This Week in Legacy: What to Play for Eternal Weekend?
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 Eternal Weekend 2020 on Magic Online and what decks you can pick up easily to play the format for newer players or those dipping their toes into the format for this event! In addition to that, we'll be talking about our two Challenge events from this past weekend as well as our Spice Corner (which is INCREDIBLY spicy this week)
Let's dive right in!
Eternal Weekend, Magic Online Style
We finally have some confirmation on Eternal Weekend 2020 this year on Magic Online, which was announced last week after my article last week went live. The three Legacy events will be taking place this weekend, and as of right now you can purchase your entry token for $25. As part of the entry for these events, players will gain access to every card on Magic Online until the Wednesday after the events (10/21).
You can find all the information about the Eternal Weekend events over here. Each event is competing to win a specific oversized card artwork trophy, so be sure to pay attention as to which one you want to participate in.
I am confirmed thus far to be able to participate in the Friday event. I had originally thought that I wouldn't be able to play Legacy due to a camping trip, but it turns out that trip is actually the weekend of the Vintage EW events instead, so unfortunately I won't be able to play both, but I'll be around for Legacy.
One of the best thing about these events is most definitely the All-Access Token. For a mere $25 entry, gaining access to every card on the Magic Online client means that no deck is out of any player's reach. If you were ever on the fence about trying Legacy out and didn't want to pull the trigger to buy in, this entry option is a great way to learn about the format and whether or not it is right for you. With that in mind, I selected a few Legacy decks to talk about for players that are newer to the format and may be able to easily pick up and learn.
BUG Hogaak
Hogaak as a deck is an extremely easy deck for players newer to the Legacy format to get into. Those familiar at all with the Modern Hogaak deck know how powerful this shell is, and the Legacy version is no different. The BUG variants of this deck are a little more explosive and faster, with cards like Hedron Crab accelerating the game plan. This deck can be both a combo deck and an aggro deck in one, putting a wide range of power in play one minute and then combo'ing with Altar of Dementia the next.
From a difficulty standpoint, most of the difficulty of this deck lies in sequencing plays. It can be occasionally important to hold your Hedron Crab for Turn 2 where you can play it and then play a fetch land immediately to gain the benefit from it in case the Crab bites the dust. It's also important to sequence creature spells to take advantage of the Vengevine triggers appropriately.
This is a very fun deck, and very powerful as well, considering that it has good matchups versus decks like Delver due to how wide it can go in terms of board state. There is also a Jund variant of this deck, which replaces Hedron Crab with cards like Faithless Looting. The play styles between BUG and Jund vary, but it's mainly personal preference on which variant you would like to play.
If I had to pick one deck to recommend to new players for Eternal Weekend, Gaak would definitely be it.
Cloudpost Decks
Cloudpost based decks are essentially the bigger version of a Modern Tron style deck, leaning on the usage of the titular land and Glimmerpost to make a lot of mana fast, and then leverage that mana into giant game-ending creatures like the Eldrazi Titans or Primeval Titan.
One of the big boosts this deck has gotten in recent times is the printing of Allosaurus Shepherd by the sheer virtue of making spells like Crop Rotation and Green Sun's Zenith uncounterable, which can be very important to a deck wanting to resolve these kinds of spells.
The major difficulty of this deck lies in sequencing land drops and playing against Wasteland decks. Many of these decks often play multiple Pithing Needle main deck in order to counteract Wasteland as well as Rishadan Port. This is definitely a deck however, where sequencing properly can lead to a lot of free wins.
Dark Depths Combo
Making 20/20s in 2020 is still a solid strategy, as the Dark Depths combo is still one of the most straightfoward non-Blue combo decks in the format. This deck operates mainly on hand disruption and making it hard for the opponent to interact with a 20/20 flying indestructible creature.
The biggest difficulty of this deck is understanding how the combo of Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage (or Vampire Hexmage) functions. The card Dark Depths has a triggered ability that triggers when you control a Dark Depths with zero ice counters on it. Due to how this trigger is worded, the Dark Depths needs to be sacrificed in order for the trigger to properly resolve. If an effect removes the Depths in response to this trigger, you can't sacrifice it, and therefore you won't get a Marit Lage token. This is incredibly important when playing against Wasteland decks, since you could theoretically walk into this first. The best thing to do in a situation like that is to hold the Depths+Stage/Hexmage until the opponent is either forced to tap their Wasteland for some reason, or if they attempt to Wasteland one of the pieces first. As with Cloudpost based decks, this deck often plays Pithing Needle to deal with Wasteland.
This a fun and proactive deck for players wishing to play something unique and interesting.
Karn Echo
A Chalice of the Void based strategy, much of this deck revolves around performing broken game actions involving cards like Karn, the Great Creator and Echo of Eons. As such, this deck utilizes a lot of fast mana as well as cards like Lion's Eye Diamond to enable casting Echo of Eons. Resolving an early Karn or resolving Echo with a Narset, Parter of Veils in play can debilitate an opponent's game plan very quickly. This deck can also readily abuse Emry, Lurker of the Loch and cards like Mishra's Bauble to draw cards.
Modern players who remember playing with cards like Urza, Lord High Artificer may enjoy this deck and how absurdly broken it can be.
Most of this deck's difficulty is in sequencing out artifact mana and your Ancient Tomb + City of Traitors and when to crack Lion's Eye Diamond to cast Echo. This deck has a ton of fun to it, but it is also very mulligan dependent as well, relying heavily on the London Mulligan to shape its opening hands. The rule of thumb for this deck is that if the opening hand doesn't do anything flat out broken on Turn 1-2, it's probably not worth keeping.
Reanimator
Most people not even truly familiar with Legacy are generally familiar with the base strategy behind Reanimator. The deck functions on the basis of clearing a path using disruption like Chancellor of the Annex's Pregame effect along with discard spells to reanimate a big creature from the graveyard, typically Griselbrand. Making a Turn 1 Griselbrand is incredibly strong, and it is among one of the most straightfoward decks in the format to play.
Much of Reanimator's weaknesses lie in sideboarding and mulligan decisions, and knowing what \graveyard hate spells to play against and play around. It can be important to review decklists of various archetypes in the format and familiarize yourself with what pieces of hate various decks play.
Show and Tell Decks
If you're looking for a deck that gets to play both Brainstorm and Force of Will, but is still rather straightforward, then decks that utilize the card Show and Tell are just for you. The game plan of these decks is relatively simple in that they are always seeking to resolve Show and Tell (or in the case of Sneak/Show Sneak Attack) and use those cards to put something broken into play, whether that card is Griselbrand, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, or Omniscience.
The major difficulty in these decks comes from the typical learning curve related to playing cards like Brainstorm and Ponder, but the usage of those cards is typically used to further the combo game plan that the deck is trying to perform. This also often impacts mulligan decisions as well. That being said, this is one of the most straightforward A+B combo decks that play the blue suite of cards as you're always looking for Show and Tell and a payoff card.
Titan Stompy
Titan Stompy is another Chalice of the Void shell, but this one relies on not only making broken plays with its fast mana options, but leveraging those plays into land drops with cards like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove to enable dealing damage with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle or making Zombie tokens with Field of the Dead. This deck is much like Lands in a sense, except it is utilizing the lands it does play to play a slew of threats.
Mulligan decisions are among the biggest difficulties of this deck, as the London Mulligan is very important in shaping an appropriate hand that does broken things. As is the case with most of these Chalice variants, if the opening hand does not perform some form of broken function or disruption it's probably not worth keeping.
This deck is however quite fun, and plays a lot of powerful threats.
...And More
There is certainly a lot more than just these decks to explore in the Legacy format, each with their own various learning curves and strengths/weaknesses. There are plenty of decks that are great in the format, and the current top two decks of Snow Control+RUG Delver might definitely appeal to various players as well. These decks do often have a pretty high skill floor/ceiling, which can be daunting for newer players to the format, but if you're familiar with equivalent decks in other formats (for example Snow Control in Modern or Death's Shadow shells) these can also be good decks to pick up and learn as well, as they can be quite rewarding to play.
Eternal Weekend is looking to shape up already to be a fun set of events, and the All Access Token will allow plenty of players to learn and play one of Magic's most interesting formats in Legacy.
Legacy Challenge 10/10
Our first Challenge of the weekend was the early morning Saturday Challenge, so let's dive right into the Top 32.
There was a lot of RUG and Snow in this Top 32, much more so than past events. Snow on one hand did exceptionally well, converting half of its pilots into the Top 8 of the event, which we'll now take a look at.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Snowko | 1st | Baby |
| RUG Delver | 2nd | Beenew |
| U/R Delver | 3rd | Medvedev |
| Snowko | 4th | Gerschi |
| Hogaak | 5th | Kuranari-Jackpa |
| Reanimator | 6th | Ark4n |
| Death and Taxes | 7th | ASnook |
| Snowko | 8th | AnziD |
As noted, Snow did very well in the Top 8 of this event, as did Delver variants, but we also had some other archetypes in Hogaak, Reanimator, and D&T. At the end of the day however, it was Snowko that won the event.
Main deck copies of Carpet of Flowers, Back to Basics, and Shark Typhoon are certainly interesting here in a more Miracles style version of Snow decks. I haven't seen Izzet Staticaster in a hot minute either so that's pretty cool.
In Second Place we have RUG Delver.
Magmatic Channeler showing up is a really cool thing to see. I wonder how good it was for the pilot. It seems like a really fun and interesting card.
In Third Place we have U/R Delver.
This is a fairly clean U/R Delver list. The big takeaway here is that there is a total of FOUR Force of Negation between sideboard and main deck, and that's super wild.
In Fourth Place we have a slightly different Snowko list.
This is more of the control/removal type of Snowko list, with cards like Dead of Winter and Abrupt Decay alongside the normal Snow cards. Sea Gate Stormcaller is a sweet one-of here.
In Fifth Place with Hogaak.
Hogaak with Oko in the sideboard. Has Science gone too far? News at 11.
In Sixth Place we have Reanimator.
This is a build popularized by Eric Landon by adopting some tech from Tin Fins variants in the form of Children of Korlis and a Tendrils of Agony as a combo win condition. Seems incredibly strong overall.
In Sevent Place we have Death and Taxes.
Skyclave Apparition really hit the ground running in this deck, and the results thus far with it have really shown how much of a boost it gave D&T as an archetype. It's a bit of a joke to claim that one card magically fixed D&T, but it really seems like it's the case.
Rounding out the Top 8 we have Anuraag Das on Snowko.
The really big takeaway here is no Ice-Fang Coatl and only one Oko. This is a shell using some of the ideas of the BUGr variants by also mixing in an Entreat the Angels to have more of a Miracles-like win condition. Seems pretty interesting really.
Now let's take a look at the 2019-2020 cards in this event. As always we're looking at cards with eight copies or more, with exceptions made for Companions and Modal DFCs.
| Card Name | Number of Copies |
|---|---|
| Oko, Thief of Crowns | 54 |
| Force of Negation | 46 |
| Dreadhorde Arcanist | 42 |
| Arcum's Astrolabe | 34 |
| Ice-Fang Coatl | 25 |
| Veil of Summer | 25 |
| Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | 24 |
| Plague Engineer | 19 |
| Force of Vigor | 10 |
| Klothys, God of Destiny | 9 |
| Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis | 8 |
| Agadeem's Awakening | 4 |
| Sea Gate Restoration | 4 |
| Shatterskull Smashing | 3 |
| Jwari Disruption | 1 |
| Pelakka Predation | 1 |
Oko continues to be one of the most played 2019+ card out of all the other 2019+ cards in these events. While numbers on the card keep fluctuating hard, it's fairly consistent that one of the best three drops to play in the format is Oko. Snow staples like Astrolabe were back up from the last week, as evidenced by the multiple copies of Snowko variants in the Top 32. We also saw a small number of Modal DFCs with one Oops deck and Mono Red Prison now adopting Shatterskull Smashing into the deck.
Legacy Challenge 10/11
Our second Challenge event of the weekend was the normal Sunday during the day Challenge event, so let's take a look at the Top 32 Metagame.
Again, both RUG Delver and Snowko kind of had their heyday with this event, meaning both were in full force on both events this weekend. I would surmise that going into Eternal Weekend it would help to have a plan for both of these decks for sure.
Now let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday | 1st | Monkeyscantcry |
| RUG Delver | 2nd | Andreas_Muller |
| Omni-Tell | 3rd | Jacobisboss |
| RUG Delver | 4th | Kentaro_Hokori |
| Hogaak | 5th | MissTrigger |
| Omni-Tell | 6th | TwinlessTwin |
| Omni-Tell | 7th | Ecobaronen |
| Doomsday | 8th | TheJigIsAlwaysUp |
Holy combo decks, Batman! There were quite a few of them in the Top 8 of this event, with over half of the Top 8 being some form of combo. With that being said, it was none other than Doomsday that took down the whole thing by Monkeyscantcry, a well known pilot on the deck.
Doomsday has a solid community behind the deck that is continually improving and adjusting everything this deck does. It is certainly an incredibly powerful and also incredibly difficult combo deck to pilot well.
In Second Place we have RUG Delver.
This is a fairly stock RUG Delver list for sure. Soul-Guide Lantern in the sideboard is certainly very interesting to include.
In Third Place we have Omni-Tell.
It's worth noting that the pilot of this deck is only 15 years old and is a regular already in the Vintage Challenge events. This list is pretty strong overall, and it's worth noting Sea Gate Restoration in the shell as a card that can be cast post Omni and draw a bunch of cards.
Since Fourth Place is also RUG Delver, let's move down to Fifth Place with Hogaak.
Again, this is a pretty powerful deck, and definitely worth looking at as it definitely seems to put up results.
In Sixth Place we have a slightly different spin on Omni-Tell.
This is more of a UW Omni variant, eschewing cards like Coatl and the like for things like Teferi, Time Raveler. This is a really interesting take on the list, and I suspect that it is definitely pretty good.
Now let's look at the 2019-2020 cards in this event.
| Card Name | Number of Copies |
|---|---|
| Oko, Thief of Crowns | 38 |
| Arcum's Astrolabe | 35 |
| Force of Negation | 32 |
| Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | 31 |
| Ice-Fang Coatl | 28 |
| Veil of Summer | 28 |
| Dreadhorde Arcanist | 26 |
| Plague Engineer | 17 |
| Klothys, God of Destiny | 12 |
| Sea Gate Restoration | 11 |
| Agadeem's Awakening | 4 |
| Pelakka Predation | 2 |
| Yorion, Sky Nomad | 2 |
| Jwari Disruption | 1 |
Some more Modal DFCs showing up this go around, but also just a lot of Oko in general as the trend persists. I have been coming around as we'll talk in a moment about banning Oko, and these results generally cement that for me big time.
Ban Watch
Two more events means we add two more dates to our chart, and things continue to look very interesting for Legacy.
Oko numbers continue to fluctuate quite a bit between Delver and non-Delver lists, but Oko itself is simply showing up everywhere across the format at this point. The real question becomes whether or not Oko truly does need banned or not at this point, an idea I've been slowly coming around on for a while now. I suspect that it might, but I also worry that it might be the wrong banning, as cards like Arcanist continue to be exceptionally consistent. It's a hard say what might need to go to bring back some balance, because I expect even if Oko goes, we still have Uro to complain about, which has been up and down but generally fairly consistent as well.
Around the Web
- 90sMTG had our good friend Michael Mapson on the channel playing Dark Depths combo vs D&T. Check that out here.
- Anuraag Das and our good friend Marcus Ewaldh did a little High Tide over on CFB. Check that out here.
- The Eternal Glory Podcast posted a new episode on Sideboarding. Check that out here.
The Spice Corner
Our good friend Eddie Zamora posted a very solid 5-0 result this past week featuring... yeah... none other than Rick, Steadfast Leader in Legacy Humans. This comes right on the heels of an apparent result by Pro Tour Winner Greg Orange with a Legacy Humans build playing practically the whole The Walking Dead cards. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
Land with Nissa of Shadowed Boughs? Brushfire Elemental?!
Our good friend Jax posted a Legacy Ad Nauseam 5-0!
A really sweet DETH/Curse Stompy variant here by Reeplcheep.
HIGH TIDE.
What I'm Playing This Week
This week's deck is a bit of a secret! I'm still figuring out what I'm going to play for one of the Legacy Eternal Weekend events, so I'll be sharing that next week after the event is over!
In the mean time, here's an oldie but goodie decklist.
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!
I'd also like to point out this week that I'm currently running a bit of a Donation drive over on Twitter to help push forward my technology aspects a little bit in regards to my PC Hardware to be able to get more into video content and streaming content. If you would be interested in helping out, you can check out the post on Twitter here.
As always you can reach me on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the /r/MTGLegacy Discord Server and subreddit.
Until next time!
