I just want to thank you guys for this deck, which has appeared to me as I despaired of finding anything truly cool in Modern. Suits me to a T.
No/few creatures? Check: I can cheekily include them after sideboard, and the Crane doesn't count (and my, what an all star!)
Prison deck? Check
Takes forever to conclude a round? Check
Actually not that expensive? Check
Exploits Modern's insistence to ban good cantrips? Check
People think it's really hard to play? Check
Really is hard to play? Check
Welcome to the fold, Lantern Control, join your elder Legacy brothers Lands and Storm in my collection.
If you really don't want to regret the purchase, testing out candidate decks is probably the only way to reliably avoid that possibility.
Merfolk is indeed very good right now, better than it has been for a long time. It's not all peaches and sunshine, of course, but it does function more or less as it's always meant to: exploiting plentiful islands to put a big, unblockable army into the red zone.
Green isn't seen as necessary anymore, being only used mostly for three different cards: Abrupt Decay, Carpet of Flowers, and Xantid Swarm. Each of these cards is good and has some potential use, but it was really only Decay's uniquely uncounterable property and its necessity against Counterbalance that made it ubiquitous. Once you've got green in the deck, Carpet and Swarm open up and were often used on that basis.
Carpet really shines against decks with a lot of taxing permission, Pierce and Daze, but there's not so much RUG Delver any longer. Grixis is more common and uses discard. Carpet is helpful there too, in that it can make up for a discarded ritual, but this effect isn't really worth splashing for by itself when the straight Duress/Therapy and basic lands should be fine for the matchup.
Xantid Swarm was also a card folks brought in for Miracles, and it still has a bunch of value against decks with a sort of "mono counterspell' plan. IE, Landstill, new Miracles, Sneaky Show, etc. Since discard is also fine for these, however, they are quite fine to play instead of the insects and don't involve any contortion of the manabase.
Keeping the manabase as lean and streamlined as possible pays a lot of dividends that aren't always immediately obvious when looking at the deck.
Well, there are trade-offs with Engineered Explosives: the most basic of them being that with the blue in the deck contributing to a more controlling build with this super removal spell, you're necessarily putting the combo a bit to the background and not slamming 20/20s as quickly or as often as you otherwise would be. There are matchups where the most reliable path to victory is making the 20/20 as soon as possible, like UR Delver.
As for results, it's a bit of a wash, with both forms of the deck performing well in the current metagame.
I don't see how shuffling could be a problem with this deck, I mean really: the deck demands one truly thorough shuffle at the start of the game. This is a rare and wonderful blessing in the game and a feature shared by a small number of decks. Legacy Dredge is the only one I can think of that requires the same rate of 1 shuffle per game. You guys sound like you've never piloted turns that go like: "Fetch for Savannah.... Green Sun's Zenith.... Stoneforge Mystic... activate Knight of the Reliquary..." and while I'll admit that 4 shuffles per turn is an extreme example and would have been shortcut IRL when it happened, it is rare to get through a single turn of Maverick without shuffling.
All of the 2+-of lands are either initial mana sources, payoff cards for Loam which you never want to be without, or combo pieces in case you want//need to jam Marit Lage ASAP.
What's crazy is the 4 Port 4 GQ 4 Wasteland. How did that go?
I think a Deathblade deck is where you want to be in this meta. You've got Forces, discards, and DRS against those combo decks: plus DRS lifegain can supplement Stoneforge Mystical Batterskull action.
After sideboard it only gets a lot better, your options in Esper blow their countermeasures out of the water: not that you'll need much of anything else, just some more GY hate vs. Dredge/Oops.
Indeed, the Counterbalance trigger CMC consideration is not at all trivial, but I struggle to find a good CMC 3 besides Blood Moon for the effect: the Moon is dead a lot of the time, or else it would damage my own manabase (by turning off my fetches or sticking me with only one white source). It would be great to have another CMC 3. I'm thinking Oblivion Ring, but that's icky, and Detention Sphere gets Pyroblasted too much.
I also feel pretty confident that 1 Blood Moon is the right number in a deck that sports 1-2 Enlightened Tutors along with all the other library manipulation. Many games have a window of 2-3 turns where Blood Moon would straight up win, after that it's just good, and after that it's not worth playing anymore.
CMC 4 also deserves some consideration, I think, and I've taken to playing my Moat in the MD. It's often game-winning. Other times it's dead.
I think it's time to dumpster-dive the old Landstill and Countertop archives for a good CMC 3 enchantment/artifact.
I got to jam a bunch of games today and wound up with a few ideas.
First, I think I went too far in the colorless land direction. 3 Nykthos and 1 Westvale Abbey, 4 out of my 19 lands, caused several mulligans that would not otherwise have been necessary. I also don't think those lands are necessary any more. Take the Shrine for example. I activated it a lot a few times today and won those games... but would I have won them anyway? How much mana can be made just via the elves themselves if devotion exists to Shrine for a lot of mana, and how is that not enough? The card may be win more, and I'll try the deck at 1 copy. As for Westvale Abbey, it did win me one game against Tron, but I might have been winning that game anyway. While the 9/7 demon is nice, a lot of decks can deal with it, and is it really that much nicer than the 5 dudes I sacrificed to bring it out? Not so much.
The sideboard card that I tried on suggestion from you folks on this thread, Golgari Charm, has proven itself a thousand times over. It's so crazy what this card can do. It's a counter to sweepers that is also itself a sweeper, usually one-sided! And it kills enchantments! All in one card! In one game against Affinity, Golgari Charm 3-for-1ed his army of two Inkmoth Nexus and that battlecry thing (doing no damage to my own Lorded army), and in the next game it stuffed a Whipflare (take that, one-sided sweeper, I'LL BE THE ONE CASTING THOSE THANK YOU VERY MUCH). Against my next opponent, in one game Golgari Charm stuffed his Anger of the Gods... and in the next it blew up his Worship.
If a close, personal friend of mine wanted to play Legacy on an extreme budget and asked my advice, I'd make what might be a controversial suggestion.
Buy a big set of Chinese fakes (if you can figure out where), write an "F" on the back of them with a sharpie (so they don't get traded someday for someone's real cards), and slide them into some sleeves. Try Dragon Shields because as the panes get scratched and discolored with age it'll become all but impossible to distinguish between these and the genuine article. Build whatever you want and still have enough cash left over to go to Starbucks.
Would that be wrong?
Suspension issued for promotion of illegal activity.
- Teia
It has virtues. It seems like a pretty bad card to rip with Eidolon already in play, but maybe that doesn't matter.
I've been going through some of the old Patrick Sullivan burn matches, and they are very instructive. I think we talked about it a year or so ago, but there is one against RUG Delver that is particularly helpful.
Patrick boarded in Vexing Shusher and Ensnaring Bridge. He aimed his first 3 bolt effects at his opponent's Delver of Secrets, dropped a Vexing Shusher, an Ensnaring Bridge, and a Grim Lavamancer.
The Delver player exhausted his countermagic trying to defend the Delver, and never got another threat on the board. The Vexing Shusher ate a Lightning Bolt, and then Ensnaring Bridge resolved. With the Bridge in play, the only way for the RUG player to win was to burn Patrick out of the game (I assume he didn't bring Ancient Grudge in). Patrick was at 12 life when the Bridge resolved, with enough land to play any card in the deck, and thus in complete control of the situation.
I'd always played the RUG Delver matchup as a race in which I was the beatdown, but I had it totally wrong. I'd resolve a few burn spells to the dome, take some hits from whatever threat was on the table, and lose as my last pieces were countered and the big green creatures connected for a lot.
We're not necessarily the beatdown. With Ensnaring Bridge, we apparently should play control.
I've been thinking about to include Monastery Swiftspear and Mutagenic Growth...but It seems something similar to the Vexing Devil case, because a combination of Swiftspear with Mutagenic Growth (or even Mutagenic Growth+Goblin Guide)in T1 seems very powerful, but in advanced matches it seems a bad idea. What do you think about it?
Regards!
It is theoretically impossible for Mutagenic Growth to be good in a Burn deck.
In the best cast, applied to an unblocked Swiftspear, you get 3 damage out of it. Applied to any other creature, you get 2 damage out of it, less than any bolt and highly conditional.
There are several ways of looking at this question, and the answer partially depends on the timeframe you look at, tournament size, etc.
Without question, though, Miracles is at the top of the list of competitive decks. It is the deck to beat right now. TCDecks gives 18 Miracles top 8s in September, 12 Elves, 11 Deathblade, 10 BUG Control. Those are going to make the cut by any definition.
You can add to that Sneak/Show, RUG Delver, Death and Taxes, and BUG Tempo and get the Decks To Beat list over at TheSource. WUR Delver has recently fallen from this list, with DnT added to it.
If you look at the top 8s of large tournaments in the past 30 days, you'll see a lot of additional diversity. Infect has recently been played with great success on the SCG circuit. Burn has consistently been top 8ing since the printing of Eidolon of the Great Revel.
The format as a whole may undergo something of a shift fairly soon, as the impact of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time has the potential to make blue decks even more insane than they already were. It's tough to predict who the biggest beneficiaries of these cards will be, and what countermeasures they will inspire in other decks, but public opinion does seem to favor these cards at the moment. Esperblade, WUR Delver, and Deathblade seem poised to take maximal advantage of them right out of the gate, and I don't see why Miracles wouldn't play some number of Dig Through Time. Regardless of whether the change is permanent, an alteration of this magnitude is likely to shift the format permanently. TNN isn't so widely played any longer, and he had an incredible impact on the meta.
Indeed, it's a fairly respectable format policeman, functioning a similar way to the Blood Moon decks... only possibly even more effective than Blood Moon against Team America and other BUG strategies.
It's also hardly unbeatable, as would be expected from a highly linear mono-colored aggro strategy. Decks with tough Burn matchups would be well advised to give it some sideboard attention. There are plenty of cards that make life really hard for red mages.
It is designed to be uninteractive, though... for awhile I was piloting Dredge, Burn, and Omnitell, and certain people would flat out refuse to play casual games of Legacy with me.
No/few creatures? Check: I can cheekily include them after sideboard, and the Crane doesn't count (and my, what an all star!)
Prison deck? Check
Takes forever to conclude a round? Check
Actually not that expensive? Check
Exploits Modern's insistence to ban good cantrips? Check
People think it's really hard to play? Check
Really is hard to play? Check
Welcome to the fold, Lantern Control, join your elder Legacy brothers Lands and Storm in my collection.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Merfolk is indeed very good right now, better than it has been for a long time. It's not all peaches and sunshine, of course, but it does function more or less as it's always meant to: exploiting plentiful islands to put a big, unblockable army into the red zone.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Carpet really shines against decks with a lot of taxing permission, Pierce and Daze, but there's not so much RUG Delver any longer. Grixis is more common and uses discard. Carpet is helpful there too, in that it can make up for a discarded ritual, but this effect isn't really worth splashing for by itself when the straight Duress/Therapy and basic lands should be fine for the matchup.
Xantid Swarm was also a card folks brought in for Miracles, and it still has a bunch of value against decks with a sort of "mono counterspell' plan. IE, Landstill, new Miracles, Sneaky Show, etc. Since discard is also fine for these, however, they are quite fine to play instead of the insects and don't involve any contortion of the manabase.
Keeping the manabase as lean and streamlined as possible pays a lot of dividends that aren't always immediately obvious when looking at the deck.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
As for results, it's a bit of a wash, with both forms of the deck performing well in the current metagame.
@JNes, welcome to the bossest of all boss decks!
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
What's crazy is the 4 Port 4 GQ 4 Wasteland. How did that go?
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
I think a Deathblade deck is where you want to be in this meta. You've got Forces, discards, and DRS against those combo decks: plus DRS lifegain can supplement Stoneforge Mystical Batterskull action.
After sideboard it only gets a lot better, your options in Esper blow their countermeasures out of the water: not that you'll need much of anything else, just some more GY hate vs. Dredge/Oops.
Also this Brainstorm Show Mentorblade Miracles deck would probably be sweet:
http://www.thebrainstormshow.com/
episode 24
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
I also feel pretty confident that 1 Blood Moon is the right number in a deck that sports 1-2 Enlightened Tutors along with all the other library manipulation. Many games have a window of 2-3 turns where Blood Moon would straight up win, after that it's just good, and after that it's not worth playing anymore.
CMC 4 also deserves some consideration, I think, and I've taken to playing my Moat in the MD. It's often game-winning. Other times it's dead.
I think it's time to dumpster-dive the old Landstill and Countertop archives for a good CMC 3 enchantment/artifact.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
First, I think I went too far in the colorless land direction. 3 Nykthos and 1 Westvale Abbey, 4 out of my 19 lands, caused several mulligans that would not otherwise have been necessary. I also don't think those lands are necessary any more. Take the Shrine for example. I activated it a lot a few times today and won those games... but would I have won them anyway? How much mana can be made just via the elves themselves if devotion exists to Shrine for a lot of mana, and how is that not enough? The card may be win more, and I'll try the deck at 1 copy. As for Westvale Abbey, it did win me one game against Tron, but I might have been winning that game anyway. While the 9/7 demon is nice, a lot of decks can deal with it, and is it really that much nicer than the 5 dudes I sacrificed to bring it out? Not so much.
The sideboard card that I tried on suggestion from you folks on this thread, Golgari Charm, has proven itself a thousand times over. It's so crazy what this card can do. It's a counter to sweepers that is also itself a sweeper, usually one-sided! And it kills enchantments! All in one card! In one game against Affinity, Golgari Charm 3-for-1ed his army of two Inkmoth Nexus and that battlecry thing (doing no damage to my own Lorded army), and in the next game it stuffed a Whipflare (take that, one-sided sweeper, I'LL BE THE ONE CASTING THOSE THANK YOU VERY MUCH). Against my next opponent, in one game Golgari Charm stuffed his Anger of the Gods... and in the next it blew up his Worship.
I'm going up to 3 next time.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Buy a big set of Chinese fakes (if you can figure out where), write an "F" on the back of them with a sharpie (so they don't get traded someday for someone's real cards), and slide them into some sleeves. Try Dragon Shields because as the panes get scratched and discolored with age it'll become all but impossible to distinguish between these and the genuine article. Build whatever you want and still have enough cash left over to go to Starbucks.
Would that be wrong?
Suspension issued for promotion of illegal activity.
- Teia
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
I've been going through some of the old Patrick Sullivan burn matches, and they are very instructive. I think we talked about it a year or so ago, but there is one against RUG Delver that is particularly helpful.
Patrick boarded in Vexing Shusher and Ensnaring Bridge. He aimed his first 3 bolt effects at his opponent's Delver of Secrets, dropped a Vexing Shusher, an Ensnaring Bridge, and a Grim Lavamancer.
The Delver player exhausted his countermagic trying to defend the Delver, and never got another threat on the board. The Vexing Shusher ate a Lightning Bolt, and then Ensnaring Bridge resolved. With the Bridge in play, the only way for the RUG player to win was to burn Patrick out of the game (I assume he didn't bring Ancient Grudge in). Patrick was at 12 life when the Bridge resolved, with enough land to play any card in the deck, and thus in complete control of the situation.
I'd always played the RUG Delver matchup as a race in which I was the beatdown, but I had it totally wrong. I'd resolve a few burn spells to the dome, take some hits from whatever threat was on the table, and lose as my last pieces were countered and the big green creatures connected for a lot.
We're not necessarily the beatdown. With Ensnaring Bridge, we apparently should play control.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
It is theoretically impossible for Mutagenic Growth to be good in a Burn deck.
In the best cast, applied to an unblocked Swiftspear, you get 3 damage out of it. Applied to any other creature, you get 2 damage out of it, less than any bolt and highly conditional.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Without question, though, Miracles is at the top of the list of competitive decks. It is the deck to beat right now. TCDecks gives 18 Miracles top 8s in September, 12 Elves, 11 Deathblade, 10 BUG Control. Those are going to make the cut by any definition.
You can add to that Sneak/Show, RUG Delver, Death and Taxes, and BUG Tempo and get the Decks To Beat list over at TheSource. WUR Delver has recently fallen from this list, with DnT added to it.
If you look at the top 8s of large tournaments in the past 30 days, you'll see a lot of additional diversity. Infect has recently been played with great success on the SCG circuit. Burn has consistently been top 8ing since the printing of Eidolon of the Great Revel.
The format as a whole may undergo something of a shift fairly soon, as the impact of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time has the potential to make blue decks even more insane than they already were. It's tough to predict who the biggest beneficiaries of these cards will be, and what countermeasures they will inspire in other decks, but public opinion does seem to favor these cards at the moment. Esperblade, WUR Delver, and Deathblade seem poised to take maximal advantage of them right out of the gate, and I don't see why Miracles wouldn't play some number of Dig Through Time. Regardless of whether the change is permanent, an alteration of this magnitude is likely to shift the format permanently. TNN isn't so widely played any longer, and he had an incredible impact on the meta.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
It's also hardly unbeatable, as would be expected from a highly linear mono-colored aggro strategy. Decks with tough Burn matchups would be well advised to give it some sideboard attention. There are plenty of cards that make life really hard for red mages.
It is designed to be uninteractive, though... for awhile I was piloting Dredge, Burn, and Omnitell, and certain people would flat out refuse to play casual games of Legacy with me.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730