Jack Elgin, the widely acclaimed King of Legacy, brings you a tournament report of epic magnitude.

July Thirtieth, '05. Anwar, fellow lover of all things evil, including, but not limited to, Pox, Suicide-Black, and Rush (the band), hosted a tournament at George Mason, the prize for which would be a Mox Sapphire (or the winner's choice of a better condition Mox Emerald). The rest of the Top 8 has prizes unannounced, which I always hate - as David Gearhart was correctly saying last night, no matter how good you are or you think you are, you can't rely on winning a tournament, so lack of a solid prize structure is a hindrance. However, it's Anwar, and I don't exactly have to make a schlep for it, so I go.

Importantly, this is going to be my first major tournament since March. There have been several tournaments hosted in Syracuse, including the monthly Amrod's tournaments that I love dearly, but monetary demands were such that my brother and fellow member of Team Failure, Matt, and I agreed that we would skip them and hope to make the Big Arse II instead. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and Steve Paleos. Instead of going to the Big Arse and hanging out with the Syracuse crew, we end up spending 18 hours straight packing up our dad's *sshole lawyer friend's moving van, a labor which includes but is in no way limited to moving 100 boxes of legal papers from his third story office, down a flight of stairs, and into the parking lot by ourselves.

On the drive down to Blacksburg the next day, we discuss possibilities of a Blue/Black version of Landstill. White/Blue Landstill is considered widely to be the best deck in the format, utilizing Wrath of God, Akroma's Vengeance, and Eternal Dragon as an early game mana fixer and late game kill condition. Going Black would give you access to a few key cards like Duress and Skeletal Scrying; the main focus of the conversation drifts towards possible replacements for Eternal Dragon. At some point I suggest Haunting Echoes, and we're both immediately drawn to the idea; Haunting Echoes doesn't fix your early game mana, but it does provide a difficult-to-deal-with late game threat. We call the guys, who are now in Syrcacuse, and try to convince Alix Hatfield, who had previously shown interest in and, prior to the format change, done well with U/B Landstill, to play the decklist we're cobbling together, but for some reason he shows reluctance to put together and play an untested decklist the night before a major tournament. We go to sleep, and thoughts of Magic are driven from my head by the grueling pain of twelve hours of unloading.

The details of that nightmarish weekend best left forgotten, we get back home two days later than we were estimating, having missed both the Big Arse and the Dream Wizards tourney that Sunday. I spend a week recuperating my shattered kidneys and reading the new Harry Potter book. During this time, triggered by the U/B Landstill discussion, I develop in playtesting with Godzilla a Legacy variant on an old favorite of mine from Standard, Mono-Black Coffers Control.

Jack Black
Land (26)
22 Swamp
4 Cabal Coffers

Creatures (0)

Spells (34)
4 Chainer's Edict
4 Diabolic Edict
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Duress
4 Consume Spirit
3 Oblivion Stone
3 Decree of Pain
3 Skeletal Scrying
3 Staff of Domination
2 Haunting Echoes

A quick history of the deck's evolution: Initially my idea was simple - take the mana engine that Coffers provides, use Black's board clearing and hand disruption to set up the game, have lots of ways of winning the late game, and most importantly, create dead cards for the opponent by having a win condition that isn't a creature - primarily Haunting Echoes.

Originally the deck was running Millstones instead of Consume Spirit, but eventually Godzilla and numerous losses convinced me that quick was better. Millstone's advantages in being able to beat Life decks and fueling Haunting Echoes were hampered by the fact that it was another permanent to worry about defending, it was slower than Consume Spirit most of the time, couldn't serve any control role, and Haunting Echoes is insane anyway.

The deck originally ran both Nevinyrral's Disk and Dark Ritual. While amazing together, Dark Ritual was just too much damned mana - 30 mana sources is a ridiculous amount for any deck, and I was getting mana flooded too often. Once I cut Dark Ritual, I found myself being less and less happy with Disk as well. I came to the same problem that many Landstill players came to - without a way to fuel it out early, all too often I found myself drawing it too late in the mid to late game and losing because of it, or because the opponent had a Disenchant. I couldn't switch to Akroma's Vengeance, but I could grab O-Stone. While I would rather have a Black Vengeance, O-Stone at least does offer the compensation of letting me save Staff of Domination.

Staff of Domination was one of the most important turning points in the deck's design. I had been looking for a card drawing engine to match the late game mana production the deck generates. I had initially glanced over Staff of Domination and passed it over as being inadequate as a card drawer; for a while I'm ashamed to admit that I was using Tower of Fortunes, and was even considering Planar Portal. As time went on, and these cards kept on sucking, and I kept realizing that this wasn't Prismatic, I gave in and tried Staff, and... it's been utterly amazing. It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries. It will not bend. It will not break. Alright, sometimes it breaks, but the card drawing has been more than sufficient, and the fact that it can be used to tap down opposing armies and boost my life against aggro strategies has been invaluable. It alone gives me a positive matchup against Burn.

Other cards require less explanation. Edicts are good because they don't ask for conditions, or ask permission to target creatures as cards like Terror, Smother, or Echoing Decay do. Chainer's Edict is actually the stronger of the two in this deck, as it wants for cards that provide card advantage. In a format swarming with efficient little packages of death like Troll Ascetic, Mystic Enforcer, Psychatog, and Nantuko Shade, being able to consistently 1-for-1 on creatures long enough to get to the late game is a solid strategy, although it runs into problems against swarm strategies. Luckily, the only swarm strategy currently being played is Goblins, although against them Edicts are definitely sub-optimal. My area is currently plagued with Gro-variants, but certainly Diabolic Edict and possibly Chainer's could be switched out for Echoing Decay or Terror if the metagame warrants it. If you wish to adapt this list, simply read those two lines as "8 Efficent two-mana or cheaper removal spells." For the Grand Prix Trial at U.S. Nationals, I switched out the Diabolic Edicts for Hideous Laughters, which makes Goblins a less horrible but still not incredibly fun matchup.

Duress and Hymn to Tourach, in Legacy, are to Black what Counterspell and Force of Will are to Blue; they fulfill their function more effectively and quickly than any of their myriad imitators. Duress is sometimes dead or weak, as Force of Will is sometimes not worthwhile, but matchups where this is the case are very few, certainly too few to argue on anything less than four of each. The discard in this deck is your first weapon against control, combo, and aggro-control, stripping their hand of counters and, in the case of Combo, their key components.

Decree of Pain is solid, sometimes uncounterable board clearing and card advantage. The fact that hardcasting it is often reasonable with Coffers is a nice bonus, but it would be playable for the cycling alone. Skeletal Scrying is, has, and will always be busted card drawing; I've always been happy with it, whether cycling it early game for 1 or 2, or drawing 4-7 cards in the late game. Consume Spirit and Staff of Domination help offset the life loss.

Haunting Echoes is in many ways the main kill condition. Although dead in the early game, it, more than any other card, sets up the late game. Once your opponent is drawing mostly land and missing key kill conditions and control spells, the game is pretty much set and match. It also deprives them of graveyard recursion, Threshold, and a host of other bonuses. Against many decks, the gameplan is simply to use discard and creature kill long enough to set up an Echoes. Knowing how to use Echoes is very important; always remember that you don't have to find every card you search for. Sometimes you want to remove every card you can to keep your opponent from getting threshold back or to simply deck them. Other times, however, you only want to remove their key cards, and let them draw a bunch of dead surplus while you establish board dominance. Sometimes it's worth using an Echoes simply to hit one or two key cards. Against Goblins, for instance, simply removing all their Wastelands and Piledrivers or Warchiefs or Ringleaders can be game winning.

We playtested the night before at Brian Diefendorf's house, and I probably spelled his last name wrong, but the playtesting was unusually nice as Brian's wife makes everyone some food. And lo, the Apple Crisp didn't have any cloves (allergies, and I'm smart enough to chew a hot mouthful before thinking to ask), and I didst have many servings. I meant to playtest Rabid Wombat (Mono-White Control with a card drawing engine based around the fact that half the deck cycles), as it's heavily streamlined and optimized after months of testing, and solid against most of the field, although it loses so very badly to Combo of all shapes and sizes... except Reanimator... who the Hell plays Reanimator? But anyway, I figured on playing Wombat, rather than a deck which was still in an experimental stage, and for which I was missing many cards. But, I wound up playtesting the MBC and doing so well with it and having so much fun and being so very full of delicious apple crisp... that I decided, what the Hell? I'm going to play MBC. And it's going to be fun. Most of my cards were borrowed from Brian Diefendorf (3 O-Stones, 2 Scryings, 3 D. Edicts, 2 Haunting Echoes), and a Decree of Pain from Gigantor later and I was ready, except for the sideboard. I really don't like borrowing cards, which is probably shocking considering how often I do it, so I don't try to borrow cards for my sideboard figuring I'll make do. This would turn out to be a mistake. The first eight cards in my sideboard were optimal, but the other seven slots were mainly filler gathered at the last minute.

4 Wrench Mind

4 Funeral Charm (okay, I borrowed these from Anwar and broke my own rule, but they're friggin' Funeral Charms. It's not like I was borrowing Kokushos. Incidentally? I desperately wished I had borrowed Kokushos.)

2 Visara the Dreadful (this actually worked out okay. She has savage synergy with Staff)

2 Twisted Abomination (I regretted this all day and never brought them in. I was hampered in this choice by the fact that I used them in Type 2, but in retrospect I don't think I was ever fully happy with them even in Standard.)

2 Bane of the Living (I've long had an infatuation with this card. It occasionally flirts back.)

1 Kagemaro, First to Suffer (Okay, I don't play Block, so I guess I'm slow on the uptake, but this card is pretty good. It's Bane of the Living but even more beat-stickish. Unfortunately, it's very bad against the matchup I most want beatsticks in, Combo, as by the time I get to five mana I've usually emptied my hand on discard effects)

[Ach, against der combo you bring in ze Negators! - Knut]

We arrive at the tournament earlyish. Or, that is to say, less late than other people. I'm wearing all black to emphasize my allegiance with villainy. After getting directions on where to park from Ian MacInnes (it turns out that "Lot C" is Canadian for "Lot E"), and a hearty breakfast of granola bars, we arrive, prepared to take heads. On the side during Registration, I twice try to lend out Darwin's Revenge to people (Mono-Green Food Chain Elves with a light splash of Red and Black for those respective Myojin. Can you tell I like Mono-Color decks?), Josh's brother ends up playing some other jank instead, and Mark Carl says he'd rather play sixty basic land. What a chump.

The turnout is mediocre. We wind up with something in the area of 30 people, with a lot of the guys from the Lucky Frog. There was talk of some people driving down from New York, but then a bunch of backing out at the last minute. A couple guys did come up from Virginia Beach, and we had some of the local Vintage players show up that are normally scarce. Mike Turpin shows up with a bear mask for me (my screenname on the Source is TheInfamousBearAssasin, and yes, I know I'm missing an 's'), which I wear off and on throughout the day, with and without the pipe. My biggest problem signing up is deciding what to call the deck. My attempts at sophistication (I write "Alfred Lord Tennyson" under "Deck Name"... y'know... 'Answer, Echoes, answer; dying, dying, dying'. Eh.) are quickly deflated by the fact that I repeatedly channel Master Betty throughout the day ("This deck is evil. It is evil, and it hurts many decks... decks that are good. I like it because it is so evil").

I end up winning Round 1 paired against my brother, Matt, as he gets a game loss from the Judge for lateness. Round 2 I beat Alix Hatfield playing Gro - more on that later. Round 3 is David Gearhart, inventor of Solidarity (that Legacy High Tide variant with the Resets you've heard about). Little known fact about the guy that invented the most talked about wholly unique Legacy deck: he's a gigantic dork. As am I. We spend five minutes high fiving about embarrassing the format by being the #1 seat. I lose the third game to some of the worst draws my deck has ever given me, and go on to play more Gro round 4. Gro is such a ridiculously good matchup. I draw round 5 to get into the Top 8 (there's only thirty people).

I smash some more Gro, mise two victories against Red-Green Survival advantage, and then lose to Vial Goblins in the final. Against the worst Goblins player ever. This is how bad he is - game 1, I'm at five life. He responds to my way-too-late-to-save-me-O-Stone with, correctly, saccing three goblins to his Siege-Gang Commander. I start to scoop up my cards. He asks me angrily what I'm doing. I tell him that I'm scooping, because I lost.

He blinks, taking a full three seconds to comprehend that. "Oh."

Sigh. Goblins is annoying not because it's overpowered, but because it damned near has artificial intelligence. The worst player on Earth can do well with the deck.

In summation:
I think that Jack Black is fully viable right now in the majority of metagames. Most combo as it exists in the format is easily disruptable with Duress and Hymn. The only really resilient combo is Solidarity, which is a problematic matchup for it's ability to survive disruption, and Force/Twincast/Flash of Insight in response to a Haunting Echoes, but Wrench Mind + Funeral Charm have been more than sufficient sideboard utility on top of a fatty or two to turn the matchup entirely around post board. I've also begun using 2-3 Nether Void in the side, which is quite amazing against Solidarity but perhaps a bit expensive and not really necessary.

The Edict-heavy build is poor against swarm strategies, and sometimes even against a deck like RGSA that has lesser critters like Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, Eternal Witness and Yavimaya Elder to sac, but the early removal is certainly the most module aspect of the deck. I don't want to run 8 Sorcery-speed removal, as it creates too much dead luggage against Landstill. Therefore I believe the correct current builds should either include 4 Diabolic Edict and 4 Infest or Mutilate, or 4 Chainer's Edict and 4 Hideous Laughter.

Wasteland is another problem for the deck, but often, particularly against control, if you view Coffers as simply an uncounterable Bubbling Muck that costs your opponent a land, it can still produce powerful mid-to-late game plays. The lack of creatures creates a lot of dead cards for opponents, although I would advocate 3-4 Kokushos in the sideboard.

Also a lesson learned is to test all matchups thoroughly. I only tested about two to three matches against Goblins, and while I didn't think the matchup was favorable, I didn't realize how bad it truly was. This is only heightened by the fact that in those test games, I had Hideous Laughters or Infests in the sideboard I ended up not actually using on the day of the tournament. I definitely need to tweak the deck or at least the sideboard in some way to avoid automatically losing my matches to the little red men, and I'm sure the presence of Goblin decks will get worse before it gets better.

Although I still maintain that the deck is viable, it has some glaring general weaknesses besides, such as: the mana curve from Hell, general slowness, the fact that you generally have to draw 5 lands within the first 5-6 turns to avoid dying against fast decks. Okay, so most of these are the same problem - your deck is a mana hungry whore. I've actually recently switched to running a whopping 27 land for this reason. On the other hand, even with such a high mana count, I can count the number of games that I've lost to mana flood on one hand, as the deck gets so much use out of each card and each mana drop that it makes. Even Hideous Laughter can splice to kill much larger bodies in the late game. The current decklist looks like:

4 Cabal Coffers
23 Swamp

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Chainer's Edict
4 Consume Spirit
3 Oblivion Stone
3 Hideous Laughter
3 Decree of Pain
3 Skeletal Scrying
3 Staff of Domination
2 Haunting Echoes

Some further tips on piloting the deck in specific matchups:

Solidarity
Solidarity is a mono-Blue, High-Tide Variant that goes off on your turn using Reset and Turnabout on top of a bunch of card drawing. It's very resilient to disruption. Unlike some combo decks, there's no way to permanently keep the deck off its feet - you need a clock. 3 Kokusho, 4 Funeral Charm, 4 Wrench Mind is necessary in the sideboard. Those are all there primarily for this matchup. They're nice in that they can come in against other decks as well, but their primary function is to beat Solidarity thoroughly games 2-3.

The plan here is simply to hit their hand as hard as possible. Keep in mind the danger that they might Flash of Insight away their yard, but you still want to try and Echoes them. It's hard to win with Solidarity when your deck is half lands. Even if you can't hit key cards with an Echoes, do so at the first opportunity to hit 3-4+ cards, and remember to leave them all their Fetchlands. Then get Kokusho into play and use Consume Spirits to finish them off. I would advise conceding game 1 pre-emptively if you don't get a very good hand including multiple discard spells + an Echoes or a couple of large Consume Spirits, as this matchup can drag on.

Landstill
Landstill is a Blue/White control deck utilizing large board sweepers and creature control elements, on top of counterspells and card drawing. Unlike your creature removal, theirs is dead. You also have discard to rip their hand apart and a lot of must-counters, including Staff of Domination, Consume Spirit, Haunting Echoes and Skeletal Scrying. O-Stone is not entirely dead in that it can kill Crucible, the card you must fear the most. Even in this matchup I prefer it to Nev's Disk for the reason that it can neuter Crucible of Worlds without letting them use Disenchant as an out, and Haunting Echoes is of course even better at this task.

Decree of Pain is a very strong card in this matchup. Your plan with a Standstill out is basically to build up land, discard spells, and must-counters in your hand with a Coffers. Once you have the right hand, break the Standstill at the end of their turn with Hideous Laughter or Diabolic Edict. Whether or not they counter the card is beside the point - you almost want them to waste a counter on it. Untap for your turn. Unload the discard spells first, rip the counters from their hand, and then play Coffers, accelerating into a large Consume Spirit or Scrying, or a Staff of Domination or Haunting Echoes. Played slowly, this matchup is hard for you to lose. You force Landstill into the position of having to be the aggressor, and it makes a truly terrible aggressor.

Vial Goblins
Vial Goblins is a fairly bad matchup depending on your removal. You certainly have the tools available to beat them, although the problem comes in that most of those tools aren't as good against other creature-based strategies. Whereas White's Wrath of God is always good against a board full of creatures, Hideous Laughter often won't do anything significant against Gro or Red/Green Survival Advantage. However, the format at the Grand Prix Trials and at Gen Con was very different from that involving the more hardcore Legacy players - Goblins was all over the place, instead of simply being one of the pack of best decks. That being the case, if you were desperately afraid of Goblins, you could switch your removal to some combination of 8 Infests, Echoing Decay, Hideous Laughters, and Mutilates. The balance can be very difficult; Goblins is back-breakingly fast, but often doesn't care about simple spot removal.

Gro-Variants
Gro's concept is to build up threshold as fast as possible while playing the Aggro-Control role. The core colors are Blue and Green, and a variant with every other color exists. Super-Gro splashes White for Swords to Plowshares, Mystic Enforcer, and Meddling Mage; Gro-a-Tog splashes Black for Duress, Psychatog, and Pernicious Deed or Diabolic Edict/Vendetta; and grU-Gro splashes Red for Fire / Ice, Magma Jet, and Fledgling Dragon. All decks feature some combination of Force of Will, Daze, and Counterspell, the latter two rarely being four-ofs, as well as a bunch of Cantrips, and usually Werebear.

Most good builds have ditched Quirion Dryad, thus earning names like Ian MacInne's "NQG", or, "Not-Quite-Gro". Nimble Mongoose is much better than the Dryad in this format. All of these builds have their own advantages, and all of them lose horribly to Jack Black. Not even a little bit of a joke. Unlike Goblins, where discard is often too late and Haunting Echoes can't save you from a board position already gone awry, these cards are good throughout the game against Gro. Some builds legitimately have fewer creatures than you have creature removal. Haunting Echoes ability to not just cripple their long-term game plan, but to revert most of their guys back to 1/1 dorks that get Decree of Pain'd away, can only produce a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Burn
Discard is helpful here. The bad "Burn" decks are running creatures too, which only helps your chances. Consume Spirit should be used often as a simple stalling tactic, but the real powerhouse here is Staff of Domination, which allows you to gain more life a turn than they can deal with. Obviously you can draw too many dead cards game 1 and end up losing, but after bringing in all the Solidarity cards games 2-3, you should be able to stall into the late game reliably where you can reassert your position. Skeletal Scrying probably isn't very good in this matchup, obviously, but using it for 1-2 early game is sometime safe and sometimes necessary.

So in one day I manage to go from the undisputed king of Legacy, beloved by my subjects, to a social leper, shunned for the crime of losing to a Peruvian. Truly, a grim end to a day that had such sweet promise.

Signing off,
Jack Elgin
TheInfamousBearAssasin on the Source
TheDreadedLeper-Island on MTG.com
TheWellKnownBrownieGolem on SCG/TheManaDrain
Once and Future King Of Legacy