This Week in Legacy: Legacy Mythic Championship Qualifier, Magic Online Legacy Quarterly Playoffs
Hey everyone this is Eric, or Ewlandon on Magic Online. I know all of us Legacy enthusiasts have missed Sean and This Week in Legacy so here I am to do my best at filling those shoes.
This past weekend at Magic Fest Seattle there was a Legacy Mythic Championship Qualifier. The Top 8 of the tournament is quite the blast from the past with the tempo players favorite deck, Rug Delver, taking it down.
This list looks a lot like the traditional RUG Delver lists that were terrifying the top tables in Legacy many years ago. The deck had fallen out of flavor after the printing of Deathrite Shamen. The banning of Deathrite Shaman had many players hopeful that RUG Delver would be great again but, despite many players trying, the deck just did not seem up to par for Legacy in 2019.
With some massive shake-ups in Legacy over the past couple months, as well as some new powerful spells for RUG itself, this Delver strategy has taken shape as a top contender once again. The two important new additions to this RUG Delver Deck are Force of Negation, with two copies main deck and one in the sideboard, as well as two copies of Wrenn and Six in the sideboard.
Force of Negation gives this deck access to another Force of Will style reactive countermagic spell that has the upside of exiling some problematic spells such as Punishing Fire and Life from the Loam.
Wrenn and Six is an extremely powerful effect when recurring Wasteland. It also helps against opponents' Wastelands and can kill creatures with one power or help a lightning bolt kill something slightly bigger, such as an opposing [Wrenn and Six]] on 4 loyalty.
RUG Delver is not the only "blast from the past" decklist that made the Top 8 of this Mythic Championship Qualifier. There is also a copy of POX as well as Merfolk in the Top 8, two more decks that have not had many meaningful results in quite some time.
The Mythic Championship Qualifier in Seattle was not the only large tournament that hopeful Legacy players played over the weekend. There was also a quarterly playoffs on Magic Online. This playoffs was the second of four that will qualify all Top 8 contenders for a Magic Online Format Championship early next year. The winner of the Format Championship will also qualify for a Mythic Championship. This nod from Wizards of the Coast points to a hopeful future of the format for Legacy grinders and enthusiasts all over the world.
Not unlike the Mythic Championship in Seattle, the winner of the Quarterly Playoffs was piloting a deck that has not seen many results in years, Maverick.
This is a fairly straightforward Maverick list with some spicy, splashy and new sideboard options in Plauge Engineer, Chains of Mephistopheles, Collector Ouphe, and Vivien, Champion of the Wilds.
Also in the Top 8 there were a staggering three copies of UR delver showing that Dreadhorde Arcanist is an extreme powerhouse in the format.
One copy of Sneak and Show featuring a couple of exciting planeswalkers in the sideboard with Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Karn, Scion of Urza.
One copy of Dredge featuring a single Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis in place of the traditional fourth Ichorid. Finally, rounding out a fairly diverse Top 8 was BUG Depths and Death and Taxes.
Overall a very exciting weekend for high stakes legacy both in paper Magic and Magic Online.
Eric Landon, or “ewlandon,” is a long time Magic and Legacy enthusiast who has spent nearly two years as the Legacy Trophy Leader by a substantial margin. He is also a full-time Magic streamer and Mythic Championship hopeful (hopeful to qualify someday).
You can find his schedule on https://twitter.com/Ewlandon1 or catch him live on Twitch at twitch.tv/ewlandon.
