This Week in Legacy: The Tax Collectors
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 digging into Tax season! No we're not giving Tax advice, we're doing a fun new Player Spotlight Series with our first focus on two of the format's most powerful D&T players: John Ryan Hamilton (xJCloud) and Jason Murray (luinil). In addition to that we've got some follow up cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Commander to discuss as well as two Challenge events from this past weekend. Oh, and there was a Legacy 10K in Philadelphia this weekend at SCG Con!
Player Spotlight Series: John Ryan Hamilton and Jason Murray
One of the things I love about the Legacy community is the people in it. There are some great players and content creators out there, so I figured this year we're going to do more focus on these people I already talk about and bring their stories to you so that you can get a sense of who these people are and what their accomplishments are. This series aims to be very candid, allowing the player/creator to talk about themselves as much or as little as they desire. As such these are only edited mainly for grammar and card names.
Our first one this year is truly awesome, as we're bringing together two of the format's most heavyweight Death and Taxes players in Legacy: John Ryan Hamilton and Jason Murray. Thanks to both of these players for coming in and sharing more about themselves and their insights into a strategy that has effectively become their Legacy to this great format and game.
Let's dig into what each of these players have to say about themselves!
John Ryan Hamilton (xJCloud)
I started playing Magic in high school with the Gatecrash prerelease in 2013. Instead of getting into Standard like a normal person would, I very quickly got into Modern and Legacy, due to the influence of a close friend of mine and his commitment to playing his foil RUG Delver deck (RIP Nimble Mongoose). As a high school student, I couldn’t afford $100 Volcanic Islands (if only we knew how good we had it), so I opted to build a much cheaper deck: Death & Taxes. Funnily enough, I almost picked Elves instead. I’m probably my own worst enemy in an alternate timeline. But Gaea's Cradles were a bit too steep for me, and honestly what drew me to D&T more than anything is something I like to call the “What am I even looking at?” factor. More than being a fan of decks with bad white creatures and artifacts, I love decks where you look at the decklist, then look at the format, and ask yourself “How on earth does this deck win a game of magic?” The novelty of putting Flickerwisp in your deck in a format where people are putting Emrakul into play with three mana or casting Tendrils of Agony for lethal on turn two is something I always appreciate in decks relative to their formats. So I bought most of D&T, proxied or borrowed cards where I needed to, and started my 9 year long journey into my favorite format in magic.
The first thing you learn as a new Magic player in a format as deep as Legacy is that Magic is a really hard game. I was bad. Like, “regularly getting rolled by my RUG delver friend, historically one of D&Ts best matchups of all time” bad. Luckily I had an abundance of free time to jam my face into the matchup time and time again until I started to be less bad. I started playing in some bigger events, my first Comp REL Legacy event was an SCG in St Louis in I think 2014. My first ever match of Legacy in a competitive event was as follows: my opponent wins the die roll. We both keep seven. They cast Gitaxian Probe, say “oh, you’re not playing a Force of Will deck” and goes land Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, LED, Infernal Tutor, Past in Flames, kill you. Game 2 my opponent goes turn one Dark Ritual into three Dread of Nights. Sometimes I wonder how I still play this format. On a brighter note, in a different early career Legacy event, I managed to get into the Top 8 of a local Win-a-Mox, before I was bested by Goblins in the quarterfinals. But the Top 8 prize was a Rishadan Port, which I needed for my deck. We take the good with the bad. So I kept playing D&T for years into college, completing the deck and playing in most events nearby. Down the road I started picking up dual lands and considered building into other decks in the format, but I had so much love for playing D&T at that point that I eventually chose to sell my extra Legacy cards to foil out D&T instead. The decision was made for me when my LGS picked up a Champs promo Serra Avenger that I ended up acquiring. Still my favorite magic art to this day (RIP Serra Avenger).
Around 2017 I started playing Magic Online as well as streaming, where I grinded Pauper until I could afford Modern D&T and then grinded Modern D&T until I could afford Legacy D&T. One day David Lance showed up in my chat and dropped me an invite to the D&T discord, where I started developing a real presence in the Legacy community at large. I made great friends with a group of D&T regulars that was eventually dubbed “The Shadowy Cabal of D&T Nerdbirds.” This group eventually extended an invitation to Luinil, who was a regular of the D&T server and had been posting good results. Ironically, my first handful of results in this time period weren’t even with D&T, outside of some middling Challenge finishes. I roomed with a handful of D&T players at Eternal Weekend 2018, where we all did okay (Patrick Green, the lone Miracles player of the group, ended up winning the whole thing lol). My first Challenge win was with Bomberman, which I also took to a top 16 finish at Eternal Weekend 2019. (Jason Top 8d this event but he was playing BUG Depths so he’s more of a traitor than me anyway). I did manage to crush many local Legacy events, run by our very own Jeremy Aaranson. I won his 10k, 20k, and 40 Duals event he ran in the pre-Covid times. (Here’s a clip of one of my most iconic victories, in game 1 of the finals of the 10k against Micah Lupa)
I took a brief detour from my D&T career during the Companion era of Legacy. Callum Smith and I worked together on Zirda, easily the most broken deck I’ve played in my life. However, companions were quickly and very reasonably banned and nerfed and I returned to my DnT roots. It was around this time when I received an innocuous DM from a young Henry Mildenstein.
Followed exactly 9 days later by:
Luinil cracked the code by building Yorion D&T during the Snowko era, and after playing with it I too realized just how good it was, and took down a Challenge in November 2020. I ended up writing an article singing the praises of Yorion D&T and refuting my and others' concerns with the deck (drawing your good cards less and bogging down the deck with chaff). Regardless, not a lot of people listened to us, and Yorion D&T went largely ignored. Jason and I both played it to a ton of success up until the Oko/Arcanist/Astrolabe ban, at which point we decided to try 60 cards again. Delver was likely to get more aggressive with the loss of Arcanist and Oko, and Control was likely going to be weaker with the loss of Astrolabe and Oko, so the logic was fairly sound. (Looking back on it, Yorion might’ve still been correct here, but this meta didn’t exist long enough for us to really find out). Before we knew it, Modern Horizons 2 came along and flipped Legacy on its head. Jason and I came up with a reasonable 60 card list, singing the praises of Solitude and Kaldra Compleat as powerful additions to the deck. Jason even managed to con a bunch of people into buying Powder Kegs because they blew up artifact lands and constructs out of the new Affinity decks. We were happy with the list, but when I get happy with a list I get bored. So one day I decided to put Yorion back together for fun and science, slotting in 4x Solitude, a dream we couldn’t possibly fit into the 60 card versions. I quickly realized the deck was actually incredibly busted again, and won another challenge with it. I wrote a follow up Yorion article, talking about the holes in the deck that the MH2 additions had patched up and how Yorion was absolutely the way to build the deck going forward. This time, Yorion D&T started blowing up in earnest. Markus won the Legacy Challenge with it the week after I did. Sam Rolph won a Legacy Showcase Qualifier. I won a Legacy Showcase Challenge. T Isaac Sherman won a Nerd Rage Gaming 10k. Akaleth Top 4'ed one of the Eternal Weekend 2021 events. Luinil Top 8'ed a showcase challenge. Yoshiwata won a Super PTQ. Luinil won another Showcase Challenge. I got 2nd in a Super PTQ. I probably missed another 10 big results the deck got in the past 8 months.
And now here we are, Yorion D&T is the definitive build of the deck, and Jason and I played a huge role in getting it there. I’ve never had more fun in Magic than leaving a lasting mark on my favorite deck, the pride and joy I’ve been playing for almost nine years now. I’ve had the time of my life, even with the ups and downs of magic in recent years. I hope my content and contributions to this format and this community has helped to usher in new fledgling D&T players who one day get to do the same things I’ve done. Thanks to everyone who has supported me over the years. Shoutout to all the Nerdbirds, and their collective brain power that helped drive our DnT progress. Shoutouts to my wife, Ayşenaz, for barely understanding Magic at all. She’ll never know I left this here. But she does know what D&T is and agrees that Yorion is the truth. Shoutouts to you, the reader, for knowing that Yorion is the best way to build D&T, and not taking crazy pills and thinking 60 cards is better and Solitude is bad, or something. And biggest shoutouts to my D&T partner in crime, Jason Murray, and his work on the deck.
-xJCloud
Link to my Yorion D&T content, for aspiring Sky Noodlers:
- Original 2020 Yorion D&T article
- 2021 Yorion D&T article
- Post Ragaban D&T Deep Dive + NEO card analysis with me and Jason
Jason Murray
My Start in Magic
I got into Magic in ’94 but never got past the “play all the cards I own on the bedroom floor” stage before abandoning it for Decipher’s Star Wars CCG. 5th grade me made some poor schoolyard financial choices in dumping every Ice Age, Revised, Unlimited and Beta card I owned, but Han Solo was awesome and I got to put him in the Falcon during recess.
Fast forward to the end of college, and a friend got me back into the game with casual kitchen table decks. A few years later, I got into EDH, then started drafting M14 & Theros. Sitting down with my trade binder one fateful day, I saw someone with Stoneforge Mystic and Aether Vial, but I only had enough cards for one. What a conundrum. Death & Taxes needed both, but Merfolk, well that was a deck I could play with just Vial. So I became a Fish player, in Modern first, before finally arriving in Legacy in 2015 after acquiring Force of Wills, and I was hooked.
After years of being “Merfolk Guy”, I moved onto Infect, and with the printing of Conspiracy 2, Death & Taxes— Stoneforge Mystic and Aether Vial, together at last.
At the time, the local NYC meta was dominated by D&T, so I learned to enjoy the mirror, or at least, learned not to get obliterated in it. D&T is a deck with a million hidden tricks, and there’s no better teacher than losing against them over and over again. I started playing the deck online to improve, and eventually met John Ryan, David Lance, and the rest of the Nerdbirds.
Everything was going great in my D&T adventure, until Modern Horizons arrived, and with it, the printing of Wrenn and Six. I fought the good fight, for a while, but I eventually cracked. I had been expanding my repertoire with Tom Hepp’s BUG Turbo Depths, and it turns out that deck is really good when Delver takes turn 2 off to cast Lay of the Land.
Eternal Weekend 2019
After months of 2.5+ hour D&T leagues on MODO, 70-80 minute Depths runs felt free to squeeze in, so I ground them hard, hard enough that I had enough tix to finish the deck in paper. The Nerdbirds were organizing rooms in Pittsburgh for Eternal Weekend, and excited to put faces to screen names, I packed both decks, but I knew D&T would be staying in my backpack.
I spiked a 4-0 to win a last chance bye the day before the event, so I spent round one running into NYC locals I didn’t know were making the trip and hearing excited Round One win stories, then it’s time to get down to business. I got off to a quick 3-0 before running into Tom Hertfelder and taking my first loss. Hours later, I’m 7-1 and it starts to sink in that I have a shot. I snap a photo of the pairings and we head off to one of the best MTG dinners I’ve had. This game truly is about the gathering, and everyone was all smiles that night, whether they’d spent the day winning or losing.
Back at the AirBnB, I look over the pairings and realize the bad news—I’m likely to play against a good friend, and I’ll be a huge underdog against D&T. I spend hours thinking about all the tricks that can come up in the matchup, tricks my friend knows from playing both decks, tricks I’ve discussed with him.
Pairings confirm it, and I’m preparing myself to be a good friend at the end of the match and mask my disappointment. But instead, I played my best Magic of the weekend and I’m 8-1. I won Round Ten and I’m through.
First Eternal Weekend, first Eternal Weekend Top 8, and first Eternal Weekend quarterfinals loss. It almost has a great ring to it.
Wrenn and Six eventually got banned, and I was back on D&T, trudging through the Snowko era.
Yorion
Not many people know this story, but Yorion D&T was created in part due to some good-natured bullying. One night after streaming some Eternal Weekend 2020 playtesting, one of the people in our group chat caught sight of how many cards were on my Magic Online account and ripped into me for being a Pack Rat.
I’ve always been an avid drafter, and kept a pile of EDH decks built online as well, but they had a point—it was time for some spring cleaning. Going through, I eventually hit all the D&T cards. Playsets that had since gotten cut down, outdated sideboard cards, and pet cards that looked solid but I could never find room for.
And so, Yorion was ultimately built out of asking “Why not?” There were no Legacy events to prepare for, let’s hav some fun. I grabbed an old list from when Michael Braverman tried Yorion pre-nerf, brought it up to date and got a quick 5-0, then 10-0, then 14-1. We could beat the control decks with almost no SB cards, load up on combo hate, and still beat Delver despite the increased variance. I fired off the tweets for some clout, told JR it was legit, and he took down the challenge that Sunday.
We’d go on to tinker with 1-2 cards in the list, but most of our work on the deck was defending it to the community and convincing them that yes, there were in fact only 5 flex slots in 80 cards, and no, we didn’t have room for their pet card, but yes, they could try it anyway.
Anuraag Das did a matchup spotlight on the deck for ChannelFireball, with me facing off against Snowko and JR doing commentary, which helped persuade people. That, and the fact that 60 card D&T stopped putting up meaningful results.
The list would go largely unchanged for months, and though metagame changes eventually led us back to trying 60 cards, I’m pretty sure it was wrong in hindsight. I think it’s important to question the commitment to 80 periodically, but trying it once every month or two has only strengthened my trust in the Sky Noodle.
The Decklist Today
When Modern Horizons 2 dropped, the set was full of new cards to try in D&T, and I quickly spent hours trying to make Esper Sentinel work (it doesn’t) and far too little realizing how busted Kaldra Compleat, Solitude and Urza's Saga were. We eventually found a passable 60 card list, but it wasn’t all there. This time, it was JR who’d put the pieces together and re-break Yorion for us with 4 Solitudes, and he took down the challenge with it (again).
I no longer attempt to quantify the finishes Yorion has to persuade people to try the deck, I just point to the lack of 60 card results. It’s the definitive build, and the only meaningful debate left about D&T’s identity is whether to play Urza's Saga or not (I vote yes, but it’s not a free choice). I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done to shape the future of the archetype and leave our mark on a corner of Legacy’s identity. I’m incredibly lucky to have friends like JR and the rest of the Nerdbirds, who have contributed so much behind the scenes.
If you’ve made it this far, and still have the desire to travel a little further, make sure you check out the Youtube videos on JR’s channel. He’s done replay recaps of many of the major finishes D&T has had that are a blast to watch and participate in. I also need to shout out the incredible NYC Eternal Community, especially Roland Chang, David Thomas Tao and Phil Nguyen, as well as Chris Banuchi for his incredible work on 90sMTG, which kept paper Magic going for us through lockdown and has become one of my favorite streams that lets me feel like I’m hanging out at the LGS while I’m home with my infant son. Finally, to my wife Alyssa, thank you. Magic is a challenging hobby for a spouse, and it’s really hard to play Magic Online events with a baby on your lap.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Followup
We had some followup stuff to talk about in our set review for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and the Commander products, since the Commander cards were finally spoiled after the article last week was submitted for review. So let's hit up some cards!
Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
This is one of the Channel lands I missed last week talking about, and I think this is definitely interesting and has a lot of solid possibilities to it, especially in a deck like D&T. I can definitely see this getting played, the effect is very powerful and having an uncounterable way of killing a Delver or DRC or something else is pretty good. The tension for these cards lies mainly in deckbuilding as to whether you consider it a land or a spell, but I think a one-two of in a deck like D&T is reasonable and we've already started seeing it in some of the lists played by our two spotlight players this week.
Roadside Reliquary
I've seen some mild commentary about this card in regards to how it works with Urza's Saga (it being an Enchantment and making Artifacts), but I feel like this is probably just okay at best in those shells and probably not worth the slot it's asking for as a "Land as Spell" functionality. Even in a deck like Lands, which is not hurting for card advantage this is probably just another possible fun-of card that can be Loam'ed back for value. That deck has a ton of those cards now and there are likely just other lands that eclipse this on sheer power level.
Swift Reconfiguration
This one threw the Internet for a loop because of its utility as a combo piece involving Devoted Druid. For those not getting the combo, because this card turns Druid into a Vehicle and makes it lose it's Creature card type, Druid can tap itself for G and then untap itself with the -1/-1 counter infinitely because Druid is not a Creature and won't die to the counters (unless you decide to Crew 5). Having an infinite mana combo this cheap is relatively interesting, but the utility of this card outside of the combo is okay at best. Because it has Flash you can do some cool tricks like save your own creature from Swords to Plowshares by putting this on your creature in response, and since the creature doesn't lose any abilities it's a cool way to save certain things. It's just okay as a pseudo-removal spell as again the creatures retain their abilities, but it does make for a neat piece of removal versus Marit Lage (until Knight of the Reliquary gets in the driver's seat).
In the end I'm curious to see where this card goes and whether it's good enough. I have a suspicion that it's a lot of overhype and that it's just another reasonable infinite combo in Legacy that could see play, especially one that is vulnerable slightly to removal (by removing Druid in response to the casting of Swift Reconfiguration and requires a payoff in hand to use the mana on. At the very least, the combo is pretty difficult to interact with once it's in play with both pieces, due to the fact that there's no downside to activating the -1/-1 counter ability of Devoted Druid so it can be re-activated multiple times in response to a removal spell, guaranteeing the infinite mana.
It's also thoroughly possible the major reason this variant of infinite combo doesn't see much play due to the clicking required on Magic Online. Food Chain already has some timing issues on the platform and while this is slightly easier, clicking through all of that to make enough mana to win the game does take a fair amount of time if the opponent is making you play through it.
Kappa Cannoneer
My mind had to do a lot of double takes when I first saw this card, and the more I've read this card the more convinced I have become of how playable this card is. Improvise is basically a Convoke effect for Artifacts where you pay for the spell by tapping artifacts to pay for the generic cost of the spell. This thing can come down very quickly onto a board of Baubles, Lotus Petal, and Mox Opal-like artifact heavy decks and once it's in play... getting rid of this card is a real challenge. Ward 4 is functionally Hexproof versus a ton of Legacy decks and the clock this card can represent is absolutely very powerful, especially when you consider that it can't be blocked as well every time it gets a trigger and grows. Oh, and there's no limit to how many times you can put a counter on this guy per turn, so it can just absolutely grow massive and close a game out quickly and more than likely can't be dealt with.
It also helps that this thing is a six mana value card, so it's very uncommon for a card like Meltdown that is commonly played to deal with it once it's in play. The downside here is that early Meltdown effects can stunt your board development to make this thing uncastable, so there is an interesting tension there of running out a bunch of 0 drop artifacts to play this turn 2 and getting Meltdown for X=0 to stop that plan. Of course, having your opponent have to Meltdown a bunch of random things to stop this to play around it is also interesting tension. At the bare minimum, this is a blue card so it does pitch to Force as well, but everything about this card seems pretty strong overall.
The only actual major downside of this card is that it's only available in the Neon Dynasty Commander product in paper AND only out of Treasure Chests on Magic Online. Without a good increase in drop rate from Chests, expect this to be sort of an expensive card (the hype already has pushed it to 90 tickets as of this writing).
Legacy Challenge 2/12
The Saturday Challenge fired yet again this past weekend with 63 players, 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.
The big thing to note here is that despite how popular UR Delver was here, it had a sub par performance overall. D&T was just as represented and had a slightly over 50% win rate in the event, while Jeskai Control (namely the Hullbreacher decks) had solid performances as well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lands | 1st | Promidnightz |
| UR Delver | 2nd | ZYURYO |
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 3rd | Angers |
| Death and Taxes | 4th | shiromuni |
| ANT | 5th | DemonicTutors |
| Jeskai Control | 6th | JackieBrown |
| Goblins | 7th | umeboshijiisan |
| 4C Control | 8th | TrueHero |
Pretty interesting Top 8 here, with some solid variety of strategies here. At the end of the event it was Promidnightz who took it all down on Lands!
This is a cool list for sure. Lightning Bolt is a sweet inclusion in the main deck, but the real spice is Thran Foundry in the sideboard as a piece of graveyard hate that sidesteps a lot of the normal Pithing Needle targets and forces the opponent to shuffle. Also helps that it costs one mana and can be found with Urza's Saga. Really sick idea.
The Second Place list here is on UR Delver.
One thing that really drew my attention here is the sideboard copy of Fall from Favor. Seems like an interesting sideboard option against various big creatures that you want to shut off from abilities and attacking (since a good majority of abilities tap to do something). It's also a Monarch enabler so that part is reasonable as well. The flex spots here that we are seeing are Brazen Borrower and Chain Lightning, both really good solid Delver cards.
Also in the Top 8 we've got Mono Green Cloudpost!
Our first look at a list with Boseiju, Who Endures in it, and it's Cloudpost. Looks like a solid list with all the usual suspects you would see in these decks. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is really strong as just a mana ramp option Without something like Cascading Cataracts you're never activating it, but you can keep bouncing it with Karakas as a ramp spell.
Further down the Top 8 we had a showing by ANT.
We haven't seen a ton of ANT results in a long time so it's cool to see it show up. This is a slight piece of hybrid technology by having two Burning Wish to get a card with if need be, which is generally going to be Tendrils or Peer, but there's also Consign // Oblivion as well which is sweet.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we have some Goblins action!
This list dips slightly into green for some Ignoble Hierarch ramp, but also for Goblin Anarchomancer and Masked Vandal out of the sideboard. Also some spicy tech in the sideboard is Goblin Chainwhirler which is really sick.
Legacy Challenge 2/13
We had a second Challenge this past weekend on Sunday, which fired at 93 players 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.
UR Delver was heavily represented here over the next top deck, but it again didn't put up the performance. Is this a trend or just a weekend fad? Only time will tell for sure. Doomsday was also well represented and it had a really solid win rate over this event.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday | 1st | wonderPreaux |
| The EPIC Storm | 2nd | Bryant_Cook |
| UR Delver | 3rd | burrarun |
| Reanimator | 4th | astrozombee |
| Lands | 5th | aslidsiksoraksi |
| GW Depths | 6th | duckduckmongoose |
| Lands | 7th | isthetim |
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 8th | into_play |
Definitely a really interesting Top 8 here, with some good variety. At the end of the event however, it was a Combo v Combo matchup with wonderPreaux taking it down on Doomsday!
This is the more traditional list for Doomsday, compared to the more Tempo-esque variants that are gaining some traction. WonderPreaux is a solid Doomsday pilot, so I'm not surprised to see them do well with this.
In Second Place we've got the one and only Bryant Cook on The EPIC Storm.
A sideboard copy of Boseiju, Who Endures here is pretty sweet. Also one thing to note here is the lack of splashing into the White cards to play Prismatic Ending as The EPIC Storm has done in the past. This is a different shift in things for this deck, but it looks very clean and strong. Main deck Defense Grid is really cool too.
Also in the Top 8 we've got Reanimator.
This is a solid list. Eight Unmask-like effects is really groovy. Serra's Emissary is a really powerful card and should probably be a one-of in every Reanimator list at this point. It just handles so many things.
Down at the bottom end of the Top 8 we've got GW Depths.
Another Boseiju in the list, definitely seeming to do exactly what was expected in being a part of lots of green Life from the Loam-esque decks. GW Depths is a great place to be in the current format. It's really powerful and has a lot of strong game plans.
SCGCon Legacy 10K Philadelphia 2/13
This past weekend we also saw another big paper Legacy event in Philadelphia with the SCGCON Legacy 10K event on Sunday the 13th. This event had an exceptionally healthy attendance with 325 PLAYERS! That's quite a bit! Very exciting stuff for sure. It's pretty great to see a big paper event occurring again, and in one of Legacy's oldest areas as well.
You can find all of the decklists for this event (minus some that didn't get transcribed) over on MTGMelee and the data sheet for this event (with just metagame share) over here.
We don't have any win rate data for this event, but we do have the metagame share and UR Delver was certainly the most popular deck by a huge margin. Right behind it was Jeskai Control and 4C Control. D&T also had a really strong presence, as did Lands and Reanimator.
Let's take a look at the Top 8
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| GW Depths | 1st | Ezra Christensen |
| 8Cast | 2nd | Timothy Jackson |
| Food Chain | 3rd | Michael Everett |
| Jeskai Control | 4th | Michael DeBenedetto-Plummer |
| UR Delver | 5th | Aaron Schwarcz |
| Painter | 6th | Gary Leek |
| Oops! All Spells | 7th | Nathaniel Snyder |
| Jeskai Control | 8th | Logan Howe |
Pretty solid Top 8 really with some great variety. I'd like to give a great big shout-out to my good friend Nathaniel Snyder for hitting this Top 8 with Balustrade Spy and friends for sure.
At the end of this event there had to be a winner, and it was Ezra Christensen on GW Depths!
This list is pretty fun. One of the big things of note is that there are zero Mox Diamond in the list because as I heard Ezra didn't actually own any, and the random Taiga in the list is because they left their third copy of Savannah at home. Just paper Magic things!
The Second Place finalist of the event was on 8Cast.
Main deck Nettlecyst in these lists is pretty solid for sure. This deck is very powerful and has a lot of solid game to it still, and it stands to potentially get better with things like Kappa Cannoneer.
Around the Web
- Our good friend Peter van der Ham is DRIVING SOME CARS! Check out the video here.
- Everyday Eternal is SCARED of a TURTLE!
- 1MrLee with some TURBO STAX action! Check it out here.
- Douges is back with some spicy Maverick content. Check it out here.
- The Canadian Threshold had our good friend Max Gilmore on! Check that out here.
- Speaking of Max, he wrote a sick guide to UB Tempo Doomsday, which you can check out here.
- NEO, YOU'RE THE ONE!
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
First up we've got a sweet Nic Fit list from Ben Bauer, utilizing both the Witherbloom Apprentice + Chain of Smog combo but also Karn, the Great Creator. This deck is SWEET.
Next up we've got some Phoenix action!
Bomberman is always sweet, but this one is playing three copies of Kappa Cannoneer and it looks insane here. Plus side: Kappa is even mana value for Gyruda!
Our next Spice entry is Thought Lash combo!
And finally from the SCGCON Legacy 10K this past weekend, John Smith cooked up some SWEET SWEET Mono Black Midrange Pile for us. This deck IS ART.
What I'm Playing This Week
It's been a weird week but I'm hoping to have another video recorded this week, this time on Legendary Aggro in Legacy. I've been kicking this deck around the practice rooms a bit and it's definitely hilarious when it does its thing. Faithful Pupper definitely can get very big very fast.
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 Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
