Rogue Legacy Ideas- Part 2

Today, I'm going to look at some of the cards I think will be well-positioned for the GP and thinking about how to beat some strategies that you will surely encounter should you choose to play this weekend. I'm also going to talk about a special promo that I'm running related to the Grand Prix!



I'll start off with what I think is the best creature in legacy right now, and no, it's not Tarmogoyf. It's not even Dark Confidant. I'll give you a hint, it's on a team. Team cats. That's right, it's Wild Nacatl! I played this guy last year at the GP, and wow, playing a 3/3 on turn one makes your opponents plays look pretty embarrassing (provided they don't, like, kill you on one or something). Nacatl is the lynchpin for all the zoo decks, as I think that without him they wouldn't exist. If goyf didn't exist, sure, zoo would be worse, but there are other solid two drops (Teeg, Pridemage, Watchwolf, ok, not Watchwolf, but you get the idea) that could take its place, and a lot of other decks would get proportionately worse as well, but for Nacatl there really just is nothing that even comes close. The difference between Ape on 1 and Nacatl on 1 is usually at least three points of damage, not to mention that nacatl is better in combat and may allow you to make attacks or blocks that would otherwise not be feasible. This guy is definitely the real deal, and expect to be staring him down on turn one at least once this weekend.

Continuing the theme of powerful commons, next up is a creature that is a little more under the radar, Spellstutter Sprite. The Sprite is obviously more dependent on synergies than Nacatl is, but she is a surprisingly powerful counterspell for her cost. Getting other faeries, such as Mutavault and Vendilion Clique, isn't too hard, and she has even shown up in a couple of decklists that have hardly any other faeries at all. Not to be neglected as well is the synergy this card has with Aether Vial. This card is also very well positioned; everyone's running a bunch of low casting cost spells, and this card is amazing against Aluren, where it can usually come down and counter something for free even after the Aluren has resolved. This card won't be as popular as the Nacatl, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least four copies of it show up in the top 8.

A creature who I don't think will fare as well is Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. A number of combo decks have shown up who attempt to utilize this guy, and some of them even look quite promising, but most of them utilize Show and Tell, which is an inherently dangerous strategy especially if the other guy is packing Emrakuls or Sowers of Temptation. I also think that a lot of the pilots will try to pick up the Emrakul decks without much practice, thinking "how hard can it be to tap three mana and cast a Show and ell," but I think that, especially with builds that also have Stifle/Dreadnaught in them or Lim-Dul's Vault, there's a lot more skill needed than people will think, so I do not expect these decks to put up the numbers that people are expecting. That being said, this is a probably a strategy that you will have to beat in order to do well this weekend nevertheless.

Onto a couple of sleepers that I think have potential to fight the format in interesting ways. First up this time is Engineered Plague. This card is an absolute beating right now against a number of decks in the field. Its power against Merfolk and Goblins is obvious, and if you can ever assemble two of them the game is usually just going to be over. If it were only for those decks, though, it would be a specific sideboard card at best. But that's not where it stops. It can shut down Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek if you name Thopters, and putting this down naming either Humans or Advisors makes it virtually impossible for Aluren to win since their Recruiters will die when they hit the battlefield, so they can't bounce them with Dream Stalker. Note that, as tempted as you may be to name birds instead so you can kill Cavern Harpy, they usually will have a tutorable card out of the board to deal with the Plague, and the idea should be to shut them down as much as possible and not give them time to find it with Recruiters and then bounce their recruiters to keep going. This card also completely hoses Elves (both Survival and Glimpse combo) and other fringe uses include killing Lavamancers, Elspeth and Decree of Justice Soldier tokens, and Mangara of Corondor. I expect this to start showing up as a one-of or two-of main in some esper color decks with Enlightened Tutor, and at the very least this is a card you can expect to show up in sideboards.

The next card is Vedalken Shackles. This one hasn't shown up outside of monoblue control for a while, but now could be the time for it to make a comeback. So many decks are relying on creature-based strategies, and nothing is better against creatures than making them fight for you, which Shackles does. Though most decks do have ways to remove it, so it is not game over when this lands, it is a card that the game will revolve around from the time it hits the playing field. There will also be 50 some cards supporting the shackles in the deck, so it's all about crafting a board state where playing them creates a huge advantage, and with other blue cards in the format featuring Brainstorm, Force, Counterspell, etc., that shouldn't be too hard to do.

An archetype that I think will fare well this weekend is mana denial. By this, I'm not talking about Stone Raining your opponent, or recurring Avalanche Riders with Reveillark, I'm talking about Wasteland based decks and Back to Basics decks. How greedy people are with their manabases is cyclical; when there are a lot of Wasteland decks, everyone runs basics, so the Wasteland decks don't do so well, and then there become less of them. Then, people think they can get away with less basics, so the Wasteland decks do better, and then more Wastelands start showing up again. And so on. This weekend I think is near the peak of manabase greediness, so while I don't expect a lot of people to be playing wasteland strategies, I do expect them to be successful. To me, what this means is that I want to have a plan of how to beat them, namely, running some basics and being aware that Wasteland is a card that exists when evaluating how to fetch and which opening hands to keep.

The next strategy that will show up is graveyard abuse. By this I mean Dredge, Reanimator, Survival, etc. Having a plan to beat these decks is pretty necessary, especially since Dredge is a real sleeper for this weekend. Though these decks fall into the category of combo decks (generally speaking), they are susceptible to graveyard hate, and the choice that then presents itself is how much graveyard hate to run and which cards to use. Common options include Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Prognitus, Leyline of the Void, Yixlid Jailer, and Ravenous Trap. Obviously, if one of these is tutorable in your deck, it seems to get the nod, and if you have a bunch of manipulation/draw spells Leyline might not be as valuable, but in general I'd recommend no fewer than 4 slots and even 5-6 if you can afford the sideboard space and I'd also try to mix up which cards you have. That makes it harder for the opponent to sideboard and prevents them from blanking all of your hate with say, a Pithing Needle. The "other combo" decks are pretty much anything else that is trying to combo you out. The problem here is how to sideboard- though some of them are vulnerable to Teeg and/or Canonist, others aren't, so it's hard to say exactly which cards you're going to want. My advice would be to be proactive. Thoughtseize and Duress are guaranteed to hurt all of these decks (while not being dead in other matchups), and counters are always good in these matchups too, with Spell Pierce usually being the frontrunner. Proxy abilities for counters or discard like Vendilion Clique and Meddling Mage are also good here too. While I understand that Zoo doesn't necessarily have access to the colors to support these cards, they are in my view the best way to attack combo strategies right now.

I'm going to lump all of the creature based decks into one group. Though some of them feature combos or pseudo-combos (NO counter-top bant, goblins), they all have the same properties of having creatures that want to beat down, having a way to interact with the opponent (be that with Lightning Bolts or Force of Wills), and having ways to generate tempo in the early turns of the game, which can involve efficient creatures, Wastelands, Aether Vials, Stifles, or even Swordsing or Pathing the opponents two or three drop. The key to beating these decks is to realize that you either need to kill them before they kill you or you need to be able to remove almost every creature that they play until your more powerful spells can take over. If you're on the second plan, I would definitely advise having removal somewhere in your 75, because if you're not killing their Nacatl on 1 your play isn't going to be as good as theirs was. The key here is that it's always their creatures that matter, and that their tempo plays are merely a means to bolster the effectiveness of their creatures. Don't be distracted by other things and focus on what matters, their creatures!

The final grouping of decks are combo-control decks. I can't really call most control decks by their proper name since most of them feature combo based win conditions such as Thopter/Sword or CB/Top. The tricky thing about these decks is that they're able to pack a lot of cards that are equally good in the early and late games (swords, counterspell, spell snare), so they can gain advantage by extending the game merely because their cards are just as good in the late game whereas yours aren't (Aether Vial, Kird Ape, and Daze come to mind as terrible late game topdecks). They don't actually have to run that many cards that are only good in the late game, sometimes relegating the wincon duty to 3 or 4 copies of Jace or a 2/1 split of Foundry and Sword. The key to beating these decks is to realize that you can't fight them in the late game even if it appears like you can- even after boarding in 4 Krosan Grips to kill their Counterbalances and Foundries, your Daze still isn't as good of a draw as their Counterspell. Therefore, the emphasis has to be on closing the game quickly and having sideboard cards that offer disruption while not slowing you down too much. Qasali Pridemage jumps to mind as a great card in general against these decks, as does Gaddock Teeg, simply because he can get in some beats while shutting down some of their cards. It is important to remember that, especially in the Enlightened Tutor variants, their sideboarding plans are very relevant to how you sideboard; I'd fully expect between 5-8 targeted removal spells post board from these decks against creature strategies, and at least 4-5 hate cards for combo decks, probably including Meddling Mage. If you take away one thing from this piece, I'd spend more time than usual on sideboarding strategy since sideboarding is, in my view, more important in this format right now than it has been in any format for quite a while now. A lot of matchups change significantly depending on what card you do or do not have access to.

Finally, I'm announcing a sort of fantasy draft related to the Grand Prix. Here's how it works. You get to pick any five cards that you want that are legal in the format. Type them up and email them to me at kurtisroxs@gmail.com before the tournament starts. You'll get one point for every time that a copy of one of your cards shows up in the top eight, and after tallying the points whoever has the most will win a draft set of ROE on MODO. I'll wrap up my discussion of legacy tomorrow by presenting the deck that I'm leaning towards playing for the event.