Originally Posted by
Ronald Deuce
First of all, congratulations! It's a rare and beautiful thing to see "All My Spells" listed in the Legacy meta in 2018 on mtgtop8. Keep it up, yo!
So a couple of quick questions. Do you think your success is a product of the deck's power, the format's current potential/actual weakness against us, and/or a combination of the two?
My second question [EDIT: Not really a question at all, I guess] is for people interested in brewing something interesting, and it's a bit more complicated. I started playing this deck around 2014, and I shelved it for a few years with Underworld Cerberus as the primary wincon. I like the idea of using Garna to cut out a step in the combo, but I'm wondering whether it's better to be running fewer Cabal Therapies and more cards like Manamorphose that, in my experience, felt a bit weak and unreliable.
Here's what I'm considering:
4x Balustrade Spy
4x Undercity Informer
4x Bridge from Below
4x Pact of Negation
4x Lotus Petal
4x Chrome Mox
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Street Wraith
4x Gitaxian Probe
3x Summoner's Pact
3x Narcomoeba
3x Cabal Therapy
1x Dread Return
1x Flame-Kin Zealot
1x Manamorphose
SB:
4x Charbs
4x Spoils of the Vault
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Garna
1x Lab Man
1x Ingot Chewer (N.B.: I think you need this)
So we're not so worried about having Bridges or Narcos in hand, Chrome Mox has plenty of black cards, Cabal Therapy gets better, we don't have to use Manamorphose (card is really not good here), we can cut a whole bunch of steps out of our combo, and (maybe most importantly) we've got a bit more grindiness without losing speed. More vulnerable to Stifle and cards that stop attacks, but we don't target and we can afford to play draw-go rather than just go for broke.
Next step is to find a way to add Unmask without cutting our other disruption. [EDIT: Good against Surgical Extraction if we've got multiple Bridges.] And, of course, to find a ninth Rogue.