This Week in Legacy: The Current Climate of Legacy
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 going to be taking a look at the current climate of Legacy and how the format is shaping up since the release of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth and just in general how I feel about the format. We've also got some paper events to look at in the form of the NRG 5K Trial over the weekend plus Bazaar of Boxes Series 8.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Current Climate of Legacy
We're doing a climate check on Legacy this week and frankly, what I have seen of the format in the few weeks since we got a bunch of new cards is that everything about the format seems to be very fresh and exciting. We've been certainly seeing a lot of Orcish Bowmasters, which isn't too surprising given how new the new toy is and how good the card is playing out. Having fair black decks be back in style is pretty refreshing actually and we're seeing a solid amount of diversity again in the various Midrange/Control shells thanks to cards like Bowmasters, Delighted Halfling in Yorion Zenith, and also Forth Eorlingas! in Jeskai Control variants.
The card that seems to be really pushing the envelope a bit here is The One Ring, and that is primarily because of the fact that the Ring functionally juiced up the power level of a deck we already had in the format utilizing the card Mystic Forge as a combo engine. That original deck primarily used cards like Mesmeric Orb and Basalt Monolith to cycle through the deck, but with The One Ring that game plan is pretty unnecessary. It's a powerful strategy, but at the very least it still seems to fall prey to Mulligans like most Ancient Tomb decks do as well as cards like Null Rod or Force of Vigor. Yes, the Ring itself is indestructible, but that's where things like Haywire Mite and Cast into the Fire come into play. Slowing this deck down by keeping its mana rocks off the table is where you want to be really.
Outside of the Ring, we continue to see people playing around with various cards, in fact seeing things like Boromir, Gondor's Hope in Bomberman decks makes current Legacy seem pretty cool.
I do definitely believe current Legacy is in a really reasonable spot, and it looks fun to play around with. I myself have been playing around with the Ring deck and it's incredibly goofy when it does its thing. If anything, this set was a real net positive for Legacy I feel as it introduced some strong playables without being too insanely overpowering, and even though we're seeing a lot of certain cards like Bowmasters that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It seems to be having more of a positive impact on the format than negative for sure.
At the end of the day, I think Legacy is really fun right now and I definitely recommend it, especially with the current All Access Token pass going on MTGO.
Bazaar of Boxes Series 8
This past weekend was also the Bazaar of Boxes Series 8 event, held in Tilburg, The Netherlands. This event had 79 players in it overall, so very solid attendance for sure! Bazaar of Boxes streamed the event on their Twitch channel, and you can find all other information for Bazaar of Boxes at their website.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 1st | Alex Rouw |
| Cradle Control | 2nd | Yannick Neleman |
| Creative Technique Combo | 3rd | Mattias Kres |
| Death's Shadow | 4th | Daan van der Hoogen |
| Death's Shadow | 5th | Max Vervoort |
| Creative Technique Combo | 6th | Mark Ehrhart |
| Esper Abdel Combo | 7th | Marat Akhin |
| Burn | 8th | Phil Kalter |
Absolutely wild Top 8 here. I will note that both the first and second-place players here qualify for the European Legacy Masters event for this year, rounding out the Dutch team to be headed to the ELM event on September 2nd in Bologna, Italy. The event here was won by Alex Rouw on Mono Green Cloudpost.
Cloudpost utilizing The One Ring seems like a slam dunk in my opinion. It's easy to power out and it protects the deck while offering card draw. Seems like a very strong choice.
In Second Place here was Cradle Control.
We talked a lot about this deck last week. It's still a very good deck and it's going to continue to do well in events for sure.
Another deck that caught my eye out of this Top 8 was the fact that we had two decks utilizing Creative Technique. The official name for this deck that I have heard is known as "Mississippi River".
The very nature of this deck is to primarily get to five mana and cast Creative Technique. Odds are you are going to hit a spell that has Cascade, and if you choose the Demonstrate option on Technique you're going to get two copies of the spell. Trust me when I say, your spells to Cascade into with Technique are usually better than your opponent's. If you hit something like Apex Devastator getting to cascade four times is insane. This deck looks super fun and the only downside of it is that some of the cards don't exist on MTGO (like Creative Technique).
NRG Series 5K Trial 7/9
This past weekend in St. Louis, Missouri the NRG Series held another weekend of Magic which included a Team Trios event and also a 5K Legacy event on the Sunday of the weekend. This event brought out 167 players to play in it, which is pretty reasonable attendance!
You can find all the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8. Note this is in no particular order, as MTGMelee does not do well with Top 8 standings lately.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| 4C Uro Control | Top 8 | Ryan Hayes |
| Reanimator | Top 8 | Dominic Stryker |
| Death's Shadow | Top 8 | Garrison Fogt |
| Black Stompy | Top 8 | Will Kowalczyk |
| Black Saga Storm | Top 8 | Michael Reed |
| Red Painter | Top 8 | Devin Slater |
| Grixis Delver | Top 8 | Jarvis Yu |
| Boros Stompy | Top 8 | Sam Beaulieu |
Really interesting Top 8 here. I do know from the grapevine that the winner of this event was Black Stompy.
Jamming The One Ring into this deck is pretty interesting honestly. It seems like it would be a really strong card to put in here for sure.
Legacy Challenge 7/8
This past weekend's Challenge events kicked off with the early morning Saturday event. This event had 63 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Surprisingly enough, the top two decks in terms of representation was 4C Uro decks and the Mystic Forge Combo deck. The former did very poorly while the latter did very well. Esper Control variants also did very well as did GW Depths.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Esper Control | 1st | Ozymandias17 |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 2nd | Cherryxman |
| UR Delver | 3rd | SebastianStueckl |
| Red Stompy | 4th | Turn1GlistenerElf |
| Death's Shadow | 5th | i_b_true |
| Black Stompy | 6th | mephidro |
| Thought Last Combo | 7th | Utsunomiya |
| RUG Cascade | 8th | ecobaronen |
Actually an incredibly interesting Top 8 here. Quite a bit of a variety in archetypes. At the end of the event, it was our good friend Matt Vook who won!
This deck is sick. I love love love this. Esper having a real chance in a world where previously Uro was the top dog is a real breath of fresh air honestly.
In Second Place we've got Mystic Forge Combo.
This Paradox Engine + The One Ring deck is incredibly absurd when it does its thing. It's very powerful for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we had Black Stompy.
Having Bowmasters as a fair attack card that also acts as a punisher piece is great. The Combo aspect of this deck is not to be understated though.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Thought Lash Combo.
Very clean and powerful list here. Having Step Through as a tutor for your Thassa's Oracle is very nice here.
Legacy Challenge 7/9
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Sunday event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Grixis Delver was the most played deck of the event, but it had a less-than-positive win rate. Mystic Forge decks did very well, as did Esper Control variants yet again. RUG Cascade also performed well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| GW Depths | 1st | The3rdHorseman |
| Death's Shadow | 2nd | CoolestRaven |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 3rd | susurrus_mtg |
| BUG Scam | 4th | pepeteam |
| Esper Control | 5th | GodOfSlaughter |
| RUG Cascade | 6th | r0cknati0n |
| Jeskai Control | 7th | kauffj |
| Grixis Delver | 8th | Dinglis |
Really solid Top 8 here. Nice variety among the decks. At the end of the event, it was an Abzan Depths deck that won.
Bowmasters impacting and seeing play in non-blue decks is pretty nice. I think it fits quite well here and Grist, the Hunger Tide is also very nice.
In Second Place we've got YORION Death's Shadow.
Wow. This list is cool. One card on this list we haven't talked enough about yet is Sauron's Ransom which looks like a fun Fact or Fiction-like effect. Super sweet deck.
Also in this Top 8 we had BUG Scam.
This deck topping out at just Grief is so groovy. It's kind of fun to Grief someone though and then Reanimate their thing that is big and broken.
At the bottom half of the Top 8 we had RUG Cascade.
I am always impressed that this deck works as well as it does in Legacy. Having a "blue" deck without Brainstorm is always a fun challenge, but this deck manages it well.
Around the Web
- TonyScapone has a new video on Black Saga Storm. Check it out here.
- The Cabal Therapy podcast has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Eternal Durdles has a new "Welcome to Legacy" series, with the first episode focusing on 8Cast. Check it out here.
- The Legacy Gambit has a vlog featuring Sahar Mirhadi! Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
This UW Control list wants its opponents to do all the things.
Alexwest wanted to do ALL the artifact-related things.
Golgari Pox with Wrenn and Realmbreaker is pretty sweet.
YAWGMOTH.
LEGACY LIVING END.
Mono Black with Call of the Ring!
HYPERGENESIS. The One Ring and Mind Over Matter combo!
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!
