Rogue Legacy Ideas- Part 3

In the final installment of my brief look at some legacy cards/lists before the Grand Prix, I'm going to provide my views on the card Brainstorm in a response to A.J. Sacher's SCG article that went up today and then I'm going to go over some of the cards that will be in my deck this weekend.



The link to Sacher's article is : http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19780_Fishing_Lessons_Pondering_Brainstorm.html If you haven't read the article, I highly recommend that you do, because what I'm going to say won't really make much sense otherwise, it's actually a pretty high value read, and his Counter-Top-Thopter list is pretty far ahead of the curve. The gist of what he says is that most people Brainstorm too carelessly and far too early, which I agree is generally true. However, I think he neglects to mention that it is definitely possible to Brainstorm too late, something which I have seen a lot of players do in real matches. The advantages of waiting are outlined clearly in his article, but playing a one mana See Beyond, as it were, has its merits sometimes. The goal is not just to get better cards in the endgame, it is to see as many cards as is possible in the early game. Playing a turn one Brainstorm on your opponent's endstep lets you see two more cards than you would otherwise on your next turn after you've drawn. What this means is that decks that want to be casting a strong two-drop on turn two, like a Standstill, a Survival, or a Tarmogoyf, have a higher chance of seeing that card and being able to cast it on time. This obviously does not necessarily hold true if said card is already in your hand, but even then it can help to dig for a card to back up your powerful two drop like Force of Will or Daze.

Using Brainstorms properly with Counterbalance is doubly tricky, and can often involve counterintuitive plays. For example, if your opening hand has a fetchland and an Island, you may be tempted to play the Island first so that you can shuffle away a card after brainstorming, but then if you do not draw a non-fetch blue source you will not be able to stack the top of your deck after you play the Counterbalance. I'm not saying that either play in this case is necessarily correct or incorrect, it's just something to think about.

I find the hardest part about using Brainstorm correctly is to balance its power to see additional cards (in the early game) with its power to act as a draw spell in the late game (by filtering away dead cards). This is usually dependent on the boardstate and the matchup. In matchups where you are disadvantaged, it is generally requisite to play Brainstorms as early as possible to try and sculpt a hand that even has a chance at winning. I'm aware that sometimes you'll get screwed in the late game or you won't Brainstorm into a fetch, but if you have an out, you just have to play to it and if you miss you miss. In favorable matchups or in gamestates where the rest of your hand besides the Brainstorm is really good, it's often better to wait.

Another point that was brought up is the mentality of "can cast spell, will cast spell" that people often take in the early game with Brainstorm. It is important to be conscious of when you are casting all of your spells each time you cast them and not to fall victim to this mentality. In this respect, Sacher is right that a lot of people don't take the time to think about this. The problem I have with his argument is that I lot of the decks in legacy need to curve out pretty much perfectly (or near perfectly) in order to fully utilize their resources, and this is especially true of decks that run Sensei's Divining Top. In these decks, passing on the opportunity to Brainstorm early on in the game can require holding off on brainstorming for several turns. Looking at your curve, in these situations, is very important to figure out whether you'll have time to play the Brainstorm later on in the game.

A related issue that he brings up is playing around Daze, something that is often used as a testing point of "skill" among legacy players in that "good players play around Daze." This statement is truly a double-edged sword, because the card Daze is such a high-variance card. True, if you play around it, and they have it, sometimes you blank one or two of their cards. On the other hand, playing around it may cause you to fall too far behind, and even though they are left with a dead card in hand, you're actually dead. Also, playing around it when they don't have it is like sphere of resistancing yourself the entire game. My point here is to be conscious of Daze and play like it exists, but to know when you can and cannot afford to play around it. Sometimes, it is right to run one of your cards into a Daze so that next turn you can resolve a more important on-curve spell than to wait an extra turn to cast your two spells. This is often true against the Dtifle/Wasteland types of decks, where they will have other forms of mana disruption so when you sit around waiting to build mana they will Wasteland and Stifle you out until you're forced to play into the Daze anyways because the whole time you were taking hits from a goyf. Again, my point here is to always be thinking about Daze as a card that exists in the format, whether it relates to you trying to resolve spells against your opponent or them trying to resolve spells against you.


Enough about theory for the moment and onto what cards I actually like in this format. I'll list a few that I'm playing for sure- Spellstutter Sprite, Vendilion Clique, Sower of Temptation, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Force of Will. The supporting cast is still up for grabs, but, aside from Zoo (where we have the rest of the deck and the sideboard to work with) and Burn (if that's even a deck anymore), these cards are very, very effective against large portions of the field, some of them to the point where they're able to win games on their own (Jace against cb/top/thopter, Sower against an emrakul, etc.). The faeries are an impressive tribe and they are inherently well positioned against combo-based strategies, which are always rampant; not only that, but they are not always cards that your opponent will play around, often times making them more powerful than they would otherwise be. The question is what color to pair the fae with and/or what other combinations to add to our control deck as finishers.

Options for combos include thopter/sword and counter/top, not to mention leyline/helm as well. The two leading colors are black and white, but green is a consideration as well. Let's look at what we get with each of them. Black: Dark Confidant, Smother, Innocent Blood, Thoughtseize, Duress, Engineered Plague, Thopter Foundry, Ghastly Demise, Leyline of the Void, Bitterblossom White: Swords to Plowshares, Enlightened Tutor, Path to Exile, Meddling Mage, Ethersworn Canonist, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (I'm only partially kidding on this one), Thopter Foundry Green: Tarmogoyf, Trygon Predator, Krosan Grip, Life from the Loam, Lorescale Coatl, Nimble Mongoose Colorless: Umezawa's Jitte, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Engineered Explosives, Pithing Needle, Helm of Awakening These are just various ideas about ways to take the deck, and I'm still working on finalizing my list and sideboard for this weekend. It may even depend on what I see over or under represented at the grinders. Make sure to get in your submissions for the fantasy contest by Friday at midnight if you want to enter, and good luck to everyone who'll be at Columbus this weekend!