Merfolk won Grand Prix: Columbus. Let that sit for just a second. Bask in the comfortable, warm feeling surrounding your body. If you care about Legacy at all, then this should be good news for you. Merfolk has been fairly popular lately, and now that should increase with the results from Columbus, allowing you to adequately prepare for it, as well as giving you a great sideboard plan when playing it. So, what does that mean for us regular Joes?
Why did Merfolk win the tournament, exactly? You could argue that Saito is just a master, but I don’t think that does it justice. The deck itself is very strong against blue-based decks, both combo and control alike, but is usually considered to be fairly weak against aggressive strategies like Goblins or Zoo. So why was Saito’s deck different?
Maindeck:
4 Coralhelm Commander
3 Spell Pierce
Sideboard:
4 Engineered Plague
2 Nature’s Ruin
1 Perish
3 Submerge
These cards were just insane for him, giving him the edge in nearly every matchup imaginable. It took just a bit of digging through card searches to find what set of sideboard cards daggered both Zoo and Goblins, and Saito came up with a very respectable list of sideboard options. Engineered Plague has been the bane of Goblins since its inception, and Nature’s Ruin on top of Perish gave him the tools necessary to combat Survival, Zoo, and any other Green-based deck. Perish also doubles as a great way to stop Natural Order into Progenitus decks, giving him a plethora of solid removal cards against decks that might be considered bad matchups. The full four Coralhelm Commanders made me happy as well, since I consider that card to be as strong, if not stronger, than Merrow Reejerey. He can win the game on his own, which few other Merfolk can boast. He also flies when leveled, giving you the ability to just fly over an opposing Tarmogoyf and take the victory.
Submerge is in a different category altogether as far as sideboard cards go, since it doesn’t really hose an archetype, but what it does is gain you incredible board advantage and tempo. Submerge is great for any Green-based matchup because it is usually a race, and Submerge is quite possibly the best tempo card available for a Blue aggro deck. A few lords later and you have already taken control of the game while they are losing their draw step and all of the mana spent to play their dork. If you can land a Standstill after casting a Submerge, then the game is probably over.
Now, what does Merfolk winning the tournament mean for us? If Goblins, Zoo, and every other aggressive deck can’t beat Merfolk, then what does? I am not saying that Merfolk can beat those decks 100% of the time, and they are probably still not entirely favorable matchups, but if you have a much better shot at beating your bad matchups while simultaneously being the most feared deck for both Combo and Counterbalance decks, then you have a very real shot at winning any given Legacy tournament, which Saito proved in the biggest Legacy tournament ever held in the United States. I’m honestly not sure if any deck in the tournament was as good as Saito’s Merfolk list, and his innovation proved fruitful to the tune of $3,500 and 10 Pro Points. Nicely done, sir.
…
As for me, I went to Columbus in a very strange mood. I didn’t want to get my hopes up because it was a very new format for me, and I hadn’t played Legacy at all without the existence of Mystical Tutor. Luckily, Cedric Phillips had been putting up some good results with a nice looking Aluren deck on Magic Online, so that is where I started. When Kali and I arrived in Columbus on Friday, I spent the majority of the afternoon trying to get Imperial Recruiters. It was a fairly difficult task, since they were stacking about $200 each, but I was finally able to get in touch with Adam Cai, who is apparently a legend around my area for owning 4+ of every card in Legacy. Needless to say, he is a good friend to have. Thanks again, Adam!
After acquiring $800 worth of Uncommons ($1000, according to some dealers’ sell prices), I went on a journey to find the rest of the deck. After it was all said and done, here is the Aluren list I decided to play:
Creatures (18)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 1 Bone Shredder
- 4 Imperial Recruiter
- 1 Cavern Harpy
- 4 Coiling Oracle
- 2 Dream Stalker
- 1 Parasitic Strix
Lands (21)
Spells (21)
There are plenty of variations on the Aluren combo, but this one works very well. Recruiter is pretty awesome, since he is a one-card-combo with Aluren, chaining through the rest of your deck to find the necessary pieces. I didn’t know exactly how the deck worked a week before the tournament, because I’m an idiot, but here is how someone taught me to walk through it:
Play Aluren. Play Recruiter, fetching another Recruiter. Play that one and fetch another, so that you have three in play. Getting the fourth is optional, and you might want to leave one in your deck while you are comboing in case they interrupt it somehow. After having 3 Recruiters, search up a Dream Stalker, bouncing Recruiter, repeat this getting the second Dream Stalker, then get a Cavern Harpy, which bounces Dream Stalker, which lets you bounce Recruiter again, getting the Parasitic Strix, going infinite with the Cavern Harpy. Make sure that you re-bounce both Dream Stalkers before “going off” with the Parasitic Strix, so that you can use them to save your Strix if they try to kill your guy in response to casting the Cavern Harpy. Whew. Got it? Good.
After building the initial list, I thought that the original Swamp seemed unnecessary, mostly because you only cast one black spell in your maindeck: Cabal Therapy. You rarely ever cast the Cavern Harpy, since it is mostly just a combo piece. Sometimes you have to play some Beasts and turn them sideways, but you will rarely win those games anyways. If you are playing around Wasteland, you will almost assuredly search up the Island or Forest first, and I don’t honestly think you need more than one of either. If you want to make casting your spells a little harder, you can add in a few more basics without much of a drawback, keeping yourself safe from Price of Progress, but I don’t think burn is usually fast enough to keep up with your average draws.
Birds of Paradise plays a very important role in the deck that no other creature in Magic can really play. On top of being able to fix your mana, he can accelerate into your combo, and is fodder for your Cabal Therapy and post-board Natural Orders. I can’t really tell you how often during the tournament I fetched up a Basic Forest on the first turn, played a Birds of Paradise, and used it to eventually cast virtually all of my spells. While he is a fragile animal, he plays the role you need him to play, and is one of the best cards in the deck. Coiling Oracle is similar, but he will accelerate you less often while having the huge upside of being able to be pitched to Force of Will. The deck is criminally low on cards you can pitch to Force of Will, and having an extra Oracle lying around is always nice. Additionally, he is a combo of sorts with Cavern Harpy if you have drawn Aluren, becoming a Yawgmoth’s Bargain.
Imperial Recruiter is half of your combo, but plays a very cool role post-board. If you are siding into the Natural Order package, then you won’t have quite enough cards to take out, and leaving yourself a Recruiter package is always nice. Llawan, Venser, Bone Shredder, and Ghitu Slinger are all solid cards to tutor up against a variety of matchups, giving you outs to things like Meddling Mage and Ethersworn Canonist. Natural Order into Progenitus is really hard for people to deal with, and often you will leave them with blanks like Krosan Grip in hand while you kill them with a 10/10. Protection from everything? Don’t mind if I do. Most versions of Counterbalance have very few outs to Progenitus, making it the combo you should shoot for when figuring out how to sideboard against a control deck. Packing maximum disruption, you should keep them off balance with things like Krosan Grip and discard until you take it home with two swings.
As far as going over every matchup, I don’t know enough about them to give you great sideboarding advice, and I was changing things up constantly to keep my opponents off balance, so that they would rarely know which combo I was on. Each match I would side in the entire fifteen and sideboard out fifteen cards that left me with one or both of the combos. It felt a lot like playing with Thopter Depths, having lots of disruption and multiple combos to play with, and the tournament itself was an absolute blast. I recommend playing Legacy to anyone who has access to the cards, because it is incredibly diverse and the interaction is awesome. There is enough disruption in the format for any deck to have a viable shot against any other, but building your deck correctly will ultimately determine your performance (as well as paltry things like playing correctly and sideboarding properly). If you want to do well in this hostile format, learning things for yourself like how matchups play out, how to play around the counterspells, how to fight Wasteland, and how to beat Force of Will. It take a lot of practice, and I made countless mistakes that I could see after I had made them, but at the time most of my plays seemed reasonable for what I thought my opponent had in hand or what they were trying to accomplish.
Cabal Therapy is an incredibly difficult card to play with, but is much better for the maindeck than either Duress or Thoughtseize for a few reasons. The first and most important reason is that you play Intuition in your deck. That card is just bonkers, doubling as a combo enabler as well as a way to tutor up three copies of Cabal Therapy so that you can sufficiently wreck your opponent’s hand. The other reason is that, most of the time, you will just need to name the only card in their hand or deck that could stop you. Stifle and Force of Will are the main offenders, and naming those right off the bat is the safest play, but after sideboarding it can get really tricky. Cards like Ethersworn Canonist and Spell Pierce can really ruin your day if you stuck to the Aluren plan, and a lot of times you have to get the read off your opponent to figure out what they have in hand. Other times you will just name Tarmogoyf and buy yourself time.
As for the actual tournament, I continued my streak of making Day 2 at Grand Prix, but failed to actually make the money at 10-6. It was a disappointing Day 2, failing to cash, but I learned a lot from the tournament and gained a ton of experience. Here’s how it went:
Rounds 1 & 2 – Bye*
Round 3 against Mike Nyberg playing Bant Survival
Game 1 was a tricky affair, and I wasn’t sure what he was playing until the third game. In the first, he played a few of the all-stars in Bant like Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique, and Knight of the Reliquary, while I set up my combo and used Cabal Therapy to keep his disruption in check. On board he had a lethal Vendilion Clique and Qasali Pridemage, and I had just played Aluren. I had a Recruiter in hand, but he could kill the Aluren in response and stop me mid-combo. I decided to just play my Parasitic Strix mid-combat to block, and he decided to attempt to kill me by using the Pridemage on my Strix. After doing so, I went off with Recruiter, and his singleton draw step had not yielded a Stile or anything threatening. He conceded after I showed him how the combo worked.
Game 2 he steamrolled me with creatures and disruption, and I decided to go all-in on the Progenitus plan after he showed me a hand with multiple Krosan Grips, and after he named Cavern Harpy with Meddling Mage.
Game 3 he played a Survival early on, and Vendilion Cliqued me revealing Aluren, Natural Order, and two fetchlands. He decided to take the Aluren, which let me get Progenitus into play after fetching up a Dryad Arbor. He died shortly after, but lamented that he could have won if he had drawn a land, so he could tutor up Llawan and lock me out.
3-0
Round 4 against Chris Woltereck playing Lands
This match was not really close. I had the combo in hand both games, and was ready to go off on Turn 3, but in the first he locked me out with Wasteland and Ghost Quarter backed by Life from the Loam and Exploration. In the second game he played a Gaddock Teeg early on, and I did some jumping through hoops to find my Bone Shredder or Ghitu Slinger. After ripping the Slinger to kill the Teeg, I had a single turn window to draw a land to kill him, but missed and was locked out.
3-1
Round 5 against Sam Black playing Survival
Game 1 I combo off very early, but probably lose if he has a Qasali Pridemage or Harmonic Sliver in his deck. Oddly enough, he doesn’t and I show him the Recruiter and perform the actions.
Game 2 he mulligans to 4 and I kill him eventually when I draw into the combo with Brainstorm.
4-1
Round 6 against Dan Wolten playing Mono Black Aggro
Game 1 involves him using two Wastelands, Hymn to Tourach, Duress, Thoughtseize, and a few creatures to kill me. Not sure there was anything I could do here.
Game 2 he mulliganed and applied no pressure. I was able to stick an Aluren, and eventually drew a Brainstorm, hitting the Recruiter necessary to go off.
Game 3 I had both combos in the deck, and was basically all-in on Progenitus. He showed me a Gatekeeper of Malakir and I was dead shortly after.
4-2
Round 7 against Raymond Veenis playing 4-Color Blue
I actually drew the nut Turn 2 kill this game with Birds and City of Traitors, and he could only stare in amazement when I showed him how the combo worked. “Nice deck,” he responded.
Game 2 I drew three Natural Orders to battle through Force of Will while his grip consisted of multiple Krosan Grips, and his board contained a second turn Meddling Mage naming Aluren.
5-2
Round 8 against Andrew Morrow playing Goblins
Game 1 I combo with Aluren after using Cabal Therapy to make sure he didn’t have any shenanigans with Goblin Matron into Goblin Sharpshooter.
Game 2 is pretty much the same, except he begins to cast his creatures when I have Aluren in play. He didn’t know that it worked for both players, and I combo’d off holding three Recruiters so that I could combo in response to his Goblin Matron, just in case.
6-2
Round 9 against Rafael Coqueiro playing for Day 2
Rafael was playing a solid Counterbalance list, and I eventually killed him in Game 1 with Cavern Harpy and Coiling Oracle combined with Aluren, drawing into multiple Force of Will and the like with a ton of power of guys in play. He blind-flip hit on Counterbalance a few times, which was bad for me, but I fought through and won through double Force of Will.
Game 2 he set up the lock and I conceded to save time, since my hand had no gas and he had a full grip and active Jace.
Game 3 I went all in on the Progenitus plan, but waited until I drew a Cabal Therapy before going off. I put Progenitus into play after he missed hitting a four-drop on top of his deck with Counterbalance and Divining Top, giving me a 10/10 and eventually a victory on the fourth turn of extra turns. Good thing I scooped Game 2!
7-2 and Day 2!
Round 10 against David Fitzgerald playing Belcher
This game was strange. I won the roll and led with an Underground Sea in order to cast Brainstorm. I had Force of Will and another blue card in hand, so I was fine with him imprinting an Empty the Warrens on Chrome Mox. He went for a Ritual, which resolved, and I countered a Seething Song, leaving him with three cards in hand and only B in his pool. I was afraid of him having a second Empty the Warrens in hand, which is why I countered the Rituals, and used Therapy on the next turn naming Empty the Warrens. Surprisingly, he showed me Charbelcher, which was weird because I had led with Underground Sea, and fully expected him to be comboing into an Empty the Warrens instead of the Belcher. He drew blanks after I flashed it back, and I comboed shortly thereafter.
Game 2 I didn’t have Force of Will, but I did have a Turn 3 combo, when his first two turns consisted of playing, then eventually activating the Charbelcher for… 14.
8-2
Round 11 against Max Tietze playing Goblins
Unfortunately, this opponent knew how to play Goblins pretty well, and tutored for Sharpshooter when I cast the Aluren, shutting me out of the game rather easily, since he had a Goblin Warchief in play.
Game 2 was equally brutal, but I just didn’t draw anything relevant after my opener. Brainstorm revealed lands, and he put me on a very fast clock with a Goblin Piledriver.
8-3
Round 12 against David Price playing New Horizons
Game 1 he has a slow draw, and I resolve Intuition for Cabal Therapy to clear the way for the Aluren combo.
Game 2 he smashes me with monsters, but shows me a hand full of Krosan Grips and Qasali Pridemages, and I quickly side out the Alurens.
Game 3 I resolve a Natural Order into Progenitus after we have a drawn-out affair. Unfortunately for him, he had no answer.
9-3
Round 13 against Patrick Sullivan (my nemesis!) playing Mono Red
Game 1 I have a passable opener, and use Cabal Therapy naming (and hitting) Price of Progress. This leaves him with just a Grim Lavamancer in play, and a Lava Spike in hand. He uses Grim Lavamancer to pile on the damage while I fail to draw any of my combo pieces from Brainstorm and shuffling. I die quickly.
Game 2 I Force his Pyrostatic Pillar and combo out on Turn 4.
Game 3 he kills me quickly, but I would have comboed him out with Aluren if given one more turn. The games were short and not very interactive, but Patrick is a cool guy and it was a pleasure playing against him. It is nice to see Red mages that actually know what they’re doing on occasion.
9-4
At this point there’s no way I can make Top 16, which sucks because I missed out on the PTQ. I decide to just trudge onward and try to make a bit of money and get a few Pro Points. However, my only real goal for the weekend was to qualify for Amsterdam, and I failed miserably. I shake it off and get ready to battle.
Round 14 against Martin Lohman playing Confidant Counterbalance
Game 1 he wrecks me with Spell Pierce, Stifle, and Force of Will, as well as locking me out with Counterbalance and Divining Top.
Game 2 I cast and flashback an early Cabal Therapy, ripping his hard to shreds, then resolve Natural Order.
Game 3 I Thoughtseize him twice before resolving another Natural Order. He digs and digs but has no answer and dies shortly after.
10-4
Round 15 against Dave Williams playing Aluren mirror
This match was really awkward, but amazingly fun. Game 1 took 25 minutes, and consisted of us beating each other down with 1/1s. He was forced to use Force of Will removing Parasitic Strix in order to counter my Aluren, which would have allowed me to draw 15+ cards with Coiling Oracle and Cavern Harpy. We played Draw-Go for a while, but he stuck a Sensei’s Divining Top. I punted a few times (I think), and didn’t draw an Imperial Recruiter for 12+ turns.
Game 2 we both were on the Natural Order plan, but he ripped my hand apart with Cabal Therapy and resolved Progenitus. I had two turns to draw a Recruiter to go get Llawan, but never drew her and died in two attacks.
We ended up playing about 3-4 more games after that just for fun, because the post-board matchup was so interesting! We both had sided out our Aluren combo, and these games were incredibly eye-opening. Dave is an awesome guy and I would have gladly played 10 more games against him. Rarely will you find someone you can test against over and over playing the same deck or matchup and not get bored. Dave was a very chatty guy with a lot of funny things to say, and he really deserves all of his good fortune and success.
10-5
Round 16 against Matt Hetzner playing for Top 64
Matt was playing New Horizons, and he kills me fairly quickly in the first game with Stifles and Force of Will, backed by some pressure in Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf. I had a Turn 2 kill if he didn’t have a Wasteland, but he actually drew 2 and completely wrecked me.
Game 2 I cast Natural Order after using a Bone Shredder to kill a Meddling Mage naming Natural Order. Cabal Therapy made sure the coast was clear for the 10/10. I actually got to use a neat trick with Progenitus, sacrificing himself to Natural Order to go get himself, virtually giving him Vigilance. I couldn’t have won Game 2 without doing so. Progenitus is a replacement effect and shuffles in immediately, so he is in the deck by the time the card resolves.
Game 3 was very close, but he drew very well and I couldn’t fight off his pressure. He played a few Meddling Mages and I was never really in it. I congratulate him on his finish and wander off to give back the cards I had borrowed.
While the tournament was a bust, it wasn’t a complete blowout. Kali got 2 boxes of M11 and a slew of sweet Judge foils for judging both days, which softened the blow (and helped pay for our plane tickets). After the tournament, I decided to draft while Kali went to dinner with some Judges. Brad Nelson was in the room when we got back, getting some much-deserved rest. He got to sneak into Top 8 due to a last-minute DQ, which resulted from a guy exclaiming that he had won a bet that he would make Top 8. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but either way he broke rules that are very clear at the tournament level: Gambling is not allowed in Magic. There is more than one reason why Ante cards are banned. Congrats to Brad and his new Level 6 status (and a free ticket to Amsterdam. How lucky!). He really deserves it. He’s a good player and a great guy, and I couldn’t be happier for him. Thanks for a fun weekend!
After getting back to the hotel room, what do I do after 10 grueling hours of Magic? Switch on the computer and play some MOL. I think I have a problem…
Thanks for reading.
Todd
strong sad on MTGO