Kich867
06-29-2011, 06:03 AM
This is basically a pet deck, but it's not remotely budget so I didn't feel it should be put there.
List: U/W MRC
//Creatures: 10
2x Meddling Mage
4x Mirran Crusader
4x Stoneforge Mystic
//Hand stuff: 8
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
//Counters: 11
4x Force of Will
3x Counterspell
4x Mental Misstep
//Board wipe: 1
1x Wrath of God
//Equips: 3
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte
//Planeswalkers: 5
2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
//Lands: 22
2x Tundra
4x Flooded Strand
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Kor Haven
6x Island
5x Plains
//Sideboard: 15
3x Peacekeeper
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Tormod's Crypt
2x Energy Flux
1x Meddling Mage
1x Mindbreak Trap
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Wrath of God
--
I have a fairly ghetto version of this deck that I'm really really enjoying right now. I'm quite a huge fan of mid-range control decks, it's what I naturally gravitate towards and feel most comfortable playing (I've tried a plethora of combo decks and quite frankly hate that there's no player interaction, even in Starcraft I'm more of a macro player haha).
The jist should be fairly obvious--resolve dudes, swing with dudes, win with dudes, if I can't win with dudes, win with Jace.
The thing that I've started to really learn after awhile was the goal isn't to disrupt your opponent's plans, it's to stop anything that stops my plan. Legacy is surprisingly predictable, and after the first turn or two I'll know if they run removal and which removal based on their land.
Meddling Mage on removal / combo pieces generally wins games, he's fun to play with because much like Cabal Therapy you need to take a lot into consideration. For instance against Reanimator, Meddling Mage naming either Exhume or Animate Dead is always more ideal than naming Reanimate since Reanimate is able to be hit with Misstep, which gives me 11 answers to it rather than 7. A lot of these situations come up (for me it's generally about casting costs and numbers of cards in graveyards etc).
Some people feel iffy on running 8-10 creatures with SFM, however I run fewer in my current list (this is my "ideal" list), and between the fetches, Brainstorm, and Ponder, it's actually pretty hard not to run into a dude to drop.
Jace 2.0 is mainly there to win when I can't actually hit someone and to just be the baller that he is.
With 8 fetches, I should be able to always get a tundra or two down, maybe I'll up the Tundra count, but I've never actually had mana issues before so to me it's like--why make myself prone to wastelands if I don't need to. The fetches that I run I run out of convenience, like I'd love to rep 2 Flooded / 2 Misty / 2 Scalding / 2 Marsh Flats, but I happen to own a playset of Flooded and a playset of Misty's and they all hit Tundra so..yeah.
Card Considerations but Don't know what I'd Drop:
Vendilion Clique
Cryptic Command
Batterskull
Swords to Plowshares
Oblivion Ring
Orim's Chant
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tossing Counter-top into the mix seemed logical to me, I have it, I can, but 8 spots is a lot at this point and the only cuttable spots are creatures/equips, which would essentially force my wins to be Elspeth and Jace bossin' out thug nasty style and whatnot. I'm iffy on it though, I'd like to run creatures, but one of the things that drove me to smaller creatures that are either increadibly powerful or super tech is the shittiness that is running a big-dumb-creature win condition. Smaller creatures are easier to protect, always.
Jace always seems like a safer way to win, Planeswalker's in general really, just feel like safer means to win with, but him in particular. If I went with Counter-Top, I'd probably run 4 Sun Titan's as the big dumb creature as they return counterbalance and top to the battlefield in the event Krosan Grip's start flying, and add the 4th Jace main-deck.
The only problem with the CounterTop shell for this deck is the lack of 3 drops, I'd be covered on 1-2 drops and 4 drops, but I'd always have to hard-counter 3 drops (which granted is like, Knight / Clique but still...).
Also, that, and the deck wouldn't be aggro-control anymore it'd be countertop superfriends..
--
For some deck history:
This idea evolved from my American Tempo (which was really American Mid-range Control) which was a very similar deck, except it focused more on disruption with Stifle/Wasteland and splashed red for Grim Lavamancer / some burn. I proxied it and ended up really not liking it, it tried to do a little too much at once and ended up feeling convoluted. It also was obnoxiously apparent that Red was only there because I wanted it to be. It didn't add anything meaningful that the other colors didn't do better / just as good without complicating my mana for no reason.
So I dropped red, which made the stoneforge package an obvious choice, it made Meddling Mage more appealing, it simplified the mana base, it added more control, it added equipment, it added more hand manipulation and drawing, really the deck just got a lot better after I dropped red.
-- Sideboard:
I don't know how I feel about the sideboard. Peacekeeper is there to stop things like Elves or Dredge or Reanimator who can drop this like, enormously unstoppable force of shit rather quickly--so rather than try and out-aggro them, I fall back on Peacekeeper and Jace.
Canonist is for combo, crypt graveyard hate, flux affinity, mage for combo, jace for peacekeeper wins, wrath for highly creature oriented aggressive decks / NO Prog shenanigans. It should all be pretty self explanatory.
------
After hitting "Post" I noticed the Caw Blade in Legacy thread, I don't know if this actually qualifies as it though, so this list may belong there? But I don't know. If so, let me know, I'll just copy-pasta this over there and hopefully there's a way to delete the thread.
List: U/W MRC
//Creatures: 10
2x Meddling Mage
4x Mirran Crusader
4x Stoneforge Mystic
//Hand stuff: 8
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
//Counters: 11
4x Force of Will
3x Counterspell
4x Mental Misstep
//Board wipe: 1
1x Wrath of God
//Equips: 3
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte
//Planeswalkers: 5
2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
//Lands: 22
2x Tundra
4x Flooded Strand
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Kor Haven
6x Island
5x Plains
//Sideboard: 15
3x Peacekeeper
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Tormod's Crypt
2x Energy Flux
1x Meddling Mage
1x Mindbreak Trap
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Wrath of God
--
I have a fairly ghetto version of this deck that I'm really really enjoying right now. I'm quite a huge fan of mid-range control decks, it's what I naturally gravitate towards and feel most comfortable playing (I've tried a plethora of combo decks and quite frankly hate that there's no player interaction, even in Starcraft I'm more of a macro player haha).
The jist should be fairly obvious--resolve dudes, swing with dudes, win with dudes, if I can't win with dudes, win with Jace.
The thing that I've started to really learn after awhile was the goal isn't to disrupt your opponent's plans, it's to stop anything that stops my plan. Legacy is surprisingly predictable, and after the first turn or two I'll know if they run removal and which removal based on their land.
Meddling Mage on removal / combo pieces generally wins games, he's fun to play with because much like Cabal Therapy you need to take a lot into consideration. For instance against Reanimator, Meddling Mage naming either Exhume or Animate Dead is always more ideal than naming Reanimate since Reanimate is able to be hit with Misstep, which gives me 11 answers to it rather than 7. A lot of these situations come up (for me it's generally about casting costs and numbers of cards in graveyards etc).
Some people feel iffy on running 8-10 creatures with SFM, however I run fewer in my current list (this is my "ideal" list), and between the fetches, Brainstorm, and Ponder, it's actually pretty hard not to run into a dude to drop.
Jace 2.0 is mainly there to win when I can't actually hit someone and to just be the baller that he is.
With 8 fetches, I should be able to always get a tundra or two down, maybe I'll up the Tundra count, but I've never actually had mana issues before so to me it's like--why make myself prone to wastelands if I don't need to. The fetches that I run I run out of convenience, like I'd love to rep 2 Flooded / 2 Misty / 2 Scalding / 2 Marsh Flats, but I happen to own a playset of Flooded and a playset of Misty's and they all hit Tundra so..yeah.
Card Considerations but Don't know what I'd Drop:
Vendilion Clique
Cryptic Command
Batterskull
Swords to Plowshares
Oblivion Ring
Orim's Chant
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tossing Counter-top into the mix seemed logical to me, I have it, I can, but 8 spots is a lot at this point and the only cuttable spots are creatures/equips, which would essentially force my wins to be Elspeth and Jace bossin' out thug nasty style and whatnot. I'm iffy on it though, I'd like to run creatures, but one of the things that drove me to smaller creatures that are either increadibly powerful or super tech is the shittiness that is running a big-dumb-creature win condition. Smaller creatures are easier to protect, always.
Jace always seems like a safer way to win, Planeswalker's in general really, just feel like safer means to win with, but him in particular. If I went with Counter-Top, I'd probably run 4 Sun Titan's as the big dumb creature as they return counterbalance and top to the battlefield in the event Krosan Grip's start flying, and add the 4th Jace main-deck.
The only problem with the CounterTop shell for this deck is the lack of 3 drops, I'd be covered on 1-2 drops and 4 drops, but I'd always have to hard-counter 3 drops (which granted is like, Knight / Clique but still...).
Also, that, and the deck wouldn't be aggro-control anymore it'd be countertop superfriends..
--
For some deck history:
This idea evolved from my American Tempo (which was really American Mid-range Control) which was a very similar deck, except it focused more on disruption with Stifle/Wasteland and splashed red for Grim Lavamancer / some burn. I proxied it and ended up really not liking it, it tried to do a little too much at once and ended up feeling convoluted. It also was obnoxiously apparent that Red was only there because I wanted it to be. It didn't add anything meaningful that the other colors didn't do better / just as good without complicating my mana for no reason.
So I dropped red, which made the stoneforge package an obvious choice, it made Meddling Mage more appealing, it simplified the mana base, it added more control, it added equipment, it added more hand manipulation and drawing, really the deck just got a lot better after I dropped red.
-- Sideboard:
I don't know how I feel about the sideboard. Peacekeeper is there to stop things like Elves or Dredge or Reanimator who can drop this like, enormously unstoppable force of shit rather quickly--so rather than try and out-aggro them, I fall back on Peacekeeper and Jace.
Canonist is for combo, crypt graveyard hate, flux affinity, mage for combo, jace for peacekeeper wins, wrath for highly creature oriented aggressive decks / NO Prog shenanigans. It should all be pretty self explanatory.
------
After hitting "Post" I noticed the Caw Blade in Legacy thread, I don't know if this actually qualifies as it though, so this list may belong there? But I don't know. If so, let me know, I'll just copy-pasta this over there and hopefully there's a way to delete the thread.