This Week in Legacy: MTGO Legacy Challenge, MTGO Legacy MCQ, and The 14th God of Legacy Hareruya Japan

by Ewlandon // Aug 21, 2019

The tournament results this week are further evidence that the Legacy metagame has finally settled down from the incredible shake-ups it has experienced over the past year or so.



MTGO Challenge



The Magic Online Challenge had three different versions of Dark Depths decks make it into the Top 8, with Mzfroste winning the event with a mostly traditional Dark Depths deck. Elvish Reclaimer as an inclusion tells me that the card is no joke in a Depths strategy.







Sharkcaster_Mage's take on Dark Depths is the most unique of the three. It looks a lot like a hybrid between Turbo-Depths and Maverick. The creature package looks almost entirely like a Maverick deck but with Giver of Runes over Mother of Runes, presumably for the reasons I discussed in last week's article. However, in the past Maverick would sometimes include one copy of Dark Depths and one Thespian's Stage as a combo to fetch using Knight of the Reliquary. Sharkcaster_Mage has the full playset of each of the combo lands making this a much more combo-centric Maverick deck. Elvish Reclaimer costing only one mana and adding an additional four ways of tutoring up the combo in this build seems to be working well for Sharkcaster_Mage as he had a few 5-0 league results leading up to this week's challenge.





The rest of this week's Challenge Top 8 included three different and Wrenn and Six decks: Delver, Control, and 4-Color Loam. There were also a couple of stragglers still playing their 2018 Storm and Miracles decks.





MTGO Mythic Championship Qualifier



The Magic Online Mythic Championship Qualifier had a totally different Top 8 makeup while still mostly in line with what I expect with the current meta. A staggering three Moon Stompy players made it, but could not close the deal, leaving Blue-White Stoneblade as the MCQ winner.



As for the rest of the Top 8, it made me proud to see someone with Black-Red Reanimator. It was a little bit surprising to see only one Wrenn and Six deck. It was not at all surprising to see one Dark Depths deck. It was completely shocking to see one player, Yosoyez, show up with their Modern Humans deck and crawl their way all the way to a Legacy MCQ Top 8.







Jokes aside, I know that Yosoyez has been playing, tuning, and advocating for Legacy Humans for a very long time. It is great to see that they made it all the way to the Top 8 of one of the years premier Legacy events on Magic Online. I also know from experience that the deck not only has legs but is on a level playing field against any deck in Legacy. It also has some serious benefits over Death & Taxes in our current metagame because the creature package tends to be wider, bigger and more evasive than the more tax-heavy white decks.





The 14th God of Legacy at Hareruya Japan



This week at Hareruya Japan there was an amazing turnout of 181 players for The God of Legacy tournament. The Top 8 of this tournament looks an awful lot like the what we saw on Magic Online this week, which is a bit unexpected because Japanese Tournaments are notorious for having all kinds of innovative brews and spice.



One of the two Top 8 Moon Stompy players took down the event with a couple of new inclusions to the deck: Chandra, Awakened Inferno and Seasoned Pyromancer.







Seasoned Pyromancer, which has taken the spot of Legion Warboss, does not close out the game as quickly as its predecessor but it gives some extra utility in card draw. I'm unsure if Season Pyromancer is a good game plan compared to the faster token generators but it certainly has some upsides beyond the ability to draw cards. It can create tokens even if it is removed immediately and it gives the deck a late game mana-sink that can put some additional pressure on the opponent.







Chandra, Awakened Inferno is extremely mana intensive at 4RR, however, it is a threat that comes with some serious potential headaches for opponents. The reason it is seeing play is the static ability line says "This Spell can't be countered." The loyalty starting at 6 basically says the spell doesn't die to anything but Hydroblast (which gets countered by Chalice of the Void. Finally, all three abilities are backbreaking in different situations. The [+2] creates emblems that will quickly kill the opponent, the [-3] is a board sweeper, and the [-X] can clean up seriously difficult threats such as planeswalkers, Gurmag Angler, or even Griselbrand.



The rest of the Top 8 included two 4-Color Delver, one Black-Red Reanimator, one Grixis Delver, one Miracles and another lost modern player playing Hogaak.







This list making it into the Top 8 of a 181-person Legacy tournament really goes to show how ridiculous it is that the deck was almost entirely Modern-legal just a few weeks ago. It really speaks for itself.

Eric Landon, or “ewlandon,” is a long-time Magic and Legacy enthusiast. He is a full-time Magic streamer and Mythic Championship hopeful (hopeful to qualify someday).

You can find his schedule on https://twitter.com/Ewlandon1 or catch him live on Twitch at twitch.tv/ewlandon.