[DECK] Cycles for Nothing and Your Critters for Free

[morgan_coke]

I've been mostly playing Arena for awhile now, but the cowards at WOTC still won't put Astral Drift on there so I figured I'd take a look at cracking it in Legacy.

Just from looking around at what's popular the best solution seems to be abandoning the traditional control/witness shell and just embracing the degeneracy with free cyclers and free creatures that have stupid ETB effects. Namely Solitude and Grief. One hits their hand, the other hits their creatures. The game plan is to disrupt them with cheap discard, exile and kill all their dudes, then just beat face.

Creatures - 17
4x Grief
4x Solitude
3x Orcish Bowmaster
4x Street Wraith

Spells - 17
4x Thoughtseize
4x Edge of Autumn
4x Astral Drift
3x Life from the Loam
2x Assassin's Trophy

Planeswalkers - 4
3x Karn, the Great Creator
1x Gideon of the Trials

Lands - 24
3x Boseiju, Who Endures
4x Flagstones of Trokair
3x Ash Barrens
4x Indatha Triome
3x Scattered Groves
2x Plains
1x Forest
1x Swamp
2x Emeria, The Sky Ruin
1x Heliod's Hall of Generosity

Sideboard
3x Damn
4x Obstinate Baloth
2x Gideon of the Trials
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Mycosinth Lattice
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Pithing Needle
1x The Stone Brain
1x The One Ring

The new white Court looks interesting because it can recur Drifts, Gideon, and Bowmasters, as well as lands you've dredged/cycled into the 'yard. The lands to the battlefield bit might be the most boring and useful tbh. Sideboard is built to hate on creature swarm decks, discard decks, and burn decks. Grief and Solitude pair incredibly well with Drift since you just slide them out after evoking them, meaning once you drop a drift, you can cast and cycle them for zero mana thanks to Edge and Wraith. Emeria means your Elementals and Wraiths come back for free to beat face. Bowmasters work great as both anti-bowmaster tech, anti-drawing tech, and a target for drifting in and out. They also help with stuff like Elves and DnT. Trophy and Boseiju give you a ton of LD, and deal with most any other permanents, while Karn locks down any artifact decks that try to outmana you, and hits a lot of combo decks hard as well.

No Eternal Witness's since the card just doesn't do enough anymore for its cost, sadly. No Volrath's Stronghold because Emeria does the same thing but better. No Wasteland because Boseiju and Assassin's Trophy do the job without costing you a land drop and are more versatile.

The only cards in the list that are Legacy only are Ash Barrens and Mycosynth Lattice, but those do allow you outs to things like Blood Moon and work as an alternative "i win button" respectively.

[Barook]

What's the reason for the lack of Troll of Khazad-dum? It cycles, can help fix your mana and it would play along nicely with Reanimate to give your deck a Scam angle for Grief/Solitude. Grief/Troll/Reanimate is one of the stronger packages in Legacy right now and I see little reason not to add it.

[morgan_coke]

What's the reason for the lack of Troll of Khazad-dum? It cycles, can help fix your mana and it would play along nicely with Reanimate to give your deck a Scam angle for Grief/Solitude. Grief/Troll/Reanimate is one of the stronger packages in Legacy right now and I see little reason not to add it.

It's not there because I didn't know about it, lol. But yeah, Troll or Cast Out and/or Reanimate could be easy additions.

[FTW]

You don't have enough white cards to make Solitude reliable. Grief scam looks like a good plan here though, and Grief flickers well.

4 Grief
4 Street Wraith
4 Troll
4 Bowmasters
4 Reanimate

Plus the rest. Thoughtseize, Trophy, Drift, Edge of Autumn, Loam, Cast Out.

Also look at Currency Converter, another great payoff for cycling.

Edit: you could support Solitude if you ran more white cards. It might be worth it. White has a lot of great stuff:
Cast Out
Charming Prince
Timeless Dragon
Prismatic Ending
the new white Court

If you don't have space for white cards too, just use Palace Jailer or Skyclave Apparition instead of Solitude.

[Purple Blood]

If you don't have space for white cards

Yorion.