[Deck] Team Italia

Team Italia
A Legacy Magic deck, by Gerard Fabiano
4th place at a StarCityGames.com Legacy Open tournament in Boston, Massachusetts, United States on 2011-04-24

Maindeck:

Artifacts
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
3 Figure of Destiny
4 Grim Lavamancer
1 Ranger of Eos
4 Stoneforge Mystic

Instants
4 Lightning Bolt

Legendary Artifacts
1 Umezawa's Jitte

Sorceries
1 Gerrard's Verdict
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
4 Vindicate

Lands
3 Arid Mesa
4 Badlands
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
1 Plateau
3 Scrubland
4 Wasteland

Sideboard:
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Pyroblast
4 Swords to Plowshares

Primer coming soon!

reserved

This deck is very solid. I played it the last week at the LGS and managed to take down a GPT with it. If you need help with the Primer, let me know. We changed a few things, but not a lot.

I'm actually happy to see a comeback to this kind of highly disruptive decks with small guys that do a lot of work. Grim Lavamancer, Dark Confidant, Stoneforge Mystic and even Trinket Mage are making a comeback. This makes me happy, i was a little bit tired of seeing progenitus and emrakul everywhere.

Back to the roots!

(Turn 1) Blood Moon wrecks you.

lol, to be fair, Turn 1 Thoughtseize taking Blood Moon wrecks Dstompy :P The list can always incorporate 1 basic plains in Moon metagames, and continue to bash face with Mystic + Equipment.

I really like the list.

No basics = random lose to lands/recurring wastelands/blood moon effects - don't forgot u don't have counters to avoid it on draw

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Metalwalker

lol, to be fair, Turn 1 Thoughtseize taking Blood Moon wrecks Dstompy :P The list can always incorporate 1 basic plains in Moon metagames, and continue to bash face with Mystic + Equipment.

I really like the list.

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Not necesseraly Dragon Stompy, but just any deck playing or boarding Blood Moon can wreck it, and there is no solution at all.
Losing to a burn deck in a Grand Prix must suck really hard at this budget.

Let's do some math here.

Chances of being screwed by Blood Moon <<< Chances of being screwed by not having right colors of mana against decks people actually play.

Basics aren't necessary.

Last time I played against a Blood Moon was.... over a year at least. Wastelands can be dealt with. Especially in a deck that runs a relatively high count of lands. I'll take my chances against running into a Blood Moon. In all likelihood, they were knocked out by a real deck in earlier rounds.

One of the few changes I made to the deck was to add Bitterblossom. In an equipment deck that aims to disrupt... it was extremely good. Especially against the counter/thopter decks that run Humility and Moat.

In a deck like this color fixing is absolutely necessary. The arguments for running that singleton basic are rather moot in comparision to A) The dependancy this deck has on color fixing, B) The disruption this deck runs to disable viable nonbasic threats, and C) decks centering on nonbasic hate rarely show up to big events and even if they do are often dropped within several rounds. Let's be realistic, DS is hardly the most competitive deck and many people (including myself as a DS player) realize this. As of right now DS is too meta-dependant to be a competitive deck, so the odds of facing it are irrelevant. Lands gets absolutely wrecked in the current meta, and lets face it that Stax hasn't put out good results since Planar Chaos came out. The only two decks that ever even bother to run a MD/SB Moon effect beyond the aforementioned are S&T and Enchantress, of which Moon effects aren't established cards but rather personal choices for either deck.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Wasteland. So...? This deck can reasonably function and recover off of just 2 mana. To effectively color fix and avoid Waste you'd need at least 3 basics which will affect your gameplay. I think in this case I'd rather randomly get wrecked by that deck you're realistically never going to see rather than decrease the overall strength of the deck just to be safe.

ForlornEgoist

Merfok sometimes run back to basic in the board so as far as tier one decks that is all you really need to worry about. I guess goblins can be annoying with wasteland and ports but I think adding in 3 basic to this deck list is not worth it to be honest. This isn't personally my style of deck but I do think it is a very strong deck.

I'm not sure that one T8 appearance makes a deck established.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tim the Enchanter

I'm not sure that one T8 appearance makes a deck established.

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+1

No offense but this seems just the SCG effect.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Ya gotta love the singleton Divining Top with no means to fetch it. I already said it, but this deck is a really cool idea in colors nobody else has been successful in. But it has some gaping holes. Perhaps we can patch them.

The land situation is tenuous, but this is hardly the only deck straddling that fence. Back to Basics from Merfolk is unlikely to be a problem with so many 1 CC spells. On that note, expect much suck from Misstep in the near future.

The lack of real threats is a problem. Without equipment in play, this deck just piddles around. Why bother Vindicating a blocker when the only attacker you have is a Dark Confidant or a Grim Lavamancer?

Too few creatures in general is an issue. There are going to be plenty of games when you land a Mystic and don't see another creature for several turns. If the opponent zaps the Mystic, you have a problem.

I say add Jotun Grunt for starters in place of some of the random stuff to take care of both of these issues at once.

Bitterblossom solves the lack-of-creatures problem. It is incredibly powerful because it continuously puts out creatures to use equipment with.

The Land situation is not the problem people think it is.

Adding Jotun Grunt doesn't solve the creature problem and has significant anti-synergy with Grim Lavamancer. It is a situational creature that doesn't get there when you need it.

I do think Bitterblossom would be pretty good here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Finn

Ya gotta love the singleton Divining Top with no means to fetch it. I already said it, but this deck is a really cool idea in colors nobody else has been successful in. But it has some gaping holes. Perhaps we can patch them.

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So... you're saying that this should be in the developing section? I agree. I know of at least 3 people that played this in Charlotte and all of them scrubbed out by the end of round four.

I really like the idea behind this deck, but I see some things that I would change.

First of all, I absolutely love the fish-y creature base (not Merfolk fish, but the oldschool fish). I have quite a bit of experience with these style decks from years past, and really enjoy the playstyle.

I would quickly cut the 3 Figure of Destiny and 1 Ranger of Eos for 4 Mother of Runes. The deck doesn't need a 1 drop that can eventually become a 4/4 or larger; it has equipment for that. What the deck needs, is additional control/utility. Mother of Runes not only protects the creature base, which happens to be pretty fragile, she can also send smaller guys into the red zone more effectively (can be very effective with equipment like SoFI and an unactive Jitte).

The singleton Top is completely out of place. Whether or not it's necessary in here, I do not know. However, if I were to run it, it would be as a 3-4 of, and not a singleton.

This deck is not trying to be aggressive; the aggro package is not tempo oriented, and doesn't apply a fast beatdown. The aggro package is slow and controlling, primarily by gaining alot of card advantage. For this reason, I do not understand why Lightning Bolt is favored over Swords to Plowshares. Swords is a far more effective removal spell, and should most definitely be ran instead.

Basilisk Collar is really janky. I can understand it, slightly, in the current list, but it still seems like the worst equipment spell in the deck. In a list with Mother of Runes, Swords to Plowshares, and Vindicate (which is already being ran), the deck does not need the deathtouch. With Umezawa's Jitte, the deck does not need the lifelink.

Lands (22)
4 Marsh Flats
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Arid Mesa
4 Scrubland
1 Badlands
1 Plateau
1 Swamp
1 Plains
4 Wasteland

Creatures (16)
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Mother of Runes
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Dark Confidant

Spells (22)
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Vindicate
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

At this point, the deck is only splashing red for Grim Lavamancer's, which happen to be an absolute house against Vial Aggro so I think their inclusion is good. It also opens up Red Elemental Blasts in the sideboard. Otherwise, the deck focuses on B/W, since that's the core of the deck. I decided to keep the Top's in for now to see how strong they are. Even with SFM, Jitte is a critical element of this deck, and I feel 2 would work better.

I haven't playtested this, so my take may not be optimal. This is the direction I would go in, though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hanni

Mother of Runes not only protects the creature base, which happens to be pretty fragile, she can also send smaller guys into the red zone more effectively (can be very effective with equipment like SoFI and an unactive Jitte).

Swords is a far more effective removal spell, and should most definitely be ran instead.

Basilisk Collar is really janky.

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I agree with Mom and STP, both are must plays IMO. However, I believe collar is worth a slot. Collar is searchable with Stoneforge and Combos with Grim Lavamancer. It wins games, period. Collar on a Mom is also more effective than Mom with Jitte sometimes. It should probably be a 1/1/1 Jitte/Sofi/Collar split. Cheers.