MTG Salvation

@Figurative, I'm not sure how one could respond. Try out some decks and choose the one you like, life's too short (and Legacy too expensive) to fool around with things that aren't fun. I personally found all of the Aether Vial family of decks to be quite great, though I've since moved on to casting Brainstorm.

Regarding the options you mentioned, DnT is probably the most competitive.

@motleyslayer, Pox is an OK deck to get started with in Legacy if you like that sort of thing. The deck is iconic and instructive in its structure. Although very strong against tempo, it has a few trouble spots in the average metagame (Vial decks, Burn, and hard control like Miracles). The other difficulty is that it can be hard to leverage the cards in Pox into other archetypes. Liliana is played in Shardless, Jund, and a few fringe decks. Sinkhole is played almost nowhere else. The deck is definitely playable without Tabernacle and probably without land destruction. Liliana is a totally boss card, but I wonder when she'll see a reprint. I'd hesitate to shell out for her myself, but that's what I say about every card.

That is correct. There are very effective versions of Pox that focus solely on hand and creature removal, using The Rack as the primary win condition. In these versions, however, Liliana plays a very important role, and running less than 4 is going to be far from optimal. In the LD versions of Pox she's still crucial, but not to the same extent.

If you're just getting into the format and you want to do so via Pox, I suggest sticking with a discard-oriented deck in as budget-conscious a manner as you can. It's an interesting, unique, and instructive deck. Keep in mind that few players continue playing Pox for the long term, and by next year you'll probably be on to something different. While there are better and worse versions of the deck, they all share the same structural weakness: the very bonecrushing sorceries that Pox uses to enter a resource-starved late game make for abysmal topdecks. As a new player, it's easy to get the idea that just adding these high-quality, expensive cards like Wasteland, Sinkhole, and Tabernacle will make the deck tier 1, but that's not the case.

Decks with Modern/Legacy similar base/strategy?

Thanks guys

Quote from Ryuriel »

Decks with Modern/Legacy similar base/strategy?

Thanks guys

Burn & Merfolk

Quote from Ryuriel »

Decks with Modern/Legacy similar base/strategy?

Thanks guys

You could try Affinity.

Quote from d8dk32 »

You could try Affinity.

Affinity's not great in legacy tho.

Infect is another option. So is grixis delver, though it doesn't share all that much with modern grixis delver.

Thanks for the answers, nothing with green color?

Im thinking of Big Zoo modern and Punishing Maverick Legacy. But, the problem is, Tarmogoyf are playable in zoo but not in Maverick =/

Quote from Ryuriel »

Thanks for the answers, nothing with green color?

Im thinking of Big Zoo modern and Punishing Maverick Legacy. But, the problem is, Tarmogoyf are playable in zoo but not in Maverick =/

Junk and Jund strategies can look fairly similar, but the bases of the decks start to diverge due to the number of cards banned in modern, along with the older cards open in Legacy.

Zoo really isn't much of a thing. I've seen punishing maverick do okay, same for Maverick Zoo (wild Nacatl replacing mother of runes in Maverick).

If you're looking for green decks with similar gameplans to Modern, I think Jund, Dark Maverick, and Brave Sir Robin are the closest. Shardless BUG is also worth mentioning.

Even with their overlap though, the green decks tend to be rough to bridge the formats due to how much high cost cards don't transfer between the two formats (in both directions -- modern's cards that fill the gaps are no longer exactly cheap)

Current Modern player looking to get into Legacy and I am a little hung up on where to make my initial investment. Some background:

GR Tron is my modern deck of choice, though I was starting to collect the pieces for Grixis Control. I've got some of the C/U staples, but have yet to pick up the Snaps. My other project is slowly getting the pieces for Jund (short the Goyfs there).

I enjoy decks that have many of lines of play, and I like making my opponent play my game. I enjoy quick games almost as much as grindy ones. Combo is okay, but I much prefer a deck that isn't a one trick pony (which is why, as much as I love GR Tron, I was looking to build Grixis/Jund).

I am also okay with slowly building this deck. It's going to be a big investment, so I am in no rush to complete it. Lots of opportunity to use proxies at some of my venues, so it's not like I won't get the chance to play it at all while it's under construction.

Lastly, I would like to be able to keep building my modern collection alongside this deck (and what I hope will eventually be a Legacy collection).

Okay, so that all said, I've got $500 with which to make an initial investment. Up until Legacy caught my eye, I was just going to go ahead and pick up my playset of Goyfs finally. Now I am torn, because I would love to get into Legacy, and while the price of Goyf may very well go down with reprints, etc, some of these Legacy staples will never go down (Wastes, FoW, Duals).

So I am torn, what Legacy deck do you all recommend? What staples should I look to pick up as this initial investment? Depending on the deck, would it still be the Goyfs given the inter-format compatibility? Or do I go with something like FoW's since they go in just under %50 of the decks in the format, and will only go up in price, and just deal with having four of something I won't be playing in Modern ever (which I can totally deal with)?

Based on the recommendations here, I will proxy up a few of the decks and start fiddling with them before I settle on where that $500 is going to go. Thanks everybody.

I would have a couple different suggestions based on your preferences.

If you want to play green in Modern while you build your Legacy deck, I would say go for the Tarmogoyf playset. It seems like you will get the value out of that purchase the soonest.

If you want to get what will be most useful in Legacy first, I'd probably go with the FoWs. Those are played in a ton of decks, including some of the Tarmogoyf decks, and will probably give you more Legacy options over time.

You could also just buy whichever cards you have the most fun with now and work towards the rest over time.

How are stoneforge mystic decks doing nowadays? Is it advisable to play a stoneforge deck to get into the format? I was thinking about buying the cards for jeskai stoneblade because it seemed like it would play a lot like twin does in modern, and casting blood moon in legacy seems sweet.

What is stoneblade good/bad against? What is its place in the current meta? Money is not an issue and I plan on also buying cards for esper as well somewhere down the line.

Hey guys,


I think I have lowered my future legacy deck down to two choices -- merfolk or infect. For merfolk, that was my first instinct upon choosing a deck as it seems like a nice all around bet -- cheap, easy enough to play for someone new to legacy, and one of my friends is likely taking apart modern merfolk so I could get many of the pieces from him. However, I'm worried it's not very competitive. It appears to be towards the very bottom of tier 2, and I'm not sure how much success I will have with it should I take it to bigger events like I plan on doing.

On the other hand I could build infect, which is a much more competitive deck that I enjoy playing as well and also seems like a good choice for an entry deck. However I am not a huge fan of its tendency to die to removal, and it is a tad pricey for my wallet. I could probably afford it but not super easily, and it also has a number of matchups that just feel unwinnable because of how interactive they are. However, I really do want a competitive legacy deck.

A third theoretical option I guess is I could stay with my current deck, burn. I really find it dull to pilot but it does look like it's doing quite well at a number of events at the moment for whatever reason.

Between those two I would consider Infect the higher tier deck, though not by a massive margin. If you're good at Merfolk you can certainly do well with it.

Either way, you're going to want to play something that really interests you. Infect is basically a combo deck, so to play it you need to be willing to go for the same combo every game (and not get bored of it :P). Merfolk is slower, but has less potential to lose to the removal of one key creature. Arguably it also has a little more variety just because it's not a combo deck.

I currently have modern Merfolk and modern Grixis Delver/Twin. I was thinking of selling/trading away the Grixis deck to get back into Legacy, used to play Burn. I'll have about $800 of trade value, should I just build Legacy Merfolk, or should I start building something else? If I do build something else, I'd like the new deck to be mostly complete.

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this since i already know i want to get into legacy infect by liquidating my modern stuff besides my modern infect deck, but what pieces should i buy first? The tropical islands are by far the most expensive cards individually but i could in theory replace them with breeding pools (which of course, will make me lose a certain percentage of games i wouldn't have otherwise).

Hi guys, thinking of getting into legacy from modern and kind of like the look of dredge. Classic lists with the 12 gold lands seem extremely reasonably priced and I wouldn't mind shelling out for LEDs if that was the strongest direction for the deck. I'm a spike at heart but I'm really really shying away from the price tags of some decks like maverick for instance. My question about dredge is how much play is there to the deck? Is there a lot of careful decision making and playing around your opponents answers, or is it kind of "cast faithless looting, response? Ok you're going to lose then..." Vs "cast faithless looting, response? Oh, force of will. Ok I lose then"?



Also, how terrible would it be to try and run a list like maverick or w/e using modern lands and paying life for them to enter untapped? Is burn that prevalent and good that it's a suicidal proposition? Sorry for the questions, I'm a modern player who hasn't paid a ton of attention to legacy so please indulge my ignorance...

Quote from Calamity »

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this since i already know i want to get into legacy infect by liquidating my modern stuff besides my modern infect deck, but what pieces should i buy first? The tropical islands are by far the most expensive cards individually but i could in theory replace them with breeding pools (which of course, will make me lose a certain percentage of games i wouldn't have otherwise).

For expensive stuff, you need Forces, Trops, and a couple Berserk. I would start with Forces. You're going to lose more games to fast combo than you are to life loss due to shocks without those. After that, it's a toss up between a Trop or 2x Berserk. The deck runs pretty fetch heavy, so having even a single Trop is going to be a vast improvement over 4x shocks. Berserk isn't typically run as a playset and can do a ton of work getting fast kills. Finishing the set of Trops is lower priority than having some number of Berserk.

Quote from Dressedspring1 »

Hi guys, thinking of getting into legacy from modern and kind of like the look of dredge. Classic lists with the 12 gold lands seem extremely reasonably priced and I wouldn't mind shelling out for LEDs if that was the strongest direction for the deck. I'm a spike at heart but I'm really really shying away from the price tags of some decks like maverick for instance. My question about dredge is how much play is there to the deck? Is there a lot of careful decision making and playing around your opponents answers, or is it kind of "cast faithless looting, response? Ok you're going to lose then..." Vs "cast faithless looting, response? Oh, force of will. Ok I lose then"?

Dredge depends a lot on how much people are expecting it. If you don't see GY hate out of the board, dredge is a solid choice to spike a tournament. If you're playing the same people on a regular basis and they know to board Rest in Peace/Leyline of the Void, you're going to have a lot of one sided games. Dredge can play around countermagic pretty well between dredging being uncounterable and running a set of Cabal Therapy, but you're still going to have to learn how to play with it (just like any other deck).

Quote from Dressedspring1 »

Also, how terrible would it be to try and run a list like maverick or w/e using modern lands and paying life for them to enter untapped? Is burn that prevalent and good that it's a suicidal proposition? Sorry for the questions, I'm a modern player who hasn't paid a ton of attention to legacy so please indulge my ignorance...

I would be more worried about tempo lists than burn. Fetch into shock is a relevant amount of damage, the land is equally as likely to get wasted as a dual, and you're likely to see a lot more of them. How well it works depends on where you're going to be playing. I'd hazard a guess that your average weekly event is much more forgiving than the large tournaments. If you're just looking for something to play locally, you should do alright. I would try and limit the number of colors you go into, i.e. if you're planning on running maverick, stick to GW instead of GWx. You're still going to be at a disadvantage when compared to the list running duals, but you'll be able to go slightly heavier on basics and can hopefully mitigate the disadvantage somewhat. Also keep in mind that having even one dual is a big improvement over all shocks, because you're going to fetch it out a lot more often than you're going to draw it naturally.

So Ive just completed legacy merfolk as my first complete deck for the format. I do, however, plan to start collecting pieces for some deck to transition into, as I don't want to play fish forever. So I have the force of wills, which are the only real thing of merit I'll take with me towards my new deck.


My question is, what are the most cost efficient and playable decks that use the 4 copies of force of will I could transition to? I'm guessing the main viable options would be miracles, grixis delver, infect, sneak and show, and maybe some others?

Building Burn, then Burn with fetches for Grim Lavamancer food, then U/R tempo, then Grixis Tempo is a logical upgrade path, assuming you WANT to play tempo decks. It has the advantage of also building you an entire second legacy deck (Burn), of which many parts go into U/R tempo (especially the burn heavy variants that don't run Wasteland) and then Grixis tempo.

Otherwise, Infect and Miracles are fine decks. Miracles can easily run just 3 duals, and copes fine with budget substitutions of shocks while you get the duals. Infect, also needs some other relatively $ cards, but it's basically Tropical Islands, fetches, Noble Hierarch, Berserk).

Really depends what you want to play in the end honestly.

I have no clue to what I should play/buy I'm new to legacy I'm switching from modern to legacy. Mostly due to my twin deck getting banned Anyways I enjoy playing any colors but control is not my strong suit. I love midrange. What I look for in a deck is one that can survive early game and still have game when it goes late I like trading card for card value and disrupting my opponent. Any decks that are like this catagory? Budget is about 1000-1900$

Quote from HeckofAswag »

I have no clue to what I should play/buy I'm new to legacy I'm switching from modern to legacy. Mostly due to my twin deck getting banned Anyways I enjoy playing any colors but control is not my strong suit. I love midrange. What I look for in a deck is one that can survive early game and still have game when it goes late I like trading card for card value and disrupting my opponent. Any decks that are like this catagory? Budget is about 1000-1900$

Why not build Legacy Splinter Twin? Works well, does better than the Modern version, and does everything you want. Although it is a bit more combo as it gets better dig spells.

Jund, Nic Fit, Deadguy Ale, Stoneblade, Deathblade, Maverick are all pretty midrangey. Just depends on the flavor of disruption you like. I think Deathblade is too pricey for your range, but some of the others are a little more affordable.