This Week in Legacy: Back to Mordor
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 looking at new cards coming in the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Holiday bundles, specifically the Scene card bundles. There's some interesting things here. We have a few events to look at this weekend, including a Legacy Qualifier event and two Challenges.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
A Return to Mordor
We're headed back to Middle-earth for just a bit, while things are cooking for the Doctor Who Commander decks and The Lost Caverns of Ixalan coming soon, a new holiday release of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth brings us some new frame treatments for various LTR and LTC cards, but the biggest thing here is that we're getting new LTC (Commander) cards in four brand new Scene boxes. These boxes contain six borderless cards that are brand new cards, which means they are also legal in Legacy.
Let's look at what cards from that set could be interesting for the format.
Call Forth the Tempest
One of the spells we don't have on MTGO still for the Creative Technique deck is Let the Galaxy Burn, but this could be a reasonable replacement in that deck. It's a bit pricier and you're only going to hit this off Creative Technique and never off something like Apex Devastator (since both cost 8), but there are versions of the deck that play things like Emergent Ultimatum and Mind's Desire that exist that this could go in. It's guaranteed to wipe your opponent's board for sure if you roll through enough spells.
Legolas's Quick Reflexes
This card is one of the few out of this set that shows the most potential. Its applications exist in things like Infect as well as shells that use Dark Depths combo or Knight of the Reliquary. It's interesting here that this card can be used as a free untap for various cards but it can also be used as a method of clearing blockers from the field (Inkmoth Nexus seems quite scary with this card if you have things like Invigorate to pump it before swinging to where it can eat a creature that could block it) or simply untapping a creature to use again (like Knight of the Reliquary).
The fact that this has Split Second is kind of insane. I'm honestly surprised it doesn't also draw a card with this much text on it.
Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress
Things like Abzan Depths / Golgari Depths or even Lands could use this card as a way to push through their Marit Lage damage, given that those decks are good at recurring lands via things like Life from the Loam in case of Wasteland. Giving your Marit Lage shadow is pretty sweet and seems quite good. You could also see this in Death's Shadow so you can give your Shadows... shadow.
Mists of Lorien
This one is a reader but it's interesting. You target a nonland permanent and you return everything with the same mana value. If you replicate it, you get to choose a new target, one that presumably has a different mana value so you hit multiple things at once. It's sort of like a mega-Chain of Vapor. It's pretty cool and I don't know if it sees play anywhere but it's a unique effect.
Olorin's Searing Light
This card is kind of neat. Yes, four mana is a lot for an effect like this, but this is a very clean answer to Marit Lage and if you have spell mastery you're also probably killing your opponent at the same time. People are playing Forth Eorlingas! in Jeskai decks, I could see this being a sideboard card if Depths/Lands variants get more prolific.
Sorcerous Squall
Delve on a blue card almost always is worth a read to me. This one is probably not so great though. If you're delving 6 cards and UUU for mill an opponent nine and get one of their spells, it's just sort of okay. It really is dependent on your opponent's deck and if your opponent is playing Red Stompy you're more than likely to hit zero cards in nine.
Legacy Qualifier 9/30
This past weekend there was Legacy Qualifier on Saturday. These events are distinctly different from Super Qualifiers in that they only cost 40 Qualification Points (QPs) to enter, and the number of invitations to a Regional Championship event are only given out to First and Second Place. This particular event had 176 players in it thanks to the data we were able to get from the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the incomplete datasheet here. Due to technical difficulties, there was no data for this event, so let's look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Scam | 1st | duke12 |
| 5C Uro Control | 2nd | Ark4n |
| Esper Saga Storm | 3rd | musasabi |
| Cradle Control | 4th | dganev |
| Death and Taxes | 5th | roter_Erzengel |
| Grixis Delver | 6th | piao |
| 4C Uro Control | 7th | Graciasportanto |
| GW Depths | 8th | Didackith |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event, it was Dimir Scam that won.
This looks very powerful and has a strong proactive game plan about it. I like the Tourach, Dread Cantor in the sideboard vs Swords to Plowshares decks.
In Second Place we had 5C Uro Control.
There's so much going on here between Uro, Bowmasters and cards like Forth Eorlingas! It's very interesting to see how much Up the Beanstalk has dropped off though.
Further down the Top 8 we had Esper Saga Storm.
Teferi definitely seems like a strong inclusion to this kind of deck, making it easy to combo off by shutting off the opponent's ability to interact. Beseech as a two of here is pretty interesting as well.
Also in this Top 8 we had Death and Taxes.
The black splash versions of this deck seems to be pretty strong. It's got a lot of power with Bowmasters and Thoughtseize, and the minor red splash in the board for Magus of the Moon seems quite good too.
Legacy Challenge 9/30
There was also an early morning Saturday Challenge event this weekend. This event had 50 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.
Black Stompy decks were the most popular here, but their win rate was dragged down a bit. Grixis Delver performed the best with very little copies overall in the event. Good performers here was also 4C Uro Control decks and Boros Stompy.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Delver | 1st | kulne |
| Dimir Scam | 2nd | davy2892 |
| 5C Uro Control | 3rd | OnlyLandsDotCom |
| Grixis Delver | 4th | JPA93 |
| 4C Uro Control | 5th | mortr3d |
| Doomsday | 6th | FirstToThirst |
| Dredge | 7th | MahfuzVanGogh |
| Boros Stompy | 8th | _INF_ |
Really interesting Top 8 here. Good amount of Tempo, but good amount of variety as well. At the end of the event it was Grixis Delver that won.
Very flexible-looking list here. Nice to see the return of Unlicensed Hearse here.
In Second Place we had Dimir Scam.
This looks very much like the winning list from the Qualifier. I do like the Court of Cunning in the sideboard for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we had a neat 5C Control deck.
Delighted Halfling is such a strong card with these kinds of decks as it can do some really powerful things with all the Legendary spells. Seeds of Innocence is a great sideboard card that seems quite good right now.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Boros Stompy.
Very clean and powerful list here. No frills and there doesn't need to be for sure. This has some strong openers and can be quite good.
Legacy Challenge 10/1
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Sunday event. This event had 72 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.
Dimir Scam was the most popular deck of the event, and it had some good finishes despite the lower than 50% win rate. Grixis Delver did well again as did Boros Stompy and D&T. Reanimator slightly suffered despite the fact that it had a Top 8 finish here.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Delver | 1st | xDingusKhan |
| Black Midrange | 2nd | grymn |
| Grixis Delver | 3rd | spiralprince |
| Dredge | 4th | MahfuzVanGogh |
| Dimir Scam | 5th | HJ_Kaiser |
| Reanimator | 6th | snoopy-magic |
| Goblins | 7th | Danny_Bambino |
| GW Depths | 8th | The3rdHorseman |
Definitely an interesting Top 8. However at the end of the event, it was Grixis Delver again that won.
I will admit that I really enjoy seeing Painful Truths in these lists. Using it with Mystic Sanctuary really is super cool.
In Second Place we had Mono Black Scam (Black Midrange).
This deck is sweet. Checking out that sweet sweet Chains of Mephistopheles action out of the sideboard. Seems really good versus so many of these decks using cards like The One Ring and Up the Beanstalk.
Also in this Top 8 in a double Top 8 performance this weekend was MahfuzVanGogh on Blue Dredge.
It's pretty cool that this deck is a thing. It scratches an itch for me in that I love Dredge, but I also love casting Brainstorms. Getting to do both is pretty sweet.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Goblins.
An instance of the infamous "Name Sticker Goblin" on MTGO showing up here. Seems interesting when you're just trying to make a bunch of mana to Muxus with. Very cool list regardless.
Around the Web
- Bryant Cook is doing some Beseech with Song of Creation. Check it out here.
- Bazaar of Boxes has some sweet stuff going on. Check out this Trials 118 video here!
- Everyday Eternal is doing some historical podcasts. Check that out here.
- The Legacy Gambit is dropping some Rhinos. Check out the video here.
The Spice Corner
The Legacy leagues yet again did not publish, so let's find some Challenge lists that look spicy!
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!
