“…and that was how I beat 3 Elephant Grasses, 2 Solitary Confinements, 3 Argothian Enchantresses a Sacred Mesa (with Serra’s Sanctum on board), and a resolved Iona, Shield of Emeria with One-Drop Zoo.” —Me to anyone who would listen
Yeah, that happened…
Let’s back it up though. First, before anything, I want to apologize about last week’s article. Honestly, it was poor planning on my part. I was truly and legitimately excited about the deck idea and had to scrap my previous article to hurriedly write that article before I left for Charlotte. I didn’t get much time to re-read my work (thus the incredibly awkward land-count error) nor did I get to update the list with changes I made for the event.
I’ve e-mailed the people who sent me an email asking for the updated list, but I also want to list the most updated version of the deck before I continue. And before you ask, no, this isn’t what I played in the Invitational, but that also had something to do with card availability (I would have had to find Primeval Titans at the site, and I was concerned about doing that last minute) and also because I just felt it wasn’t 100% ready for the big times, even though I feel it definitely could be. Here’s the most updated list:
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
Now, a lot of people have criticized this as “just a Wolf Run list that you’ve jammed Snapcaster Mages into.” To an extent, yes, this is correct. However, I feel this, in addition to the Ponders, is a worthy inclusion when I’m trying to increase the consistency of the deck without draining the power level. I had Negates but felt that I just wanted to be doing the same thing every game (ramping, Titans), and Negates felt somewhat dead in the maindeck. Frost Titans are awesome cards, but I only really want them in the Wolf Run matches (and also control decks to an extent, just to up the threat density).
Someone left a comment stating essentially that the only reason to play Ponder is when you have a bunch of one-ofs and you need to find them. I think that’s a backwards way of looking at things; if you play Ponder, you get to play one-ofs and are able to find them at a regular rate, not the other way around (where you’re required to have one-ofs to run Ponder). Ponder allows you to find what you need early on (once again, this is a ramp deck, and it needs very specific spells in a very specific order to be good) while also being a great topdeck late (giving your late-game Rampant Growths some use as shufflers as well).
As I mentioned in my last article, Snapcaster Mage does a great job impersonating Solemn Simulacrum early on then turning around and playing whatever role you need him to later in the game. It gives the deck redundancy in the ramp department (being able to flashback an early Rampant Growth) then added utility in the late game (With a Ponder and/or Green Sun’s Zenith in the graveyard, it’s as good of a topdeck as Ponder/ Zenith obviously, same as any burn spell as well).
I think people are used to seeing Valakut-type lists (ramp + titan, no shenanigans) and are leery of changes. I can understand this, but I also feel that the Hive Mind grabs ahold of decks so quickly these days that innovation is essentially frowned upon. The list I posted was the deck in its current form, and it did change, but I felt so strongly the deck central idea was sound that I wanted to get it out to you guys.
If you didn’t like it, well… they say you can please everyone, right? I understand the criticisms, and as long as they were relatively constructive, I actually really appreciate them. I’m by no means perfect, and in this case some of the criticisms were actually justified. My apologies for the rough list, and hopefully this one looks a bit better (though again, I’m not going overboard with blue in the deck, only seeking to add to the consistency of the deck while providing added utility in the sideboard).
StarCityGames.com Invitational in Charlotte
Ok, enough of that. On to the story-telling!
So my story begins on the Friday before the Invitational. I knew I’d be leaving that evening for the weekend, leaving Sarah to deal with four kids by herself for two and a half days. I knew she wouldn’t be pleased, so I took Friday off from work and stayed at home to take care of the kids. I woke up at 6 am and played Dad, which is exhausting work if you’ve never done it.
That evening, I met up with the Kenny Mayer crew (Kenny, Matt Scott, Dave Heilker, Jonas Sinacola, and myself), and we headed out for Charlotte in Jonas’s four-seater Honda. If your math serves you correctly, yes, that’s five of us in a four-seater. Fun times! (Seriously, it was awesome they let me tag along; otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to go. The fact that I carpooled with a bunch of others becomes relevant later in our story, though.)
We arrived in Charlotte at around midnight, at which time I called my brother Matt, who still lives in the area, and he came and picked me up. I headed to his house, where he had a box waiting for me.
“I found this. It’s from when you guys used to play a long time ago.”
The box is one of the white cardboard boxes, roughly 500 count or so and was obviously old and decrepit, as this is the south, and it’s incredibly muggy and humid. Not expecting much, I opened the box, pulled out a stack, and saw a pack mint foil Apocalypse Vindicate sitting on top. Pack mint, never touched… it made me feel incredibly lucky and also made me feel confident, as obviously this was a sign that I was going to run good this weekend, right?
Well, the next morning my brother Matt agreed to allow me to use his car for the day, so I drove to Charlotte from Chester, SC (roughly a 45-minute drive) and arrived at the site around 9 am. I saw Matt Eitel and his “crew” while paying for parking, and I informed him that I was still missing cards for the decks I wanted to run. Even though Kenny Mayer supplied me with a ton of cards for the weekend (which, thanks man, and also my apologies for not being more prepared both when I showed up at the apartment as well as when we were ready to leave. I can be absent-minded at times), there were still a couple of cards he had already lent out before I asked for cards that I needed to pick up. While I was trying to put together the cards for Illusions (I decided to play the deck with the most “good” matchups and hope to avoid Mono Red), Matt mentioned that he had a Bant Control list ready made that I could use. He also said he placed second in at least one grinder with the list and was quite pleased with it.
So the focus then turned to Legacy.
For those of you who don’t know me or haven’t followed my writing, I’ve played all of one, one, sanctioned match of Legacy in my entire Magic career. This was with Dredge at the StarCityGames.com Legacy Open: Washington D.C. earlier this year after narrowly missing the top eight during Standard the day before. I’d acquired the cards for Dredge and had goldfished the deck countless times, played with it online, and thought I was ready to go. Then, in Round One, I lost to a Counterbalance deck in which I scooped to a Firespout while very low on life when he had a Tarmogoyf that would survive the sweeper.
After that match, an observer questioned my scooping there; he mentioned that I had 3 Bridge from Belows in my graveyard and a Golgari Thug on the board when he Firespouted. After realizing that I was missing triggers already and that I felt like crap, I decided to drop and go cube.
That’s it. That was my entire history with the Legacy format before the Invitational.
As for Legacy cards that I own, I can point to my playset of Tarmogoyfs, and that’s about it. Other than that, I needed to borrow anything else of monetary value. I had most of the commons/uncommons for One-Drop Zoo, and between Kenny Mayer and Jonas Sinacola, had acquired the manabase necessary to run the deck.
All I needed were a couple of sideboard cards, a Savannah, and an Arid Mesa. And this is how I got talked into running Reanimator instead…
Yeah, me, a Legacy noob, played Reanimator because I was told how “super easy” it was to run. (Thanks Matt! Nice prank buddy!)
Seriously; while I was trying to cobble together the remainder of the deck, Matt informed me that a friend of his had a fully built Reanimator list that I could run. I expressed trepidation, since it looked difficult to pilot correctly, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was informed it was really easy and I could do well with the deck.
Let me put it this way: a deck with Force of Will and Brainstorm should have never been put in my hands that day.
So I started out my tournament against R/U/G Delver, and in game three I got rolled by multiple Snapcaster Mages targeting multiple Surgical Extractions. In fact, early in the game, I Thoughtseized and saw:
Force of Will
Force of Will
Force of Will
Daze
Surgical Extraction
Lands
For me, a Legacy noob, how do I beat that? I figured I could take the Extraction and try to win by forcing him to Force everything I do until I can finally hit a threat. That almost worked until the reanimation spell I drew was Reanimate at all of five life…
Then I played Bant Blade. And I got rolled again. And I’m 1000% positive I punted at every juncture, starting with Entomb and ending in a scoop.
Then? U/B Snapcaster Control. Another loss in three games. As I’m learning more and more with every game, soaking up the information like a sponge, it makes this round even worse because I’m not fully aware of ways that I’m punting after the match and realizing how the small errors are severely costing me. Unfortunately I still don’t see the mistakes until I’m in that post-game “how did I screw up this game” thought process.
Finally, after starting out 0-3 and virtually out of contention for top 64 after day one, I played another person who never plays Legacy. He was piloting a version of Andrew Shrout U/R Delver list, and I take it in a third game where I reanimate Sphinx of the Steel Wind on turn two with Force backup. My opponent started cursing the format, calling it ridiculous and saying he hated it (among other unprintable terms in which I remained silent, fully understanding there were underhanded comments directed at me that I really didn’t feel like getting into an altercation about). I couldn’t disagree more about Legacy!
Even though I got rolled in the Legacy rounds, I could tell the format was awesome. So many things could happen; so many cards could have been played to counteract what my opponents were doing; the possibilities seem endless when you’re first introduced to the format.
However, it was time for Standard.
I decided to stay in for the Planeswalker Points and also in the off chance I make top 64. I knew it wasn’t really going to happen, but at the very least I wasn’t really doing anything else and decided to stick it out. In Standard, I sleeved up:
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (27)
Spells (20)
In round five I played against a Wolf Run Robots deck a la Travis Woo in which I ended up taking down in two very long games. Seriously, they weren’t interesting; they involved me countering everything with eight maindeck counters and four Snapcaster Mages then winning with Wurmcoil Engine beats. Game two did involve a Thrun on his side which he never tapped low enough to allow me to wrath away, but there was a turn where he tapped down to two mana, and I end-of-turned a Beast Within on his land to blow up the board. It was a fun game!
After this round, I walked up to Justin Parnell who was actively looking to put together a group to test out his Custom Cube (with 100% custom cards, with the exception of fetchlands and dual lands). Since this seemed like a much better idea than sticking around for literally nothing, I dropped and ran over to join the custom cube.
I will say this; the cube is pretty sweet, though they (Justin and Ali Aintrazi) already know they have to tone down a lot of the cards. There was literally a card for one black mana that was Demonic Tutor, Thoughtseize, and Praetor’s Grasp all wrapped into one card. (It has since been changed…) However, it was incredibly fun to play, and I just made a point of snapping up every mana fixer I could and then added any cards that I could feasibly play, since the whole cube was super-powered.
While running a second round match in the cube against Justin, I turned my phone back on (I’d turned it off earlier because it was about to die, and I figured I’d want to use it before I left) and got numerous texts from multiple people that essentially said “Get in contact with me/Sarah, Zoey’s sick.” After calling Sarah, I found out Zoey was vomiting and becoming dehydrated, and there may be a trip to the E.R. in the future. This put an immediate stop to my cubing, as I had to go back to my brother’s house to hook up my charger so I could get updates. (Spoiler Alert: She’s fine now, but she did cause us a big scare.) We couldn’t leave because people were still alive, and even though I wanted to be with Zoey and Sarah, I couldn’t tell four other guys that I was leaving to help care for a sick baby when it wasn’t imminent that I do so. Not to mention, even if that thought crossed my mind (and it did, at least the thought of asking if we could leave), it would have been an incredibly hard sell, though I’m pretty confident that if the awful situation occurred where I literally needed to be there for the family, the guys would have come through, as “sucky” as that would have been.
The next morning, after barely getting any sleep due to worrying about Zoey all night, I returned to the site to play in the Legacy Open. Now, if the Invitational was my first “real” Legacy, this would obviously only be my second. As such, I remembered my lessons from the day before (in other words, no Brainstorm decks) and decided to go with what I should have gone with the day before, One-Drop Zoo. (Playing in this event was a bit difficult, as my thought all day was that I’d rather be with Zoey, but sitting around doing nothing all day didn’t feel like it would help anything.)
Creatures (25)
Lands (20)
Spells (15)
And now, a small tournament report:
Round One: Bant Stoneblade
Game one, I play
Turn One: Kird Ape
And that was pretty much all that happened on either side that game other than a couple of burn spells.
Game two, I bring in Chokes, the last Pridemage, and a Krosan Grip. I wait until he taps himself low and resolve a Choke, to which he says, “That card is so unbeatable.” Sweeter words couldn’t have been spoken. He dies with three untapped lands (one a fetchland, another a Karakas, giving him access to double white) while holding a Wrath of God. Choke on that! (Note to self: you really have to work on these catchphrases bud. You’re falling off hardcore…)
Round Two: U/W/r Stoneblade
Game one, I resolve a turn one Kird Ape, turn two Tarmogoyf, and just sit back on those spells (Bolting a Stoneforge in the process) while holding plenty of gas in hand. He plays two Wraths in the game, but my failure to overextend eventually grinds him out of action (I’ve come to learn that when they start casting Brainstorms, you’re doing something right; it’s kind of like when the boss in a video game starts going crazy because you’re about to beat him. Feels pretty good!). He taps out to activate Mutavault then bounce it with Riptide Laboratory, so I resolve a Choke, and he scoops. Choke on th… ok nevermind.
Round Three: U/W Stoneblade
In game one, he mulls to six on the play, keeps, and passes the turn without doing anything. Yeah, he kept a no-land hand. I play a turn one Wild Nacatl off a Wooded Foothills into Taiga, which resolves, then he ships another turn back without casting anything or playing a land. At this point I’ve put him on Dredge. I play two more one-drops, but he stops me and thinks before letting both resolve, and I attack with the Nacatl. He draws a card and concedes.
Now, the pause let me know he had something he could respond with, more than likely Force of Will, so I boarded in the Red Elemental Blasts and Pyroblasts to be certain, as he could have also been on something like Storm Combo with Lotus Petals. I probably should have just not boarded at all though.
Game two, I draw a bunch of Blasts and no real action, allowing him to Batterskull and Sword of Fire and Ice me to death.
Game three, I keep a one-lander on the play with plenty of action and hope that his hand doesn’t include a Wasteland. Of course he Wastelands my first land. But wait! There’s another fetchland waiting on the top!
Of course he has two Wastelands.
So of the 20 lands I play, I saw two. Of the four Wastelands he plays, he saw two. Apparently I’m not as good at math as I thought I was! (Seriously, this is a joke; I fully understand this is how the games play out sometimes.)
Round Four: Enchantress
He starts out on the play in game one and goes
Turn One: Forest, Wild Growth.
Now, while I don’t play much Legacy, I do follow it almost religiously by watching the Sunday coverage during Open weekends. I knew he was on Enchantress, and I knew I was probably going to be dead at 2-2. I soldiered on, though, and was able to actually take down game one on the draw with a flurry of burn spells directed at his dome.
Game two, he gets a turn one Elephant Grass, and I’m never really in it. Solitary Confinement makes sure of that, even though he leaves me literally a seven-turn window to rip one of my four Qasali Pridemages or one Krosan Grip to win, and I just don’t get there.
Game three, now here’s the interesting game. I literally draw what I would consider “the nuts,” in that it involved a turn one Nacatl, turn two multiple one-drops, and burn. I needed to win before he could stop me, and this was the best hand I’d had all day. The problem was that I didn’t have a Pridemage, but as long as he doesn’t have a turn one Elephant Gra…
So of course he has the turn one Elephant Grass!
I’m later informed that I misplayed by paying the two mana and attacking for three instead of playing the Kird Ape and Grim Lavamancer in my hand. While I understand the logic behind the explanation I got, I’d be curious to hear from you guys what you think the right play is here. Remember, this is all relatively new to me, so I’m very curious here!
As the game goes on, he plows through three Elephant Grasses, three Argothian Enchantresses, Living Wish (for Iona, Shield of Emeria, which he easily casts using Serra’s Sanctum), two Solitary Confinements, an Oblivion Ring, and a Sacred Mesa. I actually comment at one point “if that isn’t the nut draw, what is!?”, to which he responded “yeah, it’s really good.” He makes a couple of minor errors, like O-ringing a random Wild Nacatl when he had both Elephant Grass and Solitary Confinement in play, but for the most part, he has the game on lock.
He casts Iona and tanks, naming white. If he names red, I’m just dead. He names white assuming I kept in Path to Exile; if I was supposed to, I completely missed that memo. Even then I’m still just dead as long as he doesn’t mess up.
He’s at seven life and is getting around five to eight tokens a turn from his Sacred Mesa on top of the Iona. On the turn before he can kill me, he has to pop his Horizon Canopy to draw a card to discard to Solitary Confinement. He then draws his card and, inexplicably, plays the land. He utterly has me locked down in every way, but maybe I have an out here?
I have two Lightning Bolts in hand and a Grim Lavamancer on the board. I have two red sources. I draw my card for the turn; it’s a fetchland! I didn’t realize it at the time (because honestly I’d kind of given up, fully expecting to be dead after the round, but I was still playing it out), but I’d just draw exactly what I needed.
He can’t pay for Confinement, and it dies. I stop him on his upkeep:
Me: “Wait. Iona’s naming white?”
Him: “Yeah”
Me: “Uh… Bolt, Bolt, Lavamancer you?!”
He surveys the board, and his face slowly turns south.
I’m not proud of it in any way, but at the same time, I didn’t mean anything negative when I said “Did that just happen!?” You see, I truly think Legacy is great and had a real blast playing, and this was probably the top moment of an exciting tournament, knowing I’d just beat nigh-impossible odds. The comment was made in pure shock, not in a condescending way at all, though I apologized after I said it because I could understand how he might misunderstand my intent.
So that’s how I beat Enchantress with One-Drop Zoo. Now had he not randomly O-ringed an irrelevant Wild Nacatl, he would have had the O-Ring for the Grim Lavamancer, taking out my last real “out.” Even if I somehow got to attack at some point, with or without that Nacatl, it was more than lethal. I definitely should have lost that game, but winning it made me incredibly excited.
Round 5: U/W Stoneblade
I end up taking this down in three games when in the third game, I was able to burn him out from five life when he was going to have a Batterskull active on the next turn.
So now I’m sitting at 4-1 in my first real Legacy Open, pretty psyched, and sitting pretty. My next pairing goes up, and I’m playing Doug Azzano, the guy I lost to playing for Top Eight in Washington D.C. earlier this year. He was playing B/W Smallpox, and I got summarily destroyed in two games, the second of which I literally had no lands left in deck to even fetch up because they’d all been Wasted or Poxed.
After that, I played a funky Dredge list with Force of Wills and Stifles; he mulls to five in game three and wins on turn two. Gotta love it!
Well, this article’s getting rather long. I truly had a blast rocking Legacy, and I’m definitely going to be doing more of it in the future. Until I feel comfortable with the format, I’m probably going to stay away from the Brainstorm decks, as I’m 100% sure I cast that card at the wrong time 100% of the time. I felt like I should be beating the Stoneblade decks with the Zoo list I had, even if a One-Drop Zoo list lost in the finals to a Stoneblade deck. I’m probably going to stick with Zoo for the short term until I get a better grasp of what I’m doing and what the format holds.
As always, thanks for reading!
@mikemartinlfs on Twitter