantage that the deck is able to generate. AEther Vial is essential to both decks as well. The flexible card that can be dropped from both lists is Wasteland. While the mana denial will win some games and allow you to apply a lot of pressure early on, the card isn't vital to the play the deck. Mutavault and Goblin Piledriver could both possibly be cut from either list, but that is looking a lot more skeptical. You have to start somewhere, so it is best to look at the cards are not entirely vital to the functionality of the decks.

The Casual Suspects

Burn

I talked a bit about this deck last week, and since I wrapped up that article another Burn deck has had a respectable finish:

"Burn by Kyle Miller"

Until fairly recently Burn was considered a terrible deck. Taking Burn into a tournament was literally doing the deck's namesake with your entry fee. Zoo has always been seen as a superior strategy, and until recently Zoo had not been taken seriously as a competitive deck. Though Burn has put up some numbers in this format, while it may not be an ideal deck, but it has proven that it is a metagame player.

The Good – Burn is ultra consistent, as all the cards do exactly the same thing – kill the opponent. Despite losing in the finals to a Merfolk deck, Burn has proven that it is able to race most current aggro strategies. Burn decks are also able to really punish combo decks and speaking as a control player, a knowledgeable red player is one of the most aggravating things to play against. There are a fair number of decks that realistically have bad matches against this deck.

The Bad – The archetype tends to be an easy archetype to hate out as years of cards have been printed to effectively foil a deck that just recently recieved enough cards to truly become playable. The curve on playing this deck is also deceptively high. While on the surface the idea is just to send everything at the opponent, learning how to sequence spells for the most effective endgame and resource management for when a Lightning Bolt needs to act as a removal spell makes some experience required. Also, because Burn is so straight forward, you are seldom able to have a trick that the opponent is not going to see coming, meaning that there are very limited opportunities to out play anyone on the other side of the table.

The Price Points – The only cards in the deck over $11 are the fetchlands and Chain Lightning. The rares that are in the deck are plentiful and generally unplayed so they are easy to accumulate. Most of the deck is common and many of these cards exist in excess in most collections. To cut costs on the deck the Fetchlands are the first thing that can be cut as they are only useful to power up a Grim Lavamancer who himself can be a candidate to be removed. Chain Lightning's price tag has grown quite a bit over the last few months and for budget concerns it can certainly be cut. The only piece of advice is to be sure that the card that replaces it deals as much damage and is not Shard Volley. I'm a big fan of Hellspark Elemental finding a slot in this deck and some people have had success using Reckless Abandon or Reckless Charge to push in a lot of early damage. The sacred cow of the deck that probably should not be removed is likely Goblin Guide as he is able to apply so much pressure that it drastically reduces the work the rest of your cards need to do to get the job done.

The Long-Term – Cards such as Sulfuric Vortex, Stigma Lasher, Everlasting Tormet and Leyline of Punishment are all fairly inexpensive means to combat a lot of the cards that people are going to attempt to use to win games against you. The decline of Counterbalance has really helped to push this deck into the playable realm, but if you see much of it in your metagame, moving toward high cost cards that are a bit slower may be the best call, Hell's Thunder is an attractive option and I had liked the possibility of Flame Javelin for a long time, but that probably isn't an excellent choice. To further combat tribal plans, Flamebreak is really good. Don't try to load up on cards to beat Combo with, generally the burn is just punishment enough for a burn player.

Elves

About a year ago the world was abuzz with the idea there there was an Elf combo deck that was winning all kinds of games. Grand Prix Chicago had a lot of Elfball players but the metagame was actually ready to handle them. The archetype really dropped off after that point, but is essentially a very powerful and cheap deck to build. The idea behind the Elfball deck is to play Glimpse of Natures and pair it with Heritage Druid and some number of Nettle Sentinel. Eventually the process will net a large amount of mana and you can use Banefire or Mirror Entity to enable a win.

"Elfball"

The Good – The deck is fairly resilient because it isn't suscepitble to much of the same combo hate that storm decks are and has a solid backup plan of attacking with swarms of creatures. Even if the combo fizzles out you are left with a lot of power on the table for the next turn and often a handful of guys. A big selling point is that a lot of people won't see this coming and have a very difficult time playing against the deck properly. Even if the deck becomes a force in your metagame, it's possible to modify an elf deck to use Natural Order and/or Survival of the Fittest which gives you a lot more versatility than either Goblins or Merfolk can offer.

The Bad – Because green isn't the strongest color there is little in the way of protection for the combo or any of the creatures. The intricacies of the deck are many and if you're going to outplay the opponent, you're going to at least need to have the experience to know that Wirewood Symbiote can save any creature from a removal spell or deny counters to a Jitte. The biggest problem is the splash hate that this deck is going to suffer from people combating Zoo and Merfolk; Firespout, Volcanic Fallout and Perish are all around. It almost doesn't matter what the sweeper is, Elves are going to die to it.

The Price Points – Many casual and otherwise budget players have a high tendency to have a lot of elves cards in their collections already, which can really cut into the cost of this deck. Like Burn, most of the rest of the cards are common and not too much substitution should really need to happen considering that Glimpse of Nature is the only card likely to have a high price tag attached to it aside from Gaea's Cradle. Glimpse of Nature is a lynchpin of the deck where as Gaea's Cradle can easily be worked around or simply omitted. Considering that the next highest card may well be Priest of Titania, which many builds do not use – the entire deck is on the low end of competitive decks and allows for a lot of wiggle room.

The Long-Term – As previously stated, Elves builds have a lot of flexibility and as a result really do have long term potential. Seeing as how Green, the color that other people splash for access to Krosan Grip, the best Disenchant effect is already easy at hand and some of the strongest hate for control decks can be found in the form of Choke and Xantid Swarm. The available tutors in the form of Chord of Calling and Summoner's Pact make the choice versatile and any of the cards that you're going to be dreading should be able to be answered through Caller of the Claw, for surprise wins. Elves have been a minor player in the format as far as aggro decks go and now modern builds of Elfball and Elf-Survival mean that there is likely a lot more potential for the archetypes and for mono-green decks in the future.

Dredge

Another deck that was a big player in Chicago was Dredge. I'm personally not a fan of this deck, but it is a good choice for some people. Anwar Ahmad has written a lot about a Dredge that would feature both Lion's Eye Diamond and Entomb. While I'm convinced that the best Dredge decks are going to be using Lion's Eye Diamond, I'm not sold on the power of Enomb. In fact, the best performing Dredge decks have a relatively low cost, and are not using either, which is exactly why I'm discussing it right now.

"Dredge"

The Good – There is likely no deck in Legacy that has a higher percentage of game one wins and you only need to win one more game after that to seal up a match. Dredge has such a strong surprise factor and is so dependent on just one zone that it is difficult for other decks to even interact with it, even when Dredge has a poor start. For most intents and purposes the deck is immune to Counterbalance, Chalice of the Void and any other counterspells. Dredge is strong against most aggro plans and goldfishes most real games anyway and Dredge goldfishes a bit faster than other decks.

The Bad – There is likely no deck in Legacy that has a higher percentage of game two or three losses. Literally every deck has access to hate for Dredge and most people tend to over-sideboard against graveyard strategies. Dredge, especially with an inexpeirenced pilot, also loses a lot harder to hate than other graveyard based decks such as Reanimator or Loam based decks. Dredge does goldfish a bit faster than most other decks, but essentially it is a luck-based deck, so the deck is a lot more open to variance in not only draws but in dredges as well. One final concern is that Dredge isn't going to present the greatest way to learn the format as most of the games are going to be incredibly skewed one way or the other.

The Price Points – Dredge's cards are all around and under $5 each, so there shouldn't really be a need to cut costs anywhere. The lands and Lotus Petals can be used for other combo decks and Cabal Therapies can both be used in future creature decks, but after that there are not many real uses for any of the Dredge cards except to play Dredge.

The Long-Term – Dredge was formerly one of the decks of choice of pro players coming into the format, so they did a lot of work on it about a year ago. There are still some very dedicated players with excellent credentials putting work in on the deck. While it is unlikely that Dredge will get any new new maindeck cards anytime soon, Leyline of Sanctity and other new options keep appearing for the sideboard.

Belcher

A few months ago I had worked on a joke deck that I had called, "Budget Belcher". The idea behind this deck was that Belcher was so cheap as it was that making a budget build of it was a joke. I was using painfully sub-optimal cards, and even with really poor choices that slowed the deck down numerous turns, I was still beating competitive decks:

"Budget Belcher"

The above list is seriously a joke, do not try that one at home. However, if I can win matches with this deck, then it stands to reason that a deck that isn't using awful cards in the place of good ones can and many of the good cards aren't even costly. A real build of the deck is slightly faster but it doesn't need to be much more expensive to build and the optimized lists are not that much better than a list that is not optimized.

"Belcher"

The Good – Belcher has enjoyed a good deal of success recently and it seems as though the deck is on the verge of being able to overcome some of the "just lose to Force of Will" scenarios that the deck is known for. Belcher also has a very strong game against decks that are not packing a heavy control suite.

The Bad – Being another luck based deck, Belcher is going t fall victim to the variance in draws that Dredge is open to, where your ability to fix draws stops at your deck choice.. Unlike Dredge, Belcher is going to mulligan a lot harder as it generally needs all seven cards in hand to really take be able to generate a win. Being a very linear deck, there are very few opportunities to outplay an opponent and they all involve how you sequence your rituals The elephant in the room of course is how weak the deck is to counter magic and there isn't an excellent answer for it just yet. Sometimes when you play a deck that goes for broke, you end up dead to some cards.

The Price Points – Belcher has been the only suggested deck that featured a dual land, and in this case it can easily be replaced with a Stomping Ground at almost no less of efficiency. The issue with the cost on Lion's Eye Diamond can probably be overlooked as the card is not essential to the functionality of the deck. Chrome mox is the next highest card in the deck and is a lot more difficult to drop, but it can be done if you need to do it, as I've had success with a deck that didn't play it. Even Burning Wish can be replaced with something like one Empty the Warrens and three Spoils of the Vault. After all the substitutions the deck's price of mandatory cards starts on the high end with Elvish Spirit Guide and works its way down to something like Desperate Ritual.

The Long-Term – It had looked for some time that Belcher's best days were over, but lading up to the Star City events and in those events themselves. Belcher recently took second at Legacy Worlds and has enjoyed moderate success in other tournaments even putting a few copies into day two at the Grand Prix, something I feel that few people would have thought possible. There is most likely a future for the deck and it will likely get stronger before it gets weaker.

Conclusion

I feel that these are some good options to get into the format with. I didn't have time this week to test a budget build of Counter-Top Thopters that I had seen, although it looked interesting. This is likely a topic that I will revisit in the coming weeks, so I'm not too upset that there were a few decks that I missed.

I wanted to comment on something else that has been on my mind. Everyone I know, myself included was convinced that interest in Legacy was going to drop off the map after the Grand Prix. I think the basis for this arguement is how no one cares about Extended after the PTQ season for it ends. As school has been picking up and people have started settling a lot more, I've noticed that attendance in local tournaments has actually been steadily increasing. Part of this is recovering from the drop off we had as school ended, but there are definitely a lot of new faces playing the format, which of course is great.

Here is a look at the updated compilation of top performing decks

Bold entries are new

x = Denotes 2nd-8th in a 64+ event or 2nd-4th in a 32+ player event.

1 = A first place finish.

Total tournaments accounted for: 7

  • Zoo

    • Traditional Zoo: xxxxxxx

    • Big Zoo: 1xx

    • BRG Aggro: x

    • Cat Sligh: 1

    • Survival: x

  • Merfolk

    • Mono Blue: xxxxxxx

    • U/b: xxx

    • U/w: x

  • Goblins

    • R/b: xxx

    • R/g: x

    • R/b/g: x

  • Combo

    • Belcher: x

    • TES: 1xxx

    • DDFT: x

    • Reanimator: xx

    • U/R Painter 1xx

  • Counter Top

    • NO Counter-Top: 1xx

    • UGr: x

    • Supreme Blue: x

    • Ugwb: 1

  • Survival

    • GWb: xx

    • U/G Madness: 1xxxxx

    • G/W: x

    • Elves: 1

  • UG/x aggro

    • UGR Tempo Thresh: x

    • Team America: x

    • New Horizions: 1xxxxx

    • Aggro Bant +NO: x

  • Emrakul Decks

  • Control

    • Landstill U/W: xxx

    • Landstill U/b/g: x

    • U/W Control: x

    • U/g/r Control: x

    • Dreadstill: x

    • Faeries: x

  • Loam Decks

    • Aggro Loam: x

    • 43Lands.dec: x

  • Midrange

    • B/w Deadguy: 1

  • Chalice Decks

    • White Stax: 1xx

  • Other

    • Burn: xx

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