Welcome all to another edition of Forcing the Will! Today we’re going to jump straight into things starting off with a Legacy Metagame breakdown. I will provide some useful information for the upcoming MOCS (Magic Online Championship Series) basing my predictions on recent Legacy events as well as speculation. Last of all I will cover the new hot Combo deck online known as Aluren. Lets jump on in!
Legacy Metagame
(4-0) UBgw Landstill
(4-0) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Mono Black
(3-1) Baseruption
(3-1) New Horizon
(3-1) Imperial Painter
(3-1) Survival – Naya
(3-1) Zoo
(4-0) Show and Tell/Sneak Attack
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Mono Black
(3-1) Show and Tell/Stiflenought Bridge
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(4-0) UBg Landstill
(4-0) Imperial Painter
(3-1) Ub Merfolk
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Zoo
(4-0) New Horizon
(4-0) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) Rb Goblins
(3-1) Aluren
(3-1) Merfolk
7/10/2010 (Event #1395803) - Premier Event
1st Show and Tell
2nd Aluren
3rd Death and Taxes (DnT)
4th Faeries
5th Zoo
6th Countertop/Thopter
7th Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT) – Red splash
8th Dredge
(4-0) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) New Horizon
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(4-0) Aluren
(4-0) Aluren
(3-1) Baseruption
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Merfolk
(3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) Show and Tell/Stiflenought Bridge
(3-1) Zoo
7/11/2010 (Event #1395804) – Premier Events
1st Countertop/Thopter
2nd Death and Taxes (DnT)
3rd Red Deck Wins (RDW)
4th Reanimator
5th Red Deck Wins (RDW)
6th Countertop/Thopter
7th Countertop/Thopter
8th Survival – Bant
(4-0) UW Stax
(3-1) Belcher (0 Lands)
(3-1) Mono Black
(3-1) Ub Merfolk
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) New Horizon
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(4-0) Zoo
(4-0) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Elves
(3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Aluren
(3-1) Zoo
(4-0) Dredge
(4-0) Zoo
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Merfolk
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Natural Order
(3-1) Belcher (0 Lands)
(3-1) Aluren
(3-1) Show and Tell/Stiflenought Bridge
(4-0) Dredge
(4-0) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Elves
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Aluren
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Bant
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(4-0) Enchantress
(4-0) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Aluren
(3-1) Imperial Painter
(3-1) UBg Landstill
(3-1) Survival – Bant
(3-1) Merfolk
(3-1) New Horizon
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(4-0) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Dredge
(3-1) New Horizon
(3-1) Aggro Loam
(3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
7/18/2010 (Event #1414866) - Premier
1st Aluren
2nd Zoo
3rd Dredge
4th Imperial Painter
5th Countertop/Thopter
6th UBgw Landstill
7th Aluren
8th Zoo
(4-0) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(4-0) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Dredge
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Countertop/Thopter
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Mono Black
(3-1) UBgw Landstill
(3-1) Reanimator
(3-1) Survival – Bant
Top winning Legacy Decks
|
Deck |
Wins |
Percentage of Wins |
|
1. Zoo |
20 |
15.62% |
|
2. Countertop/Thopter |
16 |
12.50% |
|
3. Landstill |
14 |
10.94% |
|
4. Aluren |
10 |
7.81% |
|
5. Death and Taxes (DnT) |
10 |
7.81% |
|
6. Red Deck Wins (RDW) |
7 |
5.47% |
|
7. Dredge |
6 |
4.69% |
|
8. Merfolk |
6 |
4.69% |
|
9. New Horizon |
6 |
4.69% |
|
10. Show and Tell |
5 |
3.91% |
|
11. Imperial Painter |
4 |
3.13% |
|
12. Mono Black |
4 |
3.13% |
|
13. Survival |
4 |
3.13% |
|
14. Baseruption |
2 |
1.56% |
|
15. Belcher |
2 |
1.56% |
|
16. Elves |
2 |
1.56% |
|
17. Reanimator |
2 |
1.56% |
|
18. Aggro Loam |
1 |
0.78% |
|
19. Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT) |
1 |
0.78% |
|
20. Bant |
1 |
0.78% |
|
21. Enchantress |
1 |
0.78% |
|
22. Faeries |
1 |
0.78% |
|
23. Goblins |
1 |
0.78% |
|
24. Natural Order |
1 |
0.78% |
|
25. Stax |
1 |
0.78% |
|
Total Decks: |
128 |
|
Wow, look at all of those decks! Legacy has gained quite some popularity this past month due to the MOCS coming up. The more data we get the more useful the information becomes to us, and going over the list the Top 3 looks very solid. Zoo is still in the Number 1 spot for the 8th week in a row, and will continue to do so until players either stop playing Zoo so much or players start playing a deck that just beats Zoo. With almost 16% of the wins in such a large field Zoo is a powerhouse that you should be expecting to face each Legacy event. Following shortly behind Zoo Countertop/Thopter replaced Dredge in the Top 3, and passed up Landstill for the Number 2 spot. This is a huge boost from the 11th spot 2 weeks ago. The deck does well against Aggro decks as well as control decks, but is still a tough matchup against the two. Dropping a spot to Number 3 is Landstill. I plan on seeing Landstill in the top 5 decks for some time, and with 11% of the wins the deck is still putting out great results. The top decks show a clear indication to expect a lot of Zoo and Control decks; therefore, playtest against these archetypes as much as you can till you feel comfortable facing them.
MOCS
I have been flooded with questions the last few weeks from players as to what to play in the upcoming MOCS, and while I’m not certain what the field will be I will do my best to provide some insight. I expect to see an extremely large field of Zoo decks and Burn decks fallowed by Control decks and then Combo decks. The reason being that Zoo players are everywhere and that’s not going to change in less than a week. With Zoo putting up big numbers I expect to see a lot of new Legacy players picking this deck up and just trying to smash face as much as possible. Burn is the second deck I expect to see a lot of due to the cheap cost of the deck, and for those who want a chance at winning the MOCS but don’t want to pay for expensive cards Burn will be the deck players choose. Death and Taxes costs a pretty penny with those Wastelands, but the deck does holds its own against Zoo, Burn, and even Control decks. Expect these 3 decks in the top played Aggro decks. Control decks will be taking up the second part of the field consisting of Countertop/Thopter, Landstill, New Horizon, and Show and Tell. Of these decks I expect Countertop/Thopter and Landstill to be relatively close in terms of decks in the tournament. New Horizon is a Control/Aggro hybrid and I expect it to be the 3rd most played control deck followed by Show and Tell. As far as Combo goes I don’t know which decks will be the most played, but I would suggest testing against Dredge, Aluren, ANT, Imperial Painter, Belcher, Enchantress, and Reanimator. The deck I would choose to play in the MOCS would be the UBgw variant of Landstill. I am usually a big fan of UBg Landstill, but I think for the MOCS the White splash is needed especially for such a large field. Seeing as I expect a large amount of Aggro and Burn the deck has many answers for these decks, but I would highly recommend adding Pulse of the Fields to the sideboard to combat these deck even further. This is by no means the best deck to play, but rather what I would play. I wish you all the best in the upcoming MOCS!
Aluren
Aluren is the deck I’m going to be covering today. The deck has been around for quite some time, but has been improved by the addition of Parasitic Strix. The basic function of the deck is to lay down Aluren as fast as possible then cast your Cavern Harpy usually bouncing Parasitic Strix back to your hand and then recasting it which will take 2 life from an opponent and give you 2 life. Return the harpy to your hand using its ability and repeat this process over and over until your opponent is dead. There are a number of builds out there, but I’m going to be focusing on just one build. The reason being is that I think this build is optimal and much better than the other builds. The card that makes this build better than most is [/card]Imperial Recruiter[/card]. I’ve heard many players say that Recruiter hinders the deck and takes up too much space, but after testing the builds I found that Recruiter gives the deck a major boost. The reason that most players believe this is that they can’t afford a playset of Recruiters in paper at $150 a pop. So take advantage of Recruiters online price tag of $4! Since I am only covering one version of the build I won’t repeat myself with the decktech I am providing, but will cover additional sideboard cards I don’t cover in my decktech. The maindeck for all of these builds is the same. Here is the decklist!
Legacy Aluren!
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt formatThis is the first sideboard option I’m going to be covering. I don’t believe this sideboard option is the best but it’s still very effective. The only card on this list that differs from the one I’m playing is Engineered Plague. Plague is one of the best answer against tribal based decks. Right now in Legacy I have been seeing Merfolk, Goblins, and Elves rather frequently. If you are expecting a large field of tribal decks definitely include the Plague.
By SorryMsJackson (2nd Place) Legacy Premier #1395803 on 07/10/2010http://www.wizards.com/magic/samplehand.asp?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/1395803&decknum=1
Sideboard
1 Bone Shredder
4 Duress
4 Engineered Plague
4 Krosan Grip
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Stern Proctor
The second sideboard option has some similarities, but has graveyard hate/board sweeper options included. Engineered Explosives is useful against decks that run a lot of permanents of the same cost such as Zoo, Merfolk, and even Countertop/Thopter decks. Explosives becomes most useful against Countertop/Thopter allowing you to lay down Explosives for zilch and allowing you to live an extra turn or two by sweeping their Thopter army into oblivion. The second sweeper is Pernicious Deed and if you play Legacy you don’t need any introduction to this card, but for those who don’t the card is amazing! Deeds allows you to lay down a turn 2-3 ticking time bomb that you control, and the best part is that you get to choose the cost of permanents it destroys. You can safely wipe away a Zoo, Thopter, New Horizon, Goblin, Merfolk, Elves, or Faerie players army away within a few clicks. Affinity suffers the most damage from Deed since it also destroys their artifact lands. Deed is also an excellent way to get rid of a pesky Pithing Needle set for your Harpy. Board Deed in if you are playing against a deck with lots of low costing permanents that need to be dealt with.
Thoughtseize is an addition discard tool we can use. Thoughtseize is most effective against Control decks that run a lot of counters, but is very useful against Aggro decks that carry a ton of heavy hitters on their back. Since Thoughtseize can deal with any card in an opponent’s hand besides land it becomes very versatile, but I wouldn’t suggest adding it in against Burn decks as Thoughtseize deals 2 damage to you in addition to its cost.
The last card is Leyline of the Void. This card is one of the best answers for graveyard decks with the ability to stop an opponent from going off before it’s your turn. Since we’re running Black we have the ability to hardcast the Leyline if needs be later on in the game. Board in Leyline against Dredge, Astral Slide, Loam, Countertop/Thopter or any graveyard based decks.
By QuiGonJinn985 (4-0) Legacy Daily #1395737 on 07/11/2010
http://www.wizards.com/magic/samplehand.asp?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/1395737&decknum=1
Sideboard
1 Duress
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Krosan Grip
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Stern Proctor
2 Thoughtseize
This is the last sideboard I will go over and is the sideboard option I chose to play. I provided all the information on these cards in my decktech so now I will leave you with a decktech video as well as videos of the deck in action in a Legacy Daily event.
By SorryMsJackson (4-0) Legacy Daily #1395737 on 07/11/2010http://www.wizards.com/magic/samplehand.asp?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/1395737&decknum=1
Sideboard
1 Bone Shredder
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Duress
3 Krosan Grip
4 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Stern Proctor
This time I didn’t take the time to go through my videos and point out play mistakes. I know I have some play mistakes within these videos, but just be aware I didn’t point anything out this week.
ALUREN DECKTECH
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 1
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 2
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 3
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 4
There we go 3-1 in a Legacy Daily. I hope you found these videos useful in providing insight to the Aluren deck. If you have any comments or questions about the deck please feel free to post or send me a message. As always I appreciate all feedback and if you have any additions questions, comments, thoughts or ideas please feel free to drop a post and contact me. That’s all for this week and until next time may the Force of Will be with you.
Owen Robbins
Very legit Deck.
Sadly it’s kinda boring to watch you go off
The rest was interesting. Looking forward to that Baneslayer deck.
Love your Legacy videos.
Just FYI, I think you made a couple of mistakes, though:
Against the Bant deck: You play your only fetchland instead of Tropical Island so you can’t shuffle after Brainstorm.
You used Bone Shredder‘s ability on Vendilion Clique for no apparent reason. (Shredder is a 1/1 flier so it trades with Clique in combat)
Against Argothian Enchantress, I would have Force of Will‘d the Argothian, but it didn’t matter anyway since you won before it got out of hand. I think it’s debatable whether you should save FoW for his Solitary Confinement or not, but if he doesn’t have his draw engine going, then he can’t keep Confinement up.
You can use Cabal Therapy to discard Progenitus, which gets shuffled back into your library so you can Natural Order it out. You probably could’ve won round 1 game 2 like that.
what do you think is the best deck in the format in your opinion not based on results?
yo what sport u play?
Great article and I love the videos. Just try to keep the deck techs under 10 minutes or they start to kind of drag on.
I agree with blue. I love these articles. Bring on countertop! You can also do dredge; I know how much you’d love that lol.
Can you explain what baseruption is, I’ve never heard of that deck and the name is cool!
Round 1 g2, when you kill the clique with shredder, I agree with roon that you can block clique with shredder, however I also think that a better play might be to kill the knight while it’s tapped, then play the harpy after the shredder and return the shredder, then you can block the clique and trade with it or before damage bounce the harpy and you can eventually wipe out his board like that.
Fun videos to watch, legacy has awesome combo decks.
@ eXXa: I will have the Baneslayer deck up as soon as I get some Angels. I’ve been waiting for the m11 release so they will be cheap. I also need some practice with the deck before I jump in an event. I do agree watching people combo off can be very boring, but compared to paper mtgo isn’t nearly as bad especially with all the shuffling.
@ roon: I agree I played the shredder way wrong. I also meant to counter the Enchantress, but after passing priority I decided it wasn’t so bad since I could still counter Confinement if needed.
@ geodishy: I didn’t even think of that! The deck seems so much better now that I have came to realize that option. I can’t believe I overlooked that it seems so obvious now.
@ Giovanni: I don’t believe that there is just one best deck since every deck has a deck it loses to more than it wins. Stephen Menendian a Legacy/Vintage writer composed a graph of decks that shows what decks win against or lose against, but I’d have to dig to find it. Basically it was showing you need to pick a deck based on what you predict will be in the tournament.
@ Awesome757: I play rugby for UVU.
@ bluedragon123: I agree about the decktechs I’ll try to cut them down. Thanks for the support bud!
@ NecroSavant543: I have the Countertop videos next, but you might be waiting some time for Dredge since you know how much I love Dredge!
@ Aznsilly: Here is a forum topic that posts a bit of information on Baseruption it look s a bit outdated, but the information is still useful http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?6504-Deck-Baseruption-%28aYb-Aggro-Control%29 . You are correct I played that totally wrong I don’t even recall what I was thinking at the time, but I sure could have played it better.
Thanks for all the input guys it really helps me out as a player/writer, and I have you guys to thanks for improving my skill. I hope I can continue to provide useful information with even greater skill as I continue on with my articles.
Thanks for the link, it was very detailed. I have seen the deck before, but never knew it by that name!
Thanks a lot for these vids, they are very informative and fun to watch
I didn’t have the chance to watch them earlier but I’m glad I got to now. You probably won’t read this anymore, but i still wanted to ask: Why do you take as long as possible to combo off?
I’m seriously wondering. You mentioned in the first vid I think that you’re a team player and want to give them all a chance and stuff, but I just find it hard to believe that’s really the reason you take another ~1 minute combo’ing off. What am I missing? I mean recruiting all 3 other recruiters, returning dream stalker with cavern harpy instead of returning parasitic strix, stuff like that.
Again, not saying I would do better or that you made a mistake. I’m just wondering why you would go about it the long way, even against tapped out opponents not playing blue.
@ Aznsilly: You’re very welcome. I figured you would have seen the deck before, but a lot of people just don’t know the name of it.
@ Zage: I am glad you like the videos :D! I will admit I made the mistake of bouncing the Stalker with the Harpy instead of the Strix. Sometimes when I get in combo mode I just click like a mad man, but besides that I was simply taking the long route unintentionally. As for getting all the Recruiters it allows me to have the option to bounce another Recruiter if my opponent is able to kill one of them off. This is just habit and is not always necessary,but I do it just be to cautions. Sometimes spending the extra minute to do something can save you, but a lot of the times it’s not needed. I would advise going the long route in most cases unless you are running low on time. So in summary more Recruiters are better in my opinion, and I played the Harpy, Stalker, and Strix wrong in that game.
Round one game two the aluren match you could have just cabal therapied progenitus out of your hand then cast natural order.