After a brief hiatus for the multiple Grand Prix Trials of last month, London Legacy Monthly was back with a bang on Sunday. The Clerkenwell Craft Beer Company where we hold our events is now shut on a Sunday so we have a free run of the whole pub! This means we can increase our capacity to 50 players comfortably and we had our highest attendance at 38 players! This is even though our friends at Axion held a great Legacy event the day before. I think this goes to show there is plenty of demand for regular Legacy events in London! Keep an eye out for the comparison between the meta at Axion and LLM I’ll put up later in the week.

The prizes obviously reflected the increased turnout and we managed to put on our best yet. First received an Underground Sea, Second a Tropical Island, Third and Fourth both got a Show and Tell and Force of Will each and 5th-8th got to choose from the reanimator packages in order of Swiss finish.

Metagame

This months meta was once again dominated by Delver and Death and Taxes but with a ‘slight’ adjustment of five Lands decks!

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

Five Death and Taxes. Five Lands. Four UR Delver (nine total Delver). It looks like we just played out GP Vegas at a pub in London!

DNT has always been well represented at our events, as has UR Delver. This is probably because they are both decks that attract people starting out in Legacy due to their cheaper price. I suppose the chance to practice your Legacy deck trumps the chance to brew something insane. These two decks making up the finals of GP Vegas was probably just the extra encouragement people needed to bring them to our best prized event yet. Lands continues to inexorably grow in the UK scene. It has been my deck of choice for three years now and is a deck that many people want to try out because of its unique lines of play. It probably helps that you can proxy legacies most expensive card at our events. Lands also had a great showing at Vegas with Jody Keith making Top 8 and Legacy GP staple Jarvis Yu making 9th.

Next month I would expect a few people to react against the perceived Lands menace and bring some proper hate like Blood Moon and Back to Basics. This means decks like DNT will still be well positioned as they have a good chance against not only most combo decks, especially the Reanimator and Sneak and Show style decks we saw this month, but their reliance on basics and Aether Vial ignores a lot of the non basic hate I expect to see. It also has a fine Delver matchup which is still the most played archetype/deck choice. Personally I would recommend a deck that can deal with this non basic hate and the prevalence of Death and Taxes. Either something that has answers for the little White men and women and some basics or a deck that has its own land hate, can race Delver and DNT and ignores all non basic hate.

It’s time to play Merfolk people!

Funnily enough our event wasn’t dominated by our top three decks, although a representative from each made the Top 8. The swiss rounds were controlled by Callum Smith on his new As Foretold stompy/prison deck he built with Truckis and Thomas Hooker playing NU Miracles. The As Foretold list is definitely one worth checking out. Using fast mana to ramp out either a Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Chandra, Torch of Defiance or one of the lock pieces of Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice of the Void is powerful enough. But the added element of casting a free Balance or Ancestral Recall using As Foretold gives the deck some incredible power to wipe the board or draw into answers. This deck could well be one to keep an eye on for the future.

Top 8

After the Swiss rounds our Top 8 looked like this

Callum – As Foretold Stompy Tom Hooker – Nu Miracles Daniele – Lands Diego – Aggro Loam Juan – Mono Red Sneak Attack Jay – BUG Delver Tom Eves – DNT Claude – UR Delver

Both our top seeds were quickly deposed as Tom H lost to Claude in two games and Callum fell to Tom E as the new prison deck got Taxed out in three games. I’ll let Callum take over as I was concentrating on my delicious beer (This is England by Roosters).

‘I got three Ensaring Bridges on the table quickly and emptied my hand fast, Jace got there easily. G2 Tom curved out while I wasn’t able to get much together. A timely Ethersworn Canonist from him stopped me casting any more spells after an Ancestral Vision came off and I died when it didn’t draw me into an Ensaring Bridge. G3 a Chalice of the Void on one shut off most of his hand, until a Flickerwisp on it setting it to 0 shut down most of my deck! I ended the game with Balance and Visions in hand, unable to cast them! Got rekt.’

In the other Quarters Juan Carlos and his back up deck dispatched Deigo on Aggro Loam. Juan had played the day before at Axion and somehow left his deck there. Luckily Francois and Liz found it so we may see him on Grixis Delver next time. Jay finished off the last Lands player standing 2-0, as BUG delver turned the tables in a usually poor matchup and Daniele was defeated. Game one came down to the classic way to deal with Lands, Wasteland to prompt a Thespian’s Stage activation, backed up with a Liliana of the Veil. Game two was an example of the other method to defeat Lands. Deal with their coloured mana so they can’t play anything while they rely too heavily on The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. A Surgical Extraction on Dark Depths took Daniele’s win condition and unfortunately he couldn’t survive long under a Glacial Chasm.

In the Semi-finals Tom Eves faced Jay while Claude stood up to the mono red menace. Jay took Game one with a Hymn to Tourach which took Tom’s third land. This left him with a hand of three drops as Delver got there over five turns. Game two was even more one sided. Jay takes over, ‘I played Hymn turn 2, Hymn turn 3, Hymn turn 4. Well played by me’.

Juan defeated Claude in two equally one sided games. Turn one Chalice of the Void game one and turn two Trinisphere game two. UR Delver isn’t getting back from those kind of hands…

Finals

In the Finals Mono Red Sneak faced down BUG Delver, another poor matchup for Jay. I had already seen him concede to a turn one Magus of the Moon earlier in the day. Hopefully he would at least get to play a couple of turns against Juan!

Game one got off to a good start for Jay with a Delver and an Abrupt Decay on the first Blood Moon. His Hymn then hit a Sneak Attack and a Seething Song leaving Juan with only two cards in hand. Unfortunately for BUG Delver one of them was the second Blood Moon. Delver would have to get there alone! As is often the case Delver then decided to not flip for six turns giving Juan plenty of time to get back into the game. Finally, at three life, but a with a full grip of cards, Juan had to go for an end of turn Through the Breach which Jay had the Force of Will for. It wasn’t enough however as Juan drew and top decked another Breach, cheating in a Wurmcoil Engine, attacking for six lifelink and leaving behind two tokens. Delver can’t race that alone and we were onto game two.

Finally on the play for the first time in the Top8 BUG Delver ran smoothly as Jay resolved threats and Juan couldn’t get through the wall of counter magic as his mana base and hand was picked apart.

Game three would be the decider and Juan was already on the back foot with a mulligan to six cards. Jay’s hand was however reasonably fair, relying on a Daze, some cantrips and a Delver and Deathrite Shaman. With Juan on the play Jay’s Daze did nothing to stop the turn one Chalice of the Void. The game was now firmly in Juan’s favour and Jay tried his best to slow down Juan’s plan with a few Dazes. Juan used a Simian Spirit Guide to pay for a Daze on Sneak Attack and after attacking with Griselbrand and drawing 14 cards the finals were over.

Congratulations to both our our Winner Juan Carlos Jara and Finalist Jay Richardson!

Top 8 Lists

1st – Juan Carlos Jara

Big Red

2nd – Jay ‘The Legend’ Richardson

BUG Delver

3rd /4th – Claude Schmit

UR Delver

3rd/4th – Tom Eves

Death and Taxes

5th – 8th – Callum Smith

As Foretold Stompy

5th – 8th – Daniele Maccio

RG Lands

5th – 8th – Thomas Hooker

Miracles

5th – 8th – Diego Massone

Aggro Loam

Spice Corner

I thought I would bring everyone’s attention to the other new deck that has been doing the rounds. Baubleman! The inspiration came from Japan where a UW list was doing well and Caleb Durward has been playing this deck on stream and in the Legacy Premier League (well worth a watch) on Twitch. You can also read about it in ‘This Week in Legacy‘ by Sean Brown. Peter’s deck has three main ways of winning. Either powering out an early Monastery Mentor and then making loads of tokens with the 0 mana artifacts that cantrip in odd ways or making infinite mana with Auriok Salvagers and Lion’s Eye Diamond and having either an infinitley large prowess creature or Walking Ballista. Infinte mana and Lodestone Bauble is also a kill by making the opponent draw their entire deck plus one extra card!

Peter’s innovation on these other lists has been adding Abbot of Keral Keep and going WR colours. This has allowed cutting the clunkier blue cards like Trinket Mage while still drawing cards you can cast. Abbot is likely to flip a 0 cost artifact after-all!

A quick extra from Peter ‘I think I’m going to cut the Mox Opals — the acceleration is good, but you don’t really want to dump your hand to get Metalcraft, because that makes a top-decked Mentor terrible. I want at least two Engineered Explosives in the deck somewhere and maybe another land/accelerant. Maybe -3 Opal, +2 EE, +1 Talisman of Indulgence.’

Peter White - Wr Baubleman

Thanks to everyone who came to the June London Legacy Monthly! We look forward to hosting you all again on July 23rd!

All the best

Tom Kellock

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