Card Discussion.
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Sample list:
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8 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Karakas
4 Trinisphere
4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Curse of Death's Hold
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cruel Reality
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Curse of Misfortunes
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Chrome Mox
4 Eliminate
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
2 Dystopia
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Vault of Whispers
4 Plague Engineer
1 Necromentia
2 Hymn to Tourach
Lands:
The land based is extremely similar to the tried and true moon stompy base (8 sol lands, 8-12 untapped lands, 8 pieces of acceleration), with 1-5 more utility lands to support our higher curve without flooding.
• Ancient Tomb
o Tap, pay 2 life: Add 2.
o The best sol land. Play 4.
o It is usually but not always worth taking 2-4 life to play around daze
• City of Traitors
o When you play another land, sacrifice ~.
o Tap: Add 2.
o The second best sol land. Play 4
o It is usually not worth losing city to play around daze, unless you know you will die imminently.
o Putting a land into play with an opponents S&T, uro, or vet explorer will not trigger city. MTGO is bugged and will not trigger when you play a land stolen from the opponent by opposition agent.
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
o Legendary Land. All lands are swamps in addition to their other types.
o Lifegain with ancient tomb, and helps cast BB spells. Play 1-3 depending on how many BB spells you have.
• Snow-covered swamp
o Can’t be killed by wasteland.
o Snow covered for the fringe situation where the opponent trades you a coatl and for bluffing. Or your favourite basic swamp; you do you. The fact you are reading this primer probably means you care about looking stylish more than that 0.02% winrate increase.
o You need at least 10 t1 untapped black producing lands, fill up remaining slots based on how many urborgs you have.
• Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
o Target opponent reveals their hand. You may choose a card from it with converted mana cost 3 or greater. That player discards that card.
o Pelakka Caverns enters the battlefield tapped.
{T}: Add {B}.
o Newest addition to the deck, it’s the worst as a land but the best as a “spell”. It is considerably better than it looks; it has tons on flexibility functioning as a mana source, protection or acceleration (with chrome mox). It should not be compared to thoughtseize; it should be compared to ponder for thoughtseize, ponder for land or ponder for dark ritual.
o Having a land that can trade with the only cards we care about (forces, oko, show & tell) with only 1 black pip and being immediately useful is extremely strong. Has mostly replaced the below utility lands.
o With oko banning planeswalkers and other high cmc cards are less prevelant, and creatures are more common. Hagra’s mauling is considerable as an alternative or in addition to pelakka. Extra cost and black pip are problematic however. 3-6.
• Ifnir deadlands
o Tap: Add 1.
o Tap, pay 1 life: Add 1
o Tap, pay 2BB, sacrifice a Desert: Put two -1/-1 counters on target creature an opponent controls. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
o Lowest opportunity cost, weakest power. Uncounterable arcanist/delver killing. 0-1
• Castle Lochwain or Silent Clearing
o Castle Locthwain enters the battlefield tapped unless you control a Swamp.
o {T}: Add {B}.
o {1}{B}{B}, {T}: Draw a card, then you lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand.
o Strong ability for controlling flooding but slow. I was playing castle prior to pelakka predation.
o Silent clearing has a bit higher floor for a lower ceiling. Silent Clearing over nurturing peatland gives you a small chance of hard casting splendor if you draw 2 or manage to steal a tundra with opposition agent. It also bluff D&T better whereas AFAIK no deck plays nurturing peatland. 0-2.
• Karakas
o Legendary Land.{T}: Add {W}.
o {T}: Return target legendary creature to its owner’s hand.
o Technically better than a colourless land since it can hard cast splendor in conjunction with opposition agent every once in a blue moon.
o Purely played because the turbo depths matchup is so bad. 0-1.
Spells:
The main consideration with spells is to have at least 22 (absolute minimum 20) white or black cards for chrome mox. If you max out on helms and bridges you may have issues with imprinting on chrome mox, especially if you draw 2. Assume mainboard unless mentioned elsewhere. You should have an extremely strong reason for each two black pip card you put in the deck. If you have less than 10 cards that win the game you will give too much time for the opponent to get out of your lock.
• Dark Ritual
o Arguably the best acceleration in legacy. Yes it sucks if you topdeck it with chalice out, but it makes you the best deck in the format at t1 trinisphere. 4.
o Fixes colourless mana into black with 3ball out for dystopia etc…
o More discussion about Dark Ritual & Chalice:
I will be using
this excellent article as framework to answer the question about why to play dark ritual in a chalice deck.
Please think about when patriot was a deck to beat that played bolt & plow. Consider the following non-bos accepted in 2020 legacy: AdNaus & Echo, teeg & gsz, uro and basic plains, 3 of any legendary land, deafening silence & ponder. Its interesting to ask @maxtortion‘s questions about each of these, and if it matters more or less than drit & chalice.
The answers to the 3 questions in the article are:
1. This anti-synergy only matters after t1, when your chalice has not been dealt with, and only if you top deck it.
2. It can matter but you do have 4 mox.
3. Chalice & Drit are 1st and 2nd best at what they do, respectively.
• Chrome Mox
o Stompy staple. Its probably the best card in the deck. Outlet for dead curse targets/dark rituals. 4.
o You can exile karn to chrome mox if you need to get empty handed, but don’t expect it to do anything.
• Chalice of the Void
o The reason to play this deck. 4.
o You can kill it with Karn+ if you are desperate to dark ritual.
o In paper: stop feelbads, remember your triggers.
• Trinisphere
o Because of dark ritual you are the best deck in the format at getting this out t1. 3-4.
o If you turn Trinisphere into a creature, attacking with it will cause the ability to turn off.
• Leyline of the Void
o The premier black hate card. Against almost every deck this will at least be annoying, which is insane for a 0 mana spell. And 10% of the time it wins you g1 by itself. 4.
o Leyline prevents dies triggers such as the one from Mogg War Marshall, Veteran Explorer or Flagstones of Trokair.
o Usually it is correct to put the first 1 into play t0 in the blind, but the second should be kept for chrome mox. Occassionally you may need to keep the first 1 for chrome mox so don't autopilot.
• Ensnaring Bridge
o We usually lose to mana denial and can easily get cards stuck in hand. Still quite good vs Eldrazi and Marit Lage. 0-2 main, 1 side.
• Eliminate
o 1B Instant. Destroy target creature or planeswalker with cmc 3 or less.
o Answers cards that traditionally prove difficult for stompy to beat (big creatures like goyf, cheap planeswalkers like oko) efficiently, without conflicting with chalice. Play 4 unless you are in a meta with no aggro or tempo.
o With oko gone, if your meta has few planeswalkers,
Liliana’s triumph (delve creatures/TNN/marit lage) or
collective brutality (combo/control) can be played instead
• Defense Grid
o 2 Artifact. Spells cost 3 more to cast except on their controllers turn.
o After marit lage and force of Vigor, daze is probably the strongest card against this deck. Defense grid is the best possible daze answer in colour and gives you the most nut draws. (Leyline, tomb grid, swamp rit helm is a protected t2 kill)
o Oko being banned makes this worth considering. There are still costs associated that need to be taken into account: it doesn’t do much with a trinisphere in play already, it hurts your B count for mox, it is significantly worse than 3 ball vs combo, and it is a poor top deck.
• Murderous Rider // Swift End
o 1BB instant. Destroy target creature or planeswalker. You lose 2 life. (Then exile this card. You may cast the creature later from exile.)
o 1BB. 2/3 Lifelink. When Murderous Rider dies, put it on the bottom of its owner’s library.
o Additional eliminates that also draws you a great blocker. 1BB is rough on the mana base however and I prefer pelakka predation above as an additional pw removal/expensive creature removal. (0-2 main or side)
• Plague Engineer
o 2B. 2/2 Deathtouch. As Plague Engineer enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Creatures of the chosen type your opponents control get -1/-1.
o The best 2B hate piece probably ever, it is especially good when chalice and trinisphere are bad. 3-4 between main and side.
• Helm of Obedience
o Artifact, 4.
o {X}, {T}: Target opponent mills a card, then repeats this process until a creature card or X cards have been put into their graveyard this way, whichever comes first. If one or more creature cards were put into that graveyard this way, sacrifice Helm of Obedience and put one of them onto the battlefield under your control. X can’t be 0.
o Since you are playing Leyline anyways, activating this with Leyline out for X=1 or more will exile the opponents entire library. This is true even if the opponent has a Progenitus in their library; they must choose a different replacement effect once they are looping shuffling Progenitus back into the library.
o If you don’t have Leyline, fairly activating it can buy you an emergency blocker, steal a griselbrand vs s&t or BR reanimator, steal a creature for the last few points of damage if they are too greedy with library, “counter” a personal tutor or mystic sanctuary, or slowly mill the opponent out if they are creatureless. I have won multiple times in each of these ways, however it is usually better to try and wait for the Leyline topdeck.
o It’s the worst of the wincons by itself however so trim it first if your curve needs to be lowered. 1-3 MD, 1 side. Side in the helm if Karn passive/Coating is already gg or if Karn is sided out.
• Karn, the Great Creator
o A staple of any deck in any format with ramp or fast mana, you know what this does. 4.
o This card is extra important in this deck as we otherwise have difficulty interacting with lands.
o Helm combo means running him out into a board where he will die, as a 4 cmc tutor, is often correct.
o Remember that Karn can get bog’d or force of negation’d artifacts too.
• Curse of Misfortunes
o 4B Enchantment. Enchant player. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may search your library for a Curse card that doesn’t have the same name as a Curse attached to enchanted player, put it onto the battlefield attached to that player, then shuffle your library.
o It is the namesake of the deck. Play 4. Some basic aura rules:
Attaching does not target and does not use the stack. Veil/Leyline of Sanctity do nothing to the trigger. They cannot fetch if they see you getting overwhelming splendor after they let the trigger resolve. This also applies to any curse coming down off of show & tell.
Casting an aura does target. Don’t get blown out by veil. Always target the opponent.
Aura’s will died as a SBA if turned into a creature. Don’t plus your Karn on them if they are an artifact.
o Due to its wording, if the OP force of vigors your curse of misfortunes in response to the trigger it can get another copy of curse of misfortunes.
• Overwhelming Splendor
o 6WW. Enchant player. Creatures enchanted player controls lose all abilities and have base power and toughness 1/1. Enchanted player can’t activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities or loyalty abilities. 1.
o Primary target, this beats most non-storm decks by itself. Unfortunately it is uncastable; exile it to chrome mox if you have enough black sources.
o Remember the last line affects a player, not a group of permanents. Fetchlands, Wasteland, Vials, and even cards in hand with cycling or ninjitsu.
o As a humility effect you will have to learns lots of layers issues. The most common ones: Elks made before it are 1/1s, elks made after it are 3/3s. Magus of the Moon and Painter’s Servant’s abilities will not be turned off. 0/0 creatures like walking ballista will become bigger.
• Curse of Death’s Hold
o 3BB. Enchant player. Creatures enchanted player controls get -1/-1.
o The least impressive but cheapest curse, it forms a hard lock with splendor above. Considering how good plague engineer is in legacy, just hardcasting it can win games vs some decks such as Goblins. 1.
o If you expect removal or are about to die to a wide board sometimes it is correct to get this one first, as it has the most impact if immediately removed.
o Plus-ing karn on a 1 cmc artifact (for example
pithing needle on helm) will kill it with curse of death’s hold in play
• Cruel Reality
o 5BB. Enchant player. At the beginning of enchanted player’s upkeep, that player sacrifices a creature or planeswalker. If the player can’t, they lose 5 life.
o Handles the few permanents that can beat the above lock (planeswalkers, +1/+1 counters) as well as actually finishes the game. 1.
o When against a combo that doesn’t use permanents much like storm, it is usually correct to get this first (If fools wisdom is not relevant or played) to speed up your clock.
• Curse of Fool's Wisdom
o 4BB Enchantment. Enchant player. Whenever enchanted player draws a card, they lose 2 life and you gain 2 life. Madness {3}{B} .
o Historically, it is an additional win con when MTGO is bugged and cruel reality doesn’t work. You can enable the madness with collective brutality if you are playing that card.
o Can cover for one of the good curses being exiled to chrome mox. This is important to increase threat density in control metas, as well as just making the deck more consistent overall.
o Answers klothys/valakut awakening/burn which otherwise can be an issue. Having a curse that is relevant to combo without being as dead as curse of exhaustion is a benefit in combo metas.
o In tempo metas it can be too weak to be worth the extra dead draw, since it is pretty embarrassing to hard cast. 0-1
Primarily Sideboard cards
• Sorcerous Spyglass
o A powerful card against our worst matchups (depths/stryfo/rug), but eliminate is more flexible. I find having more than 12 do nothing hate pieces (chalice/3ball/leyline) MD can lead to games where you just never draw threats and die to that t1 delver. Note that the peek effect is significantly more valuable when curving into a pelakka predation. 0-2 MD, 1 SB
o Although you have one in the sideboard as part of the karn package, feel free to side it in for Wasteland or Marit Lage matchups.
• Vault of Whispers
o Artifact Land. {T}: add {B}
o Allows Karn to get a coloured mana source to hit 5 mana through Trinisphere. 1 SB.
o This allows you to helm combo with just leyline, karn and 4 mana; get helm with one activation and vault with another to activate it.
o This can also come up if you have to lose your City of Traitors to play karn.
o Using Karn + on this will cause a death trigger. Notably, this will exile opposing Bridge From Belows.
o Feel free to side this in vs mana denial or slow control decks, where you want more permanent mana sources.
• Liquimetal Coating
o Allows you interact with lands, extremely powerful with Trinisphere. Don’t side this in ever. 1 SB.
o Minus-ing with karn immediately to get this allows you to start killing lands faster. It does leaves you at risk of being blown out by bolt or a hasty coatl/elk. Consider the risks and rewards.
o Using Karn + to kill lands with this will cause a death trigger. Notably, this will trigger opposing Bridge From Belows.
• Tormod’s Crypt
o A great Karn target vs graveyard decks. However, we are already so favoured vs them that sideboard space is often better served elsewhere. 0-1 SB.
o Can be used on yourself to buy back countered/destroyed artifacts.
• Torpor Orb
o A Karn target that replaces the 4th plague engineer vs creature decks. Not quite as good there, but also being great vs doomsday, oops and Esper vial is nice. 0-1 SB.
o It will stop uro from killing itself.
• Mycrosynth Lattice
o Turns Karn into 10 cmc win the game. 1 SB. Don’t side this in.
o This is not recommended vs
collector ouphe. Vs
null rod this can still be a win if the opponent has no board, no field of the dead/dryad arbor/emrakul in library and less cards in library.
o This is the easiest way to hardcast overwhelming splendor; which has come up for me once or twice.
• Plague Reaver
o 2B Creature. At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice each other creature you control.
Discard two cards, Sacrifice Plague Reaver: Choose target opponent. Return Plague Reaver to the battlefield under that player’s control at the beginning of their next upkeep.
o With oko and ice fang-coatl mostly gone, this is the classic sideboard juke. None of the text matters except the numbers in the bottom right corner. This is a goyf/mentor for our deck to punk people who sideboard out removal for enchantment hate. Choke on your force of vigors/back to basics and die, control player!
o We play this over
Rotting Regisaur since the downside matters less in a high curve, low creature deck. 0-3 SB.
• Snuff out
o Excellent tempo positive removal through chalice and daze when eliminate is too slow. A bit dangerous to your life total and leaves you unable to answer Klothys or Karn. 0-1 SB.
• Soul Shatter
o 2B Instant. Each opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker with the highest converted mana cost among creatures and planeswalkers they control.
o A recent upgrade to
To the Slaughter, this is an option if you need your PW removal to also deal with Marit Lage and T1/T2 Karn. Ignoring veil of summer & cheap creatures like elemental tokens is a nice bonus. (0-2 main or side)
• Bloodchief’s Thirst
o Your sideboard removal primarily needs to answer either big things eliminate misses (soul shatter for Lage and Karn) or extremely cheap (snuff out for Thalia or dryad arbor) Bloodchiefs thirst does both of those things moderately well, at the cost of efficiency, Non-boing with chalice, and instant speed. 0-1 SB.
• Hymn to Tourach or Collective Brutality or Agonizing Remorse
o All 3 options are primarily to deal with spell based combo or forces. BB is extremely difficult to cast, but against decks which are not attacking your mana it is fine to side in a few. I value non-disenchantable sideboard cards highly; you want 2-3 hand/search/draw hate between this and the ones below. This is a flexible discard spell but it has low impact.
The other two options are even more flexible (delver and uro removal respectively) and easier to cast but are even less game changing. 0-3 SB.
• Dreamstealer
o 2B. ½. Menace. Whenever Dreamstealer deals combat damage to a player, that player discards that many cards. Eternalize {4}{B}{B} ({4}{B}{B}, Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a token that’s a copy of it, except it’s a 4/4 black Zombie Human Wizard with no mana cost. Eternalize only as a sorcery.)
o A discard spell that is easier to cast and is quite effective vs control sitting on a pile of counterspells. It is quite slow however. 0-3 SB
• Necromentia
o 1BB. Choose a card name other than a basic land card name. Search target opponent’s graveyard, hand, and library for any number of cards with that name and exile them. That player shuffles their library, then creates a 2/2 black Zombie creature token for each card exiled from their hand this way.
o The best sad sac effect since it can target dark depths. It is the best discard spell vs A+B combo & graveyard decks, the worst one vs control. 0-3 SB.
o I have never done this, but against some decks naming a dual that is not yet in play could completely take them off a colour.
o You can die to the zombie you give them, but it is usually better than giving the opponent a random card.
• Chains of Mephistopheles
o An alternative to the discard mentioned above if you want additional blue hate. 0-2 SB.
• Dystopia
o 1BB. Cumulative upkeep—Pay 1 life. (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.). At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player sacrifices a green or white permanent.
o Handles snowko/rug delver bullshit effectively. The only card in the format that trades evenly with Oko + elk. It will also deal with goyfs/library/Klothys/Uro which can be a pain for you. You can’t run too many though because it doesn’t answer delver. 2 SB
o It happens to also be great against Thalia decks and decent vs elves/enchantress, but that’s not the reason they are in your sideboard.
o It is removal for leyline of sanctity if you know your opponent is running those.
o If curse of misfortunes & dystopia are triggering at the same time, stack the triggers so that the sac and fail to pay upkeep triggers resolve before you search and put in splendor (a white permanent) into play.
o If Cruel Reality & Dystopia are triggering at the same time, stack the triggers so that you give the opponent the smallest amount of options. Specifically, order it such that the cruel reality trigger resolves first if they have a green or white non-creature permanent or that the dystopia trigger resolves first if they have a red/blue/black/colourless creature.
o Remember that sylvan library & klothys both trigger after the upkeep step; they will not get the effect if they sac it to dystopia.
o When deciding to pay for it with no targets, consider if it would be worth paying upkeep twice to kill something. Table below:
Age counter you are adding this turn 1 2 3 4 5 6
Life to kill something played next turn 3 5 7 9 11 13
• Curse of Exhaustion
o 2WW. Enchant player. Enchanted player can’t cast more than one spell each turn.
o Gives us a great curse target against storm which usually can ignore splendor. However, those decks are already so favoured sideboard space is usually better served elsewhere. 0-1 SB.
• Opposition Agent
o 2B. Flash. 3/2. You control an opponent while they are searching their library. You exileeach card they find, and can play those cards using mana of any colour.
o A very good card for this deck. Note that the card stolen can be played even without agent. The only prison piece ever printed that can be cast at instant speed off of dark ritual. Has the floor of a flash magus of the blood sun, and absolutely dumpsters both spell based combo and green non-brainstorm decks. After the opponent’s fetch gets got once they will respect untapped swamp, giving you free value. Several abilities such as SFM allow the controller to decline to search in which case you would not be able to control them. While controlling the opponent, you get to see everything they can see, except for their sideboard. This includes their hand, which is currently bugged on MTGO.
o It does play very badly with urborg and against removal. For these reasons I have decided it’s not quite good enough to maindeck in fair metas. Urborg should usually be sided out for vault if this comes in. 2-4 SB.
o Don’t underestimate the flash body. Quite relevant vs arcanist, Karn & Narset.
o Deciding whether to run the body out as a prison effect (to make sure it doesn’t let anything through) or try and steal something is a difficult choice. Some heuristics of mine:
o Against sorcery speed effects in decks with little interaction (E.g. GSZ) it’s usually free to wait since you can always cast it eot.
o Against instant speed effects in decks with lots of interaction (fetches in snow) its best to play it out if you have other things to do with your mana. How much does it hurt you if they go fetch pass?
o If you manage to steal something: Vs fetches steal the duals in their removal colours or try to get double white for splendor. Vs green tutors you should be able to find something good against themselves. Vs spell combo tutors: why hasn’t your opponent conceded yet?
• Treacherous Blessing
o An effective 2 cmc draw 3 in this deck, but it is too likely to kill yourself against aggro. Can be considered in heavy control/combo metas. 0-2 in the 75.
o You can use liquimettal coating or an opponent's council's judgment to get rid of it.
Rejected cards
• Liliana of the veil (And other 1BB planeswalkers such as ashiok)
o Although one of the more powerful cards in black, we have a high curve so the plus is detrimental and 1BB cards are difficult to play early without dark ritual.
o If we are playing a 1BB card, I want it to beat an oko. See murderous rider above. With oko banned Liliana the last hope is a consideration as a wincon we can deploy t1, but sometimes she just doesn’t do enough and you lose before she can ultimate.
• Wasteland
o You have one of the highest curves in legacy.
o If you are playing spyglass MD, you are probably naming this card.
• The Abyss
o Great in a creatureless deck, but I want all my >3 cmc cards to win the game or at least beat oko.
• Nether Void
o You have one of the highest curves in legacy.
• Bitterblossom
o The days of this being good vs control are gone. It loses to oko & uro, especially in an ancient tomb deck.
• Elspeth’s Nightmare
• Lotus Petal
o I know dark ritual & chalice looks bad, but the extra velocity and black count is essential.
• Crucible of Worlds
o Better suited for a grindy stax deck, we are trying to go over the top of the opponent. Wasteland and fetches are bad in this deck.
• Feed the Swarm
o Black gets enchantment removal now, but the enchantment we care about most is
klothys.
o Worse than dystopia in most situations.
• Hall of Heliod's Generosity
o Legendary Land.{T}: Add {C}.
o {1W}, {T}: Put target enchantment card from your graveyard to the top of your library.
o Extremely powerful vs control, but requiring a small splash and producing no coloured mana screws up your mana too much in other match-ups. 0.
• Ill-Gotten Gains
o Although it does combo with
leyline of the void, it is significantly worse with leyline than helm and not much better than helm without leyline.
o Compared to DETH our fair IGG are really bad since we don’t have LED or Tutors.
o Being black for Chrome Mox is not enough of an upside to outweigh the above downsides.