Much Abrew: Legacy Stax

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Mar 20, 2017

video Much Abrew About Nothing legacy

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. This week, we have a special treat: we get to play some Legacy! Even though we have Legacy Instant Deck Techs fairly regularly, it's rare that the Legacy option is the most popular of the week, but Stax broke the mold! Apparently, people want to see endless Wastelands with the help of Crucible of Worlds and some Turn 1 Smokestacks to eat away our opponent's board. While I have no idea if this deck is good, I love mean, unfun Magic, so even if we don't win a lot of games, we still sort of win by making our opponent wish they didn't stumble into our match. Let's get to the videos, and then we'll have some brief thoughts on the deck.

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Legacy Stax: Instant Deck Tech

Legacy Stax vs. Death and Taxes (Match 1)

Legacy Stax vs. Shardless Sultai (Match 2)

Legacy Stax vs. Esper Stoneblade (Match 3)

Legacy Stax vs. Temur Delver (Match 4)

Legacy Stax vs. Miracles (Match 5)

Legacy Stax: Wrap-Up

Discussion

First off, we ended up 2-3 in our video matches, which isn't great. However, I did run into Miracles a second time, and we finished with a win, so overall our record was 3-3. While this still isn't exciting, Legacy is a challenging format, and Stax is a surprisingly tricky deck, so it's not horrible for picking up the deck for the first time.

My overall impression of the deck is that it has the tools to beat just about anything and can pick up a lot of free wins by drawing the right cards in the right matchups. Chalice of the Void beats some decks all by itself, Smokestack beats others, and the Wasteland / Crucible of Worlds lock still others. However, as a Legacy deck without Brainstorm, we are really hoping to draw the right cards in the right order, and many of our losses came from drawing the wrong half of our deck.

Looking back, I think the biggest mistake I made was not mulliganing aggressively enough. Instead of hoping we'd draw into what we needed, it might have been better to try to mulligan into the cards that are best in a specific matchup (like Chalice of the Void against Delver, for example).

Another big takeaway is that the deck has some really weird decision points, and it's actually a lot harder to play than it looks. While just slamming powerful Stax pieces is enough to win some games, to really play the deck well, it's important to know when it's correct to attack with Mishra's Factory, when it's right to play a land with a City of Traitors, and the correct tutor targets for Inventors' Fair. Many of these small things seem like they would become more intuitive after playing the deck for a while, so if you decide to get Legacy Stax a try, make sure to play some matches before taking it to a tournament.

As far as changing the deck, I don't really have much advice. While there are weird little things to quibble over (for example, the split of three Ratchet Bombs and one strictly worse Powder Keg), nothing in the deck felt wrong, and even the things that felt weird are defensible and may even be correct (with the previous example, the reason for the split is most likely Surgical Extraction. I'm not sure whether this is a good reason, but it's hard to say that the choice is actually wrong).

One of the nice things about the deck, if you do decide to play it, is that a lot of the pieces go into MUD as well, and while MUD isn't a tier deck in Legacy, it is somewhat playable and occasionally does well at tournaments, so you sort of get the tier-two two-for-one by picking up the cards for Legacy Stax.

So, should you play Legacy Stax? It seems like the deck is powerful enough to win matches in Legacy, which is a good thing. While consistency may be a problem, the issue is probably minimized (at least, to some extent) by learning how to mulligan with the deck really well. If you enjoy making your opponents miserable, it's likely one of the best options for the Legacy format, but if you enjoy interactive games of Magic where both players have fun, you'll probably want to head another direction.

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.