This Week in Legacy: Tiny Robots
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 looking at a pretty sweet deck utilizing some new Modern Horizons 2 cards in Thought Monitor and Urza's Saga! In addition to that we have two events to talk about in the Sunday Challenge and the AnziD 1.2K event. The Saturday Challenge again did not fire this past weekend, and we had some community movement on some players reaching out to Wizards on the state of the Legacy format.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Tiny and Not-So Tiny Robot Armies
While we are often looking at the impact that Modern Horizons 2 has had with a critical eye as of late, I enjoy the fact that the set did bring forth some very interesting and fun strategies. The deck I'm talking about this week came my way via our good friend Bob Huang, who I have seen in the League dumps doing well with this deck. It was suggested because I've been playing something similar in Vintage.
I managed to sit down and play some games both in proxy with some friends over the weekend and on Magic Online with the deck and this is a pretty sweet deck.
The basic strategy of this deck lies in several angles of attack, from drawing raw amounts of cards from both Thoughtcast and Thought Monitor to recurring value with Emry and generating a board state with Sai, Master Thopterist. This is all tied together with the raw cantrip value of Baubles and Urza's Saga.
This deck is unique in that it's not quite an Affinity deck and it isn't quite an Echo of Eons deck, although those synergies are present in the deck, moreso on the Affinity side as there's only two LEDs to go with the Echo plan. Emry and Sai are both powerhouses in create the kind of advantage you want out of this strategy, and you can even easily beat on decks playing Null Rod with the Sai plan or Urza's Saga beatdown. What sets this apart from the traditional Karn/Urza decks is the ability to run Force of Will and not be so reliant on Echo as a game plan.
This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy some of the more subtle effects of Modern Horizons 2 on the format, as the introduction of some of these newer cards created a unique and interesting space of deckbuilding, and I think especially Thought Monitor has really provided that to many decks in the current format.
Legacy Challenge 10/17
The Sunday Challenge did fire this past weekend with the bare minimum of 64 players. Thanks to the efforts of the Legacy Data Collection Project in collecting the data for this event.
You can find all of the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
As we have seen a lot of in these events, UR Delver had a big presence and overall Tempo itself continues to be very popular in the format. UR Delver itself didn't have a stellar win rate in this event, and the Jeskai deck had a middle of the road win rate. Elves did exceedingly well, but the Top 8 itself was certainly something to behold.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| 4C Loam | 1st | HeyNongMan |
| RUG Ragavan | 2nd | Ark4n |
| Elves | 3rd | DemonicTutors |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 4th | wambocombo2020 |
| Reanimator | 5th | hopeof130 |
| High Tide | 6th | Iwouldliketorespond |
| Bant Control | 7th | LeoFa |
| Death and Taxes | 8th | Cstrolo |
Pretty wild Top 8 here, with some very interesting decks, especially our First Place winner of the event which was on a deck that I featured in last week's Spice Corner... Loam?!
This deck is wild. It really is stretching hard on the power of Mox Diamond, and I can see some turns with Diamonds that seem absolutely nuts (Dash in a Ragavan off Diamond and a land on T1? Yeah that can happen). This is a list I'm going to have to save for All Access because it is currently way outside my rental space.
In Second Place we have a RUG Ragavan variant by Ark4n.
Instead of Plow and Prismatic Ending, we've got Unholy Heat and Life from the Loam. Same basic principle of being a Daze deck with Ragavan, just with different removal options and value.
Further down the Top 8 we had a showing by Reanimator.
Serra's Emissary is a sweet sweet card. There are a lot of decks in the format that simply cannot beat the card if it hits the table, especially those playing lots of creatures.
Also at the bottom half of the Top 8 is our good friend Marcus on HIGH TIDE.
This list is super duper sweet. It's sort of crazy to consider that High Tide has some action in 2021, but it seems like it definitely does and Marcus is the current undisputed King of the deck right now.
Outside of the Top 8 we had a sweet spice showing by our good friend Michael Mapson.
Grixis Ragavan Affinity is not what I had on the menu, but whew is that some spice!
AnziD 1.2K Legacy Special 10/16
Our good friend Anuraag Das (AnziD) hosted another 1.2K event over the weekend, which brought in 38 players overall. Despite being ran on MTGMelee, the Legacy Data Collection Project worked on collecting the data into our sheets for presentation purposes. This event was unique in the sense that it was ran under a Double Elimination style system, where players played until they had received two losses at which point they were eliminated. The Top 4 then played it out in a single elimination bracket.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Despite being a small event, not a lot of players showed up on the boogeymen of the format currently in either UR Delver or Jeskai Ragavan. There was however a lot of Lands players in the event, as well as a fair amount of The EPIC Storm and 4C/Bant players. However, the lone UR Delver player in the entire event just happened to be the one to go all the way.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| UR Delver | 1st | Ryan W. |
| Doomsday | 2nd | Jim Dudek |
| "Grixis Control" | 3rd | Max Gilmore |
| Eli Tucker | 4th | Mystic Forge Combo |
| Jarvis Yu | 5th | Lands |
| Nolan Polly | 6th | Aluren |
| Sneak and Show | 7th | Travis Benedict |
| Maverick | 8th | Tobias Muckelberg |
This isn't a traditional Top 8 due to the tournament structure and that is worth noting as sometimes people can read a little too much into Top 8 make-up. At the end of this event it was Ryan W (WingedHussar) who tore it all down on UR Delver as the only UR Delver player in the entire event.
This is the build we've come to expect from UR Delver thus far, and it seems to be the build that's had the most sticking power over the short period of time that it has existed. Cutting down to two Delver for Mishra's Bauble helps out the power of Dragon's Rage Channeler's Surveil triggers but also for its Delirium as well.
The other finalist for this event was on Doomsday.
Doomsday continues to be an ultra powerful strategy bolstered by a lot of the free countermagic available to it. This list went deep on new card Consider by playing three copies of it as well as two copies of Personal Tutor.
Another top finisher of this event was our good friend Max Gilmore with his take on "Grixis Control".
A lot of this list is functionally the shell for the Jeskai Ragavan decks ported into Grixis, and using cards like Kolaghan's Command with Unholy Heat to deal with threats. Pretty cool list, Max!
Also finishing in a solid place was our good friend Jarvis Yu on his signature deck Lands!
This version of Lands looks really strong right now. Valakut Exploration and Urza's Saga really did a lot for this archetype in general.
Community Updates
We got a few updates here this week. The first of which is regarding the announcement of Eternal Weekend Online as far as the dates are concerned. This happened last week after my article was already submitted. The Legacy events are going to be the weekend of November 19th - 21st. No further details are as of yet available, but I'll keep my eyes peeled and as soon as I know something regarding specifics I'll make sure to post about it.
Also, we just had a 4 Seasons event in Italy again this past weekend, and we'll talk about that event as soon as we have all the data for it (likely next week). This event did have 240-250ish players in it, so that's super sweet!
Speaking of paper events as well, there was a Legacy event in Oklahoma (The Oklahoma Land Run event series) recently as well. You can check out the Top 8 for that event here.
Finally, our good friend Anuraag Das put together a really solid and well written letter that was sent to Wizards, showcasing some of the data we've collected in the community from the Legacy Data Collection Project and asking Wizards to take some action on the Legacy format. You can find that Tweet over here if you would like to read it.
Around the Web
- Dargonstorm!
- The fellows at IN RESPONSE have a new episode! Check it out over here.
- Our good friend Bryant Cook has some "Mono Green Storm" this week, aka Elves! Check it out here.
- 90sMTG has some Zombie Tribal action with our good friend Phil Blechman. Check that out here.
- 5C Aluren Yorion Kiki Combo!
The Spice Corner
Wow Demigod of Revenge. Such Demigod, Much Wow.
Mono Black Depths with some pretty solid hatebears main deck with both Dauthi Voidwalker and Tourach.
There's a lot to unpack with this one.
Archon of Emeria and Yasharn is sweet in this Selesnya focused Loam/Depths build.
Speaking of Archon... hear Emeria's Call!
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 Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the /r/MTGLegacy Discord Server and subreddit.
Until next time!
