Legacy Metagame: MTGO Challenge Champions (2/4 & 2/5)
Card: Fiend Artisan | Art: Yigit Koroglu
Welcome to the latest installment of BTB’s Legacy MTGO Challenge Champions column. I’m the captain of this pirate ship, Curt, trying my best not to drink too much of the Phyrexian oil.
Phyrexia: All Will Be One Pre-Release
Phyrexia: All Will Be One pre-release is here! Curious how many Legacy folks are out there chasing Atraxa. While cards are not widely available yet, it hasn’t stopped fans from celebrating their draft pulls like a Lands player who just top-decked Exploration on turn one. Nothing says I want to drown my opponent in Poison counters like gathering a playset of Venerated Rotpriest on pre-release weekend.
Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy (BCDL) 11
If you are a Legacy player and have not heard of the Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy Open, you are missing out on one of the shining stars of our format. BCDL has been hosting paper Legacy tournaments, giving away awesome prizes, and drawing serious competitors from the Midwest and surrounding areas for quite a while. As a PNW-based player, who originally hails from the Midwest, part of me would love to travel back east for one of their tournaments.
The next event in their series will be taking place Saturday, March 4th at The Warp Gate in Westerville, OH. Prizes include a collection of Revised dual lands and Alliances Force of Wills; the sort of goodies most Legacy players gush over!
Full details of the BCDL 11 can be found here.
Legacy MTGO Saturday Challenge 32 Results
Reanimator - duke12
Red Prison - OnlyLandsDotCom
Izzet Delver - kiyoaggro
White Stompy - Promidnightz
Izzet Delver - JPA93
Boros Stompy - Add1ct3d
5c Control - yPrincipe
White Stompy - Oceansoul92
Full list is here
Direct links courtesy of Reddit u/FereMiyJeenyus and their MTGO Results Scraper.
Legacy MTGO Sunday Challenge Results
Reanimator - XxShuicunexX
Elves - Testacular
Izzet Delver - JUJUBEAN\_\_2004
Cephalid Breakfast - HJ\_Kaiser
Izzet Delver - kauffj
ANT - TonyScapone
ANT - coe205
White Stompy - HeyNongMan
Full list is here
Direct links courtesy of Reddit u/FereMiyJeenyus and their MTGO Results Scraper.
Weekend Legacy Challenge Overview
I should use this space to make a crude joke about how Reanimator resurrected its ability to win a weekend Challenge with two pilots navigating their way to the trophy both days.
Saturday was an exciting finish with Reanimator squaring off against Red Prison in the final! What an exciting pair of decks to close out the challenge! Izzet Delver and White Stompy made their regular appearance, as did 5c Uro.
Sunday saw a return of Elves to the final, losing to the other Reanimator deck of the weekend. Delver and White Stompy represented in the Top 8s, as did Cephalid Breakfast and a pair of ANT decks.
Some interesting cards seeing play in Legacy these days are True-Name Nemesis (TNN) and Caves of Chaos Adventurer (CCA). I have seen a number of people on social media celebrating the return of TNN, mostly due to the emergence of White Stompy. But its return to competitive play has also helped some decks make it through unsuspecting opponents' radar.
Meanwhile, CCA was in Saturday’s Red Prison deck as well as a White (Boros) Stompy deck. Interesting to see both cards show up in this weekend’s action.
Top Legacy Decks
Legacy, at least MTGO Legacy, seems to have settled into a sort of balance with Izzet Delver and White Stompy making regular and rather dominating appearances each weekend, but not necessarily stealing the show.
This weekend, there were four copies of each archetype, yet none that made the final round.
Saturday’s Reanimator list had a fairly stock deck but utilized some of White Stompy’s tricks with a couple copies of Chancellor of the Annex to protect against those first-turn combos or White Plume Adventurer. Sunday’s Reanimator was a similar list (with a few differences) but one card in the sideboard that looks really sweet to me is Iona, Shield of Emeria. Definitely a great early-game reanimation target against the right opponent.
Sunday’s Elves deck really caught my eye though. Nice midrange Elves list with plenty of mana-dorks and a splash of black for Snuff Out. Snuff Out is another card enjoying a resurgence right now thanks to White Stompy. The ability to cast without spending any mana is really strong right now. And any small edge you can get against what has become a creature-heavy meta is a great inclusion in your deck.
I’ve written about Elves' curious disappearance from the top of the format in the last few weeks. Could it be that the non-combo version is the better way to sustain a winning record?
Reanimator
The top deck of the Sunday Challenge was comprised of most of the usual suspects from Reanimator. I like the inclusion of Grief here giving them another option to fish a few threats out of the opponent’s hand. Combo decks are in a tough position these days, so anything that gives you another way of attacking the opponent may be a good way of staying relevant.
I talked about this above, but the inclusion of Iona, Shield of Emeria is a smart move here.
Red Prison
The runner-up on Saturday was Red Prison, with the usual suspects making appearances. I have noted this elsewhere, but I like the inclusion of Caves of Chaos Adventurer. Any time a deck splashes an Initiative card, it creates the potential to offset whatever your base strategy is. Some will argue that this is unfair, but if you want to win in today’s Legacy, you have to choose a side.
Many going the way of Initiative are finding ways to get to the win. Much like Expressive Iteration, the right card can help you gain just a slight advantage and make the difference between moving on or moving aside.
Boros Stompy
Let’s just get this out of the way now, this deck is trying to do a lot of things. The deck feels like it started out as White Stompy, then adopted a few red elements to try and reinforce that, and dropped all the prison elements.
When you think about this as a strictly aggro deck, it fits. There are a few pieces of removal, but Solitude was dropped in the process, preserving the rest of the aggro strategy. Although this deck didn’t win the trophy, it sure lays out a good blueprint for how to potentially get it done.
Maybe a slightly comical comment, but I am curious if Emrakul is included here as a potential hit when they finish the Undercity. Jank for sure if so, but damn, talk about ending the game on the spot!
I expect to see more of this.
Elves
I’ve probably gushed too much about this deck in the column this week but I am impressed with what was done here. Minor tweaks led to what appears to be a brilliant path back to competitive Legacy for Elves.
The ability of this deck to go get the tools that it needs rivals the utility of a Maverick deck, and does it without having to splash white.
Sure, you lose the ability to combo out the whole deck in one turn, but that has become the hallmark Elves deck and people are ready for that.
Takeaways
This week saw the re-emergence of several of the old guards of Legacy. Each deck utilized some sort of alterations to the previously accepted “stock” lists.
I especially like what Testacular did with the Elves build, taking what has been an emerging non-combo strategy and further evolving it into a winning combination. I suspect we will see more of Snuff Out in strategies like this going forward for old decks that want to remain relevant.
I'm curious to see if Atraxa slots into a deck like Elves too as it’s a great target for Natural Order. Maybe it's too slow by placing the cards in your hand instead of directly onto the battlefield.
Also nice to see White Stompy continuing to try different venues by adding Caves of Chaos Adventurer. This isn’t the first time this has been tried, but the fact that two decks near the top used Adventurer is saying something.
Thanks for reading!
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