Over the weekend of the 24th and 25th of June both Axion and Lonon Legacy Monthly held Legacy events. Axion had 37 players while LLM had 38. Below I will give you the run down of all the decks played in each event, the Top 8s for both events and the combined metagame accounting for people who went to both events. Many thanks to Sebastian Amrogowicz for giving me the decklists from Axion and thus the kick needed to analyse the weekend as a whole. Iv’e also put the Top8 lists from the Axion event at the end of the article.

Right, on with the data!

Axion – 24th June 2017

Deck No. of Players Deck No. of Players Grixis Delver 7 Grixis Fish 1 Death and Taxes 5 Hunting Grounds Combo 1 BR Reanimator 3 Infect 1 Lands 3 Miracles 1 Turbo Depths 2 Punishing Dack 1 Aggro Loam 1 Omnitell 1 Burn 1 UB Reanimator 1 Cephalid Breakfast 1 UB Shadow 1 Dark Bant 1 UR Delver 1 Dredge 1 4C Control 1 Elves 1

LLM – 25th June 2017

Deck No. of Players Deck No. of Players Death and Taxes 5 Baubleman 1 Lands 5 BUG Delver 1 UR Delver 4 Cephalid Breakfast 1 Grixis Delver 3 GB Pox 1 Aggro Loam 2 Grixis Thieves 1 Elves 2 Infect 1 Sneak and Show 2 Miracles 1 Affinity 1 Necrotic Ooze Combo 1 As Foretold Stompy 1 StoneBlade 1 BG Depths 1 4C Delver 1 BR Reanimator 1 Mono R Sneak 1

The Top 8 Decks over the weekend

Death and Taxes – 4

Grixis Delver – 2

Aggro Loam

As Foretold Stompy

BR Reanimator

BUG Delver

Lands

Miracles

Mono Red Sneak

Turbo Depths

UR Delver

4C Control

Combined metagame for London

Ten people went to both events on the weekend. This gives us 65 unique players for the events. These people have therefore had their deck choices weighted at 0.5 rather than 1.0. This gives us a total of 65.0 for the decks played over the weekend. Interestingly of the ten who went to both events four played the same deck on both days, this has been taken into account.

A few caveats. This is only two events, one of which was unsanctioned but still competitive, so take this into account when making deck decisions. There is not yet enough data to make any concrete pronouncements about Londons legacy players. But I’m sure that won’t stop me…

Deck No. of Players Deck No. of Players Death and Taxes 9 GB Pox 1 Grixis Delver 8.5 Grixis Fish 1 Lands 6.5 Grixis Thieves 1 UR Delver 5 Hunting Grounds Combo 1 BR Reanimator 3.5 Miracles 1 Turbo Depths 3 UB Reanimator 1 Sneak/Omnitell 3 4C Control 1 Elves 3 4C Delver 1 Aggro Loam 2.5 Stoneblade 1 Cephalid Breakfast 2 As Foretold Stompy 0.5 Infect 2 Baubleman 0.5 Affinity 1 Mono Red Sneak 0.5 BUG Delver 1 Necrotic Ooze combo 0.5 Burn 1 Punishing Dack 0.5 Dark Bant 1 UB Shadow 0.5 Dredge 1

The top four decks, Death and Taxes, Grixis and UR Delver, and Lands make up 45% of the London Metagame. If you are going to an event here soon then you need to have a plan for those decks. This, however, is largely what one would expect. Death and Taxes has been doing well since the Top ban, contrary to contemporary thought that it would lose out. It is also one of the cheaper decks, like UR Delver, and has a very loyal following. Grixis Delver is currently ‘the best deck’ in many peoples minds so one would expect it to be well represented anywhere you go.

The outlier here is how well Lands is represented. I think in the local scene we are seeing the culmination of people who have been interested in the deck for a while finally finishing off their lists combined with a slight spike of people trying it out at LLM. Lands has always been a powerful deck but it has been a slow burn in popularity over the last year or two, mainly due to it’s high expense and low overlap with other card pools. However, once people have bought into it, I think they are unlikely to sell out. This is for two reasons. Firstly, Lands plays games in a largely unique way. Prison/Control combined with turn two Combo kills is not an experience found in other Legacy decks. It is not just having these dichotomous game plans but the fact that one generally has to stick to one or the other when playing a match that makes it so interesting to play. Secondly, Lands always had an issue with Miracles as it was, because of the flexibility of Miracles and inherent inflexibility of Lands. Now Top has gone Lands no longer has to maindeck cards like Boseiju, Who Shelters All and this new space in the main and board has taken some of the pressure off making hard cuts to shore up the Miracles matchup.

If you are interested in a current list I can recommend this one from Jody Keith.



Lands

The rest of the field is pretty open with a good spread of combo decks and some really off the wall brews like Hunting Grounds combo. Interestingly the top three combo decks are largely making giant creatures making Karakas and Swords to Plowshares better, which is probably another reason Death and Taxes is doing so well here.

I thought with the banning of Sensei’s Divining Top and toppling of Miracles, Turbo Depths would really take off in popularity. For reference this list made the semis at Axion.

Turbo Depths

Depths major weakness to Miracles was trying to beat such a reactionary deck that could just play land drops and hide behind a Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell while simultaneously threatening to entirely lock out every spell in the Depths deck with Counterbalance. The contortions from the sideboard were enthralling to watch. First four Sylvan Library and Garruk Relentless, then using your Thespian’s Stage to copy an Island and use Nephalia Drownyard to mill the Miracles deck. The latest sideboard plan involved Walking Ballista recursion and Academy Ruins. With Miracles out of the way and the numbers of Plows significantly lower, Turbo Depths should be in a much better position generally. However the number of Death and Taxes players in the local meta don’t make it a great choice here but perhaps some more SB space can now be devoted to that utterly terrible matchup?

Onto the under represented decks.

I am surprised to not see more Stoneblade, of the Esper, UW or Bant variety in our meta snapshot. This is a deck that used to be a staple of the worldwide meta and was pushed out by Miracles. With that gone surely people would flock to Stoneblade so they could use their Tundras?

The predicted resurgence of Elves after Terminus fell away doesn’t seem to have taken place either. The deck should be reasonably well placed in the London metagame with the ability to grind against both Grixis and Death and Taxes, a fast and solid combo game one and answers post board for the even faster decks. It’s relative unpopularity is due to, in my opinion, how surprisingly hard the deck is to play. It is an unassuming deck of mana dorks and a few hours goldfishing should get the main combo lines down. However, knowing what to value in the grindy matchups where you can’t fast combo people and your Elves are all largely similar is much harder and requires much more experience than most assume.

Surprisingly, we had zero Storm players over the two events. This is a surprise considering how well the deck is positioned right now, but I will get onto that next. Perhaps people are enjoying playing other combo decks right now?

What should I play?

To metagame against this field is quite hard. However, the first deck that springs to mind is Storm. Either the ANT or TES variety. While Grixis Delver isn’t your favourite matchup Storm certainly has the tools to beat it and your matchups against the other top ten decks are largely favourable. TES might be a good choice as it is generally the faster version of Storm. Here is a list that Bryant Cook has been doing well with online. You can read all about the deck over on his website.

TES

My second choice is a blast from the past and probably isn’t a good pick if the meta changes and people pick up storm again. However, if things remain largely the same, the reasonably low amount of combo in the combined meta leads me to think that Jund is quite well positioned here. If you make sure to have a solid sideboard plan for your poorer Lands and BR Reanimator matchup the true card advantage from Jund should run over the other top decks on our list. Punishing Fire and Hymn to Tourach are nightmares for Death and Taxes decks. There are plenty of classic Punishing Jund lists floating around the internet but I thought people might also be interested in this newer version from last weeks Legacy Challenge. While it eschews Punishing Fire it still looks great against our meta. Lacking Punishing Fire means this list can’t pressure planeswalkers as well as usual but the upside is a much more solid manabase. The Grim Flayers over the more classic Dark Confidant give the deck a little more resilience as they can’t be bolted late game but can still provide card selection. Cascading Bloodbraid Elf into Kolaghan’s Command must be a wonderful feeling!

qbturtle15 - Jund

I hope this analysis was of some use to you. Please give me any feedback on anything else you would like to see mentioned here etc.

See you next time

Tom Kellock

Below are the Axion Top8 lists. Well done to those who made the Top8. I’m looking forward to making it over to Axion for their next Legacy event, Francois and Liz always put on a great show!

For those of you who need the Top 8 lists of the London Legacy Monthly event, they can be found in the tournament report here.

Axion Top8 Lists

1st – Aston Ramsden – Death and Taxes

Death and Taxes

2nd – Oriol Montala Jorda – Grixis Delver

Grixis Delver

3rd/4th – Damien Salinger – Turbo Depths

Turbo Depths

3rd/4th – Eugenio Martinez – Death and Taxes

Death and Taxes

5th – 8th – Juan Carlos Jara – Grixis Delver

Grixis Delver

5th – 8th – Slaine Harris – BR Reanimator

BR Reanimator

5th – 8th – Dominic Sanders – Death & Taxes

Death and Taxes

5th – 8th – George Garner – 4C Control

4C Control

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