This year Magic Online introduced the so-called “Legacy Challenge”, a special tournament on the 2nd Saturday of each month at 8pm CET (UCT+1). It features a quite top heavy payout structure but also returns the 25 Tix entry to each of the Top32 finishers. Overall it seems to be some reasonable +EV and usually features all the online Legacy grinders.

After I told you all the neccessary facts about the Legacy Challenge, here’s the most important rule about it: you will always forget it’s that Saturday again and almost miss out on it. Every. fucking. month. That’s why usually everyone starts spamming Twitter and Facebook groups about it being the Legacy challenge tonight so people won’t forget. And just as is tradition, I once again almost forget to enter the most recent one until I noticed a couple of people tweeting about borrowing cards for the event. I just wish Magic Online had some intregrated reminder system for these things. Or an app that sent me push notifications about upcoming special events I might miss out on. Or – let’s be a crazy and wild here – allow you to sign up for tournaments via your phone on the way home. I know, I know, technology just isn’t there yet. We’ll probably all be flying around curing cancer in our sentinent supercars before Magic Online works with game-mode capture in Open Broadcaster Software.

After defying all odds, I signed up for December’s Legacy Challenge in time. If you paid at least some attention to my latest results on Magic Online, you’ll notice that I’ve been constantly switching it up and never really dedicated myself to a specific version of Elves. Whether it’s with or without Natural Order and/or Abrupt Decay in the maindeck, I’m not sure where I really wanna be with the deck; but thus this also hasn’t really been much of a concern as every version seems to be winning and the MKM Season#3 opening in Milan is still almost three months away from us. So I just randomly signed up to the Legacy Challenge with this:

In order to prevent spoilers I put my matchups and results at the end of this post. Feel free to skip the videos if you’re just here for the raw numbers. For everyone else, here’s the (replayed) videos of the matches I played during this Legacy Challenge:

Round 1: UR Delver

Round 2: Shardless BUG

Round 3: Grixis Delver

Round 4: Grixis Delver

Round 5: Imperial Painter

Round 6: Grixis Delver

Round 7: Aluren

Quarterfinals: Miracles

I got really pissed about this one on Twitter. Not because it’s Miracles or because I lost to it, but because even though I was the higher seed, Magic Online still determined Play/Draw via a random die roll, which I ended up losing. Also, there’s not much to say about the match itself; I lost it fair and square and being on the play probably wouldn’t have changed anything in this case. Do yourself a favor and skip this video unless you want to see a long and boring completly one-sided match. Basically the very essence of the soul-sucking, heart-crushing, puppy-devouring ways of Miracles. You’ve been warned.

Results:

Round 1 — UR Delver — 2:0 WIN Round 2 — Shardless BUG — 2:0 WIN Round 3 — Grixis Delver — 1:2 LOSS Round 4 — Grixis Delver — 2:0 WIN Round 5 — Imperial Painter — 2:1 WIN Round 6 — Grixis Delver — 2:0 WIN Round 7 — Aluren — 2:0 WIN Quarterfinals — Miracles — 0:2 LOSS

That’s it for today. I was really super pissed about Magic Online putting me on the draw despite being the higher seed. Their explanation is that their programmers can’t find a way to properly implement the play/draw rule so it just doesn’t exist. They probably don’t even consider this a bug, which means you won’t qualify for compensation like you do with other bugs. Kinda funny when you think about it: can’t make a mistake when you’re not intending to get it right in the first place. Sigh.

So long,

Julian

PS: The header image was created by Geoffrey Palmer. Even if his name doesn’t ring a bell with you yet, you’ve probably seen his amazing card artwork animations while watching Grand Prix coverage. Check out more of his work here.

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