This past weekend was a momentous occasion for Legacy lovers everywhere. For the first time in Legacy Open history, Brainstorm and Force of Will were both absent from the final match of the tournament. There has been only one Grand Prix finals without Brainstorm or Force of Will, and that was Philadelphia in 2005, back when The Meddling Mage himself was still in the game.
What does this mean for Legacy as a format? Well, for starters, it shows us that Brainstorm is not the only tier one strategy around. It reminds us that powerful linears exist all over Legacy, not just in places where we’re already looking. There was a ton of graveyard hate in the Top 8 of Richmond, but there weren’t any graveyard decks at the top tables, despite my prediction to the contrary.
Graveyard decks aren’t the only things that are powerful in the absence of hate, though. With barely any Hydroblasts or Ancient Grudges to be seen, Burn and Affinity were great choices for the tournament. They can both kill on turn three or four with alarming consistency. Yes, they can be hated out, but so can Dredge, Storm, Reanimator, and Goblins. That doesn’t mean that people have the sideboard space to board in a bunch of hate cards for everything. There will be linears that people can’t defend against. If you read articles like these and study the decklists from the previous weekend, you can even predict which linears people will be trying to hate out!
Yes, Brainstorm took five out of eight slots in elimination rounds, but none of the Brainstorm decks made it to the finals. There has never been a better time to not play Brainstorm in Legacy. With a metagame this diverse, the Brainstorm decks finally have to pick which matchups they’re willing to lose. The common complaint about Brainstorm decks is not that they’re overtly overpowered, but that they never have to “just lose” to anything. The narrative surrounding Brainstorm in Legacy has always been that you get to play a deck that plays real games of Magic against everything and where you’re never just blown out. That era looks to be drawing to a close. People are playing hyper-aggressive decks that require as much hating out as Dredge or Storm, and blue decks are stretched thin as is.
So how do we evaluate deck selection in a wide open metagame like this? More importantly, how do we evaluate card selection in a metagame like this? Some may have the luxury of switching what colors and strategies they play, but even those of us locked into a given dual land configuration have plenty of choices.
The rest of this article is divided up by color. I’ll go through all the popular cards in each color and share my opinion of their current playability. If they’re likely to be good in the future, I’ll note that and describe why. If they’re likely to get worse in the future, I’ll tell you why.
Wait, all the cards?
Well, not quite. Since no one has the attention span to slog through all the relevant cards in Legacy in one sitting, I’ll be splitting this up into three parts. Today, I’ll cover white and blue’s Legacy hits, while those of you waiting to hear about how good Dark Confidant, Fireblast, Nimble Mongoose, and Geist of Saint Traft are will have to wait until next week.
This evaluation is more about the cards themselves than the decks that they can go into. For instance, just because Snapcaster Mage (spoiler alert!) is good doesn’t mean that there’s only one deck that can play him to good effect. I’m not going to waste your time telling you all the decks you can play that involve Snapcaster Mage. I’ll leave the decision-making to you. Let’s go!
White
Mother of Runes
Currently good: Legacy is all about creature combat right now. While he was commentating on the StarCityGames.com Los Angeles Open, a few weeks back, Patrick Sullivan made a great comment about measuring the health of a format. He said, “A good format is one where Ravenous Baloth is a reasonable card. It doesn’t have to be great, but if it’s something you could consider playable, the format is about the right things.”
What Patrick was saying is that Magic, at its core, should care about creatures and combat and life totals. Goofy combo decks can have their day and succeed occasionally, but they aren’t the things you want as fundamental drivers of your format.
Mother of Runes fits into that combat-based paradigm perfectly—she’s an underappreciated card that a lot of decks just can’t beat. If a control deck relies on spot removal to get to its late game, Mother of Runes will get huge value every time. Since we’re living through an era of Snapcaster Mage letting control decks double up on spot removal, Mother of Runes is a great proactive counterpunch to those strategies. If Wrath of God or Pernicious Deed make a comeback, however, Mom’s outlook gets much worse. As of now, though, Mother of Runes is a great card against RUG Delver’s Bolts and U/W Stoneforge’s Plows.
Swords to Plowshares
Currently good: Swords to Plowshares has always been the best reason to play white and is the best removal spell by quite a bit. If you’re white, you want to play this. Granted, Zoo decks in eras past once played Path to Exile over Swords to Plowshares, but those decks were aggressive enough that they could expect to win before the opposing tempo advantage from the Rampant Growth effect overwhelmed them. Nowadays, aggressive decks want to win a game of board advantage, so Mother of Runes has tagged in for Wild Nacatl as the one-drop of choice in Legacy’s premier green/white/red decks. Without a bunch of Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings, Swords to Plowshares’ drawback is far preferable to giving an opponent a free land in an attrition battle.
Path to Exile
Currently good: …but narrowly so. Path to Exile sees play in exactly one place nowadays, and that’s as a 2-3 of in the sideboard of U/W Stoneforge decks. Path serves a very narrow purpose nowadays as Swords to Plowshares #5-7 against aggressive decks. In a format as driven by tempo cards as current Legacy, very few decks can afford to given the opposition a free Rampant Growth. This may well fall out of vogue if control decks are forced toward a less attrition-based, more trump-based style of deckbuilding. Given the rise of powerful linear decks like Mono Red and Affinity, an attrition-based control deck may not be the best way to attack Legacy in the next month.
Enlightened Tutor
Will be good: As I just noted, control decks may have to move away from a one-for-one attrition strategy toward a trump-based strategy in the near future. The best way to tie together such a control deck is with a powerful tutor, since you can’t really afford to play four Grafdigger’s Cage, four Circle of Protection: Red, four Energy Flux, and so on. Enlightened Tutor has seen a lot of success in the past as a way of tying together a Counterbalance control deck, but that was before platinum hits like Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage. A better question than “Will trump-based control strategies be good?” might be “Are people willing to put down Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets?” That question might not be answered until Grand Prix Indianapolis.
Stoneforge Mystic
Currently good, but getting worse: I’ve been looking at U/W Stoneblade a lot in recent weeks. Every time I think about picking the deck up, though, I want to cut the Stoneforge Mystics for more card drawing or more counterspells. Mystic makes the deck much better against tribal aggro decks and small creatures, but Wrath of God or Vedalken Shackles could also do that. Merfolk is an extinct tribe, so there’s less demand for Batterskull than there used to be. The green decks have shifted away from Chain Lightnings (which could never beat a Batterskull) toward Green Sun’s Zenith and Knight of the Reliquary and their own Stoneforge Mystics. Everywhere I look, decks have adapted to not flat-out lose to Batterskull. At what point is it better to just ignore their Mother of Runes and Wrath them? When can we play Ancestral Vision again? None of the blue decks can ever beat a Jace, the Mind Sculptor, so why not just try to stick one of those every single game? Don’t get me wrong; Stoneforge Mystic is a great card, but I consistently want to cut it from its namesake deck. Like every other non-Brainstorm sacred cow, Stoneforge Mystic is worth questioning.
Aven Mindcensor
Currently bad, getting worse: Aven Mindcensor is like Stifle. Fundamentally, Stifle is a pretty bad card. It doesn’t do a lot, it can’t consistently do the job you want it to do, and sometimes it’s not worth a card. Still, you play it because you Get people with it. You know, the people who play their fetchland, say go; you play your fetchland, and they crack theirs at the end of their turn? You slam your Stifle down before you’ve even touched your own fetchland because you’re so excited about getting to cast your Stifle as a Stone Rain. That’s Aven Mindcensor in a nutshell.
The problem is that Mindcensor is also an embarrassing creature. Oh, and your deck is so mana-efficient that passing with three mana unused on an early turn is like playing with your hand face-up. Oh, and almost all of the Intuition decks that Mindcensor actually preys upon are gone now, so your best hope is to spike a Stoneforge Mystic trigger or a Green Sun’s Zenith. You could never Zenith for it, so you had to play multiples in order to actually see it in a relevant time frame. If you want to beat Emrakuls, just play your deck, and you’ll find a way to get your Karakas in play. If you want to beat Hive Mind or Sneak Attack, play Ethersworn Canonist, Qasali Pridemage, Pithing Needle, and Flusterstorm. Your clock is decent on its own. There’s no compelling reason to play Aven Mindcensor over a plethora of better options, so why make your maindeck worse?
Oblivion Ring, Humility, Moat
Could get better: See Enlightened Tutor. Oblivion Ring sees a little bit of play outside of Enlightened Tutor decks, but these cards’ fortunes are pretty directly tied to how playable Enlightened Tutor is. If you play Tutor, you will want cards like these. If you don’t, you probably won’t want to play with these cards.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Completely bonkers insane awesome fantastic: To start with the obvious: Elspeth is great in U/W Stoneblade because she’s a game-winner that doesn’t get Pyroblasted and ticks up out of Bolt range and protects herself as she does so. She also kills Jaces in the mirror, protects Jaces against everyone, and kills an opponent very, very quickly. Ben Friedman was right in his decision to go up to two Elspeths in his Richmond Stoneblade list, and I expect that his decision will become part of the stock decklist from now on. For reference:
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (19)
Spells (25)
But Elspeth isn’t just good in Stoneblade. She’s also good in B/W Mystic/Confidant/Hymn decks, she’s good in B/G/W Mox/Goyf/Knight decks, and she’s good in G/W Maverick. There are no commonly played ways to kill a resolved Elspeth without losing a ton of value unless you were already winning that game anyway. If you are taking a deck to a Legacy tournament that wants to grind other decks out, I would recommend having a plan for dealing with Elspeth, Knight-Errant.
Wrath of God
Getting better every week: Wrath of God is creeping back into U/W lists after a long hiatus. This is a predictable trend, given the rise of G/W/(x) Maverick in Legacy tournaments and the power of Mother of Runes against spot-removal-dependent decks like Stoneblade. Wrath of God has gotten even better, though, since Jesse and Alix Hatfield and Gerry Thompson all decided to make similar RUG Delver lists for StarCityGames.com Open: DC that played three Nimble Mongoose. Many people realized that the card was likely the deck’s best threat against removal-heavy decks and decided to play the full set of Mongeese for Richmond. If the Goose trend continues, expect to see sweepers—led by Wrath of God—make a comeback in Legacy.
Armageddon
Could be good in a few weeks: Armageddon hasn’t seen play for a while, but it could make a comeback if control decks move toward a slower, more ponderous style of play. In a creature-heavy deck, Armageddon could lock a planeswalker-heavy opponent out of the game before they manage to stabilize the board. Since such an opponent is likely to tap out for a few turns while trying to deal with your threats, you’ll have a window to slam your game breaker.
Armageddon is functionally similar to Choke in application: you’re a creature-heavy deck, so blue decks cut their Force of Wills to try to trade cards more efficiently. Since they cut Forces, they have little to no protection when they tap out. Since you’re quicker to the board than they are, you can force them to tap low to answer your threats, then Armageddon with a slight board advantage and rebuild faster than they can due to your lower curve.
As a color, white has never been more playable than it is today. White used to be the worst color in Legacy. It had no flagship creature, planeswalkers didn’t exist, and so it was only really played for its access to Swords to Plowshares. Nowadays, it has a Top Three creature, the second-best planeswalker, and several removal spells that have seen play in different decks.
Blue
Ponder
Currently good: Ponder’s fate is pretty closely tied to the viability of Delver of Secrets. Since Delver of Secrets is doing well, so is Ponder. If people figure out the secret to beating Delver, though, Ponder gets a lot worse. It will always be the format’s second-best cantrip, so its inclusion in Storm and Reanimator is always guaranteed. Still, it’s an open question as to how much longer RUG Delver will stay in the top tier of decks. At the end of the day, it’s just another version of Canadian Threshold, albeit one with twice as many Wild Nacatls.
Stifle
Perennially playable, never great: Stifle, as I mentioned in my Aven Mindcensor section earlier, is not a good card. It’s the sort of card that beats people who don’t know how to play against Stifle. Against the Ben Friedman and the Alix Hatfields of the world, however, you will find that this card is rancid. It gets worse on the draw, it gets worse against rogue decks that don’t play fetchlands, it gets worse if an opponent has patience, it gets worse if an opponent is playing more than 22 lands, and it gets worse if the game goes longer. Here’s a quick and easy guide on how to beat someone who plays Stifle:
- Always activate your fetchland when they don’t have access to blue mana. Since Stifle decks also play Wasteland, you should get a basic land with this activation. If you kept a one-land hand, question your keep. If your deck is supposed to snap-keep one-landers, accept that you are the target opponent demographic for people who play Stifle.
- If your opponent holds up their fetchlands and keeps passing, just keep passing back. As long as they aren’t doing any damage to you, you’re winning. This is because Stifle is rarely a deck’s only bad late-game topdeck, and so it is very likely that you are subtly tilting the game in your favor by allowing mutual development.
- Just keep trying to play lands. After a while, you won’t care if they Stifle your land. At this point, your deck should be better than theirs, and you still haven’t taken any damage, since they didn’t play a one-drop at any point. Congratulations, you’re winning (even though it might not feel like it)!
- Play around Daze. Again, be patient. Don’t let them get value from all of their conditional cards.
That’s about it, really. Be patient, don’t get aggressive, and don’t crack fetchlands or fetch nonbasics if it exposes you to unnecessary risk. The later in a tournament you go, the more likely it is that your opponent intuitively knows what you just read and the less likely it is that your Stifles are going to be good. Unfortunately, part of the RUG Delver strategy involves mana-screwing its opponent, so some number of Stifles are always going to be a part of the deck. As you might have noticed from my Richmond list, though…
Creatures (15)
Lands (18)
Spells (27)
- 1 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Chain Lightning
- 2 Daze
- 3 Stifle
- 2 Spell Snare
- 4 Ponder
- 1 Spell Pierce
Sideboard
…I didn’t play the full four, and in retrospect I would have rather played 4 Spell Snare, zero Spell Pierce, and 2 Stifle.
Ancestral Vision
Not played currently, unlikely to be good again: I wrote about this deckbuilding tension when Snapcaster Mage was printed, but it bears repeating. Snapcaster Mage and Ancestral Vision both want you to build attrition-based strategies. They both want you to play a lot of removal and counterspells. Snapcaster Mage wants as many instants and sorceries as possible, while Ancestral Vision is fine if you have some permanents in there as well. The problem is that Ancestral Vision is really, really slow and doesn’t play well with Snapcaster Mage, while Snapcaster Mage both affects the board immediately and provides slot redundancy that Ancestral Vision doesn’t. What do I mean by slot redundancy?
Let’s say that you’re playing against Dredge. You could play Ancestral Vision or Snapcaster Mage in your U/W Stoneblade list, but not both. Given the option, Snapcaster Mage is the easy choice. Why? Because you want to play with eight Swords to Plowshares, whereas Ancestral Vision only lets you play with four. Against combo, Snapcaster Mage lets you double up on counters, while Ancestral Vision forces you to play with the cards you have. You may draw more cards with Ancestral Vision, but Snapcaster Mage ensures that you always draw your most relevant card exactly when you want it. Ancestral Vision is therefore better than Snapcaster Mage only in heavily permanent-based decks like BUG Control with Pernicious Deed, but Nick Spagnolo would even disagree with that:
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (23)
Spells (29)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 3 Counterspell
- 3 Force of Will
- 1 Island
- 2 Smother
- 1 Standstill
- 1 Crucible of Worlds
- 3 Pernicious Deed
- 1 Life from the Loam
- 1 Repeal
- 2 Spell Snare
- 1 Damnation
- 1 Maelstrom Pulse
- 3 Spell Pierce
- 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
Sideboard
I would love nothing more than to tell you that Ancestral Vision is an amazing blue spell again, but right now, it’s not. If Counterbalance comes back again, it’ll get even worse. If Pyroblast sees a ton of play, it’s even worse. It will take a very specific confluence of events for Ancestral to make it back into the Legacy spotlight, but now is not its time.
Hydroblast
Not played currently, will be good: Given the recent back-to-back success of Burn in Legacy Opens coupled with a Goblins showing in the more recent Top 8, Hydroblast should see a modest comeback in the next few weeks. It’s not a four-of sideboard card by any means, but having two copies and four Snapcaster Mages lets blue mages have a bit more of a chance against the red mages of the world.
Spell Snare
Easy four-of: I didn’t include Brainstorm in this list because that would be insulting, and I almost didn’t include Spell Snare for the same reason. Still, there are decks that don’t play four Spell Snares, but they are pretty consistently incorrect in doing so. Almost every single deck in Legacy is focused on casting a powerful two-mana spell. It could be Tarmogoyf, Stoneforge Mystic, Snapcaster Mage, Dark Confidant, Counterbalance, Flame Rift, or Cranial Plating, but everyone has a crucial two that they want to play. It’s almost as impossible to deny Spell Snare value nowadays as it was to deny Mental Misstep value when it was legal. Granted, the two are nowhere near the same power level, but Spell Snare allows blue decks to trade their first turn of mana for their opponent’s critical second turn of mana, bridging them into an uncontested Stoneforge Mystic or two open mana for Counterspell. Having a first-turn Spell Snare is far more powerful than many blue mages realize, and so they cut Snares without understanding why the card is so good.
Spell Pierce
Currently great and will get better: Spell Pierce has seen sideboard play in RUG Delver for a few weeks now, but Ben Friedman decided to play one in his U/W Stoneblade maindeck to great effect this past weekend. Spell Pierce is a great card on both sides of a tempo war. It lets the player with a board advantage counter an expensive stabilizing spell, while also allowing the player who is behind to interact efficiently with a mana-light opponent’s cheap counterspells. After all, RUG Delver only runs 18 or 19 lands, while U/W Stoneblade runs 23 or 24. Spell Pierce is just as good against the 18-land deck as it is in the 18-land deck. Given that RUG Delver can rarely beat a resolved Jace, Elspeth, or Wrath of God, Spell Pierce covers a lot of a tempo deck’s weak points against more controlling opponents.
Flusterstorm
Good and getting better: Daryl Ayers and Matt Devine finished 15th and 17th with very similar G/W/(r)/(u) Maverick lists in Richmond:
Creatures (22)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 1 Scryb Ranger
- 1 Tarmogoyf
- 1 Gaddock Teeg
- 1 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Qasali Pridemage
- 3 Stoneforge Mystic
- 2 Scavenging Ooze
Lands (23)
Spells (15)
Blue for Commander box set standout Flusterstorm is the newest addition to Knight of the Reliquary’s Technicolor manabase. This cheap spell—castable off of any Hierarch or Birds—can take a combo deck by surprise, as Maverick decks up to this point have not played counters in their sideboards. Ayers and Devine decided to de-emphasize the Enlightened Tutor toolbox in favor of a Natural Order plan for the mirror and control and a trio of Flusterstorms against Storm, Reanimator, and Show and Tell. Their plan has further cross-functionality against linear decks like Burn, where every piece of interaction is helpful.
Daze
Currently playable, will get worse: Daze has been good for the last few months, as it has rode Delver of Secrets all the way to the top of Legacy once more. Daze’s playability is one of the best ways to understand what is important to Legacy’s blue decks at any given time. If Daze is more playable than Counterspell, expect games to be shorter, curves to be lower, and spot removal to be emphasized over sweepers. This is because Daze decks typically have one-drops that they expect to ride to victory, and so they don’t need the ability to unconditionally counter a spell. They don’t expect the game to go that long. Instead, they expect that they will need to tap out to continue applying pressure and want to be able to counter an important, stabilizing spell on that turn. Since its one-drops are more important, the control decks have to lower their curve in order to interact in a reasonable time frame, and so spot removal takes the place of sweepers. Since the printing of Snapcaster Mage, though, Daze is quite a bit worse, since flashing it back is pretty awful. As a result, its playability has remained solid, while its number on decklists has fluctuated between two and three.
Counterspell, on the other hand, indicates that Legacy is about longer games. It tells the story of a format where people can hang out and wait until turn eight to cast their important spells, where tempo cards aren’t the most important drivers of the format, and where value cards can see play over cheaper one-for-one cards. Once people figure out how to consistently beat Delver of Secrets decks (and they will), Counterspell will become much better than Daze. In a fight between a Daze deck and a Counterspell deck, the Counterspell deck traditionally has an advantage if it was built to include enough removal to stabilize in the first half-dozen turns.
Mana Leak has also seen a bit of play recently but only in U/W Stoneblade lists. Tony Chu was the innovator of that particular inclusion after realizing that flashing back a Counterspell with Snapcaster Mage would tax the mana of a deck that only had 17 blue sources:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
Mana Leak has caught on with some deckbuilders, but know that its inclusion will make your U/W Stoneblade list slightly worse in the mirror. If your deck has a Crucible of Worlds in it, I would strongly recommend playing Counterspell in that slot instead, as Crucible will let you rebuy your blue sources in a late-game situation.
Counterbalance
Moderately played, will see more: Counterbalance saw its last maindeck success in the hands of Calosso Fuentes as he piloted a Hatfield-built RUG Delver deck to the top of a Baltimore Legacy Open last October:
Creatures (12)
Lands (18)
Spells (30)
The deck was notable for its lack of Snapcaster Mages and its capacity to completely crush Snapcaster-based blue decks. Since then, however, the Hatfields have switched to a much more conventional RUG Delver list with the ability to sideboard into Counterbalance/Top:
Creatures (14)
Lands (18)
Spells (28)
- 1 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Force of Will
- 1 Island
- 2 Chain Lightning
- 3 Daze
- 3 Stifle
- 2 Spell Snare
- 4 Ponder
Sideboard
In that deck, Counterbalance functions primarily as a one-sided Chalice of the Void for one, since the deck plays no threes and relatively few twos. Given the power and prominence of Legacy’s one- and two-drops, however, Counterbalance is poised for a comeback. If there was ever a time to take advantage of criminally low curves, this is it. Such a deck may well want Daze over Counterspell to fight the first few turns as effectively as possible, but Counterbalance is a real card that can beat Snapcaster and Delver strategies. It hasn’t made a big splash just yet, but I would expect it to break out before Grand Prix Indianapolis.
Spellstutter Sprite
Somewhat played, will see more play: Spellstutter Sprite fits into a slightly different mold of U/W Stoneforge decks. It wants to be played in a less controlling deck that plays Mutavaults over Mishra’s Factories (thus the deck has a lower emphasis on defense efficiency) and includes one or two Riptide Laboratories. The deck’s heavier emphasis on fliers lets it attack planeswalkers more effectively while also providing defensive value against Delver of Secrets. This adaptation of the typical Stoneblade strategy tends to be worse against Green Sun’s Zenith decks, but if those decks are not prominently featured in your metagame, then loading up on Faeries is a strong way to adapt the deck for the mirror.
Snapcaster Mage
Played in almost every single blue deck in the format, shows no sign of letting go of its viselike grip on the format: Snapcaster Mage has completely changed Legacy deckbuilding. Its presence has made creatures more important, spells more important, and permanents less important. It is a three- or four-of in the top two blue decks of the format. If you want to play Legacy nowadays, you need to have a very well-thought-out plan for how you will not lose to Snapcaster Mage. It is a beatable card, but people so far seem content to figure out what micro-strategies are good to win a Snapcaster mirror and less interested in figuring out what macro-strategies will beat all of the Snapcaster decks. If you want to “break it,” I would suggest pursuing the latter. If you want to play a powerful and synergistic deck in the next Legacy Open, I would suggest pursuing the former.
Vendilion Clique
Heavily played, will see less play: Given the recent rise of aggressive strategies, Vendilion Clique is not the card it used to be. It’s pretty slow and ineffective against both Affinity and Burn, does little against Dredge, and is slow against RUG Delver. It has strong applications against the format’s combo decks and in several blue mirrors, so it’s not an actively bad card, but it’s not as good as it was half a year ago. Given the strength of Delver and aggressive decks, you need a reason and strong supporting cast to play this card—you can’t just jam it into any given blue list and expect it to be awesome.
Intuition / Show and Tell
On the way down: Intuition/Show and Tell decks have been hit pretty hard by the rise of RUG Delver decks, as tempo-based strategies are not a good matchup for them. The recent popularity of hyper-aggressive decks like Burn and Affinity also bodes poorly for Intuition decks, as their clock is very similar to that of Burn or Affinity. If you really want to sleeve up two-mana lands for your next Legacy Open, I would recommend sleeving up all eight and maybe something to imitate them—Chrome Moxes, Grim Monoliths, something—so that you can match an aggressive deck’s speed on a regular basis. These changes will make you even worse against RUG Delver, though, and at this point, I’m unsure of whether that’s a matchup you can afford to scrap.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Currently playable, future unclear: In a world of aggressive decks and tempo decks, Jace has scarcely looked worse. You have to do a lot of work to resolve him and to protect him in a reactive deck. Still, he’s worth it—he’s Jace! How could he not be worth it? The big question is what you can do with him in a more proactive. He doesn’t fit into current iterations of RUG Delver, but that can be fixed. Given Legacy’s amazing mana, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a traditionally aggressive deck splash Jace into a very proactive strategy, using him as a way to stay ahead in the game. Caleb Durward showed us just how far Zoo’s manabase can stretch in the middle of last year:
Creatures (18)
- 3 Grim Lavamancer
- 2 Tarmogoyf
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 3 Knight of the Reliquary
- 2 Qasali Pridemage
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (18)
What about Affinity? How many Springleaf Drums, Mox Opals, Seat of the Synods, and Underground Seas do you need before Jace becomes a reasonable anti-control sideboard card? Yes, Jace is still good in Stoneblade strategies, but Delver of Secrets and Counterbalance have shown us that some of control’s best tools can be used to push a proactive strategy over the finish line. There’s definitely some innovation left to be done with Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Force of Will
Still just as good as ever: There are people who like cutting Force of Will from their counter-heavy blue decks, but I will almost never advise such a move. Force of Will is an important part of blue decks’ capacity to win games. By being able to interact on turn zero, blue decks can fight the least fair decks better than anyone else. If you cut Force of Wills, you start losing to the same degenerate turn-two combo decks that will start showing up to prey on all the hyper-aggressive strategies. If the format was a control-on-control slugfest, then sure, cutting a Force of Will could be right. But we don’t live in a world where pure control is the best. We live in a world where tempo strategies are the best. Cutting away pieces of turn-one interaction hardly seems like a good call in such a metagame. If you’re going to play Force of Will, do yourself a favor and play four.
Submerge
Good, and getting better: Submerge is one of the best removal spells in Legacy right now. It does everything that a blue control deck wants: it costs zero mana, it kills a creature, it can be timed to gain extra value (for instance, responding to a Knight of the Reliquary activation with a Submerge on the Knight), and it gives you more information about the next turn. Given that Delver decks have no real way of killing a Knight of the Reliquary in the mid-to-late game, Submerge is a great tool for getting another turn ahead in a race situation. It works just as well against Delver as well, since it’s impossible to Daze with any effectiveness if played correctly. The rise of non-green aggro decks isn’t surprising, given the power of Submerge and its recent rise in sideboard play. What Submerge does better than most other cards, however, is be a red removal spell.
When I say that it is a red removal spell, I mean that it would be far better in a red deck than it would be in a black or white deck. After all, black decks have a ton of removal options, so playing Submerge is a little superfluous. It’s still good, but a lot of the time, you’d rather just kill their creature. If you’re playing Dark Confidant, you definitely don’t want Submerge in your deck. The same goes for white decks: you could Submerge their creature, but why aren’t you just Swordsing or Pathing it? Red, on the other hand, has relatively few options for removal, but by Submerging an opposing creature, it gets to save its Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings for the opponent’s nugget. Since Red decks want to race, that conservation of resources is often crucial.
If you feel that I missed something in white or blue worth talking about, please let me know in the comments. I’m always interesting in hearing what you’re considering, so drop a line! Join me next week, when I go in depth on the rest of the colors, artifacts, and multicolored cards.
Until next week,
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