This Week in Legacy: The Dead Format

This Week in Legacy MTGO Super Qualifier Doomsday

Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe, and this week we're not talking about the excellent podcast known as The Dead Format (which you should all listen to of course), but instead we're approaching the concept and notion that Legacy itself is "the dead format." To that end we have a great lineup of stuff to talk about, including an interview with Elaine Cao, a Legacy centric L2 Judge from Missouri, as well as an overview of the first Legacy Super Qualifier event (which brought in over 200 players) on Magic Online. Of course, we've always got a Legacy Challenge to talk about and also a sweet deck focus on the deck Doomsday. We'll finally round things out with our Spice Corner.

Without wasting one single solitary second, let's dive right in!

The Deadest of Formats

Legacy is dead.

Well, that's what they say at least. The notion that Legacy is a dying format has been around for several years (and was even echoed by people when I got into the format roughly 5 years ago). There are many reasons to claim that Legacy is dead/dying. One such reason has often to do with the Reserved List and the "stranglehold" that it has on the format. However, as has been proven time and time again, there are many options to the format either through decks that don't play RL cards or via outlets such as Magic Online, proxy events for local play, or borrowing cards. When confronted with these options can we truly say Legacy is dead?

Well, it's a matter of perspective, and it's certainly not as cut and dry as it sounds. From a supported competitive event perspective in paper Magic, Legacy certainly is considered to be dead. However, out of the ashes of that death the community breathes new life into the format by continuing to develop grass-roots approaches to the format. Even in our current climate where paper events are in an uncertain place thanks to the ongoing global pandemic of COVID-19, Legacy players are organizing to play paper Magic via webcam to keep the spirit of the format alive. More recently there have been a few high profile Legacy events on Magic Online, one of which boasted PT qualifications (which we'll be talking about later). Even more recently, Jeremy Aaronson of MissouriMTG announced entry for a 100K Legacy event next year (April 2021) with a cap of 600 players that had a $200 entry fee, with a good portion of the funds going to CDC / COVID-19 charity. This event filled to cap within an hour. An hour for an event that is a year away. This speaks well to Jeremy and his events, but also shows that Legacy players are ready to continue to show up to events run by the community for the community.

Yes, it's truly a matter of perspective. One such perspective is that it doesn't really matter if Legacy is "dead" or not. As a friend of mine once put it: "Maybe it's fine that Legacy is dead. Maybe it just needs to die so it can live again." This is a good perspective to have, honestly. Legacy is a wonderful format, and yes there are some issues with the Reserved List, but maybe it takes something massive such as Wizards dropping the format in paper to give the community the ability to develop the format longer term in a more grass roots level of things. The format started this way after all. It is fitting that the community handles it from there.

Legacy is dead. And yet the community continues to soldier on, not mourning their format's death but celebrating it the only way we know how: by raising it from the dead into some form of abomination that can't be killed. More and more Legacy content is being produced. More and more streamers are pushing the format. Never have I engaged with a community as devoted to a format as the Legacy community is. Time and time again, they have proven to me that Legacy might be "dead", but that which is dead may never truly die as they continue to support and promote the format.

Yes. Legacy is dead. Long Live Legacy.

Interview with Elaine Cao (Oritart)

I had the opportunity to sit down with Elaine Cao, aka Oritart, over the past week and talk to her about her experiences with Legacy and judging in general. Elaine is truly an awesome person and a wonderful ambassador of the Legacy format.

First of all, thanks for joining me this week! Let’s start things off with a little bit about you. Tell us all about yourself, and hold nothing back! (Okay you can hold some things back)

Hi! I’m Elaine Cao, known as Oritart on the internet, and I’m a Level 2 judge from Saint Louis, Missouri. I’m a regular judge on the MagicFest circuit as well as in local Saint Louis regional events. I’m a mod on the MTGLegacy discord and I’m a community figure in the Legacy scene. Outside of Magic, I’m a computer programmer, and I’m a transgender woman. I also used to be really good at chess and I also used to do a lot of social activism but I got burnt out of both of those. I like Star Trek, I like pineapple on my pizza, I pronounce gif with a hard G, and I drink way too much Starbucks.

How did you get into Magic? And by extension how did you get into playing Legacy?

I got into Magic a bit after the Gatecrash release while in college. My friends made me a Boros deck for my birthday in February of that year, and I was instantly hooked. I started going to FNM pretty regularly after that, and day 2’d my first Grand Prix, Chicago of 2014. My local store (shout out to Titan Games in Champaign-Urbana) hosted weekly proxy Legacy, where I learned how to play now-obsolete decks like RUG Delver, Shardless BUG, and Maverick. My most relevant paper Legacy finish from that era is a Top 8 of a SCG Classic with Jeskai Stoneblade.

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I quit Magic and sold all my cards around February 2016 to focus on my transition, and got back into it around June 2018. I slowly bought back through blue-white staples, mostly because I knew that I could play a reasonable deck in any format for a relatively cheap price.

I’ve always enjoyed Legacy most because I feel that it's the format with the most decision points. How to sequence your lands, when to cast and how to resolve your cantrips and tutors (and which ones to cast), what spells to counter or not counter, how to build a sideboard, etc. are all very difficult decisions that take hundreds of hours of learning that run almost completely perpendicular to the non-Eternal formats. I also love that blue-based Tempo decks are almost always relevant in Legacy when they’re very hard to put together almost anywhere else.

What about judging? How did you get into that, and how has being a judge affected your relationship with Magic?

I got my Level 1 certification in September 2014 and my Level 2 in September 2018.

I’ve always had a need to know how everything works, so within the first week of my learning Magic I read the Comprehensive Rules in its entirety, and it was only natural that I would become a judge. I got more heavily involved as a way to travel the continent and see new places, and I’ve stuck with it because I’ve made friends with a lot of judges and players from around the country.

Judging a lot has definitely made it more difficult for me to play as much competitive Magic as I’d want to, and the rare times I actually attend an event as a player I’ve felt off my game and have not played as well as I’d like. (Though my winrate is always even or positive!) But if I didn’t judge so much, it would be impossible to justify traveling so much out of my own pocket, and I wouldn’t have bought into Legacy if I didn’t have judge earnings, so there’s that.

Is there anything about Legacy that makes it more interesting to judge than other formats? Is there anything that makes it less interesting?

Legacy is always more interesting than other formats. Of course, there are the rules interactions- explaining Sylvan Library and Brainstorm to people is always fun- but Legacy players almost always recognize me as an online community figure, and I get to have discussions with players between matches about the metagame, the state of the community, various microdecisions I saw them make in their last match, etc.

On the other hand, Legacy is sometimes less interesting as a judge because players tend to be more chill and I almost never have to deal with argumentative rules lawyers. Legacy players are almost always super nice- I’ve even seen a player insist that I take the result slip back from the scorekeeper when the opponent showed up after I already gave them the match loss, which would be unthinkable in any other format.

If CFB Events just always gave me every Legacy side event every day at all the MagicFests I work in the future, I would be so happy. Are you reading this, Carlos? ;)

What do you think about the state of Legacy as a format right now from a gameplay perspective? Is there anything you would change right now? // What is your favorite deck/card/strategy in the format?

I’m definitely a tempo player at heart, and I love the cards Stoneforge Mystic and Vendilion Clique. I wish that the Jeskai Stoneblade deck I played years ago was still good, but unfortunately too many of the cards have been outclassed.

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I have a hatred of prison decks like Moon Stompy, Eldrazi Taxes, and 12-Post, which have all come out of the woodwork in the past few years; I acknowledge that Oko is busted, but at least when I lose to Oko I at least feel like I got to play Magic. I’ll admit that I aggressively chalice-check my opponents in paper, and elking a chalice somehow feels like justice. My ideal legacy format, in terms of how much I’d enjoy the matches, is one where I get to play Delver into a field of the mirror, DnT, ANT/SnT and other turn 2-3 combo decks, and maybe a random green deck.

With all that being said, this is my current primary deck:

It has a lot of actual good cards, because I do like actually winning games, but I’ve also put my own spin on it, with cards like Narset, Karakas, and Counterspell. It's definitely constrained by my current card availability, but if I wasn’t then I would probably play a lot of Grixis Arcanist (which I’m currently trying to learn on MTGO through card rentals).

What do you think of Legacy right now from the community perspective, especially with a lack of paper events from both Wizards and SCG?

I actually don’t think that it particularly matters that large tournament organizers don’t want to run Legacy events. To me, the numbers indicate that large Legacy tournaments would be well-attended and profitable, so if Wizards of the Coast, CFBEvents, and SCG don’t want to fill the need for whatever reason, it just leaves room for other tournament organizers, such as Card Kingdom, Nerd Rage Gaming, Terra Eternal, or my friend MissouriMTG, to fill in the gap and grow as organizations. Legacy players aren’t particularly incentivized by Player’s Tour invites, so not being able to offer them isn’t a huge deal.

Something that’s related but that you haven’t asked here is about the price point of Legacy, which I try to be very cognizant of as someone who tries to recruit as many people into Legacy as possible. Part of why I didn’t mention Astrolabe as a problem above was because I think that, though the card has disputed merit from a gameplay perspective, it is very hard to imagine Legacy becoming affordable as a serious format ever again if Arcum’s Astrolabe is banned. I believe the price of duals would just continue to skyrocket and blue-based decks would become unaffordable for too many people. Part of why I don’t play Grixis Arcanist, as mentioned before, is because of the price of Underground Sea in paper.

Is there anyone you’d like to shout out before we go?

I’d like to shout out the judge community, who I’ve grown close to over the past year or so and who have helped me grow as a judge and as a person- especially the queer part of the community, who I’m always glad to see at every event. I’d also like to shout out my Legacy friend group/pseudo-team, The Nerdbirds, especially my girlfriend Miranda Keith, the cutest and best Maverick player, who is beautiful and amazing at magic and also at making lemon squares.

Once again, thanks for joining me this week! Drop some social media links down below and let people know where they can find you, and never forget that you are awesome!

I’ve been streaming a lot recently at www.twitch.tv/Oritart. I recently made Affiliate and I’m trying to stream Legacy and/or Vintage daily during the quarantine at 7PM Central. I sometimes write articles on Medium. The latest one is on trans visibility in Magic, and you can see it here. You can also follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Oritart. And if you see me in judge black at a future event, be sure to say hi!

Level Up Lesson - In The Works

We've got a lot going on this week, so I don't actually have a Level Up Lesson for this week, HOWEVER starting next week I will be having GUEST Level Up Lessons written by various Legacy players sharing their own experiences and tips/tricks in the format, so look forward to that!

Community Legacy Update

Paper events are still on the down low right now thanks to the whole pandemic situation. As always though refer to Bolt the Bird for anything, but make sure to double check to see if it is actually happening. And of course, stay safe out there!

Deck Focus - DOOMSDAY

Our deck focus this week is on a deck that is currently doing super great (as we'll be talking about in the Super Qualifier). It's a combo deck that has some of the most intricate workings of any deck in the format. I'm talking of course about Doomsday.

Doomsday is a deck that promotes a ton of critical thinking. Simply knowing how to build a pile that wins the game is a matter of understanding what cards are in your hand, what is in your graveyard and what is in your library. This makes the deck incredibly difficult from a gameplay standpoint, but isn't unlearnable. In fact, there are many resources for this deck out there, one of which is the DDFT Wiki. In addition, there is a great community around this deck in the Doomsday Discord server.

One of the big reasons for this deck's viability as of late is on the printing of Thassa's Oracle.

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While in the past history of this deck that either relied on winning via Tendrils of Agony or via Laboratory Maniac, Thassa's Oracle offers a clean method of winning the game, and in addition allows the deck to play a much more reactive control game, all while getting to utilize cards like Teferi, Time Raveler. The edge this deck has now is much more than it has had before, and the popularity of the deck has really shown in the past few weeks. More and more players are picking up this deck and it is putting up some serious results.

There are a few variants of this deck, either BUG or Esper based variants, both of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. One great thing about the Esper lists currently is the ability to play cards like Monastery Mentor out of the sideboard, giving the deck a way to sidestep focused combo hate without completely debilitating its own plan. This is much like the Underworld Breach lists were capable of doing prior to the banning of that card.

If you are looking for a deck that involves a lot of critical thinking and lots of micro decisions, this is a great deck to look at, and there are currently a ton of resources on the deck available out there to learn how to play it.

Legacy Super Qualifier 3/26

Last week we had our very first Legacy Super Qualifier event on Magic Online. If you aren't familiar with these events, they are essentially Player's Tour Qualifier type events with two PT qualifications being given out for first and second place. As such the competition this can draw is pretty immense. We have another one of these this week on April 2nd (so tomorrow) at 7 am PDT / 10 am EST, so be on the lookout for that.

This first event however, drew in a whopping over 200+ Legacy players (I heard somewhere close to 260) to throw down NINE ROUNDS of Legacy. We can attribute a lot of this to the fact that there's a global pandemic and more people are on Magic Online than general, but this is still great to hear. I think what also helped this event is the fact that it didn't just cost QPs to enter and instead had entry options for tickets / play points. This opens things up a bit more since QPs are rough to acquire via just League events and you need to play a lot of Preliminaries to acquire them.

Let's first take a look at the data we have which is the Top 32 Metagame Breakdown.

The big top two decks of the Top 32 were Eldrazi Stompy and RUG Delver, both coming in at 4 copies of each deck, followed by Miracles, Astrolabe decks, and Depths Combo at 3 copies each. It's very interesting to see how the top end of this event turned out, as it continues to note just how good RUG Delver is even after the banning of Wrenn and Six. The format definitely still appears to be settling and feels very wide open, despite the fact that Oko + Veil continue to be just about everywhere. Time will tell on these cards for sure.

Now let's take a look at the Top 8.

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username RUG Delver 1st LearnToLove6 Doomsday 2nd RomarioVidal BUG Depths 3rd Griselpuff Titanic Dryad 4th KelmasterP Esper Vial 5th Jtl005 Oracle Thought Lash Combo 6th Larkblue RUG Delver 7th TwinlessTwin Maverick 8th Andreas_Muller

The Top 8 of this event is pretty wildly all over the place, with several different play styles represented from Delver to combo to even Maverick, not to mention some of the more interesting decks like Esper Vial and Thought Lash Combo.

At the end of the event, however, it was LearnToLove6 (aka Rich Cali) who took one of the coveted PT qualifications by winning it all on RUG Delver.

Rich is a solid player and the list here is really well designed. Massive congratulations to Rich on this accomplishment and good luck at the future PT!

In Second Place of this event, also snagging one of the PT qualifications is RomarioVidal (aka Romario Neto) on none other than Doomsday!

I had the great opportunity to sit down with Romario and talk about this deck and their event a little bit. It's super cool to see Doomsday doing well as it is just about the coolest deck.

First of all, congratulations on your placing in this event and queuing for the Player’s Tour! Let’s start with telling the folks at home a little bit about yourself. How did you get into Magic and by extension Legacy?

I got into Magic by reading a magazine when I was kid in Brazil around ‘96-’97, and later I found out a friend of mine played the game. He showed me where our LGS was and taught me the rules, and that got me hooked. As far as Legacy, I took a long break from the game, from 2000 to about 2009, and when I got back I started playing Standard and Extended. SCG had an Open event in town (Richmond, VA) and I saw that Saturday was Standard and Sunday Legacy. At that point I had no idea what Legacy was. I read the decklists that got published and I really wanted to play with the same cards I played when I was a kid, so soon after I bought the pieces for Merfolk, then another deck and another deck, well you know how it goes.

Your weapon of choice for this event was Doomsday. What led you to choose the deck for this event?

I played some Doomsday when Gitaxian Probe was still legal in Legacy, not very seriously mostly online leagues and a couple of local events, but the way the card makes games like puzzles is very interesting to me. After Thassa’s Oracle got printed I saw that Ethan Formichella was posting some good results with Doomsday and I decided to give it a try. I didn’t really like the BUG lists, then I saw a couple of Esper Doomsday lists and I was able to get a few 3-2s and 4-1s playing online leagues, after a few changes to the original list I was consistently getting 4-1s. Thassa’s Oracle made the deck a lot more resilient and making Doomsday piles that you pass the turn are more “safe”. The other aspect I like about the Esper list is being able to play Teferi, Time Raveler, The card does everything this deck needs, it protects you from the opponent interacting on the combo turn, draws a card to start the “Doomsday pile”, bounces permanent based hate cards and sometimes it allows you to cast Doomsday EOT.

Walk us through a little bit of your event. Were there any highlights or awesome things that stood out during the course of the day?

There were a lot of awesome moments, a few turn one wins which are not very common with this deck, game 3 of the first Top 8 match I won with Monastery Mentor. I had very little time left on the clock but I knew I needed to stay calm and I was able to win with only 38 seconds left on my clock., but I think by far the best moment was winning the win-and-in by attacking with a Street Wraith.

Doomsday seems pretty great right now. What do you think of the deck going forward? Any changes you’d make to your current list?

The deck is good, the one matchup I still find a little difficult to beat is decks like Death and Taxes, Maverick and maybe Humans, so maybe I will try to squeeze in another Swords to Plowshares.

How do you feel about Legacy right now as a format? Is there anything you would change?

I think Legacy is fine, I mean I just qualified for the PT casting Doomsday the format is obviously wide open.

Do you have any shoutouts before we wrap things up?

I would like to shout out the whole Richmond, VA Legacy community, in special David Richardson, Rory Reen and Drew McFayden, the Doomsday discord (probably the friendliest and most resourceful discord server I have joined) and last but not least my podcast co-host Fausto de Souza.

Thanks for joining us, Romario, and congratulations again on queuing for the Player’s Tour! Drop some social media links below so that people know where to find you, and never forget that you are awesome!

Twitter: @romarioneto3

Twitch: twitch.tv/romariovidal

Moving on Third Place, we have our good friend Bob Huang on BUG Depths!

I like the look of this list quite a bit, it seems very powerful and not only that Depths seemed well positioned for this event. There was a lot of talk about how many of the Delver pilots especially RUG Delver had been cutting main deck Brazen Borrower which is ultimately really good for 20/20s.

In Fourth Place, a deck that continues to just keep putting up results is the Titanic Dryad deck. I think this deck is a lot of fun, and I'm not surprised to continue to see it do well.

In Fifth Place, our good friend Jtl005 with what has become their signature deck. It's Esper Vial!

Jtl's results with this deck truly show that they really have put in a ton of work into the testing aspect of this deck, and it's really great to see it continue to do well.

In Sixth Place we've got none other than the Thassa's Oracle / Thought Lash / Paradigm Shift deck!

This deck is wildly cool, and Thassa's Oracle is just an insanely powerful card all around.

In Seventh Place, we have another copy of RUG Delver!

There isn't much to say here as this looks pretty much on point for RUG Delver.

Finally rounding out the Top 8 we have G/W Maverick!

It's actually really super cool to see straight G/W Maverick doing really well right now, without even having to splash for blue for Oko. The deck is super sweet and very powerful. I'm also in love with the Shifting Ceratops in the sideboard.

Now let's take a look at the 2019 and 2020 cards in the Top 32 overall!

2019 Cards

2020 Cards

The talk of the town continues to be both Oko and Veil as both cards continue to be very well represented. In addition, this event there were more Astrolabes than there have been, which is also interesting. On the 2020 card side, Uro continues to see a lot of play which I'm not very surprised by. The card is truly insanely powerful. I'm still of the mind that we should continue to wait and see what happens and let the format continue to settle. The format still seems very wide open, so we should continue to wait and watch for any truly disturbing trends.

Legacy Challenge 3/29

We did also have another Legacy Challenge over the weekend, so let's take a look at how that all shook out as well!

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username 4C Delver 1st Samu_27 Titanic Dryad 2nd KelmasterP Eldrazi Stompy 3rd Yamakiller Uroza 4th NovaT28 U/R Delver 5th TonyScapone ANT 6th WonderPreaux Grixis Delver 7th Mannes Titanic Dryad 8th 3ERPZ

The Top 8 of this event was also fairly interesting, mostly dominated by decks running Chalice of the Void and Delver of Secrets, including two more Top 8 appearances of the Titan Dryad deck. We even had a rare showing by an ANT-based deck.

At the end of the event however it was none other than 4C Delver that took it all down.

This list is intriguing, not only utilizing Gurmag Angler but also Tarmogoyf AND Dreadhorde Arcanist. The manabase of this deck is quite greedy and it's incredible to think that even with several Wasteland decks in the Top 8 that it really speaks to the level of play here to win through that.

In Second Place we have the Titanic Dryad deck that has been making the rounds so well as of late.

The evolution of these lists is really cool. It's really neat to see a new archetype appear in the format like this. I especially love the Vraska, Golgari Queen in the sideboard.

In Third Place we have one of the hardest working grinders on Magic Online, Yamakiller with Eldrazi Stompy.

This list is super clean and what we've come to expect out of Eldrazi as of late, including the usage of Once Upon a Time.

In Fourth Place, we have very nearly a Modern deck (minus the banned cards obviously) in disguise with Uroaza.

This kind of deck speaks a lot to the overall power level of certain cards, like Emry, Uro, and Urza, but not to mention Karn + Oko. There's a lot going on here and it's all very strong.

In Fifth Place we have another Delver variant in U/R Delver.

One of the really interesting things about this list is the maindeck Accumulated Knowledge. Wildly cool list for sure.

In Sixth Place we have an ANT variant leaning on Wishclaw Talisman and Veil of Summer.

This list is pretty interesting and it's cool to see something like this doing well. I especially enjoy the Narset, Parter of Veils in the sideboard being able to shut down some of the grindier matchups.

In Seventh Place we have our third Delver variant in Grixis Delver.

There's not much to say here, as most of these Delver lists have been pretty well developed over time.

Rounding out the Top 8 is our second Titanic Dryad list.

I'm of the mind that this deck is pretty solid and I intend to do a deep dive on this deck soon because of how cool it is. Dryad of the Ilysian Grove is such a high ceiling card and it does so much for these kinds of decks.

Now let's take a look at the 2019 and 2020 cards in the Top 32 of this event!

2019 Cards

2020 Cards

Again this week the big three are Oko, Veil, and Once Upon a Time. There was slightly less Arcum's Astrolabe in the Top 32 this week than there was in the Super Qualifier. There were not only three of the Titanic Dryad lists floating about but also a few Loam lists playing Dryad as well. The opportunity cost of the card and slotting in a single Valakut is really truly so low that it just makes sense.

Around the Web

Our good friends at Everyday Eternal just posted a new episode, this one about Legacy History which is a real passion of mine. Be sure to check it out here!

Hareruya Pro and MPL member Javier Dominguez posted a sweet primer on Cephalid Breakfast over here!

Shoutout to Kyle Moran, who regularly streams with Worldgorger Dragon combo over here on his Twitch Channel!

The Spice Corner

We're starting this week off right with a little Two Card Monte!

More and more people are figuring out how playable Dryad of the Ilysian Grove is in these big mana strategies.

Taking a cue from Modern, it's Uroza!

Cloud of Faeries + Vengevine! It's the old Eric Rill special, Cloud Vine!

What I'm Playing This Week

After week one of "stay at home" orders, I haven't actually had a ton of time to play much, so I'm still looking at the Titan Dryad deck and having a lot of fun with it.

Wrapping Up

That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for your continued support and readership! Join us next week as we continue our journey into the Legacy format!

As always you can reach me on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon! Of course, I'm also always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the /r/MTGLegacy Discord Server and subreddit!

Until next time!