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Main » Articles » [Legacy] The Old Deck

[Legacy] The Old Deck

Christopher Walton
Posted on August 25, 2010
 Reddit

GenCon and Goblins

If you read some of the early reports out of Legacy Champs at GenCon, then you know that Belcher won Legacy Champs. This was an odd build of the deck that eschewed Burning Wish and played 4 Belcher 4 Empty the Warrens. Playing against Goblins in the final round, it was a clean and simple victory. This was the first big tournament Belcher had won since just before Flash was a legal deck and it was cleaning up at all sorts of tournaments prior to the Grand Prix.

However, there was simply one problem: Some of the people that reported out of GenCon were mistaken. When seeing that the final match of the night was Belcher vs Goblins, many people apparently packed it in and went home as it was clear that Belcher was going to take the trophy. Belcher even won game one, as it should. But things didn't exactly go as planned in game two where the Belcher player was Mindbreak Trapped and succumbed to goblins before he could rebuild. Again in game three an early Mindbreak Trap put him on the back step, but he then rebuilt and got an active Belcher. I'm sure there actually wasn't much tension in the room as the Belcher player starts to reveal cards, relieved as he is about to face down lethal damage next turn. Ultimately he revealed four cards to his Belcher before hitting the only land in his deck and then losing on his next turn.

Goblins has been a format defining deck for nearly as long as the format has existed and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Goblins won the tournament, even if a lot of luck was involved in the last few games; because the pilot still battled through every other round and was able to come out on top of those matches. As the metagame shifts more and more, Goblins has still been a consistent choice and I think there are good reasons for it. Goblins is a deck that can play any role, be it aggro, control or combo, and is very adaptable to the needs of each situation so there are few match-ups where Goblins is going to be a complete underdog. Which reminds me, we should take a look at this list:

"Goblins by Ryan Messick"

The only real issues I have with this list are the Barbarian Rings and lack of additional Stingscourgers. I can see how Barbarian Rings will help in the end game as the opponent is attempting to stabilize, but I really like the idea of those slots being Rishadan Port. Port helps keep the opponent pinned down off early answers that are difficult for Goblins to deal with such as Firespout, Humility, Moat or Rhox War Monk and using it for mana isn't going to hit your life total. The argument would be that this build is playing a llot more red mana symbols than the list I had proposed leading up to the Grand Prix, but at the same time Merfolk has about as many colored mana symbols and uses 7-8 lands that produce colorless mana. I think the advantage that playing a couple of Ports can give to a deck like this is far going to outweigh the instances where you cannot play a Warren Instigator on two.

The fact that this list does not play Stingscourger is very peculiar to me. Initially I was skeptical of the card when it first began appearing in goblins lists, I didn't really see the benefit of the effect to cost ratio that it provided. However, Stingscourger has really proven to be a staple of the modern Goblins deck, giving it game against all nature of decks that plan on dropping a higher quality creature and as just an additional ways to push an early creature out of the way for Goblin Lackey to connect. I'd really like to see a build like this drop one Warren Instigator for another Stingscourger, which would then also smooth out the mana a bit better for the Rishadan Ports to take the place of Barbarian Rings.

Another observation about the deck is that he is playing three Goblin Chieftain. I've been curious for some time now to see if anyone is going to take a build of Goblins and try to play it a lot more like the Merfolk strategy. Merfolk obviously has some edges when it comes to overextending guys onto the table because Cursecatcher, Daze and of course Force of Will are all there to back up the team and of course both Lord of Atlantis and Coralhelm commander only cost two to get on the table. In addition to Goblin Warchief and Chieftain, the playable goblins really dry up and all of them are prohibitively costed in the three range. I was surprised not to see Mogg War-Marshall paired up with the number of Chieftains that he was plying, but I can understand not wanting to play what is essentially Dragon Fodder simply because it works well with a single card in the deck.

Winning a single tournament isn't conclusive evidence to suggest that a deck is dominant, but Goblins put just as many decks into day two at Grand Prix Columbus as Merfolk and I'm interested to see how many people piloted each deck in day one. Considering that most of the pros played Counter-Top, Aluren or another control or combo brew, this makes the result even more impressive. I've been saying for some time that I feel Goblins is a deck to play right now, and it's really looking like it's still the case.

Another Familiar Face

Landstill is another old staple of Legacy that had faded for a while but recently has been getting a lot more play. There are two main versions of the deck, the heavy white splash such as the build that I took to the Grand Prix and the build that is heavier into black and uses green as well. Much of the excitement about the deck came from the Deck Tech that Lewis Laskin did with Star City Games where he showed his 'innovative' Landstill list. The innovation was mostly including Jace, The Mindsculptor into the fold, however the deck has done fairly well and encourage people to start looking at dedicated control in Legacy again, which an exciting prospect for control players. Let's take a look at the two sample builds:

Jason Ford piloted this build to top eight at Grand Prix Columbus:

"UBg Landstill"

This is the list that I piloted to 41st at Grand Prix Columbus:

"Uwbr Landstill"

Although the decks are quite few cards off from one another, they are looking to achieve the same goal with very similar cards. Where I played a full set of Swords to Plowshares, Jason played Innocent Blood. I wanted a couple more plow effects to shore up some match-ups, Jason used Ghastly Demise where I used Path to Exile. As far as win conditions go I have Jace, Elspeth and some Decrees, Jason plays three Jace. Even in the sideboard we both have access to two removal spells off Cunning Wish, Submerge and Diabolic Edict from UBg and two Path to Exile for my list. The main differences between the lists are that he decided to use Spell Pierce to attack combo decks and my build was more metagamed toward aggro decks using Humility and Moat to try to eliminate creatures as a factor.

Landstill is attractive right now because the non-storm combo decks that are being played right now are skewed to entirely bypass Counterbalance locks. Landstill offers a strong anti-creature control suite with a flush of hard counters for cards like Show and Tell or Doomsday. Of course, I just came off writing my report about Landstill so if you're curious to learn more about it you can check it out here.

How Counter-Top Decks are Adapting

As the format starts to define itself a bit better, a coherent control strategy will mostly be agreed on and it looks like interest in control is high right now, especially considering how many pros were playing Counter-top lists that looked a lot closer to Landsitll. Generally, we're accustomed to seeing Counter-Top decks play as aggro-control and use Counterbalance to protect creatures while they go the distance, destroying decks that are looking to curve out by turn three is just an added bonus. However, what we saw in Columbus was a legion of Counter-Top decks that decided to start decks in an entirely different way than had traditionally been done. Previously the answers to decks like Goblins and Zoo was to just play more creatures, Knight of the Reliquary and Rhox War Monk paired with Goyf and Pridemage, to clog up the ground until control could be established with either Jace or Natural Order. Despite the superior numbers and finishes that NO Counter-Top has had over the last year, Supreme Blue was the new face of Counterbalance control in the top eight:

"Supreme Blue"

What we see in the list that Tom Martell played at the Grand Prix iwas a deck that is still going to be able to hit the decks that it was previously able to, but rather than clog the table up with guys, it's going to use more and better control elements to strike back at the decks that are trying to adapt to Counterbalance locks. Playing fewer creatures, and just getting better mileage out of the ones you do play while using cards like Counterspell and Firespout to seize control of the game, stabilizing under Counterbalance and using either Jace, the Mindsculptor or Tarmogoyf to end things.

Why was this build favored by pros coming in from the outside? Last week I posed some questions to potential deck builders for the format. The success of these decks comes entirely from proper analysis of this deck's weaknesses and identifying how if at all they could be addressed. All Counter-Top decks have a really difficult time against Merfolk and even Zoo has been a huge problem for these decks. The Natural Order trick wasn't racing these plans anymore, even with Counterbalance. Supreme Blue offered legitimate strategy against these decks known as, "Play control." If you stand a good chance of dying to swarms of creatures and the format is mostly swarms of creatures, why not do something about it? If the opponent is going to try to kill you with a three-cost spell and you can't always handle it, why not take that into consideration and play more hard counters for it? When you can answer for most of a decks shortfalls you are going to have a much greater chance of doing well, it's that simple.

The NO Bant decks of all flavors had become antiquated and lacked the bang that they once had. Most people jumped ship before the Grand Prix and were able to explore other options. Bant decks that didn't use Counterbalance at all was the second most successful archetype of deck after Zoo. Counter-Top Thopter control didn't do as well as was expected but had a lot of pilots. Referencing the same questions that I posed last week, NO Counter-Top's answers have started to lack as it and Zoo were the two major poles of the format that everyone was attempting to build around. Supreme Blue was the better choice because clogging the ground up with creatures like Rhox War Monk did not win the game as Zoo had ample answers for these creatures, but when a player uses Swords properly in conjunction with Firespout, Zoo is left with no answers, only the option to race.

Burn!

When you're sitting at table two in round eight, there are few decks you expect to see sitting next to you more than Burn. He loses a close game one against ANT and then loses game two because he boarded out burn cards for Pyroblast and Mindbreak Trap, which clog up his hand. Regardless of which, he and three other Burn players made day two. Burn did well in this tournament because much like Zoo, it is ultra-consistent. All of the cards do exactly the same thing at roughly the same scale. An apt Burn player will be able to hammer a control opponent that is not packing Counterbalance. From the reading I've done and the results I've seen, Burn is able to race both Zoo and Merfolk, although it struggles with Goblins. Burn is also going to really punish decks like ANT and TES as the decks operate on roughly the same clock and the burn that is thrown at them is really going to bottle-neck the card advantage that Ad Nauseam is going to be able to create for the end game.

Patrick Sullivan has written a great report for his experience with the deck on the Starkington Post. I'd like to take a look at the list he played:

"Burn!"

I don't think I've ever shared a deck with as many four-ofs while I've been writing here, but that is what Burn is about. There is no need to play anything other than the maximum number of spells that deal the most damage. The deck reminds me of the original Sligh deck which was a 20/20/20 split. 20 lands, 20 creatures 20 burn spells. Patrick plays 20/12/38 which may seem a lot different, but the quality of red guys hasn't actually scaled with the quality of other creatures, so the ones that you do play really need to be capable of pushing through as much damage as possible.

I really like that he did not use Magma Jet and instead played something like Flame Rift over it because it deals more damage. A lot of people see it as a staple of Burn because it can clear dead draws. My issue with Magma Jet is that it in and of itself doesn't deal enough damage to be desirable to play. It seems to me that if Burn decks really cared about card quality there would be a trend of playing Brainstorm which is cheaper and will not only filter bad draws but get unwanted cards out of your hand. The other issue is that Magma Jet or anything like that can't really draw you into a game breaking card because there are none; instead Magma Jet doesn't deal enough damage and then you are left passing with having invested two mana for two damage, which isn't something that any other card in the deck does. Magma Jet was a great fit in Gro decks of yore, but I don't see why anyone would want it now, especially for a hyper-aggressive deck like Burn.

Kiln Fiend certainly seems like the weak link here and Patrick agrees in his report. He suggests replacing Kiln Fiend with Keldon Marauders which is a common choice. I am fairly out of practice with burn decks but I think that I'd like to see it as something like Flamebreak. It seems that perhaps even something like Jackal Pup may be good enough. It is only really going to be bad against Zoo and it is aggressively cost so it can push in damage. I'm also a fan of Hellspark Elemental, as it can be played twice and no one ever wants to block it.

While a stable Legacy metagame is still up in the air it's difficult to say what the single best deck for the environment is going to be. However, if you pick a deck with a solid game plan that is either going to try to do something unfair or have a really well rounded game-plan, then you're going to be rewarded.

In an attempt to monitor the metagame, I've decided to keep a running tally of the decks that have made top 4 at 32+ player tournaments or Top 8 at 64+ player tournaments and keep a running tally of the archetypes. I'll be sourcing from any physical tournament results posted on-line that I can find. I say physical tournaments because card availability is radically different on both Magic Online and Magic Workstation. I will mainly be using Deckcheck.net and MTGThesource, removing duplicate entries when possible. I'm always looking for more information, so if anyone can provide other resources for this information. The effective date for this tally beings August 2nd. Here are the preliminary standings:

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

    • Standard Zoo: xxx

    • Big Zoo: 1xx

    • BRG Aggro: x

    • Cat Sligh: 1

    • Survival: x

  • Merfolk

    • Mono Blue: xxx

    • U/b: xxx

    • U/w: x

  • Goblins

    • R/b: xx

    • R/g: x

    • R/b/g: x

  • Combo

    • Belcher: x

    • TES: 1xx

    • DDFT: x

    • Reanimator: x

  • Counter Top

    • NO Counter-Top: 1x

    • UGr: x

    • Supreme Blue: x

  • Survival

    • GWb: xx

    • U/G Madness: xx

    • G/W: x

    • Elves: 1

  • UG/x aggro

    • UGR Tempo Thresh: x

    • Team America: x

    • New Horizions: xxxxx

    • Aggro Bant +NO: x

  • Emrakul Decks

    • Sneak Attack: xx

    • Eureka: x

    • Aeon Bridge: x

  • Control

    • Landstill U/W: xx

    • U/W Control: x

    • U/g/r Control: x

  • Midrange

    • B/w Deadguy: 1

  • Chalice Decks

    • White Stax: 1x

  • Other

    • Burn: x

Check in to see how this fills out over the coming weeks. For now I’m off to investigate a bit of Vintage and I still have no idea what I’m going to be playing in Legacy this week.

Christopher Walton

im00pi at gmail for Electronic Mail

Master Shake on The Source

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