This Week in Legacy: The Return of Stoneforge?
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 going to be taking a look at the rise of Stoneblade decks in the wake of the bannings of Expressive Iteration and White Plume Adventurer. In addition to that we've got two Challenges to take a look at from over the weekend.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Art of the Stoneblade
We're now a few weeks into the post ban era after the bannings of Expressive Iteration and White Plume Adventurer, and one of the more interesting things that has arisen out of this initial weekly results is how much cards like Stoneforge Mystic have been able to return to the format. Between Death & Taxes and Cephalid Breakfast we've certainly seen a lot of Stoneforge, but traditional blue based Stoneblade lists had previously been fairly fringe during the Initiative era. Thanks to some new cards and some new ways of approaching the decks though we have seen some interesting developments with Stoneblade.
The first big development is the implementation of the Bant Stoneblade variants. These decks utilize what one would expect in Noble Hierarch, True-Name Nemesis, and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath alongside Stoneforge as their core game plan.
One new card however that has really popped up here is the card Trailblazer's Torch.
The primary function of this card has been that it is a card that takes the Initiative that can be put in at instant speed off of a Stoneforge Mystic, making it a very powerful way to immediately snag the first two rooms off of the Undercity by putting this in on an opponent's end step and then progressing to upkeep to get the second room. Surprisingly enough as well, the secondary ability is quite good especially if you equip this to something like a Germ token off Kaldra Compleat. It makes the trample off Kaldra so much better by being able to clear out blockers and push damage through. The Equip cost being low as well is pretty good too.
Another interesting development is the push of Jeskai Stoneblade decks and Stoneblade decks in general playing cards like Staff of the Storyteller. We'll talk about this card more in depth here below, but let's look at the list first.
This deck gains access to a good number of the powerful cards one would expect to see, but the build around in Staff of the Storyteller is heavily apparent here, so let's talk about this card.
A brand new card out of the Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander products, this card is a VERY interesting card as it presents a lot of interesting ways to push drawing cards throughout the course of the game. Right off the bat, Staff puts a story counter on with the Spirit token, but then cards like Shorikai, Genesis Engine, Shark Typhoon, and even Living Weapon Equipment will continue to put story counters on Staff, allowing you to continue drawing cards. There's a lot of cards in Stoneblade colors that generate tokens, so it makes the engine advantage here very strong, and because this card is not Legendary in nature you can have multiples in play generating story counters and drawing cards. It's an incredibly cool development to the format, and a very powerful card advantage engine.
Stoneblade sofar is looking pretty good right now in Legacy in multiple three color combinations and honestly it's a pretty cool place to be. I am definitely looking forward to seeing how these strategies develop.
Legacy Challenge 3/25
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event. This event had 58 players in it thanks to the data collected
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
UR Delver had a solid metagame presence and a good win rate here. 8Cast also did quite well as did Reanimator and D&T. Gruul Stompy had some presence but didn't do too well overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jeskai Stoneblade | 1st | jibeta |
| UR Delver | 2nd | Nodintree |
| 8Cast | 3rd | Butakov |
| Cephalid Breakfast | 4th | RikRin |
| Golgari Depths | 5th | aooaaooa |
| Reanimator | 6th | snoopy-magic |
| 8Cast | 7th | CoolUser |
| UR Delver | 8th | bjarnearne |
Interesting Top 8 for sure here. Some Delver, some 8Cast, but at the end of the event it was Jeskai Stoneblade that won it all.
This list is super cool. Staff of the Storyteller is definitely an underrated card as we discussed above. It's proven itself to be quite strong, and I think we'll see more of it in the future.
In Second Place we have UR Delver.
Not so much actual Delver of Secrets here, but going deeper in on DRC and Ledger Shredder game plan with a full set of eight Baubles. Nice to also see Spell Pierce too here.
Further down into the Top 8 we had some Cephalid Breakfast action.
This deck is so very strong and has a lot of powerful gameplay behind it. It's great to see this deck continuing to do well through the bannings, because I think it's definitely a great deck.
Also in the Top 8 we had Golgari Depths.
This deck has gotten a lot of strong powerful new cards such as Dauthi Voidwalker and Opposition Agent. Urza's Saga has also been a huge boon to this deck, giving it some great angles of attack as well.
Legacy Challenge 3/26
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Sunday event. This event had 93 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 data sheet here.
Both UR Delver and Reanimator were the most popular decks here. Both decks had a pretty poor win rate, despite Reanimator having a solid top finish. Doomsday, 8Cast, and Breakfast all did quite well here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Reanimator | 1st | piao |
| Red Painter | 2nd | Julian23 |
| Jeskai Control | 3rd | wiky |
| Grixis Delver | 4th | qbturtle15 |
| Gruul Stompy | 5th | yPrincipe |
| Death's Shadow | 6th | jimirynk |
| Cephalid Breakfast | 7th | L4rss0n |
| UR Delver | 8th | xDingusKhan |
Definitely an interesting and diverse Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Reanimator that won the event.
Atraxa has been a really solid addition to these Reanimator decks. It's certainly proven to be very good and a very powerful card.
In Second Place we've got Painter (piloted by our good friend Julian Knab).
I like the clean look of this list very much, and going deep in on four copies of Thorn of Amethyst in the sideboard is pretty solid too. List looks great for sure.
Also in this Top 8 we had some Grixis Delver action.
The return of Gurmag Angler! Love it.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we have Shadow!
Pretty clean looking list overall here. Lot of strong hand disruption and threats alongside powerful removal.
Around the Web
- The Doomsday Wiki got an update. Check it out here.
- TonyScapone scored another Trophy with Black Saga Storm. Check it out here.
- Legacy Deck Names are Strange
- PunishingWaterfalls has a sweet video on Domain Jegantha Zoo. Check it out here.
- The Eternal Glory Podcast talks about the metagame on their newest episode. Check it out here.
- Our good friend Phil Gallagher has a life update! Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
My My My My Winota!
ONCE MORE THROUGH THE BREACH!
Demigod of Revenge is SO COOL.
DINO STOMPY. Special shout out to good friend David Lance for this 5-0.
Tezzerator featuring STARSCREAM.
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!
