This Week in Legacy: 2021 is Over!
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for the final edition of This Week in Legacy for 2021! We made it! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're looking ahead to 2022 with some of our hopes for Legacy as well as a few mailbag questions for the end of the year! We also have the final Challenge of 2021 as well to talk about.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The End of 2021!
The end of the year is upon us this weekend and it's time to say goodbye to 2021 and hello to 2022! This year has been a wild ride of a time and I want to talk about some things I would like to do more in 2022. But first, I want to thank the entire Legacy community for being awesome this year. It's clear based on the responses to last week's Round Table article that we have some passionate people in this community, and I just want you all to know how much I appreciate all of you!
As far as 2022 is concerned, I would like to lean more into being able to do more video content and streaming. Finding the time for this is hard for me often, so it may continue to be sparing, but I still want to try to put out some more of this kind of content, and hopefully some of that via the official MTGGoldfish channel!
Another thing I'm looking forward to 2022 is hopefully getting back to some more paper Legacy events! I've had a few outings already with some Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy events here or there, but I'm definitely looking forward to hoping that the MissouriMTG 40K goes off without any problems and hoping that we can get back a semblance of normalcy with these events in these pandemic-y times. I'd also really hope for a paper Eternal Weekend next year too.
Of course, if we can't, that's okay too. I'm also still looking forward to plenty of Magic Online related stuff as the recent announcement has got me hopeful that we can see more interesting things occurring in the next year with MTGO.
I am also looking forward to quite a bit of the product next year. Between Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and The Brother's War, as well as Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, I'm thoroughly excited for new cards and new and interesting ways to approach the Legacy format.
2021 was a unique year, and 2022 will hopefully be better and brighter than ever! What are you looking forward to in 2022 for Legacy! Hit me up on Twitter or in the comments below!
2021 Mailbag
I put out a call for mailbag questions earlier this month like I usually do for my EOY articles, and I got a few questions to look through! So let's not waste much time and answer them!
Question #1 by Billy Lee Mitchell:
So you ban Ragavan. What other 3 cards need to be banned in order to level the playing field?
This is tricky because banning just Ragavan might potentially showcase some other things that have been good and we didn't know it because so much of the conversation is surrounded by Ragavan. Potentially we see just how strong cards like Dragon's Rage Channeler, Expressive Iteration, and Murktide Regent really are working in synergy with each other in a build designed to really maximize upon those cards. It's certainly possible from that point, both Murktide and Iteration would need to go, but the third card is tricky. If this represents a world where something like Daze is on the table I'd say that, but if not, then I'd probably have to consider something like Urza's Saga. While Saga is a favorite card of mine, it has a lot of homogenizing gameplay factors and while I do think it has a lot of strong counterplay to it, it could be a bit much, but ideally I'd rather see something attack the blue shell, but there is that possibility that Saga is waiting to burst from underneath that shell.
It's definitely a tricky thing though and there might be too many factors to consider.
Question #2 by Jared Knotts:
I don't have duals. Will I lose if I play shocks and fast lands instead? Also, is there anywhere to play Legacy in the Cincinnati/Dayton area?
There are certainly some decks that are going to lose some equity on playing shocks over duals, but even Delver decks are playing Steam Vents in addition to their duals today (for a lot of good reasons obviously). You really have to look at what kind of Delver matchup you have (and how punishing shocks will be in that matchup) and what you can afford to lose life-wise. It's worth noting that you should always play lands you can fetch for sure, so fast lands are generally out except in highly specific situations (Depths decks used to play the Golgari one to get around Submerge). Of course, at the end of the day there is always the Grixis Shadow/UB Shadow variants where playing Shocks is considered an active advantage because it puts you into a position of being able to maximize your Death's Shadow.
As far as playing in the Cincy/Dayton area, hit me up on Twitter! A friend of mine and I help organize some semi regular play at local bars where proxies are allowed, and if you venture as far up as Columbus area there's always Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy!
Question #3 by Lee Hung Nguyen
Do you think the Legacy Collection Effort is worth to keep doing if WotC one day officially declared that they won't support the Legacy format?
Such a declaration would likely come with an announcement that they're also cutting off Magic Online events for the format, so yeah, in that instance it would not be worth continuing since we would have no MTGO events to really fall back on and that's what the LDC collects data for mainly.
Question #4 by Brett Steinbrink
Hi Joseph, longtime reader, first time, uh, question-asker (is that a thing?) A lot of discourse lately has debated both the idea of how frequently "Modern Horizons" sets should happen, or if supplemental products should even be allowed in Legacy at all and Legacy instead shift to only cards that have been in Standard-legal sets. I know after nearly two years of COVID there hasn't been a load of paper Legacy events, and I know that updating just one of my decks in paper will cost me a couple hundred bucks because of the shifts in metagame and new printings, especially from MH2. I would love to hear your thoughts on either/both the frequency of MH sets or a shift in what defines Legacy. Keep up the great column!
I have thought a lot about this, and frankly there is actually a lot about supplemental products to like more than there is to dislike for me, and I could name a ton of cards that have been awesome additions to the format from many of these sets. Generally I don't mind this from a Commander product standpoint because a lot of those cards tend to just be interesting nowadays and aren't quite on the level of True-Name Nemesis. What people really mean when they want to know about this is Modern Horizons sets. What I like about Horizons sets is that it does give Wizards a chance to design outside the box and come up with cards that can be fun in older formats without having to go through Standard, and there are plenty of fun cards from these sets. What I dislike is that it does seem that the frequency of the Horizons sets is higher than it feels like it should be (and that is hard to fully figure out without releasing the sets) and that there are some cards that end being too pushed and are higher in rarity than they should be. These are the cards that people really tend to focus on when talking about these products, because they tend to dominate all the conversations while all the cool cards that are just playable are just in the background not being really recognized. I don't think we should let a few bad apples detract from the overall experience, but I also think that Wizards should be quicker to handle those bad apples too if they are not going to fully test for Legacy/Vintage.
In short, I'm fine with these sets existing and all supplemental product existing because I believe there's a lot more positive than negative, but the negatives overwhelm the collective communication.
Community Event Update
Oh man, we got another Buffalo Chicken Dip on the way on 1/28/2022! Check out the event details here! This event will also be streamed and commentary provided by my good friends Nathaniel Snyder and Minhajul Hoq!
Going to be one sweet event!
Legacy Challenge 12/26
We had our final Challenge of the year this past weekend with the Sunday Legacy Challenge. This event had 66 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.
Definitely what we've come to expect as of late, but with a lot more Reanimator. There was a lot of this deck in this event at seven copies and I think a lot of it has to do with the recent win by Kanister in the Showcase Qualifier. The deck had a below 50% win rate (48.72%) however, but did put two pilots out of the seven into the Top 8. UR Delver had the most representation here and an extremely positive win rate. The Yorion Zenith deck also had solid representation but it had an abysmal win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lands | 1st | Sprouts |
| UR Delver | 2nd | stu909090 |
| Elves | 3rd | MdvWin |
| Reanimator | 4th | Funnyman31399 |
| UR Delver | 5th | Condescend |
| Grixis Delver | 6th | abombdiggity |
| RUG Delver | 7th | bocci |
| Reanimator | 8th | Beekeeper |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 with a lot of flavors of Delver/Tempo type shells. However, it was one of the only two Lands players in the entire event that took down the whole thing!
This is definitely a super unique Lands variant. Only two Exploration but multiple copies of things like Elvish Reclaimer and uniquely enough Esper Sentinel. This deck leans hard into taxing the opponent with main deck Sphere of Resistance as well. Very interesting for sure.
The Second Place finalist was on UR Delver.
A slight return to just being clean and having four-of all the threats in the deck including Delver. Incredibly clean list all around for sure.
We had two Reanimator showings in the Top 8, so let's look at the best placing one in Fourth Place.
Solid and powerful list. People seem to have really figured out a groove for Grief and Unmask in the deck.
Also in the Top 8 we had a unique URb (Grixis) Delver style/Tempo/Strix variant by our good friend Adam Wallace.
The unique angle here is the four Baleful Strix in the main as well as the sideboard Plague Engineer. Definitely interesting if you're expecting lots of things like Murktide (for Strix) and tribal decks like Elves/D&T (for Engineer). Cool deck for sure!
Just outside of the Top 8 we have long time colorless prison player Michael Coyle showing us all how to respect Smokestack.
I love love love this list. Very powerful stuff. Michael is no stranger to these kinds of Stax-heavy builds so it's great to see him back at it.
Further into the Top 32 we've got a list by Anuraag and some sweet tech.
The big hitter here is Pernicious Deed as an answer to things like Urza's Saga. We recently saw this in Vintage where Justin Gennari was able to take this card and apply the same factors to it of being able to kill Sagas easily, so it's no stretch to see it here as well. This list also has traditionally powerful BUG cards like Leovold and Strix.
Near the bottom of the Top 32 we've got a sweet Yawgmoth, Thran Physician deck!
This list is super duper sweet. I am digging everything going on here, but most especially powerhouse cards like Grist, the Hunger Tide. Awesome list for sure.
Around the Web
- A great video on Bant Control vs Jeskai Ragavan. Check it out here.
- Our good friend Phil Gallagher posted a video on a D&T Tutoring Session. Check it out here.
- Our other good friend Bryant Cook posted a sweet video on pure Izzet Galvanic Relay Storm Combo. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find all of the 5-0 lists for this week's deck dump right over here.
First off we've got a sweet Esper Sinkhole Tempo variant, with ETHEREAL FORAGER.
It's the return of the Naya Landfall deck! Skyclave Pick-Axe is a bomb!
Pox being an Urza's Saga deck now is super cool.
It has been a while since we've seen Arclight Phoenix, now paired up with Murktide Regent!
This next deck has Academy Manufactor in it. Just saying.
Finally we've got a wild 4C Yorion deck with Wandering Mind in it!
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 /r/MTGLegacy Discord Server and subreddit.
Until next time!
