Much Abrew: Legacy Leylines

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Apr 17, 2017

video legacy Much Abrew About Nothing

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, one deck blew the competition out of the water: Legacy Leylines! The Turn-0 combo deck is looking to play a bunch of Leylines for free before the game even starts; play a Serra's Sanctum, which will tap for a bunch of mana; and then play an Opalescence to turn all the Leylines into 4/4 creatures, allowing us to beat our opponent down before they even get to play a land! While the combo sounds sweet, the bigger question is if it will work. Let's get to the videos and see!

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Legacy Leylines: Instant Deck Tech

Legacy Leylines vs. Death and Taxes (Match 1)

Legacy Leylines vs. Storm (Match 2)

Legacy Leylines vs. Elves (Match 3)

Legacy Leylines vs. Dredge (Match 4)

Legacy Leylines vs. BUG Delver (Match 5)

Legacy Leylines Wrap-Up

The Deck

First off, the record: we only managed to go 1-4 with Legacy Leylines, which obviously isn't a great record.

The "why" of going 1-4 is more complicated than it looks. While we did lose to Force of Will on occasion (as expected), we also just lost to ourselves a lot. One of the biggest things I realized about the deck as we were playing it is that you really have to try to mulligan into the nut draw, or close to it. Since the numbers in the deck are so strange (basically eight Serra's Sanctums, 10 Opalescences, and a bunch of Leylines) and because we need at least one of each to win (along with multiple Leylines), it's really hard to keep a hand that's missing any of the pieces. The odds just aren't in favor of us drawing what we need in a timely manner, and since our deck is nearly half Leylines, our average draw will be a Leyline that we can't cast.

On the other hand, the deck has this odd ability to pick up wins because of the Leylines themselves. While it doesn't happen that often, our opponent can't win if we randomly have Leyline of Sanctity on game one against Storm or Burn, or Leyline of the Void against Dredge or Reanimator. The problem is that we don't know what our opponent is playing, so it's mostly just blind luck. While we did get Storm this way, we also mulliganed a Leyline of the Void hand only to find out that our opponent was on Dredge.

The other problem with the deck is there really isn't a way to fix the deck's problems. It's hard to get more redundant (literally every card in the deck is part of the combo, mana, or cards dedicated to finding the combo), and beyond playing our own Force of Wills (which would weaken the combo even more), there really isn't a way to beat the free counter (which is currently a four-of in 61% of Legacy decks).

Basically, Leylines in Legacy is now and forever will be what it is today: a really interesting novelty deck that wins in an awesome and hilarious way but loses a lot more than it wins.

So, should you play Legacy Leylines? If the goal is to win a tournament, definitely not. On the other hand, the deck reminds me of the Legacy version of Zombie Hunt, so you might want to give it a shot if you're a Zombie Hunt fan. The problem is that Zombie Hunt is like $10 and this deck is hundreds, and it's hard to spend hundreds of dollars on a deck that isn't the least bit competitive. You could try to substitute some of the most expensive Leylines for cheaper ones, but that makes the deck even worse, since the most expensive Leylines (Sanctity and Void) are the ones that give the deck random free wins on their own. Plus, you can't really get around spending $250 on Serra's Sanctums. So, give it a shot if you happen to have the cards (or are a wealthy Zombie Hunt fan), just because it's unique, but don't go out and spend $700 on this deck.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.