This Week in Legacy: The Rise of 8 Mulch
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 looking at a sick Lands variant known as 8Mulch! We've also got some Challenge data from this past weekend as well as a look at the concepts of the Lurrus bans in Modern/Pioneer through the lens of whether Lurrus would ever be unbanned in Legacy.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Twice the Mulch, Twice the Power
Lands-based decks have always had some interesting aspects to them, and they always continually evolve over time as the Lands community continues to iterate on the deck's success. One such variant of Lands that has been popping up recently in both Challenges and Leagues is 8Mulch. The name of this deck comes from the fact that the deck plays two different copies of the effect that the card Mulch in Mulch itself and Winding Way.
These effects both provide a ton of redundancy for being able to hit lands out of the library, but the big selling point of this deck is being a strategy that leans on four copies of Manabond as the primary engine of the deck. With Manabond and effects like Mulch you're going to be able to consistently find Lands to put into play with the deck, making your Manabond triggers much better every turn. The big payoffs here are both Urza's Saga and Field of the Dead, both of which can be recurred with Life from the Loam but are also findable off the two Mulch effects. In addition to that, some of these decks have been incorporating the new card Commune with Spirits into the deck as well because not only does the card find lands, but it also finds the enchantments like Exploration and Manabond, which is very important to this deck's overall engine.
Let's take a look at a sample list.
This deck is incredibly interesting and chock full of strong effects. Being able to dump and recur lands like the Canopy lands every turn to effects like Roadside Reliquary (which is very easy to turn to draw two with Urza's Saga in play) to generate raw card advantage is a strong play. The big kill condition here is going wide with Field of the Dead, which can often be simply back-breaking if the opponent can't answer the value engine of Manabond to keep putting more lands into play. One nice thing about this deck is that it isn't always overly reliant on the graveyard and can even win the game without accessing the graveyard, which cuts off one angle of hate that the deck would normally have to fight through in order to make Loam a real engine. By simply being able to sidestep and ignore that hate, this deck can still very easily push through Zombies or Constructs.
This is definitely an incredibly fun deck and full of some really sick-looking plays. I would not be surprised to see this continue to see play, and this is a reasonably fun variant to try if you're already a Lands player and interested in something else.
Lurrus of the Dream-Denned
As we all know by now, Lurrus was banned in both Modern and Pioneer formats last week, and it definitely presents an interesting eye into something Wizards thought was problematic in those formats and brings some clarity to the idea of whether or not we could ever unban Lurrus in Legacy. I have thought a lot about this since that ban announcement and I've come to the conclusion that it's more than likely we never see Lurrus get unbanned in Legacy due to a very similar trajectory that I could see occurring in that format with Lurrus over three drops. With the note that Lurrus was in 31% of decks that had at least 4 wins in leagues in Modern, that makes me wonder hard if we would see the exact same kind of thing in Legacy, and I'm guessing that would be true.
While it's true that we were able to unban Lurrus in Vintage, the context of that format is much different than Legacy and there are plenty of cards higher than three mana value worth playing in that format (Bolas's Citadel being the biggest) that Lurrus quite frankly doesn't see as much play there because of how much slower it is in the context of that format. Within Legacy, I suspect Lurrus would override decks wanting to play plenty of three mana value cards more often than not, leading to a similar space where there are a bunch of different decks but they're all Lurrus decks.
The only saving grace here is that many of the decks that might want Lurrus have some pretty compelling reasons to not run it, such as Murktide Regent and Solitude, or even the blue based artifact builds having stuff like Thought Monitor and Kappa Cannoneer. That being said, I still believe Lurrus would definitely see a ton of play and it would be just as problematic down the line.
Legacy Challenge 3/12
We had two Challenges this past weekend, the first of which was the early morning Saturday event. This event had 65 players in it thanks to the data provided by the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
UR Delver was again pretty popular and had a reasonable win rate, while Jeskai Control came in a close second here and also had a solid win rate. Sneak and Show was one of the firm contenders of this event though, as were 4C Control variants.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| 4C Control | 1st | McWinSauce |
| UR Delver | 2nd | tomoro3333 |
| Hogaak | 3rd | Heibing |
| Sneak and Show | 4th | snoopy-magic |
| ANT | 5th | DemonicTutors |
| Sneak and Show | 6th | HNmagician |
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 7th | into_play |
| Lands | 8th | Ozymandias17 |
Definitely an interesting Top 8 here, with some smattering of Sneak and Show and some fair decks plus Combo. At the end of the event though it was 4C Control that took it down in the hands of McWinSauce!
This list is very spot on to the style of 4C Control we've seen folks like Anuraag Das popularize, but with some superb tweaks for sure. A couple copies of Timeless Dragon is pretty sweet as a late-game threat plus mana fixer, and also a copy of The Wandering Emperor is super duper cool. Definitely a fun list for sure.
In Second Place we've got UR Delver.
Pretty solidly stock list here, but it is worth noting that we're now up to four Pyroblast across the entire 75, which is pretty immense here. There are a lot of targets for Blast at the moment so I'm not surprised to see them here, but usually, when we're up to a full four there's definitely a problematic aspect of the format going on. Whether that is Murktide or the Turtle is not super clear but it is interesting to note.
Also in the Top 4 of the event we had Hogaak.
One super interesting new card here is Undead Butler which sort of functionally does what Stitcher's Supplier does on ETB, but also has a solid effect when it dies to recur a creature to hand (such as maybe putting a Hogaak back in hand to cast from hand). The sideboard here is also incredibly clean. This deck knows what beats it for sure.
We also had Sneak and Show show up twice in this event, so let's look at the top placing one.
Very non-FIRE design here for sure. This is just a straight pre-2019 Sneak and Show list for the most part, which is pretty sweet. No frills, just putting in a threat and winning the game.
Near the bottom of the Top 8 we had Cloudpost master into_play!
Boseiju, Who Endures even as a one-of is an incredibly strong effect to add to this deck, where it can be used versus cards like Blood Moon and Back to Basics and keeping those effects off the board is very important for this kind of deck. Definitely a solid game changer for sure.
Legacy Challenge 3/13
Our second Challenge of the weekend was the Sunday event, which had 74 players in it thanks to the efforts of the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
UR Delver was again super popular, but it didn't perform quite as well here as it did on Saturday. 8Cast had a solid event here though and performed very well, while Grixis and Jeskai Control both vied for solid performance. This looked like a pretty reasonable event overall though!
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| 8Cast | 1st | 2jjm |
| The EPIC Storm | 2nd | Bryant_Cook |
| Blue Artifacts | 3rd | GHash77 |
| Esper Vial | 4th | wooop_orc |
| GW Depths | 5th | duckduckmongoose |
| Grixis Control | 6th | TGB12 |
| UR Delver | 7th | Baku_91 |
| Grixis Control | 8th | Andreas_Muller |
Really interesting Top 8 here given that there is no Delver at all in this Top 8. At the end of this event it was a repeat winner of events in 2jjm with some TURTLE POWER.
Otawara is just as important of a printing for this deck as the Turtle is honestly. It helps the deck smooth out dealing with threatening cards at a strong rate and also being uncounterable is pretty good as well. This deck is definitely very strong at the moment.
In Second Place we've got the man himself with Bryant Cook on The EPIC Storm.
This is definitely a powerful list, and we are seeing yet again builds of this deck with four Carpet of Flowers in the sideboard, which is really good versus stuff like UR Delver for sure. Galvanic Relay also is really strong as it provides so much advantage to setting up a combo turn.
Also in this Top 4 we had another Blue Artifact shell.
This version of the deck is more leaned on the Echo of Eons/Day's Undoing synergy with Hullbreacher, but it also splashes some green cards for Carpet and Choke to push on the opponent in blue matchups. Notice how this deck only plays one Snow-Covered Island in case it gets a Choke down. Very smart.
We also had a solid iteration of Esper Vial + Stoneforge in this Top 8.
What's incredibly interesting about this list is the red sideboard splash letting the deck dip into blast effects, but more notably being able to play Hidetsugu Consumes All as a game plan as well. Seems incredibly sweet and is a fun looking list.
Speaking of Hidetsugu Consumes All, that's in our final list to look at in Grixis Control.
Working in the synergy of Hullbreacher + Day's Undoing is really powerful for this deck. It gives it another solid angle of attack to win the game off of.
Around the Web
- Bryant Cook posted a video on his 2nd Place Challenge finish! Check it out here.
- Eternal Durdles wants you to UNBAN THESE CARDS!
- 1MrLee posted a video on Green Cloudpost. Check that out here.
- Our good friend Phil Gallagher ALSO posted a video on the Rector Miracles deck. Check it out here.
- THE REALITY CHIP.
- Our good friends at The Eternal Glory Podcast now have a Patreon! Check it out here and check out there latest episode right here.
- It's the LAST STAND!
- Eternal Durdles also had a new episode on the Top 10 Neon Dynasty Legacy All Stars. Check that out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
Pox is Pox, but this Pox has Sedgemoor Witch + Chain of Smog as a payoff.
This deck has Braids, Cabal Minion in it.
Brought Back + Ephemerate AND Demigod of Revenge?! Be still my undead heart.
Swift Reconfiguration is pretty sweet, but oh, so is Depths Combo AND Minsc, Beloved Ranger!!! GO FOR THE EYES BOO!
Mono White Armageddon Stompy is pretty legit.
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 Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
