Midrange in the New Legacy

In recent Magic deckbuilding, midrange strategies have become very popular. In general these are decks that strive to play efficient disruption spells and creatures or Planeswalkers with a high impact-to-cost ratio. By doing so, midrange decks aim to exist in the mid-game, and can fall anywhere on the aggro-control spectrum, depending on the matchup and draw. Part of the reason this is such a popular strategy is that players have the option to switch roles freely and attempt to mitigate the impact of the opponent's strategy with broad answers and powerful threats. Historically, this has been a tried-and-tested strategy in Legacy, and one that I personally gravitate towards. Decks like Esper Stoneblade and Shardless Sultai have the tools to manage most situations, and the ability to turn the corner from control to aggro relatively quickly. However, the effectiveness of the archetype waned with the popularity of Miracles.

The power of cards like Terminus, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Entreat the Angels made it challenging for Midrange decks to pull ahead and stay there. Decks like Shardless Sultai weren’t aggressive enough to get under Terminus and they weren’t controlling enough to overpower the late-game. They did have some tools to disrupt Miracles, prevent them from developing, and deploy some resilient threats. However, the power level and efficiency of Miracles’ individual cards, backed by the consistency of Sensei’s Divining Top, meant that the Midrange decks had a relatively difficult time managing the matchup. With the banning of Top, this is no longer a concern for the archetype. Despite this, I don’t think that Midrange becomes a good choice in the new metagame. I think that throughout the course of Miracles’ dominance, the face of Legacy has changed, if only subtly, and that this change has a negative impact on the effectiveness of the archetype.

Resilient Combo

In my last article, I mentioned that I expected the initial metagame to consist of 3 combo decks: Lands, Storm, and Elves. Each of these decks were not only held back by the presence of Miracles, but have incredibly powerful, proactive strategies. In general, they also have a relatively positive matchup against midrange strategies. Both Elves and Lands have the ability to win the game as early as turns 2 or 3, while also being able to generate a sizable advantage in the mid-to-late game. Both of these decks can ignore traditional forms of disruption in Legacy because they function on an axis that take advantage of these spells. In Lands’ case it’s with an unstoppable spell in the form of Life From the Loam. As for Elves, it’s with a critical mass of replaceable creatures. In contrast, Storm has a more linear game plan but has the ability to power through an incredible amount of disruption through discard and careful sequencing of its spells.

The popularity of these decks is not an insurmountable problem for Midrange decks. The advantage that these strategies have over combo decks is the ability to be adapted for any situation. All 3 of those decks are relatively susceptible to the powerful hate cards that exist in Legacy. Any player can fill their sideboards with cards like Back to Basics, Perish, Rule of Law, and any number of cheap, efficient disruption spells they want and give themselves a better chance of managing the power of those decks. Furthermore, midrange decks can generally diversify the answers they play, thus giving them a larger number of angles with which to attack these combo decks. There are 3 problems with this approach.

The first is that Legacy doesn’t consist of only 3 decks. In the average 15 round Legacy event, a player could realistically play against up to 15 different, unique strategies. Having an abundance of powerful hosers that solve a single problem well could leave a player unable to deal with other strategies effectively. Potentially having to play some amount of haymaker hate cards might stretch the midrange decks plan too thin. The second is that these decks can react to hate pieces, and be adapted themselves, thus once again leaving the midrange player at the mercy of their opponents. The third problem is that the midrange decks don’t apply enough pressure in order to take advantage of the hateful cards. This can leave the combo player enough time to find a solution to the problem, or rebuild their advantage. These aren’t new problems to the midrange archetype in Legacy, but the popularity of these 3 combo decks specifically could make it more challenging for midrange decks to succeed. In addition to this, I think a much more insidious issue for this archetype now exists in Legacy.

Delver of Secrets

Historically, Delver strategies are aggressively-slanted, mana denial decks that sought to extend the early game with Stifle and Wasteland, and pull far ahead with its namesake card, cheap disruption, and free counterspells. Decks like Temur Delver boasted one of the best early-games that the format has ever seen, but the deck traded-off a significant amount of late-game power. This made decks that could develop their mana, and deploy more expensive, impactful threats, overall favorable in the matchup and gave midrange decks the edge. I don’t think this is the case anymore.

For starters, there have been a large number of powerful cards printed for Delver decks since Temur Delvers’ popularity. For starters, creatures like Gurmag Angler, Young Pyromancer, and True-Name Nemesis have helped diversify the threat base and give Delver players more options when deckbuilding. These decks are no longer required to play Tarmogoyf as the lone expensive threat. In addition, Fatal Push and Abrupt Decay have given black-based Delver decks the cheap, versatile removal spells they have always needed. This means that these decks aren’t left too far behind against a creature with more than 3 toughness. Finally, the most important card printed for the archetype in the past few years is Deathrite Shaman. This allowed Delver decks to compound their mana advantage even more than before, while applying pressure that doesn’t care about the combat step, and disrupting a wide-range of graveyard-based strategies.

In conjunction with powerful new cards being printed, the second issue for midrange decks in a Delver-infested metagame is that the Delver decks have the ability to function like more efficient midrange decks. This development came to fruition during Miracles’ dominance of the format, and it has not only changed the way Delver decks are built, but how they are played. In order to keep up and pull ahead of Miracles, Delver adopted slower, more powerful cards, like Painful Truths and True-Name Nemesis, in order to battle in the late-game a little more effectively. In doing so, it seems like Delver players discovered that they can introduce this late-game strategy into their decks without sacrificing too much of the early game dominance that the decks historically have. This is made possible with the presence of Deathrite Shaman, which allows Delver decks to play more expensive cards without adding more lands. I think this is the single most damaging factor which influences more traditional midrange decks in the metagame today.

Not only do the new Delver decks have a more powerful early-game, they are able to have a resilient mid and lategame, and back it up with the very cards that facilitate their early game, like Daze and Stifle. This allows the Delver strategy to deploy threats more freely, and break the symmetry of the opponent's powerful lategame cards, like Jace, the Mind Sculptor. If both players play a Deathrite Shaman on turn 1, and one deck has Daze and the other does not, the deck with Daze is much more likely to resolve a powerful 3-drop, like True-Name Nemesis, on turn 2 than the other. In addition, Delver players get to play their own, unique mid-game creatures, like Young Pyromancer and Gurmag Angler, which allow them to effectively battle on the midrange player’s terms. Midrange threats, like Tarmogoyf and Stoneforge Mystic, can be outclassed by these cards alone, which constantly force the midrange players to react appropriately.

Finally, Delver decks are able to apply a lot of pressure starting from turn 1. This gives them an advantage against the combo decks that midrange decks don’t have. As mentioned earlier, this also allows the Delver decks to take advantage of their answers more effectively, forcing combo to act before they are ready, and potentially take too much damage if their plans are disrupted. All of these factors present 2 broad problems when choosing to play a midrange deck. The first is that a historically good matchup in Delver decks might not be as favorable as it once was. The second is that in many cases, Delver decks are a better choice because they can function as faux-midrange decks, so one needs a good reason to choose to play a midrange deck.

Why Choose Midrange?

All of the information I provided here doesn’t leave me particularly pleased. Given the choice and good reason, I would choose to play a midrange deck over any other options. While I might not personally think that this strategy is the correct choice in this metagame, that doesn’t mean that the archetype cannot perform well, or that there aren’t any reasons to play it. So, what reasons are there to play midrange in Legacy?

These decks are still in the best position to take advantage of the incredibly powerful 3-drops that have been printed in the last few years. Leovold, being the most recent addition, joins the ranks of True-Name Nemesis, Liliana of the Veil, and Shardless Agent. Some of these cards can be difficult to resolve, but when they do not many other individual cards have such warping effects on games. In addition to Deathrite Shaman, midrange decks can play Noble Hierarch for acceleration, thus increasing the odds of deploying them on turn 2. Midrange players can also take a page from the Delver book of deckbuilding and incorporate cards like Daze in order to facilitate the process. In addition, if the deck builder is able to correctly guess the metagame, and choose their disruptive spells and threat base appropriately, all of the tools exist in order to dismantle the majority of opponents’ game plans. Broad-stroke answers and powerful threats have always been a well-respected strategy in Magic: the Gathering.

Midrange can be effective, and plenty of people will choose to play a deck like this. For me, though, i’m not sold on the efficacy of midrange in this new era of Legacy. Until a good reason arises, i’ll be attempting to learn how to play with Delver of Secrets and learn how to use the combat step for once.