The worst of all brews

[94teen]

So, I've been wanting to get into legacy again, but it's been awhile since I've attempted to delve into the format. I probably won't be able to afford any deck I want to build for awhile, but I can always get a head start, right?

The problem is, there aren't really any decks in the format that appeal to me at all. Countertop is boring, Landstill seems pretty bad. I've played a bunch of new horizons over the last few months, helping my friends test, and I've hated that deck the most.

I want to try to brew something up that has a really resilient late game. Something like Landstill that actually, you know, wins the game at a reasonable pace. I don't want to put up a definitive list just yet, since I'm not the most familiar with the metagame, and because I'm going to be tempted to commit to infinite colors. Here's the generic skeleton of what I'm thinking of. Not even sure if this is 60 cards, but it's a really, really rough outline.


4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce

4 Pernicious Deed
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Standstill
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor
1 Elspeth
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Knight of the Reliquary

2 Sun Titan

4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
1 Horizon Canopy


Something like this at least. It's a pretty standard Countertop/Landstill skeleton, just minus counter top, and plus bad cards.

Honestly, I just think that the amount of recursion built into the deck ought to give you a really, really strong game against anything that's not combo. Sun titan seems like an absurd win condition in the deck, buying back Pernicious Deeds to wrath the other board, standstills to put you further ahead, etc. Not really necessary, but definitely seals the deal if it goes unchecked
if it gets to attack.

Knight of the Reliquary is something I really liked out of the New Horizon deck, but I wanted to play it in a control shell. It can quickly get bigger than any Tarmogoyf, and gives you the option of playing silver bullet lands that are good against various decks: Bojuka Bog, Maze of Ith, etc.

This is probably an awful attempt at building something a little different, but I think Sun Titan is a really interesting addition to this kind of deck, just because of how quickly it can put the game out of reach. This is my attempt at making the 6cc titan playable in legacy, since it's probably one of my favorite cards in a long time.

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think of this idea, if not necessarily this list. If this is absolutely hopeless (likely), is there anything similar you can think of that might be playable? The countertop decks are just so boring, and I hate playing creature decks the most, so this is my attempt at not having to do either without going to combo.

[oxeimon]

personally I'm a big fan of that deck you helped me test against.

Ie, bant colors

4 goyf
4 hierarch
2 knight
2 rhox war monk
3 spellstutter sprite
2 stoneforge mystic

4 force of will
3 spell pierce
3 spell snare

4 swords
4 brainstorm
1 jace

1 jitte
1 SoFI

some lands


Personally I just really like the idea of just dropping a couple guys and protecting them with countermagic enough to win the game.

If you like recursion, there's always the loam variants (43-lands and aggro loam (though aggro-loam kind of sucks)). There's also that pseudo-countertop deck "It's the fear", running an intuition/loam/genesis engine in a UBG shell. There's also Jace-still, which is also UBG with deeds, jace, standstill, factories, innocent bloods, etc.

Personally I think you should give those decks another shot. A lot of the intricacies to many legacy decks are only evident when both you and your opponent really understand the format and in particular the strengths and weaknesses of each others decks. I feel like nobody here really follows legacy seriously, so maybe that's why you find most of those decks boring.

Also, as a massively overcompetitive person at heart, I find most things that don't involve competition to be boring. In particular, if I can't play with other people who really care and WANT to win, magic inevitably becomes boring after a couple of games. The most fun I ever had playing magic was at GP columbus.

[oxeimon]

as for your decklist, here are my thoughts:

1. Only 16 colored lands in a 4c deck is fragile. A single wasteland will color-screw you most of the time. Decks like new horizons will eat you for breakfast. I'd suggest cutting at least 3 of the wastelands. Wastelands by themselves are pretty sub-par, especially when you don't run any cheap threats to bash them while they're mana screwed. Most decks that run wastelands also complement them with a full set of dazes/ports/hierarch. The spell pierces work well, but even so, you're control. Wastelands are like a mini-armageddon effect, and you don't really have any board position to speak of that can take advantage of such an effect.

2. Enlightened tutors seems like they'd be sick in your deck. Without them, the lone shackles + crucibles are kind of weird.

3. I'd probably run at least 3 knights to maximize the effect of the whole land-toolbox engine with crucibles, but now you're beginning to look like new horizons.

4. The titans seem a bit awkward. You never want to draw them in your opening hand, and late game I'd probably rather a jace (at least in your opening hand jaces can become fow-fodder). Your main recursion target (deed) you include as a 4-of, so you'll probably be drawing enough of them as it is.

5. With the titans gone, the deeds become somewhat less synergistic with the crucibles and shackles, restricting possible X-values to 1 and 2, and once you've got that, you may as well use engineered explosives. The other upside of using EE's is that now you can throw in an academy ruins or two to recur EE's, as well as rescuing your shackles/crucible should they need it, though of course now an intuition-loam engine/toolbox becomes an attractive alternative to an enlightened tutor toolbox.

6. let me know if you ever want to play a few games either in person or mws. It would be great to get a playtesting group for legacy around here.

[94teen]

The colored lands was definitely one of my areas of concern when putting the deck together. I don't really want to cut too many wastelands, since they give you a way to fight other control decks with Crucible/Waste lock, and helps slow down aggro decks. I could see going down to 2 or 3 each of Mishra's Factory and Wasteland, but I definitely want them to be a major component of the deck.

I thought about trying to squeeze in Enlightened Tutors. The only things I can see cutting for them are a pernicious deed and maybe a standstill, though. The thing is, with fetchlands and brainstorms, you don't NEED tutors, you see so many cards that the one-ofs will show up often enough to make a difference. The other thing is that Shackles is just really just another copy of Deed that's just better a lot of the time, and Crucible is just a cheaper, less fragile copy of Sun Titan, letting you make land drops and wastelock people.

I don't want to run too many knights. Once again, the brainstorms/jaces should help you find the other knights/singleton lands, and I don't want to overemphasize the land component of the deck, since then you might as well play 43land or some such. They're really there as a really solid win condition, considering the number of fetches and wastelands and whatnot that you play, that are also really solid in the early game. The only thing that can compete for that slot is Tarmogoyf, as a creature that can just stop aggro dead sometimes. Knight just has more synergy with the deck, and helps to add another dimension that might not be there otherwise.

I don't know if I'd call Pernicious Deed the primary target for Sun Titan. It's certainly a reasonable target, but there are a multitude of other reasonable targets, like Standstill, Wasteland, Knight of the Reliquary, Horizon Canopy (draw engine?), fetchlands and whatnot. Titan also buys back your Shackles/Crucible, which is a reason that EE is less desirable, since it comes back with 0 counters.


Honestly, I'd be glad to test legacy with you on a reasonably regular basis. I really liked the format when I followed it and played it reasonably often. I did test a reasonable amount for GP columbus, and I did attend. I played 20+ sideboarded games with most of the top decks in the metagame, on one side or another of a given matchup:

Countertop control of various varieties
Bant variants (with and without natural order)
Survival decks of various flavors
Goblins, Merfolk, Elves (combo and survival)
43 lands, It's the Fear, other LftL-intuition based decks
Storm
Zoo
Black disruption based aggro
The bad combo decks (Aluren, Mosswort Bridge, Foodchain, etc)

None of them really do things that I enjoy doing. A couple came close, but honestly, I like trying to build decks a lot more than tweaking a list of an established deck to beat a specific metagame. Building the deck is half the fun.


Honestly though, i really don't like New Horizons. I've never been a fan of the deck, or aggro control decks in general. It feels like I never get the right combination of cards against the right deck (i.e. all the spell pierces against Goblins and Zoo, all the STPs against CounterTop). The deck needs to be tailored for a very specific metagame, and if you don't predict correctly, it's going to get wrecked pretty hard.