Originally Posted by
ACME_Myst
Hey guys, whatsup?
So, I'm seriously considering getting back into Legacy after a 4 year break from Magic. Having always loved and often played Stax and it's various derivatives, I feel like it would be a really cool deck to pick up to get back into the game. Truth be told, budget concerns are not the least of my reasons, but having never played with Metalworker and Grim Monolith in this format, I'd like to see how that plays out.
Anyway, not really having a team to seriously playtest with anymore, I'm turning to The Source to get some feedback on the list I'm working on.
My current draft of the maindeck:
// Lands (22)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Wasteland
4 Great Furnace
2 Darksteel Citadel
4 Mountain
// Engine(s) (11)
4 Metalworker
4 Goblin Welder
3 Kuldotha Forgemaster
// Moar mana (7)
4 Grim Monolith
3 Crucible of Worlds
// Beats (8)
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Steel Hellkite
// Bombs (2)
1 Sundering Titan
1 Mindslaver
// Support/misc (10)
4 Tangle Wire
3 Lightning Greaves
3 Faithless Looting
Some notes on the design philosophy I used:
- 22 lands is about 4-6 more than I've seen in most other lists. My reasoning was that
a) In my (limited) experience, (Worker) MUD has a highly volatile manabase. Which is to say, it's super explosive, but equally fragile. Because I don't want to scoop to opposing Wasteland + counter on Metalworker, a more stable manabase seems really good.
b) I hate forced mulligans because of manascrew. Contrariwise, it appears hard to be flooded in a deck with such high CMC cards.
c) Half of your lands blow themselves up or get eaten by Welder and/or Forgemaster, and finally..
- .. neither Mox Opal nor Lotus Petal seems to really work for me. Opal is not proper acceleration, as it's virtually impossible to be metalcraft on turn 1 or 2, where it seems most useful. Petal is, obviously, but it's neither a persistent manasource nor really a target for Welder and Forgemaster.
- 3 Crucible seems really good, both to stabilize the manabase further and to do nasty trick with Welders and Wastelands.
- I'm running 4 Hellkite and have cut Wurmcoil Engine entirely. The reasoning here is that
a) I'm severely lacking in board control, and this should remedy that somewhat.
b) Because I'm trying to win by turning big dudes sideways, evasion seems really good.
c) More board control synergizes better with my Tangle Wires and LD.
d) Minor point, but it's Firebreath acts like a useful manasink.
e) The above points outweigh both the increased synergy between Wurmcoil and Welder/Forgemaster, and the Wurm's lifelink ability.
- 4 Tangle Wire synergize with the overall LD plan, are insane with an active Welder, and just generally provide Time Walks all around.
- Only 2 bombs/dedicated Forgemaster targets, mostly to keep the amount of dead draws to a minimum. Of the two, Sundering Titan provides LD and a great body, while Mindslaver provides Time Walks at worst, an alternative wincondition at best, and is generally backbreaking against both combo and control.
Some random musings:
- I would love to find room for Chalice, Phyrexian Metamorph, Grim Poppet, Spine of Ish Sah, Batterskull and tbh also Wurmcoils, but the list feels really tight as is.
- I'm very much opposed to running 2-offs of anything in a deck with as little library manipulation as this, which seems to be in contrast to a lot of other builds I'm seeing. I'm wondering if nobody else has a problem with this?
- [I'm being ninja'd by JadeOberg as I'm typing] Blood Moon seems really good in a deck like this, but I feel might be better off in a more Stax-like build.
- Staff of Domination seems really win-more. If you have an active Metalworker and Kuldotha to find the Staff, along with three artifacts in hand, you should be winning anyway. I see no reason to run potentially dead, conditional cards.
- Blightsteel Colossus also seems really win-more, as he's a bitch to hardcast, the poison doesn't work very well with the deck's main route to victory which is damage dealing, and again, active Kuldotha (+ Greaves) should let you win with less conditional cards.
- Myr Battlesphere hasn't been as insane as I thought he was, but again this is from very limited testing.
- Overall, I feel the deck would improve in both consistency and stability by moving away from utility-oriented combo-esque builds, towards a more tempo-oriented aggro-control style version.
So, again, most of this is just theorizing as I've been out of the game for some time and am severely lacking in good playtest partners. Advice would be really welcome, especially with regard to specific matchups that I may have greatly weakened with this build. From what I can see, this is going to at least die horribly to Sneak Attack/Hivemind, but I feel most of the other DtB's aren't as bad, at least.
TL;DR: I'm trying to make this deck slightly less explosive, in return for increased consistency and stability. Thoughts?