sam.
08-27-2010, 03:05 AM
So I'm still relatively new to Legacy, but I'm also incredibly interested in making and trying out new decks as well as improving my game. I thought a great way to do this was to begin writing Tournament Reports to criticize my plays and deckbuilding and also focus myself while playing.
So without further ado, here's my first:
LAST @ a local Legacy Tournament
Size: 12 players
Deck: NLI
This is what I ran:
Business / IGG-Loop ( 21 ) [ 21 ]
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Dream Salvage
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
Accel ( 14 ) [ 35 ]
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
Protection / Dig ( 10 ) [ 45 ]
3 Silence
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
Lands ( 15 ) [ 60 ]
3 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
4 Ancient Spring
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
Sideboard [ 15 ]
4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
3 Echoing Truth
2 Wipe Away
1 Chain of Vapor
3 Defense Grid
This is my first tournament with the deck, but my 4th overall Legacy tournament. In the previous three I played variations of DD storm / Emrakul / ANT.
ROUND 1 vs James Onions
Deck: Doomsday Show and Tell / Leyline Helm
Game 1 on the draw.
I mull to 6 and keep the following hand:
Leyline of the Void
Ancient Spring
Lotus Petal
LED
Infernal Tutor
Infernal Tutor
Turn 0 I put the Leyline into play.
James goes land, Brainstorm, go, while I just play an Ancient Spring tapped. On his second turn he plays two Lotus Petals, casts Dark Ritual, then casts Doomsday. I'm fortunate enough that he makes a pass-the-turn stack, and just says go. I top deck a silence, play another Ancient Spring which I drew the turn prior, play my Lotus Petal and say go. During his upkeep, I crack the Petal and Silence him. He simply passes. On my turn I drew a Leyline, cracked a Spring to cast Infernal Tutor, getting a second LED. I then played both LEDs, cracked the last Spring for Infernal Tutor, and won via IGG loop.
Since I expect him to side in Leyline of Sanctity (he was talking about it earlier), I side in my bounce. I also bring in Duresses because it's the smart thing to do. Maybe Thoughtseize would also have been a good idea?
- 2 Silence
- 1 Chrome Mox
- 1 Lotus Petal
- 1 Cabal Ritual
- 1 Infernal Tutor
- 1 Brainstorm
- 1 Dream Salvage
+ 4 Duress
+ 3 Echoing Truth
+ 1 Chain of Vapor
Game 2 on the draw.
I mull to 6 again and keep the following hand:
Chain of Vapor
Echoing Truth
Duress
Duress
LED
Underground Sea
He leads with Leyline of the Void and Duresses out my LED. I do the same, but take his Silence, seeing all lands. A few turns of land -> go happen, which involves me drawing a Dark Ritual and a Cabal Ritual, while James gets himself (and casts at the end of my turn) a Lim-Dul's Vault. On his turn he Duresses out my Echoing Truth. I just draw a land and say go. He then plays Helm of Obedience (!!), which I respond to and Chain his Leyline. I rip the luckiest Duress to not lose on the following turn and take his Leyline. He then drops a Bob and lays the beatdown, then drops another one in a following turn, then eventually plays Leyline and kills me.
Game 3 on the play.
I keep the following hand:
LED
Leyline of the Void
Ancient Spring
2 lands
Ponder
Cabal Ritual
We both start the game with Leyline of the Void in play. I play my LED now, for fear of it getting Duressed early game (I have enough IGGs in the deck to still win off an IGG-loop) and play a Spring. He just plays land Petal. During my upkeep he silences me, so I just lay down a land. On his turn again he plays a land, Silences me, plays a Petal, accels, and kills me with Helm.
0 - 1 ( 1 - 2 )
Thoughts: I really like the Helm/Leyline in his sideboard. Plus James is a great guy; he's indirectly the person who got me interested in Legacy and he's been really helpful with my deckbuilding and overall strategy for stuff. :D
LESSONS LEARNED
Keep better hands, either with dig or business. Ramp just doesn't cut it. I shouldn't be afraid to mull more aggressively too.
ROUND 2 vs Bryn
Deck: TES
Game 1 on the play.
I'm really a fan of TES. It's a great deck with multiples lines of attack and defense. Also Bryne's a good player.
I mull to 5 and keep this:
Leyline
Leyline
Ancient Spring
Dream Salvage
Silence
I plop the 'Lines down and play my land. He duresses out my Silence.
I draw a land say go. He Brainstorms, fetches, Petal, Petal, Ritual, and Empty the Warrens for 10. I land go, but eventually just die.
I think to myself, I should side the same way I did against James; seemed to work really well.
It didn't. I did exactly what I did for Round 1.
I should've not boarded in the Chain of Vapor.
Game 2 on the play.
I mull to 6 and keep the following hand:
LED
IT
Ancient Spring
Ponder
Silence
Cabal Ritual
I play the Spring and pass. He Duresses me, contemplates my hand for a while, and eventually takes LED. I tell him it's the right play. I then Duress him for a LED, and he tells me it's the right play. We do the land -> go thing for a while, then he Brainstorms and fetches the junk away. I eventually decide to IT for the Cabal Ritual I have in hand, since I had drawn an Ill-Gotten Gains recently. He goes off and makes a bunch of Goblins. I rip the greatest Echoing Truth ever . . . and it gets REB'd, which I should've known since I had Duress'd him earlier. The following two turns he deals 20 while Chanting me and I die.
Now instead of playing Truth, I should've done this:
Cabal Ritual (thresh)
Cabal Ritual (thresh)
IGG -> Cabal Ritual LED IT
Win through IGG loop.
That was a misplay on my part, though he still had multiple Chants to take me down (he had a rainbow land untapped after EtW).
0 - 2 ( 1 - 4 )
LESSONS LEARNED
Instead of making the play that seems good on the surface, take a moment and think about all possible lines of play PLUS what's on the field / what the opp has in hand. In other words, look at what you know, and look at what you can do, and find the best line of action. I'm finding this to be truer and truer for combo decks each time I play.
ROUND 3 vs Brett Jenkins
Deck: Stax
So for the second tournament in a row I get paired with my friend who I play against like, 4 days a week. At least he was borrowing a dec -- oh no it's stax!! :(
Game 1 on the play.
I keep the following hand:
Underground Sea
Underground Sea
Leyline
LED
Cabal Ritual
Dark Ritual
Dream Salvage
I drop Leyline, land, go. He plays an Ancient Tomb and a Chalice on 1. I drop my LED in fear of Chalice on 0 (which shuts of 11 mana sources in the deck), a land, and say go. He plays a Smokestack, and this becomes interesting to me. I'd never played against Stax in my life, but had a vague idea of how it worked. So this was the first time I got to mess around with it.
I play Iggy to Twist his hand, cracking my LED, then replaying LED. He plays a Crucible. We play draw-go for a while, and my notes say "KEPT DRAWING BS" in angry writing. BS of course for Brainstorm, which isn't all that helpful with Chalice at 1.
He eventually Armageddons and sacks his Stax to itself. I'm fortunate because this lets me stabilize. I draw some lands while Brett does too, also playing a Crystal Ball. His Ancient Tomb, to his misfortune, starts to kill him, and he ends up at 10 life. At one point in the game I have IGG, Cabal Ritual, and two Petals in my hand, and a Mox, Swamp, Spring, and LED in play. My goal is to hit 4 storm then Tendrils him.
He takes a while, thinking with Ball, then plays a Stax. I rip a Tutor and kill him. I'm so happy that storm doesn't care about resolved spells.
I didn't write down my sideboard for this matchup because time was running low. I boarded in bounce and out pieces.
Game 2 on the draw.
I keep:
Leyline
Land
Land
Mox
Brainstorm
Infernal Tutor
Igg
He mirrors his last turn 1 play and Tomb's into a Chalice on 1. I play a Swamp, and Mox my Brainstorm. He plays Trinisphere. I land go, and he Geddeons, and in response I Echoing Truth his Trinisphere. I play a Land, Petal, and say go. He replays sphere, and I draw-go. The next few turns involve me Mind Twisting him in an attempt to get advantage, but with nothing useful in my graveyard it doesn't really count. Eventually he plays Chalice on 0 and Magus of the Tabernacle and attacks me to death.
Game 3 on the play.
We both mull to 6.
I keep the following hand:
Leyline
Spring
Mox
LED
Dream Salvage
IT
And play Leyline, Spring, go. He wastes me. We pass the next two turns, not having lands. I eventually Mox my DS and Duress him, seeing one Wasteland, 3 Mox Diamonds, a Crucible, and a Trinisphere, and I took the latter. He then plays the Wasteland, and many turns pass until he plays Mox -> Trinisphere. He later tells me that he drew the Sphere the turn after I Duress'd him. I die horribly after drawing no bounce spells.
LESSONS LEARNED
Stax is evil. No actually it wasn't too bad. I probably should've mulliganed more aggressively for the win because Trinisphere on 3 is incredibly hard to deal with. So is Chalice on 2 (harder than 1 I think, because I can't IGG-loop or Truth or Hurkyl's Recall it, though I know I wasn't running Recall).
0 - 3 ( 2 - 6 )
ROUND 4 vs BYE
Deck: n/a
I won one! I got myself some food.
1 - 3 ( 2 - 6 )
Because it's a small tournament, there are only 4 rounds.
FINAL THOUGHTS
On the deck, I feel like it's just short of being something that can compete. Honestly, I never drew Dream Salvage and IGG. It was a great card to target with Chrome Mox, but overall it just seems so unnecessary to win. It's just too dead when I don't have IGG.
Maindeck Leyline of the Void, however, was amazing. Having the ability to wreck your opponent's hand and gain value was just incredible, and having Chrome Mox means the spare Leylines are rarely a problem. However on the other hand, I played a total of 3 rounds with this deck, so the stats aren't there yet.
The sideboard was prepared for Merfolk, which last week was easily the predominant deck, but this week it turned into storm. I hope I had a positive influence on the metagame, since I've been playing storm for the last three tournaments. :P Nah, probably not.
On Ancient Spring, I found it to be awesome for a deck that aims to go off on turn 2 or 3. It gives you U for pre-combo dig and BW for when comboing. It does come into play tapped, which I know hampers a lot of turn 1 BS/Ponder, which is probably the ideal play, but when pushing explosiveness it helps. But at the same time, it's a Wasteland target, and it sucked getting waste'd versus Stax.
The rest of the manabase was solid, as expected in Legacy (I moved here from type II).
All in all, I found the deck to be almost good enough. Other storm variants like Doomsday, ANT, and TES are still superior for one really good reason: they do what this deck does and more. Seriously, they can storm out in a number of different ways, while this deck is very linear in it's "Igg-Loop into Tendrils" plan.
Anyways, it's always a blast to play legacy, and it's great that the people at the local shop are kind and also good players.
(Also, shoutout to sdematt, who was at the same tourney. I just found out he was on the Source today!)
Until next time,
-- Sam
So without further ado, here's my first:
LAST @ a local Legacy Tournament
Size: 12 players
Deck: NLI
This is what I ran:
Business / IGG-Loop ( 21 ) [ 21 ]
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Dream Salvage
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
Accel ( 14 ) [ 35 ]
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
Protection / Dig ( 10 ) [ 45 ]
3 Silence
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
Lands ( 15 ) [ 60 ]
3 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
4 Ancient Spring
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
Sideboard [ 15 ]
4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
3 Echoing Truth
2 Wipe Away
1 Chain of Vapor
3 Defense Grid
This is my first tournament with the deck, but my 4th overall Legacy tournament. In the previous three I played variations of DD storm / Emrakul / ANT.
ROUND 1 vs James Onions
Deck: Doomsday Show and Tell / Leyline Helm
Game 1 on the draw.
I mull to 6 and keep the following hand:
Leyline of the Void
Ancient Spring
Lotus Petal
LED
Infernal Tutor
Infernal Tutor
Turn 0 I put the Leyline into play.
James goes land, Brainstorm, go, while I just play an Ancient Spring tapped. On his second turn he plays two Lotus Petals, casts Dark Ritual, then casts Doomsday. I'm fortunate enough that he makes a pass-the-turn stack, and just says go. I top deck a silence, play another Ancient Spring which I drew the turn prior, play my Lotus Petal and say go. During his upkeep, I crack the Petal and Silence him. He simply passes. On my turn I drew a Leyline, cracked a Spring to cast Infernal Tutor, getting a second LED. I then played both LEDs, cracked the last Spring for Infernal Tutor, and won via IGG loop.
Since I expect him to side in Leyline of Sanctity (he was talking about it earlier), I side in my bounce. I also bring in Duresses because it's the smart thing to do. Maybe Thoughtseize would also have been a good idea?
- 2 Silence
- 1 Chrome Mox
- 1 Lotus Petal
- 1 Cabal Ritual
- 1 Infernal Tutor
- 1 Brainstorm
- 1 Dream Salvage
+ 4 Duress
+ 3 Echoing Truth
+ 1 Chain of Vapor
Game 2 on the draw.
I mull to 6 again and keep the following hand:
Chain of Vapor
Echoing Truth
Duress
Duress
LED
Underground Sea
He leads with Leyline of the Void and Duresses out my LED. I do the same, but take his Silence, seeing all lands. A few turns of land -> go happen, which involves me drawing a Dark Ritual and a Cabal Ritual, while James gets himself (and casts at the end of my turn) a Lim-Dul's Vault. On his turn he Duresses out my Echoing Truth. I just draw a land and say go. He then plays Helm of Obedience (!!), which I respond to and Chain his Leyline. I rip the luckiest Duress to not lose on the following turn and take his Leyline. He then drops a Bob and lays the beatdown, then drops another one in a following turn, then eventually plays Leyline and kills me.
Game 3 on the play.
I keep the following hand:
LED
Leyline of the Void
Ancient Spring
2 lands
Ponder
Cabal Ritual
We both start the game with Leyline of the Void in play. I play my LED now, for fear of it getting Duressed early game (I have enough IGGs in the deck to still win off an IGG-loop) and play a Spring. He just plays land Petal. During my upkeep he silences me, so I just lay down a land. On his turn again he plays a land, Silences me, plays a Petal, accels, and kills me with Helm.
0 - 1 ( 1 - 2 )
Thoughts: I really like the Helm/Leyline in his sideboard. Plus James is a great guy; he's indirectly the person who got me interested in Legacy and he's been really helpful with my deckbuilding and overall strategy for stuff. :D
LESSONS LEARNED
Keep better hands, either with dig or business. Ramp just doesn't cut it. I shouldn't be afraid to mull more aggressively too.
ROUND 2 vs Bryn
Deck: TES
Game 1 on the play.
I'm really a fan of TES. It's a great deck with multiples lines of attack and defense. Also Bryne's a good player.
I mull to 5 and keep this:
Leyline
Leyline
Ancient Spring
Dream Salvage
Silence
I plop the 'Lines down and play my land. He duresses out my Silence.
I draw a land say go. He Brainstorms, fetches, Petal, Petal, Ritual, and Empty the Warrens for 10. I land go, but eventually just die.
I think to myself, I should side the same way I did against James; seemed to work really well.
It didn't. I did exactly what I did for Round 1.
I should've not boarded in the Chain of Vapor.
Game 2 on the play.
I mull to 6 and keep the following hand:
LED
IT
Ancient Spring
Ponder
Silence
Cabal Ritual
I play the Spring and pass. He Duresses me, contemplates my hand for a while, and eventually takes LED. I tell him it's the right play. I then Duress him for a LED, and he tells me it's the right play. We do the land -> go thing for a while, then he Brainstorms and fetches the junk away. I eventually decide to IT for the Cabal Ritual I have in hand, since I had drawn an Ill-Gotten Gains recently. He goes off and makes a bunch of Goblins. I rip the greatest Echoing Truth ever . . . and it gets REB'd, which I should've known since I had Duress'd him earlier. The following two turns he deals 20 while Chanting me and I die.
Now instead of playing Truth, I should've done this:
Cabal Ritual (thresh)
Cabal Ritual (thresh)
IGG -> Cabal Ritual LED IT
Win through IGG loop.
That was a misplay on my part, though he still had multiple Chants to take me down (he had a rainbow land untapped after EtW).
0 - 2 ( 1 - 4 )
LESSONS LEARNED
Instead of making the play that seems good on the surface, take a moment and think about all possible lines of play PLUS what's on the field / what the opp has in hand. In other words, look at what you know, and look at what you can do, and find the best line of action. I'm finding this to be truer and truer for combo decks each time I play.
ROUND 3 vs Brett Jenkins
Deck: Stax
So for the second tournament in a row I get paired with my friend who I play against like, 4 days a week. At least he was borrowing a dec -- oh no it's stax!! :(
Game 1 on the play.
I keep the following hand:
Underground Sea
Underground Sea
Leyline
LED
Cabal Ritual
Dark Ritual
Dream Salvage
I drop Leyline, land, go. He plays an Ancient Tomb and a Chalice on 1. I drop my LED in fear of Chalice on 0 (which shuts of 11 mana sources in the deck), a land, and say go. He plays a Smokestack, and this becomes interesting to me. I'd never played against Stax in my life, but had a vague idea of how it worked. So this was the first time I got to mess around with it.
I play Iggy to Twist his hand, cracking my LED, then replaying LED. He plays a Crucible. We play draw-go for a while, and my notes say "KEPT DRAWING BS" in angry writing. BS of course for Brainstorm, which isn't all that helpful with Chalice at 1.
He eventually Armageddons and sacks his Stax to itself. I'm fortunate because this lets me stabilize. I draw some lands while Brett does too, also playing a Crystal Ball. His Ancient Tomb, to his misfortune, starts to kill him, and he ends up at 10 life. At one point in the game I have IGG, Cabal Ritual, and two Petals in my hand, and a Mox, Swamp, Spring, and LED in play. My goal is to hit 4 storm then Tendrils him.
He takes a while, thinking with Ball, then plays a Stax. I rip a Tutor and kill him. I'm so happy that storm doesn't care about resolved spells.
I didn't write down my sideboard for this matchup because time was running low. I boarded in bounce and out pieces.
Game 2 on the draw.
I keep:
Leyline
Land
Land
Mox
Brainstorm
Infernal Tutor
Igg
He mirrors his last turn 1 play and Tomb's into a Chalice on 1. I play a Swamp, and Mox my Brainstorm. He plays Trinisphere. I land go, and he Geddeons, and in response I Echoing Truth his Trinisphere. I play a Land, Petal, and say go. He replays sphere, and I draw-go. The next few turns involve me Mind Twisting him in an attempt to get advantage, but with nothing useful in my graveyard it doesn't really count. Eventually he plays Chalice on 0 and Magus of the Tabernacle and attacks me to death.
Game 3 on the play.
We both mull to 6.
I keep the following hand:
Leyline
Spring
Mox
LED
Dream Salvage
IT
And play Leyline, Spring, go. He wastes me. We pass the next two turns, not having lands. I eventually Mox my DS and Duress him, seeing one Wasteland, 3 Mox Diamonds, a Crucible, and a Trinisphere, and I took the latter. He then plays the Wasteland, and many turns pass until he plays Mox -> Trinisphere. He later tells me that he drew the Sphere the turn after I Duress'd him. I die horribly after drawing no bounce spells.
LESSONS LEARNED
Stax is evil. No actually it wasn't too bad. I probably should've mulliganed more aggressively for the win because Trinisphere on 3 is incredibly hard to deal with. So is Chalice on 2 (harder than 1 I think, because I can't IGG-loop or Truth or Hurkyl's Recall it, though I know I wasn't running Recall).
0 - 3 ( 2 - 6 )
ROUND 4 vs BYE
Deck: n/a
I won one! I got myself some food.
1 - 3 ( 2 - 6 )
Because it's a small tournament, there are only 4 rounds.
FINAL THOUGHTS
On the deck, I feel like it's just short of being something that can compete. Honestly, I never drew Dream Salvage and IGG. It was a great card to target with Chrome Mox, but overall it just seems so unnecessary to win. It's just too dead when I don't have IGG.
Maindeck Leyline of the Void, however, was amazing. Having the ability to wreck your opponent's hand and gain value was just incredible, and having Chrome Mox means the spare Leylines are rarely a problem. However on the other hand, I played a total of 3 rounds with this deck, so the stats aren't there yet.
The sideboard was prepared for Merfolk, which last week was easily the predominant deck, but this week it turned into storm. I hope I had a positive influence on the metagame, since I've been playing storm for the last three tournaments. :P Nah, probably not.
On Ancient Spring, I found it to be awesome for a deck that aims to go off on turn 2 or 3. It gives you U for pre-combo dig and BW for when comboing. It does come into play tapped, which I know hampers a lot of turn 1 BS/Ponder, which is probably the ideal play, but when pushing explosiveness it helps. But at the same time, it's a Wasteland target, and it sucked getting waste'd versus Stax.
The rest of the manabase was solid, as expected in Legacy (I moved here from type II).
All in all, I found the deck to be almost good enough. Other storm variants like Doomsday, ANT, and TES are still superior for one really good reason: they do what this deck does and more. Seriously, they can storm out in a number of different ways, while this deck is very linear in it's "Igg-Loop into Tendrils" plan.
Anyways, it's always a blast to play legacy, and it's great that the people at the local shop are kind and also good players.
(Also, shoutout to sdematt, who was at the same tourney. I just found out he was on the Source today!)
Until next time,
-- Sam