This Week in Legacy: The Golden Chicken
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 talking about my experience with a local tournament circuit known as Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy! We've even got an interview with the TO of the series, Robert Wilson! In addition, we'll be going over some other community Legacy stuff and as always talking about the Legacy Challenge on Magic Online as well as the Legacy PTQ event. And let's not forget, our deck focus of the week is on the BUG Zenith Oko deck, and we're also going to continue some discussion on bans in Legacy pursuant to the changes made in Modern recently.
Without further ado, let's dive right into the thick of things!
Chasing the Golden Chicken - Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy 3
This past weekend, during the midst of Theros: Beyond Death pre-release events, I made it out to Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy, a local region tournament series organized by Robert Wilson. This is an unsanctioned event, as it allows playtest cards, but the prizes are pretty real. In addition to the prizes, the real prize is the buffalo chicken dip that is provided for the players to partake in, in addition to the golden chicken trophy for the winner of the event. This event was graciously held by Comic Town in Columbus, OH after a venue change, and it was capped at 32 players. The prizes that Robert had for this event were exceptional:
Even just placing in 5th-8th got an Alliances Force of Will, while the Top 4 played for a Dual Land, with the winner taking home a fresh Underground Sea.
In addition to these cool prizes, Robert also had some sweet participation cards as well.
As such, I myself spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what I would actually play for this event. I am actually pretty bad at figuring out what I want to play in events as I tend to waffle a lot on deck selection and even card selection. I started off considering playing BUG Hogaak, but a few leagues on the deck and I didn't feel confident enough with it. I also considered playing BUG Zenith Oko, but I also didn't feel confident on it either with not much time before the event. I eventually settled on Vial Elementals after a friend asked if I was going to play it, and I ended up realizing I would have more fun playing that deck than I would subjecting myself to something else.
So, I took from perseel's most recent 5-0 list, and put together the following list.
At the end of the event I did end up 2-3 and didn't make Top 8, but I did have a lot of fun playing the deck. My matches ended up as follows:
Round 1 - LOSS vs Cory on UG Omni-Tell - Record: 1-2
Highlights of this round was getting to copy a Griselbrand in Game 2 with Phantasmal Image and having a giant Elemental token from Voice of Resurgence. Overall I can't be upset about winning when Cory went on to win the entire event.
Round 2 - LOSS vs Ethan on U/W Spirits - Record: 0-2
The battle of the tribes. Too bad Spirits all fly. Still, my opponent was in awesome spirits and shout out to him for having read the column!
Round 3 - WIN vs Ben on ANT - Record: 2-1
I was pretty impressed to win this, managing to win Game 3 after an Empty the Warrens for 22 Goblins by finding a Flamekin Harbinger to find Omnath, Locus of the Roil off a Risen Reef Trigger to dome for lethal. Ben is a fellow Team Serious, and it was great to catch up with him.
Round 4 - LOSS vs Ed on Burn - Record: 0-2
My deck plays nonbasic lands, their deck plays Price of Progress. Do the math.
Round 5 - WIN vs Kevin on BUG Threshold - Record: 2-0
I figured out in this matchup how to beat Plague Engineer naming Elemental, by using double Phantasmal Image to copy Plague Engineer naming Carrier. Kevin is also fellow Team Serious, so we joked of course about my wins being solely against other members of the group. Kept it in the family!
Overall, I had a great event, as I was able to hang out with fellow Team Serious friends who were attending in addition to good friend Min of MinMaxBlog. In addition to the chicken dip, the real event was indeed the Gathering.
An Interview with the TO
Of course, one of the nice things about attending was getting to meet and sit down with Robert Wilson, the TO behind Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy. Let's see what he has to say about it all.
First of all, thanks for joining us Rob! Tell us a little about yourself, how you got into Magic and how you got into Legacy.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy (BCDL) with me and that you played in the event. My name is Robert Wilson, I’m 34, I work as a corporate and tax lawyer for a Big Four Public Accounting Firm, and live in Columbus, Ohio. I primarily play Legacy, but I’m learning Vintage, and I have a lot of experience with Modern. I first started playing Magic when Ice Age came out and played casually in middle school and high school through Tempest and Urza's Saga blocks then took a break right before Odyssey for undergrad. I jumped back into Magic around Kaladesh and started with Standard then quickly switched to Modern and eventually took the leap to Legacy and haven’t looked back since.
How did the idea behind Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy come about?
BCDL really started out of my house. A rotating group of six to twelve of us regularly got together on Friday nights to play Legacy (in addition to our regular Thursday weekly) and it grew from there. To get people to come over to my house, I would make buffalo chicken dip and we would order pizzas so that’s how the name came about. Yes, I make buffalo chicken dip for every event. I came up with a plan for growth, set goals that were realistic, and really got a lot of feedback from the local community and other players on what would get them to travel and regularly play local events. I put everything back into BCDL. It’s really a labor of love. What BCDL is now, wasn’t my original vision. That original idea was closer to the events Jeremy Aaronson runs in Missouri; albeit on a smaller scale.
The best feedback I got was that people wanted regular events for reasonable stakes as opposed to one or two off large scale events. I also intentionally give cards out as prizes as opposed to cash to allow people to build into decks. I typically do a couple blue duals as top prizes and regular Legacy staples such as Force of Wills, Wastelands, Wrenn and Six (pre-ban) as lower tier prizes.
Additionally, people also wanted to use proxies. We’re lucky that many regulars (I’d say about 20-30 or so locally) have multiple or complete Legacy decks. But allowing proxies removed the reserved list barrier to entry and has really opened up the format to many Modern players. Legacy is what everyone says they want Modern to be, “an open format where almost any strategy is possible and you’re rewarded for knowing your deck.” If you find yourself disenchanted with Modern, I’d suggest giving Legacy a shot.
What are your thoughts on the state of Legacy from the community perspective right now? What are ways that the community can engage and keep Legacy alive?
I’m a big believer in “if you build it, they will come.” One of the most important things I can tell people looking to start or grow their Legacy scenes is to set realistic goals. I started with a cap of 24 people, take money upfront so I can secure prize cards, and set a realistic budget for expenses and making buffalo chicken dip for participants. When Star City Games (SCG) made their announcement cutting Legacy support, I can see how people thought the sky was falling. You can even find an angry rant on Twitter by me as well as a productive conversation with Ben B from SCG. From SCG’s standpoint, I understand. I think it's even more incumbent now on local regional groups to cultivate their own scenes. It’ll take time, but I promise it’ll be worth it.
One of the biggest strengths of Legacy is that it's a “big little community.” What I mean is that there are regional pockets, but you can go across the country and see some of the same people regularly and get to know those people on a personal level. Almost every interaction I’ve ever had with Legacy players has been pleasant. You’re dealing with mostly late 20s and early 30s adults. I don’t experience the salt I use to endure when I played a lot of Modern competitively. That’s not to say there aren’t great people who play Modern, it’s just a different crowd and it shows at times. The positivity and support the Legacy community shows each other really has a galvanizing effect that is the core backbone of the format.
People ask me all the time, “how can I support and help BCDL?” The answer is simple, show up and show up often. In addition to BCDL here in Columbus, Ohio, there are other regional pockets running tournaments such as; Missouri MTG in Missouri, Arizona Eternal Central in Arizona, Leaving a Legacy/Gaming Etc. in Boston, Face to Face Games in Canada, From the Vault Games in Syracuse, Channel Fireball in California, Card Kingdom and Mox Boarding House in Seattle, the Legacy Pit in Maryland, Nerd Rage Gaming in Chicago, and even SCG at SCGCon in Roanoke. I’ve even started a Discord channel for tournament organizers and content creators to coordinate.
How do you feel about the format itself right now?
I think the format is in a good spot overall, but there are some cards worth watching. The first card I believe that may be troublesome is Arcum’s Astrolabe. While somewhat innocuous it breaks what I believe to be a fundamental restriction of Magic; the color pie. While there’s certainly color pie bleed, it usually comes at a deckbuilding cost. Arcum’s Astrolabe removes that barrier for little to no opportunity cost. Cards like this tend to have a homogenizing effect on the format enabling “blue soup” decks that essentially devolve into playing the best cards in 4 (or 5) colors. If you’re applying the same logic and tests (breaking the color pie and being above rate) that got Deathrite Shaman and Wrenn and Six banned then Arcum’s Astrolabe (while not as powerful in a vaccum as those two) likely meets that threshold. I think it’s also worth noting that Arcum’s Astrolabe also skirts two important “police cards” of the format; Wasteland and Blood Moon. These cards serve as checks on greedy mana bases and Arcum’s Astrolabe invalidates those strategies to a degree.
For example, my brew for BCDL 3 (4 Color Dreadhorde) was my take on a Tomas Mar/Czech Pile style deck. It’s essentially the best flexible cards in blue, green, red, and black then using Dreadhorde Arcanist to grind out opponents and close the door with threats like Tarmogoyf and Oko, Thief of Crowns. Playing BCDL 3, I felt like I had the answer to literally every question presented. There was no deckbuilding cost to having all the best cards. It may be a potential issue in the future and why I think Arcum’s Astrolabe is a card to watch. You’re seeing similar strategies developed already with Four Color Miracles and Tomas Mar’s new “Czech Pile.” It may not be too long before a “best blue soup deck” is found if this continues.
The second card that I feel may be problematic is Veil of Summer. I do like that colors other than blue are getting cards that can interact on the stack, but the play pattern of Veil is above rate and leads to snowball play patterns that could be exploitable. The level 0 is “one mana Cryptic Command,” and while not completely accurate, in Legacy using Veil on an opponent’s Force of Will is nearly backbreaking and snowballs the fight for resources. In Legacy, the battle for resources is king and this card is clearly above rate since it replaces itself. Additionally, Veil can be exploited to allow degenerate combo patterns. You’re starting to see this in the Blue/Green EurekaTell and latest version of The EPIC Storm. That pattern being, play Veil, make them counter it or they lose the game, essentially trading at a minimum for one of the opponent’s interactive cards.
The third card I believe worth watching is Oko, Thief of Crowns. Oko is a card that functions as an aggressive card (by making tokens that eventually turn into attackers) and a control card (by invalidating the text on a creature or artifact). Invalidating so much of the format is a big issue as the starting loyalty and abilities provide it enough loyalty that it’s nearly impossible to attack down. If it wasn’t for Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast being checks on this card, I think it would be more of a problem, but even decks like Death and Taxes at least have Council’s Judgment. The other option is “go over the top of Oko” and combo decks can do just that, but it's possible the fair decks devolve into a race to see who can play Oko first. Preparing for BCDL 3, it felt wrong not to take advantage of these three cards. All of which were in my list.
I’m not advocating for bans, but I think these are reasons to watch those cards in the future. I do think it is worth mentioning that if you remove Arcum’s Astrolabe, the opportunity cost to play Oko and Veil increases and it may stymie the homogenization of “blue soup” decks. Prior to 2019, green was an underplayed and underpowered color in the format. Veil and Oko may be the shot-in-the-arm green needs to see more play.
Any shoutouts you want to throw out to anyone?
First, I want to thank you for joining us at our BCDL3 event and taking the time to talk Legacy with me and giving me a platform to help grow the format and BCDL. I appreciate MTGGoldfish committing to give space to Legacy (and Vintage). It’s truly noticed and appreciated. I’d also like to thank the Columbus, Ohio eternal community (BCDL, as well as Team Serious Vintage, and the Columbus Kobolds/Cleveland Rocs Old School groups) for embracing Legacy and eternal formats. I’d also like to thank all the content creators starting with my personal friends Lawrence Harmon and Steve Hendrickson of Thirst for Knowledge podcast and Min Hoq and Max Gilmore of MinMax blog. I also wanted to shout out the great Legacy content creators who help drive the format and make it what it is; Tom Smiley and Ian McKeown (even though Ian doesn’t remember me) of The Dead Format for always being a great strategy discussion; Anuraag Das and Bryant Cook for always making quality content and deep thinking on high level Legacy play; Bryant again for designing the BCDL logo (check out theepicstorm.com); and Jerry Mee and Pat Euglow for all their work on Legacy a Legacy. Leaving a Legacy really is the community watercooler for our format and the community wouldn’t be where it is without them. Lastly, I’d like to thank all the other Legacy streamers whom there are too many to name. Your content grows the format and I always appreciate watching your streams. Lastly, Comic Town Gaming Center in Columbus, Ohio for being a great LGS and supporting BCDL and the entire Columbus, Ohio Magic community.
Thanks again for joining us! Drop some social media links down below, and never forget that you are awesome!
Thanks you can follow BCDL on Facebook at Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy, on Twitter at bcdlegacy, and me personally on Twitter at robert_h_wilson. You can also find me on Thirst For Knowledge podcast giving BBQ updates from time-to-time and up in their Discord.
Metagame Breakdown and Top 8
Now that we've gotten my event out of the way, let's talk about the metagame breakdown of the event and the Top 8. Rob was gracious enough to do some of the hard work for us with this, so let's dive in!
This event was overwhelmingly dominated by combo decks, with decks like UG Omni-Tell and Food Chain doing well here, in addition to non-blue combo like BG Slow Depths and Mono-Red Painter. In addition, there were quite a few control style strategies as well ranging from 4C Miracles builds to 4C Loam based decks.
At the end of it all, it was Cory Lonas on UG Omni-Tell who managed to take down the event and win that Golden Chicken, in addition to that fresh Underground Sea.
(Note: This isn't the real trophy the winners get to take home, they get a smaller version, but they do get their name engraved on a plate of the bigger chicken!)
Congrats to Cory on his finish! Let's take a look at his list!
The real strength behind this kind of list lies in the four maindeck copies of Veil of Summer. Being able to know that Show and Tell is not only going to resolve but also that all your other spells will likely end up resolving as well is pretty powerful, and Drawn from Dreams is essentially the new Dig Through Time for this kind of deck. This deck can be deceiving as well, since the presence of Ice-Fang Coatl can lead opponents to thinking their opponent is on Snow Control or 4C Miracles, until they see a card like City of Traitors and then Show and Tell. Strong deck, strong finish! Congrats again to Cory!
Also in the finals of this event was a good friend of mine by the name of Joe Palazzo, who has loved Food Chain as a deck for as long as I can remember. He finished strong in this event as well on BUG Food Chain!
One card that Food Chain based decks received in the past year outside of things like Oko that makes the deck interesting is Hydroid Krasis. Krasis is the real deal in this deck, giving the deck a powerful infinite mana sink that also gains them life and allows them to find their win condition of Walking Ballista to kill their opponent. In a vacuum, the card is insane value and can grind games all on its own by the sheer nature of being gigantic. Big congrats to Joe on the finish!
Also in the Top 4 of this event was the TO himself, Rob Wilson, playing 4C Dreadhorde. He talked about this deck a little bit above in his interview, so let's take a look at it!
This list is pretty cool, not going to lie. Seems very powerful indeed.
Also down the Top 8, a few of my friends made it in. One of them is a local Dayton friend who has always been super helpful to me when I am able to make it out to paper Legacy locally by lending me cards or whole decks to play, and he really deserves the recognition for being that guy in our community here. Steve Sizemore's Slow Depths!
This deck is seriously interesting as cards like Elvish Reclaimer still are very powerful, and despite Steve's comments to me that he felt that Depths wasn't currently well positioned, his performance in this event certainly was. Congrats to Steve on his finish!
Finally in the Top 8 is another friend of mine and fellow Team Serious David Lance on D&T! David has long held a love for Thalia and friends and in his words "only bad cards in my deck" but he is a solid D&T/Aether Vial deck pilot and he definitely deserves it!
At the end of the day, this was a great event and definitely promotes Community. If you find yourself ever in the Columbus, OH area, look up to see when the next Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy event is because it's definitely worth it (for the dip, of course).
And thus, I leave you with the Top 8 of the event as Chicken intended.
Community Legacy Events
I was informed by some of you from last week's article on a few events I missed out on mentioning, so thanks to you fine folk who offered helpful comments in that regard. There was a sweet 5K at Nerd Rage Gaming two weeks ago and they even streamed it! You can catch the VODs on Twitch here.
My good friend Jerry Mee of the Leaving a Legacy podcast wanted me to pass along that pre-registration links for The LaL Open on February 1st is now available over at Gaming Etc.'s website. Go pre-register here if you're attending this event!
That's all the updated news I have at the moment, but as I always note if you feel I've missed anything please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know!
Deck Focus - BUG Zenith Oko
Our deck focus this week is on a deck that has shaped up to become a powerful midrange strategy in the format, good enough that it placed in the finals of a MagicFest Bologna and has been on quite a tear since then. It's BUG Zenith Oko!
The big defining trait of this deck is the sheer amount of 2019 cards that are in it, and not just the cards like Oko or Astrolabe or Veil of Summer, but also things like Ice-Fang Coatl, Plague Engineer, and even cards like Questing Beast and Gilded Goose. This deck is full of 2019 cards and it leverages those cards well with the power of Brainstorm and Green Sun's Zenith.
What makes this deck powerful in addition to the 2019 cards it's playing is that it is a midrange deck with countermagic much like how older BUG Midrange style lists were, but it can leverage a lot through the two cards above. GSZ finds threats or pieces as necessary, while Brainstorm allows the deck to remain fluid with what answers + threats it needs at any given time. When combined with cards like Arcum's Astrolabe, being able to set up situations where Brainstorm is actually a Draw 3 put 1 back is a very real thing by deploying an Astrolabe afterwards if it allows you to keep another good card before using that fetchland, or using the fetchland and then Astrolabe to draw a fresh card. In addition, Sylvan Library can help dig through the deck too and set up a similar situation. Just don't ever cast Brainstorm in your upkeep with your Library in play please. Your judges will thank you.
The midrange style threats in this deck tend to often snowball very quickly and provide lots of incremental advantage. Cards like Ice-Fang Coatl draw through your deck while being able to accumulate damage in the air, but it's definitely cards like Leovold, Tireless Tracker, and Questing Beast are all powerful advantage threats that can quickly snowball games, but it's definitely Courser of Kruphix that really sells the card advantage strategy this deck provides. By sheer virtue of being a 2/4 the card can provide grindy games with ways of keeping your life total high while providing you with ways to clear the top of your library with playing lands off the top and keeps you making land drops to deploy further threats. It really is an exceptionally powerful card I've found in my limited time with the deck.
Out of the sideboard, due to the nature of a deck like this with as many draw effects and cantrips as its afforded, there are plenty of 1-of effects like Flusterstorm, Fatal Push, and Collector Ouphe to go around. In addition, typical staples such as Surgical Extraction, 2019 card Veil of Summer, and of course Carpet of Flowers make an appearance. Carpet's appearance in this deck is owed a lot to the other decks in the format that are playing Snow basics and Arcum's Astrolabe since the majority of the basics in play end up being Islands. This make Carpet very powerful for ramping one player over the other, and it allows this deck to be able to cast multiple threats in a single turn which can be very powerful against decks like Miracles.
All in all this is a pretty solid deck and worth looking into if you owned most of these cards in Modern, given that Oko is now banned there. The major duals needed for this deck are 1 of each type (Bayou, Tropical Island, Underground Sea) which really isn't an insane investment into the format, given that the rest of the deck is fairly inexpensive. You could even mostly get away with a split of 2/2 Goose + Hierarch to trim on costs of Hierarchs if you don't own them, but this a great nearly Modern legal companion deck to have for this format and barring anything like Astrolabe or Veil or even Oko leaving the Legacy format is relatively powerful and worth a look at.
The State of the Union - Bans in Legacy
Not too long ago we had a major set of bans in another format, i.e. Modern. While we're not going to dig too deeply into those actual bans since this is a Legacy article, one of the cards that was banned was none other than poster child for 2019 design: Oko, Thief of Crowns. This has prompted yet another set of discussion on this card and the impact that it has had on Legacy and of course Magic overall.
One of the things that came up in the announcement was the discussion of play patterns in regards to what Oko does to games, and while I think that is fairly accurate in a format where the questions are greater than the answers, I don't believe the same is true for a format like Legacy where the answers are on par with the questions. Oko is certainly a fundamentally broken card, but plenty of broken cards exist within Legacy that are also fundamentally broken. This same logic can be extended to new cards like Underworld Breach, which is now being tested by many to see if the card's effect is truly busted and powerful or if the answers available allow for the card to exist within the format.
Most of Legacy's format identity is built with design mistakes or transgressive cards in mind, and the format has had its fair share of these cards. Some of them, like Wrenn and Six / Deathrite Shaman break things on a level that it reduces metagame diversity to the point where the format is stale and stagnant, and thus must be banned in order to clean up that mistake. Some of them, such as cards like Yawgmoth's Will, are fundamentally so broken that in multiples they destabilize the game and the format overall by presenting a question that is much harder to answer. But there is that third category of cards that are generally fundamentally broken but allowed a place to live. Some would argue that cards like Delver of Secrets fit this mold because of being a blue aggressive creature and that fundamentally it breaks the color pie.
So thus we come back around to Oko. It's hard to evaluate where Oko sits in this level of transgressions. It is clearly a powerfully broken card, and yes, the play patterns of it are pretty bad, but are they bad enough to warrant eventually banning the card in Legacy? At the moment I don't think this is the case. Memes aside about 3/3 Elk and all, I personally don't think we're at that level yet with Oko. Should we allow it to get there? I don't know personally. There is a lot of complications and moving parts to this current format, and a lot of these transgressive cards interlock together. Between Astrolabe, Veil, and Oko all being cards that see general play together, it's hard to say which of these is the most transgressive. I know I very recently talked about this and how I believe Astrolabe is a big cause of this, and I still believe this, but I wanted to address solely Oko on the merits of Oko. I think that quite possibly we may end up seeing this fundamentally flawed card end up banned in Legacy, and that might happen before other cards, and that might not even be the best thing to ban at the time. It's a careful and delicate dance to seeing whether the metagame will continually adjust to the way things are, and I ultimately would prefer to see that happen over banning yet another card so quickly. Now I definitely supported the banning of Wrenn and Six as quickly as it was. Wizards definitely chose deliberate action there, and I am happy they did so, but with Oko things are not as clear cut.
And yet still, I can see a reasoning behind it. Very few other planeswalker cards outside of W6, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor have had such an insanely powerful impact on Legacy overall, and Oko has been on a tear across multiple formats as likely one of the most widely played (until a banning occurred) planeswalkers of all time. The card creates repetitive play patterns and makes for boring repetitive gameplay and limits the types of questions a deck might be running, thus reducing deckbuilding diversity in the long run. However, this is enabled by the fact that decks can freely cast this card either thanks to Veil or Astrolabe making mana so incredibly easy. Again, the answer is not clear cut as to whether or not Oko is a true issue or not.
However, in the long run I find it good to continue to have these kinds of discussions. It is productive I feel to discuss what Legacy's identity is meant to be, and how cards as they are printed impact the format. I will be ever curious going forward to continue to watch this evolving metagame and how things eventually shake out in it.
Legacy PTQ 1/18
There was a Legacy PTQ this weekend on Magic Online! Let's take a look at how it shook out.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Delver | 1st | MzFroste (Topher Stitson) |
| RG Lands | 2nd | Urawik3 |
| Turbo Depths | 3rd | Duplicatore |
| Esper Hatebears | 4th | Jtl005 |
| Grixis Delver | 5th | Egadd2894 |
| Eldrazi Aggro | 6th | GGoggles |
| Eldrazi Aggro | 7th | Djbmppwns |
| Dredge | 8th | Ark4n |
This was a pretty cool Top 8 to see, with pretty much no copies of either Arcum's Astrolabe or Oko, Thief of Crowns in it at all. In fact, it was Grixis Delver that took it all down in the hands of the very capable Topher Stitson (MzFroste).
This list is pretty strongly close to the list that we talked about last week, and it really shows how powerful cards like Brazen Borrower and Dreadhorde Arcanist really are. There was in fact a fair amount of Grixis Delver in the Top 16 published lists of this event, so it looks like this deck is really building in popularity. Congrats to Topher on his finish!
Also in the finals of this event was straight RG Lands piloted by Urawik3.
I like this list a lot. It seems very powerful and it's definitely cool to see cards like Field of the Dead.
Also in the Top 8 of this event was Jtl005 on what seems to be their signature deck in Esper Hatebears.
This deck continues to be super sweet, and again with the singleton Tithe! I've heard thus far that the Tithe is really solid, it's just amusing to see.
Legacy Challenge 1/19
We also had our first Challenge event with Theros: Beyond Death legal this past weekend. Let's see how the Top 8 shook out!
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| BUG Delver | 1st | Lord_Beerus |
| Monored Prison | 2nd | Shadow_PT |
| 4C Miracles | 3rd | TWilder3 |
| Slivers | 4th | JustBurn420 |
| Underworld Breach Combo | 5th | MartinMedMitten |
| Narset Echo of Eons Combo | 6th | S063 |
| RUG Delver | 7th | SilviaWataru |
| Oko Lands | 8th | Delthar |
This event showcased some Theros: Beyond Death cards, and we can talk about the Underworld Breach combo deck here, but first things first the event was taken down by good friend Lord_Beerus (who plays a lot of Vintage too) on BUG Delver!
Again, Brazen Borrower proves to be a very powerful card in this format in these kinds of strategies. I expect more of this card to show up in the future. Regardless, congrats on the finish Beerus!
In a truly awesome Top 4 showing, we have a Slivers deck!
The real all star of lists like this is most certainly Unsettled Mariner. That card was such a boon to random tribal lists and it is exceptionally powerful vs decks like Storm.
Now we get to the real spice of this event, MartinMedMitten gave us a real showing of Underworld Breach with this list, and it sounds insane.
This deck is also built around a combination of utilizing free and cheap artifact mana to cycle through the deck with the combo of Riddlesmith and Ovalchase Daredevil. For those that don't quite see it, casting an artifact allows you to draw + discard with Riddlesmith in play. By choosing to discard the Daredevil, when the artifact enters the battlefield, it will return to your hand ready to be discarded to the next artifact you cast. It essentially turns into a free card draw engine because there's no downside to discarding the card. So what better way to abuse this kind of draw power? Underworld Breach naturally, along with the Brain Freeze combo.
Also in the Top 8 of this event was a deck playing both Narset, Parter of Veils AND Oko, Thief of Crowns with Echo of Eons!
This list is absolutely insane. I love it and hate it at the same time.
Outside of the Top 8, we had another Theros: Beyond Death card show up. Tomas Mar (aka Svaca) took the opportunity to show us how good Klothys, God of Destiny was. I'm a tad surprised as I didn't really consider the card to be that great in Legacy, but this list did place 9th, so I'm willing to be ultimately wrong about this card if it is that good.
Another Theros card that showed up was Thassa's Oracle in 9th alongside Doomsday!
And yet ANOTHER Theros: Beyond Death card is Polukranos, Unchained in what I can only call BUG Plug by Matt Vook (Ozymandias17)
Wow. Just wow. I am in love with this list. That's all I have to say about that.
One of the things that I'm going to start doing here is taking a tally of all the new cards from 2020 showing up in these events starting with Theros: Beyond Death, so let's get the tally on that here:
| Card Name | Number of Copies |
|---|---|
| Underworld Breach | 9 |
| Dryad of the Ilysian Grove | 3 |
| Thassa's Oracle | 3 |
| Klothys, God of Destiny | 2 |
| Cling to Dust | 1 |
| Polukranos, Unchained | 1 |
| Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | 1 |
This is pretty interesting given that this is only the first week of Theros being around, and card availability being a thing as people scramble to acquire cards and the like but still seeing 9 copies of Underworld Breach overall is interesting. It will be interesting to follow this card to see if it is truly the hype people believe it to be.
Around the Web
- Our good friend Callum Smith (WhiteFaces) wrote a sweet primer on BUG Hogaak for MinMaxBlog. Definitely worth checking it out.
- Our peeps over at Eternal Durdles Podcast threw up their "Great Theros Set Review" cast recently. Go check it out!
- Eternal Durdles also published a cast on B&R talk that is very interesting, so go check that out as well!
- Ian and Tom over on The Dead Format also reviewed Theros! Check it out!
The Spice Corner
This deck did really well in the Format Champs, but it's Legacy Twin!
Izzet Phoenix? I think it is!
This deck has Worldgorger Dragon in it. You're welcome.
Stryfo decided to up the ante in Stryfo pile by playing Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Join me next week as we continue our journey into the 2020 of Legacy! We're going to be keeping a close eye on how Theros: Beyond Death will affect the format since it's now legal on Magic Online, so I'm looking forward to seeing what is played and what isn't.
As always you can reach me on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! Please take a moment and consider subscribing!
Until next time!
