This Week in Legacy: The Aftermath and Beyond
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 back in something of a spoiler season with March of the Machine: The Aftermath as well as some of the things spoiled this past weekend and ahead from MagicCon Minneapolis! In addition to that we've got Challenge data from this past weekend!
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
The Aftermath
Releasing on May 12th, March of the Machine: The Aftermath is a weird non-draftable micro set of only 50 cards, following up the story that was ended in March of the Machine. This is primarily a story set, but it is worth noting that because this is a non-draftable set that cards on Magic Online will be acquired by the purchase of the Epilogue boosters in the MTGO store (see blog post here) but also extended-art and etched versions of the cards will appear in Treasure Chests.
Because there are so few cards in this set, there isn't a ton to look at for Legacy purposes, but there are a few cards worth talking about.
Coppercoat Vanguard
Legacy Humans is certainly a very fringe deck, but this giving the deck a lord that grants multiple instances of Ward in multiples of this is very interesting indeed. Definitely a card worth looking into for those decks for sure.
Filter Out
At first glance this effect may not seem all that great at three mana, but I think a deck that would really like to see this kind of card would be 8Cast. This is an instant speed effect that very neatly cleans up a wide array of hate effects in that it it's all noncreature, nonland permanents that this hits. For 8Cast this can be pretty low, most of its permanents that aren't creatures are things like Chalice and Mox Opal. This could also see play in a number of decks like Storm even, as being able to clean up both a Deafening Silence and a Narset at the same time seems great, but also being able to clear out things like Karn seem fine too.
This might see more play in Vintage overall, but I think it's worth a look here too.
Vesuvan Drifter
This is kind of a cute card for Sneak and Show in that it lets you convert your derpy 2/4 into an Emrakul for a turn by simply Brainstorming the Emrakul onto the top of your library. I don't know if this is good (or if there is a cute combo deck built around this) but it gives me some Arcane Artisan vibes in that it's a threat that sidesteps traditional hate vs Show and Tell and Sneak Attack.
Cosmic Rebirth
I don't think this is more playable than a card like Sevinne's Reclamation in Legacy right now, but the fact that it gets any permanent back but only puts it into play if it's mana value is three or less is intriguing.
A Look Ahead at 2023 - Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who
This past weekend (and some time ago as well for some of the cards we'll be talking about here) at MagicCon Minneapolis we had some spoilers on some of the sets we are expecting to see coming soon. This included some spoilers for Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth, Doctor Who Commander decks, Commander Masters, a look at the story stuff for Wilds of Eldraine, and more. Of these, we got some concrete cards to look at for only Lord of the Rings and Commander Masters.
Let's look at each set and what we know of them so far.
Commander Masters
This one is pretty easy, since it's mostly a reprint set. In terms of Legacy power level reprints, keep an eye out on this one. We've already seen already cards like Personal Tutor. However, this set does have a few Commander decks associated with it, and those decks will have some new cards in it. There was definitely one of these cards they spoiled over the weekend that caught my eye.
Zhulodok, Void Gorger
Giving all of your colorless spells double cascade in a deck like Eldrazi Post seems pretty gross. This is the face card general of one of the Commander decks, so that means this deck is entirely colorless in identity. This may not mean much to some, but to me it means there's a possibility of getting more Eldrazi creatures that are aggressively costed. Already I could see this as a one-of in an Eldrazi Post deck, where you can use it to abuse casting your big Eldrazi (or Ugin) and cascading into something else. It's not super abusable since you have to cast the spell from hand to double Cascade, but double Cascade is already pretty good.
Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth
While Commander Masters is a reprint set for the most part, the Lord of the Rings set is most definitely not. It is a full on set to be released directly into Modern, so there is some interesting things to come out of this one for sure.
The biggest and most important thing we got this weekend was how "The Ring" works. This is a mechanic known simply as "The Ring Tempts You" and it does have some interesting aspects to it.
As far as Legacy is concerned, the Ring mechanic actually seems pretty reasonable if not really super playable. One of the big downsides of the mechanic is that its wholly reliant on creatures (unlike Initiative) and it does present an interesting downside to most creatures in that it makes them Legendary, which turns on Karakas. Now, there is always the aspect of making a creature like True-Name Nemesis or Kappa Cannoneer your Ring-bearer, but at the end of the day it's really going to rely on which cards that involve utilizing the Ring mechanic and whether or not the card is A: Good without the mechanic and B: the mechanic makes it better.
The basics of this mechanic however are that every time the Ring tempts you, if you have a creature to select as the Ring-bearer you select them, and then that creature gains the next ability listed on the card. The abilities max out at the four listed, but it does mean that if the Ring-bearer leaves play and you select a new Ring-bearer it will gain all of those abilities. This is semi-relevant for a few of the cards we've seen so far.
Let's take a look at least at two cards with this mechanic that might be interesting, and then another card we've known about for a bit but is worth discussing as well.
Samwise the Stouthearted
This having Flash is sort of interesting enough. You can Wasteland or fetch on an end step and then flash in Sam for value, but then also have the Ring tempt you. Being able to Karakas this back to hand and reuse makes it interesting enough and reminds me a lot of cards like Mangara of Corondor in that sense. This card is probably honestly playable without the Ring mechanic, but I think the Ring gives it a little more oomph in that you can flash this in on a combat step and assign a new creature the Ring-bearer status (one that maybe isn't blocked) and gain the extra value off making the opponent lose three life off of the damage trigger.
I will also note that this card plays exceedingly well with cards like Solitude and the other Elementals, and is cheap enough to cast to make those cards worth it in that kind of shell.
Again, I suspect this card will end up seeing play solely because of the ETB ability more than anything.
Call of the Ring
This is sort of a weird way to promote shifting your Ring-bearer around. Every time the Ring tempts you, you can pick a creature to assume that status, so this can give you a steady stream of card draw per 2 life. Sort of like a Dark Confidant that is capped at 2 life. It is currently unknown based on just reading "The Ring" itself if choosing a creature to remain your Ring-bearer counts as "choosing a creature as your Ring-bearer" so whether this works with only one creature in play remains to be seen (until we see the Release Notes on this set).
The One Ring
This is a card we've known about for some time, and I don't usually do reviews like this before actual spoiler season but I felt like changing it up a bit. This card is actually kind of bonkers in a lot of ways, but more especially if you can abuse the function of giving yourself protection from everything by bouncing the card to hand. I feel like this could see some play in decks like 8Cast as it's kind of a Time Walk card for the opponent in not generally being able to kill you. It's definitely a powerful effect, and the draw aspect of the card is also quite powerful if you can untap this some in a single turn. The life loss is negligible in a lot of ways honestly as the draw is exponential.
There doesn't really exist a Paradoxical Outcome deck in Legacy though and this probably would be the best place for such a card (which is why it looks pretty nuts in Vintage), but this is definitely a card to keep an eye out for.
Doctor Who
As noted, we don't really know a ton of information about specific cards for the Doctor Who Universes Beyond Commander decks. We do know that there are four decks in total, with each deck having a different theme (one based on the Classic Doctors, one based on Modern era doctors (Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh), one based on newer Doctors (Twelfth, Thirteenth), and one based on the villains (with the Dalek creator Davros as the face of the deck). We also know there's going to be Planechase based cards for each of the decks and also Collector Boosters. Collector Boosters will only have alternate art versions of cards in the decks and no new cards.
Legacy Challenge 5/6
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event. This event had 59 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 incomplete data sheet here. We had some technical difficulties acquiring the data on Saturday, so this just means there no fancy graphs.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| White Stompy | 1st | perez |
| Stiflenought | 2nd | ajdadd420 |
| Boros Stompy | 3rd | burrarun |
| RUG Cascade | 4th | ecobaronen |
| Reanimator | 5th | snoopy-magic |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 6th | Cherryxman |
| Death's Shadow | 7th | Oceansoul92 |
| 8Cast | 8th | boytriton |
Quite an interesting Top 8 here. Some Stompy, some Control, and even some Mystic Forge. At the end of the event it was White Stompy that won the event.
Fairly interesting approach to this deck, eschewing Chalice for cards like Swords to Plowshares and Esper Sentinel. This deck has lost a lot of its explosive power due to the ban but it's still got some strength to it.
In Second Place we have Stiflenought.
This is like Delver + Stiflenought and that's kind of fun. I like seeing Phyrexian Dreadnought for sure.
Also in this Top 8 as noted we had some Mystic Forge Combo.
This deck utilizes an interaction between Mesmeric Orb and Basalt Monolith to continually mill itself with a Mystic Forge in play so it can play all of its cards like Lion's Eye Diamond and then recycle using Echo of Eons. It then eventually wins by casting either Karn + Lattice or a massive Walking Ballista.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we have Death's Shadow.
It's neat to see that this deck still exists and is kicking around the format and not only that, doing quite well. It's also nice to see tempo strategies that aren't just UR Delver having some success too.
Legacy Challenge 5/7
The second Challenge of the weekend was the mid afternoon Sunday event. This event had 91 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.
8Cast was the most popular deck of the event, and it had a really solid win rate. Reanimator was also popular with a middle of the road win rate. We also saw Jeskai Control and UR Delver do well, while D&T did poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| UR Delver | 1st | Sahakvic |
| White Stompy | 2nd | Parrotlet |
| Bant Delver | 3rd | TueBo |
| 8Cast | 4th | techou_aisu |
| Grixis Control | 5th | TrueFuturism |
| Boros Stompy | 6th | burrarun |
| 4C Uro Control | 7th | unluckymonkey |
| BUG Control | 8th | 2ndSiegeRhino |
Lot of Control options here and Stompy, with some Tempo strategies. It was a UR Delver list that won this event at the end of it.
Pretty straightforward list here, with the flex spot of additional threat being Sprite Dragon. Definitely no frills here though, unless you count the little frills on Sprite Dragon!
In Second Place we had White Stompy.
Pretty similar list to the list that won the event the day before, except we do see the addition of Archon of Emeria here. Also, we see stuff like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in the sideboard here as a hedge against Painter decks.
Further into this Top 8 we have Bant Delver?
Hexdrinker, Tarmogoyf, URO?! This list is pretty hot fire. I am digging it for sure.
Also in this Top 8 we had Grixis Control.
Wow this list is pretty cool. Faerie Mastermind aside because I think that card is sweet, but also Chrome Host Seedshark is super cool here as a sort of Monastery Mentor-like card. Shadow Prophecy out of the sideboard is hot fire.
Around the Web
- Coming hot off his challenge win, fishduggery has a primer on Yorion Zenith posted over on MinMaxBlog. Check it out here.
- GreenSunsZenith has a Tournament Report on Abzan Maverick at the 22nd God of Legacy. Check it out here.
- The Eternal Glory Podcast has a new episode on "The Draw of Blue." Check it out here.
- Eternal Durdles continues its 101 style episodes with an epsiode on Ancient Tomb. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
Invasion of Ikoria Depths is always spicy.
Grixis Control is one I haven't seen in a hot minute. Pretty cool list too.
Esper Vial rocking some new cards like Ertai Resurrected!
Tainted Pact. No context needed.
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!
