MTG Legacy format introduction
- May 30, 2022
- 15 min read
Updated: Mar 29, 2023
As you may or may not know, Magic the Gathering can be played in a variety of ways. It can be casual, that is purely for fun with friends with a beer. It can be MTG Arena where everyone is trying hard to be at the mythic, believing that they will find there the happiness that is lacking in life. It can be EDH, sometimes it turns out that the random crap that we can keep under the bed can be worth a lot of money, because it plays in this strange format. Another and, in my opinion, the best way to play is the Legacy format. If you are new to Magic the Gathering, please refer to the Basic Knowledge Posts first.
_-=Upkeep=-_
Just to be clear. I could introduce a brief history of the format here at the outset. It would be appropriate. But do I have to? I play long enough to know that Legacy became Legacy from some other thing known as Tier 1.5 or something. Either way, going further, Legacy is the format in which all cards are legal to be released continuously since 1993, not counting the banned ones, which are a little bit. A banned card is simply too strong for the format. You can see a list of illegal cards in Legacy below:
Ancestral Recall
Arcum's Astrolabe
Balance
Bazaar of Baghdad
Black Lotus
Channel
Demonic Consultation
Deathrite Shaman
Demonic Tutor
Dig Trough Time
Dreadhorde Arcanist
Earthcraft
Fastbond
Flash
Frantic Search
Gitaxian Probe
Goblin Recruiter
Gush
Hermit Druid
Imperial Seal
Library of Alexandria
Lurrus of the Dream-Den
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Mana Vault
Memory Jar
Mental Misstep
Mind Twist
Mind's Desire
Mishra's Worshop
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Mystical Tutor
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Oko, Thief of Crowns
Ragavan, Nible Pfifier
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Survival of the Fittest
Time Vault
Time Walk
Timetwister
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Treasure Cruise
Underworld Breach
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Wreen and Six
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will
Zirda, the Dawnwaker
_-=Main Phase=-_
What defines the format and distinguishes it from others (except Vintage) is access to cards commonly known as the Reserved List. These include cards that have been promised never to be printed for fear that they will lose their value (in short). Most of them cost astronomical amounts of money, and these are the main reason people choose not to play Legacy these days. Most of the decks contain dual lands in their lists, and all 10 of them are on the above-mentioned list. This means that not everyone can afford a deck to the format and it is played only by those people who bought expensive cards in times when they did not cost a lot and those who earn a lot. Alternatively, people like me who devote most of their time to their passion and like to play collecting money and as well people who use proxies. I will develop this thread a bit further. The second major reason people are not choosing to play Legacy right now is .... the fact that Wizards of the Coast has stopped supporting the format (in theory). Legacy has been said to have died for several years, and there is no interest in playing this format on a scale like Modern, Pionier or Standard. Until a few years ago, the format had a reputation for very rarely changing. Currently, this is not true anymore, virtually every new expansion adds some cards to Legacy that cause changes to the game.
If you want to play Legacy nowadays, in Poland in several larger cities you can find players who, let's say, play regularly. These are:
Warsaw; where the number of people with full decks is by far the largest. Moreover, Warsaw, taking into account the representation and away team, usually places the strongest team in terms of the level of play and skills.
Łódź: now the center of the Polish Legacy, due to the fact that for several months this city has been organizing tournaments regularly, despite the pandemic. The local community also secured the support of the MKM, an international singles "shop" where most European players buy and sell cards. What's more, the community gave us the opportunity to play with proxies, so that people who want to try to play the format could try their hand at Legacy.
Rzeszow; It would seem that nothing is happening in a city so isolated from the rest of Poland, but it is the team from Rzeszów that is the most numerous when it comes to people ready to fight for glory and fame at tournaments. Currently, tournaments are also played in Rzeszów and, like in Łódź, there is a possibility to play proxies
Cracow; Before the outbreak of covid, the format community was quite large, but at the moment it's hard for me to say what it looks like there. Cracow was famous for organizing better Legacy tournaments due to great prizes, and the competition was quite popular. Its location on the map of Poland is a big advantage because from any other city you could easily get to. I am afraid, however, that the format in this city has died, not counting people who, of course, still have decks but live in a dormant state and wait for everything to return to normal from the time before the pandemic.
Wroclaw; I know that players from Wrocław are actively organizing themselves, but they are not actively taking part in tournaments organized in other Polish cities;
Katowice; guys from Katowice for over 2 years regularly go to tournaments in Poland, participate in forums and recently invite them others;
Naturally, there is also a computer-based form of playing the format, which includes the MTG Online platform. Personally, I am skeptical about the way matches are played there and the way the game itself is played. However, it is the players' results from MTGO tournaments that define what the format's metagame looks like today.
_-=Combat=-_
In this section, I will introduce the decks played in Legacy.
Here we go.
1.
Delver Decks
In a nutshell, these are decks that plan to defeat the opponent in their strategy by flipping the dude in the picture below. While playing Legacy, you can come across various variants of Delver, usually each of them slightly differs from the rest not only in color but also in the choice of other threats. For example, the BUG (Sultai) color version of Delver is called Team America, and is played with Tarmogoyf, Tombstalker, Abrupt Decay, and sometimes Liliana of the Veil as well. Another variation is RUG (Temur), which adds a card such as Uro or Klothys to his strategy. The version, incidentally, stopped playing a bit, but the Delver variant in this configuration is still very much alive. Apart from the above-mentioned, the most common and infamous version of UR recently, sometimes even abandoning the use of Delver in favor of more powerful threats, printed in the past months. The option to ban multiple cards from this deck is currently under debate, so if you plan on purchasing real cards for Delver, I recommend that you use proxies for the time being:) * * The monkey crashed into a ban(ana), so luckily in Legacy, it's gone. In the past, there was also a version of this deck in the colors of Grixis and Mono U, but I'm afraid that both versions have been lost to the abyss of memory.
2.
Death & Taxes
Modern players may know this term and name, because a similar deck to the one in Legacy also plays in their format. The purpose of the deck is to make the game as uncomfortable as possible for the opponent. This is done with the help of small, cheap creatures that have built-in punishing effects. For example, those that increase the cost of playing spells by 1, those that allow you to draw only one card per turn, those that protect themselves against the selected color and, as a result, protect the others from being removed from the game. Below is a classic example of such a mean creature. Originally, Taxes were always a pure white deck, with an admixture of artifactic cards. If I remember correctly, the version with a splash to red once played, giving access to Imperial Recruiters and the Magus of the Moon creature.
3.
Maverick
Apparently, somewhere in the abyss of the Internet, you can still discover why we call the green and white men in Legacy Maverick. I do not know and this is not what I am here to inform you. They are not just people, because the deck is, you can safely say, the most ordinary toolbox in the world under cards such as Once Upon a Time and Green Sun's Zenith. Playing the format, you can come across the usual version of the deck in GW colors, admittedly not very popular, but surprisingly effective version of the Punishing Maverick that adds red to the terrifying and punishing 2 mana burn spell and the most common version called Dark Maverick that adds black color to the deck for additional remowal and a bit of discard. Blue is not added to the deck because it is just a Bant, and in the colors of bant we already have a different deck in the format.
4.
Burn
I don't have to present this deck, its proverbial name is - "Three in your mouth". Burn is characterized by the fact that it burns the opponent with spells and attacks with small creatures. Each format has an archetype called Mono Red Wins, in Legacy it's just Burn. Since the dawn of time, specialists have been trying to characterize this deck into the appropriate strategy and until today it is not known whether it is a combo, or agrro, tempo or something else. What is certain is that the entire deck is red and cheap to assemble. Until a few years ago, it used green splash and played with one Taiga to allow access to a potential sideboard. Currently, even fetch lands have stopped playing in this deck, so you can complete the entire deck for a fairly small amount. One of the cards that is the core of the deck even got a Polish name, I'll show you below. Here is the rice of progress :)
5.
Elves
Probably the first example of a combo deck that I have ever introduced. The deck can kill in the third turn, which makes it quite strong, and since Allosaurus Shepherd was printed, it no longer loses to Force of Will. The method of operation and killing is quite simple. We play the Glimps of Nature card, which allows us to draw a card for each creature we play. All elves in the deck have a mana cost of 2 or less. Looking at it logically, we choose a large part of the deck by spinning these elves, because most of them give us mana and have various skills of bouncing, tap. With the help of the land commonly known as the Cradle, we gain millions of mana and finally play Craterhoof Behemoth, who kills the opponent for a trillion of damage. Usually, the game is played with green and black colors, the latter gives us access to black sideboard cards. Sometimes you also see blue, then played for Leovold, white for Gaddock, or red for a card known as Ruric Thar, the Unbowed.
6.
Show & Tell
The second Combo deck that I will present and its numerous variations is Show and Tell. A deck has several types, usually named after the cards it contains. All variations have the same purpose. Deceptively insert Emracul or Griselbrand into a game and win with their help. In most cases, we can come across the UR version, less often but equally often the UG called Omnitell, as well as other less important and played variants. Be careful if you are a beginner and find the deck simple to play. Many people think so, concluding that playing a card below simply wins the game. This is a serious mistake because without proper training, overly self-confident players without experience can be easily outmaneuvered.
7.
Miracles
One of the better format decks, almost always, at least since the Terminus was printed. A white and blue deck, recently also played with a touch of green. It is the best control deck in Legacy and possibly one of the better control decks in the game overall. Its purpose is to make the game difficult for us, and when it deprives us of the pleasure of playing, by countering our spells and threats, it kills us with, for example, Uro or Jace 2-0. Recently, a very popular version, commonly known as Bant Control. I'm not sure if any cards with Miracle mechanics are still playing on this deck.
8.
Lands
The MTG TOP 8 website categorizes this deck as Control. The name of the deck comes from the fact that the majority of cards in it are lands. There are those that tap the opponent's mane, destroy the opponent's mana, give life to the opponent and take it. From a historical point of view, as far as I can remember, the deck was played in the RG layout, but with the Uro print, from time to time there are lists adding blue to this deck. The deck is one of the most expensive in the Legacy format, as it is played very expensive at the Land box office. There is a saying that Lands without Tabernacle are not Lands. Its English version in affordable condition costs only 3.5 thousand euro. Fortunately, the Wizards once reprinted an Italian version that cost about half of it. (sarcasm) If you won the lottery, you know what to invest in. Remember, however, that access to a printer is always effective in reducing costs.
9.
Painter
The name of the deck comes from a creature called "painter's servant" . When he enters play, a color is selected and all cards in play receive the selected color in addition to the one they already have. The deck is not a typical combo deck (it involves milling your opponent in one turn), as it has access to other ways to win.
10.
Storm
The name of the deck is borrowed from the mechanics printed on several cards. There are several variants of Storm in the format, the most popular ones currently playing will be Ant and TES respectively I think. Optionally, also a version of the reanimator that plays elements of the aforementioned combo, called Tin Fins. Playing with this deck involves playing a large number of spells in one turn, so that the number of these spells played is enough to kill your opponent or create, for example, 20 goblins with one spell.
11.
Reanimator
This cluster of cards is called the reanimator because the ultimate strategy is to revive large creatures from your own (or someone else's) grave. Using the cards Faithless Looting, Everybody Careful Study and Entomb, we throw these creatures into our cemetery. The most played version is the BR variation, which has access to a very explosive start, which many decks cannot cope with. The UB version is less popular and good, with access to sideboard cards like Show & Tell and main countermagic. I have had the opportunity to play with the Reanimator many times, and although its players believe otherwise, I find the deck easy to use. Out of 10 games played with this deck, my opponent killed me 9 times in turn 1. This does not mean that the deck is straightforward, but without the proper card of your opponent, it is difficult to outmaneuver.
12.
Nic Fit
See link below :)
13.
Infect
In one of the initial posts, I described ways to win a game against another player. Infect mechanics is one of them. The deck is all about summoning creatures with this mechanic. As soon as they deal 10 damage to the opponent, they lose the game. Infect is counted among combo decks as it can kill an opponent in the second turn. The deck is played with a lot of spells that increase the creature's base stats. For example, Invigorate, which can be played for free if you control the forest, gives a creature of your choice + 4 /+ 4 until the end of the turn. At the time of printing of little Teferi, a variation of the deck using white color appeared. I am afraid that the deck has fallen into disfavor now, as Plague Engineer completely devastates Infect's creatures due to creature type update - Phyrexian.
14.
Doomsday
Fourteenth on my list of Legacy Decks to recommend. The name of the deck reads like the name of the card at the top and its entire strategy is to play it. How does he win? In 2 ways. The first, usual way is to play the card higher and make a pile of the rest of the cards to win the next turn with the Thassa's Oracle card, which makes us just win the game. The second is a sideboard plan that adds an alternative wincon in the form of Emrakul, Aeons Thorn + Shelldock Isle cards to the deck. With fewer than 20 cards in the deck, we can simply play Emrakul for one blue using the land and cheat him into the game. In addition, in the deck, the pose of a whole range of cantrips is played with discard, counters and basically anything that will help protect the combo.
15.
Dragon Stompy / Mono R Prison
Two names, the deck is almost the same. I don't know where the name "Dragon" comes from. Not a single dragon is playing on the deck. Perhaps he once played, but he stopped playing, and the name stuck. This pile of cards is based on making the opponent's life difficult, such cards as Chalice of the Void, Blood Moon, Blood Sun, Magus of the Moon, Trinisphere, Ensnaring Bridge are played here. The win-con in the deck can be Karn with an option to Mycosynth Latice, goblins like Rabblemaster or Warboss Legion, or a possible range of different types of Chandras.
16.
Goblins
The goblins are probably as old as the format itself, and I have to admit they're holding up quite well. They may not be a Tier 1 deck, but thanks to a few prints in recent months, they've definitely grown stronger. The MH1 add-on definitely introduced some new features, as well as the Jumpstart add-on. When playing with them you should expect a naturally red and black color, sometimes you also see white playing for the Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Some time ago, when I was still living in Rzeszów, I had a friend who played goblins a lot and tested them a lot. One of the techs he patented was a card that was absolutely never used on this deck, which does quite a bit of havoc in the game. Then his deck changed its name from ordinary goblins to divine goblins.
17.
Merfolks
Fish, Fish, Fish. The name comes from , as you know, Merfolk - the Sea People lives in the depths of the oceans, all kinds of water reservoirs, rivers, sewers, puddles and lakes. All playable, good fish are blue, and the worst carps and roaches are mixed with other colors. I'm afraid that this deck's presence in the metagame is based on performance only. We know he is, but no one has seen him for a long time. Probably because there are better decks than fish that have a similar playing strategy.
18.
Dark Depths
This deck is all about murdering an enemy by attacking with an indestructible 20/20 creature with flying and indestructibility. He does this thanks to a combination of Thespian Stage + Dark Depths cards or possibly Vampire Hexmage + Dark Depths. The whole deck is based on this to achieve this combination and to deprive the opponent of the possibility of getting rid of the threat, for example by playing with a discard in the form of Thoughtseize or cards blocking activated abilities like Pithing Needle.
19.
Eldrazi
Playing Legacy u can meet two variants of this deck:
Big Eldrazi(often confused or interchangeable with another deck called Cloudpost) somewhat reminiscent of a modern throne. Its task is to play threats more expensive in mana cost than most decks in Legacy, using the legacy Tron lands, i.e. Cloudpost and GlimmerPost. In addition to the minions pack, you can play colorless mass remowal in the form of All is Dust, Ugin for 8 mana, various types of Karns in the deck.
The second version is eldrazi agrro, focusing entirely on playing cheap, not necessarily small creatures, reaching the highest cost CMC = 5, in the form of Reality Smasher.
20.
Death's Shadow
The construction strategy is to play a creature that you can see below. The less we have life, the bigger it becomes, so instead of using color duals, we play shocklands. His stats increase from the moment we have 12 life . A large part of the cards in the deck are designed to deal damage, which increases the above-mentioned creature. People play BUG or UB variants. Green once gave access to the Oko, now these are Veil of Summer or Abrupt Decay. Of course, this deck also plays dual lands for better fixing, but the priority lands are those that take your life points.
21.
Mono G Cloudpost
Oh my. This is not a deck description that you should see. In the sense that I should encourage you to the format and I am really trying to do so by writing this article. Unfortunately, the description of the cloudpost consists of my personal and exceptional reluctance to this deck. There are really very few things in the world that I don't like doing or having to do, but the Post, especially its green version, is the worst thing that can happen to me at a tournament. Grrr Playing at the Lodz Legacy Trial in December 2021, I found both that were at the competition ....., were 33 people were playing The reason for my reluctance is simple. This is the worst matchup of my deck, absolutely unbeatable. Well, but I'm writing in vain, and you don't know what's going on here.
The game revolves around playing a Titan who, when entering the game, searches for other cards from the library, ending the game. They can be:
Combo Dark Depths + Thespian Stage
More cloudposts than we have on the table, resulting in more mana, as a result a chance to play ballista for a lot and kill the opponent
Finding lands like Eye of Ugin, which means finding a way to search for Emrakul, Ulamog or Kozilek. Yes, this deck plays all three eldrazi titans. Additionally, finding the land of Karakas, which together with Emrakul is the basis of synergy = Endless turns.
The downside of this deck is that it has very little interaction with any combo decks, and it has no access other than Ulamog (XD) to any remowal.
That's it. But these are not all format decks. I will list all of them, or at least the ones I know, below, so that you can get an idea of how wide the scope of Legacy's playing is and how extensive the meta is. Perhaps you will like one of them by name and out of curiosity you will check how it works or what is played in it, what is played, how is it played and so on.
Ur Delver
Grixis Delver
Temur Delver (RUG)
Jeskai Delver (UWR)
Mono U Delver
Sultai Delver ( Team America, BUG)
BUG Control
Bant Control
UW Miracles
Grixis Control
4c Control
RG Lands
BUG Lands
Naya Lands
Eldrazi Agrro
Big Eldrazi
Mono G Cloudpost
Nic Fit
Scapewish
BUG Fit
SMOG Fit
Rector Fit
Sneak Fit
Show & Tell
Omnitell
Sneak & Show
RB Reanimator
UB Reanimator
Dredge
Manaless Dredge
ANT ( Storm)
TES (Storm)
Belcher
Maverick
Dark Maverick
Punishing Maverick
Bant Agrro
Goblins
Merfolks
Dark Bant
BG Smog
BUG Smog
Death's Shadow
Dark Depths
Rainbow Depths
Death and Taxes
Team Italia ( Mardu )
8Cast
Affinity
Enchantress
Titanic Dryad
Loam
Doomsday
Pox
Mill ( 8 crab )
Dragon Stompy
Big Red / Dragon Stompy
Elves
Aluren
MUD
Painter
Jund
Deadguy ( WB Taxes )
RW Taxes
Tin Fins
Ninja
Turbo Madness
Humans
Slivers
Landstill
Stax
Foodchain
Cephalid Breakfest
Infect
Bomberman
Curses
High Tide
And many, many more. In a big tournament, the same rule applies as always. You can find anything. In Poland, unfortunately, our group of comunity is limited and we already know each other enough that we know who plays what more or less. Looking at all the active players in our country, counting that it would be possible to choose a convenient time for the tournament for all people, there are about a hundred of us, maybe less.
22.02.2022
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