This Week in Legacy: Wheeling and Dealing
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 focusing on a pretty sweet deck that has popped up lately by the one and only Killabee. That's right... it's TURBO WHEELS! In addition to that we've got two Challenges to discuss and also some info on ban schedules adjacent to the Standard bans this past week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Wheeling and Dealing the Killabee Way
It's always cool to see new decks pop up out of nowhere, and for me even more so when those decks are crazy wild new combo decks. I love these especially, so when I saw this deck last week, I was definitely intrigued, and it deserves much more of a look than just a Top 8 review. We're talking of course about the Turbo Wheels deck by known combo afficionado Killabee.
This deck is absolutely wild. The primary game plan here is to utilize cards that wheel the opponent like Wheel of Misfortune and Echo of Eons to continually loop through your deck and eventually cast something like Grapeshot to win the game with. One of the deck's biggest and best cards here though is Runehorn Hellkite.
This card is actually just insane. Having a wheel effect that can be used at instant speed even for six mana is absurd but six mana is not so bad when you have four Lion's Eye Diamond and three The Mycosynth Gardens to act as additional LEDs. One really cool line you can do is use something Gamble or Dream Salvage and then activate Hellkite in response to wheel the opponent and possibly resolve your other spell. It leads to some really absurdly crazy lines for sure.
Another fun and absolutely gross interaction in this deck is the usage of Wheel of Misfortune and Intervention Pact. Cast Pact in response to the Wheel (choosing the Wheel on the stack) and then you can name the highest number possible. The damage gets prevented and you gain that much life. Very easily this can swing a game to where you just gain so much life the opponent can't even win.
The downsides of this deck are very much pronounced in regards to understanding at its core what a hand does and how to mulligan into a functioning hand, and what a functioning hand even looks like. You want to be proactive in doing things, not waiting for the opponent to establish themselves. Furthermore, the deck can have a hard time with both graveyard hate (i.e. Leyline) and artifact hate like Meltdown or Collector Ouphe, etc. Primarily though, a lot of this deck is sequencing and understanding that sequencing and how it wins you the game, so it definitely takes a lot of time of gameplay to understand how best to play it.
Killabee's deckbuilding is pretty cool though, and his decks are sweet. I definitely can't wait to see how this one might evolve going forward.
Banned and Restricted Philosophy Update from 5/29
This past Monday we did have a BnR specifically for the Standard format, and while that doesn't affect Legacy we did get some information on some shifts in Ban philosophy going forward. The announcement is worth reading in that regard. You can find it here.
Primarily the cadence in ban announcements is changing. Once per year before fall previews begin (this year being August 7th) there is going to be a BnR announcement that has the possibility of covering multiple formats, Legacy included.
In addition to that, they will also have a BnR on the third Monday after every set release specifically dedicated to addressing large environmental imbalances (think Felidar Guardian or Underworld Breach level stuff).
This shift in philosophy will be interesting to see how it affects formats like Legacy for sure. Will this be better or worse than what we have now? Let me know what you think of it in the comments.
Legacy Challenge 5/27
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the early morning event, which had 58 players based on the data we were able to collect within the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the incomplete data sheet here. Unfortunately some technical issues prevented us from getting full data. This just means we don't have fancy graphs.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lands | 1st | aslidsiksoraksi |
| Death's Shadow | 2nd | RedArmada |
| MUD | 3rd | susurrus_mtg |
| Doomsday | 4th | filthy_casuals |
| Reanimator | 5th | Turn1GlistenerElf |
| Reanimator | 6th | snoopy-magic |
| UR Delver | 7th | Oceansoul92 |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 8th | Vashezzo |
Definitely a wild Top 8 here. Good amount of variety though. At the end of the event it was Lands that took it all down!
Very old school version going on here for the most part, outside of new common stuff like Saga. This list certainly has a lot of power behind it for sure. If you want to get the pilot's perspective on their Challenge win check out this article over on Pendrell Vale.
In Second Place we've got Death's Shadow.
Incredibly straightforward and clean deck here. I especially enjoy seeing cards like Court of Cunning out of the sideboard for those very grindy matchups where card advantage really matters and you can maybe win the game off of it.
Also in this Top 8 we had straight up MUD.
Wild. This player is well known for these kinds of stax-y builds. This one looks super fun for sure.
Reanimator did well in this event (surprise!) so let's look at the higher placing version.
The "sideboard" into Initiative.deck plan here is definitely wild. Digging it a lot for sure. Also Sire of Insanity!
Legacy Challenge 5/28
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the mid afternoon Sunday event. This event had 82 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.
Death's Shadow and UR Devler were the two most popular decks here with Shadow not doing super hot but UR Delver having a positive win rate. Reanimator did somewhat poorly here, as did 8Cast. Lands and Cephalid Breakfast did very well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dredge | 1st | MahfuzVanGogh |
| Cephalid Breakfast | 2nd | L4rss0n |
| White Stompy | 3rd | duke12 |
| UR Delver | 4th | qbturtle15 |
| UR Delver | 5th | mortr3d |
| Lands | 6th | rj_rodman |
| Elves | 7th | NumotTheNummy |
| Jeskai Control | 8th | Iwouldliketorespond |
Crazy looking Top 8. At the end of it all, it was BLUE DREDGE that won it all!
This deck is GAS. I am digging every little piece of this list as someone who has always really enjoyed Dredge. The fact that this list has had these kinds of results is an absolute testament to hard work by players like Mahfuz. I am looking forward to playing around with this deck for sure.
In Second Place we've got Cephalid Breakfast.
This deck continues to have solid results and it's in a great spot right now. It continues to be refined over time, and these versions with Urza's Saga seem quite good.
We did have two UR Delver lists here, so let's look at the higher placing one to get a feel for where this deck is at.
Mercurial Spelldancer seems like a super sweet card for sure here. Triggering off Bauble is pretty cool. I'm not sure how good it is with Expressive Iteration gone though.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we have our good friend Marcus Ewaldh on Jeskai Control.
Marcus continues to have great results with this deck. It looks solid and while I'm not 100% sold on Staff myself, it seems to be working well for him so don't mess too much with success!
Around the Web
- GreenSunsZenith.com has an article on Abzan Depths in 2023. Check it out here.
- 90sMTG has some sweet decks with Miracles vs Mono White Dreadnought. Check it out here.
- Phil Gallagher has some Mono Blue Delver! Check it out here.
- Tony Scapone's PSA is "Friends Don't Let Friends [Normalize Sandstone Needle]".
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
ZOOOOOOOO
This is a spicy Death's Shadow deck.
Wow, this one is cool too. Polymorph!
Song of Creation Storm is gas.
Sheoldred Echo? Sheoldred Echo.
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!
