Hey guys my LGS is running a legacy league were we got a $20 budget and about 2 bucks every week to upgrade. This is what I landed on (a pauper list with board wipes).
I'm not sure where to go from here most of the meta is aggro so the board wipes help a bunch but is still a bit of nonBO with the rest of the deck (kill my own stuff, sometimes stabilize without them then they are dead draws).
There is some combo decks emerging I basically just hope for the best against right now(which works) but they are quickly getting better.
Where do I go from here? just save a for a whole new deck? Hymn to tourach? Thanks for any feedback!
I talked to another guy about building this deck as a competitive deck on a shoe string budget. But I am going to suggest combo is what you want. Combo is usually the cheapest route into legacy in general because most of the cards are relatively cheap and legacy has some really powerful cards that have been printed to death. The 20 dollar limit requires us to know what pricing standards you can use--so we can check your deck against them. TCGplayer low at 20 percent is alot more powerful card than say Star City Games. That aside, I think mono color black combo is what we want.
So first, what does this deck try to do? It is basically reanimator deck, that's much slower than the full powered version, but wins instantly when it does combo out. The basic combo is to cast buried alive or dimir machinations to find buried alive. This lets us put three creatures in our graveyard. So we put in Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer, and Triskelion. We then cast animate dead or exhume on Ooze.
He gains the following to powers from our creatures. We need to look up the oracle text on Phyexian Devoeurer.
Exile the top card of your library: Put X +1/+1 counters on Phyrexian Devourer, where X is the exiled card's converted mana cost.
Remove a +1/+1 counter from Triskelion: Triskelion deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
So now you can flip your whole deck and ping your opponent to death at instant speed. Even if they had a removal spell, you basically keep putting damage on the stack. So the only real problem is counter spells--and that's why you pack 8 disruption spells. Something like a leyline can be an issue but they can't actually afford it easily on your price plan. And of course, you can just attack them with a gigantic ooze without removing the counters.
So in an ideal game:
First turn: Swamp, Dark Ritual, Buried alive.
Second Turn: Animate or Exhume. Win.
But a realistic game might go.
Turn 1, swamp, duress.
Turn 2, Swamp, distress.
Turn 3, swamp, buried alive. (Note, if you have a dark ritual, you win here.)
Turn 4 Animate/Exhume, win.
If you have to use dimir machinations to find buried alive, it delays you a turn, but it still pretty reasonable.
Effectively, you run 8 animate effects and 4 buried alive, but also 4 tutors for buried alive with dimir machinations. We run two copies of our creatures in case we draw one. Distress can be used on ourselves to get one into the graveyard, if we get really unlucky and draw both but in my testing that almost never happened.
In the long term, you grab a single necromancy because dimir machinations can tutor for it. Beseech the Queen is basically a tutor for either half the piece, increasing your tutor count for either half by 4...though its a pricey card for a 20 dollar budget and will have to wait until you get more money. Shred Memory can help lower your price a bit, if its too high, since it can sub for an animate or exhume--like I said in the beginning, its tough to price a deck out with money when different sites use different amounts and prices move up and down so much.
Ultimate price is just a filler kill spell that can by you some time to cast your other combo pieces and can stand in for Beseech until you get the budget or if you want to slowly build into another deck. Monocolor isn't a big deal when most people aren't going to be using two colors anyway. The other way to go with it, was sign in blood. It gave you the power to draw more raw cards, which isn't the worst way to spend your turn by any means.
Finally, you might promote people to use graveyard hate if you do too well (tormod's crypt or relic of prog). Something like pithing needle lets you shut them down. Higher price cards like Rest in Peace or Graf's Cage will probably never see play because of price limits for a sideboard card.
The main advantage this deck has over a pauper list is you can play with rares that aren't worth much like Ooze, Trisk, and Devourer.
Without knowing your metagame, is tough to say, how we'll you do. If a guy is like 24 counter spells, you'll have a tough time even with 8 discard spells. But against any "fair" deck, they probably won't be able to clock you fast enough.
If you are interested, I used to play a monogreen overrun deck that usually could win by turn 5 and I could probably dig up a deck list. It wouldn't be a deck I'd normally suggest for legacy (ie it can't interact with taxes, countermagic, or discard to stop real combo decks), but it might be overwhelming for budget decks. (The idea was to drop stuff from the original Zen block, like Nest Invader that made tokens and ramp up with elves and such. Then on turn 5, overrun/overwhelming stampede and hit for lethal. It was incredibly consistent.
This gives you a lot of card advantage because many of your effects double up and are attached to creatures so they will have value later in the game when you draw them on an empty board. Sacrificing a Black Cat or Shambling Goblin to a Fleshbag Marauder turns into a 2 for 1 and leaves you with a 3/1 on the board afterwards instead of the 1/1 sacrificed.
Cuombajj Witches is really strong and probably shouldn't come out but I wanted to present some additional options. If you like some of the options you can fit the witches in as you like.
Smother is best spot removal in legacy. Diabolic Edict is best edict, though I guess Geth's Verdict is better if in mono B. It's two bucks but I think Hymm to Tourach is worth it. If your running gary use him.
Put a zombie tribal deck together quick. It's cheap as heck! Just something to look at. Korlash, Heir to Blackblade, Liliana's Reaver, Risen Executioner,Undead Warchief, and Skinrender could all be used in the 4 drop spot to curve out if you want. If people are using mono white weenie then Massacre is a must for the SB. I agree that combo could be good but a dedicated graveyard based combo deck will be hated out within a week in a small local meta should you make that deck and do well for a week or two.
Use [card]unnerving evil[\card] with trisk,its a one turn one mana mikaeus that can add a few weenie flyers you can sac if needed to snipe some weenies.great for deathtouch!
You use it once and I believe that's 6 token flyers and trisk still on the board.
Any creature that toughness is counters can be used like trisk and the undying effect.You have TONS of options.With the black cat you can sac a counter and destroy it if your opponent refuses to kill it.Easy to tell,attack,if they take it they don't want to discard so make them.Add a few deathtouch weenies for protection dirt cheap(rats work good) and a few cipher cards and you can have quite the pain in the rear.The one I built was under ten bucks like that.And think about necropede(i think that's what it's called)artifact poison creature that gives neg one counter when dies.cheap and effective. The way this one will play is you won't have any ONE game plan,instead you work with the poison guys as a distraction,then the trisk and undying as pressure in the form of swarming(flyers),and with the use of the cat will slow down your opponent.Its mainly to make your opponent second guess their strngths,most are afraid of poison and discarding,and most can't stop 7 flyers at the same time, add [card]tainted strike[\card] and your opponent will hate that deck.
I'm not sure where to go from here most of the meta is aggro so the board wipes help a bunch but is still a bit of nonBO with the rest of the deck (kill my own stuff, sometimes stabilize without them then they are dead draws).
There is some combo decks emerging I basically just hope for the best against right now(which works) but they are quickly getting better.
Where do I go from here? just save a for a whole new deck? Hymn to tourach? Thanks for any feedback!
4 Cuombajj Witches
4 Chittering rats
4 phyrexian rager
4 gray merchant of Asphodel
2 Gurmag angler
2 dead weight
2 unearth
4 chainer's edict
2 geth's verdict
4 sign in blood
3 tendrils of corruption
2 corrupt
3 barren moor
20 swamp
4 mutilate
1 drown in sorrow
4 illness in the ranks
4 dark ritual
Combo piece 1
4 Buried Alive
4 Dimir Machinations
Combo piece 2
4 animate dead
4 exhume
Disruption
4 distress
4 duress
In the deck
2 necrotic ooze
2 Phyrexian Devourer
2 Triskelion
22 swamp
Long term
1 necromancy
4 Beseech the Queen
Short term
4 ultimate price
4 Shred memory (maybe)
4 Sign in Blood
1 Pithing needle (maybe)
So first, what does this deck try to do? It is basically reanimator deck, that's much slower than the full powered version, but wins instantly when it does combo out. The basic combo is to cast buried alive or dimir machinations to find buried alive. This lets us put three creatures in our graveyard. So we put in Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer, and Triskelion. We then cast animate dead or exhume on Ooze.
He gains the following to powers from our creatures. We need to look up the oracle text on Phyexian Devoeurer.
Exile the top card of your library: Put X +1/+1 counters on Phyrexian Devourer, where X is the exiled card's converted mana cost.
Remove a +1/+1 counter from Triskelion: Triskelion deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
So now you can flip your whole deck and ping your opponent to death at instant speed. Even if they had a removal spell, you basically keep putting damage on the stack. So the only real problem is counter spells--and that's why you pack 8 disruption spells. Something like a leyline can be an issue but they can't actually afford it easily on your price plan. And of course, you can just attack them with a gigantic ooze without removing the counters.
So in an ideal game:
First turn: Swamp, Dark Ritual, Buried alive.
Second Turn: Animate or Exhume. Win.
But a realistic game might go.
Turn 1, swamp, duress.
Turn 2, Swamp, distress.
Turn 3, swamp, buried alive. (Note, if you have a dark ritual, you win here.)
Turn 4 Animate/Exhume, win.
If you have to use dimir machinations to find buried alive, it delays you a turn, but it still pretty reasonable.
Effectively, you run 8 animate effects and 4 buried alive, but also 4 tutors for buried alive with dimir machinations. We run two copies of our creatures in case we draw one. Distress can be used on ourselves to get one into the graveyard, if we get really unlucky and draw both but in my testing that almost never happened.
In the long term, you grab a single necromancy because dimir machinations can tutor for it. Beseech the Queen is basically a tutor for either half the piece, increasing your tutor count for either half by 4...though its a pricey card for a 20 dollar budget and will have to wait until you get more money. Shred Memory can help lower your price a bit, if its too high, since it can sub for an animate or exhume--like I said in the beginning, its tough to price a deck out with money when different sites use different amounts and prices move up and down so much.
Ultimate price is just a filler kill spell that can by you some time to cast your other combo pieces and can stand in for Beseech until you get the budget or if you want to slowly build into another deck. Monocolor isn't a big deal when most people aren't going to be using two colors anyway. The other way to go with it, was sign in blood. It gave you the power to draw more raw cards, which isn't the worst way to spend your turn by any means.
Finally, you might promote people to use graveyard hate if you do too well (tormod's crypt or relic of prog). Something like pithing needle lets you shut them down. Higher price cards like Rest in Peace or Graf's Cage will probably never see play because of price limits for a sideboard card.
The main advantage this deck has over a pauper list is you can play with rares that aren't worth much like Ooze, Trisk, and Devourer.
Without knowing your metagame, is tough to say, how we'll you do. If a guy is like 24 counter spells, you'll have a tough time even with 8 discard spells. But against any "fair" deck, they probably won't be able to clock you fast enough.
If you are interested, I used to play a monogreen overrun deck that usually could win by turn 5 and I could probably dig up a deck list. It wouldn't be a deck I'd normally suggest for legacy (ie it can't interact with taxes, countermagic, or discard to stop real combo decks), but it might be overwhelming for budget decks. (The idea was to drop stuff from the original Zen block, like Nest Invader that made tokens and ramp up with elves and such. Then on turn 5, overrun/overwhelming stampede and hit for lethal. It was incredibly consistent.
Unfortunately no Zombie Lords are in the price range.
I don't know your meta so it's possible that this isn't feasible.
1cc
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Shambling Goblin
3/4 Duress
2cc
4 Blood Scrivener
4 Rakdos Guildmage
4 Black Cat
3/4 Sign in Blood
3cc
3/4 Fleshbag Marauder
3/4 Chittering Rats
5cc
3/4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
This gives you a lot of card advantage because many of your effects double up and are attached to creatures so they will have value later in the game when you draw them on an empty board. Sacrificing a Black Cat or Shambling Goblin to a Fleshbag Marauder turns into a 2 for 1 and leaves you with a 3/1 on the board afterwards instead of the 1/1 sacrificed.
Cuombajj Witches is really strong and probably shouldn't come out but I wanted to present some additional options. If you like some of the options you can fit the witches in as you like.
4 Carnophage
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Stromgald Crusader
4 Sangrophage
4 Cemetery Reaper
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smother
1 Go for the Throat
2 Dismember
1 Doom Blade
2 Sign in Blood
22 Swamp
4 Lifebane Zombie
4 Withered Wretch
4 Duress
Put a zombie tribal deck together quick. It's cheap as heck! Just something to look at. Korlash, Heir to Blackblade, Liliana's Reaver, Risen Executioner,Undead Warchief, and Skinrender could all be used in the 4 drop spot to curve out if you want. If people are using mono white weenie then Massacre is a must for the SB. I agree that combo could be good but a dedicated graveyard based combo deck will be hated out within a week in a small local meta should you make that deck and do well for a week or two.
You use it once and I believe that's 6 token flyers and trisk still on the board.