This Week in Legacy: Guildpactin'
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're taking a hard look at the initial impact of Murders at Karlov Manor and particularly one card that may make some further waves, while also looking at a card we missed in our set review. We've also got two Challenges to take a look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Guildpact Cometh
Murders at Karlov Manor came out on Magic Online this past week, and already we are seeing cards from the set begin to make their presence known in the format. This past weekend we saw a lot of stuff happening in other formats with these cards, but in Legacy we had some very interesting stuff happening with one card in particular.
Yes, surprisingly that this is a card that is currently upsetting Modern a little from the RC this past weekend that it is also getting some love from the Legacy side of things as well! This card was quite divisive and innocuous during spoiler season, but the card does enable a lot of a really powerful things that people have picked up on, namely cards like Scion of Draco.
Enabling your ability to not only fix your mana for very low investment, but then to be able to cast Scion of Draco on Turn 2 and have it automatically gain all of the abilities granted by itself. In addition, making Territorial Kavu its full Domain Power/Toughness for two mana AND gaining all of the abilities by Scion seems incredibly silly. This also heavily enables Leyline Binding to be cast at one mana all the time, and even if you don't have the Leyline on pregame actions, casting it for its casting cost is reasonable 95% of the time.
However, the shell that this card was really tearing it up in Modern was Rhinos, and so we can inform a choice to use this card in Legacy Rhinos!
The Scion of Draco tech here is even better since it reduces the cost to 2 while still being a 12 mana value spell that you can't ever Cascade into. This also allows this version of the deck to play Leyline Binding as a catch-all removal spell. It's pretty interesting to see how this has informed other formats for sure.
In addition to the Leyline, we had another card start showing up that was one I missed in our set review. Cryptic Coat.
This card is wild given that it's an Equipment with no actual Equip cost. It generates creatures on its own, however and Ward 2 is pretty strong to get a 3/2 unblockable out of the deal. A good place to see this card is in decks like Cephalid Breakfast.
Being able to have a backup plan of Stoneforge Mystic picking up a card that makes an unblockable creature that could maybe be flipped up into a different creature later on (if you set it up as a creature you want in play). Being able to swing in for raw damage on a Ward 2 body is very interesting thing indeed. I'm pretty excited to see where this card goes as it seems quite powerful in Stoneforge decks in general.
Beyond these two, we've seen a few showings by cards like Pick Your Poison and even stuff like the Surveil lands in various shells like RUG Cascade and Reanimator builds. It's going to be cool to see how MKM impacts the format, given how interesting stuff like Leyline of the Guildpact is. Are we in for another shift? Well, it's only week one so time can only tell.
Legacy Challenge 2/10
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event. This event had 58 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Reanimator was the most popular deck of the event which is pretty wild, and its win rate was reasonably good. Grixis Delver also did very well, while Turbo Muxus had a not-so-good win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lands | 1st | Granham |
| Reanimator | 2nd | RikRin |
| Grixis Delver | 3rd | _INF_ |
| Grixis Delver | 4th | ReformedPaolo |
| Abzan Depths | 5th | Sprouts |
| Omni-Tell | 6th | MoMo321 |
| Boros Stoneblade | 7th | rikmaru6 |
| Death's Shadow | 8th | Denym |
Pretty interesting Top 8 here actually. At the end of the event, it was Lands that won.
The 4 Sphere Lands builds are interesting honestly. They look very powerful. Attacking mana bases right now has never seemed better.
In Second Place we had Reanimator.
Haven't seen a ton of Dimir-based Reanimator for a while, but having Atraxa as a card that boosts your blue count for Force of Will is quite good for sure. I like the sideboard here that transforms more into a tempo build of a deck.
Also in this Top 8 we had Abzan Depths.
No Bowmasters is quite interesting. Also, the two copies of Get Lost in the sideboard is pretty cool.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Boros Stoneblade.
Yoshimaru! This deck is super duper-sweet. Inti, Seneschal of the Sun seems like a super cool card here. Also Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon?! This deck has so many cool hidden gems.
Legacy Challenge 2/11
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Sunday event. This event had 89 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project. There was a pretty major bug in this event actually that gave everyone in Round 6 a "loss/draw". We worked around this in our sheet by assigning a Draw (which doesn't get counted at all in the raw W/L statistics similar to a Bye) to address any issues with this situation.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Reanimator again was the most popular deck, with a very middle-of-the-road win rate. Grixis Delver was popular and despite a good finish had a pretty poor win rate. Beanstalk did great here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday | 1st | Enrichetta |
| Beanstalk Control (Non-Yorion) | 2nd | Dave2187 |
| 4C Cascade | 3rd | elquinelas |
| Grixis Delver | 4th | NimblestMongoose |
| Reanimator | 5th | RikRin |
| Doomsday | 6th | SAWATARIX |
| Thought Lash Combo | 7th | gotsjo |
| Dimir Scam | 8th | Sven745 |
Wildly interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event, it was Doomsday that won.
Solidly good list here. The sideboard jukes of Sheoldred and Murktide seem quite strong as does the Subtlety. Also, a Darkblast in the sideboard? That is super cool.
In Second Place we had Beanstalk Control.
BUG Beans is a super straightforward deck and quite powerful. I don't particularly like the Stifle here, I'd rather see Dismember as a card. Witherbloom Command is an extremely powerful card now.
Also in this Top 8 we had Grixis Delver.
Rather straightforward Grixis list here. Molten Collapse has continued to prove that it is a solid card though in these decks. It's a pretty powerful card.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Thought Lash Combo.
I like this list a lot. Really intriguing. A bit of Omni-Tell splashed in is pretty cool.
Around the Web
- Akaleth has a video on Yorion D&T vs BUG Beans. Check it out here.
- StrassDaddy has a video on Kaldra Compleat in Maverick. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook is doing some High Tide. Check it out here.
- IN RESPONSE Podcast has a new episode. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that Leagues are posted throughout the week, let's find some Spice!
Rakdos Scam continues to be super fun.
White Initiative with new card Unyielding Gatekeeper!
Pretty wild take on the Echo Stompy deck here.
Stiflenought with new card Doorkeeper Thrull is super cool.
This Scam deck is worth pointing out because it has NINE Nazgul in it.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition, I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
