Mental Misstep is gone and we're back in the glory days before New Phyrexia. Back to the cyclical metagame development we got to see in years past. Everybody is happy and we can all play whatever we want. Wait what? The same people are already complaining about blue's dominance again because we had an Open Top 8 full of combo followed by one full of control? Really? After two events? The cycle we had is developing again? Maybe nobody should listen to people calling for bannings anymore. Ever.

As long as there is no single dominant deck/strategy leave the damn format alone at least for the six to twelve months it takes to shake out. I'm quite confident we'd have seen more aggro- and non-blue strategies in these two Top 8s had Misstep not been banned considering Maverick finally started to develop some traction in the US during the last Open before the banning.

Enough of me whining about not getting to play with my toys any more though. I'm not here today to rant about bannings or discuss Legacy format philosophy. (Though this thread's subject shows an official attitude threatening enough to what Eternal is about to nearly make me do it. Please stop believing there are “right” and “wrong” ways to play Magic—other than by the rules that is.)

No this is the last time I get to write before GP Amsterdam rolls around and I'd like to present you with a nice big snapshot (or rather panorama picture considering the size) of what is out there. Because one thing is for sure Legacy is big. No bigger than that. There are more decks than you can easily remember even. Today I'll try to create a place where all of them are etched into the internet for all eternity. Well at least for some time alright?

Be warned though. There will be a lot of decks in here that aren't common. Some are quite rarely played actually. I'm going for completeness not a picture of the metagame itself. With the still rather undefined metagame after a new set release and a banning that seems comparatively futile. Instead I'd like to show you the beauty and variety of decks in the format. The pool of decks you might just happen to run into in Legacy is huge and by reading this article you will usually have at least an inkling of what your opponent is up to. Who knows you might even find something new you'd like to play!

I've given sources for the decklists whenever I just copied them from someone. If they're listed as my decks that doesn't mean I built them just that I stuck my gauntlet list (gauntlet in the large sense—it doesn't mean I test against all of these for obvious reasons) in there. The lists are mainly meant to give you an idea what the archetype basically looks like. If you plan on playing any of these decks yourself do some research and play some games then tune the deck to your liking. It'll help you pilot the deck somewhat competently too.

A word on classification methodology: I'm going to try to class each deck under a macro-archetype header (aggro combo aggro-control etc.) and create subgroups to further diversify depending on the engines they use (Loam Tribal Hymn to Tourach Stifle or something larger like “blue-based” or Tempo) when I think it's appropriate. That way you can skim through if you're looking for something in particular.

This is going to take some time so let's jump right in.

Aggro

Tribal

Goblins

The little green men have been a staple of the format for a long time.Super-SolRings1/1 Demonic Tutors and 2/2 haste Fact of Fictions combine into an aggressive deck that can win on turn three (though rarely) as well as disrupt your mana and overwhelm you in the late game with card advantage.

Elves

Elves NO

Elves is the tribal deck with the biggest archetype range in the format but all Elves decks share one quality: the ability to produce absurd amounts of mana very rapidly. These two use that mana to throw a large number of creatures into play and smash face or enable a combo-esque beatdown kill through Mirror Entity or Natural Order for Progenitus (as Elves are conveniently green) respectively. The other versions of Elves based around Glimpse of Nature that bear a stronger resemblance to the old Extended lists can be found further down in the aggro-combo category.

Pure Beats

Zoo

Zoo is the classic good stuff beatdown deck and the true heir to Sligh in Legacy. Run out a bunch of hyper-aggressive one-drops and either keep the board clean with burn or aim it at the opponent's head to end the game even faster. As fast as the strategy is it's a dog to true combo and the sideboard well reflects that.

Affinity

Long gone are the days of Mirrodin in which Arcbound Ravager was the faerie godmother giving you undeserved wins. Today that guy isn't even good enough. The artifact aggro archetype however can deliver quite the beating. Just flood the board with artifacts strap a Cranial Plating on Ornithopter and a few swings should be enough. Should attacking not be an option for some reason Tezzeret will usually be a one-turn clock anyway. Drain life for a million? Seems good.

Midrange

Big Zoo

Being blisteringly fast isn't the only way to take advantage of a 3/3 for G. Especially if you expect to see a lot of aggressive decks going bigger is quite the reasonable plan. The above list is a pretty close port of Rubin Zoo from Extended in which Punishing Fire gives you a lot of inevitability against both aggro and control while the creature suite delivers a lot of size for not a lot of mana. Take a look at the sideboard if you want to know what that strategy isn't good against.

Maverick

And here we have the other end of the beatdown spectrum. Maverick is pretty good at bashing face with Knight of the Reliquary and Stoneforge Mystic but the deck's real beauty lies in how much of a grind it is to actually do anything meaningful against the rest of the deck's creatures. Whatever you plan on doing there will be some bear that stops you cold and Green Sun's Zenith and the Enlightened Tutor board make sure Maverick will find it. Don't be surprised if games feel like you're playing a prison deck not an aggressive one. It just so happens that the lock pieces are also quite adept at ending the game.

Maverick/U

How do you make a G/W prison deck better? Easy give it a minor countermagic component so that it becomes even more annoying to play against! Oh and you obviously need to add a few Jaces. Mustn't forget the Jaces.

Death & Taxes

Legacy's resident White Weenie deck this is quite different from inferior traditional implementations of the archetype. Instead of relying on a pure beatdown strategy something other colors (say Zoo above) are much more well suited to do Death and Taxes is a utility beatdown deck that excels at using cute interactions to grind out game-winning advantages. The defining features of the deck are the four Karakas which combine with Mangara of Corondor to set up a repeatable Vindicate engine and one that becomes both hard to disrupt and extremely mana-efficient with a Vial on three. If you're playing any semblance of a fair deck getting Vindicated every turn is sure to put you in a bad mood.

Splashed versions of the deck have also seen reasonable success:

Green and Taxes

Splashing green doesn't fundamentally change the deck's plan but allows you to both have much bigger beaters and adds consistency to your Vindicate endgame (because Knight of the Reliquary finds Karakas). Scryb Ranger is very good here providing ample defense against all kinds of Merfolk (especially if he carries Equipment) while allowing you to multi-Vindicate even without Karakas or Vial (Flickerwisp enabled similar shenanigans in the mono-white list but needs Vial to be in play).

Junk and Taxes

So the green-splash variant is really missing some card advantage and interaction outside the battlefield you say? Well a little bit of black goes a long way giving you access to both Dark Confidant to solve the former issue (making Mother of Runes a lot better in the process) and Thoughtseize to deal with the latter. The more colors we see being splashed the fewer Karakas make the cut—which makes sense as the regular game plan just becomes much more viable—but having a few Karakas threatens obscenity in the late game and gives the deck a true trump in drawn-out midrange or control fights.

Aggro Loam

G/W/B Donner Loam

R/G/B/(w)

Aggro Loam occupies the opposite spectrum of Zoo as far as aggressive decks are concerned. Where Zoo tries to put you away blisteringly fast Loam marries the ridiculous card-drawing power of Loam plus cycling lands to an aggressive beatdown game assuming it'll get you one way or the other. Depending on the situation the deck can either go for a fast prison plan by constantly recurring Wastelands drop fat on turns one and two to just beat you down or settle in for the long grind—which it is likely to win considering its draw engine is nigh impossible to stop as long as the Loam player is careful.

Soul Sisters

The basic idea behind this deck is the same as in the Standard version which doesn't bode well considering the deck wasn't even Tier 1. One thing changes the equation though: Martyr of Sands. Due to the amount of life it makes you gain it can get Serra Ascendant to swing for six as early as turn 2 and even just the life gain itself makes it very hard for aggressive decks to race especially if combined with Proclamation of Rebirth.

I'm not convinced running a bunch of slightly better Mons' Goblin Raiders is really the kind of strategy you should embrace in Legacy but there also are quite a few worse things to do.

Aggro-Control

Tempo

Canadian Thresh

Ah the godfather of all tempo decks. Canadian Thresh has been around nearly unchanged for longer than just about any other Legacy archetype other than Goblins. Stifles Wastelands (aka the tempo engine) and ridiculous amounts of countermagic keep the opponent from doing anything relevant until one of the few beaters has finally whittled them down—which often happens surprisingly early because a stock of Lightning Bolts is suddenly liquidated and in turn liquidates the opponent.

Nimble Mongoose deserves special mention here as it seems quite underpowered on first sight. The ability to run out a creature that doesn't need to be protected is very powerful in a deck like this as cheap removal is one of the first things to not be affected by the mana-denial theme. If your threats all die at that point you'll be in for a hard time as the deck's spells are quite underpowered against a fully functional opponent. An early Nimble Mongoose makes sure the game won't develop to that point.

Next Level Threshold

Named after its roots in Canadian Thresh this deck has developed into something quite different. Instead of trying to win the game before the opponent has recovered from the early disruption Next Level Thresh uses the early advantage to make sure its own powerful spells come online first. Instead of a game plan the tempo plan has become a means to carry you until your actual endgame comes online.

Dark Thresh

While Canadian Thresh knows that the opponent will break out of its disruption at some point and just plans to burn the opponent to a nice crisp once that is imminent Dark Thresh harnesses the power of The Great One (Bob Maher or rather his invitational card Dark Confidant). If Confidant lives there is no breaking out of the continuous stream of disruption making Bob the deadliest threat imaginable. If you don't deal with it right now—quite the tall order against all that disruption—you probably won't get the chance again later.

Team America

You need Nimble Mongoose to have a surefire way to kill the opponent if they draw out of their quite intentionally inflicted mana woes you say? How about just dropping a dragon on them instead? Won't they just be dead before that problem ever comes up? Team America says yep that's it exactly.

Bant/New Horizons

Bant-Blade

New Horizons

Both of these actually work quite similarly to their differently colored cousins. You either plop down a faux Baneslayer instead of a dragon or get a fatty and repeatable disruption engine in one by running Knight of the Reliquary (hint: Wasteland is in fact a land).

Esper America

As the name indicates this is essentially Team America trading Goyfs and black removal for Stoneforges and Swords to Plowshares. Who said Legacy naming conventions are needlessly cute?

U/W Vial

This on the other hand is quite the brew. Instead of trying to use Stifle to mess with the opponent's mana you get Weathered Wayfarer to fetch out a Wasteland every turn (which you have an infinite supply of should Jotun Grunt come online). The deck can play the whole game on one or two lands thanks to Vial and a low curve. This hasn't seen success for some time as far as I know and might just be outdated but I wouldn't be surprised to run into it from time to time. Fathom Seer in particular is quite the interesting way to both produce card advantage and get your own lands off the table to make Wayfarer active.

Discard-based

BUG Snapcaster

Tiago Chan is in the house. BUG control decks were already good before Innistrad but Snapcaster Mage flashing back Hymn to Tourach is quite brutal. Instead of controlling the flow of the game through the traditional countermagic only a bare minimum of actual on-stack interaction is available in these new decks in large part because Snapcaster simply plays much nicer with proactive disruption. Essentially what you're trying to do is to trade two- and even three-for-one multiple times until something takes it home. Tarmogoyf's big body is what completes the decks creature defense by the way.

U/B Faeries

Re-tune the just mentioned BUG lists to have a better manabase and this is what you get. Bitterblossom plays defense against single threats admirably and also presents a very hard-to-answer threat against opposing control decks. I'd be a little concerned about the amount of damage this deck deals to itself though especially considering that there isn't much that can actually kill the opponent fast.

Eva Green

Suicide Black at its finest. Discard throws the opponent off their game for a few turns just enough for something big—say good old Goofy—to take them out. Who says you need to play blue to deliver that kind of one-two punch? Bitterblossom again makes an appearance and seems very sweet here. An enchantment is one of the harder threats to get rid of meaning it's the perfect thing to punch through early with all the discard.

B/W Blade

Now green offers some interesting incentives for a disruptive aggro deck but ever since Stoneforge Mystic and Mirran Crusader hit the scene Tarmogoyf isn't clearly the best guy to beat down with any more. Marrying a similar amount of disruption (don't overlook the Tidehollow Scullers) to a white beatdown plan instead of a green one also means Mom makes another appearance to break open fair deck matchups.

Junk

The next logical step after Eva Green and B/W Blade is obviously to see if you can't simply take all the best beaters and smash face with them backed once again by the black disruption package. The creature quality in Junk is through the roof and this is what I'd consider the logical result of tuning both B/W Blade and Eva Green. That doesn't mean others necessarily agree with me on that though which is why the two-color variants still see play and success.

Team Italia

So just having the biggest baddest creatures isn't good enough for you? Want more removal and tighter ways to control the board? Cue Grim Lavamancer and Lightning Bolt. With Stoneforge Mystic and Figure of Destiny providing relevant enough threats sacrificing some raw power in your creatures for the ability to kill a lot of opposing stuff is definitely a valid approach especially if you expect a lot of tribal decks.

The Gate

Now this is a weird version of mono-black ... uhm ... control? Aggro? A ton of creatures as well as Innocent Blood. Bitterblossom Dark Confidant (this time with even more four-drops) and Thoughtseize all make it into the same deck again. Feels a bit bizarre one has to admit. The beauty of it is that the resulting deck can reasonably play whichever role is most appropriate. Mono-Black Control with twelve creature removal? Check. Eleven discard spells and your own draw engine? Check. A fast clock thanks to flying titans for four? Check. Not exactly what I'd be running in a tournament but quite the interesting piece of design work nonetheless.

Chalice-based

Faerie Stompy

Chalice of the Void for one is quite the blowout against a number of decks and the Stompy archetype (which doesn't have anything to do with what Stompy originally was by the way) tries to fully utilize that power. A turn-one Chalice followed by a turn-two 4/3 flyer spells game often enough to be actually frightening. Who needs all those Stifle-Wasteland shenanigans when they can simply keep the opponent from playing relevant spells with a single card and run out a bunch of cheap fat?

Dragon Stompy

Speaking of cards that keep the opponent from playing the game all on their lonesome there is more than Chalice. A first or second turn Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon will leave many opponents totally unable to anything at all. Seems worth building around as long as there are enough threats to make sure the opponent won't have time to topdeck into some basics. Koth and Rakdos Pit Dragon definitely count.

Midrange

Punishing Fire RUG

Oh look Legacy Jund! Yeah sure the colors are all wrong but the strategy is actually pretty close. Honestly I'm not sure how much I need to say about this deck that isn't evident from looking at the list but one thing you should remember is that Brainstorm perfectly sets you up to Bloodbraid Elf into Ancestral Vision. Free Ancestral Recall? Don't mind if I do!

Nice Fit aka Veteran Explorer Rock

I fully admit I'm not familiar with this deck but I suspect it plays out pretty closely to traditional Rock decks. What makes the deck special is Veteran Explorer. Saccing that to Cabal Therapy seems like solid value considering the opponent should have far fewer spells to actually cast with their lands while you're just getting started (not to mention a lot of decks either don't have basic lands or can't really abuse the mana boost).

Highly Aggressive

Blue Zoo

Did they really need to print a blue Wild Nacatl? I mean it isn't like blue is exactly underplayed even without throwing three-power one-drops in its direction. As to the deck remember playing against Zoo and how hard it is to contain its fast starts? Now imagine doing the same thing through Daze. Yep that was my reaction too.

Merfolk

The original Fish deck is alive and kicking especially thanks to all the new lords the deck has gotten in the last few years. A little bit of countermagic can go a long way when you play a Crusade every turn that can itself attack. While the above list is mono-blue splashes are common with black being a favorite ever since Saito took down GP Columbus 2010 with that approach.

CounterSlivers aka Meathooks

Speaking of mass lords here is a tribe that has fallen out of favor ever since Merfolk printings made running a mono-blue manabase in a similar deck possible. The original swarm-based aggro-control deck (there is a reason aggro-control in general was referred to as CounterSliver at some point) still packs some punch especially because Crystalline Sliver makes things very hard to answer. Most people seem to have decided the color hassle isn't worth the benefits though and I'd have to agree. Merfolk's Lords give a fair impression of Sinew and Muscle Sliver (if not better) and ever since Kira was discovered the pure blue tribe even gets its very own Crystalline variant.

Control

Countermagic-based

U/W Blade

So the banning of Mental Misstep was supposed to kill this deck right? Well it's still alive and going strong so don't get rid of your Ancient Grudges just yet. A pure control deck from most angles U/W Blade uses Stoneforge Mystic as its very own Baneslayer Angel for 1W echo and thereby gives itself the ability to go beatdown when the opportunity arises. A few years ago it was Tarmogoyf; now it's Mystic. By the way Batterskull happens to be a much better option for the aggro plan in a control deck because it can also fill the shoes of the classic unkillable finisher when necessary.

U/R Stifle

This is what happens when you take the concept of Next Level Threshold to the extreme and cut all the pure beaters for more control elements. Who needs Tarmogoyf when you can Trinket Mage for Phyrexian Dreadnought?

U/B Control

My reaction to seeing this list was “Wow that deck really has all the cards I'd want! How did he get all that into the deck?!” Essentially this deck is to the BUG Snapcaster lists what U/R Stifle is to Next Level Threshold. Maximized card-drawing and disruption in a more stable manabase with a few random beaters to clean up the mess at your leisure.

Counterbalance-based

Counterbalance-Thopter

The Counterbalance-Top lock has been somewhat forgotten during the age of Mental Misstep but the engine is still more potent than its popularity would indicate. Instead of closing out with random creatures the Thopter Combo delivers a win condition of undeniable strength that even has synergy with new Legacy poster boy Stoneforge Mystic. Enlightened Tutor serves to pull everything together to lock out creature combat the stack and everything in between; there isn't much this deck can't answer. A forgotten contender but one that you should keep an eye on.

U/W CounterTop

Just because you can play an Enlightened Tutor engine doesn't mean you have to though. By simply going with the classic Next Level Blue plan of board-dominating creature plus CB-lock you avoid a lot of self-inflicted card disadvantage. The CB plan also solves the problem of protecting your Stoneforge Mystics now that you don't have Misstep any more quite neatly.

Supreme Blue

And here we are with the quintessential goodstuff Counterbalance control list. This deck was considered the best in the format for quite a while till people learned how to beat it. Just because it can be beaten doesn't mean it's suddenly bad though. The deck isn't the best at anything but very good at everything. It isn't the best at setting up CB Top (the E-Tutor builds are); it isn't the best at beating down (only four Goyfs); and it doesn't have the most countermagic or removal (like Landstill Next Level Thresh or U/W Blade). Instead it's decent of playing all these roles. Players that value flexibility and adaptability more than laser-focused efficiency in implementing a single plan can often profit from playing something like this.

Prison

Stax

Let me be direct: I think this deck stinks. Badly. You're playing a control deck without library manipulation with fragile lands an absurdly high curve and very specific answers. That being said the answers pack power commensurate to their cost and if you draw things in the correct order in the correct matchups you'll be blowing out a lot of people.

Lands

Where Aggro Loam uses Life from the Loam as a powerful late -game engine to support its beatdown plan Lands is fully focused on abusing the card. The whole deck is geared towards recurring and putting into play a huge array of powerful lands that first make it impossible for the opponent to win (or actually do anything relevant) before incidentally killing them with manlands or the Mindslaver-Academy Ruins lock.

Eternal Garden

Essentially a different incarnation of the lands deck Eternal Garden gains the raw power of Knight of the Reliquary and resilience to graveyard hate in exchange for some consistency as far as totally soul-crushing Loam abuse is concerned.

Enchantress

A classic fortress strategy Enchantress lives and dies by its namesake cards. By turning all enchantments into cantrips you get an engine that rapidly spirals out of control once it starts running. As all those enchantments also make it harder and harder for opponents to kill you the game will be essentially locked up at some point which is when the Enchantress player is going to find and drop one of the few actual win conditions and dispatch the opponent in short order.

The Mighty Quinn

Yes this is actually a classic mono-white control deck and one that is close to Enchantress in spirit if not in execution. Scrying Sheets Sensei's Divining Top and Snow lands make sure you never miss a land drop while drawing good cards; said good cards make sure dying is not an option. Once the game is locked with a Sceptered Orim's Chant the Painter-Grindstone combo delivers the finishing blow.

Tezzeret Foundry

When Tezzeret Agent of Bolas was released David Gearhart took up the challenge of trying to make it as good as it could possibly be. Turns out that it is pretty freaking good actually. One of the few control decks to possess actual mana acceleration this deck can move into a dominating position very early on and rapidly move from controlling to winning with either the Tezzeret ultimate or a swarm of Thopters.

Jace-based

U/B/G Landstill

While Landstill stepped back into the top tier for a while thanks to Mental Misstep the granddaddy of control decks in the format can still be pretty feisty even without it. The BUG variant essentially splashes both black and green for the awesome power that is Pernicious Deed but aside from that commitment it's all business as usual. Destroy everything on the opponent's side of the board counter the rest and end the game with Mishra's Factory or Jace. I suspect this is the kind of deck Liliana of the Veil will find a home in eventually.

U/W Landstill

By giving up Deed you get better spot removal as well as Decree of Justice which is quite devastating under Standstill. I feel compelled to mention that while the list above has Isochron Scepters that is far from standard and there exists a wide variety of variants on this theme.

CAB JaceTM

Couldn't just ignore my own baby could I? CAB Jace is really a fully dedicated Jace deck and trades the conditionality of Standstill for the deckbuilding requirements of Treasure Hunt. The deck is very powerful in metagames that are dominated by creature-based win conditions but has immense trouble consistently fighting combo because it is so focused on controlling the board instead of the stack (making it probably not the greatest choice right now).

Resource Denial

Loam Pox

Loam cannot only be used to progress your own game plan it is also a perfectly fine way to break the symmetry of Pox effects ending in games in which the opponent has lost everything to symmetric disruption while your recursion has kept you afloat through the devastation you have unleashed. This is another strategy that might well profit from a few Lilianas considering Lili's abilities allow you to approximate Pox quite well.

Combo-Control

Dreadstill

Dreadstill comes at you from all angles. Card advantage Counterbalance lock tempo shenanigans and the ability to end the game in a turn or two—it's all rolled into one delicious shell. Before the game has played out it's even difficult to say if the deck is aggressive or defensive; it all depends so much on both the plan the pilot decides on and the ones the deck makes available.

Dread Stalker

Built around the premise of accelerating out huge threats fast Dread Stalker gives up the additional angles of Dreadstill for a focused game plan of disruption and short games. Vision Charm is a particular gem as it works both as a way to keep a Dreadnought in play (by phasing it out in response to the enters the battlefield trigger) and making Tombstalker cheap (by milling yourself).

Combo

Engine-Combo

Burn

Yes I consider this a combo deck—the combo being seven different versions of Lightning Bolt and the mana to cast them. The reason I see this as combo is that it has the same kind of non-interactivity to it. If you can't mess with the stack you either race it or die.

Boros Burn

A slight splash into burn moves the deck ever closer to Sligh (and thereby the aggro branch of this compendium) but essentially Steppe Lynx is nothing but a conditional Bolt that will deal four to eight depending on how often it connects.

ANT

Ari's signature list is the most consistent of the Tendrils Storm decks with a rock solid two-color manabase and the full twelve cantrips but is also the slowest usually goldfishing turn two to three. There are three ways the deck usually wins the least demanding being to get Ad Nauseam to resolve and flip till a combination of cards is revealed that will lead to a lethal Tendrils. The second way is Ill-Gotten Gains which allows you to recoup Rituals/LEDs and a tutor from the graveyard to build up more storm before getting your hands on Tendrils. Finally there is tutor-chaining in which the pilot burns through mana by casting Infernal Tutors for more Infernal Tutors before finally getting the Tendrils.

TES

TES trades some of U/B ANT's resilience for speed and more raw power. Its manabase is more vulnerable to Wasteland and there are fewer lands in general; the deck is more reliant on Ad Nauseam and the associated life loss/variance and the presence of Rite of Flame and Burning Wish mean color hiccups are more likely to occur. A significant increase in turn-one and two wins the ability to win after partially going off with Empty the Warrens and the availability of Orim's Chant (which is backbreaking against a number of things including Stifle and the combo mirror) are the payoffs for these sacrifices.

Belcher

I don't particularly enjoy playing with or against Belcher as it is the classic “FoW or no?” deck. You have to admire the single-minded devotion to speed it brings to the table though and if you aren't playing blue you better hope you don't run into it.

Spanish Inquisition

Probably the only deck able to match Belcher for speed The Spanish Inquisition is a Tendrils deck in the tradition of Meandeck's Storm Ten. Chain Rituals into draw spells into Rituals until you find Tendrils and have the mana to cast it. The beauty of this approach is that you never actually have to give the opponent turns by relying on Empty the Warrens.

Doomsday

Doomsday has the distinction of being probably the hardest deck in the format. In addition to the already complex cantrip management issues associated with other Storm decks you need to know a large number of established Doomsday piles with different requirements and capabilities and be able to come up with heretofore unknown lethal piles on the seat of your pants depending on the actual game state. The list above has been simply called “The German List” and was tearing up southern Germany before Mental Misstep put an end to that. We'll see if that reoccurs now or if the ridiculous complexity of the deck keeps it from being a contender.

Spiral Tide

High Tide isn't the fastest combo deck (actually it is usually just fast enough to race the aggressive decks) but it is the best one at playing the control role if the matchup demands it. Merchant Scroll is the true heart of the deck that enables this switch finding High Tide to start the engine or Force of Will to create a nigh impossible to break counter wall. The really obnoxious thing about Tide is the length of its combo turns though which can easily burn up ten to fifteen minutes and which you're forced to sit through because there always is a non-zero chance the deck will fizzle. My suggestion is to play with your hand face up once you feel sure you have it to at least share the puzzle of going off with your opponents.

Solidarity

Solidarity is one of the strangest beasts ever conceived and my favorite deck to goldfish. To abuse Reset the deck uses nothing but instants to go off during the opponent's turn generally in response to either lethal damage or a game-breaking spell being on the stack. It sometimes has speed issues against highly aggressive decks and shares the issue of interminably long combo turns with the sorcery-speed version of High Tide. The above list is my personal rather experimental concoction utilizing the synergy between Snapcaster Mage and Snap to provide more consistent combo turns and hopefully speed the deck up to the point where it can consistently outrace aggressive decks.

Two-card combos

Painter

Opal Painter

Caleb Durward's other brainchild (after Vengevine-Survival which got banned) uses Goblin Welder and Intuition to consistently assemble the Painter's Servant-Grindstone combo. Mox Opal artifact lands and Sol lands provide the necessary acceleration while the ability to usefully run maindeck Red Elemental Blasts (thanks to Painter's Servant) means the deck can run extreme amounts of protection against meddling blue mages without giving up to much against everybody else.

Imperial Painter

The Blood Moon combo deck uses a slightly expensive Portal Three Kingdoms card to make sure it can actually stick a Painter's Servant. Once that's done it can either win outright if Grindstone is available or truly grind the opponent out with Red Elemental Blasts that hit everything and Jaya Ballard Task Mage. Blood Moon (and Magus of the Moon which can conveniently be Recruitered up) gives the deck a second angle of attack seeing how half the decks in the format just falter and die against a turn-one-to-two Moon effect.

Aluren

Oh look another Imperial Recruiter deck. Aluren is another slow combo deck that makes up for it in disruption. Especially now that the deck also has access to Gitaxian Probe (which enables 100% accurate Cabal Therapies) it can be quite challenging to keep Aluren from sticking its namesake card at which point an Imperial Recruiter guarantees the win by fetching up a Dream Stalker which returns Recruiter which now tutors up Cavern Harpy which bounces Dream Stalker which bounces Recruiter which finds a Parasitic Strix to bounce around with Harpy to drain the opponent out. This may look vulnerable to spot removal but it isn't as long as the Aluren player does it correctly—I just thought the description was already convoluted enough as is so I'll leave that procedure as an exercise to the reader.

Show and Tell-based

NO Show

One simple goal: get a super-fattie into play be it Emrakul or Progenitus. As only having Show and Tell to achieve that goal isn't consistent enough and mana Elves quite conveniently both accelerate you and are green creatures Natural Order can pick up the slack.

Hive Mind

Risen during the Misstep era this deck is still hell on wheel against blue decks. The ability to have eight zero-mana counterspells to protect your threats the best ritual in the format (Show and Tell) and an Emrakul backup plan makes Hive Mind a force to be reckoned with.

Dream Halls

To my mind Dream Halls is just a worse Hive Mind deck as it has to run as many or more useless pieces and doesn't really gain anything relevant for doing that. Using Dream Halls to Conflux for more Confluxes and finishing it off by shooting Cruel Ultimatums at the opponent might be confidence-building but it isn't particularly efficient deck-space-wise.

Sneak and Show

And another Show and Tell deck that I feel is just worse than Hive Mind. Sneak Attack is lackluster in that it doesn't do anything relevant with half your creatures (hitting them for just ten isn't really doing anything); it isn't like you're using up less room in the deck and you can't play Pact of Negation because you generally don't actually end the game in a single turn.

Graveyard-Based

Reanimator

Ever since Jin-Gitaxias Core Augur came out this deck is sick and not having Misstep around doesn't change that. If you're interested in more on Reanimator check this out.

Cephalid Breakfast

The Commander sets have made this slightly better once again (the kill itself isn't really vulnerable to spot removal any more) and the deck's speed is quite frightening especially for a deck that can support Daze and FoW. A significant amount of duds clutter the decklist though and it is vulnerable to just about any form of interaction you'd like to imagine.

Four Horsemen

A slower Cephalid Breakfast that solves all the vulnerability issues by being creatureless and able to just ignore most graveyard hate (the kills happen through looping through your deck with Emrakul and sacrificing the Narcomoebas to Blasting Station every iteration which is in play because you Dread Returned Sharuum). Personally I wouldn't want to play this anywhere important because the Head Judge might decide that the way the deck wins actually qualifies as stalling.

To explain: To safely win the deck first needs to hit all three Narcomoebas the Dread Return the Blasting Station and Sharuum without hitting the Emrakul. To get to that point you'll often have to mill yourself until you hit Emrakul and start again. As that doesn't advance the game state at all it can be considered stalling.

Dredge

Zombie eat brain. Zombie like. I really don't think there is much to say about this deck anymore; it's been around long enough that almost everybody knows what happens when the opponent tries to deck themselves by dredging Grave-Trolls. Game ones are almost always easy for Dredge and generally end with a horde of Bridge-born Zombies eating the opponent's brains but as soon as graveyard hate comes in from the board the going becomes quite tough.

Manaless Dredge

This is what you get when you make Dredge as non-interactive as possible by using the game rules to discard instead of actual spells. Without Misstep around this deck lost much of its reason for existence as by now it is mainly a slower version of regular Dredge. Draw-discarding on turn one is a good way to get a dredger into the yard if the discard outlets are threatened by countermagic but the turns you're giving away aren't worth it anymore.

Other

Illusionary Mask/Torpor Orb

Remember Dread Stalker from above? This operates similarly though with a significantly lower disruption count and the much worse Hunted Horror instead of Tombstalker. It has a far easier time getting multiple fatties down though.

Shelldock Doomsday

A very different kind of Doomsday deck that reduces using Doomsday to reduce its library size which means you can Shelldock Isle out an Emrakul. Personally the deck always felt too slow for something that intended to pay half its life to win only a turn or two later.

Aeon Bridge

This one's another sweetie. You have Dreadnought and Stifle for the 12-power trampler Show and Tell to get an Emrakul down and Mosswort Bridge (which can conveniently be activated when there's a 'nought in play waiting for its ETB trigger to kill it) to actually hardcast the Old One. Wickedness all over.

PatternHulk

A very weird way to enable the old flash combo admittedly but one that seems to work out reasonably well. In case you didn't know the plan is to get out a Protean Hulk with either Pattern or Natural Order sacrifice it to one of a multitude of effects go search for Body Double (which will copy the Hulk) and Carrion Feeder sac the Hulk to Feeder find Reveillark and Mogg Fanatic and shoot the opponent with Fanatic before sacrificing the Reveillark to Feeder. At that point you can return Mogg Fanatic and Body Double (as Reveillark) to repeat this process ad nauseam.

Turbo Eldrazi

A very atypical combo deck in that it is comparatively slow but backbreaking later in the game. The resemblance to the Modern Cloudpost strategy is clear even if the means employed are quite different.

Aggro-Combo

Metalworker

Play a Metalworker tap it for a million mana next turn and do ridiculous things; that's the plan in a nutshell. This is the heir to classic Tinker decks though much less broken without the blue sorcery. Note that Metalworker plus Staff of Domination with three artifacts in hand means you can draw your deck and play all of it. A red version playing Goblin Welder instead of Thoughtcast also exists.

Infect Stompy

Berserk was here long before Blazing Shoal and is similarly good at making Poison lethal very fast. The plan is as easy as that. Drop an infect guy connect cast a bunch of pump spells. Countermagic makes sure you don't blow your whole hand into a Swords to Plowshares.

I'm wondering if forcing the Shoal plan into the deck in addition to the Berserk plan might be beneficial by the way.

Combo Elves

Food Chain Elves

If you had asked me when Lorwyn came out if Food Chain plus Evoke would become a viable deck I'd have denied it. I'd have been wrong. Like so many decks lately this is all about connecting with Emrakul and Food Chain gives you the mana to do that by chaining creatures that draw cards one into the other.

Elves Intuition

Elves Glimpse

I'm going to discuss both of these together as they're quite similar outside of one having a real backup plan. The list without Intuitions is essentially the straight port of the Elves strategy as known from PT Berlin which can in theory beat down with 1/1s but is mainly a combo deck.

The beauty of the other list the one with Intuitions is that there isn't much of a difference as far as combo consistency is concerned (you could even argue four more tutors raise that consistency) but Intuition for three Vengevines is usually quite the play against decks that can stop you from going off with Glimpse of Nature.

Aggro-Combo-Control

Natural Order

NO RUG

Well NO RUG debuted on the star city circuit in the hands of Reid Duke before Misstep was even legal and I see no reason why it shouldn't continue to perform. You can go control with Cliques and countermagic Zenith up Goyfs for the aggro plan and play combo by deploying a fast Progenitus. Extreme flexibility and a high power level. What's not to like?

NO Bant

The basic approach here is similar to that of NO RUG but the weights of each possible plan are partitioned differently. You happen to be a slightly worse aggressive deck (no burn more expensive creatures) but you have stronger fatties (Knight should rapidly end up larger than a Goyf) and essentially unconditional removal. The deck compensates for the weaker aggro game by running Jaces as additional bombs to accelerate into and will as a result more often play the control role instead of swinging in.

G/B Ooze Vine

Ken Adam's Ooze deck is still a beauty. People should try it out (for an actual explanation just click the link).

JunkDepths

Some time ago I mentioned this as a prime example of hybridization taking off and I still think this concept of an incidental Dark Depths combo in an otherwise rather regular Junk shell has promise. I replaced the Missteps the known list ran with Hymns because that card is ridiculous but maybe the deck would be better off with more precise discard instead.

End of the Line

Well I think that's it. Every deck in Legacy that is seeing at least a reasonable amount of play—let me know if I missed something; I'll try to get it added to the article! I hope this will help you to understand both how huge this format is and how many angles haven't been explored yet. For those still undecided what to play in Amsterdam—I suggest you pick one of these!

Wish me luck at the GP until next time—enjoy the wilderness!

Carsten Ktter