At The Library we try our hardest to get our hands on all of the decklists for any UK Legacy event that has more than 50 players. Thanks to Callum for transporting, and Nick and Liz for sorting me out with the 138 lists from this event. Lets get stuck in!

On 30th April 2017 Axion hosted the largest UK Legacy event ever seen! The prizes were great as usual and First received a flight and Byes to Grand Prix Las Vegas! Eight rounds with a cut to Top8 were played and because of the record breaking number of players Francois and Liz, as usual, went above and beyond, with prizes for the winners of 9-16th and 17-24th! This event is not just important for the UK scene but because of the ban on Sensei’s Divining Top six days beforehand, the decklists and meta data from this large event should prove valuable for Eternal players around the world. Ill give you the Top16 decklists in full, a run down of the meta, up to decks that were played by three or more players, the list of every deck played and finally the percentage of players of every deck that had four or more players that made the Top16!

So first up the Top 16 lists in full, congratulations to everyone who did so well!

Top 8 Lists

1st Place – Paul Mcgleish – Eldrazi Aggro

Eldrazi Aggro

2nd Place – Dan Burnand – 4C Control

4C Control

3rd/4th – Francis Cowper – Grixis Delver

Grixis Delver

3rd/4th – Jordan Griffin – RUG Delver

RUG Delver

5th to 8th – Lewis Marshall – BR Reanimator

BR Reanimator

5th to 8th – Aston Ramsden – Death and Taxes

Death and Taxes

5th to 8th -Jay Richardson – BUG Delver

BUG Delver

5th to 8th -Duncan Tang – UWr StoneBlade

UWr StoneBlade

Top 16 Lists

Paul Crosby – Sneak and Show

Sneak and Show

Tom Hayward – UR Landstill

UR Landstill

Lewis Mcleod – Sneak and Show

Sneak and Show

Phil Mead – Infect

Infect

Deren Ozturk – Junk

Junk

Heimir Palmason – Death and Taxes

Death and Taxes

Archibald Owen – Dark Bant

Dark Bant

Chris Vincent – Dark Bant

Dark Bant

Congratulations to those who made the Top16.

Meta and Conversion Rates

Next up is a chart of the Meta. Anything in ‘Other’ had fewer than three players.

We can see that the two most played decks were both non-blue and cheap (ish) decks, which should not be too surprising given the size of the event when compared to previous UK ones and that there was a Modern GPT the next day. Death and Taxes has always been well represented in the UK. The cheap entry point into the format that Burn provides, combined with its ability to prey on what was quite a BUG heavy meta before the Top ban made it an obvious choice for many players. (As an aside this strong showing from non blue decks made the event evenly split down the Blue/ Non-blue lines with 69 players each.)

Infect has come out of the woodwork as have Sneak and Show and Eldrazi. I imagine these three decks being well represented is due to people choosing decks with both solid and powerful game-plans in an unknown meta. Infect and Sneak and Show can both win early on and when piloted by someone with experience are very resilient to disruption. Eldrazi is an aggressive choice and that is often the correct thing to do in a new meta. It is also one of the decks that is slightly easier to port over from Modern. I am slightly surprised at the numbers of people choosing to play it in the face of its poor BUG matchups however. This was born out by its relatively poor conversion rate to Top16.

Many people predicted a large upswing in Deathblade variants as former Miracles players easily transferred their deck over to a known performer from previous years. The data from this event does not quite show this with more people choosing the Dark Bant build from Eternal Weekend over the classic Esper Stoneblade. These decks looks similar but play out rather differently.

The major axes along which people played were Delver, midrange and a big variation of combo decks. Control was, as expected, underrepresented with only a couple of Shardless, and Landstill players. A single Stax, 4C control and Pox player rounded them out at only seven total players. It seems like Delver (21 Players) and very varied Stoneforge Mystic decks (21 Players) are the major fairer strategies that you need to have answers for. Deathrite was in 38 decks but they range widely in variety. It will be hard to attack the card directly as it fits into almost every fair deck at this point.

Combo is all over the place right now but with 18 of them having a slight weakness to Karakas, that could be a worthy consideration going forward. I would also keep in mind there are plenty of decks that can sideboard into a Blood Moon or three so have answers for those as well.

There isn’t really much more to say about the decks people chose to bring as the meta currently is an odd place. It is entirely open after Top’s banning, yet the cost of changing deck suddenly to take advantage of this is prohibitive for the majority of players. This will mean many decks from the last few years will bleed over for a while until things settle down.

Here is the break down of every deck played

Deck No. of Players Deck No. of Players Deck No. of Players Burn 11 Food Chain 4 DeathBlade 1 Death and Taxes 11 Lands 3 Delverless BUG 1 Infect 9 Nic Fit 3 Enchantress 1 Sneak and Show 9 12 Post 2 High Tide 1 Eldrazi 8 Aggro Loam 2 Junk 1 BUG Delver 7 Belcher 2 Leylines 1 Dark Bant 6 BG Turbo Depths 2 Maverick 1 Storm 6 Dark Maverick 2 Mentor Midrange 1 Reanimator 5 (BR) 1 (UB) Shardless 2 Painter (Imperial) 1 Grixis Delver 5 Sneak and Breach 2 Pox 1 Elves 5 Stoneblade 2 RW Stax 1 RUG Delver 4 4C Control 1 UR Landstill 1 UR Delver 4 Aluren 1 UW Landstill 1 Jund 4 BUG Deaths Shadow 1 UW Delver 1

Top 16 Conversion

This graph only counts the decks played by four or more players. Well done to the UR Standstill player but his 100% conversion rate isn’t going to be counted for obvious reasons.

Dark Bant is the obvious winner here with 2/6 players making the Top16. Its a powerful deck with game against everything and was picked up by some strong players.

The more interesting numbers are the poor showing for Elves and Storm. After the Top ban the general consensus was that these two decks benefited the most from the death of Miracles. But with none of their players making it into the Top16 it appears that the field was prepared for them both. There poor showing could also be because both of these decks are very complicated. They may both have suddenly got better in the metagame but just picking them up the week before an event is unlikely to get you into the Top16.

I find it slightly surprising that Death and Taxes, which many expected to suffer from the hate directed towards Elves managed to put two players in the Top 16, but then it was the joint best represented deck of the day. This brings us nicely to Burn which, as usual, did dismally. This is likely to be because the deck is picked up by and lent to people who are new to the format, combined with inherent weaknesses of the deck. Burn is a combo deck that is often a turn too slow and in a metagame with plenty of Thalia’s and Batterskulls it is going to find it even harder to get the last points of damage across. This is not to say however that people should never play the deck. It can and does Top8 (see EU Eternal Weekend) but you need to be very practiced against the entire Legacy field just like any other combo deck.

I hope that some of this meta data and Top16 lists will be useful to you as you look towards GP Las Vegas.

Until next time

Tom Kellock

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