Choosing a Deck for the New Look Legacy Format
In recent years, I have chosen to commit to decks in Legacy that were pretty clearly the best decks. Playing the most powerful and consistent deck overall leads to a higher win % in just about every tournament, and that fits my goals in playing Legacy. However, the not-so-hidden downside to this is that these decks have ended up being the target of the banhammer. This isn’t at all surprising to me and the more I played both Miracles and Grixis Delver the more I personally wanted the decks to have cards banned from them. After playing with a single deck for a long time, choosing another deck is somewhat daunting to me. With the banning of Top, Grixis Delver was the clear front-runner so switching over to that deck was an easy choice.
This time around, this isn’t the case. Being spoiled with playing the most oppressive archetype 2 formats in a row has made choosing a deck in this much healthier format quite a challenge. This week, I want to go through the process of choosing a deck in a relatively open metagame. To get to that point, I want to talk about the metagame as a whole, and some of the factors that contribute to this metagame. As always, i’m evaluating decks using my personal preferences, which mostly include playing fair blue decks. There are a ton of other decks that are excellent, but as long as being fair and blue is a valid strategy in Legacy, I will be trying to learn it.
One feature of this Legacy format is that it is much more open. The banning of Deathrite has meant that no one deck has reached the level of “best deck.” I think there are two major factors that contribute to this:
- Almost all of the top fair, blue decks in the format were Deathrite decks. This means that these is not only a hole that needs to be filled, but also that the top fair decks have to pay more costs in deckbuilding which leave them vulnerable to more cards/decks.
- This is a substantially healthier and more interesting format than the previous 2. There are more decks that are performing well, and the way these decks fit together in the metagame leads to there being more meaningful choices in metagaming decks.
Regarding the former, this has meant that people have mostly either reverted to previously outdated decks (looking at you, RUG Delver) or have been finding ways to make their decks work without Deathrite Shaman (Like Grixis Control). It is possible, and preferable, that none of these decks ever reach the level of Deathrite-Grixis and Top-Miracles. Deathrite Shaman decks didn’t have to make many sacrifices in deckbuilding. Most of them could exist anywhere from aggro to control and anywhere in between simply by playing Deathrite. As a result, these decks were less exposed to the elements of Legacy, and the costs that came with poor mana bases, including a higher curve of cards, and casting cards like Daze and using Wastelands weren’t large costs at all.
Without Deathrite, these fair decks have to make choices in deckbuilding that both leave them more exposed to specific archetypes and come with costs that are more difficult to mitigate. It is difficult to freely include Wasteland in decks like Grixis Control because it is both more difficult to support colorless lands and get a mana advantage. This makes decks like Sneak and Show better because their manabase is less likely to be a liability. To the same point, RUG Delver plays Stifle, which means that decks that are less weak to Stifle can flourish in that metagame, like Death and Taxes. As a result, it is more likely that the best fair blue decks will often have a foil in the metagame, which means it is less likely that one of these decks will dominate the format like previous decks.
Regarding the latter point, the results have fully started coming in and this looks like an awesomely diverse format. There are a fair amount of viable decks, and it looks like a real metagame has begun to develop. The top of the format is getting more well defined with each event, but none of the top 5 or 6 decks are putting up dominating results. Each of them seem to have exploitable weaknesses which is a great place for a format to be.
I think the top decks in this metagame so far are as follows, in no particular order:
- Sneak and Show
- Death and Taxes
- Storm
- Miracles
- RUG Delver
- UW Stoneblade
- Eldrazi
- Lands
That’s a lot of decks and this list doesn’t even include a plethora of other well-performing archetypes. This list makes my first deck choice for the new format, RUG Delver, seem a bit embarrassing. It exists in a similar space to Grixis Delver, in so far as it has a chance in every matchup, all of these decks are built in ways to take advantage of RUG’s style of deckbuilding. While the combo decks are favorable, in general, they have a lot of tools to play around the type of blue disruption RUG brings to the table. More than half of these decks have the capability of making Stifle look embarrassing. Nimble Mongoose is excellent against Miracles and Stoneblade, and it’s passable against Lands, but it is pretty terrible against just about every other deck. The mirror match can also be a huge pain to play against, especially if you like having mana sources. I am not saying RUG is a bad deck. I’m still putting it on this list because of its brutal efficiency and its ability to beat anything. However, I think considering this metagame, I think we can do better, and i’m going to be considering other options.
My next go-to is Stoneblade, which is definitely a solid deck choice, and my favorite archetype of all time. Gerrard Fabiano has an interesting take on the archetype:
UW Stoneblade, 11th Place at SCG Worcester, Played by Gerrard Fabiano
This deck has some Fabiano flair that he loves (i.e. really weird numbers) but the deck looks quite interesting. The mana base is rock solid, and I love Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. However, it isn’t a particularly brutal deck. The cards are powerful, but they all come at a cost. True-Name Nemesis is good, but slow. This deck gets to play some of the strongest removal spells, especially Swords to Plowshares, but because it has so many white cards, it can end up being too exposed to combo. I think Back to Basics is the strongest part of the deck, and I think this is a good Back to Basics deck, but the card is completely dead in some matchups. While i’ll never stop testing and playing Stoneblade out of love, I don’t think it is the deck for me at the moment.
The parallel UW deck of the format, Miracles, is a different story. I have written about Miracles before, and even in this new format, my opinion hasn’t changed. It’s a great deck that performs well, but it is too slow for me at the moment. Including Mentor in the deck speeds the game up a bit, but the deck is still glacial and i’m not willing to play a deck of that speed in an event at this point.
Considering this metagame, and all of these decks not being particularly impressive to me at the moment, I think the deck that impresses me on paper (although, this one I haven’t tried in practice yet) is a shocking one: Grixis Delver. I completely wrote off this deck for the first week or 2. I did the same thing when Top was banned with Miracles, and look at the format now. I’m not going to write off any finishes as flukes, and instead really give it a chance early on.
This is the version of Grixis that most impresses me, and it shares a lot of similarities to old Grixis lists I liked a lot:
Grixis Delver, 9th Place at SCG Worcester, George Magou
I love the inclusion of 4 Gurmag Anglers. In a Tarmogoyf/Mongoose world, that card is a total house. I assumed that the loss of Deathrite would be a death-knell to the archetype, but I think the power of Gurmag Angler could be enough keep the archetype afloat. On any turn but turn 2, Angler is usually better than Tarmogoyf, and it is exposed to less of the common removal in Legacy. The best thing about Gurmag Angler is how it can sidestep mana denial. Even after being Wastelanded down to just about nothing, Gurmag can turn their Wastelands into faux-Lotus Petals. Regarding the other threats, while True-Name does seem much more clunky without Deathrite, it is still absolutely devastating against decks not prepared to answer it. It seems to line up well against just about all of the fair decks that are the most popular at the moment. Grim Lavamancer seems like a metagame call, but this does look like a solid metagame for it.
The threat base isn’t the only thing that impresses me. There are two key features to the spell-base that I really like. The first is that this deck doesn’t play any Stifles. Stifle ends up being great for stealing games, but is too often dead weight if they play around it which a lot of players have learned how to do. The second is in the sideboard. Having access to black cards means that anti-countermagic measures, like Defense Grid, don’t end the game nearly as often and it is tougher for opponents to play around. The removal suite gets to be more diverse than “Burn spells + Dismember,” so cards like True-Name aren’t necessarily lights out for this deck.
Overall, I think there are a lot of positive features that this deck has in a vacuum, as well as being a solid metagame choice. This is the version of Grixis that I like the most at a glance, and is definitely going to take up my time with testing. Playing less Anglers and including Bomat Courier and Young Pyromancer, like Noah Walker has done, seems interesting to me, but too far out for me right now. The alternative Grixis strategy, eschewing Delver and playing a slower game, also seems like it has a lot of merit. However, I have had a strong preference lately to bringing the game to my opponent early, and Grixis Control seems a bit too reactive for me.
I’ll probably say this every week, but that’s just because it’s undeniably true: I love this new format. The diversity is excellent, the gameplay is intricate and fun, and a lot of players seem to be rejuvenated with the banning. I will keep a close eye on what changes happen in the metagame, and keep trying to find something that works for me.
