A look at legacy

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graemetaylor

20 December 2011

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Some Legacy decks create themselves. Some are created by innovative thinkers, others just happen to appear. However, there are currently decks that just need to go away. The current Legacy metagame has a countless number of decks, and it’s about time we made a cut to see what should pass and what should not. I expect to get a lot of grief on this, as no one likes to hear that their deck should not be played. Trust me, I play Reanimator, and there is always a graveyard hater who would probably love to inform me of why I shouldn’t play my deck. I encourage you to debate whether I’m wrong or right, and please consider my opinions.

First up, Dredge

Dredge, whether manaless or not, is one of the most conditional decks that we have ever seen. You can do some great, flashy things with this deck, but you can also screw up big time. The first factor to be reckoned with should be the hate for it. As a player that interacts with his graveyard, I am well aware of graveyard hate. However, I have Force of Will, Dredge does not. They start with Leyline of the Void and you are on manaless, good luck. The have Planar Void, good luck. Tormod's Crypt, good luck. There are many ways they can get rid of you. I recently played against a Dredge player. Both games followed in this order:

Me: Polluted Delta. Go.
Him: Discard GRAVE TROLL!.
Me: End step, fetch, Underground Sea, Entomb, Elesh Norn to graveyard.
Me: Untap, Reanimate the Norn.
Him: Concede.

This is just one of the many things that can go wrong. Heck, I could have done Jin Gitaxias for all matter, it still would have been fine for me. There just really isn’t much he could have done.

There was a time when Dredge was the G. Now, everyone knows how to deal with it. I think this deck needs to wait for some more cards to come out for it. It is totally possible to win with it, and viable. In fact, at the Charlotte invitational, a guy made it to the Semi’s with this deck. But he’s a fabulous player, he missed zero triggers, and he had great matchups. It’s time for Dredge to rest.

Counterbalance

This next one will cause a lot of grief. I honestly think that Counterbalance needs to be put to rest for a little bit. I still think it’s a great deck, however, in the current metagame it really can’t keep up. Mental Misstep really helped it, and it’s current win condition is still Stoneforge to Batterskull or go the distance with Vendillion Clique, while controlling them. I don’t think that the deck is unplayable, in fact a good friend of mine, Christopher Walton, has and still successfully pilots it on occasion. What should be noted though, is that Chris is one of the top players in North America: He can do this, he has the skill and the knowledge of cards. Many other Counterbalance players are just relying on an ability to resolve both of the big cards. Counterbalance should be put down for a while so that they heavy deck makers can tweak it back to superb-ness.

Painter’s Stone

Awesome idea! Really cool interaction between cards, and you can mill their deck. A feared turn one is Lotus Petal, Lotus Petal, Land, Servant, LED, Grindstone, crack LED, kill you. However, that turn one required SIX certain cards to be in the opening hand. SIX. This deck is one of the most dependent on cards deck I can think of. Assembling the pieces to it is one thing that players are scrambling to do. There are versions that run Imperial Recruiter to get Painter's Servant, and then Goblin Welder to get Grindstone. Honestly, if you can get Grindstone in your graveyard, you probably could have gotten it on the battlefield. You need to set up so much for this deck, and the card Force of Will ruins it all. I just think that this deck is so unreliable that you are left with an incredibly chancy game, every game. To top it off, here’s a quote from a former Painter’s Stone player: “The win’s almost never there.” This deck has just too many parts, you can’t reliably assemble it in the current metagame.

Charblecher

And finally, the flashiest, best type of win deck there is. Charblecher. I will admit, this deck can do incredible things. It can win on turn one on a good basis, it can either blow you to smithereens or create an army of little green men to kill you. However, with the amount of Force of Will currently being played, it’s an incredibly hard to win with deck. I played against a wonderful chap in a tournament today, who writes for this site. He was a great guy and a genius about Magic, and he was piloting this deck for the first time. I won 2 - 0, and the reason? First game Elesh Norn taking out 12 Goblins, then followed by Iona on red. Second game, Force his win condition, build up to a Jin then to Elesh after he did something for 6 Goblins. Might I also add, I had Pithing Needle on turn one. Yeah. It was just not a good matchup for him, and it wasn’t very hard for me to answer his cards. Blecher will come back, I’m sure of it. But right now, I wouldn’t play it.

Well, that was kind of a saddening article. I honestly hate to say not play certain decks, it just makes me seem like a mean person. But, next article I’ll give you a list of tons of decks to play, and why to play them. You can find the beasts of this format, and I hope you enjoy it. A hint: The decks are Merfolk, Reanimator, Storm, High Tide Storm, and Enchantress. Have a nice and Magical week!

graemetaylor