This Week in Legacy: Where Everybody Knows Your (Deck) Name
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 a bit about some Legacy History as we delve into the origins of deck names within the format. In addition to that we have a mess of events to talk about, between a Super Qualifier and two Challenge events. Our deck focus this week is going to be on the Lurrus Taxes deck that's been cropping up, and of course we always have our Spice Corner.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
What's a Deck Name, Anyways?
A recent Twitter thread by my good friend Elaine Cao got me thinking this week on the topic of Legacy and deck names. Legacy history has long been one of my more favorite subjects, and deck names are always interesting to me because I find the evolution of them to be utterly fascinating. As Elaine pointed out however, Legacy deck names can often be a little confusing for newer players to the format, which is why it makes sense for me to approach this from a more historical context. Many of these naming conventions aren't used that much anymore outside of a few decks, as the format has evolved where players commonly accepted which names survived and which names did not. This is actually pretty great because it makes for an interesting commonality of accepted language within the format. The thing to remember here is that these names aren't hard set in stone, and you shouldn't insist on calling them by some of these obscure names if you really don't want to. Anyone can call a deck whatever they want. After all, we all bring a different amount of language to the format.
Without further ado, let's dive right into some history.
Canadian Threshold - RUG Delver
Canadian Threshold has its naming roots actually in the Extended and Vintage formats, where two decks known as Gro (an aggro-control deck) and "Birdsh*t" (a disruptive element deck) are generally referred to as the progenitors of the first Legacy lists. Threshold decks typically paired with cards like Werebear and Nimble Mongoose, but it wasn't until 2007-2008 that the beginnings of the modern Thrreshold deck would take form, popularised by players from Canada such as David Caplan and Lam Phan.
The original versions of this deck played many cards that are still often seen today in more Modern RUG Delver lists. The popularization of this deck and Caplan's achievements with it led to the deck's name cemented in stone during several years as variants of Canadian Threshold, Threshold, or Thresh. The primary shift in language for this deck came from the release of Innistrad and the card Delver of Secrets, which has led to a long term reshaping of the language to officially call the deck RUG Delver / Temur Delver.
Team America - BUG Delver
Team America actually began as a joke deck and has a much simpler origin behind its namesake. The deck simply referred to the differences between the European players and American players at the time, and played many cards that the American players were not playing.
The naming convention of this deck quickly fell away again, as Delver became printed and quickly fell into place as the best thing to be doing. This is one that didn't stand the test of time, for sure.
Maverick
This deck however, did stand the test of time, and has continued to keep its deck naming convention for pretty much the entire life of its deck thus far. The story of Maverick is really quite simple in that it was originally created by Luis Viciano whose MTGO screen name was "M@verick" and it began life actually as an Aether Vial deck.
Over time and with the printing of both Green Sun's Zenith and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben the deck has generally evolved over time, but the name of this one always stuck.
Dragon Stompy
This is one that is amusing to note. Most people these days know this exact deck, but depending on who you ask it's likely called something different. What is Dragon Stompy? Well, it's actually Mono Red Prison, or Red Prison, or Blood Moon Prison, or whatever else you want to come up with to call the deck. This is another one that ended up not quite standing up to the test of time, but held out much longer than most others did. The primary reason for the deck's name to be Dragon Stompy is because the original decklists ran Rakdos Pit Dragon as the curve topper and finisher. Over time however, as the decklist evolved, the name actually stuck.
In fact, the name stuck so much that it was even called Dragon Stompy in lists that had no dragons at all in them, often causing confusion for people. This is one that I think ended up being fine to end up evolving into a newer name, simply because having to explain the joke often got less funny as time went on.
Nic Fit
Nic Fit as a deck has roughly a million different theories from people as to why the deck is named the way it is. Often times responses will be made in the form of "I heard it was because someone was supposed to type 'nice fit' and accidentally typo'ed" to theories about smoking habits (which is sort of true). As noted however in the thread by user Tao on The Source in 2005, the deck was actually named after the Sonic Youth song of the same name. Tao was apparently listening to the song when working on the decklist, and felt that it fit well.
TinFins
This is one that tends to get a lot of people, especially when it comes to TinFins variants such as Martian Law, Ice Station Zebra, and the like.
Produced from 2001 to 2005, SeaLab 2021 began airing on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network's late night programming block). The show was a satirical parody of an environmentally themed Hanna-Barbera cartoon called SeaLab 2020. One of the episodes of this series in Season 2 was called "Tinfins" and revolved around a fictional restaurant "Grizzlebees", which was a common amusing nickname for Griselbrand. Thus, the deck name TinFins was born, and has stood the test of time to this day due solely to the dedicated player base behind the deck.
In fact, nearly every slight variant of TinFins has been given a name that references an episode from SeaLab 2021 such as the aforementioned Ice Station Zebra (which is essentially a Depths package as well as Living Wish in the shell) to Martian Law (which is a Burning Wish shell). This is one instance of a deck name transcending the jokes it perpetuates because frankly, there's no other good name for the shells and it does sound cool. Also, if you've never watched SeaLab, you should probably do so. It's quite hilarious.
Community Legacy Update
As always there isn't much going on, but if you are working on something community-oriented and would like for me to give a shoutout, please feel free to reach out to me!
Deck Focus - Kitty Kat Taxes
Our deck focus this week is on a deck that has been gaining some interesting steam in the format, giving new rise to a Death and Taxes like shell.
This deck leans into being fast and aggressive with its hatebears and threats by being able to deploy them as early as Turn 1 with the acceleration provided by Lotus Petal and Mox Amber. Turn 1 Thalia off Petal + land into Mox + Giver of Runes / Mother of Runes can be absolutely backbreaking to deal with, and furthermore this also enables a Turn 2 Lurrus.
Lurrus' utility in this deck is far less relegated on card advantage than its use in the blue shells is, but is rather utilized for either being able to rebuy mana sources (Petal/Mox) or is used to rebuy dead creatures if need be. It becomes a very powerful value play over the consistent card engine it is in shells with Brainstorm and Mishra's Bauble.
Even more interesting is the ability to use Smuggler's Copter to gain card advantage with Lurrus by pitching spells to replay from the yard later on while being able to maintain consistent access to lands and spells you want to cast from hand like Swords to Plowshares. It helps too that using Copter to trade with a flipped Delver of Secrets is a pretty win win trade because of being able to just rebuy Copter with Lurrus as well.
This is a cool deck for sure, and it is certainly an interesting take on the Death and Taxes archetype. In addition, there's an Isamaru, Hound of Konda in it, so who says cats and dogs can't work together?
Legacy Super Qualifier 4/30
We had another Super Qualifier this past week, and it's likely these will just continue until Wizards says they're done doing them, since they've done quite a few already. First things first let's take a look at the Top 32 Metagame Breakdown.
This is most certainly a lot of Delver as the upper echelons of this event are just nearly all Delver shells. Of course, this also means a lot of Lurrus, but Lurrus wasn't just in the Delver shells, it was also in the Miracles shells too!
Let's take a look at the Top 8 of the event.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Jeskai Delver | 1st | LouisBach |
| Bant Zirda | 2nd | CoolUser |
| Lurrus Jeskai Delver | 3rd | CNewman |
| Lurrus Grixis Delver | 4th | MisplacedGinger |
| Lurrus Grixis Delver | 5th | Gul_Dukat |
| Simic Lands | 6th | KelmasterP |
| Lurrus BUG Delver | 7th | Julian23 |
| Lurrus Grixis Delver | 8th | Xugengyu |
At the end of the event, only two could win the PT Qualification for this event, and it was LouisBach and CoolUser in the finals. The winner was LouisBach on Lurrus Jeskai Delver.
This list is pretty close to what we've been seeing out of this archetype, however there are no Meddling Mage in the 75 at all, and white seems to be more of a splash than anything (for Swords to Plowshares mainly). The value I assume is really just rebuying things like Baubles.
In Second Place with a sweet Bant Zirda list is CoolUser.
This deck is pretty sweet, and I really enjoy the overall setup of it. Looks to be a lot of fun for sure.
Third Place also had a Jeskai Delver list, this time with Meddling Mage.
This list also had some Lavinia, Azorius Renegade which is a great way of shutting down opposing Baubles, etc.
In Fourth Place we have Lurrus Grixis Delver.
In Fifth Place we have our good friend Daniel Goetschel (Gul_Dukat) also on Lurrus Grixis Delver.
This list seems pretty solid, and I really dig the Baleful Strix in it. Strong list indeed!
In Sixth Place we have a sick Simic Lands list by KelmasterP.
This list seems pretty cool, and ultra focused on how powerful Uro really is. Great list!
In Seventh Place we have our good friend Julian Knab of Everyday Eternal on Lurrus BUG Delver.
Stifle in the main deck here is really cool, and it's crazy to see Nimble Mongoose in a build that isn't RUG Delver, but I can definitely see it here.
Rounding out the Top 8 we have another Lurrus Grixis Delver list, but this list is slanting Grixis with black as a splash in the sideboard over any main deck black spells.
This list seems pretty cool. I like the slant of being more aggressive focused with cards like Monastery Swiftspear and Sprite Dragon.
Now let's take a look at our Companions and our 2019-2020 cards, starting with the cards. A reminder for all of these events we only look at 2019 card with 10 or more copies.
| Card Name | Number of Copies |
|---|---|
| Dreadhorde Arcanist | 71 |
| Force of Negation | 52 |
| Lurrus of the Dream Den | 24 |
| Arcum's Astrolabe | 15 |
| Karn, the Great Creator | 12 |
| Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | 11 |
| Veil of Summer | 11 |
| Sprite Dragon | 4 |
| Yorion,Sky Nomad | 1 |
| Zirda, the Dawnwaker | 1 |
Holy moly this event had a lot of Dreadhorde Arcanist, primarily on the basis that it had a ton of Delver in the event that could play the card. Insane numbers overall.
Now let's take a look at the Companions in the event.
Lurrus certainly cemented itself as the number one Companion in the event overall, being present in 75% of the decks in the Top 32. What this says about Delver and Lurrus in general is not positive, as I will discuss further down in my Companion Watch section.
Legacy Challenge 5/2
Our first Challenge of the weekend was a bit of an interesting one considering this is typically the smaller of the two events as it mainly is set at a time that is better suited for European / Asian players. Let's take a look at the Top 32 Metagame Breakdown.
This event didn't boast nearly as many Delver decks as the Super Qualifier, but it did have a decent amount of RUG Delver too. However, most of the Top 8 of the event were decks that had Lurrus in them in some capacity. Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Miracles | 1st | AnziD |
| Lurrus Grixis Delver | 2nd | TheStyle |
| ANT | 3rd | SurfinBird19 |
| Elves | 4th | EronRelentless |
| Lurrus Jeskai Delver | 5th | Butakov |
| Cloudpost | 6th | Into_Play |
| Reanimator | 7th | Yurai-Whitecats |
| Lurrus Grixis Delver | 8th | Flingg |
The Top 8 of this event had 6/8 of the Top 8 as decks with Lurrus, as we'll see when we cover these decks. In First Place however, is our good friend Anuraag Das (AnziD) with Lurrus Miracles!
Anzi's list is pretty powerful, and the inclusion of Entreat the Angels is really quite strong. Congrats to Anuraag for his finish! Great player and well deserved.
In Second Place, Anzi's finals opponent was another good friend in TheStyle on Lurrus Grixis Delver! Congrats as well on the run!
This deck is pretty close to Gul_Dukat's from the Super Qualifier, so there's not much to say about it other than that it's still very strong.
In Third Place we have ANT with Lurrus.
Lurrus fits this deck quite well considering none of its permanents ever went above CMC 2 anyways. This is mostly where most people saw Lurrus going, so it's not much of a surprise.
In Fourth Place we have Elves... with Lurrus? Well sort of. Elves gets to use Lurrus in a very interesting way, as was pioneered by Newton Hang in the Showcase Qualifier event (that never got posted sadface).
You see, Lurrus is not the deck's maindeck companion. Lurrus is enabled as a companion in post board games for certain matchups, matchups where cards like Craterhoof Behemoth and Archon of Valor's Reach are actually boarded out. This is a really smart usage of the card I have to admit, and makes for an interesting post board dynamic.
In Fifth Place we have Lurrus Jeskai Delver.
There's not much to say about these lists that hasn't already been said, so let's move on to Sixth Place, where we get a Cloudpost based deck!
This deck also doubles as a Depths deck, playing the combo to have access to a 20/20 as well as the big crazy stuff in the list as well, enabled by the mana ramp production of Cloudpost.
In Seventh Place we have Reanimator.
There is a Dream Trawler in the sideboard of the deck, and a Sire of Insanity in the main deck, so clearly this is peak Reanimator progress. Fun list all around!
Rounding out the Top 8 we have another Lurrus Grixis Delver list.
Now let's take a look at the Companions and 2019-2020 cards in this event.
| Card Name | Number of Copies |
|---|---|
| Force of Negation | 33 |
| Dreadhorde Arcanist | 28 |
| Veil of Summer | 23 |
| Oko, Thief of Crowns | 18 |
| Arcum's Astrolabe | 17 |
| Lurrus of the Dream Den | 17 |
| Prismatic Vista | 16 |
| Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | 7 |
| Gyruda, Doom of Depths | 4 |
| Yorion, Sky Nomad | 3 |
| Omen of the Sea | 2 |
| Sprite Dragon | 2 |
| Cling to Dust | 1 |
| Lutri, the Spellchaser | 1 |
| Zirda, the Dawnwaker | 1 |
There was significantly less Dreadhorde in this event, likely owing to the fact that it was indeed a smaller event than the Super Qualifiers usually tend to be. In addition, as you'll see later in the Spice Corner, we had a rare showing by Lutri.
Now, for the Companions.
Lurrus was still relatively significant in this event, but not nearly as ridiculous as the Super Qualifier results. We'll be getting a better overall look further down in the article.
Legacy Challenge 5/3
The Second Challenge of the weekend also proved to be quite interesting. Let's first take a look at the Top 32.
All in all this event appeared to have quite a bit of variety, and even the Top 8 of the event was actually relatively diverse in regards to the types of decks that made it there. Let's take a look at that.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Lurrus Taxes | 1st | Ultimar |
| TES | 2nd | Bryant_Cook |
| U/W Tempo | 3rd | Jtl005 |
| Doomsday | 4th | MonkeysCantCry |
| Lurrus Grixis Delver | 5th | LearnToLove6 |
| Lurrus Miracles | 6th | TheJigIsAlwaysUp |
| Bant Zirda | 7th | Fishduggery |
| Jegantha Lands | 8th | CraigHead |
This turned out to be a relatively interesting Top 8, given that there was not much repeat of archetypes in it. At the end of the event it was Ultimar who took it all down on the Lurrus Taxes deck!
This deck continues to be really interesting to watch its development of Toolcraft Exemplar is some sweet stuff.
In Second Place we have our good friend Bryant Cook on The EPIC Storm!
Again, this is basically a great place for Lurrus in general, because the deckbuilding restriction is essentially zero. Great run regardless!
In Third Place we have Top 8 regular at this point, Jtl005, on a sweet U/W Tempo build.
There is a lot of cool stuff with this deck going on, most especially Fathom Seer. Really solid deckbuilding here for sure.
In Fourth Place we have DOOMSDAY.
This deck has also succumbed to the Lurrus menace, but that seems fine with cards like Ideas Unbound and the like.
In Fifth Place we have Rich Cali on Lurrus Grixis Delver.
This is again super close to the list piloted by Gul_Dukat we mentioned earlier.
In Sixth Place we have Lurrus Miracles.
This list also seems pretty strong, and it's also worth noting that there's no green splash for Veil and no Astrolabes at all here. Wild stuff indeed.
In Seventh Place we have Bant Zirda by fishduggery.
This list seems pretty powerful in backing Zirda up with countermagic. While not as all in as the Bomberman combo variants, this still seems pretty solid.
Rounding out the Top 8 we have a Companion we have yet to see pop up in Jegantha.
Lands definitely seems like a really solid place for a card like Jegantha as just a sheer value play when they need it since the deck tends to not run many cards with same mana symbols in them. Very cool list!
Now let's take a look at the 2019-2020 cards and the Companions.
| Card Name | Number of Copies |
|---|---|
| Force of Negation | 35 |
| Dreadhorde Arcanist | 29 |
| Veil of Summer | 28 |
| Lurrus of the Dream Den | 23 |
| Oko, Thief of Crowns | 16 |
| Arcum's Astrolabe | 15 |
| Ice-Fang Coatl | 11 |
| Prismatic Vista | 11 |
| Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | 7 |
| Sprite Dragon | 4 |
| Zirda, the Dawnwaker | 2 |
| Cling to Dust | 1 |
| Jegantha, the Wellspring | 1 |
Again the Top cards of this event from 2019-2020 were Dreadhorde, Force of Negation, and definitely Veil/Lurrus.
Now for the Companions.
Despite any relative diversity in the archetypes, there were a ton of Lurrus decks in this event overall, however both Zirda and even Jegantha both popped up too. There were only 6 decks in this event overall that had no Companions.
Companion Watch
Now we come to the meat of our analysis on Companions for this week. This chart is the compilation of all of the posted large events from Week 1 to this week. This only includes events such as Challenges and Super Qualifiers that have substantial numbers of players and results posted. Leagues are generally inaccurate on numbers because of them being curated, and Prelims either fire or don't fire and have inconsistent results. Challenges and Super Qualifiers always fire and always have enough published results with Top 32 decklists to show trends.
In general the picture that this paints of the format overall is that the numbers of non-Companion decks in the format are in a sense decreasing while the numbers of Companion decks are increasing. There have been plenty of divisive opinions on these cards and this mechanic in general. Some players have expressed the fact that there is a general diversity in the Lurrus shells, while others still have criticized the repetitive nature of game play that the Companions (and Lurrus especially) tend to bring. The arguments on both sides have brought to life the age old arguments of wanting to ban cards like Lion's Eye Diamond and Brainstorm, to the point of even trying to somewhat compare Lurrus' metagame share to the metagame share taken up by Brainstorm.
On the topic of Brainstorm and comparing it to Lurrus, my good friend Max Gilmore (Maxtortion) wrote a great thread on Twitter about this very thing, and in talking with him about the subject we also came up with a great analogy of what he wrote about. I found this subject rather interesting as it does give a little bit of a nuanced understanding of a card's role in the format.
Imagine you are designing a machine that performs a relatively simple task. Your machine is going to be comprised of a feature (a function of what the machine does), but in order for that feature to work, you need fasteners holding the machine together so that it can perform the task it was designed to do. This is comparable to a deck, and the function it is trying to achieve within a game. If the features are out of balance or potentially overpowered electrically, the entire machine could simply melt down.
In this example, Brainstorm is not the feature of the deck, and never has been of any deck playing it. Brainstorm is a fastener, and it holds the deck together in a sense. Now, Brainstorm just so happens to be the best fastener available for the job (more on this later), so therefore it is going to see a lot of usage, i.e. a lot of play in Magic events. Features on the other hand, are cards like Lurrus. Lurrus is a feature, not a fastener, as it is a haymaker that warps games and snowballs out of control if unanswered. Imagine in the sense of the machine example that every machine no matter its function had a specific feature that it had to have, but in order to have it you needed to warp the construction of the machine to accommodate it. The fasteners are all the same, but the machine is irrevocably different. This is sort of what Companion has done.
Now, the thing here to remember is that when we talk about these kinds of things we often have to talk about the concepts of Format Identity. As Legacy players we have essentially accepted that the format's identity is defined as a place where you can play Brainstorm as a 4-of. In addition, we have essentially accepted the fact that these cards will likely never be banned. The argument given is that we shouldn't give old cards a pass because thye're old of have nostalgic factor or whatever, but in a sense we kind of have to. Legacy is a format where 4x Brainstorm is part of its format identity at this point, and no one should ever really expect Wizards to change that ever. That being said, Brainstorm is a card that does have the potential to be a card that would be banned if it were newly printed today. Again, going back to the machine example, there are likely a bunch of different fasteners for the machine you're building, but Brainstorm is the best fastener, and is, therefore, is used over all the others. Sure, some other fasteners supplement (Ponder/Preordain), but Brainstorm is the best.
And as Legacy players most of us acknowledge that about Brainstorm's status in the format. We know that the card is fairly strong, and we know that if we were to apply more Modern sensibility to the card it probably would be banned. But the thing to remember is that it won't ever come close to being banned. So complaining and comparing it to a card like Lurrus mostly just ends up being an awkward comparison at best.
As far as Lurrus is concerned, the problem that most have with the card is not directly tied to the amount of play the card is seeing, but rather down to the kinds of games that Lurrus creates and the play patterns it encourages. Often these play patterns are extremely repetitive, often revolving over who manages to untap with Lurrus and accruing value with the card. The biggest issue with this is not the fact that it can take over a game however, but the fact that the ability to do so is always available from the get go of the game. As noted by Max in his thread, before Lurrus enters play gameplay in the game is often dictated by the threat of it appearing. You may hold up different removal that you didn't need to hold up before, or hold up countermagic. Now while this is no different than adjusting for your opponent's game plans when new things come around that cause the format to evolve, Lurrus dictates this in every game it is relevant in because it is always in the Companion Zone waiting to be cast.
I do believe that we will eventually see at the very least Lurrus banned in Legacy. I believe this to be a good change personally if it were to happen. What happens after that will be very interesting however, as both Zirda and Yorion have a potential to stand in and fill the gap very quickly. Regardless, until a change has occurred I will continue to track the data on these cards and present that data as best as I can.
Around the Web
- Shout out to reddit user kronicler1029 who tirelessly posts the League/Challenge/etc results every week to the /r/MTGLegacy subreddit.
- Our friends over at ELO Punters put up a new epsiode, which you can check out here.
- In addition, Eternal Glory also dropped a new episode this week, which you can find here.
- ALSO, our friends at Everyday Eternal also dropped a new episode, welcoming their new co-host, Callum Smith (WhiteFaces). Congrats Callum! You can find this here.
- A great article on Bant Maverick was posted to GreenSunsZenith.com. You can find that here.
The Spice Corner
LUTRI SINGLETON LEGACY.
Notion Thief and Urza and GYRUDA AND WHAT?!
Turbo Retrofitter Foundry seems quite fun and cool as a win condition.
Okay, I'll give you Lurrus Goblins. Call of the Death-Dweller seems pretty sweet.
What I'm Playing This Week
I've been taking a slight break from the Tentacle Monsters to play around with the Foxy Boi. Make no mistake, this deck feels powerful.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join me next week as we continue our journey into the Legacy format!
As always you can reach me on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! I'm also always available on the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the /r/MTGLegacy Discord Server and Subreddit. Also, last week my friend Scott Campbell of LegitMTG and I released the first episode of our podcast together called "The Astrolab" which you can find on Twitter over here. Be sure to check it out and follow the Twitter!
Until next time!
