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This Week in Legacy: The Battle for the Multiverse


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 taking a look at the rest of Phyrexia: All Will Be One and hitting any cards we missed from last week now that spoilers are finished. We've also got some paper event news from The Bazaar of Boxes.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Phyrexian Rhapsody

We are continuing our review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One this week, since we now have the full set plus the Set Booster exclusive cards for Commander. There were some interesting things put into these that we missed, so it should be interesting!

Bloated Contaminator

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

I don't know if this is actually good or not, but a 4/4 with Trample that proliferates and gives poison counters is certainly interesting. Toxic is certainly weird because it doesn't get affected by the typical pump spells that an Infect shell usually plays because Toxic happens separately from regular combat damage. I suspect this is not playable, but it is another interesting tool.

Distorted Curiosity

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

This may have some use cases, as getting an opponent to three poison counters in Infect is usually not that difficult that the average cost of this will be U. Drawing two cards for one blue mana is definitely reasonable, and we've seen decks jump through even bigger hoops to cast Of One Mind before so I think there could be a spot for this.

Ichormoon Gauntlet

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

This is definitely spot on the strangest card design in the entire set and usually very strange designs tend to allow for strange things to happen. As it stands, I don't think this is insanely good and the first half of the card is not that great (outside of potential shenanigans with Comet, Stellar Pup) but the second half of the card does pique my interest. In the current format I don't think this is that great at all, but I think there could be a goofy deck for this at some point.

Kemba, Kha Enduring

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

I had overlooked this, but in all reality, it seems pretty reasonable. It can re-equip stuff to a Cat which is okay enough, but the fact that it is another way to put a Kaldra Compleat that's token has been exiled somewhere is a thing, and the boost to equipped creatures is reasonable. The only reason this really warrants a look is because it can be found off Recruiter of the Guard.

Skrelv's Hive

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

Bitterblossom is unfortunately not playable right now, and this is a Bitterblossom that creates tokens without evasion. I doubt this is very playable.

Soulless Jailer

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

This is another card that's close but not really close enough. I don't think there's enough things that this hits in the current format. Yes it can hit some of the noncreature stuff out of Painter and stuff off Expressive Iteration, but I don't think that's close enough and I'm not sure this is that good to really be worth it.

Synthesis Pod

$ 0.00 $ 0.00

This is quite possibly the weirdest card out of the Set Booster exclusive cards in this set. I don't know that this is actually playable in Legacy, due to the fact that so much of its value is inherent in getting things out of your opponent's deck and not your own, so it is basically impossible to really build around this card. Still, it's an incredibly unique card and unique cards often find ways to break a little down the line. I also definitely expect someone out there to play this in a deck.

Bazaar of Boxes Series 6

This past weekend was the conclusion of the Bazaar of Boxes Series 6 which took place on 1/28/2023. This event marked the last event in their current venue as the series is outgrowing its current location and moving to a large venue for Series 7. This event had 49 players in it overall and was also a qualifier event for the European Legacy Masters event. You can keep up with everything related to Bazaar of Boxes on their website here.

You can find all of the decklists from this event here and the data sheet here.

UR Delver was certainly the most popular deck in the event but not by much. Painter was second, and it was a little weird to see basically no White Stompy at all (there was only one player on the deck) given how much that deck has seen play in paper events. Despite having such a presence, UR Delver's win rate wasn't that great. Painter's was really solid overall though.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name Placing Player Name
8Cast 1st Teus van der Meij
Aluren 2nd Tomas Lens
Mono Blue Delver 3rd-4th Joris Koek
Esper Attractions 3rd-4th Peter van der Ham
Death's Shadow 5th-8th Daan Van den Hoogen
Oops! All Spells 5th-8th André Cabaça
GW Depths 5th-8th Davy Verhaeghe
Jeskai Control 5th-8th Stefan Kouseband

Kind of a wild Top 8 here for sure. Lot of blue decks here, and at the end of the event it was none other than 8Cast that won in the hands of Teus van der Meij, who now goes on to qualify as the first Dutch qualifier of 2023 for the European Legacy Masters.

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The "green" splash here is subtly on Haywire Mite only, but making green with Petal/Opal and stuff is incredibly super easy that you don't need green colored lands to make the green. The Mite is definitely worth the inclusion in this deck because it deals with a lot of different things.

In Second Place we had Aluren.

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Aether Channeler is such a solid Aluren card. It does so much and generates so much value and is a win condition as well. Very wild that it exists. Very cool too.

Also, I would not be remiss if I did not mention the true highlight of this Top 8, and that's our friend Peter van der Ham's Esper ATTRACTIONS list.

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Dubbed "Esper Stellar Funland" by Peter, this deck has it all and it is ultimately super hilarious. Let's get Attractions to Magic Online soon, yeah?

Legacy Challenge 1/28

The first Challenge event of the past weekend was the early morning Saturday Challenge. This event had 56 players in it thanks to the Legacy Data Collection Project.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the datasheet here.

White Stompy was certainly highly popular and it had a really strong win rate as well. UR delver was next in line and also had a strong win rate. There was a lot of interesting decks above the cutoff as well including a strong showing by ANT.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username
White Stompy 1st HanktheObese
ANT 2nd kobayui
UR Delver 3rd stu909090
Painter 4th kanican
White Stompy 5th Promidnightz
White Stompy 6th LucasG1ggs
Bant Control 7th Kihara_Works
Hammer Time 8th CrusherBotBG

Lot of White Stompy in this Top 8, and at the end of the event it did indeed win it all.

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Chancellor of the Annex is a pretty wild card that is definitely aiming to protect a Turn 1 threat / Initiative creature and it also freely pitches to Chrome Mox. Very wild. I also appreciate the Gemstone Caverns in the sideboard here. The arms race of this deck continues for sure.

The Second Place finalist was on ANT.

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This very much reminds me of a DemonicTutors list that they were doing well with for several events in a row. I expect we'd see more of these lists once Pair o' Dice Lost makes it onto MTGO.

Also in this Top 8 we had Red Painter.

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This is another deck that is missing some cards from paper, such as Chaos Defiler from the Warhammer 40,000 sets. However, the deck does continue to be very good in the current format.

Legacy Challenge 1/29

The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid-afternoon Sunday event, which had 68 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.

UR Delver flipped the script this event with the popularity vote and had a reasonably strong win rate as well. White Stompy was next in line and it also did quite well.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username
8Cast/Painter Hybrid 1st DNSolver
UR Delver 2nd TrueFuturism
Cephalid Breakfast 3rd Aigis
White Stompy 4th HanktheObese
Reanimator 5th snoopy-magic
UR Delver 6th JPA93
Painter 7th _Gerwaz
Cephalid Breakfast 8th sawatarix

Kind of a wild Top 8 here. Two copies of Cephalid Breakfast?! Insane. At the end of the event however it was DNSolver with a Painter/8Cast style hybrid deck that won.

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This list is pretty sick. I love how it somewhat converts into traditional 8Cast post board with some of the choices in the sideboard there. Very solid and very interesting for sure.

The Second Place finalist was on UR Delver.

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Pretty common to what we've come to expect out of these lists. All the Pyroblast in the sideboard is definitely interesting, but with the split in the format of so many non blue decks like White Stompy around it makes a lot of sense to hedge towards that. Those could come back in things change in the format.

As previously mentioned this event also had Cephalid Breakfast in it. Let's take a look.

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I love how strong this deck is, it's such a cool strategy and always super fun to look at. The Urza's Saga here is very neat and I love Step Through as a tutor for either Thoracle or Cephalid Illusionist.

Around the Web

  • The Eternal Glory Podcast has some HOT TAKES. Check it out here.
  • Douges has some Yorion and Taxes featuring Akaleth. Check it out here.

The Spice Corner

You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.

Jeskai Initiative?!

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Kind of sick to see Hypergenesis combo for sure.

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The Riddler Cometh!

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Spicy little Thoracle combo deck here.

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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!



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