I love spoiler seasons. Magic is the best game in the world because every three months we get another couple hundred cards that change the way we look at the game, change the way we build our decks, and allow us to express our own innate creativity. I’ve spent a lot of time reading ideas from around the web on how Dark Ascension will change Standard, but there’s been mostly conjecture surrounding how Dark Ascension will change Magic’s greatest format.
I’m here to change that. This is an article of lists, interactions, and things to look out for in a post-Dark Ascension Legacy. My set review will come out next week, so be sure to check that out, but today’s article is about putting these cards in situations.
What situations are we interested in, exactly? Good question. Our targets are, in order:
Delver tempo decks of all colors
G/W (occasionally splashing Punishing Fire) Maverick
U/W Stoneblade
Graveyard decks—Reanimator and Dredge are the two important ones.
Show and Tell decks—Sneak Attack and Hive Mind are the two most popular ones, although keep in mind that every Reanimator player will board in Show and Tells against graveyard hate.
I’m not going to lie to you—that’s a lot of Brainstorms. Everything that isn’t Maverick is a Brainstorm deck. If we were interested in fighting Brainstorm decks, what would we be looking to do, exactly? To start, let’s look at what Brainstorm decks are doing that wins them games.
Delver decks of all colors are usually just shy of 50% instants and sorceries. They play ten to fifteen creatures, seventeen to nineteen land, and twenty-five or so instants and sorceries. Their mana curve is so low that Lil Jon would have no advice left to impart. They run a lot of cantrips to find either a crucial second (or third) land or a spell to fill out their curve. They can flip Delver of Secrets on turn 2 by casting Brainstorm in their upkeep. They run Snapcaster Mage in their eighteen-land deck because they’re pretty consistently flashbacking a one-mana spell. They don’t want their fourth land ever, so they can even play Wasteland in their three-color, eighteen-land deck. It’s pretty greedy, but they never flood and rarely get mana-screwed. They keep the game in a constant state of mid-level development: never so much that their opponent can comfortably resolve a haymaker like Jace, the Mind Sculptor through soft countermagic like Spell Pierce or Daze, but never so little that they can’t Snapcaster for value.
What this deck does better than other decks in Legacy is play a tight curve. It uses its mana better than anyone else. It always has something to do, and that something is always relevant to the game state. If it’s past turn 3, it always has a counterspell of some sort. It might be a free Force Spike , it might not counter your creature , or it might set them back another card , but they can interact with you. If you ever spend a turn doing nothing, you’ll fall behind in the race. All it takes is a turn where you miss your curve for a Delver deck to seize the initiative and run away with the game.
So how can we beat a deck filled with one-mana sorceries and free instants?
Turn 1: Mother of Runes.
Turn 2: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is a card that makes me actively want to play White Weenie in Legacy. The deck has suffered from a lack of ways to interact with today’s super-powerful combo decks on a time frame that keeps their interaction relevant, but Thalia is a whole other story. If you think paying one more mana for a spell is no big deal, then you’re not paying much attention to the state of Magic. People are running a ton of Phyrexian mana spells in Standard to slim down their already super-tight curves, and Legacy isn’t much different. Delver of Secrets forces people to interact early, often, and cheaply. Let’s take a look at a recent iteration of the deck I’d like to fit Thalia into:
Creatures (26)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 3 Jotun Grunt
- 3 Mangara of Corondor
- 4 Serra Avenger
- 1 Aven Mindcensor
- 4 Flickerwisp
- 4 Stoneforge Mystic
- 3 Phyrexian Revoker
Lands (13)
Spells (21)
There’s a lot to like about this deck. I share Patrick Sullivan happiness with Mother of Runes seeing real play in successful Legacy decks, for one. Mother is a huge part of any anti-blue strategy. After all, part of playing so many cantrips is that you can play fewer spells that fulfill a given function. If you’re seeing half of your deck every game, you see three out of six removal spells along with a few Snapcasters in case things get dire. You don’t need to build a deck with eight removal spells if you’re casting three cantrips a game—you’ll get to whatever you need.
An active Mother of Runes makes people not want to cast their removal spells. Want to know what happens if they have a bunch of removal spells and not much else to do with their mana? They pass the turn. If they don’t have any pressure on the table, getting RUG Delver to pass the turn is a tangible step toward winning. Just don’t think that you’re ever supposed to attack with Mother of Runes. That’s a quick way to get all of your guys killed.
Enough about Mother of Runes, though. Let’s talk about the really good creature in this deck: Batterskull.
… wait, there’s no Batterskull in this deck? What do you mean there’s no Batterskull in this deck that has Stoneforge Mystics in it? You’ve gotta be kidding me! It’s not like the deck doesn’t need the help or anything. We aren’t exactly rolling in creature quality over here. That Germ would be the best creature in the deck! Okay, let’s change that little bit around …
+1 Batterskull
Where were we? Oh, right, Stoneforge Mystic is great, best white creature ever, banned in two formats, easy in, all that. But I have a few problems with Josh’s equipment selection. The notable exclusion of Batterskull is a real problem in a deck that wants to kill people with … what? A bunch of 1/1s and less than a dozen creatures that can look at a Tarmogoyf without fainting? Batterskull is perfect for this deck! Here are the top ten reasons why Batterskull is way, way better than Sword of Fire and Ice in this deck:
- All of your other creatures are embarrassing. Some people might take pride in casting Serra Avenger, but other people might also take pride in casting Slippery Bogle. It’s the same sort of pride in my book.
- You can’t actually attack through a Tarmogoyf on the ground, nor can you effectively race one without a flier that also has an active Umezawa’s Jitte. Absent an unlikely series of events, you’ll end up blocking with Mother of Runes and running the pseudo-Avacynian Priest game. Your Mother of Runes will not last long in this game, which means that you will not last long in this game.
- Burn just won the Legacy Open—expect people to pick it up. Batterskull is like Umezawa’s Jitte against Burn, except you don’t need to connect with your 1/1 in order to gain four life. Your 4/4 is nigh-unkillable against a red deck. If they do kill it, your Germ gained you somewhere close to seven life.
- If you are playing against U/W Stoneforge and they get Batterskull, what are you going to get? Sword of Feast and Famine? You think that that’s going to go well for you? Sure, you can block their Germ, but in a longer game—which will happen, since you’re unlikely to get a quick kill against a U/W control deck with a three-power clock that starts on turn 4—your protection colors are close to irrelevant. If you have Batterskull, your life totals go sky-high and then you get to win because you have fliers. If you have Sword of Feast and Famine, your fliers aren’t going to be able to race a Batterskull-equipped Geist of Saint Traft or Snapcaster Mage.
- Let’s say your answer to #4 was “Psh, no, I’d get Sword of Fire and Ice. Isn’t that what we’re comparing to Batterskull anyway?” You’re actually in a worse position in every way, since you can no longer block their Germ at all and are back in the “Tarmogoyf is The Abyss” situation, a.k.a. you will lose this game because your creatures are tiny.
- Your deck is full of nuisance creatures that your opponent wants to kill. If they succeed in using multiple spot removal spells to take out your first wave or two of threats, would you rather have Baneslayer Angel that you can rebuy or a do-nothing piece of equipment that will sit there while you get pecked to death by some random two-power creature?
- Since you’re actually a midrange beatdown deck that wins on the back of heavy disruption, how often can you afford to move Sword of Fire and Ice? You have Rishadan Ports, Wastelands, and four Karakas, so mana is going to be pretty consistently tight. Tapping two main phase mana is not negligible. Instead of spending mana to make a 3/3 that has the potential to deal five, why not sit back on your 4/4 vigilance lifelinker and make the opponent react to your superior board?
- Drawing a card is not actually that powerful in a deck with four legendary lands, quite a few legends, and Aether Vials. You’re going to win because your permanents are awesome, not because your cards keep trading for value. You won’t win by making trades. You can definitely lose with a lot of cards in hand.
- We even have Flickerwisp to reset our Batterskull! Isn’t that cute?
I would much rather play Sword of Body and Mind than Sword of Feast and Famine. Since this deck isn’t doing truly impressive things with a second untap step in a given turn (such as playing Elspeth, Knight-Errant and Jace, the Mind Sculptor), I would rather play a card that lets us continue to pressure an opponent through Tarmogoyf. As noted above, Tarmogoyf embarrasses a lot of creatures in this deck, so having a pro-green Sword is important. What’s equally important is being able to attack past Snapcaster Mages when a Delver is clocking us in the air. Sword of Body and Mind lets us win a lot of races against RUG decks that would be unwinnable with Sword of Feast and Famine or Sword of Fire and Ice.
Still, 1800-word preamble aside, the real reason we want to play this deck now as opposed to a month ago is because of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Her Sphere of Resistance ability is incredible, synergizing very well with Port and Wasteland. She plays into the “Vial on two” game just as well, letting you Vial her in with a Snapcaster trigger on the stack and a single mana open on the other side of the table. She makes cantrips embarrassing and punishes the very common two-land-and-a-Brainstorm keeps that don’t draw a third land but can play a bunch of one-mana spells to stay even on board. She wins every fight that Tiago Chan, Dark Confidant, Stoneforge Mystic, Mutavault, Mishra’s Factory, Geist of Saint Traft, and Insectile Aberration will ever pick. On the “almost as adorable as Tom Ma” list of positive attributes, Thalia is even saved by all of your Karakas! Nifty, right?
The reason Thalia belongs in a deck like this is that she actually wants to exist in a very specific deck in a very specific metagame. Here are the ways to make her better:
- The metagame should ideally be heavily cantrip-based so that opponents have to tread water for more turns before they get to their answers, which they will also have to spend an entire turn casting.
- Play a ton of mana denial elements so that your opponent will either be locked out of playing spells or will be even more slowed down by your Thalia.
- Play ways to protect her or ways to negate her legendary drawback, since you want to cast her on turn 2 of almost every game—meaning that you want four.
- Play as few non-creature spells as possible.
- Have ways to disrupt their midgame development. Since they’re not going to stay on two lands forever, you have to be able to continue to disrupt them when they get to three and four lands.
This deck does all of that. The metagame is ideal for it, the deck has Wasteland and Rishadan Port, we can protect Thalia with Mother of Runes and Karakas, we are only playing Swords to Plowshares, equipment, and Aether Vials as noncreatures, and we have access to cards like Aven Mindcensor and Mangara of Corondor for additional midgame disruption.
If I were taking this deck to a tournament, I would cut the Phyrexian Revokers and a Jotun Grunt for the set of Thalias. In addition, I would take a hard look at the numbers on our fliers, as none of them match up well against Insectile Aberration. Figuring out how to beat that card is a tough nut to crack, but we can start by playing fewer cards that cost three times as much for the same reward.
I would suggest starting with the following:
Creatures (26)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 3 Jotun Grunt
- 3 Mangara of Corondor
- 4 Serra Avenger
- 4 Stoneforge Mystic
- 4 Mirran Crusader
- 4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (13)
Spells (21)
Yes, you lose a lot of the cuter aspects of the deck by cutting Phyrexian Revoker, Flickerwisp, and the solo Aven Mindcensor, but you gain a much better beater in Mirran Crusader and a much more broadly-relevant disruptive element in Thalia. If you’re of the “beat Brainstorm” persuasion, I would highly recommend this deck.
If we take a different look at how to attack the metagame, however, we might see a sea of Green Sun’s Zenith and Snapcaster Mage decks. If that’s our paradigm of the format, we have been given a card that has been described as everything from “a card that will radically change Legacy” to “just another Tormod’s Crypt.” Regardless of your thoughts, it’s important to understand Grafdigger’s Cage:
The Cage is a skill-testing card at its finest. There are going to be people—not you, dear reader, but others—who will jam this card into the sideboard of a deck that doesn’t want it at all. Or they’ll board it in against a deck that isn’t really hosed by it at all and wonder why they lose when they drew two of their sideboard card. Let’s start by going over what it affects in key decks:
U/W Stoneforge: Snapcaster Mage and not a single other thing.
RUG Delver: Snapcaster Mage and not a single other thing.
G/W Maverick: Green Sun’s Zenith, most plays involving Dryad Arbor, and nothing else.
Reanimator: All of their reanimation spells, but they still get to have a graveyard.
Dredge: Narcomoeba, Ichorid, Cabal Therapy, Dread Return, Ancient Grudge, Gravecrawler (if people want to play that).
Show and Tell: Not a single thing.
On its face, this is a powerful card. In the context of our Legacy metagame, it’s hard to envision this card seeing play in a lot of sideboards. After all, a lot of Legacy decks play Snapcaster Mage or Green Sun’s Zenith! Why would the Snapcaster Mage decks play Cage over Surgical Extraction, and why would the Zenith decks play Cage over Scavenging Ooze? Each alternative lets Stoneblade and Maverick play to their strengths rather than sacrificing their respective best card.
Still, Grafdigger’s Cage is a very well-designed card. It just needs to find a home in a deck that wants to grind people out with intangible attrition value and where a single copy will suffice, since drawing a second Cage is a miserable experience I would not want to wish on anyone. So what deck can play the Cage? Check it out:
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (17)
Spells (36)
This is the sort of deck that can play Grafdigger’s Cage successfully—one that can tutor for it with Trinket Mage or Enlightened Tutor, that can put it back and shuffle it away with Brainstorm and fetchlands, and that can use it to lock people out of the game in conjunction with other lock pieces such as Counterbalance and Ensnaring Bridge.
How the deck actually goes about killing its opponent is up in the air, but that part isn’t as relevant. The purpose of this deck is to give you a starting point for a Grafdigger’s Cage control deck. Finding the right mix of counters, tutors, artifacts, and mana sources is important, while finding the right cards with which to kill the opponent is secondary. Does this deck want to be a Painter deck, for instance? Should it have a different color? Should it play more artifact lands and Mox Opals? These are questions worth investigating if you are interested in building a strong, Cage-worthy deck.
It’s important to note that Goblin Welder, a traditional synergy of a Painter deck, wouldn’t be as good in a Painter deck that has Grafdigger’s Cage. The Cage might be a good card in Painter, since it shuts off Maverick’s Zeniths for Pridemage, but we can probably do better. Since Enlightened Tutor Counterbalance often plays cards that are situationally valuable, I believe it to be the most likely home for a card like Grafdigger’s Cage, which is often not going to be worth a card of value up front.
To all of you who would jam the Cage into your aggressive deck’s sideboard, I want you to reconsider for a second. Think about your options, think about whether this affects any interactions in your deck, and think about whether it fits into your deck’s overall strategy. If it does, that’s great. Play it, and you’ll probably ruin a Dredge player’s day. If you can be playing something more powerful and better, though, it’s worth realizing that “new” does not always mean “better.” It means “cooler,” but cooler is not better.
Everyone can benefit from Grafdigger’s Cage, but not everyone who benefits from it will play it in their deck. Perhaps, as is the case with many cards like Grafdigger’s Cage, the best lesson we can learn is one of restraint and context. Every card has its home. A broadly-hyped card like Grafdigger’s Cage is sure to find a number of homes in Legacy decks. If you’re all about playing cool permanent-based control decks that don’t get much value from Snapcaster and don’t have green creatures to Zenith up, Grafdigger’s Cage is the card for you, and I hope I provided a reasonable blueprint to start designing from. For those of you who are more interested in playing with Dark Ascension’s powerful graveyard-based cards though, I’ll see you next week with a bunch more lists.
Enjoy your prerelease!
@drew_levin on Twitter