Are you feeling nervous, are you having fun? 4-0 with Cephalid Breakfast

I had a pleasant Sunday afternoon playing Legacy at Game Kastle in Redwood City, going 4-0 with Cephalid Breakfast. My list below owes tremendously to this one from Tensai: https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=31467&d=443882&f=LE

Here’s mine:

3 Mother of Runes
3 Nomads en-Kor
4 Cephalid Illusionist
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Narcomoeba
1 Thassa’s Oracle

3 Aether Vial
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Kaldra Compleat
1 Shuko

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
1 Dread Return

2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Cavern of Souls
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Plains
2 Island

SB:
1 Batterskull
1 Thassa’s Oracle
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Surgical Extraction
2 True-Name Nemesis
2 Plague Engineer
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Prismatic Ending

(Main diffs are I cut a Cavern for a Scrubland to help me cast Therapy and Plague Engineer and I put the second Cavern in the SB and don’t mess with Skyclave Apparition since we cut Recruiter of the Guard.)

I have historically been an aggro-control player sneering at X+Y combo and only occasionally dabbling with more convoluted stuff like Aluren. But I enjoy Mom and Aether Vial and Stoneforge packages, and the prospect of getting to play them in a deck with Brainstorm and Force of Will and a potentially counterproof combo that ends the game on turn two was somehow alluring, and the promise of a transformative sideboard that goes full True-Name Nemesis beats, well…

Plus I have fond memories of Nomads en-Kor from middle school. So here we are.

R1 vs Brian with Elves

It's very important you get paired R1 with someone you rode down with; otherwise how would you know it's a real Legacy tournament?

G1: I do the thing like T2 or T3, sorry my guy.
G2: He starts with Leyline of the Void and Thoughtseize on I don't remember what but then proceeds to draw like hot garbage. Circa T3 he has Visionary, Dryad Arbor, some other dork and not much else. I have Mom and Nomads. He goes to GSZ for 1. I figure he’s planning to get Wirewood Symbiote and start drawing a lot more cards with Visionary so I FOW. Then I find a Stoneforge and he scoops to the inevitable Jitte. I think his hand ended up with both Natural Order targets and no way to get them out. Oof.

Games 2-0, rounds 1-0.

R2 vs Not sure of the name with Bant Snapcaster/Uro/Stoneforge/Prismatic Ending/Endurance/general control stuff

G1: I mull to 5, he mulls to 3 (!). I go for a fast Stoneforge into Kaldra plan and hope to beat him down but he manages to find more ways to remove it than I have ways to protect it before I can close the game out.

A long topdeck war ensues in which I hope to let him keep thinking I’m some kind of Esper Stoneblade deck and not a combo deck. I’m putting counters on Jitte by attacking with a second Stoneforge and I kill an opposing SFM before Batterskull can come out. Also during this slow grindy stretch he casts at least one Uro but is stuck with a Plains and not the GGUU needed to escape it.

Long story short he stabilizes and my beatdown plan eventually gets away from me and my combo doesn’t show up and I scoop to save time.

Games 2 and 3 were less eventful as I’m able to combo off fairly expediently. In at least one of these games I have FOW for Endurance.

(Interesting side note: if my deck is face-up in my graveyard and Nomads and Illusionist are alive, I barely care about Endurance at all as I can Therapy the opponent before I try to Dread Return the Oracle, and if Endurance goes on the stack above Therapy I can let it happen and then just flip my library face up again. So yeah.)

Games 4-1, rounds 2-0.

R3 vs Kevin with Maverick.

G1: His deck is good against fair decks and my deck decides not to act like one. Thassa’s Oracle wins the game promptly.
G2: I board out Aether Vials but have a hand that really wants Stoneforge into Shuko to work. Kevin has something like T1 Noble Hierarch into T2 Collector Ouphe, Wasteland, and soon the Ouphe is swinging for four thanks to two exalted triggers. I die.
G3: The combo once again goes to plan and I have FOW for any interaction if it matters.

Games 6-2, rounds 3-0.

R4 vs David M. with UB Death’s Shadow

(This matchup went very poorly for me when we jammed it two nights ago at Kevin’s kitchen table, but whatever, at this point I have “All Eyes on Me” in my head: “Are you feeling nervous? Are you having fun? It’s almost over. It’s just begun.”)

I win the die-roll and since we’re both Daze decks this feels consequential.

G1: He opens by cycling three Street Wraiths and dropping to 14, then 11 off fetch-shock, but doesn’t have a Death’s Shadow to start beating me down; rather it’s a Delver that takes an extra turn to flip. I find the combo and do the thing with 10 life remaining.
G2: He quickly Reanimates a Street Wraith, which has swampwalk and starts beating me down, but also because he’s a Death’s Shadow deck, his life total at one point is only like 6 and I have daydreams of managing to race him with Nomads en-Kor / hardcast Narcomoeba beats. A timely 6/6 Murktide Regent puts an end to that charming fantasy and we’re off to G3.
G3: As we’re shuffling up I’m so relieved to be on the play here. I make a keep involving SFM, Illusionist, Cavern of Souls, Island and Ponder, and I decide I just want to go deep on the Shuko line, but my life is complicated when he Wastelands the Cavern which was naming Kor. A flipped Delver starts taking bites out of my life total, but luckily even as a second Delver is coming down I’m topdecking like a legend and with Cephalid Illusionist on the battlefield and one more untap remaining I blind rip a Nomad, tell David “better lucky than good” and get there.

Games 8-3, rounds 4-0.

So yeah. I’ll probably tinker slightly with the build but really hats off to Tensai again for being the sole reason I even considered putting it together this year.

Epilogue: I packed a shiny Strixhaven Brainstorm, a Sedgemoor Witch, a stamped Call of the Wildspeaker, a white-text Into the Roil, and a few other random things with my store credit. I also sold my Rishadan Ports as it hasn’t been a card I’ve felt excited to do things with for years; I hope David B. enjoys them immensely.

And in the end my dog was very excited for me to get home before sundown. Yep