This Week in Legacy: SCG Philadelphia and Other Tournaments!

This Week in Legacy legacy Turbo Depths Miracles Food Chain Steel Stompy BUG Delver lands Death's Shadow Painter mill

Welcome to another This Week in Legacy! This week we’ll be looking at the results from SCG Philadelphia, along with a few other results from Channel Fireball’s recent event and the Legacy Preservation series from Card Kingdom. Let’s dive in!

StarCityGames Philadelphia Team Open

Find the list for the Legacy portion of the evnt here. Well, that’s a lot of Grixis Delver, many of which were the typical Spell Pierce-touting lists. However, what actually took the top spot in the end was Turbo Depths:

This list is relatively stock, though the main deck Dryad Arbor I imagine is a little bit of a hedge against the very popular Diabolic Edicts running around (even in some of the main decks of Czech Pile, yeowch) as it is something that can be fetched with either Verdant Catacombs or Crop Rotation. More interesting is a card uncommonly seen in the sideboard:

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Steely Resolve. Chose Avatar and worry no more about Marit Lage being taken down by Karakas, Swords to Plowshares, or an untimely Flickerwisp trigger. I imagine in all the White-based matchups this is one of the first cards to bring in.

Speaking of White-base decks nicely, there was quite a few Miracles lists that found their way into higher places than the last Team Open. Many were the somewhat “stock” lists that we’ve seen popularised over the recent months, featuring both Search for Azcanta along with Counterbalance. But Daniel Miller brought something a little different. The most interesting card in his list is actually Relic of Progenitus.

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I imagine this is used to combat the graveyard shenanigans of Czech Pile, or even the Delve synergies of Grixis Delver, that are so rampant in the current metagame, while also having absurd splash damage on decks such as Dredge or Reanimator. It certainly reminds me of when Joe Lossett utilised Relic of Progenitus in the main deck of his Miracles lists (pre-Top ban) during the Treasure Cruise era. I certainly don’t like the dissynergy with Relic and Snapcaster Mage, but I’m sure that can be managed, and the upside in certain matchups is well worth its place as a one-of.

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Vedalken Shackles is also an impressive piece of technology in the sideboard to take control of threats such as Eldrazi or Tarmogoyfs, which are getting a little bit of a resurgence. With Decay having a little bit of an uptick, overloading these with Search for Azcanta, Counterbalance, and Vedalken Shackles seems quite feasible. I’m surprised Shackles gets so little play in Legacy, and in Miracles it certainly looks like quite a nice fit.

SCG Philadelphia Classic

Looking towards interesting decks from the Classic, we have somewhat antiquated decks in Walking Ballista-less Food Chain:

I’m not sure if I can honestly get behind this list, even though Fierce Empath gives the deck convenient access to Gurmag Angler as a failsafe. Walking Ballista is truly the reason to be trialing Food Chain in the current era, as it is just a lean, flexible win condition that also turns around problematic matchups like Death & Taxes. Excluding Ballista does mean that Shardless Agent can be included in this list, but the Agent has certainly lost its lustre in recent times with Leovold the BUG three drop of choice.

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That being said, I think the sideboard here has a lot of neat technology:

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I think Hostage Taker is quite an impressive card in a deck such as this, not only as just a creature to generate value in fair matchups, stealing other creatues, but also having usage against combo decks such as Sneak & Show and Reanimator. Food Chain is made to push out four drops, and so the Taker seems quite reasonable due to Deathrite (or even some Food Chain sacrifices) accelerating it out. I also like Brutality, that has been seen before in some Food Chain sideboards. This is an excellent, flexible, sideboard option that I think more Black-based midrange decks could be taking a look at – even something like Czech Pile I’m sure could find Brutality useful.

Steel Stompy keeps stomping in. In fact, this is one of two Steel Stompy lists that found a place in recent tournaments this week. There’s nothing too different about it from Amadeus Grun’s debuting list (except the Sword of Fire and Ice in the sideboard became a Jitte), but it’s nice to see a new deck seeing more and more traction moving forward.

Channel Fireball 4k

Next, the Channel Fireball 4k on the 28th of January went past with a Top 8 as below:

Deck Player Placing BUG Delver Hans Jacob Goddik 1 Turbo Depths Carey Ng 2 Miracles Ryan Kinney 3-4 Sneak & Show Ryan Kinney 3-4 BUG Delver Nathaniel Parker 5-8 Burn Luke Aggarwal 5-8 Death & Taxes Allen Wu 5-8 RUG Lands Zack Wong 5-8

Bizarrely, all the Delver decks in this Top 16 are BUG Delver, not Grixis Delver. Again, this is really cementing Abrupt Decay as the place to be. Fittingly, the master of BUG Delver HJ_Kaiser took the top spot with a list very similar to his Eternal Weekend-winning list.

Newer innovations include the Bitterblossom in the sideboard, something I am seeing more and more of in Black-based Delver decks to pressure slow, grindy decks that don’t have Decay *wink* *wink* to remove it. I also find interesting the choice of Spell Pierce over the more typical Flusterstorm in the sideboard, but perhaps this gives this BUG deck a little more game against worrying planeswalkers like Jace, the Mind Sculptor that otherwise cannot be cleanly killed.

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RUG Lands also took a spot in this Top 8, the lynchpin of this list being the inclusion of the Academy Ruins + Engineered Explosives. Interestingly this list took the approach of four Ghost Quarter over Rishadan Port as many Red-Green lists have opted, likely to synergize not only with Loam but also the “fifth Loam” of Crucible of Worlds included in this list.

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Interestingly, this list has a one-of Sylvan Safekeeper that can’t really be tutored for just for when this very grindy version of Lands needs to shift into combo mode and defend Marit Lage.

Card Kingdom Legacy Preservation Series

From what I understand there were back-to-back Card Kingdom events that you can find on Twitch. You can check out the coverage here and there was some pretty exciting stuff on display.

Deck Player Placing Steel Stompy Michael Kiesel 1 Elves Randy Yao 2 Grixis Delver Kelvin Wallace 3-4 Sneak & Show Tom Lynch 3-4 Big Eldrazi Gavin Bennett 5-8 Elves Nick Ragazzo 5-8 Maverick Alonso Cisternas 5-8 Miracles Andrew Harris 5-8

Steel Stompy took down the 72-player event! This deck is certainly showing more and more promise than initial glance after it debut at MKM!

There’s a few changes to this list, such as trimming down on some of the faster mana, adding more lads in Vault of Whispers (good food for Ravager, and can cast Vault Skirge if needed) and the addition of two more Lodestone Golems, something I’ve certainly been in flavor of.

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The following event featured an even spicier Top 8:

Deck Placing UB Death's Shadow 1 Grixis Mill 2 Jeskai Stoneblade 3-4 Black-Red Reanimator 3-4 RUG Delver 5-8 Burn 5-8 Grixis Delver 5-8 Eldrazi Stompy 5-8

We’ll save one of those for The Spice Corner, but the winning Death's Shadow list is certainly exciting too.

Unlike other Shadow lists utilizing Delver, this list has opted to go very heavy on the Delve threats, with not only a full set of Anglers, but also Tombstalker. This is incredibly easy to fuel though, of course, thanks to Probe, Wraith and Thought Scour. Interestingly, this list has opted for Stifle but zero Wastelands – I’d sooner prefer to simply run Thoughtseize as a more synergistic disruption angle with Shadow, but there is something to be said about slamming undercosted beaters and Stone Raining opponents.

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Conclusion

That wraps up our This Week in Legacy. As always, here’s some links to have a look at:

‘Til next time.

Sean Brown

Email: sean_brown156@hotmail.com

Reddit: ChemicalBurns156

Twitter: @Sean_Brown156

What I’m Playing This Week

The deck I’m really in love with is jasper’s Mono-Blue Painter:

This deck importantly finds an elegant way to add Chalice of the Void to a Painter shell by utilizing both Transmute Artifact and Whir of Invention as tutors. The deck also has some solid card advantage engines – Thirst for Knowledge and Jace – and also can hit up the opponent with Lodestone Golem if needed. Have to love the Llawan + Painter synergy as well.

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The Spice Corner

This came second in the Card Kingdom Sunday event and although I’m not certain on the exact numbers on this list, this is Grixis Mill! I imagine Visions of Beyond is really the linchpin of a deck like this which can really churn out some card advantage and give it the ability to not only use countermagic to stop whatever the opponent is doing, but also defend its mill effect from getting countered. I also like the inclusion of Surgical Extraction – once you’ve flipped over most of your opponent’s deck, you can rip out their win condition or stop pesky things like Emrakul re-shuffles.