This Week in Legacy: The Legacy Pit Open II
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week I'm going to be taking a look at the Legacy Pit Open II, a large Legacy event weekend held in Richmond, VA. In addition to that, we've got two Legacy Challenges to talk about over the weekend.
Also, before we get started, I would like to note that this coming weekend in Acton, MA is the next Leaving a Legacy Open at Gaming, Etc. This is worth noting here because this is the last Leaving a Legacy Open ever. Leaving a Legacy is closing down on these events, and is also going to be sunsetting the podcast in the following weeks. I was given the opportunity to hang out with Pat and Jerry this week on the cast, which will be out on Friday. Much love to Leaving a Legacy for EIGHT years worth of content and guests, and the best of luck to both Pat and Jerry in the future!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Legacy Pit Open II
This past weekend was one of the Legacy community's largest events of the entire year in the Legacy Pit Open II, held in Richmond, VA at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. Organized by our good friends over at The Legacy Pit, this event weekend had not only a large main two-day Legacy event in it, but plenty of side event Legacy events, a Vintage event on Day 2, and a memorial Modern event dedicated to Abra Roberts (with a portion of the proceeds donated to various suicide prevention charities). All in all, this looked like an incredibly fun weekend with a very well run series of events.
The Legacy Pit posted several action shots throughout the two days, showcasing the action as players battle head to head in Legacy combat.
Jarvis!
THE CHAMPIONSHIT BELT!
At the end of the day, the main Legacy event had 306 players overall, which is a stellar turnout. Players with X-2 records or better made it to Day 2. To be honest, this kind of setup is pretty cool because it reminds me a lot of old school Grand Prix events. In addition, the main event had full coverage featuring commentary from the likes of Mike Noble, Mike Shank, Anuraag Das, and more. The full VOD of coverage will be able to be found over on The Legacy Pit's YouTube coming soon!
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the datasheet here. Big thanks to the folks of the Pit for providing all this data for us via MTGMelee!
UR Delver had an incredibly massive representation at this event, with a stunningly 17% of the overall metagame. Not only that, the deck had a very positive 55.17% non-mirror win rate. The next most popular deck, typical Delver predator, was GW Depths, but it did not do as well in this event, and even had a less than 50% win rate versus Delver itself, which is not super typical of the matchup. 4C Control decks featuring Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes were very popular, as was 8Cast, Elves, and D&T. 8Cast and D&T also did very well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8!
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| UR Delver | 1st | Hunter Nance |
| UR Delver | 2nd | Aaron Belsky |
| The EPIC Gamble | 3rd-4th | Tony Scapone |
| UR Delver | 3rd-4th | Ryan Mullens |
| Elves | 5th-8th | Matthew Szabo |
| 8Cast | 5th-8th | Bob Huang |
| Grixis Doomsday | 5th-8th | Samantha Murphy |
| Death and Taxes | 5th-8th | David Lance |
A good number of Delver decks in the Top 8 that all converted into the Top 4 quite well. At the end of the entire thing, it was Delver v Delver, with Hunter Nance taking it all down!
Some very interesting deckbuilding decisions here overall, with the addition of one Young Pyromancer to the list. No Maddening Hex here, but a definite plan in the sideboard for various types of decks. Can definitely see the respect for GW Depths with two Submerge here. Hunter's games looked really strong for sure.
The Second Place finalist was also UR Delver.
This is much closer to what we typically see as stock on these lists. Very powerful and clean deckbuilding right here.
Outside of the finals, there was some serious sweet decks in the Top 8 besides the Delvers. In Third Place we've got the one and only Tony Scapone (the master of the Gamble) on his signature deck The EPIC Gamble.
Tony's definitely put in tons of work into the creation and tuning of this deck, and he knows it inside and out. It's always great to see this kind of persistence and work pay off. Tony was the only player on this archetype in this event and absolutely crushed it!
This Top 8 also had an appearance by Elves, with four main deck Fiend Artisan.
This list is super duper sweet. I really dig the Fiend Artisan game plan. The card being a tutor effect plus a beat down is very powerful and I am all for how interesting it makes the game.
We also had good friend Bob Huang on 8Cast.
Bob has been well known for playing this deck for some time, and it's a very powerful deck. Two main deck copies of Unlicensed Hearse here is incredibly cool, giving the deck a lot of Game 1 action versus decks like UR Delver where Hearse can control the graveyard for Delirium and Murktide.
Finally, in the bottom half of the Top 8 we have two players that hail from my home state of Ohio so I would be remiss if I didn't mention them here. They're both regulars of the Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy series and both absolutely stellar players. The first is Samantha Murphy, on her very unique take on Grixis Tempo Doomsday.
This list is sweet. The tempo-controlling aspect of the deck makes for some very interesting games where the opponent may misread that the opponent is on Grixis Tempo of some sort, while being able to leverage into a Doomsday to win the game. Just an absolutely sweet-looking list, and also very pretty on paper (very foily!)
The last player is a good friend of mine, and is bar none of the most powerful Death and Taxes paper players out there today. He doesn't play much MTGO, but he is regularly crushing into Top 8s of paper events with the deck, and that is David Lance.
David is now more on the RW D&T game plan, which has become more and more stock over time given the fact that Magus of the Moon and blast effects are very strong right now in the format. This deck is very powerful (and also very shiny) and David is a true master of the deck.
Legacy Challenge 10/1
The first Legacy Challenge of the weekend was the early morning Saturday event, which had 71 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.
Delver had a huge representation but not a great win rate, and this was a definitely interesting turnout for a weekend with such a huge presence of Legacy paper events like the LPO.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 1st | tarksar1990 |
| UR Delver | 2nd | kiyoaggro |
| Elves | 3rd | DawsonCreep |
| Jeskai Auras | 4th | Sprouts |
| Elves | 5th | EronRelentless |
| Death and Taxes | 6th | Yoshiwata |
| Yorion Zenith | 7th | LeoFa |
| Grixis Tempo | 8th | NooxTom |
Despite not doing so well, Delver still had a deck in the Top 8 here. At the end of the event though it was Mono Green Cloudpost that won it all.
This list looks super fun, with lots of ways to abuse the mana production behind the Post lands. Elvish Reclaimer continues to be one of the better one MV creatures in Legacy for sure.
As noted, the Second Place finalist was on Delver.
Pretty solidly stock list, with a higher focus on Unholy Heat in the main deck with two copies there. Rough // Tumble continues to show up in a great capacity in the sideboards of these decks as the versatility of the card is very high.
Also in this Top 8 we had a wildly interesting Jeskai Auras deck.
Seeing Bloodforged Battle-Axe in a Legacy deck is amazing, but then we get both Curious Obsession and Staggering Insight. This deck is super sweet.
Legacy Challenge 10/2
The Second Challenge of the weekend was the mid afternoon Saturday event. This event had 69 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.
Delver had the representation and the winrate in this event, with Jeskai Control also doing well in addition to Elves.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| UR Delver | 1st | John1111 |
| UR Delver | 2nd | K_Prinz |
| Doomsday | 3rd | Iwouldliketorespond |
| UR Delver | 4th | JUJUBEAN__2004 |
| GW Depths | 5th | HeyNongMan |
| Jeskai Control | 6th | Wurst_ |
| Grixis Tempo | 7th | NooxTom |
| Elves | 8th | ccarlson32 |
Good number of Delver / Tempo strategies here, with another Delver mirror in the finals. Let's look at both lists.
Both lists are similar enough in main deck, but the sideboards is where things differ. We see some Counterbalance action in one, with Unlicensed Hearse in the First Place list. Definitely some flexibility here in the sideboards.
We also had Marcus Ewaldh proving that you can jam just about anything into Doomsday and it works... Stoneblade Doomsday?!?!
If this deck wasn't Third Place in a Challenge it would definitely be in a Spice Corner. This is amazing and super duper cool.
Around the Web
- Everyday Eternal had on Maxtortion in a really solid episode filled with Doomsday and Wine being poured on keyboards! Check it out here.
- Naya Depths SB Guide from DougesOnTwitch! Check it out here.
- Bazaar of Boxes asks the question: "How good is the good boy?"
- Eternal Durdles gets heavy on Triumph of Saint Katherine. Check it out here.
- Elo Punters has a new episode as well. Check that out here.
- Insert Storm Clickbait Title Here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here. I'm also going to be pointing out some of the truly spicy piles from The Legacy Pit Open II as well this week!
Blue Painter is pretty sweet.
Gruul Prison? No, Gruul Smash!
Koike's Nic Fit lists are always pretty amazing.
From the Legacy Pit Open II, we've got Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward in a sweet Reanimator shell!
Speaking of Abdel Adrian, we've got another list with him in a big Yorion shell.
Trade Routes and Mana Maze?! BE STILL MY BEATING HEART.
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!
