This Week in Legacy: Foundational Terminology
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're back to talk about a bunch of various news related to Legacy. We've got a look at Foundations, some discussion on some paper events, some Eternal Weekend news, as well as the MTGO Creator Showdown from this past weekend. I was off last week due to a ton of factors, primarily related to getting back home from a convention that took a lot out of me.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Foundations for Legacy
A new Magic set known as Foundations is here! This set is more or less meant to be a big set for Standard gameplay, so while it's mostly reprints, there are new cards that are worth talking about. We'll be discussing those as well as any choice reprints for Legacy purposes here.
Sire of Seven Deaths
A large amount of keywords on a really hard to kill card. Not sure if I see Eldrazi wanting one of these or not, but getting it into play it is a real beating and very difficult to fight against. Paying 7 life to plow this while your opponent gains 7 life is crazy. Honestly, it's probably not a long stretch to see a copy of this over a copy of Nulldrifter or Devourer of Destiny since those are both also 7 mana and also castable.
Celestial Armor
I do always take a pause at Equipment that attaches itself to a creature, since those kinds of Equipment tend to be reasonably good. There's a large amount of Equipment you can Stoneforge for now, so the slots are rather slim, but I think an Equipment that gives something hexproof and indestructible for a turn is pretty neat.
Abyssal Harvester
Wildly I think this could see play in some of the more black midrange piles that we see in Legacy now. Being able to exile a creature from a graveyard is sweet if you can get it. It also doesn't say the creature has to die, it just says it had to be put into the graveyard that turn, so you can make them discard something with a discard spell and then get one of their creatures out of the deal. It also helps recycle your other creatures if you need them.
Electroduplicate
I'm not sure if this is great, but I do think a token making card that gives something haste is kind of sweet, especially when it has flashback.
Dionus, Elvish Archdruid
Coming from the Jumpstart product for Foundations, this card is kind of sweet, given that there's plenty of Elves like Heritage Druid that tap multiple Elves at once. If you bounce this and replay it with Wirewood Symbiote, you get the triggered ability again, sort of like Nadu. I think this could see fringe play in Elves.
Thurid, Mare of Destiny
Clearly I am building a deck around this.
Legacy Reprints
While this set does have some new cards in it, it does have more reprints. Here's a few Legacy relevant reprint from this set.
Eternal Weekend NA Legacy Championships Attendance Officially Over 1,000
Eternal Weekend North America is literally in the next few weeks here, and we've officially crossed over 1,000 players pre-registered for the Legacy Championships event that weekend. This number is staggering! I'm very much going to need some help working on data for this event. I've made a post on the Data Project discord about this, so please take a moment to read and if you're able to assist that would be great. Please note, this does not require you to be at Eternal Weekend at all. It's mostly data entry stuff.
AnziD's Eternal Legacy Showdown Series
Magic Online is kicking off a major series of events for the various members of the MTGO Creator Program to curate some very unique events on the application. The very first one of these was AnziD's Eternal Legacy Showdown series, which you can read more about over here.
This series ran from November 4th-10th, combined with an All Access Pass on MTGO from November 6th-12th. Players who either 5-0'ed a Legacy League or did well in a Legacy Prelim/Challenge earned a Legacy Point which gained them entry into the Eternal Legacy Showdown event on November 10th.
The Eternal Legacy Showdown itself was extremely well attended, having 241 players! Pretty sick!
You can find the Top 32 decklists from the event here and the data sheet here.
Both Dimir Tempo and UB Reanimator were at the top of the event in popularity here, with Dimir Tempo taking the top spot by three copies. Both decks had a really strong win rate overall. Other decks that looked to do well here was Red Painter, Sneak and Show, and even keel performances by Red Stompy and Mystic Forge.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Oops! All Spells | 1st | choutin |
| UB Reanimator | 2nd | 416FrowningTable |
| Dimir Tempo | 3rd | JuanmaAT |
| Dimir Tempo | 4th | Hammafist |
| Dimir Tempo | 5th | Necrophoon |
| Cephalid Breakfast | 6th | Bleep45 |
| Dimir Delver | 7th | ecobaronen |
| Eldrazi | 8th | Ti0Patinhas |
Tons of Psychic Frog here. At the end of the event however it was Oops! All Spells that won.
This same pilot did really well over the weekend in one of the Challenges as well. Jack-o'-Lantern is a truly interesting card here, primarily because it can be used from the graveyard to make a mana of any color, say for example you need to cast a Thassa's Oracle from your hand or maybe cast Memory's Journey. Seems really neat.
In Second Place we had UB Reanimator.
Defintiely a really interesting take on this deck. Down to only two Fanatics between main deck and sideboard, but lots of Fatal Push (three main, four sideboard). Also four copies of Consign to Memory in the sideboard is truly staggering. I would very much expect to see greater numbers of this card in NA Eternal Weekend overall.
MTGO Creator Showdown 11/9/2024 - Legacy
This past weekend on Magic Online was the MTGO Creator Showdown event, this month being Legacy! This is an invitation only event for those in the MTGO Creator program and is a six round double elimination event. There was 49 creators playing in this event, which is super awesome. I myself played in the event, unfortunately running into a hard 0-2 elimination. I definitely recognized after the fact that I didn't have much prep for this given a number of factors, one of those being just raw prep for a convention I was at during the previous weekend. That being said, I did have some fun with the event in the two matches I played, which are up on YouTube below.
I ended up on Nadu Combo for the event, with the list below.
I think my deck choice was fairly solid, and I still think Nadu is a really strong deck overall. I did get to really see how good Agatha's Soul Cauldron is in the deck, by getting to make a Dryad Arbor gain both Nomads en-Kor and Delighted Halfling abilities in order to go off the following turn with Nadu.
The event was eventually down to the finals match of UB Reanimator and Mystic Forge Combo with the winner being Minh Nguyen on Dimir Reanimator.
This is certainly a fairly stock looking list for Dimir Reanimator at this junction. Honestly, it's definitely one of the better decks of the event to win it, so I'm not super surprised to see it do well. You can find Minh's Twitch over here!
Bazaar of Boxes Series 13
Bazaar of Boxes Series 13 took place this past weekend on 11/9 in conjunction with CardCon 2024 in Utrecht, the Netherlands! This event looked superb, with there being a whopping 118 players! This is so good to see from across the pond, and thank you so much to Michel de Jong for providing us all sorts of information and data on this event. You can find all of the information on this series over here.
Their Brewer's Cup this go around went to Bas de Vaan for a super sweet Mono Blue Belcher deck!
Really sick list, Bas! Congrats on winning the Brewer's Cup!
You can find the decklist for this event here and the data sheet here.
UB Reanimator was the most popular deck of the event, and it did have a very reasonable win rate overall. Eldrazi also did well here, as did Mystic Forge.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday | 1st | Maxine Dück |
| Doomsday | 2nd | Joost Den Bieman |
| Mono Blue Delver | 3rd | Joris Koek |
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 4th | Stefan Gussenhoven |
| Coveted Jewel Combo | 5th | Arjan Bos |
| Eldrazi | 6th | Guus de Waard |
| Death and Taxes (60 Card) | 7th | Sebastian Siemko |
| UB Reanimator | 8th | Schrdr |
Pretty sweet Top 8 here really. Surprise showing by 60 Card D&T, but also Coveted Jewel. The finals was a Doomsday vs Doomsday battle (and two different versions at that) with the winner being Maxine Dück.
This is a much more all-in version of the deck obviously, and what more traditional Doomsday lists tend to be like. The option of Jace, Wielder of Mysteries in the sideboard here is kind of cool as an alternative way of winning the game outside of Thoracle.
The Second Place list is more on the Tempo Doomsday plan.
Tamiyo is an incredibly powerful card in this list for sure. It offers another really strong way of potentially winning the game off a flip and then just also controls the board very well, retrieves a Doomsday from the yard that may have been countered, etc. If you ultimate it, you very much just win the game here.
Legacy Challenge 32 11/6
The first event of the week was the Wednesday event. According to the MTGO website this event had 59 players in it. There was no data for this event, largely due to a lot of bugs with MTGO this week.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Tempo | 1st | cicciogire |
| Red Stompy | 2nd | GoblinElder |
| Eldrazi | 3rd | Dreddybajs |
| BR Reanimator | 4th | tao_bye_bye |
| Mono Green Cloudpost | 5th | Gustavo_BR91 |
| Mono Black Reanimator | 6th | Roodslay |
| Death and Taxes (60 Card) | 7th | medvedev |
| Esper Tempo | 8th | Hammafist |
Fairly interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Dimir Tempo that won.
These decks going super deep on main deck Nihil Spellbomb (UP TO THREE MD) is crazy but it makes so much sense. Reanimator is the deck to beat, and having main deck interaction is really strong and lets these decks fight against it, while also being a card draw option.
In Second Place we had Red Stompy.
This is a super straightforward list. Pyrogoyf is such a powerful card in this deck because deploying multiples can just be so back-breaking especially when you can pitch one to a Broadside Bombardiers late game as well.
Legacy Challenge 32 11/9
The second event of the week was the Friday event. According to the MTGO website this event had 62 players in it. There was no data for this event, largely due to a lot of bugs with MTGO this week.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Red Stompy | 1st | Mogged |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 2nd | -Nausea- |
| Boros Stompy | 3rd | Tulio_Jaudy |
| Sneak and Show | 5th | 2plus2isfive |
| BR Reanimator | 6th | KazukiOoyama |
| Eldrazi | 7th | TheTunnelingCat |
| LED Dredge | 8th | Haqy6510 |
Very diverse Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Red Stompy that won.
I think it's definitely strong that maindeck Vexing Bauble is seeing play as a full four-of in these lists. It's definitely a lot better than Chalice of the Void right now I feel. It does have a slight nonbo in this list with Fury but this list makes enough mana that hard casting a Fury is easy.
In Second Place we had Mystic Forge Combo.
Being able to run Planar Nexus and Urza's Tower in this is really quite good. This is another deck where Vexing Bauble honestly really shines, since you are really only playing five main deck zero mana spells.
Legacy Challenge 32 11/10
The third event of the week was the Saturday morning event. According to the MTGO website this event had 61 players in it. There was no data for this event, largely due to a lot of bugs with MTGO this week.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Oops! All Spells | 1st | choutin |
| Eldrazi | 2nd | _Shikamaru_ |
| ANT | 3rd | hugofreitas1 |
| Red Painter | 4th | kanican |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 5th | OopsMissedTrigger |
| Naya Depths | 6th | maximusdee |
| UB Reanimator | 7th | lxclxc |
| UB Reanimator | 8th | Gitaxian_Probe |
Kind of a cool Top 8 with some varied options. At the end of the event it was Oops! All Spells that won.
I like the MDFC spread here. Fell the Profane being somewhat castable is nice, but then Disciple of Freyalise being another good green land in addition to another good black land like Boggart Trawler means this deck is more often than not going to have a land to put into play Turn one. Memory's Journey is also a really solid card here.
In Second Place we had Eldrazi.
Very much a strong stock list of this deck. I think this is where this deck has now officially settled for good. People are just no longer playing around with things like Eldrazi Linebreaker, they are full in on the Sowing Mycospawn train.
Legacy Challenge 32 11/11
The fourth event of the week was the Saturday evening/Sunday morning event. According to the MTGO website this event had 62 players in it. There was no data for this event, largely due to a lot of bugs with MTGO this week.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Sneak and Show | 1st | The_Gerogerigegege |
| Eldrazi | 2nd | _GGN_ |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 3rd | musasabi |
| Sneak and Show | 4th | Sol-e22558 |
| Sneak and Show | 5th | CriKohler |
| Mystic Forge Combo | 6th | Chris_McNasty |
| Red Stompy | 7th | Thebigempty92 |
| The EPIC Storm | 8th | ScreenwriterNY |
Lot of Sneak and Show in this Top 8, and it in fact won the event.
Vexing Bauble simply makes a lot of these insane combo decks that need to resolve a key spell to win the game so much better, and this is the most A+B combo of them all, so it makes sense that the card is good here as well.
In Second Place we had Eldrazi again.
What's nice about the copies of Wastescape Battlemage in the sideboard is that you really don't need the blue lands for the bounce side, because generally Cavern of Souls does that. It's really there for the artifact/enchantment half since it exiles.
Around the Web
- IN RESPONSE has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook has a video on Storm. Check it out here.
- Eternal Durdles covers the top decks from Magic Con Vegas. Check it out here.
- StrassDaddy fed the Yao Guai! Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that Leagues are posted throughout the week, let's find some Spice!
This Mono Black Necro list is sweet.
EXPLODING KITTENS.
This Ruby Storm list is ONLY $600!!
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
