Welcome to the first season of Weekly Legacy Recap! Each of these nine articles will consist of two parts. First, a Metagame Recap, where i’m analysing my most recent matchups from the Legacy League on Magic Online. I’m playing fifty matches per week, but we’re mostly going to look at them in the context of the four week metagame, i.e. my 200 most recent matches.

The second part is the What I Played Last Week section, where i’m going to feature a different deck each week. We’re going to talk about my reasoning behind choosing the deck, my expectations, my actual results and the changes i’ve made throughout my league runs with the deck. This week, we’re going to look at Enchantress.

Metagame Recap

(google spreadsheet with the complete data)

Four Week Metagame Before Last Week

Last Week’s Metagame

This was a rather odd week. Sure, Delver was – as it always is – the most popular archetype, but i only faced UW Control during the second half of the week while not facing Grixis-based Control decks at all. To make up for that, i played against a lot of graveyard combo and Storm. Show and Tell was still there, but after the massive week it had a while ago, it’s down to a more moderate metagame share.

Death & Taxes missed the 5% mark again and not only did Depths not make it in for the first time, i haven’t played against Depths at all this week. And that’s all for this week’s metagame. Let’s move on to the bigger picture:

Four Week Metagame After Last Week

First off, let’s look at what we lost: Depths & Dredge. Both of those archetypes are sitting at 9 matches over the past 200, so just under the 5% mark. You could say that Depths is on a downward trend, but this might easily just be a sample size issue – i have always played against Depths either three or four times per week and maybe i just dodged them this week. I wouldn’t base my deck choice on the presence of Depths, but i think taking it into consideration when adjusting removal slots is very reasonable still. It would take another week of little presence for me to start ignoring the deck.

As for Dredge, the deck didn’t actually have a bad week at all – it’s just that a good week rotated out and the two following weeks were bad. If you then take into account that RB Reanimator is another 5% of the metagame, Leyline of the Void is starting to look like a great card to be playing right now.

The four most popular archetypes are still in the same order: Delver, UW, Chalices, Show and Tell. After another week of not playing against Show and Tell all that much, i’m considering the archetype slightly overrepresented in these charts, but a significant portion of the metagame nonetheless. Especially after Cyrus’ GP win, Storm seems like the more relevant deck here. Be prepared for Storm.

This leaves us with Grixis-based Control, which has fallen behind Storm after a bad week. If i’m being honest, i’m not quite sure what to make of this. With the addition of Mystic Sanctuary to the format, Miracles might be the more exciting deck to play around with. Maybe that’s it. I must say that i felt confident in my Miracles matchup with Grixis Control after Top was banned, but then again, the list had access to Young Pyromancer, Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy for massive card advantage.

What do i think is a good choice in this metagame? Probably Miracles / UW Control. I’m not sure how much i would want to lean on Terminus, but Supreme Verdict is a great card against Delver while six Forces in combination with white sideboard cards should cover most linear matchups. For everything else, you should probably just try to cast Monastery Mentor. These are just my thoughts. I suspect Miracles might be strong, but i haven’t played it in a long time. I have played against it though and i feel like the pieces are all there.

What I Played Last Week

I settled on Enchtress for my next deck mostly because it’s the only non-Blue deck that naturally incorporates maindeck Rest in Peace. Of course there were other factors such as seemingly great mana, not being cold to Chalice of the Void at one and the fact that i think Enchtress is a cool deck that i had never gotten to play around with.

Potential issues could be overreliance on single cards (Enchantress effects), a weakness to Narset, Parter of Veils and obviously combo matchups. Luckily, most combo decks in Legacy right now rely on the combat step. The most prominent exception is Storm, of course, but with Veil of Summer, i thought maybe the matchup wouldn’t be too bad after all.

Picking a list wasn’t easy because not only was it hard to find recent lists, but they were also quite diverse. I actually did some digging and went through older lists, but in the end, i went with the most recent 5-0 list:

(Enchantress by famdoola)

My first league on the deck was rather uneventful. I went 3-2, losing to Storm twice, with all games being very close. Throughout my matches, i brought all of my sideboard cards except Sunscour and Force of Vigor, although i didn’t exactly get to cast all of them. Notably, i took quite a few mulligans because i failed to have green mana in my opening hands.

Having access to Flusterstorm and Veil of Summer felt pretty great and i thought the deck was not that far off from having a good Storm matchup – a singleton Gaddock Teeg might just be enough.

I lost a game each to Notion Thief and Narset and i wasn’t sure i had enough outs to those cards. I was more worried about Narset here, but it didn’t actually come up anymore and i think i eventually found a better plan for blue matchups.

My second league was another 3-2, this time losing to Death & Taxes and Sneak & Show. When i first saw that my opponent was on Death & Taxes, i felt good about my chances to win, but it didn’t take me long to realise that Thalia and Tomik are very annoying cards to play against. Sanctum Prelate is not much better.

I also immediately identified Sneak Attack as a problem – between Karakas and Oblivion Ring effects, Show and Tell was fine, but i had no way of interacting with Sneak Attack outside of Elephant Grass and i don’t think it’s reasonable to keep in all removal plus Elephant Grass in a combo matchup.

I played another league with the list. Roughly everything went wrong; i only won two games. I lost to Death & Taxes and Sneak & Show again, while also picking up losses to UB Delver, Aggro Loam and RB Reanimator.

I thought that the deck was just short of having tolerable combo matchups – they would probably be good enough if Veil of Summer and Flusterstorm were universally good, but they ended up being too narrow. Leyline of Sanctity did exactly nothing in my fifteen matches so far. I decided to devote most of my sideboard to combo matchups and then run Doomwake Giants for annoying creatures like Thalia and one or two cards for blue control matchups / Delver:

(deckstats.net link)

I figured Thoughtseize would be a great universal tool for combo matchups. I ran Gaddock Teeg for Storm and Sneak Attack. Choke just randomly stayed in the deck while i cut all the cards that did nothing. Leyline of the Void in the triple Rest in Peace deck might seem odd, but my reasoning was that a) i was running Helm of Obedience anyway and could speed up my clock this way and b) i had great chances against graveyard decks now while also getting some extra options to slow down Storm. I also slightly streamlined my maindeck, but that’s largely irrelevant. The biggest change is probably that i cut the third Invocation because i wasn’t playing Tropical Island anymore and didn’t want to stretch my Utopia Sprawls too thin.

I lost my first match to UR Delver. Both games were close, but it did feel bad to just get my Doomwake Giant forced when my opponent had double Young Pyromancer. I then won three matches against RUG Delver and finally managed to take a match from Sneak & Show thanks to my discard spells.

It only took me one Thoughtseize to come to the conclusion that this was what i was missing. I cut one Veil to make room for the fourth copy. I also realised that Dragonlord Dromoka was a great plan against Delver. I was strongly considering a third copy, but i only made two slight changes to the list:

(deckstats.net link)

I lost my first match again, this time against Eldrazi Stompy. I won game one, but games two and three i kept hands that were weak to Chalice. My opponent had Chalice both games. But once again, i managed to win my next four matches, this time against Merfolk, Canadian Threshold, a Mardu Midrange deck and Death & Taxes (finally).

Overall, i was happy with my list and the only cards i wasn’t sure about were Dryad Arbor and Gaddock Teeg. I wasn’t sure if i wanted to play Arbor at all, and i was considering moving Teeg to the maindeck. At this point, i had played five leagues with the deck, sitting at a 14-11 record. Normally, i don’t continue to play decks when i’m below 60% match win rate after 25 matches, but i made an exception here because i was close enough and figured i had solved the problems that initially had – i was 8-2 with my updated list, after all.

I ended up playing another two leagues with the deck before making one slight change. I went 5-5, taking some unfortunate losses due to mulligans and throwing game three in my match against Storm, as is my tradition.

The change i made was finally cutting Dryad Arbor, a card that i had not used once and boarded out a lot. I replaced it with Solitary Confinement because that was the only card i could think of. It can randomly win games against Storm at least.

(deckstats.net link)

I beat UW Delver in my first match. Then i lost to Aggro Loam and OmniTell (Oblivion Ring doesn’t do much here, unfortunately), threw another game three against Storm and lost to UB Ninjas because Magic Online was acting up, i wasn’t paying attention and i somehow skipped a turn. I actually have no idea what happened there, but i must admit i didn’t care much.

In my next league, i started off beating Dredge and UR Control without dropping a game. What can i say, maindeck Dromoka and Rest in Peace were great, as were Leyline of the Void and having another Dromoka in the sideboard. Then i had a game against Moon Stompy where i thought my opponent had me locked under Blood Moon (with Chalices at one, two and four), but they also had Mycosynth Lattice without Karn. No, i did not realise i could’ve cast all my spells. I then took my first loss to RUG Delver – i didn’t realise until after this match that Elephant Grass was better than the White removal spells here; one creature usually takes to long to win a game, but multipes can do the trick. I then beat a sweet As Foretold / Fires of Invention combo deck. Game one was very close; my opponent had As Foretold into Crashing Footfalls turn one. I did end up having Solitary Confinement on time though.

In my final league, i beat RB Reanimator and Lands, lost to Moon Stompy and then split games against RUG Delver. Ending my run with the deck on just casting Dromoka to win a game was pretty boring, but that’s more or less what the deck does.

This puts my final record with Enchantress at 16-14. Definitely not good enough for me to play the deck again anytime soon, but it does feel like it has some pretty lopsided matchups. Graveyard decks are great, as are Delver and Control decks (which i barely faced, unfortunately). Sneak Attack is still a problem though, as is playing badly against Storm. I did pretty badly against Moon Stompy, but the matchup can very easily be solved by either playing Force of Vigor or running a basic Plains. It just wasn’t on my radar and i played against it more than expected.

Finally, there’s Estrid’s Invocation and the question of consistency. Invocation does round out the deck and allows you to win without an early Enchantress-effect (flickering Abundant Growth once a turn is actually pretty good if you draw relevant cards, of which the deck has many), but sometimes it feels like win-more and i have had copies rot in my hand several times.

I wouldn’t make any changes to the list for now, but i also would not play it until the metagame shifts away from Storm a little (which is a rough matchup even if you do play well).

If you’re interested in my decision making with the deck, i am going to share some of my opening hands with the deck on twitter throughout the week: @JonLX.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading!

j