[Primer] R/G Lands

[filln]

If you're splashing black, why not try out some number of deathrite shamans. It's in almost every deck. Why not lands if you're going b/g like everything else.

How does everyone feel about Chalice of the Void? More and more I have thought about cutting it from the sideboard and finally did. I had it in there for several months. I never liked it. Can't cast it on 2 obviously. 1 never seems right even if an exploration is on board, may be a correct line in .01% of board states/situations. Even on 0, it always somehow ended up on the board right before I drew a mox diamond.

Regarding Deathrite, I'm not sure you want to be turning on an opponent's creature removal in the first game. His abilities are also relatively mediocre with our game plan as we'd rather keep lands in our graveyard and chipping away at an opponent's life total often doesn't matter if you're swinging in with a 20/20. The ability to protect your Dark Depths and Loams from Surgical is kind of neat I guess.

Never a huge fan of Chalice as well and it looks like most players have already moved away from it in favor of Sphere effects instead.

[Eragos]

Hi there I am an old Legacy lover, played modern for the last few years and now I'm ready to go back to legacy
I love the flavor of this deck and I own the cards so I am keen on battling with it. I love its strength against delver strategies and with the absence of an overpowered miracles strategy I believe it's in a good position.

The inability of interacting with combo is a big issue though, and this deck consistently looses to S&T and storm. Has anyone ever tested living wish ? It can find creatures that impair combo, it provides a graveyard-independent victory condition, and it can find a piece of combo. We can even find easily room for it by moving situational land cards to the board like chasm, karakas, bog, tabernacle, or one piece of the combo or the 4th groove.
Thoughts on it ?

[patrickjdoyle]

Hi there I am an old Legacy lover, played modern for the last few years and now I'm ready to go back to legacy
I love the flavor of this deck and I own the cards so I am keen on battling with it. I love its strength against delver strategies and with the absence of an overpowered miracles strategy I believe it's in a good position.

The inability of interacting with combo is a big issue though, and this deck consistently looses to S&T and storm. Has anyone ever tested living wish ? It can find creatures that impair combo, it provides a graveyard-independent victory condition, and it can find a piece of combo. We can even find easily room for it by moving situational land cards to the board like chasm, karakas, bog, tabernacle, or one piece of the combo or the 4th groove.
Thoughts on it ?

Its a neat idea, but I don't think its worth is. Crop rotation and gamble already fill the role of fetching situational lands or missing combo pieces depending on how the game is going. Cutting any more lands for spells will leave you with too few lands (making loam way weaker), and you cant really cut any of the spells (loam, P Fire, and exploration are musts, and having 8 tutors is a big deal for consistency. In theory you could cut either a Manabond or Gamble/Crop Rot for Living wish but i think its just a worse option than either of those two, since its two mana, a sorcery, and cannot grab loam/pfire or be cast through blood moon, which comes up.) Grabbing a creature from the board to fight combo is okay(though the ones that come to mind other than tracker would require a white splash), but I don't think its enough of an improvement to outweigh the downsides.

Part of playing magic is accepting there are going to be some games/MUs you will lose. You can tune your deck to be better against them, but at a certain point it is ultimately better to accept you will be unfavored, instead of making your good/even matchups worse in an effort to make the bad one less bad.

That said, I do like your thought process, keep throwing out ideas for the deck!

[Claymore]

A newer version of Turbo Depths won EE7 with a Living Wish package. Very different from RG Lands, but there has been success with that idea along side Dark Depths.

[Eragos]

Thanks for the answer, yes I follow your reasoning. It's just that having access to ashen rider and perhaps to canonist/talia on game 1 sounds super sweet to me :o

[Ingo]

What might be a problem game 1 against combo with Living Wish, is that you usually don't know what he's playing (and what to wish for) until it's combo time (and too late). A Burning Wish is better, as it proactively gets your engine going by getting Life from the Loam, besides also having access to a reactive wishboard.

[Epeirogeny]

Regarding Deathrite, I'm not sure you want to be turning on an opponent's creature removal in the first game. His abilities are also relatively mediocre with our game plan as we'd rather keep lands in our graveyard and chipping away at an opponent's life total often doesn't matter if you're swinging in with a 20/20. The ability to protect your Dark Depths and Loams from Surgical is kind of neat I guess.

Never a huge fan of Chalice as well and it looks like most players have already moved away from it in favor of Sphere effects instead.

I agree about your thoughts on deathrite shaman. I was joking about it in the sense that legacy as a whole is warping towards b/g because of deathrite shaman. So if lands is going to now splash black, they may as well play deathrite shaman because every other deck is doing it.


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[patrickjdoyle]

A newer version of Turbo Depths won EE7 with a Living Wish package. Very different from RG Lands, but there has been success with that idea along side Dark Depths.

Yes, but Turbo Depths' main concern is quickly combing out, and wish allows them another way to fetch depths/stage or hexmage, which is what they would be doing when not getting a hate card. For us, Loam, Fire and Depths/stage are the main things we would go for when not getting a silver bullet, and wish only lets us get depths/stage, which makes its floor a lot lower for us than it is for turbo depths. Turbo Depths also has more flex spots than we do, and doesn't have to worry about that all too important Land/Spell ratio for the loam engine (since it is rare for them to even run loam and when they do its just to recover the combo).

[patrickjdoyle]

I agree about your thoughts on deathrite shaman. I was joking about it in the sense that legacy as a whole is warping towards b/g because of deathrite shaman. So if lands is going to now splash black, they may as well play deathrite shaman because every other deck is doing it.


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You joke but there's a guy I've played against at some EW trials who plays a mashup of bug control and lands to decent success. He placed highly enough in Vegas to have his decklist posted.

I would say its closer to BUG control with a dark depths package and lands running deathrite, but it does have Loam Depths Stage Wasteland sitting alongside Deathrite.

[OldSpellMaster]

So I was looking for a replacement for the Krosan Grips, but I wanted something that gives me a new angle to attack my opponents permanents and something that works with the main engine of the deck. I boarded it a few times but never draw it. On the other hand I also boarded Krosan Grip a few times and this card was by far the one that underperformed the most in my SB (Also the last tournaments). Since Counterbalance is not played anymore Krosan Grip seems weaker for the RUG SB. I'm still not sure. Ordered some more copies of Oblivion Stone so I will replace the 3 Krosan Grip for 3 OS to test it more. I mean I would never cut the "Krosan Grip" effect completely from the SB. Either I will keep them or replace them with something that does the "same" or something that helps us more in other matches where KG is not strong. I like it in theory to have a reset bottom that can handle everything, but as I said not sure if it is too clunky or if I really wanna cut KG.

Since I saw your post I think about putting OStone in as well. There are some points to look at: If you replace KGrip with OStones, will it affect other MU in a bad way? What if you have to cast OStone instead of sneaking in with SnT? So do I have the needed mana?
My oppinion: An artifact fits better in my RUG build than those Grips. But with EE I already have a good artifact doing the same except for SnT decks.
If it should be the SnT solution, OStone fits good. If I wanna use it against other decks, maybe a NDisk or Boompile is good enough. I just see the problem, it can be counteted, but in RUG it's recurrable... And I still have to draw it the right time (like KGrip also)...

About CotV: I'm not sure if I should cut it. What are your ferlings about it? I have Tolaria West as tutor, but thats not really an advantage against fast combo decks...

[Epeirogeny]

You joke but there's a guy I've played against at some EW trials who plays a mashup of bug control and lands to decent success. He placed highly enough in Vegas to have his decklist posted.

I would say its closer to BUG control with a dark depths package and lands running deathrite, but it does have Loam Depths Stage Wasteland sitting alongside Deathrite.

Haha. I'm not surprised.



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[patrickjdoyle]

Serious question guys, what is drop of honey for? I mean, I get what its "for" (beats up on things like elves, Delver, Death and taxes, infect) but with the exception of death and taxes it feels like it comes in against decks we are already very favored, and honestly doesn't even seem like the best choice for creature removal (it seems very slow, and we cant even just put it on the field early and leave it there as they can simply not play a creature and it dies).
Open to (and looking for) an opposing opinion, but it honestly seems like the sideboard slot could be better utilized IMO. If you are worried about swarms of creatures, why not play something like Volcanic Fallout of Kozilek's return? Yes, I know in theory Drop can kill a Grizzlebrand or Emrakul, but I think vs the types of decks cheating fatties into play, you'd rather have spheres and a fast combo or tracker out of the board rather than trying to play their little combo games. And Karakas/Maze seem like better answers than drop since they are MDable. (well Maze doesn't answer Emrakul but you cant have everything.)

Thoughts? I would love to hear from the people who play/support drop.

[Dice_Box]

Decks that play Leo and TNN.

[TLK]

Played in a local Legacy event for staples on Saturday. Going into the event, I was undefeated in paper matches over the span of like 5 tournaments. I knew that luck had to run out at some point, and unfortunately it did.

Round 1 vs BUG Control:

Figured this was a favorable matchup, but I lost a tough game 3 when he had 2 Diabolic Edict and a Snapcaster Mage.

0-1, 1-2

Round 2 vs BUG Delver:

Easy steamroll victory 2-0.

1-1, 2-0

Round 3 vs D&T:

Another easy steamroll victory 2-0.

2-1, 2-0

Round 4 vs D&T:

This one was a little tougher as I had to grind out the wins when he had seemingly infinite answers to my tokens. Eventually got there.

3-1, 2-0

Round 5 vs Dark Maverick:

This was my win-and-in. Unfortunately, this matchup didn't feel close at all. Facing an active Knight, Scavenging Ooze, Deathrite Shaman and equipment, this was a nightmare of a match. Felt pretty helpless.

3-2, 0-2


Anyone else have trouble against Knight of the Reliquary decks?

[Crimhead]

Anyone else have trouble against Knight of the Reliquary decks?

This is another situation where Engineered Explosives does a ton of work and can swing tbe match in your favour.

[TLK]

This is another situation where Engineered Explosives does a ton of work and can swing tbe match in your favour.

Yeah, I think my sideboard needs some major re-tooling. EE seems like a good choice. I've also considered a slight black splash for Abrupt Decay.

[.Ix]

Round 5 vs Dark Maverick:

This was my win-and-in. Unfortunately, this matchup didn't feel close at all. Facing an active Knight, Scavenging Ooze, Deathrite Shaman and equipment, this was a nightmare of a match. Felt pretty helpless.

3-2, 0-2


Anyone else have trouble against Knight of the Reliquary decks?

I feel the same way. Maverick can interact with everything we have, and Knight just steamrolls us. It's really hard to stop them from getting the 1GW they need. EE is good for sure, and so is Bog and Kozilek's Return. I've been playing Song of the Dryads in the SB, which can help against Knight and Scooze, but I haven't actually played against the deck in a while.

[GiveMeYourOil]

I feel the same way. Maverick can interact with everything we have, and Knight just steamrolls us. It's really hard to stop them from getting the 1GW they need. EE is good for sure, and so is Bog and Kozilek's Return. I've been playing Song of the Dryads in the SB, which can help against Knight and Scooze, but I haven't actually played against the deck in a while.

Maybe give this old fella a spin again ?

[Ingo]

Yeah, I think my sideboard needs some major re-tooling. EE seems like a good choice. I've also considered a slight black splash for Abrupt Decay.

Since you're already considering a blacksplash, consider Toxic Deluge as a sweeper. It gets Mom and TNN too.

[Dice_Box]

EE is fantastic. I run it main, I suggest that configuration.