This Week in Legacy: Commanderin'
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're back from vacation! Because of the week off, we're only going to be covering the events from this past weekend, but I will note that we will make a special exception for the Jordan Aisaka Memorial Tournament. The primary focus of this week will be a look at the new cards from the Commander Masters Precon decks as well as a look at key reprints for Legacy from the set. I've also got a reminder about an upcoming paper event this weekend!
New Cards! Commander Masters and Legacy
Commander Masters is upon us, and with it, we get a bunch of reprints and also some new cards that are coming out of the Precon decks. We're going to discuss some of these new cards and what they could theoretically do in Legacy.
Slivers
One of the new decks is a Sliver deck, so there are some new Slivers to consider!
Hatchery Sliver
This one is weird. Giving Slivers Replicate is kind of cool honestly, but a good amount of Slivers are Vial'ed in and not cast, and mana is pretty tight in those decks. Might just be too much of a win-more situation.
Regal Sliver
Four mana is a lot to ask, but four mana to make any Sliver turn on the Monarch (for example if the opponent takes it from you, you can Vial in another Sliver to gain it back) and then give Slivers a pump effect is kind of cool. This is the most playable of these that I saw, honestly, because usually having the Monarch is pretty strong.
Cloudpost Things
Cloudpost decks got a lot here, not going to lie. There's an entire deck devoted to Eldrazi, so this is just a lot for those kinds of decks. We already talked about Zhulodok, Void Gorger before this article, so let's only look at the new cards.
Abstruse Archaic
This can't copy mana abilities, but it can copy Wasteland activations and Eye of Ugin activations. Might be interesting enough in some capacity.
Darksteel Monolith
Sort of like an Omniscience for colorless spells. Might be okay? I am doubting this one.
Flayer of Loyalties
Even just casting this thing is good enough to get the effect off of it and turn any of your opponent's creatures into a base 10/10. It can also grant haste to another creature you control or turn one of your other creatures into a base 10/10 with annihilator 2. Seems pretty reasonable.
Rise of the Eldrazi
Even at 12 mana, this card is utterly disgusting in many ways. The only big downfall here is that it's not a Tribal Sorcery - Eldrazi so it can't get cost reduced by Eye of Ugin. Still, if Cloudpost can cast this, it's kind of game over at that point. Absolutely insane in many ways.
Enchantments
One of the decks was focused on Enchantments. There wasn't a ton out of this deck though.
Demon of Fate's Design
This one is definitely weird. Allowing you to pay life for your big enchantment spell is interesting enough. I have seen some ideas of using this in an Academy Rector shell if you accidentally draw your payoff (your Omniscience and stuff).
Key Reprints from Commander Masters
This set also had a bunch of great reprints in it for Commander, but there were some Legacy-specific stuff, so let's take a look at some of the cards being reprinted that see some amount of Legacy gameplay.
Jordan Aisaka Memorial Tournament
July 15, 2023 at Mox Boarding House was a tournament held in the honor of Jordan Aisaka, a long time Legacy stalwart who passed away from a brain aneurysm last October. Jordan was unparalleled in the Legacy community. There was truly no one like him. This event not only honored his memory, but also gave charitable donations to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. The event overall raised $6,500 for the Foundation.
This event was held by Daniel Aisaka, Jordan's brother, and looked to be an absolutely amazing event. There was live coverage, there was commentary, there was hope. There was a lot of memories of Jordan and his time in the community. You can watch the full coverage stream below.
I never got the chance to meet Jordan personally, but I knew him well via several appearances he had made on podcasts such as Leaving a Legacy, and his light shone throughout the community in many ways. Many will remember him from coverage streams, many will remember his enjoyment of white bordering cards (so many white bordered cards).
We're going to miss Jordan for sure, and I hope Card Kingdom is able to make this a yearly event to keep Jordan's memory alive and well. Be sure to check out the stream. There's lots of feels.
Paper Event Reminder - Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy Open 2
Just a reminder that this weekend is the Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy Open 2 in Canal Winchester, OH! Registration for this event is now closed (due to needing to provide headcount to venue for lunch purposes), but this is looking like it's going to be an awesome event! This event is going to streamed on Twitch with myself (onsite) and the one and only Anuraag Das (via remote) providing commentary throughout the day!
If you're coming to the event, please feel free to stop by and say hi!
Legacy Challenge 7/22
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event. This event had 63 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.
Death's Shadow was the predominant deck of the event here, but its win rate was slightly less than 50% overall. Grixis Delver came in next here at half of Death's Shadow with a slightly better than 50% win rate. Mystic Forge was also popular but did not do well. Red Painter did very well as did Reanimator.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| GW Depths | 1st | Sol-e22558 |
| Boros Stompy | 2nd | Sommertroll |
| Worldgorger Combo | 3rd | duke12 |
| Deadguy Ale | 4th | CoolUser |
| Cradle Control | 5th | EronRelentless |
| Red Painter | 6th | matyo804 |
| Grixis Delver | 7th | nevilshute |
| Red Painter | 8th | Searzist |
Very interesting Top 8 here. Plenty of interesting diversity. At the end of the event though it was GW Depths that won it all.
This list looks quite solid for sure. So much of this deck has not changed a lot and it's nice to see it doing well. I think this is one of those decks that play the "doesn't care about Bowmasters" game quite well, and it's a good place to be to combat that card. Making a 20/20 doesn't hurt, for sure.
In Second Place we've got Boros Stompy.
It's crazy how good Forth Eorlingas! is in these Stompy builds. Its floor is pitching to Chrome Mox for RW mana, which is great.
Also in this Top 8 we had Worldgorger Combo!
This deck is wild honestly. Using the Ring as a draw engine for Worldgorger to win the game off of is pretty crazy. This deck is just so very very cool.
Further down this Top 8 we had some sweet sort of Deadguy Ale action (really the best classification for it).
This deck is sick. Sort of like Taxes but with Samwise and Bowmasters doing a lot of work (Samwise plus Mishra's Bauble and Karakas is gas).
Legacy Challenge 7/23
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Sunday event. This event had 92 players in it thanks to the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the incomplete datasheet here. Due to a technical issue with MTGO we didn't have full data.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Delver | 1st | HJ_Kaiser |
| Doomsday | 2nd | wonderPreaux |
| Maverick | 3rd | Harry1232 |
| 8Cast | 4th | jaarseth |
| 8Cast | 5th | ItsSwiftyTime |
| Deadguy Ale | 6th | 2radMTG |
| RUG Cascade | 7th | 420SlamKing |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 8th | buildorburn |
Also another pretty interesting Top 8 here. Nice amount of variety. At the end of the event it was Grixis Delver that won.
Sauron's Ransom is kind of a sweet card we haven't talked too much about, but it is quite powerful and seems great in a list like this. Very interesting to see some Delver decks close to cutting actual Delvers again, but we've got a number of different tempo decks in the format and that's pretty sweet.
In Second Place we had Doomsday.
Commandeer is a sweet sideboard card. Want to steal your opponent's The One Ring? Yeah. Sweet.
Also in this Top 8 we had Maverick.
This is a spicy list, borrowing some thoughts from Cradle Control for sure here. I always enjoy seeing Maverick, so it's just a cool thing to see Bowmasters breathe some life into the deck for sure.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Mystic Forge Combo.
This deck is really powerful, in my opinion. It's biggest opposition is of course itself as an Ancient Tomb deck and mulligans, but it has a lot of really powerful things it can do.
Around the Web
- Alex McKinley reviews Forth Eorlingas! for The EPIC Storm. Check it out here.
- Sam Dams has a new Infect build! Check it out here.
- The Legacy Gambit has a video on BUG Scam! Check it out here.
- Eternal Durdles covers the evolution of Death's Shadow. Check it out here.
- Sauron's Ransom looks pretty sweet! Check out some Bazaar of Boxes content here.
- Douges posted a trailer on the Green Sun's Summit. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
Samwise the Stouthearted in a Lands shell!
There are some really sweet Stompy lists showing up now. Titan Stompy with Forth Eorlingas!
Rector Nic Fit!
GW Stoneblade is kind of sweet. Plenty of sweet cards in this list.
JUND
JUGGERNAUT MATTERS. WHAT.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
