This Week in Legacy: Horizontally Speaking
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 diving into some of the first early spoilers of Modern Horizons 2 and boy howdy are there some spicy ones to talk about! In addition to that we've got two events to talk about and also our Spice Corner!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Horizons on the Horizon
We've got our first looks at several Modern Horizons 2 cards this week, and we've got some really interesting ones at that. I normally wait for spoiler season to be over to do my set reviews, but I'm trying something new with this set since it's such an interesting set. If you like it, let me know, if you don't also let me know!
Let's dive right in, shall we?
Grief
In what has been rumored to be a cycle of these, Grief is already an incredibly powerful card. The Evoke cost being essentially a pitch spell makes this card super free. Now it isn't quite 100% Unmask since that card can also target the player casting it (for reasons of putting stuff in the yard) but this is still very, very very good. One of the best things I think about this card is the fact that because Evoke sacrifices it, it triggers Bridge from Below in the graveyard, but it also can help trigger Vengevine since it's a creature. This can't be Force of Negation'ed or Flusterstorm'ed, and if you pair this with a card like Ephemerate you get to take two cards from your opponent's hand and get a 3/2 with Menace because you can order the triggers so that you take the card first and then can respond to the Evoke trigger.
I can definitely see this card finding a home in some aggressive Vengevine shell like Hogaak, because it definitely seems powerful. We'll see if the other ones in this possible cycle are just as insane.
Oh and of course, I would be remiss to not mention that this is an Elemental. Risen Reef is intensifying every moment in this set thus far!
Rishadan Dockhand
This is a neat design, but ultimately I don't think this does enough, even with having a relevant tribe in Merfolk. Merfolk these days is an aggro/combo deck (because of Thassa's Oracle) and I don't really see a place for a more controlling version especially since the Lords really incentivize attacking. If this had been a white card I could almost see it somewhere, and that would have been very interesting to be honest. As it stands though I don't think this will see much play if any.
Prismatic Ending
This card is unique and sort of flexibile which makes it interesting. Wizards has been on a kick of printing flexibile removal in White it seems, and this doesn't seem terrible. That being said, the biggest point against it is Sorcery speed, which puts it out of answering plenty of things that White can already answer pretty easily with other premium removal spells in Legacy.
Void Mirror
This card got a lot of discussion since it was spoiled and plenty of hot takes about how bad it makes Eldrazi, and how this shuts off so much of the Legacy format... and I think it pretty much just falls short of all of that. Eldrazi decks already play plenty of ways of getting around this card (Caverns, Urborg, Spirit Guides) that playing a card that makes your own Force of Will's bad is just not going to work. This stops so many things symmetrically that I can't really think of a deck that wants this effect. Not even Death and Taxes, as that deck doesn't really need to shut off Forces in matchups because of Aether Vial, and it's going to be too slow against many of the aggressive stompy builds plus the fast combo decks like Oops / Reanimator.
This feels like a card that's on the cusp but not really there, and while it's interesting, I think the trend of this card will be that people will try it out, and then quickly realize how bad the symmetrical downside is and then it will be nowhere.
"Sword of Hearth and Home"
It's a Sword, so it warrants a look, because Sword equipment usually does something. This is a pretty neat utility card and you can use it to flicker something (so Flickerwisp or a Stoneforge Mystic) and you get a basic land, which isn't hateful. Protection from Green/White is interesting enough since it protects against Swords to Plowshares which is definitely intriguing. This may not be better than Sword of War and Peace as a backup sword, but there are instances where I could see this in a deck.
Brainstone
I think the only thing that would make this card very interesting in Legacy would be if they unbanned Lurrus of the Dream-Den, in all honesty. I don't think this is good at 3 mana to do this, but if you can repeatedly do it with Lurrus, it would certainly be interesting.
Legacy Challenge 5/22
We did have two Challenges this past weekend but it looks like we did not get any decklists posted for any of the Challenge events, so we have to rely a little on the data collected by the Legacy Data Collection Project. We know from our data that this event had 74 players in it.
You can find the datasheet for this event here.
UR Delver was very popular here, followed by Bant Control and RUG Delver, but UR had a pretty poor performance in this particular event overall despite putting two players into the Top 8. Definitely, a lot of fair blue decks here though as has been the big trend of the format as of late.
Let's look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Reanimator | 1st | hktknbr |
| RUG Delver | 2nd | cabbatsu |
| Bant Control | 3rd | LeoFa |
| Omni-Tell | 4th | 2plus2isfive |
| Elves | 5th | Testacular |
| UR Delver | 6th | Oddball |
| UR Delver | 7th | excel0679 |
| RUG Midrange | 8th | sawatrix |
Interesting for sure with three Delver variants, some fair blue midrange/control, and combo. Interesting enough to see Reanimator taking down this event. Hopefully, these lists will be published soon so that we can see them!
Legacy Challenge 5/23
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday afternoon event, which had 94 players thanks to the data collected by the LDC.
You can find the datasheet for this event here.
Not only did UR Delver dominate in metagame share but it completely flipped its Saturday performance on its head and did very well overall. In fact it did so well that RUG Delver had a sub 40% win rate in an event for the first time in a long time. Is UR the new defacto Delver variant to be playing? It very well could be. Expressive Iteration definitely seems like it did a lot for the deck overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| UR Delver | 1st | kentaro_hokori |
| Doomsday | 2nd | sawatrix |
| UR Delver | 3rd | slow_brz |
| Bant Control | 4th | Kihara_Works |
| ANT | 5th | L4rss0n |
| UR Delver | 6th | Tw33ty |
| UR Delver | 7th | Butakov |
| UR Delver | 8th | nathansteuer |
We put some Delver in the Delver so you could Delver while you Delver. Lots of UR in this event sprinkled with some control and combo. This is a pretty wildly Delver stacked Top 8, so I'm not sure how I feel about this if this trend continues like this. Thankfully Modern Horizons 2 may change some things, we shall see.
Around the Web
- Eternal Durdles has some words on Modern Horizons 2. Check it out here.
- Eldrazi Post in 90 minutes!
- Everyday Eternal has "Being a Scrub & How to Avoid It" right over here.
- Episode 20 of IN RESPONSE is out now! Check it out here.
- Stiflenought!
- Making Mental Muscles! The Eternal Glory Podcast has a great episode here on mental health in MTG. Well worth the listen.
The Spice Corner
Very interesting Maverick list here running Archon of Emeria and also Court of Grace in the sideboard.
Arclight Sedgemoor Witherbloom Kroxa!
TURBO PEER INTO THE ABYSS!
This Jeskai Mentor list with Expressive Iteration is super hot.
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.
