Welcome back for this month’s London Legacy Monthly report!

2019 continues to be a good year for London Legacy as we broke the 40 player barrier again. We also had loads of new people from around the country, and a couple of drivers with full cars!

Yet again we managed to source some great prizes with a Tropical Island for first, Savannah for second, Plateaus for third and fourth and a choice between Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Ancient Tombs for those finishing in fifth to eighth. Again we managed to source a box topper Leovold, Emissary of Trest for the winner of the Top16 playoffs.

This months metagame was horrible. Utterly utterly horrible if you were an honest Nic Fit player just out for a nice Sunday of Legacy. Doubly so if it was your first event in a while…

February Metagame

Deck No. of Players Deck No. o fPlayers Moon Stompy 4 GB Pox 1 Death and Taxes 3 Grixis Control 1 Depths 2 High Tide 1 Dredge 2 Infect 1 Elves 2 Mill 1 Eldrazi Post 2 Nic Fit 1 Lands 2 Punishing Maverick 1 Miracles 2 Chunder Bucket Pile 1 Stoneblade 2 Sneak and Show 1 Storm 2 Strawberry Shortcake 1 UB Shadow 2 Sun and Moon 1 Reanimator 2 The Epic Pits 1 Eldrazi 1 Tezzerator 1

Five decks played maindeck Blood Moon. Don’t miss the intrepid chap in the metagame breakdown there playing his Modern Sun and Moon deck at LLM but with far better mana.

Ten decks played maindeck Chalice of the Void. A smidgen off a quarter of the field.

Only twelve people played a deck with Brainstorm!

42% of the field was combo, and the MTG Top8 mechanism I use considers Moon Stompy an Aggro Deck.

All in all a terrible, terrible day to try and hardcast Thragtusk. There is however, something more interesting at play here. The Chalice players, and especially those on Moon Stompy, all correctly predicted that this would be a field dominated by combo decks. Jamming Chalice and Ensnaring Bridge into the nine of us making Marit Lage, Griselbrand and Reality Smasher is rather good.

These teeming hordes of combo players have to have come from somewhere. And it looks like Grixis has been the loser. Grixis control has large areas of weakness as things have got more varied and confidence in Grixis Delver from the general legacy population has decreased. This can be seen in the many varied builds around now. A good example is Bob Huang’s 4 Thought Scour, 4 Gurmag Angler deck played this last weekend. This version is very different to the Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe fuelled monster of last year. I think players used to that power have perhaps finally had enough of the Delver deck not being as powerful as it was and are looking for other broken outlets. The UB Shadow deck hasn’t captured all of these disenfranchised players and they are now playing combo.

Our incredibly low number of Brainstorm decks played chimes well with the data presented by Bob Huang in his look at the meta. As does his assertation that Legacy is a format that cares more about turn 1 plays now than it has before. Only a handful of the decks played in February don’t seem to be ‘attempting to secure a critical mana advantage in the early turns of the game’. The advice he gives in the article can already be seen in our Top8 decks (Spoilers!). The Infect player cut Flusterstorms for Spell Pierces so they would have more turn one interaction. A solid choice against chalice decks is Stoneblade and that also made the Top 8.

This brings me to my favourite part of any report. What to play next month! Combating the preponderance of Chalice and Moon can be done in a few ways. SCG Syracuse showed that you can still play Delver and do well, just that it should be UR or UW. Both decks play plenty of basics and hope to either counter that Chalice on 1 or play some Stoneforge Mystics and/or True Name-Nemesis. The other way is to play a deck that ignores Blood Moon and Chalice entirely. You can also have plenty of game against that 42% of the room who played Combo. Oh, and your deck gets better when they bring in the London mulligan rule… Play Stax! Yes! For the first (and likely last time) Stax was a great deck to play at LLM. Ensnaring Bridge, Chalice, Sphere of Resistance and Karn, Scion of Urza should give you plenty of game!

Shame no-one told me beforehand…. 🙁

If you have been persuaded then I would start my search for a viable list with these two. Both playing Serum Powder. (I wasn’t joking about that mulligan rule). List 1 – nola_gold (Jody Keith). List 2 susurrus_mtg (Michael Coyle)

The Tournament

Two players went undefeated in the swiss rounds of the event. Liam playing Death and Taxes and Tommaso on Moon Stompy. There was a clean cut as the rest of the top8 could all draw into it as they only had one loss by the final round. Congratulations to Alex on Moon Stompy, Lee playing Infect, Ross on Elves, George playing Lands, Will on UB Shadow and Francis (top 8 again!) playing UW Stoneblade. Francis notably got his loss in the first round, a bye in the next and then kept winning, so always stay in the event even when ‘mildly hungover’ 😉

Top 8 Matches

Quarters

I sat down in the middle of the action to watch George (Lands) play Alex (Moon), in the vain hope that George would somehow overcome a terrible match-up against the player who beat him in the Swiss. It was not to be however as Alex dispatched him in two games. The game before sideboard is not a great matchup but George had found his maindeck inclusion of Worm Harvest which is primarily in the deck to steal games from Moon Stompy players. At a crucial turn with two Crop Rotations in hand he did not cycle them to increase the number of worms he could make, and so a Goblin Rabblemaster could survive which quickly took the game away from him. Game two started ominously with a turn one Karn, Scion of Urza for Alex. George had stated out with a Molten Vortex, often the difference in games against the Moon deck as you essentially just need to see about 12 Lands, not unreasonable. Alex started to help by lengthening the game by playing an Ensnaring Bridge cutting off his clock entirely. However, he had the Chaos Warp to answer the Vortex and the board continued to get cluttered. George stated to make worms again but they could not attack due to the bridge. He dredged spectacularly badly and lost his Krosan Grips. Alex finally made a Chalice on 5 and it was lights out for George.

I looked over to Tomasso (Moon) playing Will (UB Shadow) to see Will facing down a turn two Hazoret the Fervent. This was promptly Dismembered and Will managed to take the match 2-1. After the game I asked Tommaso how he felt to lose such a solid matchup. ‘It’s fine, it is a card game’

In the games I couldn’t cover Lee then beat Ross 2-1 and Francis beat Liam 2-1.

Semis

Francis then faced sole remaining Northern hope. Lee led on a Noble Hierarch, followed up by a Sylvan Library that Francis tried to Force of Will, this was met by a Daze. Squire and Jitte were Francis’ play for the turn. Next turn the Sylvan Library found enough for Lee to kill with an Inkmoth Nexus and Invigorate and Berserk. This is how they Sideboarded.

Game 2 started with Francis mulliganing. This meant that when he appeared to be looking for a land drop from a Ponder Lee took the opportunity to Flusterstorm it. Francis responded by Forcing a Blighted Agent so that Lee would have no discernible clock. A Back to Basics from Francis on turn 5 would have probably closed this game out but due to that earlier missing land drop he couldn’t pay for the Spell Pierce that Lee had. A Counter war ensued with Lee the eventual winner. Lee won game two with a Vines of the Vastwood and Berserk on an Inkmoth. Unfortunately the punished mulligan had really hurt Francis as he had no resources left to his opponents full grip of cards.

In the second semifinal we wondered if Will (UB Shadow) could pull off a miracle and knock the final Moon player (Alex) out of the field.

Game one stated with a Chalice of the Void on one for Alex. His followup Trinisphere was Dazed however, but things didnt look good for Will when the turn three Karn arrived. Unfortunately Will had drawn many many more lands than his deck required and when Alex correctly remembered his Chalice trigger to the cast Preordain we were onto game 2.

Will brought in two Ratchet Bombs, a Liliana, the Last Hope (Truly!) and a Spell Pierce. He took out:

Alex sideboarded like this: Out – 3 Karn, Scion of Urza and 3 Firey Confluence. In – 2 Chaos Warp and 4 Ensnaring Bridge

Game 2 put Will on the play which was a much needed help for his deck. Both players mulliganed, Will kept 6 and Alex went to 5. A turn one Delver set a clock and then a Thoughtseize left Alex with Blood Moon, Chaos Warp and Legion Warboss. The race was on!. Luckily for Will, Alex had taken enough damage from his lands that he could win and we were onto a third game.

Game three started with a Force of Will on turn one Chalice. A must if Will intended to steal another match from the Moon Stompy players in the room. Will resolved a Ratchet bomb so he could deal with future tokens or Chalices but he had no clock yet. Alex’s second Chalice was also countered but his third and a follow up Blood Moon resolved as Will started running out of cards. He blew up the Ratchet Bomb and played a Gurmag Angler. But Alex had the immediate answer in an Ensnaring Bridge. Alex then locked the game down with his fourth! Chalice into a Warboss and Rabblemaster. A second Gurmag from Will was not enough to wrest the game back as Alex remembered his Chalice triggers and got further and further ahead on board. a Chandra killed a Gurmag and Alex had enough tokens to attack for lethal.

Finals

We settled into the last game of the day with Alex on the play due to his higher finish in the Swiss portion of the tournament. His turn one Chalice was once again countered by a Force of Will. Lee responded with a basic Forest and a Noble Hierarch. Rabblemaster came down for Alex and the next turn it attacked. Lee moved to block it and used an Invigorate to kill the Goblin. Post combat Blood Moon came down as Alex tried to regain some control. However over the next few turns that basic Forest proved invaluable as Lee resolved an infect creature and attacked with lethal pump.

Game two started again with a Chalice on one. This time however it resolved! Alex then followed up with a Goblin Rabblemaster on turn 2. Lee’s response was a Sylvan Library to try and find a way around the Chalice. Alex played a Trinisphere making more of Lee’s possible draws harder to cast. He responded with a Viridian Corrupter choosing to take out the Trinisphere rather than the Chalice. At this point there was a brief aside about both players love of Enchantress and how Alex could have won this if he was just playing Temur Battle Rage… Lee then took out the Chalice and played a Blighted Agent and Alex responded with Pyrostatic Pillar. At this point Alex had taken no infect damage. A Ponder lost Lee 2 more life. He responded by putting Alex to 3 infect. The next turn it was suddenly 10 and Infect had won the day in the face of a room full of Chalice and Blood Moon!

Congratulations to our Finalist Alex Rea and Winner Lee Brook!

Top 8 Lists

1st – Lee Brook

Infect

2nd – Alex Rea

Moon Stompy

3rd – Will Patey

UB Shadow

4th – Francis Cowper

UW Stoneblade

5th – Liam Harvey

Death and Taxes

6th – Tomasso De Michele

Moon Stompy

7th – Ross Mckenzie

Elves

8th – George Moulton

Lands

Current LLM Leaderboard

Player Name 1st 2nd 3rd-4th 5th-8th Number of Top8s Total Points 1 Niklas Ek 1 1 2 4 13 1 Francis Cowper 2 1 3 13 3 Juan Carlos Jara 1 1 1 3 10 4 Jay Richardson 1 2 3 7 4 Callum Brownson-Smith 1 1 2 7 6 Alex Rea 1 1 2 6 7 Michael Woodleigh 1 1 5 7 Charlie Bridger 1 1 2 5 7 Deng Pan 1 1 2 5 7 George Moulton 1 1 2 5 11 Enrico Selis 1 1 4 11 Mario Espinosa 1 1 4 11 Amar Dattani 1 1 4 11 James Mills 2 2 4 11 Diego Massone 2 2 4 11 Claude Schmit 1 1 4 11 Thomas Kellock 2 2 4 11 Marcelo Scantena 2 2 4 11 Josh Brass 1 1 4 20 Stavros Denaxas 1 1 3 20 Nic Genieis 1 1 3 20 Aston Ramsden 1 1 3 20 Joe Baddeley 1 1 3 20 Artur Malimonov 1 1 3 20 Levi Heinz 1 1 3 20 Thibaut Wohrer 1 1 3 20 Will Patey 1 1 3 28 Matthew Johnson 1 1 2 28 Michael Yearby 1 1 2 28 Lauri Achte 1 1 2 28 Rory Smith 1 1 2 28 Tom Hooker 1 1 2 28 Hannah Lissaman 1 1 2 28 Charles Seccombe 1 1 2 28 Tommaso de Michele 1 1 2 28 Ross McKenzie 1 1 2 28 Liam Harvey 1 1 2

The leaderboard is turning into a three person race. Nic, Francis and Juan Carlos are looking like the safe bets for an eventual winner. However there are still four events for someone else to take the top spot!

Spirit of LLM

At the beginning of the report I lamented how tough of a day it would be for a lone Nic Fit player in the room. Well the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed we had one. And he won the Spirit of London Legacy Monthly award!

Theo embodied the teachings of Zeno of Citium. He was indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune as round after round he faced down combo players one after another with a smile and good humour.

Patrick’s Spice Corner

Callum Smith - The Epic Pits

This deck involves ramping up to enough mana to effectively use Wilderness Reclamation. The deck does this through Veteran Explorer, which seems quite incongruous, but so far seems to be the best option. Once this has happened you can use Cunning Wish to find a plethora of options to anything that your opponent might play. But now you might need to win!? Time to get Empty the Pits and then Nexus of Fate to win out of nowhere! You can find a much more indepth primer to this deck here.

Thanks to everyone who came to February’s London Legacy Monthly. I hope you had a great time!

Tickets for next month WHICH IS ON A SATURDAY, can be found here.

See you next time!

Thomas Kellock

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