Despite paltry testing with this list and middling confidence, I won a 35 player legacy tourney on 7-2-11.
4 flooded strand
4 scalding tarn
4 island
2 plain
2 tundra
3 wasteland
2 mishra factory
1 karakas
1 academy ruin
4 sensei top
4 brainstorm
2 ancestral vision
4 mental misstep
4 spell snare
4 force of will
4 swords plowshare
4 stoneforge mystic
1 batterskull
1 sword body mind
2 vendillion clique
3 jace mindsculptor
side
2 enlightened tutor
2 surgical extraction
1 tormod crypt
1 back to basic
1 counterbalance
1 ethersworn canonist
1 ensnaring bridge
1 spellskite
1 umezawa jitte
1 circle of protection red
1 crucible worlds
1 hex parasite
1 energy flux
I finished 2-2 in a little 8man tourney earlier in the week, which although mediocre, told me that stoneforge was at least viable if I played tighter. I was pretty happy with how relevant turn 1 Ancestral Visions were, but couldn’t find room for all 4, since I hadn’t noticed that the mainstream stoneforge decks had completely cut Divining Top, which I find unfathomable. Stoneforge makes SDT even better due to so many extra shuffle effects. I had games where I shuffled my library with SDT on board, 2x/turn, for every turn of an 8+ turn game. With this many shuffles, drawing redundant Tops is fine, bc can just cycle them. That is retarded card selection. Will take. Compare this to the highly situational Standstill. If they have any board presence, its uncastable, and even if not, they can wait to break it in your 7+ card end-step and make it Ideas Unbound. Do you just board it out on the draw? Card advantage that only works if you resolve the first creature sounds like textbook win-more. The only maindeck oversight I regret is failing to go up to 4xFactory.
I was pretty happy with the sideboard both before and after Saturday. Putting the tutor toolbock package into the board worked fine. I took a little risk eschewing any targeted artifact removal given the liklihood of facing the mirror, in favor of a couple Surgical Extractions which seems like an unfair effect at 0. Counterbalance as singleton was irrelevant and Crucible never saw play. One of these, probably Counterbalance, is becoming Dispeller Capsule again. Spellskite was very tits tho. Every combat exchange in legacy is pretty high stakes, so having a static free method of diverting removal is clutch. And an 0/4 sword carrier isn’t the worst asset either.
Rd 1 Elves
Game 1 takes forever. His list is a little jank, with lots of big drops that frequently leave me with dead missteps in hand. Over the course of the game he draws 9 extra cards from two [green monster who draws cards] and prolongs things against unopposed UG sword via two Primal Commands. There are some EPIC combat exchanges with giant elves vs Batterskull + spot removal, etc. In the long run though, a 6/6 pro-green vigilant, lifelink Germ could not be stopped by his library in hand.
Game 2, despite the fact his list has like 117 1+2 drops, I board out all the missteps and some snares for tutors, jitte, bridge, and counterbalance. Despite seeing Banefire get milled from Sword of Mind, I don’t bring in COP:R, which of course becomes his only out when trapped behind Bridge+SDT+CB lock, and we have 5 min for game 3.
Game 3, I get t2 Stoneforge into sword UG, and do in fact mill him to zero cards only to see he boarded in Ulamog FTD.
Rd 2 Homebrew
This was a relaxing round where a Blazing Effigy was Spell Snared for the first time in the history of sanctioned magic.
Rd 3 Storm Caleb Scherer
Tight match. Caleb was unprepared for maindeck Spell Snare so I basically wasn’t in danger. By only using missteps and cliques on his discard, my snares and forces always hit the infernal tutors. In game 1, I had factory + clique on board, and tapped out for jace or something, and Caleb resolved mainphase adnauseam post-land drop. He hit a chunk of high curve stuff w no petals, so stopped at 6 life. I attacked him to 1, jaced into multiple counters and legend ruled my cliques in his draw step to get rid of a duress, so he couldn’t resolve anything.
Game 2
I board out stoneforge and equipment and 2 stps for all relevant hate. He goes for Ritual into Adnas fairly early and I force, then foolishly Surgical Extraction Adnaseam, which turned out to be his only copy. I Clique him and see a hand of 2 Cabal Rit, 2 Echoing Truth, and 2 Infernal Tutor. I’m holding 2xSnare, so let this stand. Some time goes by and I attack him to 1, and Caleb attempts to go off when I’m at 14. In the course of our counter war, Caleb is holding Tendrils, so deals 16 to me, but luckily I was holding one of the STPs I left in library mainly to handle possible Xantid Swarm or Negator sb tech. I plow the Clique and life totals are now 1 to 17 with no cards in either player’s hand. I have factory and SDT on board. I get Jace the following turn and fateseal him, though since I have to put all his card selection spells on bottom, he has plenty of opportunitys to get a tutor. I get a Force in hand, with enough mana to still attack, and hardcast it, so now I’m only dead if he actually draws the Tendrils, which does not happen in his alloted 8 turns, after using a fetch.
Rd 4 dredge Gabe Jolly
Its fun to watch them try.
Rd 5 merfolk Kevin Bopp
I keep Factory+Tundra. My Stoneforge is Forced, and Tundra wasted, and I draw not another land until he has 8 power worth of watermen.
Game 2 I mull to 6 and basically am outdrawn and thwarted at every turn.
Rd 6 merfolk Mark Mehochko
This match was essentially the reverse of the previous round.
Game 1 Mark keeps a 7 card hand of 2 drops, island and Vial. I misstep his vial and he misses 3 land drops while I get UGsword swinging, and its way too late when he casts his second spell.
Game 2 Way more interactive, I get turn 2 Spellskite, which dulls his early attacks quite a bit. Then I wait until I have 4 mana to resolve endstep E-tutor for ensnaring bridge around Daze. I think Mark did not actually have any bounce boarded in, so this is effectively the end of the game, but to seal the deal I get Stoneforge for UG sword, equipped to Spellskite, and use SDT to get up to 2 cards in hand during attack step, and back to 0 or 1 in 2nd main.
Top 8 mono black Brian Sondag
This tournament started at 1pm. I got delayed on an errand and arrived at the shop at 1:07, so was quite rushed in registering. I forgot to include Vendillion Cliques on my decklist and start the top8 down a game. I had glanced at some of Sondag’s gamestates throughout the tournament, but it didn’t occur to me that someone would play monoB, so I assumed I was up against WB, which I also have decent matchup against. Turns out without Vindicates, monoB is pretty vulnerable to Jace, which I can generally hide from discard via Bstorm/SDT.
Game 2.
He has lots of discard (turns 1, 2, 3 are Thoughtseize, Duress, Tourach) but I had t1 SDT on the play, so it never really matters. I force a Grave Titan, then STP another leaving him with just 2 zombies as his only threat pretty much the whole game. I stick jace like turn 7, which keeps the hits coming, and I have enough mana eventually to safely drop stoneforge and hardcast Batterskull in same turn to evade Duress.
Game 3
I board out the missteps for tutors and bridge and spellskite. I mull to 6 and keep pretty mediocre hand of [force, snare, 4 land]. Sondag duresses me t1, but I topdeck Visions. He Dark Rituals into T2 Nevynrral’s Disk. I land Jace t4, and with my huge infusion of cards turn 5, I get SDT, and Stoneforge equipped with Jitte, and academy ruins+spellskite. Sondag is forced to use the Disk and then resolves a Titan, but I’ve been stowing a Bridge on top of library w SDT, and just run away with Jace ultimate.
Top 4 dredge
Dream pairing
Finals Loam Josh Smith
This is really uphill battle, since none of my cards are very good at stopping his cards. If he draws Worm Harvest, I can’t win. If he resolves Devastating Dreams, I can’t win. If he resolves Vindicate on Batterskull, I can’t win. If an unopposed Crusher lives to attack, probably over. So its clearly in Josh’s best interest to play, but we have other plans, so Josh scoops to me and we take the prize back home, to organize a split at our leisure. I propose we play some number of tournament style matches of Josh’s choice and the winner chooses either:
Mox Jet
-$195*(opponent match win%) to be given to opponent
or
Force of Will
Jace Mindsculptor
+$195*(winner’s match win%) to be recieved from opponent
Josh agrees and chooses 10 matches. As of print time the score is 2-0 Josh, and to save time we decided to play all the remaining game 1s consecutively, and of those 8, score is currently 2-2. This is pretty grueling, so I cut it short and we agree to 75-25 in Josh’s favor.
Recent Comments