This Week in Legacy: Painting the Sky Red
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 looking at the current and future state of Painter decks in Legacy! In addition to that we've got some Eternal Weekend news, a 5K in SCG CON Baltimore to look at, a paper event announcement, and multiple Challenge events.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Painting the Sky a Great Shade of Red
While much of the current discourse and discussion within Legacy lately has been centered on Grief or Eldrazi, I figured it would be a great idea to talk about a deck that seems like it is and will be a powerful force in the format going forward. That deck is of course, Painter.
Painter as a deck has always been a solid deck to consider when playing Legacy. The big thing of current decklists for Painter is how much velocity the deck has and how much power it can stuff into 75 cards. Not just the combo, but all the individual cards that the deck now plays is a very powerful thing. The biggest changes to this deck came in this past year with Wilds of Eldraine as that deck introduced the card Agatha's Soul Cauldron as another option for this deck with cards like Phyrexian Devourer. Giving a deck with an A+B combo another A+B combo it can easily slot in is always going to be good.
The big reasons I feel that Painter looks like a good deck right now in the current format is that it has a lot of favorable ways to build to interact with current top decks in the format. UB Reanimator is quite popular, but having cards like Urza's Saga and Soul-Guide Lantern are great against that deck, and having loads of options and ways to construct the deck to build against it is nice.
On the other half of this, Eldrazi is exceptionally popular right now, and Painter seems incredibly favorable versus Eldrazi. One of the big things that Painter has on Eldrazi is how Painter's Servant interacts with cards like Eldrazi Temple and Eye of Ugin. By making everything a color, those cards no longer count as colorless for the purposes of Temple or Eye. It hurts the mana ramp of the deck substantially by cutting off a good chunk of lands from the deck's game plan.
After we see Grief leave the format however, I think Painter gets even better in the long run. Eldrazi is still present and running around at that point, but the primary tempo shell likely becomes the Tamiyo/Psychic Frog pile. This means that cards like Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast become even better, and Painter is already running these cards main deck in order to use with their primary game plan of Painter naming blue. Having extra velocity there makes for a much better deck overall.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this deck continues to evolve over time, and it's an exciting thing to see a deck like Painter be very good. It's already putting up quite a few results, I expect we'll see it more as time goes on.
Eternal Weekend 2024 Announced
We have a very early announcement of what Eternal Weekend 2024 will look like this year. Eternal Weekend is returning in 2024 to all three major venues (Asia, US, and Europe) and those dates are as follows:
- October 12-13 - Shizuoka, Japan (Hosted by BIG MAGIC)
- November 21-24 - Pittsburgh, PA (Hosted by Card Titan)
- December 6-8 - Prague, Czech Republic (Hosted by JK Entertainment)
More information on the specifics for each of these weekens will be released by each of the TOs later on. That being said, there are some pretty big changes this year. Let's start with the good change.
The previous years introduced a promo card that was unique to the Top 8 players of the event. That non-foil version of the promo has been now extended down to the Top 32 players of the event. The Top 8 of the event will receive a foil promo of the same card. This year's promo for the Legacy Championship is Crop Rotation.
It's great that the promos have been officially extended down to the Top 32 for these events. I am a big fan of that change in general.
Now for the actually bad news. This is the first year in an extremely long time where there are zero, and I repeat zero paintings that will be awarded to the winners of each Eternal Weekend Legacy Championship. This news is somewhat jarring actually to me, and the announcement of it is very much a throw-away line in the article announcing these dates:
I am not a big fan of this change at all. One of the very traditional and wonderful aspects of Eternal Weekend in general was always the painting being the cool big prize, seeing the winner get to pose and hoist it up for pictures at the end of the event. It lends an air to the word "Championship." and it means something to be that Legacy (or Vintage) Champion for that person. It just feels overall much cooler for the winners of these events to own something truly unique.
I don't like this change, but furthermore I don't like that there's zero explanation as to why this change was made. I don't expect we will get one, and I certainly hope that Wizards maybe listens to some feedback here and is able to make something happen. We don't currently know what other prize structures look like for these events, and the TOs themselves aren't in charge of this aspect of things (so don't level any criticism their way, please), so I will be curious to see what will happen here, but for now, I know I'm not thrilled to see something like this that's always been a staple of these events change.
Bazaar of Boxes Series 12 - August 3rd
Our good friends at Bazaar of Boxes has another event upcoming on August 3rd, being held at their new venue the "Koning Willem II Stadion" in the Netherlands. This venu is an ACTUAL SOCCER STADIUM WHAT IS LIFE?! This is so cool. I'm looking forward to pictures of this event.
The event currently has 101 players out of its 128 player cap, which will mean the event is a double European Legacy Masters Qualifier event as long as they maintain 100+ players until the event. This means the top two players will be chosen to represent the Netherlands at the ELM event this year.
You can find the registration link for this event here.
Big thanks to Michel de Jong of Bazaar of Boxes for reaching out and keeping me informed!
SCG CON Baltimore Legacy 5K 7/28
There was an SCG CON last weekend in Baltimore, and with it came a Legacy 5K on Sunday. This event had 157 players in it, which is superb to see.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
UB Reanimator was a very large portion of the overall event, and it's win rate looked quite good. Eldrazi also looked very good as we have noted in the past weeks as did Grixis Delver.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Delver | 1st | Ryan Freeburger |
| Eldrazi | 2nd | Stefan Vastek |
| Esper Control | 3rd | Bill Li |
| UB Reanimator | 4th | Spencer Asral |
| Eldrazi | 5th | Dan Staub |
| UB Reanimator | 6th | Corey Baumeister |
| BUG Tempo | 7th | Alex Yatsenko |
| Grixis Delver | 8th | Kate Chelberg |
The three decks that took up the biggest equal chunk here are Grixis Delver, Eldrazi, and UB Reanimator. At the end of the event it was Ryan Freeburger on UB Reanimator that won.
I really like this list a lot. Nethergoyf and Psychic Frog seem like really insane cards together (being able to pitch a different card type from Frog to graveyard to boost both cards seems incredibly nuts) and no actual Delver of Secrets makes a lot of sense (Delver traditionally being the weakest card in Delver). Ryan is an awesome player and a great judge in the community from our good friends over at The Legacy Pit, so it's awesome to see him do well.
The Second Place finalist was Stefan Vastek on Eldrazi.
Very straightforward variant here. This deck is something we talked about two weeks ago, and it has continually looked great in the current format.
Legacy Challenge 32 7/24
The first Challenge event of the week was the Wednesday event. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| UB Reanimator | 1st | Capitano_CL |
| Dimir Tempo | 2nd | GuiBonella |
| Eldrazi | 3rd | AKvsJJ |
| Red Stompy | 4th | _Shatun_ |
| Lands | 5th | TerminalJustice |
| BUG Tempo | 6th | dganev |
| Eldrazi | 7th | musasabi |
| Eldrazi | 8th | selesneal |
Quite a bit of Eldrazi here, but the end was decided by UB Reanimator.
The chatter over this list and cards like Grief continues on and more and more we see how powerful this deck really is.
In Second Place we had Dimir Tempo.
This very much seems like a deck we'll see a real shift to after Grief is banned. I think this is fine though, there's points of interaction here and it seems interesting to actually play against.
As noted we had Eldrazi in this Top 8. Let's look at the highest placing one.
I still don't know if I'm behind the Eldrazi Repurposer train here, but Eldrazi Linebreaker is absolutely insane and well worth playing.
Legacy Challenge 32 7/26
The second Challenge event was the Friday evening/Saturday morning event. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| UB Reanimator | 1st | WingedHussar |
| Cradle Control | 2nd | zhinonono |
| Red Painter | 3rd | hsrmg7 |
| Eldrazi | 4th | AKvsJJ |
| Lands | 5th | TerminalJustice |
| Eldrazi | 6th | musasabi |
| Red Painter | 7th | hrvr |
| Elves | 8th | SHAKELION |
Quite an interesting Top 8 here actually. At the end however it was UB Reanimator that won.
This is pretty similar to a list I ran last week myself for a video (which is linked below). A lot of the cool sideboard stuff here is really something right now, especially Faerie Macabre.
In Second Place we had Cradle Control.
Wight of the Reliquary is another one of those cards I'm happy to see more of in the format. It's a cool toolbox card and very unique.
Speaking of Cradles, the bottom of the Top 8 had Nadu Elves.
Nadu in general has a huge chance to really boost forward with Grief gone, but this version of Elves with it is wildly cool and very interesting. It's also great that Springheart Nantuko just sees play in this format.
Legacy Challenge 32 7/27
The next Challenge was the early morning Sunday event. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| BR Reanimator | 1st | snoopy-magic |
| Eldrazi | 2nd | ElfKid |
| Death and Taxes (Yorion) | 3rd | yoshiwata |
| Dimir Tempo | 4th | habsburger |
| Eldrazi | 5th | Venom1 |
| Eldrazi | 6th | Bezerra_da_Silva |
| Cloudpost | 7th | l337erhosen |
| 4C Initiative | 8th | GGGGGGGUY |
Eldrazi had a great foothold here. At the end of the event it was BR Reanimator that won.
I could see some Reanimator lists going back to this style post Grief. The copies of Shallow Grave and Ripples of Undeath are really sweet, as are the main deck Baubles.
In Second Place we had Eldrazi.
Very interesting enough that this version is on Chalice in the sideboard, not the main. I like the additions of the Forest and Snow-Covered Wastes though, as both Blood Moon and Harbinger of the Seas is very problematic for this deck.
At the bottom of this Top 8 we had a really wild list.
Is this the first Top 8 ever for Urza, Chief Artificer?!!?! This is nuts. I love this list to death, we may have to play this for a stream.
Legacy Challenge 32 7/28
The fourth Challenge of the weekend was the Sunday 32 player event. This event had 56 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.
UB Reanimator was the most popular deck here, and it's win rate was quite good. Red Painter also had a really strong win rate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Red Painter | 1st | _INF_ |
| UB Reanimator | 2nd | Jumba |
| Beanstalk Control (Non-Yorion) | 3rd | AnziD |
| Cradle Control | 4th | Sommertroll |
| UB Reanimator | 5th | silviawataru |
| Eldrazi | 6th | musasabi |
| UB Reanimator | 7th | Sven745 |
| UB Reanimator | 8th | Cspickle |
4/8 of the Top 8 was just UB Reanimator, but at the end of the event it was Red Painter that won.
I dig this list quite a bit. We talked a lot about this earlier, but I feel like this deck has a ton of options to fight the current metagame at the moment and it only gets better with Grief gone.
In Second Place we had UB Reanimator.
Not much to say here about this list. The options are mostly stock and there's some cool stuff in the sideboard (Legion's End is pretty cool).
Also in this Top 8 we had Beanstalks.
Psychic Frog in the Beans deck is kind of sweet really. Being able to leverage pitching extra cards to it while drawing a bunch off your Beans is sick.
Legacy Challenge 64 7/28
The final event of the weekend was the 64 player Sunday event. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Cradle Control | 1st | FunkiMunki |
| Death and Taxes (Yorion) | 2nd | Cheiffireball |
| Eldrazi | 3rd | DNSolver |
| UB Reanimator | 4th | Zenith777 |
| Eldrazi | 5th | oosunq |
| Cradle Control | 6th | CrazyMorango |
| UB Reanimator | 7th | pepeteam |
| Red Painter | 8th | Filho_do_MOL |
Pretty interesting Top 8 really. At the end of the event it was Cradle Control that won.
This is a solid looking list. Again, I think it's really cool that Springheart Nantuko is seeing play in this format and not just with Nadu. It's just a really good card regardless.
In Second Place we had Death and Taxes.
Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd has just simply proven how good of a card it really is in the current format. It's extremely strong, being able to flicker your opponent's cards or your own insane cards is so good.
My Videos This Week
I've only got one this week, and it's about well... about Grief.
Around the Web
- Maxtortion has a sweet Doomsday video. Check it out here.
- Eternal Durdles posted their Mailbag episode! Check it out here.
- 5C Zenith vs Cascade Beans on Bazaar of Boxes. Check it out here.
- LEGACY IS BROKEN
- Eternal Glory Podcast has a new episode. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that Leagues are posted throughout the week, let's find some Spice!
Fleshraker Mystic Forge!
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!
