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Part I: Big Arse II Highlights and Psychics vs. Ninjas.

“Judge, how much time do we have? I’m gonna explode.”

Dev, before finals at Big Arse II

This July 16th, 73 Legacy players headed towards Syracuse for Big Arse II to vie for the first place Mox Jet. And I tell you, damn, I wanted to make Top 8. If only I could have decided what to play. I tested deck after deck after deck. I ran VialStill, Black AggroControl, and SuperDuperGreen against Norm’s Landstill. Deck after deck lost again and again. So, Thursday before the tourney, I decided if I can’t beat ‘em, I’d join ‘em – I played Landstill. I playtested a good portion of Thursday and hoped to test for a good portion of Friday also. But alas, the fates would not have it so.

On Friday, I got stuck muscling heavy furniture into a moving truck for one of my buddies. It was not exactly a well-planned move. First, it was only my buddy and me moving, and I’m no Lou Ferrigno. Second, it was one hot-as-hell day. Sweat dripped from places sweat was not meant to drip from. Third, my buddy doesn’t believe in taking out the drawers when moving a dresser. “Bah, more trips up the stairs.” Fine, fine. I try to convince him like a bazillion times that the dressers would be easier to move if we took out the fully packed drawers, but I have no luck. When we were moving the biggest dresser out of the van into the storage unit, the whole thing tips a bit and, of course, the drawers empty out. Scattered all over the concrete are his wife’s bras, skimpy little thongs, and diaries. Mmmm, thongs and diaries. After eight hours of moving, I feel vindicated and strangely aroused – after all, what do you expect when you try to move a dresser with its drawers still packed? Oh, by the way, my buddy refused to let me read his wife’s diaries. He said that he read them once and it just pissed him off. I’m not too sure what he meant or what any of this has to do with Magic in general. Oh yeah, I didn’t test my deck enough and my arms were so flabby and sore, I could barely sling Magical cards the next day!

At Big Arse II, I ended up going a pitiful 4-3 with Landstill, ensuring plenty of rounds to play at Grand Prix Philly. So today’s story doesn’t focus much on me, or my buddy’s wife’s thongs, but more on the amazingly unseen, unpredictably sneaky trail of Dev the Ninja, and his ascent to finals.

If I had to make a prediction about who would make it to Top 8, Dev was not on my list that day. First, Dev was not even going to go to Big Arse II. Before Dev had asked me for a ride, I packed the van with as many magical geeks as possible. There was no room for Dev. I had even put Nick C. in the trunk of the black mini-van. Imagine getting pulled over with a minor in your trunk. Good luck talking your way out of that one. “Sorry officer. I was speeding since I was daydreaming about thongs. I’m driving with my elbows since I moved a ton of furniture yesterday and I can’t move my hands out of a claw position. And yes, I have a teen boy in my trunk since Magic players are often large people.” So, with a last minute decision, Dev the Ninja went with Joe Snyder and Matt Cole. Those two are a colorful bunch, to say the least. The three of them left the night before, gambled (Matt lost with pocket aces), and got to Altered States around 6 AM. That’s much too hardcore for my liking. Second, Dev, who had no sleep, also had no deck. He had to borrow Dryad Sligh from JP (not the Meyers type of JP). Lastly, Dev had nothing to eat all day. I’ve seen this guy pound 8 BK cheeseburgers – not eating does not sit well with him. Here, take a look at his list. Would you bet that this guy was going to Top 8?

MANA: 21
4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Wasteland
9 Mountain
1 Forest

MANGS: 24
4 Jackal Pup
4 Grim Lavamang
4 Kird Ape
4 Quirion pieceofwasteofaslot Dryad
4 Mogg Fanatic

BURN:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Dart
4 Magma Jet
3 Fireblast

Sideboard
4 Naturalize
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Anarchy

But at the end of the seven swiss rounds, who was the only one undefeated? Who sneaked his way into number one seed with a record of 7-0? That’s right, Dev the Ninja. He quietly surprised two Gro decks, sneaked past two Landstill decks, tiptoed by two R/G Survival Advantage, and slipped by a Vial Goblins. That was not exactly an easy seven rounds of swiss either. If you want, stop by mtgthesource.com for Dev’s tourney report entitled “How I Roll.” If you can read “Ninja,” you’ll see such classic details such as, “Round 4: Cavernninja with Gro. I won? 2-0 /4-0,” and “Game one went something like me wasting his lands and burning his dome.” Oh, and let’s not forget, “All I gotta say is Lava Dart rails goblins.” As you can see, the details are, of course, bountiful, but the true beauty of the report lies within the plethora of quotable material.

While Dev was quietly sneaking his way into Top 8, another Legacy titan made a bold prediction. Ian from VA walked up to Norm, and asked, “Can I see the Mox?” Norm complied but asked why. Ian answered with, “Because I’m going to win it.” Later, we found out that Nostradamus has nothing on Ian from VA.

Dev’s first Top 8 opponent was Seth running the traditional U/W Landstill. Game one, Dev burnt Seth to a crisp with such lines as, “3 to the wig.” The first game ended with Dev declaring, “Lavamancer’s a good card.” The second game did not look so pretty with Seth dropping a turn two Circle of Protection: Red. Seth built up to eight lands and I was thinking that Dev should just scoop. But Ninjas don’t scoop. Seth, during his upkeep, decided that he needed to put a clock on the board, and tapped five lands to return his cycled Eternal Dragon. This left him with just 3 lands untapped and one of those lands was a fetch land! EoT, Dev attempted to Naturalize the CoP: Red and Seth was forced to Counterspell it. Dev then unloaded a massive amount of burn “on your grill” to win the game and match.

For Top 4, Dev had a repeat match against Ray. Dev had already beaten Ray once in the swiss rounds and was pretty confident. Too bad Dev wasn’t pretty coherent – he was awake for about 35 hours by now and had played a hectic game of Shoe-Horseshoe at 7 in the morning. That can take a lot out of a man. This match was sprinkled with classic Dev confusion like his response to Ray declaring it to be the clean up phase: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Let’s not forgot about, “Is it my turn yet?” at the end of his own turn and then the poignant “Judge, where are we?” I think that Dev meant to ask what stage he was at, but who knows? Maybe he did forget that he was in Syracuse. The first game was pretty straightforward with little Red men swinging, Dryad sucking and waiting to be sided out, and Red burn hitting the dome. Unfortunately, Dev’s Ninja powers seemed to be taking a vacation as he continued to top deck junk. Ray stabilized at 1 life, actually Force of Will-ed a flashbacked Lava Dart, and dropped a Standstill. It did not look good for Dev since Ray was beating down with manlands and had a pretty full hand. Dev top decked a Fanatic and attempted to cast it. Ray drew his three cards and said, “Fine.” Dev, with the most incredulous tone – the type of tone someone uses when he wins the lotto or gets struck by lightning the second time – repeats, “FINE? Sac? Fine?” Dev is so tired that I’m surprised that he remembered to sac the Fanatic. So the ninja skills helped win game one. For game two, no amount of ninja skills will get any burn deck to sneak by a swinging Exalted Angel. With game three, Ray looked to repeat the game two win but stalled a little on land. It didn’t help when Dev played Wasteland and declared, “Tundra takes a big dump.” Ray eventually cast Fact or Fiction EoT but was burnt out anyway. EOTFOFGG doesn’t always hold true in Legacy.

A little Dev intermission: Dev’s a classy guy. I like him. Funny and whatnot. I mean total class. He shaves with a knife. Just sorta grabs the hair and cuts it with the knife – the same knife that he picks his toes with. Oh, and he picks his teeth with it too. He’s hardcore. For this tourney, someone had used a permanent marker to draw a phallus on Dev’s biceps. He can make it dance. Keep this in mind so that Dev’s classy move before finals comes as no surprise, “Judge, how much time do we have? I’m gonna explode.” Have you ever heard of a player asking the Judge for permission to go the can? [Sure, happens all the time in PT Top 8s. – Knut]

Finals comes along and Dev faced – what, who’s this? Who sneaked into finals playing a Gro deck? Is that Ian? The same kid that said, “Can I see the Mox? Because I’m gonna win it?” No, it can’t be. Bah, no worries for Team Albany; Dev already beat this deck in the swiss rounds and we just refilled Dev’s tank with like two Mountain Dews and a bag of Fritos. Who needs sleep when he has Dew and Fritos? Besides, Ian is playing a Gro deck! What Team Albany did not know was that Ian is psychic. Like scary psychic. Like Miss Cleo and John Edward had a child. Like one really psychic child that could randomly guess his top card when he casts Predict. That’s how psychic Ian is. Seriously, he casts a blind Predict, names Brainstorm, and gets it right! His massive card drawing quickly got him threshold and stole the first game from the Ninja. Of course it helped that the Ninja had to mulligan down to five. In game two, Dev made his last quotable statement of the night. “Wait what’s that card do? Judge, do I lose?” Yeah, Honorable Passage was a random kick to the junk for the game loss.

Dev walked away with the 2nd place prize – a playset each of Underground Sea, Survival of the Fittest, and Polluted Delta. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Part II: Calling Out the Legacy Community – Time to step it up.

Okay, I had a good time at Big Arse II and made my money back. I enjoy seeing the Source members from all over the different areas and like the friendly atmosphere. But I need to call us out. There is one thing that we, as players, need to generally do if we hope to do well at GP Philly. And I’m including myself in this. We Need To Step Up Our Playskill! Take a look at some examples:

Against a Burn deck, one lLandstill player taps five of his eight lands to return Eternal Dragon during his upkeep. But he has CoP: Red on the table! Why not wait to draw a manland and simply and slowly beat down with that? Sitting behind eight uses of CoP: Red seems like a sure win against Burn. That mistake cost Seth the game.

Instead of equipping a Jitte to a critter, one player decides to play another piece of equipment – his second Jitte! Oops.

One RGSA player sacced a land to fetch, um, what did he fetch? Nothing. He forgot to get his land.

One player had Sakura-Tribe Elder put his land into play untapped. His opponent didn’t notice until it was too late and someone got a game loss.

Another player cast Fire on a Kird Ape with a Taiga on the table. No, sorry, you can’t switch it to Ice once you’ve declared Fire.

Now granted, you will see some bad play errors at any tourney, but all of those play errors were in the finals! Just when I feel like I’m getting on my soapbox, I remind myself that I once lost a match because I couldn’t count my Tog damage correctly. My point? We need to step it up if we want a good showing at GP Philly. If we don’t, all the pros and Menendians will be able to pilot bad Belcher decks into the Top 8 on their playskill alone.

Part III: Prepping for GenCon and GP Philly

As you may have noticed, there are not many large Legacy tournies to gather data for a testing gauntlet. The likely best site for Legacy info is really run by casual players. Personally, I get to play once a week. There is a reason why Adam Chambers beats me whenever plays me. But I tell you, us casual Legacy players are excited about the Grand Prix. Finally “our” format has official support.

At the same time, I think that some of us see this official support as a little scary. What if some pro comes along and invalidates everything that we thought? What if Belcher is actually good? What if all we needed to do was add Brainstorm and be better players? Is it possible that we don’t know much about the format that we have been playing for years? Well, that type of thinking doesn’t really get us anywhere.

What we should be doing is creating a testing gauntlet for the GP. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we have that much worthwhile information or hard data. The closest thing that we have to a large tournament was Bob K’s Dual Land Draft and Big Arse II. The decklists for the DLD are MIA, so that leaves us with BAII’s lists. They’ll have to do. First the top 8. (Decks are listed in detail on SCGs decklist page and on mtgthesource.com’s tournament forum).

1st – Gro (GUW)
2nd – Dryad Burn
3rd/4th –
Vial Goblins
Landstill (UWr)
5th – 8th –
RG Survival Advantage
Landstill (UW)
Angel Stompy Variant (Wub)
RG SurVial (Crappy Survival Junk)

You will see not too many surprises. The only really “rogue” deck is the SurVial deck. It will remain a mystery best left unexplored. More importantly, you’ll notice established archetypes in that T8. Two Landstill and a Vial Goblins should come as no surprise. The Burn deck and AngelStompy may raise an eyebrow, but both archetypes have done well in various metagames. So that gives us a bit of a start for developing a gauntlet.

Let’s dive a little deeper and look at the break down of all the archetypes. I’m not going to make too many conclusions about the following data; you should make your own since I think that some are pretty obvious. Also, don’t get too antsy about my classifications of decks. I included The Game as a combo deck and gave Survival its own Archetype. Also note that the two AngelStompy decks were so drastically different that I had included them in separate sections.

Archetype Breakdown: (73 players)

Aggro: 18 decks (2 in T8) = 25% of the field/ 25% of T8
Vial Goblins - 7 (2 with Bidding)
Burn/Sligh - 7 (1 splashed G for Naturalize, Quirion Dryad, and Kird Ape)
Ravager - 1
Garv.dec - 1
Angel Stompy – 1
GU Random list – 1 (very casual player without optimal list)

Aggro Control: 16 decks (2 in T8) = 22% of the field / 25% of T8
Gro Variants - 6 (3 BUG, 1 UGW, 2 RUG - Also note that the one Gro deck to T8 did not run Dryad!)
Fish Variants - 4 (lists differ greatly)
3 Deuce – 1
Rock - 1 (Amazing Results II which splashes W for StP)
Black Disruption - 2 (1 Pox, 1 more like Poxicide without Pox and a W splash)
Angel Stompy Variant – 1
RGW - 1 (very odd list resembling San Diego Zoo builds)

Survival Variants: 10 decks (2 in T8) = 14% of the field / 25% of T8
RGSA - 5 (1 splashing black for Cabal Therapy)
ATS - 3
Welder Survival – 1
SurVial - 1 (Crappy Survival Junk – but it T8ed anyway)

Control: 20 decks (2 in T8) = 27% of the field / 25% of T8
Landstill - 11 (9 UW, 1 UWr, 1 Bob the Belcher)
Hulk 2 - (1 w/ Wish-Zerk, 1 without)
Rifter – 2
UW Chant Lock - 2 (builds vary greatly)
Turboland – 1
UW Enlightened Tutor – 1
BBS – 1

Combo: 9 decks (0 in T8) = 12% of the field
The Game - 3
2 Land Belcher (Menendian's exact list) - 1
Nausea - 1
Battle of Wits - 1
Solidarity - 2
Spring Tide - 1

So what does this hint at? Quite possibly that Legacy combo is not what it should be. None of the combo decks made it to the T8 and they represented the smallest percentage of the field – a percentage even smaller than the Survival Decks! Next, Landstill is alive and kicking. Yes, it’s a slow control deck, but Legacy is not as fast as it used to be when it was called 1.5. Yes, most of the most important plays happen on turn two, but Landstill has its own important turn 2 play – Standstill. In fact, look at this:

- Most popular deck = Landstill - 15% of the field
- 2nd most popular deck = Gro, Burn, Vial Goblins variants - 10% of the
field (each)
- 3rd most popular deck = RGSA - 7% of the field

So what? Well, I’ll tell you what. I dare say that you are looking at the beginning of a testing gauntlet. The pros may think Landstill is a bad deck, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be testing against it. Also, mark my words, Vial Goblins will be hugely popular at GP Philly. The deck ports over so easily, doesn’t even require duals, gets better with the addition of Goblin Lackey, and gains more sideboard options. Easy to play, cheap to build, and has eight cards that sneak under Standstill? Yeah, that will be played a ton.

So you don’t plan on playing any of the supposed upper tier? You’re going rogue? I have a little info for you too:

Card Numbers Worth Noting:

Spells
Force of Will - 30 decks playing 4 copies - 1 deck playing 3 copies. This is around 42% of the decks in the tourney!
Swords to Plowshares - 23 decks playing 4 copies - 3 decks playing 3 copies. 31% of the decks ran StP.

Also, consider some of the following #s of cards in the T8 of Big Arse II...

17 Wasteland
16 StPs
12 FoWs
12 Brainstorms
9 Jittes (in 3 different decks)
8 Aether Vial
8 Survival of the Fittest
8 Standstill
8 Meddling Mage

only 7 Black cards! (4 Duress and 3 Engineered Plague)

Creatures
Decks with creatures – 69 decks = 95% of the decks.
- 3 Creatures - 2 decks
- 4 or more creatures between Main and SB - 67 decks.

This number is a little misleading due to what I considered a "creature." Landstill needs to win with creatures so I considered Eternal Dragon, Decree of Justice, Faerie Conclave, and Mishra's Factory to be creatures. Also, this number may be not truly informative since so many creatures serve so many different functions. Making an assumption that Wrath of God would be great against the whole field would be incorrect, since WoG is obviously bad against The Game, is a bit of a speed bump for RGSA, and not that great against Mogg Fanatic and Grim Lavamancer. Do what you will with this number but I recommend that you keep in mind that Legacy is a creature heavy format. On the other hand, also keep in mind that 95% of the decks had some sort of creature to kill

Lands
Dual Lands - 57 decks using Dual Lands = 78%
- 0 Dual Lands - 16 Decks
- 1 Dual Land - 2 decks
- 2 Dual Lands - 5 decks
- 3 Dual Lands - 5 decks
- 4 or more Dual Lands - 45 decks = 62%

Fetch-Lands - 60 decks using Fetch-Lands = 82%
- 0 Fetches - 13 decks
- 1 Fetch - 1 decks
- 2 Fetches - 2 decks
- 3 Fetches - 1 decks
- 4 or more Fetches - 56 decks = 77%

Wasteland - 35 decks using Wasteland = 48%
- 2 Wasteland - 2 decks
- 3 Wasteland - 4 decks,
- 4 Wasteland - 29 decks

No legitimate Wasteland Targets
- 4 decks (I did not consider Fetch Lands to be Legitimate Wasteland targets. Some decks were running only Wastelands as non-Basics, but one can consider a Wasteland a worthwhile non-Basic for one's own strategic Wasteland.)
- 95% of the decks had at least a decent target for Wasteland.

Let me repeat that percentage - 95% of the decks had at least a decent target for Wasteland! But only 48% of the decks were running the Legacy King of Land Destruction. Should more decks be running Wasteland or is my assumption much too broad? Also, take a look at Dual Land percentage. That’s a lot of Duals! Like I said, use this info for what you will. I’m no Phil S., so you’ll likely get no more info from me.

Part IV: The Catch-22 and Conclusion

I don’t mean to end on a doom and gloom note, but I don’t see a Hallmark ending for the Legacy format. The GP will likely be a blessing and a curse.

The GP can make Legacy much more popular. If Legacy becomes more popular, then Wizards will want to support it further. More people will want to play. With more people playing, prices on Duals and FoWs will rise more than they are already doing. When will Duals become too pricey for a supported Legacy format? Although I’m not sure when, I bet that when they do, they’ll be banned. What’s that? You say that you don’t need Duals to play Legacy? Well that’s right. But it’s “right” like you don’t need Ravagers to play in the old Type II or you don’t need Power to play Type I. Look at the numbers… nearly 80% of the decks at Big Arse II ran dual lands. Many of them ran two playsets.

On the other hand, Legacy may not really take off with the GP crowd. If it doesn’t get popular, then it remains relatively obscure and Type I continues to control the prices of Duals and FoWs. No big deal, but I wouldn’t mind having the format supported and recognized.

But how long can Wizards support a format that will require you to play a $600 deck?

In conclusion, congrats to Ian and Dev, Legacy players step up the playskill, and finally, get going with that GP testing gauntlet!

Matt Pietarinen

Peter_Rotten on mtgthesource.com

PietarinenAThotmail.com