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The tension was high throughout the Top 8 at last Saturday’s Legacy 2K, but the polls are closed and the results are in. After six rounds of pitched combat by Magic’s best and brightest, the cut to Top 8 revealed the fruits of each player’s effort, and invited those left standing to one last test. Our Top 8 provided no shortage of ingenuity in the decklist department, but two reign supreme on the weekend.
Doing the Spilts
Our event ended with a split placing two players at the top of the pack: Michael Scherer on Sultai Uro, and Frank Singel on Lands. Both players showed the power and breadth of their decks throughout the Top 8; Singel defeating the meta-busting duo of Scott McCarty’s Blood Moon Stompy and James Turbeville’s aggro Ninjas, and Scherer withstanding Legacy’s most recent offerings in a double helping of Blue/Red Delver. Both of the winning decks offer resiliency and coverage to counter threats, and both of these two navigated through said threats masterfully to end up at the top.
Uro Pile
Scherer’s deck brings a feast of some of the best that the Legacy format has to offer, presenting format all-stars like Leovold, Emissary of Trest and Baleful Strix and flexible interaction interaction like Witherbloom Command and Dress Down, centered on the power and versatility of Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath. This core provides both a way to regain life to hang with Legacy’s more aggressive strategies, and extra resources against the more controlling ones.
Singel’s choice for the weekend was a classic Legacy archetype, Lands, bolstered by some new arrivals. The power of Lands comes in the ability to leverage the value of Crop Rotation and Life from the Loam to gain value and recurring advantage from a large suite of utility lands, using these to further gain advantage and answer threats in-game. The addition of Urza’s Saga and Valakut Exploration to this tried-and-true archetype allows for even more explosive gameplay, with each threatening to run away with a game easily when backed by Lands’ infrastructure of land-based gameplay.
Lands
Even beyond our pair of co-champions, the rest of the Top 8 offered no shortage of exciting deck choices and gameplay. Our semi-finalists were James Turbeville playing Ninjas, and Andrea Biaggi playing Blue/Red Delver, one of two players in the Top 8 in this archetype, along with quarter-finalist Michelle Tanner. Both decks look to play a tempo game, but have some notable differences.
Turbeville’s Ninjas aim to leverage the abilities of Yuriko, Tiger’s Shadow and Ingenious Infiltrator to stay up on card advantage and reset value pieces like Baleful Strix and Brazen Borrower, pressuring blockers and threatening surprise damage through ninjutsu, backed by a suite of blue and black’s interactive spells.
Biaggi, on the other hand, represented modern ingenuity in Magic with Blue/Red Delver, packing heat with the terrifying duo of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and his loyal steed Murktide Regent. These recent additions to the Legacy format, along with fellow newcomers Expressive Iteration and Dragon’s Rage Channeler, bolster the classic tempo package of Force of Will, Daze, and Wasteland.
4 Color Zenith
All in All
The rest of the Top 8 was filled out by powerful archetypes both new and old. Jonathan Salem entered the event with 4-Color Zenith, leveraging the extra space offered by faithful companion Yorion, Sky Nomad to include a creature suite ranging from Collector Ouphe to Omnath, Locus of Creation, all fetchable by Green Sun’s Zenith. Scott McCarty brought Blood Moon Stompy, looking to power out disruptive permanents early in the form of Blood Moon or Trinisphere before closing with a bang with snow-balling threats. Michelle Tanner, much like semi-finalist Biaggi, looked to leverage the power of Ragavan and Murktide Regent, making the only shared archetype in the entire Top 8. The final member of the Top 8 was Thomas Scherer, representing Urza Painter: a deck looking to use the versatility of Karn, the Great Creator and Urza’s Saga to assemble powerful artifact synergies, in particular, the game-ending combo of Painter’s Servant and Grindstone.
All in all, last Saturday’s event was a great time to watch, and for me personally, a great time to judge. Players came to show their skill, their knowledge of their own decks and the meta, and to prove themselves in a competitive setting. More than that, players came to play a great format in a great game. In that goal, everyone in attendance was more than victorious.
