By: Jeremy Crawley

So I was supposed to start a Legacy column, and that obviously didn’t happen, so I just decided to write another article about Modern and Legacy. First I will start with Modern, and move on to Legacy.

Before I get to decks I wanted to talk about the Modern ban list a little bit. So this is a new format, which means there are a lot of exciting new ideas and possibilities that are floating around, massive card price speculation, and just general excitement. First off, you can play any card that was printed in a “new border set” (8^th edition and further) except for the following list of cards:

• Ancestral Vision
• Ancient Den
• Bitterblossom
• Chrome Mox
• Dark Depths
• Dread Return
• Glimpse of Nature
• Golgari Grave-Troll
• Great Furnace
• Hypergenesis
• Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• Mental Misstep
• Seat of the Synod
• Sensei’s Divining Top
• Stoneforge Mystic
• Skullclamp
• Sword of the Meek
• Tree of Tales
• Umezawa’s Jitte
• Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
• Vault of Whispers

I think Wizards did a pretty good job with the banned list, except there are some choices I disagree with. The most obvious choice is definitely Skullclamp, as it’s even banned in Legacy. Sensei’s Divining Top makes sense because of the presence of Counterbalance as well as the fact it makes matches in large tournaments always go to max time. The next thing to really notice is that most of these cards are basically just the best cards that made certain decks too powerful. Most of these cards are basically the enablers of the best decks in Extended recently… Artifact Lands = Affinity; Bitterblossom/Ancestral Vision = Faeries; Chrome Mox/Dark Depths = Vampire Hexmage Combo; Sword of the Meek = Thopter Foundry combo; Stoneforge Mystic/Umezawa’s Jitte = WoTC doesn’t want CawBlade killing Modern too; Hypergenesis = probably the Hypergenesis deck; Glimpse of Nature = Combo Elves and Affinity to some extent; Valakut =  one of the dumbest decks ever created (Scapeshift or Primeval Titan nonsense)

There are some choices here I don’t particularly agree with:

• Ancestral Vision/Mental Misstep: I can see banning Ancestral Vision because of power level, but I don’t think it’s necessary, especially with the banning of Mental Misstep. Decks need to be able to deal with a turn 1 Nacatl or Hierarch in my opinion, and there aren’t really options for control out there right now , especially if you’re on the draw. You can choose to not play blue which seems to be Wizard’s goal unless you like milling people. I particularly don’t want to accelerate my opponent into 3 lands with Path to Exile, nor do I really want to play Lightning Bolt because the color red is awful in general. Ancestral Visions would’ve given heavy-blue decks a good chance to recover from the initial Zoo/Affinity assault, rather than having to go one-for-one (save board sweepers) the entire game, as would our next candidate:
• Jace, the Mind Sculptor: I know he’s extremely good, but he isn’t broken. This isn’t Vintage. WotC obviously knows they shouldn’t have printed a card with this power level so their immediate solution is to of course to not let people play it, instead of doing good R&D in the first place.
• Stoneforge Mystic: With Jitte banned, I don’t think this should be banned. I think this is more of a “Let’s prevent Caw-Blade from happening again”
• Golgari Grave-Troll/Dread Return: I don’t get either of these… I mean maybe Dread Return? What is the difference in just using more Dredge 4 and 5 creatures? Is Dredge 6 that big of a deal? Most people that play Dredge are bad anyways so why worry about this deck?

A card that should absolutely be on the banned list:

• Emrakul: There is no reason this creature should be legal, especially with the Urzatron engine AND all the locust lands (Cloudpost and Glimmerpost). Casting a turn 4 or 5 Emrakul that is uncounterable is not even hard in this format, unless your opponent plays Blood Moon or throws your cards in a fire. Dealing with Kozilek or Ulamog is fine, but Emrakul…. Consuela would say “No Emrakul legal… No no no.”

So the deck I’m currently tooling with right now is Doran Rock. I’ve always wanted to play this deck and now I can.

Creatures (22):

4 Doran, the Siege Tower

1 Treefolk Harbinger

1 Gaddock Teeg

4 Tarmogoyf

2 Kitchen Finks

3 Spellskite

4 Noble Hierarch

1 Thrun, the Last Troll

2 Qasali Pridemage

Spells (18):

4 Thoughtseize

2 Inquisition of Kozilek

2 Maelstrom Pulse

2 Doom Blade

2 Path to Exile

1 Go for the Throat

1 Putrefy

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

3 Green Sun’s Zenith

Lands (21):

4 Verdant Catacombs

3 Misty Rainforest

2 Marsh Flats

2 Overgrown Tomb

1 Temple Garden

1 Godless Shrine

1 Dryad Arbor

1 Reflecting Pool

2 Stirring Wildwood

2 Forest

1 Swamp

1 Plains

Total (61) – I usually play 61 card decks. I don’t know why I just do.

I like rock decks because all you do is play cards that are just awesome. This is the deck I will be playing initially in  sanctioned Modern tournaments. I don’t think it has a particularly incredible matchup against any deck, but I don’t think it has an auto lose matchup either, except burn, which please skip to matchup #8 for possibly SB options. First, here are some of the awesome things about this deck:

1)      There are 7 ways to get Doran out on turn 2. That is awesome.

2)      With an excellent opening 7, you can win on turn 4. That is awesome, especially when you outrace dumb decks like 12 Post or Hive Mind, and when they fetch for shock lands they lightning bolt themselves and make it easier for you.

3)      With Green Sun’s Zenith you’re playing effectively playing 7 Dorans. Way awesome.

4)      Spellskite + Doran. Unfair and it protects Doran. Definitely awesome.

5)      This deck has a good matchup against Zoo and other creature-based aggro decks, which will be popular. Kitchen Finks is annoying, and typically all your creatures are bigger than them. Awesome.

6)      4 Tarmogoyfs. Probably the most awesome thing about this deck.

Two choices I made that people may question:

1)      No Dark Confidant. I think people that know me can say if I choose to play green and black in the same deck, I will play 4 Dark Confidant and 4 Tarmogoyf. I originally had him in the deck, but took him out, and here’s why

1. Modern is going to be a fast format, and Dark Confidant generates very good mid-game and excellent late-game card advantage, but there is no way to get him out on Turn 1, unlike Aggro-Loam or Junk in Legacy. You could play Simian Spirit Guide to accelerate to Dark Confidant, but if you do that you’re going to definitely be losing anyways, and should sell your Dark Confidants to buy an entire burn deck.
2. There is going to be a lot of creature removal, so he is going to immediately die.
3. Loss of life is relevant in this format, especially if you decide to go the 5 life Thoughtseize on turn 1.
4. I originally subbed him out for 4 Tarmogoyfs because Goyf is the best human wizard, but I didn’t want to get immediately disqualified from every tournament I entered.

2)      No Knight of the Reliquary

1. Simply put he has been quite unimpressive in Modern. He can get Ghost Quarter or Tectonic Edge which would be helpful against 12-post, but he cannot get Wasteland, so he’s just a big dude that is mostly slower than other big dudes in this deck. I would also rather play Doran on turn 2 or 3 anyways.
2. Also tried subbing in 4 more Goyfs for KoTR, but I couldn’t because of reason “D” above.

So for the sideboard of this deck I’m still deciding what I want to do, but below are cards I’m considering or will definitely go in the board for different matchups. By the way I got these by browsing MTGO daily tournament decklists.

My initial SB will probably be, but note the Gaddock Teeg in the main deck, which I still discuss in the SB:

2 Kitchen Finks

4 Sadistic Sacrament

2 Creeping Corrosion

2 Duress

2 Surgical Extraction

1 Dosan, the Falling Leaf

2 Doom Blade

Matchups and card discussion:

1)      12-Post

1. Sadistic Sacrament – I think this may be the best way to fight this deck, with extra help from your discard spells to slow them down. Most lists I’ve seen (going from the MTGO daily results) are running 3 Eldrazi targets, with at least 1 Emrakul, and some number of Ulamogs/Kozileks. I imagine a turn 4 or 5 win needs to happen or you will inevitably lose to Emracheats.
2. Ensnaring Bridge – Another decent card, but not spectacular by any means. It slows them down by not letting Primeval Titan attack, but once they are able to fetch up Ulamog you’re probably done, unless you draw two. Your Dorans and Spellskites can attack under the Ensnaring Bridge (win), but a quick win is still necessary.
3. Gaddock Teeg – Stops Green Sun’s Zenith. Problem is that it also stops your Zenith’s. Still not a bad option.

2)      Zoo

1. More Kitchen Finks – He soaks up your opponent’s Path to Exiles, clearing way for Doran, which is hard for them to get rid of, especially with Spellskite sitting there.
2. Doom Blade/Deathmark – Probably Doom Blade because of the popularity of Affinity.
3. Gaddock Teeg – Stops Boom/Bust shenanigans and stops Zenith, if they’re playing either.

3)      Affinity

1. Creeping Corrosion – Destroying all artifacts is good in this matchup
2. Nature’s Claim/Krosan Grip – Both awesome cards, and fill a more general slot than Creeping Corrosion. I haven’t really seen too many decks that consistently do well where a general answer like Grip or Claim is needed though.
3. More Kitchen Finks – helps recover from the initial assault of tiny dudes and Signal Pest. Once you stabilize I would find it hard for Affinity to beat Doran, especially if they don’t play Disciple of the Vault, where you should be winning anyways because your opponent is dumb.

4)      Merfolk

1. This deck may continue to be somewhat popular until people realize it’s not good in Modern. I wouldn’t worry about this deck. Just board in more removal and Kitchen Finks. Things will get rough for them quickly if you land Doran turn 2 and they don’t have an answer.

5)      Hive Mind

1. Ethersworn Canonist – Shuts off their accelerants so they can only cast one dig spell a turn. Your discard spells should take care of the rest and shouldn’t be too hard to win.
2. Duress – Good
3. Gaddock Teeg – Can’t play Hive Mind… Probably good. If people start realize how good Disruption Shoal is in this format Teeg will get better.

6)      Splinter Twin

1. Gaddock Teeg – Can’t play Splinter Twin… also good. These decks are also playing Kiki-Jiki as well, which presents a problem. Just win before hand.
2. Duress – Good
3. Surgical Extraction – If you get rid of a Splinter Twin via hand disruption and extract it they basically lose. If they beat you still, depending on how many Kiki-Jikis they have, you should probably quit playing Magic or start playing 12-post.

7)      Pyromancer’s Ascension

1. Duress – Good
2. Surgical Extraction – See above with Splinter Twin
3. Dosan, the Falling Leaf – they play counterspells. He does not let them play counterspells
4. Teeg – Stops Cryptic Command and Disrupting Shoal.

8)      Burn

1. Kitchen Finks- Life gain is good, but you probably lose anyways. Be prepared if your opponent sits down across from you with pink sleeves, or if they are drooling and/or mouth breathing. Pink sleeves signify that they think they’re crafty by not playing red sleeves to give their deck color choice away, but still need pink to remind what color they are playing, and need a similar color sleeve to remind them they need mountains because the colors match. Orange sleeves may also be another good indicator. You should just be proud you’re not playing Mono-red and have a brain, and probably didn’t have to borrow $20 from your mom to play in the tournament you’re in Don’t get mad and throw their 20-sided EDH dice they’re keeping your life total on across the room though, especially when you’re having to adjust your life total on it for them because they’re too dumb to count or just forget to. If you’re at the X-0 tables, try to push them for a deck check because they’ll have their deck in a fat pack box they carry their entire collection in, with cards from 4^th Edition they found on the ground earlier mixed in with their sideboard. You’ll get a match win for that. Other possible wins include them playing either Chain Lightning or Fireblast from the Fire/Lightning deck because they heard any card with the new border is legal.
2. Nature’s Claim – In case they play Blood Moon, which sucks for you. You should be able to Zenith out a Qasali before hand hopefully. Noble Hierarch helps tremendously with Blood Moon, but she will immediately die though sadly.

9)      Any type of control:

1. Teeg – Shuts off Cryptic Command, Gifts Ungiven, Damnation, Wrath/Day of Judgment, and Mystical Teachings
2. Dosan, the Falling Leaf – They can’t play cards on your turn = good
3. Additional hand disruption – Rip apart all the stuff they can play to kill Teeg or Dosan. This match shouldn’t be hard.
4. Surgical Extraction – I would board in if they are using Life From the Loam for card advantage.

10)  Any other type of combo

1. Teeg, additional hand disruption, and most likely Surgical Extraction.

11)  Other Zenith targets I’m considering: for SB

1. Ohran Viper – I think this guy is awesome, especially as a Zenith target. I’d bring him in against Affinity if I put him in the SB. A Doran’d 3/3 with deathtouch and card advantage attached to him is neat.
2. Cold-Eyed Selkie – This is for control and is fetchable via Zenith. Excellent with exalted, and should always get through because they have Islands. Once a control deck gets well-established, I will put one of these in my SB.

Overall I think Doran is an excellent deck choice for a mostly unknown metagame. I don’t really know why Doran decks aren’t creeping up on MTGO at all, but I’m hoping that it’s just because the deck is expensive to build. Every card is solid and if played correctly you should do fine. Please send me suggestions or post after the article if you think I missed something.

Thanks for reading,

Jeremy

Hey everyone,

I attended Gencon this year, and qualified for masters where I went 3-1 and placed 4th.  A few people asked for battle reports, so here is part 1 (to the best of my recollection).  First up, the Rite of Passage tournament which I qualified in.

My lists were:

eCaine

Ol’ Rowdy

Hunter

Squire

Junior

Hunter

eEiryss

Gorman

Max Boomhowler

Aiyana and Holt

Corbeau

Rangers

Reindholdt

Stormsmith

—————————-

eHayley

Centurion

Defender

Thorn

Squire

Junior

Black 13th

Piper

Max Stormguard

Max Sword Knights

Stormsmith

ROP Round 1:

eHayley vs. Baldur on Command and Control  -  Win

I deploy my Centurion and defender towards the center of the deployment zone.  Sword Knights go below the centurion, Stormguard above.  Thorn and Black 13th are deployed below Sword Knights.  Turn 1, everything runs.  Sword knight were used to box in my Centurion to prevent push / pull shenanigans with druids.  Opponents turn, he runs everything as well.  On my turn two, Hayley pops feat and casts Temporal Acceleration on the defender.  My defender takes two shots at the Gatormen posse, killing one.  Everything else runs.  On opponents turn, he kills some sword knights with druids, but generally just repositions his army.  My turn 3, Gatormen get charged by Stormguard, who fail their command check and do nothing.  Watts manages to tag a druid at the back of a cloud with fire beacon, allowing me LOS to the Wold Guardian behind the cloud.  The Wold Guardian gets time bombed, tagging a few druids and Baldur.  Centurion and Sword Knights continue to push into the zone.  On my opponents 3rd turn, his Wold Warden tries to kill Thorn, but comes up short.  The gatormen kill most of my Stormguard, and Megalith tramples and puts a few points on the Centurion.  On my turn 4, Thorn engages the Warden.  Swordknight charge the warden and megalith (with flank) and put some damage on the two beasts.  The Centurion moves up and finishes off Megalith and two Gatormen.    Opponents turn 4, the Woldguardian starts beating on the Centurion, but fails to blow anything out.  Baldur starts moving around the bottom side to try to get into the fight.  At this point, most of the druids are dead, but the remaining ones kill some sword knights.  My turn 5, the Centurion kills the Woldwarden and Junior pegs Baldur for 12 points with a handcannon shot before time is called and I win on tie breakers.

ROP Round 2:

eCaine vs. Rhyas on Killbox  -  Win

I lose the die roll.  My opponent is playing the new Rhyas tier list from a few NQs ago.  He deploys Legionnaires on one side of the board, the Ogrun Warspears and Ogrun Chieftan in the middle, and all of his beasts and Rhyas on the other side of the board behind a forest.  I line up my rangers opposite Rhyas and the beasts, Boomhowlers in the middle and Caine and Ol’ Rowdy opposite the Legionnaires.  My opponent runs most of his army on turn 1, keeping Rhyas and the beasts back a bit.  My turn 1, the hunters kill the Chieftan.  Caine walks up and kills 3 Legionnaires before gatecrashing behind a linear obstacle.  Rowdy gets arcane shield and walks runs up.  Opponent turn 2, Rowdy gets charged by the remaining Legionnaires.  He survives relatively operational.  Warspears continue forward, along with the battlegroup.  My turn 2:  Rowdy tremors, knocking down the Legionnares.  Gorman, Junior, and Holt finish off the unit.  Aiyana harms Typhon.  The two hunters and Caine then proceed to kill Typhon (I believe I popped my feat).  Boomhowlers start engaging the warspears.  Rangers move through the forest and kill two shredders.  From that point on, I continue to wear my opponent down over a turn or two, before pegging Rhyas with black oil and finishing her with Caine.

ROP Round 3:

eCaine vs. eFeora on Process of Elimination (?)  -  Win

I lose the die roll.  My deployment is much the same as before (Rowdy and Caine on the left flank, Boomhowlers and Rangers on the other).  I don’t remember too many specifics about this game.  I remember my opponent was pushing up the board with TFG, which were getting picked off by Caine as they came in, along with Vilmon and a few Paladins.  Rowdy had AS and was holding the left zone.  Avatar was advancing on the right side of the board.  On about turn 3, I was planning on popping my feat to kill the Avatar, but my opponent felt like he needed to start pressing forward and try to light Caine on fire.  He hid Feora behind the Covenant and a jack.  eEiryss had been working up the left side.  She shot Feora to remove escort and her Focus.  Two hunter shots and a handcannon from junior softened up the book, then Caine finished the book and Feora off.

ROP Round 4:

eCaine vs. Witch Coven on Capture the Flag (?)  -  Lose

I believe I win the roll.  I deploy as usual (In order from left to right:  Rowdy, Caine, Boomhowlers, Rangers, with support lining up behind Cain and the boomhowlers).  My opponent lines up Bane Thralls and Tartarus opposite Caine and Rowdy, with Bane Knights opposite Boomhowler and an arc node on either side.  Turn 1, Caine casts true sight on himself and heightened reflexes on Boomhowler.  Everything runs up the board.  My opponent runs everything as well.  I believe he popped his feat this turn.  On my turn,  Caine’s hunter gets two focus.  This hunter walks up and gets close enough to kill Tartarus.  Everything else backs up To avoid being alpha struck.  My opponents T2, Death Jack manages to get on Ol’ Rowdy.  Rowdy loses cortex and movement.  The hunter that killed Tartarus doesn’t stand a chance, and is scrapped.  My T3,  Rowdy tremors, knocking down Death Jack.  Boomhowlers charge in, killing a few Bane thralls.  I avoid killing any Bane Knights to avoid triggering vengeance.  Aiyana harms Death Jack.  Caine then pops feat and scraps death jack and a few banes..  Following this turn, there are two turns of attrition fighting and bad rolls on both sides:  Bane Thralls finish off Rowdy, Caine wears down the remaining Knights and Thralls, kills a stalker and an arc node, bile thralls purge repeatedly and fail to kill Boomhowlers.  Knowing time is getting close to being up, I run a hunter into my opponents control zone.  There are a few remaining Bane Thralls that are threatening Caine, so I move out from behind the linear obstacle I had been camping behind.  My opponent runs his last arc node into range and Stygian Abysses Caine to death.  In retrospect, I should have taken my chances with the Bane Thralls (they need 11s to hit).

ROP Round 5

eHayley vs.  Old Witch on Overrun (?)  -  Win

I lose the roll.  My opponent deploys Kayazys on the left side, Nyss Hunters on the right, and Old Witch, Spriggan and the Behemoth in the middle.  I line up My Centurion and Thorn in the middle, with Sword Knights and the Black 13th to the left, and Stormguard on the right flank.  Running all around on turn 1.  Iron flesh goes on the Nyss.  I cast arcane shield on the Stormguard, and put deceleration up.  Opponents turn 2,  Nyss creep up and shoot at the Stormguard, killing one or two.  The Kayazys and jacks continue moving up.  Old witch moves forward and pops her feat.  On my turn 2, Stormguard (which are outside Old Witch’s feat) move up and start working on the Nyss with 3 and 4 man combines.  I loaded up the Centurion, thinking I can charge the Old Witch and end the game there.  I later discovered that her feat prevents charging.  Luckily, the Spriggan is close enough to walk to.  The Centurion scraps it.  Hayley pops her feat, and the Black 13th kill a few Kayazys.  Not much happens on my opponent’s turn 3, thanks to eHayley’s feat.  On my turn 3, I manage to force a command check from the Nyss, which they fail.  My Centurion proceeds to beat down the Behemoth, getting 2/3 of the way through the enemy jack.  Luckily, I blow out the cortex to limit the counter strike.  My stormsmith kills the Kayazy Underboss.  On my Opponents turn 4, Battle Mechanics put some boxes back on the Behemoth.  Scrap Jack kills a few Stormguard, and the Kayazy kill some Sword Knights.  From this point, the game turns into a bit of a grind fest, with the Black 13th killing Kayazys, Kayazys killing Sword Knights, and the Behemoth and Centurion pounding on each other.  Thorn eventually gets around to Old Witch.  Hayley time bombs the enemy caster.  Strangewayes makes the Centurion Evasive, who walks over to the Old Witch and proceeds to finish her off.

I finish the tournament 4-1.  The participants gather around as Hacksaw announces the final results.  I am thrilled to hear that I have the highest strength of schedule among the 4-1 crowd, and qualify for masters.  I’d like to thank all of my opponents.  They all played good, clean games and were a pleasure to face off against.  In particular, I want to give a big thanks to my third round opponent, Eric, who convinced me to stay in the tournament after round 4.  That is it for the Rite of Passage tournament.  Stay tuned for part 2 of my Gencon report, where I will go over my Masters games.

Hello everyone! My name is Will Pagani and I placed first at the first ever Lock and Load Masters event. I’m going to discuss in this article what lists I brought, why I brought them and go through each match I played, and why I picked that list for the match. I will try to recall as much of my opponents list as I can and give an accurate retelling of my games. So, without any further introduction, here are the lists I brought to Masters:

Kromac the Ravenous
Gorax
Gnarlhorn Satyr
Warpwolf Stalker
Warpwolf Stalker
Shifting Stones
Stone keeper
Shifting Stones
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt)
Blackclad Wayfarer
Blackclad Wayfarer
Druid Wilder

This is the strongest list in my arsenal. It combines infantry clearing with hard hitting in the form of Warp Wolf Stalkers with Kromac’s spell Warpath as well as the Woldstalker units. It is resilient against shooting because of the ability to warp Prowl on the Warpwolf Stalkers. The spell bestial creates problems for many factions that rely on arc nodes for either assassination, or buffing of their own units. This list is especially strong against Khador, Trolls and Menoth, and is weak against Legion.

Mohsar the Desertwalker
Gorax
Megalith
Warpwolf Stalker
Woldwarden
Shifting Stones
Stone keeper
Shifting Stones
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt)
Tharn Bloodtrackers (Leader and 9 Grunts)
Nuala the Huntress
Blackclad Wayfarer
Druid Wilder
War Wolf

This list was designed to abuse pillars of salt as much as possible. With Megalith and the Woldwarden you could spam curses of shadows and crevasse while keeping all of Mohsar’s fury to cast pillars. With the Stalker you can sprint back then throw pillars up to block charge lanes. The Gorax is there  to bump the Stalkers MAT and POW in situations when you need it, and is a great Maltreatment target for Mohsar as he will charge for free afterwards. The swamp gobbers are there to turn on your Stalker’s Prowl as well as keep Mohsar free from shooting. The Black Clad is there for Hunters Mark to increase your threat as this list has no way of doing that. The War Wolf is a point filler, but comes in very handy to contest/claim objective points. This list is strong against Khador, Trolls, Cygnar and Cryx. It is very weak to Menoth and Legion.

Baldur the Stonecleaver, Rock of Oroboros
Megalith
Woldguardian
Woldguardian
Woldwarden
Sentry Stone (Leader and 3 Manikins)
Shifting Stones
Stone keeper
Shifting Stones
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers
Blackclad Wayfarer
Blackclad Wayfarer

Balder is in my opinion one of the best anti-Cryx casters that Circle has. And with Cryx being the best army out there, you need to have a solid plan against them. This list has that, and is also just a very good scenario list. With 4 heavies most armies do not have the hitting power to bring them all down allowing you to attrition out your opponent. Balder also has a mediocre assassination run. This is a Tier 4 Balder theme list, and utilizes very well the Advanced Deploy given by it, as well as the discounted war beasts. I have seriously thought about dropping 1 Blackclad and putting in a Wilder for the larger control area as I constantly find my woldguardians get out of my control area (Thanks to shifting stones…) This list is not particularly strong against any faction except Cryx, but I feel is also not weak to any faction. This is a great tournament list to have as a catch all.
Morvahna the Autumnblade
Woldguardian
Woldguardian
Bog Trog Ambushers (Leader and 5 Grunts)
Shifting Stones
Stone keeper
Shifting Stones
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt)
Tharn Wolfriders (Leader and 2 Grunts)
Warpborn Skinwalkers (Leader and 4 Grunts)
Wolves of Orboros (Leader and 9 Grunts)
Wolf of Orboros Officer & Standard
Wolflord Morraig

I am rather disappointed in this list. I played it at Temple Con and I felt it needed work, but I could never figure out what to do with it. I still feel this way. Bringing back the Wolves has been by far the best regrowth target I’ve found. MAT 8 charges are far better than about anything else I’ve tried for their points. The +2 armor on Skinwalkers makes them one of the better tar pits in the game, especially when you park your 2^nd unit of stones behind them to heal them all each turn. Morraig hits very hard, and the bog trogs keep them on their toes. The double Woldguardian was a choice to attempt to stop eLylyth from assassinating Morvahna. And it works! The beasts also make a great wall for just about any assassination attempt, and considering the scenario focus of this list they are also great for pushing heavy targets off of objectives. This list is strong against anything without a way to get rid of upkeeps, and especially Cygnar and Legion. It is weak to very high armor concentration armies like some Khador and Skorne.

So, now that that’s over, lets start talking about the tournament. In round 1 I fought Cryx who brought eGaspy, eSkarre, eDenny and Terminus. After analyzing his lists for a moment, I decided that I could deal with all of these lists with Balder, Terminus being my biggest worry. We were playing a radial deployment scenario, which pretty much made Terminus a null issue because he could have problems with the scenario claim/contest. I was hoping to play against Gaspy or Denny, but I got eSkarre. I deployed my Woldstalkers on the flanks, beast’s right up the middle and AD’d my Sentry Stone a few inches short of his AD line (Go tier list bonus!). His list as I remember it was something close to:

eSkarre

Deathjack

Reaper

Deathripper

Satyxis (Leader + 9)

UA

Bane Knights

Tartarus

Withershadow Combine

Siren

Necrotech

Necro Surgeon

He deployed Deathjack on his right flank, Satyxis and Banes up the middle, reaper on the left. I won the roll for first so I took my advanced move on the Woldstalkers, ran them up the flanks, put my beasts in the middle. Balder casted stone skin on the 1 Woldguardian that didn’t AD and advanced after casting solid ground. He then cast a forest between Megalith and the DJ blocking the LOS for a charge. The twig men walked up and sprayed the Satyxis raiders, the first one boosting on the sea witch but missing. I killed 1 raider total. On his turn he charged with the Satyxis, popping mini feat. He killed all of the twigs, the stone for the twigs and 1 Woldstalkers. He put a few damage on a woldguardian this turn aswell. He maneuvered his DJ to get a charge the next turn and brought up the banes behind the Satyxis. Reaper advanced. I advanced with all the wolds after upkeeping my spells. Killed some Satyxis with boosted hits, and stomped on his deathripper with Megalith till it had no more arcnode. Woldstalkers on the left flank zephyred out of melee, and killed the 3 Satyxis that engaged them (5 tries at an 8, hit 3, I’ll call that some good rolling!). The other unit of stalkers zephyred forward and killed 5 bane knights. Balder walked into a unit of stones, feated and placed up about 4” behind his meatwall of 4x Wolds. This stopped DJ from charging into my line, as well as keeping a few of the Satyxis away from the Woldstalkers on the left side. Said go. On his turn the banes charged, but a massive hurt on the woldwarden which had transferred stone skin to himself with geomancy. Tartarus explodes most of the right flank Woldstalkers and engages a guardian. Skarre feats selecting the death jack, herself, the reaper, Tartarus and Megalith. Satyxis kill a few Woldstalkers on the left, and the reaper about half kills Megalith I am now officially worried about the Deathjack mauling 2 heavies next turn. I pick up my fury, calming affect a little with the stones and upkeep everything but the forest. The objective is covered in models, so that’s out of the question. Megalith starts off, pops his animus and sits tight. Between the Woldguardian on the left and the Woldstalkers the rest of the Satyxis are cleaned up. The last Woldstalker on the right kills another bane after zephyring out of melee with the DJ. Woldwarden kills 2 of the Knights he’s in melee with leaving 3 left in the unit. Black clad sprays and kills another clearing a spot for a forest from Balder to block off the DJ. A unit of stones teleports around the backmost Woldguardian ready to place it the next turn. I throw a little happy party. Next turn, his reaper takes out Megalith. Admonia dispels stone skin on the woldwarden. Banes and Tartarus take out the warden and put a few points on a guardian, and one whiffs on a stone. My turn, Balder walked up stone skins the guardian who is placed behind the Deathjack. The death jack cannot admonition away because I never moved, so the guard lays into him with 5 attacks, destroying him. The other Woldguardian charges a hunter’s marked reaper, also trashing it. I am now feeling confident about this game. The final Woldstalkers on the right shoots and kills Admonia. The 2^nd unit of stones teleport up to him and get ready to place or heal him on my next turn. His turn the banes come up with Skarre and kill the Woldguardian. Back to me, the woldguardian comes up and kills Tartarus. Balder sets up in a unit of stones behind him. Skarre comes forward to try to kill the 2^nd guardian, fails by a few boxes. Balder places behind her with the stones and succeeds in killing her.

1-0

My game 2 I played against Circle (Boo for mirror match!). He had pKreugar, eKreugar and eKaya left (I think?). He chose pKreugar. I saw a chance to play Mohsar. Against hordes and a winnable Scenario? I’ll take it. So we start deploying. I win the roll for first.

List as far as I remember:

pKreugar

Warp Wolf Alpha

Woldwarden

Feral Warpwolf

Druids + UA

Bloodtrackers (Leader + 5)

Shifting Stones + UA

Black Clad

Skin Walkers Min

We both deployed in balls near the center of the table. Scenario was Revelation. Flag to my left was #1. We both AD our Bloodtrackers on the left. I run up my Blood Trackers, put mirage on them, shift forward my Woldwarden and run the stalker into the newly formed 2^nd triangle of shifting stones to my right. I throw up some pillars to block LOS. His Skinwalkers run up on my right, the rest of his army goes left to get ready to claim the objective. I charge in with my blood trackers, killing 1 of his. Megalith advances up near the objective with the wold warden. Pillars block his heavies and leave a small gap for his Blood Trackers. His Trackers come forward and massacre mine to the man (He rolled way better than I did :D). Druids advance and throw up some clouds, his stalker runs up on the right flank. His Woldwarden kills 2 pillars freeing up LOS for his stalker to spray my woldwatcher and does minimal damage. The skinwalkers continue to advance up the right side. He ships it back. On my turn I start off by putting sprint onto the stalker with the wilder, placing the stalker into melee with the skinwalkers, warp for strength and kill2, sprint away from the 3^rd. Megalith activates, charges and kills his feral. Wold Warden advances up and makes a forest. My army shifts left, Mohsar throws up some pillars to continue blocking his heavies from the fight. The rounds pass forward and back with him pushing megalith off of the objective with druids, Kreugar throwing the woldwarden off of it aswell, but the gorax and stones contest for his turns. The warwolf gets a claim (*fist pump!*). Eventually the stalker on my right clears through the last skinwalker, and I win by scenario on the turn it would have killed his Alpha.

2-0

Game 3 was a slug fest. I played against Skorne. He has Xerxis and Rasheth left, I had Kromac and Morvahna left. I look over at the other undefeated table and see Menoth Cryx. I know that Kromac is a much better choice against those, so I pick Morvahna. She is also strong against Skorne because they have 0 ways to get rid of upkeep spells (outside of the thrulgg, which he didn’t have in any of his lists) I was really hoping to face Rasheth. He chose Xerxis. I knew I was in trouble from the get go. My army did not have ANYTHING that could kill a unit of Cetratii.

List as far as I remember:

Xerxis

Basalisk Drake

Basalisk Krea

Cyclopse Shaman

Cataphract Cetratii

Cataphract Arcuraii

Min Cav

Rhadeim

Beast Handlers

WC attachment solo

Orin Midwinter

He split deployed, Cetratii on my right, Arcuraii on my left, Ferox on my right, Rhadiem in mid. Beasts on the right with the Cetratii. Scenario was Capture the Flag, and to note we had a large obstruction in the center of the table. I went second, deploying Skinwalkers on the right (In a futile attempt to stop the Cetratii from just steamrolling me), Guardians in the mid with Morvahna. Wolves to the left with Morraig and the riders. Stones in the standard middle deployment. His first turn he ran just about everything and shield walled around his objective. I ran up to try to set up a counter hit with Wolves of Orboros in front Morraig behind w/ my cav. Skin walkers advanced, but not into charge range of the Cetratii. Wolds moved up the middle supporting both flanks and blocked by the obstruction. His turn 2 Rhadiem came in, jumping over the wolves and killing mounted Morraig. His Ferox came in, jumped over the wolves again and killed 2 out of my 3 cav. I had totally not expected them to make it that far, but Xerxis gave them the +2 movement buff. Arcuraii came up and killed a few wolves which would regrow the next turn. His Cetratii advanced a slow 5” and cautiously guarded his objective from the bog trogs. He feats in hopes of me charging the Cetratii, which I do not. On my next turn I positioned the skin walkers ready to charge should his Cetratii advance, charged in the wolves that regrew onto his Ferox, and the rest into the Arcuraii that now had defenders ward. I killed 2 of them, and managed to only land 2 hits on his Ferox (needing 5’s… =/) bringing both close to death. My Cav activates and finishes off the 2 low HP Ferox and light cavs into the 3^rd. A woldguardian crushes Rhadiem and sets up in a unit of stones just on the opposite side of the middle obstruction. 2^nd wold readies to charge the advancing Cetratii and gets a smoke cloud in front of him from the gobbers. Morvahna casts harvest and I end my turn. He starts off by throwing up the basilisk’s aura, and activating his Ferox. It jumps over my wolf rider and misses her twice. Arcuraii retaliate in kind on the wolves, killing 4 of them, all of which will be regrown the next turn. He uses a basilisk to spray down 3 more leaving only 5 left in the unit. The shaman comes up, uses the Krea animus and misses his attacks against a wolf. Xerxis moves up behind the obstruction in the middle and camps 5 fury. Beast handlers remove all of the fury from the beasts. He doesn’t advance with his cetratii, camping his point to make sure I cannot score. I rejoice at this, as I have no way in my army to deal with these guys. I continue to grind my wolves into his army putting about 10 damage on the Cyclops, stabbing down another Arcuraii. I place a Woldguardian into melee with his basilisk as I do not want him to spray the wolves again – this cold cause the whole unit to die. If this happens, I lose the game immediately. I put about 20 damage on the basilisk leaving it with very low HP and hit, but fail to kill 1 Arcuraii. The Skinwalkers continue the stand off over his objective, neither of us walking into threat of the other. The 2^nd Woldguardian moves up into the stones to be placed on the following turn. The first unit is now missing a man, and moves up to heal the previous guardian that was placed up. On his turn, the grind continues with the Shaman, and Arcuraii killing some wolves, only to have them regrow next turn, the drake gets Fury from Marketh and wails on the guardian doing a decent amount of damage. Xerxis moves up, casts fury on himself, and combo smites the Guardian, launching him away from the stones that were to heal him and leaves him at 3 hp (all on spirit), also smushing 2 wolves. The wolves regrow at the start of the turn, take out some beast handlers, grind down on the shaman and drake leaving the drake with 3 hp. I place the 2^nd Guardian behind Xerxis, attempting to go for the kill. On my first attack I’m Mat 6 vs a def 10 Xerxis (13 base -1 for fury, -2 for back arc) and pound away. He has 2 fury on him. After transferring to the Krea and taking the next 3 hits I leave him with 2 HP. I’ve got this game won I think. I pick up 3 fury from dying beast handlers and the like on Morvahna and advance to influence the last Arcuraii near the drake. If I can kill that drake my other woldguardian can charge the knocked down Xerxis and at dice -1 I can easily put the final 2 damage with 4 attacks on him at 1 dice of damage. I boost to hit the Arcuraii, hit him. He hits the drake. Roll 1 shy of killing the drake (Needed an 8 I believe on 3 dice, and roll a 7). Drake lives with 1 HP, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Guardian walks up to engage it anyways, unable to hit a def 13 with only 1 dice. The 2^nd Unit of stones teleports around Morvahna and gets ready to start healing her cuts when both of my beasts are going to die this next turn. Turn passes. Drake, Krea and Shaman are all healed by beast handlers. Xerxis finishes off the last guardian and camps 4 fury. Drake advances to spray Morvahna and it gets sack pawned to a stone doing it a few damage. Cyclops Orin, and the remaining Arcuraii kill a 7 wolves bringing the unit down to 2 men left. Super close to losing this game. The Cetratii declare a charge, 4 of which are able to get onto the Guardian in his back field and put a large amount of damage on him. A charging Krea w/ Fury manages to finish him off. I am not out of beasts and must rely on Harvest and cutting for Fury. Turn comes back to me. I upkeep my 2 spells, letting Harvest drop (Wasn’t the best idea now that I’ve thought about it a bunch…) and cut up to full. Regrow 5 wolves, 4 of which can charge Xerxis. I charge in with 3 of them, CMA and miss as he now has defenders ward from Marketh. The last remaining wolf charges and kills market, while the 4^th regrown one charges and puts another 3-4 damage on the Cyclops. It has 2-3 HP left, as does the Drake. Krea is not looking too swell after the transfers. My Skinwalkers charge the Cetratii and miss 3 out of their 4 attacks needing 6’s to hit. Wish that would have gone better, but oh well. Morvahna gets healed by 1 stone, and the other full unit teleports around her to block LOS. Drake is now engaged by 3 total wolves. His turn he kills the 3 wolves in melee with Xerxis and backs away with him, bringing Xerxis over to charge Skinwalkers the next turn. Takes 2 free strikes on his Drake which kill it (he is running dangerously close to out of time on his death clock now. Probably around 6 minutes left on his clock. I have about 15.). The shaman stabs away at the wolves killing a few more, The last remaining Arcuraii does the same. I cut for 7, upkeep and regrow 5 more wolves. Their charge brings the Cyclops to 1 hp, kills the Krea, Marketh and Orin. Bog trogs finally come in on that side as I have now realized he will never give me a shot at that objective, and 1 makes it in range to charge the Cyclops, killing it. Neither of us have beasts anymore, and he reaves up to 5 fury. His turn Xerxis charges into the Skinwalkers, kills 1. His Cetratii CMA to kill a 2^nd. Turn comes back to me, The wolves clean up the rest of the Arcuraii and his beast handlers, wolves CMA down 1 of his damaged Cetratii and I heal up Morvahna. This is when I made a mistake. I should have walked Morvahna farther away from Xerxis who now can charge through his troops to the stone blocking LOS to Morvahna, kill it and beat back into melee with Morvahna. I immediately lose if this happens. I pass turn back without doing this. He CMA’s the last Skinwalker in his way to charge with 2 Cetratii needing a 15 to kill on 3 dice. Rolls it. He declares his charge and I start sweating. He takes 2 free strikes, the first of which kills Xerxis on 7 to hit and 9 to kill. I immediately wipe my brow of sweat and shake the hand of the man that gave me the best game I played at the convention. We count points and turn our sheets. I’m 1 game away from the whole shebang

3-0

In my final game I know I have my strongest list left. I unleash Kromac and he reveals Thyra. I am already feeling confident about this because I have a ton of experience of Kromac vs Menoth. I know how to get around enliven and how to deal with the Avatar. I’m not scared of Daughters with this list and the grievous wounds spell doesn’t really scare me. We deploy and he runs turn 1. I do my standard advance, which is Gnarlhorn in my #2 unit of stones and set up the #1 unit that has the UA about 6” farther up. Stalkers move up the flanks and the Woldstalkers run down the sides. I try to take a shot or two at his daughters, but they have occultation on them. *D’oh*. His turn 2 he charges up his daughters engaging a few Woldstalkers and whiffing all his attacks on my Shifting Stone UA. Runs up his Reckoner, Bastions and Avatar. Thyra advances onto a hill on the right flank. On my turn I do a little bit of control area measuring and decide I can get my Gnarlhorn to Thyra. I upkeep Wild Aggression on a stalker, and Warpath on Kromac. The stalker kills the daughters that ran up the field blocking Kromac from advancing far enough to keep the Gnarlhorn in his control area then sprints back with its animus clearing the spot. Kromac casts Wild Aggression onto the Gnarlhorn and charges a remaining daughter to get the distance needed to keep him in control. Wilder uses the Gorax animus on the Gnarlhorn. 2^nd unit of stones activates and shifts him forward into the first unit. First unit activates and tries to place him into melee with Thyra. There isn’t enough room for his base between Gorman, the book and Rhoven. I place him in B2B with Gorman. He activates and attacks Gorman with a fist attack. Hits needing a 6 w/ free boosts. Easily kills at POW 16. Takes his warpath move up into Thyra. 3 attacks later Thyra is no more and I am the Masters Champion.

4-0

I would like to thank everyone that helped me play test, and helped me theory craft my lists into the perfection that they were for this tournament. My crew here at Asgard Games was an invaluable asset to my victory. The Texas Renegades also did great this weekend and I am as proud of them as they are of me.

Cheers to everyone that congratulated me, hats off to you.

Thank you Privateer Press, Hacksaw and Jen for running such great tournaments and supplying such a great game for us all to play. We all love you down here in Houston. I look forward to seeing a lot of you again at Gencon.

Feel free to discuss this article and ask questions about it here:

http://www.asgardgames.net/forums/index.php?topic=2629.0

Stomping Old Habits

History and Motivation

The first deck that I built for Legacy was Armageddon Stax. The archetype of prison decks was an entirely fresh one for me back then. During old extended season (circa 2001), I was a fourteen year old playing Urza Saga/Onslaught Goblins, Red Sligh, and Aluren packing 4 Vampiric Tutors, against a metagame of Monoblack Reanimator running 4 Vampiric Tutor and 4 Entombs powering Akroma out on turn two every game. I took a six year break from the game, and stumbled back to MTG in 2007 relooking into the Extended format. That’s when I found an awesome deck called Tron. It was a deck focused on establishing a Mindslaver lock, and that began my interest in prison decks.

Within just a month on my sojourn back to MTG, I became aware of a format called Legacy. Realizing that I could play all the awesome cards from my favorite sets (Tempest, Saga) and be able to play these cards for eternity, I knew this was going to be the format I would invest and enjoy. I bought the cards for my old Aluren deck, and started delving deeper into the format by reading the forums encyclopedically. I came across Christopher Coppola’s article on $T4K$ (Stax), which highlighted the $4K solution for the Vintage metagame at that time. Coppola’s article tied to the Legacy version of Vintage Stax, which he called the $400 solution to Legacy. I became immediately convinced that Stax was one of the best decks in the format, if not the coolest deck in the format (until Dredge was born later, and took the coolbro name of the format).

Of course, I was far from correct in thinking prison decks were one of the best decks in the format. The format itself is diverse and complex, and many strategies are not necessarily always going to succeed. I played ‘mental’ Stax for about a year, with myself, or on MWS with my best buddy ‘Player Left’, and slowly moved onto Stompy decks (prison-aggro decks). There was a joy in playing cards that denied interactions from an opponent. I guess you can say that playing combo Aluren to Tron to Stax followed the same spirit of enjoying decks that denied interactions.

Eventually, my involvement into Legacy got myself started on my collection of duals and staples. I could now build more decks, and the format started evolving as well. It was an era where Countertop was first being experimented in Legacy after seeing limited success in the Extended format. How ironic that Countertop was dismissed to be a slow and round-about strategy, and has now become one of the fundamental pillars in the format. I tried all variants of Stax and Stompy: Blue Stax, Armageddon Stax, Faerie Stompy, Dragon Stompy, Elephant Stompy, and Demon Stompy. Every variant was a blast to play, but it also blasted me into many game losses and frustrations. Over time, I became convinced that it was time for me to move on to more consistent dual-lands.decs. Every once in awhile, I’ll pick up Stompy with mixed feelings of joy and regret, always screaming,

“If Stompy could just be a little more consistent, it would be amazing!”

Over time, a local playgroup at Asgard Games grew into a vibrant comfortably-sized Legacy scene. We started with four people randomly meeting at Asgard Games, and coincidence and the love for the format attracted more people, and converted more people from other formats over. We have interesting metagames for most parts, metagames that are always shifting: tier and homebrew decks come in and out quite frequently and it was always fun and great to learn from every game. Over the years, deckbuilding and theory-crafting had always been my main interest in the format. Most of the time, my deck variants failed, but I always took back some interesting lessons. In this article, I would like to address some fundamental issues regarding the nature of Stompy decks, its strengths, its failures and my approach to a different kind of Stompy.

What is Stompy?
Stompy is fundamentally a prison-aggro deck that seeks to win games by disruption with prison cards and winning via an aggro strategy under these prison cards. For the following article, I would like to use the definitions:

Lockpieces: a card that generates a prison-effect, meaning, it stops an opponent from interacting in a specific manner e.g. Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Crucible of Worlds. Lockpieces often hinder an opponent’s gameplay and prevent him from executing his deck strategies the way he wants to perform them.

Beaters: a creature that is a win-condition for Stompy via an aggro-strategy.

Strategy:
Stompy is commonly identified to be a deck running a manabase of Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors, with additional accelerants in the form of Chrome Mox, Spirit Guides, or Mox Diamond. The typical Stompy manacurve begins at 2cmc and 3cmc. The reason for such a manabase lies in the selection of cards, both lockpieces and beaters, which form the core strategy of Stompy.

The strategy of Stompy is straightforward: abuse the manabase of the deck to power out 2cmc and 3cmc lockpieces such as Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere on the early turns and try to win under these lockpieces. This strategy is a very powerful one due to the nature of the format. Legacy is a format that has a dense exchange of interactions during turns one to turns three. The resulting game states for most matches are usually determined by the player who establishes a superior game state in these early turns. As a corollary, it is only natural that a lot of 1cmc to 2cmc spells are played in Legacy due to the importance of this early game phase. Stompy is a deck that tries to capture this scenario in its favor. By tweaking a manabase to power out 2cmc and 3cmc spells like Chalice and Trinisphere, Stompy is essentially shutting down bulk of the early game phase. In the meantime, Stompy can also capture this tempo gain from prison effects by dropping creatures which are considerably above the game phase curve (e.g. a 3cmc creature is usually intended to be played on turns two or three but Stompy is able to power out these creatures many turns faster thanks to its manabase).

However, the strategy for Stompy is never as simple as it sounds. On paper, turn one Chalice and Trinisphere would seem to win bulk of games, but in real life, you are facing a host of decks running cards that answer these cards. For instance, Force of Will protects a player from Stompy’s turn one disruption. Recently, the popularity of Aether Vial, Noble Hierarchs and Mox Diamond has diminished the effectiveness of cards like Trinisphere and Blood Moon. Stompy can no longer rely on a simple strategy to win games. It is now often forced to play a game with an opponent, which is something Stompy does not want to do since Stompy really just want to restrict an opponent from playing a game at all.

Regardless, Stompy decks are still attractive to some players due to its unique strategy and deck shell. It’s a shell that has a decent chance to beat all three archetypes in the format (combo, control, and aggro). The ability to run Chalice of the Void, which shuts down 60% of the format’s most important spells, and having the ability to play over-costed cards at the same pace as regular cards, pushes Stompy’s tempo development above regular decks. Not to mention, lock-pieces and disruption in the form of Trinisphere, Chalice, Crucible, Armageddon, Choke, Blood Moon etc tend to skew the tempo in favor for Stompy.

Failures of Stompy
The heart of Stompy is to win the tempo game by creating prison-effects. If it fails to do this, Stompy falls back and loses to better cards that an opponent will be playing. Despite being in a terrific shell that beats all pillars of combo, control, and aggro, Stompy decks have in recent years been labeled to be the ‘bad’ decks of Legacy. A key reason is due to Stompy’s inconsistency. This is a well-known fact that Stompy faces. You lead with an opening seven and pray that it is fast and strong enough to create locks and win under them. If your opening seven is weak, you are forced to mull because your strategy will never work unless you have enough prison-effects to buy tempo to win games. Mulligans tend to spiral Stompy towards even greater inconsistent draws governed by how the decks are fundamentally built. Stompy also has to topdeck most of the time and the tempo it creates in the early games has to be captured in order to create a lock/win. Many times, Stompy would lead off with broken starts and seemingly control the game but fail to draw relevant cards and proceed to lose.

The inconsistency issue of Stompy is always a big reason that deters people from continually playing the deck. Personally, this was the very reason I stopped playing Stompy variants, and whenever I picked up Stompy again, it was always a mixed feeling of “Stompy beats most decks, and only loses to itself”. Many innovators and people who play Stompy seek to increase consistency. One way of doing this is to increase card draw/filter with cards like Thirst for Knowledge, Crystal Ball, Sensei’s Divining Top, or other oddity choices such as Bottled Cloister, Faerie Mechanist etc. However, this implementation ends up diluting the core strategy of the deck, and more importantly reduces the explosiveness of the deck, which leads to fundamental failures since the entire deck is no longer aligned to its explosive game plan. The other alternative, which is perhaps the only alternative for Stompy is to optimize card selection to reduce the chances of drawing dead cards. No one can control the topdeck, but the mathematics inbuilt into deck design and careful selection of cards can reduce the chances of dead draws. Improving consistency of Stompy, in my opinion, is the only way for Stompy to do well in big events. Stompy can easily win small events due to its surprisingly powerful starts that few decks can handle, but in bigger events, the inconsistency factor will become an issue when Stompy needs to not only battle good decks, but also to battle itself and pray that it does not undergo ‘dead draws’.

Winning with bombs vs. incremental advantage
This is an important section that I will briefly talk about two-core strategies that I feel every Legacy deck is based upon. Winning in Legacy can be safely summarized into two strategies:

1) Bombs
2) Incremental-Advantage

The first case is winning with bombs. Legacy is a format of bombs. There are cards in the format that will win games by themselves if resolved. A few good examples include Show and Telling an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into play, resolving Natural Order into Progenitus, or resolving Ad Nauseam/ Doomsday into a Tendrils of Agony pile. It takes quite a lot of exposure to the format to truly appreciate that game-winning bombs are the heart of the format. Why would you play this format if it didn’t contain bombs? It would be just like any other format, dull and lethargic. Decks focused on playing bombs often build their decks around these bombs, forcing them to resolve to win games. However, these decks usually falter when their bomb strategies are countered and disrupted.

The second case is a strategy that relies on carefully playing out spells while constantly maintaining the game state. By maintaining the game state, incremental-advantage strategies become quite powerful because it is based on a core selection of cards that work synergistically to generate advantage. Bulk of Legacy falls under this section (despite the fact that every deck has their own bombs, there are only a few decks that truly play bombs which win on the same turn). A few good examples include Jace the Mindsculptor, Countertop, Goblins gaining advantage from Goblin Ringleader and Goblin Warchief, Merfolks building up an army over turns while countering spells, etc. Incremental-advantage decks, unlike decks packing bombs, do not falter as much when they are being disrupted. This is because these decks have much more options to attack opponents whereas a deck with bombs loses when their bombs are disrupted/countered.

With these two concepts in mind, I would like to relate this to Stompy, an observation and train of thought I had been developing which led to revelations on developments towards a different approach when playing Stompy.

To Bomb or Not to Bomb
Relating back to the core strategy of Stompy, we recall that the strategy is to play out lockpieces and win under them. This very strategy implies that the lockpieces played out by Stompy are viewed as bombs from an opponent’s standpoint. If Stompy is capable of playing a lockpiece buying three to four turns to win, then the lockpiece is clearly considered to be a bomb from the opponent. Likewise, if an opponent is able to deal with this bomb, Stompy strategies tend to falter because they cannot fully capitalize the tempo gains they originally intended.

To demonstrate and summarize the common scenarios that Stompy undergoes, let’s look at three scenarios (summary of scenario is given in parenthesis italicized).

Scenario A (explosiveness, correct sequence of spells played out)
Stompy is on the play and powers out a turn one Trinisphere and proceeds to win the game with a big beater on turn two, while following up with more lockpieces like Blood Moon/Chalice. Why has the opponent lost in this scenario? The opponent has lost to the bomb Trinisphere. If he had been able to counter the Trinisphere, he would not be in a position unable to interact. Turn one Trinisphere is definitely a bomb in this scenario. Note that in this situation, if Stompy opened with a big beater followed by drawing lockpieces, the scenario would have been much different (refer to Scenario C).

Scenario B (bomb-strategy nullified)
Now imagine, Stompy is on the draw and the opponent leads with an Aether Vial. The same Trinisphere in the earlier case is now a terrible card. The opponent has nullified the bomb of Stompy with as simple a start as Aether Vial. Tying this back to the general rule that decks with bombs tend to win when bombs resolve and lose when bombs don’t resolve, we see this exact situation happening. Not only is Stomping suffering from a dead card (Trinisphere), but the entire strategy on winning on the back of Trinisphere/Blood Moon has been nullified. Another common example is having an early bomb lockpiece countered by an opponent’s Force of Will.

Now, there is one more dimension to take into consideration, and that is the nature of Stompy decks. Consistency will always be a problem and Scenario C usually occurs in many games:

Scenario C (Inconsistency)
Stompy is on the play and powers out a turn one Trinisphere and draws lockpieces and lands for the next few turns. The opponent is locked under Trinisphere but Stompy has been unable to capitalize the tempo gain from the lockpiece since he has not drawn a creature. The game either ends up with the opponent stabilizing and answering the lockpiece bomb or Stompy finally drawing creatures that are no longer as impressive if he had drawn them earlier.

These three scenarios are the key scenarios that I feel describe the picture of Stompy and they all revolve around a common topic of playing bombs v.s. incremental-advantage. For the longest time, Stompy’s approach was to play bombs and try to win under them, but it is my sincere opinion that this strategy is no longer as powerful as it once was. The popularity of Aether Vial, Noble Hierarch, higher basic lands, and diversification of hate towards Stompy has made the whole bomb-approach less feasible. Even if it is feasible, explosive Scenario A starts can be disrupted by opponents into Scenario B, or degrade into Scenario C due to the inherent inconsistencies enforced by the selection of cards.

With such, I have begun taking steps to testing an incremental-advantage approach to Stompy rather than playing bombs. I still play bombs but my selection of cards will seek to demonstrate how I am not bent on the traditional land-a-bomb-play-beater approach, but rather, my deckbuilding is focused on a more consistency and incremental-advantage approach.

Synergy and Redundancy in incremental-advantage
Earlier, I focused that the only viable solution to improve consistency in Stompy is to minimize dead draws. Every deck faces consistency issues, so Stompy is not alone. The goal in this section is to identify what really causes inconsistencies within Stompy.

I would like to draw a case from a good Legacy deck: Zoo. Zoo is a deck built on a selection of cards with a principle of redundancy. Every card in Zoo is either a burn spell or a big beater. In the deck-design of Zoo, this can be further summarized as every card in the deck does the most damage squeezed into one card. Whether Zoo draws a Lightning Bolt, Kird Ape or Wild Nacatl, they mean almost the same value to a Zoo player. This redundancy in deck design makes Zoo a very consistent deck since every card drawn serves the purpose the deck desires, and there is theoretically no ‘bad draws’ aside from lands and creatures out of the manacurve.

Similarly, we see that Merfolks and Goblins are focused somewhat on redundancy. Despite the fact that these decks require a swarm strategy to be truly successful, these decks typically just want to draw enough creatures and eventually win with critical mass while playing some form of tempo to slow down opponent’s board development (e.g. Wasteland, Daze, Rishadan Port).

That is the power of incremental-advantage decks despite the powerful effects of game-winning bombs in the formats. Decks based on consistency, synergy and incrementally accumulating advantage, can survive better in the face of hate, and they have tremendously decreased the chances for dead draws since their selection of cards do not depend on each other.

Taking this to Stompy, I would like to highlight Scenario C where Stompy plays a bomb lockpiece but fails to win because it has not drawn a relevant card to follow up with the bomb. I want to highlight a key concept known commonly as redundancy as addressed above in the example case of Zoo, which adds to another dimension to reducing dead draws. Take for example, card X performs function X. When you need to utilize function X in a game, drawing card X will put the game in your favor. However, if the applications of function X are narrow in another matchup, then in other instances where you do not want to draw an X effect, drawing card X costs you games. At the same time, if a card Z can fulfill both functions x and y (where x is a similar effect to X but not as game winning), then that card is more flexible, and in the most cases, create less instances of bad ‘topdecks’. This is a simple way of analyzing cards and redundancy. Obviously the game state is more complicated than this, and sometimes, cards with multiple functions are not as powerful as card with a single game-winning functions. Synergy is a common term understood by many people. It involves a selection of cards with little effects working together to create an overall gamestate with a big effect.

To give a more tangible example of the story of redundancy and synergy from the viewpoints of Stompy, compare the effects of Blood Moon to something like multiple Phyrexian Revokers and Lodestone Golem. Blood Moon is an example of a card that has a single game-winning function. You resolve Blood Moon you should have the game in your favor against the decks affected by Blood Moon. On the other hand, drawing multiple Blood Moons or resolving Blood Moons against irrelevant decks creates useless cards/draws in your deck. Phyrexian Revoker and Lodestone Golem are an example of a card with a less game-winning effect (Pithing Needle effect), but drawing multiple Revoker is never bad (at worst it’s a 2/1 for two-colorless. The disruption adds up incrementally compared to Blood Moon. Obviously, Revokers will never win games the way Blood Moon does, and Revokers are in fact terrible if your deck has no other cards to back them up. But what Revoker does is creating a small lock while being a win-condition at the same time, and when more of such cards with similar purpose (Lodestone Golems, Crucible, Chalice) add up, the overall effect is synergistic, and is as strong as the lock generated by Blood Moon.

If one approaches Stompy in this manner, where cards are no longer performing specific tasks (i.e. requiring to draw lockpiece and a beater on separate cards), and when one approaches a new way to look at Stompy where every card incrementally adds up both as a lockpiece and beater, then we start looking into strategies where draws are more redundant, therefore reducing inconsistency, while at the same time redundant draws leads to an overall synergistic effect. This new strategy would require a new selection of cards over traditional bomb-approaches of Stompy, and arguably, the new version of Stompy would look quite different than traditional lists.

So, here’s a list before I lose you guys.

DECKLIST: OVERSEER STOMPY
Lands: 24
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
1 Island
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Mishra’s Factory
3 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Wasteland

Accelerants: 5
3 Mox Diamond
2 Mox Opal

Beaters: 20
4 Steel Overseer
4 Phyrexian Invoker
4 Master of Etherium
4 Etched Champion
4 Lodestone Golem

Equipmets: 5
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

Lockpieces: 7
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Crucible of Worlds
(4 Lodestone Golems count to this slot)

I really want to focus on the three Scenarios A, B, C which play a heavy role in the culmination of card selection for this deck. A brief recap:

Scenario A: (explosiveness, correct sequence of cards played, tempo, lockpieces)
Description: Stompy blowing out opponents with bombs and capitalizing on the tempo from lockpieces.

Scenario B: (no redundancy, no synergy, dead draws)
Description: Stompy losing to opponents because bombs have been answered and subsequent gameplays are affected since they relied on the bomb resolving.

Scenario C:(consistency)
Description: Stompy losing to itself due to inconsistency.

Manabase:
I want to keep the manabase as explosive as traditional Stompy lists i.e. I want to maximize Scenario A as much as possible (blowing out opponents with Stompy’s unfair speed). At the same time, I do not want Scenario C (consistency) to backfire on me.

One of the highlights of a Stompy manabase is 18 lands (4 Ancient Tomb, 4 City of Traitors), 4 Chrome Mox and 4 Spirit Guides. This configuration is well tested to power out Scenario A (explosiveness). However, when Scenario A degrades to Scenario B (dead draws), one starts seeing the risks of playing Chrome Moxes and Spirit Guides as unstable and unreliable mana sources. For myself, I have never liked playing with Chrome Moxes since it pitches an important business spell and cards are very valuable in Stompy. Sadly, the choice to run Chrome Mox cannot be solved for traditional Stompy lists such as Dragon Stompy and Faerie Stompy. These decks cannot afford a high land count to support Mox Diamonds without diluting their inherent strategies.

The best scenario for Traditional Stompy is Scenario A where the unstable manabase pays off in its explosiveness. However, Scenario B is becoming more frequent these days with anti-Stompy cards that we hate to see e.g. Sensei’s Divining Top, Noble Hierarch, Aether Vial, Force of Will etc. In this sense, it’s a cost-benefit analysis to see if the games won with Scenario A from an unstable manabase outweighs the game lost in Scenario B and C due to having a disrupted gameplan that can no longer function without a lockpiece or having multiple dead draws from Chrome Moxes and Spirit Guides. Most Stompy players follow the traditional saying: “That’s the way Stompy is, you win or you lose to yourself” and accept the traditional configuration. I, myself, cannot accept this if I am taking the deck seriously and plan to play in a big event. The traditional stompy lists does enjoy Scenario A more often than B, so this ties in closely with their willingness to run such a manabase, however, the mathematics and playtesting has also proven to work for the manabase that I have proposed.

Deep-diving into card choices, we see that Overseer Stompy runs 24 lands. Breaking these lands down, every land serves an important purpose and more importantly, since this deck is built with the principles of redundancy and synergy instead of a bomb-lockpiece approach, I’ll highlight the corresponding synergistic cards in parenthesis.

4 Wasteland
(Crucible of Worlds, Lodestone Golem)
This is simply the most powerful land in the format. This is the land that will destroy any deck, including yours when played correctly.

4 Seat of Synod
(Master of Etherium, Etched Champion, Mox Opal)
Metalcraft enabler but more importantly to pump and play out Master of Etherium

4 Mishra’s Factory + 3 Blinkmoth Nexus
(Crucible of Worlds, Master of Etherium, Steel Overseer)
Manlands are essential to the deck adding as additional threats that pair up very potently with Steel Overseer. They get pumped by Master, and occasionally enable Metalcraft. They are crucial to winning against control decks, while being on the defensive against faster aggro decks. With Crucible, they provide an inevitable win-condition. The clock with Overseer is impressive after two-activations. They give Jace/control decks a big headache even after a Firespout/EE.

4 Ancient Tomb + 4 City of Traitors
(the entire deck)Without these lands, the deck will not exist. It’s Stompy right? I used to run 3 City of Traitors, but realized that 4 were still needed to go crazy. The nice thing is City pairs up nicely with Crucible so you get a stable Stax-like mananbase compared to other Stompy builds and not tear your face with City of Traitors openings that are questionably unkeepable.

1 Island
This Island is added because there was no reason to not play 1 basic and make Path to Exile the better removal over Swords to Plowshares. You want to show people why Path is a bad removal so run 1 Island. There is no loss in running this unless the fourth Blinkmoth is required. Since you hardly pump with Blinkmoth Nexus (it takes one colorless to pump), multiple Blinkmoths are not impressive when you only need 1 Nexus to carry an equipment over.

The manabase retains the explosiveness of regular Stompy lists with Mox Diamonds and Tomblands. 7 out of the 24 lands are manlands which count towards win-conditions (that pair very synergistically with Overseer on the offensive and Crucible on the defensive). 2 Mox Opal has been tested to be the ideal ratio i.e. I seldom draw double Opals, and Mox Opal is always active and powering out 3cmc spells on turn two. Since the list I propose is not as focused on dropping 3cmc bombs like Trinispheres on turn one, we see how Opal makes sense in the deck since there is no need to drop 3cmcs on turn one in this deck, making Opal a very consistent acceleration past turn two without any card disadvantage. 4 Wasteland pairs strongly with Crucible, and provides more synergy for the Chalice/Lodestone gameplan. In this deck, unlike other Stompy decks where 10 out of the 18 lands are basics, all my lands have a purpose (except Island). This selection is based on two fundamental reasons:

1) I want to minimize the mulligans I associate due to land screw. When traditional Stompy opens with 1 Ancient Tomb and a Chrome Mox, it is usually awesome until they Wasteland your Tomb and you proceed to topdeck no lands (since you only play 18) while they win under your own Trinisphere. If you mulled that hand, then you get 6 cards where you could have avoided the land screw problem entirely.
2) Once in awhile, I get land-flooded but since all my lands serve important functions (1/3 of my lands are threats), this reduces the drawback on playing more land. The ability to play 3 Mox Diamond + 24 Lands with 4 Wastelands and 7 manlands + 3 Crucibles all tie in nicely to a land-based engine and selection of cards. The ratio supports Mox Diamonds, while allowing recycling and recursion of Waste/Manlands with Crucible, without any issues on manascrew and issues on manaflood is less severe when 23 out of the 24 lands have secondary purposes. In general, I feel that Stompy cannot afford tempo losses from manascrews but can afford some tempo losses from manafloods (best scenario is neither manascrew or flood but one can hope :P)

Creatures:
The creatures of these decks need to fulfill three key purposes addressed in earlier sections:
1) Redundancy and Synergy
2) Cost-efficient at all times
3) Disruptive and pressuring opponents to take actions

Redundancy and synergy is the main pillar on how the deck is built. On paper, choices like Phyrexian Revoker, Steel Overseer, and Lodestone Golem do not seem to justify as quality creatures in a Stompy deck, but I would encourage you to step out viewing the deck in the traditional-sense. I am shifting the strategy from playing cards with separate functions that perform tasks professionally to playing cards with multiple jack-of-all-trades functions that add up incrementally. Once again, this shift in philosophy is aimed to address consistency issues via redundancy and synergy leading to fewer dead draws.

All my creatures have to be cost-efficient. They have to do much more than what they cost. This is a simple fact. In Legacy, you are facing creatures that are above the manacurve. Your choice of creatures has to be as close to this philosophy as possible. It is hard to trump Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary when it comes to creature selection, but it should be a top priority to make sure that your creatures do something important and enough to justify its manacost.

All my creatures have to be disruptive and apply pressure, and in some ways asking my opponents to remove them if possible. Without this feature, the deck will fail, and the deck was not successful before the printing of Phyrexian Revoker since there were not enough creatures that disrupted and demanded attention. In this deck, you want your opponents to feel threatened, and under pressure from lockpieces or inevitability. It is for this reason that something as crappy as Steel Overseer generates so much fear (due to his synergy with other cards in the deck). When evaluating the card choices in this deck, you start to understand why I can make a bold statement to say that my creatures should be removal-magnets whereas decks like Dragon Stompy want to avoid having their creatures removed in any scenario. Dragon Stompy takes a lot of resource/investment to power out threats (using Chrome Mox, Spirit Guides, Seething Song all add to cards/resources to play out one threat). These decks cannot afford to have their creatures removed because they only have limited ways to powering them out. Thankfully, the bomb-lockpiece strategy (Scenario A) supports this philosophy but they have to hope this does not degrade to Scenarios B & C or their limited threats will face superior removal.

In the incremental-advantage build I’m approaching, you want your opponents to feel pressured from everything: Steel Overseers, Phyrexian Revokers, Lodestone Golems, Master of Etherium, Etched Champion, Manlands, Crucible, Jitte, Chalice etc. By doing so, they will be less able to develop their board position while focusing on answering your disruption/beaters while you are constantly building up again and again. The whole goal is to pressure your opponents, force them to be offset from their gamestate, which is exactly what the incremental-advantage strategy is about.

4 Steel Overseer
1) This is the single card that connects all pieces together. He is highly synergistic with all creatures in the deck (in particular growing manlands and Etched Champion). It is usually worthwhile to grow your dudes to 4/4, 5/5 before swinging in to make full use of his worth by putting your creatures outside the fragile x/3 toughness range. Steel Overseer grows manlands with just the manland spending one colorless on activation. This is a crucial strategy against faster aggro decks and control decks. You can afford to take some beating and early damage and when you have outgrown your dudes against theirs, they will be staring down on a board of additional creatures/manlands that are difficult to handle. Drawing multiple Overseer is both redundant and highly synergistic (pumping dudes +2/+2 a turn is very terrifying).
2) It is amusing that people ignore the Overseer in the deck and end up getting killed by an army of big 5/5s. Overseer is somewhat slow in the deck, but the speed is compensated by playing with incremental lockpieces e.g. Chalice, Phyrexian Revokers, Wasteland/Crucible, Lodestones. Typically, I try to activate Overseer two times before swinging with him. Overseer also does another impressive feat to grow Lodestones out of the fragile x/3 toughness bracket. For costing two-colorless but having the ability to grow entire armies, he is well worth the cost, but more importantly, he is the most synergistic component in the deck. In any other deck, Overseer is janky as hell and topdecking Overseer on an empty board is terrible, but in this deck, topdecking Overseer is still powerful when you consider that you have plenty of manlands that could use the pump.

4 Phyrexian Revoker
1) Multiple Revokers drawn are never dead draws. The ability to just nail down Sensei’s Divining Top, and Aether Vial makes this guy important for this deck in stifling game state development. Decks relying on Top/Vial immediately have to play without Top/Vial, which entirely changes how these decks are meant to be played, forcing opponents into an unnatural position. He also protects the deck against previously problematic Qasali Pridemages and Engineered Explosives. Revoker can be played both pre-emptively or post-threat, making him very flexible. Against Zoo/Bant, I’ll drop him naming Qasali Pridemage, insuring myself from Pridemage. I’ll drop him naming Top against Countertop and watch them become helpless being unable to play the deck they originally intended. If they drop a Knight/Lavamancer, I’ll name them on my next turn. He is a very central piece to the philosophy of incrementally disrupting opponents while building up more disruption (Wasteland/Chalice/Lodestone)
2) I created the deck before Revoker was spoiled, and told my friends that “If WotC prints a good 2cmc artifact creature that disrupts, he’ll make it into this deck”. How ironic for things to happen after a month. For two colorless, you get a turn one castable 2/1 body with a strong ability and being able to swing in with Jittes and Swords. Revoker usually serves to lock up any relevant pieces on the board that escaped from Chalice/Wasteland/Lodestone locks.

4 Etched Champion
1) If this creature had no Metalcraft drawback, I think he would be highly regarded as one of the more powerful 3-drop in the format. Etched Champion single-handedly beats Zoo (aside from burn to the face), and in many ways makes the game state stall out the way Vedalken Shackles does. Multiple Etched Champions get out of control, and drawing an equipment seals up games. He gets synergistically pumped by Master of Etherium and Steel Overseer, and is the main win-condition for the deck.
2) For 3-mana, he is one of the more powerful 3-drop in the format since Metalcraft is seldom an issue for him in this deck.

4 Master of Etherium
1) Usually 7/7 on turn 3, a single master is bad for your opponents and multiples make your army huge.
2) I see no reason not to play him since he is far above the mana-curve in terms of P/T. He is also crucial to putting Revokers and Lodestones out of their fragile toughness range when paired up with more Masters/Overseers. He is a card that screams attention due to the huge P/T and amount of pressure he’s going to apply on your opponent.

4 Lodestone Golem
1) This card puts a tax on every resource your opponent plays. Coupled with wastelands, things will become increasingly expensive for the opponents. He dies to Bolt/StP but you should either have a Chalice out or at worst it’s a four-mana investment to an opponent’s two-mana investment in a 1-1 trade (four-mana can be valued equivalently as two-mana considering your manabase). When he is not removed, he’s a disruptive force to be reckoned with.
2) Lodestone is the only slot that does not flow well with the manacurve. Occasionally he is unplayable on turns two to three due to a shortage of lands. However, he’s the only other disruptive creature on legs for the format that is playable. If he does stick in play, four colorless for a 5/3 beater that grows with Overseer/Master is well worth the cost with a tagging one-sided sphere effect on him.

EQUIPMENTS:
With 20 creatures powered out faster than most creatures, I feel that the 5 equipment ratio of 3 Umezawa’s Jitte and 2 Sword of Fire and Ice are required to support the mid-game beatdown strategies while lockpieces and disruption pieces are being built coherently by playing creatures. At worst scenario, your manlands are always available to swing with the equipment when needed. My selection of 3 /2 Jitte/SoFI initially started with a 3/2 Cranial Plating/Jitte breakdown. That selection was more aggressive and won games faster on Etched Champion/ Blinkmoth Nexus but does not solve the issues the deck faced against faster aggro decks. I reasoned that another aspect to reducing inconsistencies of Stompy is to play cards that fulfill multiple functions (as observed in the selection of creatures and manabase), likewise, the equipments need to follow a similar logic. Jitte, the best equipment ever printed, will win games by itself. Jitte stabilizes against faster decks with life-gain, kills off tribal with -1/-1 counters and unfairly wins games with Champion/Nexus. Sword of Fire/Ice was included to primarily combat Goblins/Merfolks, my weaker matchups out of the Bant/Zoo/Goblins/Merfolks aggro-cluster. Both equipments are great against control, and pair synergistically with 7 manlands on top of the 20 creatures control has to deal with.

LOCKPIECES:
This gets to the section where most Stompy players would criticize the limited amounts of lockpieces I play.

4 Chalice of the Void
If there is a single lockpiece that cannot be cut from any Stompy list, it is Chalice of the Void. Chalice shuts down 60% of all important spells played in the format. By shutting down Bolts/StPs, you are also creating enough time for your deck to outgrow and race opposing decks.

3 Crucible of Worlds
Crucible as explained earlier, is the link to the synergy of the manabase and land-strategy. It increases the playability and value of manlands, and creates the dreaded Crucible-lock, a key feature of the deck’s lockpiece as I have selected this over Trinisphere. In many ways, this decision was based on my opinions on how cards like Trinisphere and Blood Moon have decreased in power level after recent printings/popularity of Noble Hierarchs/Qasali Pridemage and Aether Vial. Crucible does not necessarily solve this problem, but once it’s online, you are always maintaining an incremental check on your opponents. Most Legacy decks play at most two to three basics, so the Wastelock strategy is a highly effective one. As you are incrementally keeping their resource in check, drawing multiple creatures with incremental disruption adds to the overall strategy. Most games I end up sealing up with Wastelock and it is hard for me to convince myself to remove 3 Crucibles when it is not just a game-winning strategy, but also one that pairs up synergistically with the entire deck.

CARDS NOT PLAYED IN MAINDECK:
Trinisphere was in the initial iteration of the deck, but due to a number of reasons, were cut.

The deck is built on an incremental-advantage/lockpiece principal. Despite the fact that Trinisphere is synergistic and greatly supporting this incremental-advantage lockpiece strategy, it was still creating dead draws in multiple. Dropping down to 3 Trinisphere did not prove ideal either. Trinisphere has to be played as a 3-4-off or not played at all. The reasons being a turn one Trinisphere is a bomb while a turn two/three Trinisphere is no longer impressive and is not worth the inconsistency it creates (multiple dead draws or being useless past turn three).

Trinisphere is a horrible strategy against Vial and Bant with Hierarchs if you are on the draw. I sometimes feel that Trinisphere backfires on me when it sits dead in my hand against those matchups. Since my list is focused more on the 2cmc curve, Trinisphere is not ideal in my decklist for personal deck design constraints that I have implemented on my deck.

Finally, I feel that Trinisphere is only truly powerful against the matchups that it is good in. Against Zoo/Gobs/Merfolks/Bant, Trinisphere is not universally powerful and maybe or may not be powerful. Since I want to reduce inconsistencies, I feel that the ideal slots for Trinisphere would be in the SB, against Enchantress/control/Combo. I feel that my current maindeck without Trinisphere is decent enough against control/combo so I would prefer to strengthen my consistency when facing aggro matchups.

CONCLUSIONS:
This is a fresh take on Stompy, based on the history of piloting many Stompy decks to success and failures. Instead of taking the sentence “This is Stompy, you blow out or get blown”, I feel it is more valuable to find reasons as to why this phenomenon happens. We all know the reasons why Stompy is inconsistent. From a very naïve standpoint, it’s like playing a combo deck without card filtering where your combo is to first accelerate, drop a bomb lockpiece and then have enough mana to play a creature and win under the combat phase. Some may think this is a bad analogy, but the truth is, this has been the traditional strategy of Stompy: Drop a lockpiece (bomb), play dudes and win before they recover.

Nothing is wrong with the strategy, and it is a strong one. Bomb-approach Stompy can blow out opponents when caught unprepared, which explains the continued success of Dragon Stompy and the new Welder/Forgemaster lists. However, bomb-centric Stompy tends to fall into the category as other bomb-decks, if your bomb is answered, chances are you will lose since you have invested in a lot of resources to powering out a bomb. This entire article is not about dismissing the traditional strategy. This article is exploring another strategy for stompy, a strategy much akin to how Zoo/Merfolks/Goblins apply pressure to other decks. An opponent can never let his guard down, and has to always play in check to the game state, and since every creature you play has a disruptive ability tagged to him, this creates a position where suddenly the opponent can not deal with it and he starts falling down into an unrecoverable state.

I hope you guys enjoyed the article, because I definitely enjoyed writing my thoughts and opinions on this archetype, one that I had thrown away for years, but recently picked up from some interesting train of thoughts, and seemingly the ideas seem to be working and meeting the expectations I have in designing the deck.

Article by Loran Kaufmann

Hordes of Combos

Magic players favor different strategies and decks. Some enjoy control decks with big finishers backed with counters and removal. Others like aggressive creature filled decks featuring quick, low cost creatures to battle a fast victory. Even the spikiest of players will have personal play preferences when it comes to similar decks. No two players are exactly alike.

Personally, I like a deck that is flexible. Something that can meet and address threats while responding with threats of my own. I like to use cards that have multiple functions and synergies. I know there is no such thing as a perfect magic deck. However there are decks which cater to our individual style better than others. And even then I won’t pick up a deck as is with out tweaking it.

I very rarely see a deck online and sleeve it up as is with out putting in a couple of preference cards. Several of the pro players do this as well. RG Valakut got hijacked by Jace and became RUG. Several players added Abyssal Persecutor to Jund decks to give it a better game in mirror and it became known as Abyssal Jund.

I love taking a deck that has seen some success and adding a little bit more to it. Some times you see a deck that has resounding success but you don’t really like it. It lacks something, a certain je ne sais quoi. Molding established decks to fit what you like can often helps you in the long run because you are more comfortable running it. You are more familiar with certain card interactions than others and you know the nuances that they offer. It’s easier than forcing yourself to run a deck that doesn’t quite fit your play.

Back in September one of my favorite Magic strategy writers, Jacob van Lunen, published an article which described building a budget 5 color elemental deck. His list features a variety of interactions which can give opposing spell slingers headaches. It featured strategies like flashing in Reveillark at instant speed, recovering bomb elementals from the graveyard, evoking and then recurring Mulldrifter. It looked like a lot of fun.

There were a ton of tasty combos, interesting interactions and powerful strategies at work here but the deck was missing something. It wasn’t just that it was a budget deck. The only non budget card to add to it would be lands like Reflecting Pool to make the 5 color creatures work. I wanted to take it apart figure out what made it tick and what could be cut and then bring add in elements that fit my style of play. I liked the aggressive combo nature of the deck but it lacked a little on the control side. So I put my brewing pants on and got to work.

My goal here was to explore the possibility of a competitive deck that utilized several different strategies. I wanted an aggressive strong creature deck that utilized an assortment of removal and control strategies while allowing for potential abusive combos. Jacob laid an excellent foundation, now I wanted to add my signature to it.

I opened up a card database and set to work. In the first few hours I overwhelmed myself with dozens of cards and strategies that I wanted in the deck. It took a while to get the deck cut to 60 but I’m pretty happy with what I left in. In the end my current list didn’t change too much from his list. Here is what I kept.

First; the creatures. These are what made the final cut.

- Flamekin Harbinger: Easy addition. One drop, fetches up combo pieces, needed elementals, and even removal spells.

- Smokebraider: Two drop mana accelerator and helps cover our bases for casting 5 colors worth of elementals.

- Incandescent soulstoke: The +1/+1 bonus he provides all elementals is secondary really to the ability to flash elementals from your hand.

- Mulldrifter: A 2/2 flyer that combos well with Reveillark.

- Shriekmaw: An evasive creature that can double as a sorcery speed doom blade

- Horde of Notions: Good finisher that gives us a way to recur graveyard elementals and even some of our removal in a pinch.

- Reveillark: Gives us another finisher but the real purpose here is the recursion effect.

- Fullminator mage: Keeps opponents off lands and works well with reveillark and mimic vat.

- Vigor: This was a card I added. I loved this card but never had an opportunity to play it in a constructed environment.

- Heartmender: Another addition as a one of that combo’s with cauldron of souls.

I left the creatures mostly untouched from jacob’s list. There are a few less of them, though as I cut several copies of Reveillark and Horde of notions.

Second is the other spells.

- Nameless inversion: Additional removal that can be fetched up with harbinger

- Maelstrom pulse: Covers any number of problems.

- Mimic vat: Provides for excellent synergy with evoke creatures, harbinger, Fullminator mage. Too good not to include in this deck.

- Cauldron of Souls: Giving evoking creatures persist I feel is a ridiculous strategy.

The reduced creature slots freed up space for extra control/removal (maelstrom pulse) and combo elements (cauldron of souls/mimic vat).

Last is the mana base. The deck we are building requires all five colors which is going to put an enormous strain on existing mana bases. Jacob did a fantastic job with the resources he had to work with. But the addition of artifacts and non creature spells is going to make it difficult to run full sets of ancient ziggurat and tapped lands. Here’s what I ended up with.

- Ancient Ziggurat: He ran a full four copies but we are running more spells and effects that can’t use it. This is defiantly going to be in the deck, but we aren’t using a full set of these.

- Primal Beyond: Provides all five colors of mana needed specifically for elementals

- Reflecting Pool: Absolutely necessary in a five color deck

- Vivid Lands: I wish these weren’t necessary. I don’t like lands that enter play tapped. But this really fills in a lot of gaps mana wise and they work superbly with reflecting pool.

Here is the deck list in its current iteration. The deck as a whole did not change much from Jacob’s initial list but the changes are not insignificant.

Creatures

4 Flamekin Harbinger

2 Fulminator Mage

3 Horde of Notion

4 Incandescent Soulstoke

4 Mulldrifter

2 Reveillark

2 Shriekmaw

4 Smokebraider

1 Vigor

1 Heartmender

Other Spells

2 Maelstrom Pulse

2 mimic Vat

4 nameless inversion

1 cauldron of souls

Lands

2 ancient ziggurat

4 mountain

4 primal beyond

4 reflecting pool

4 vivid crag

1 vivid creek

2 vivid grove

2 vivid marsh

1 vivid meadow

From Jacob’s list I paired down the reveillark and horde of notions from 4 to 2 and 3 to make room for cauldron and mimic vat. I might change these numbers up depending on how both artifacts play out. Both are there to take advantage of all the enter the battlefield effects on evoking creatures as well as flashing in creatures with soulstoke. I moved crib swap to the board but the extra pulses give me ability to deal with most threats. I cut down Ancient ziggurat to 2 because I’m running several non creature spells. Reflecting pool should help out with the mana issues.

Making sideboards is never an easy thing to do for any deck. The truth is that a sideboard can address two maybe three decks effectively so you won’t have a sideboard plan for everything. However playing five colors gives you the flexibility to address your local meta game much easier. Here’s my first shot at a sideboard.

1 cloudthresher

2 crib swap

4 Eyes of the Wisent

2 Fullminator Mage

2 Gaea’s revenge

2 Maelstrom Pulse

2 Shriekmaw

I believe that this board can cover a wide variety of issues but I focused on addressing problems in matchups against faeries and control. The two fulminator mages go in for shriekmaw in Jund matchups as well as crib swap. Eyes of the Wisent is the best anti fairies card I could find. The fact you can fetch for it with your turn one harbinger makes it that much better.

I have not had many opportunities to explore this deck against other extended decks but I have played a few causal games and learned a few things.

- Use Mimic Vat at every opportunity. Mimic Vat provides enormous pressure and fantastic card advantage. Try to avoid keeping it just in defense as it wastes a lot of potential.

- Also more than just evoke creatures can go under the Mimic Vat. Don’t forget that when you flash in reviellark or vigor you can stick it under the vat.

- Shriekmaw kills Emrakul. Remember that dear reader.

- Remember to give your evoke creatures persist. Do this for creatures you flash in with soulstoke as well.

- Map out your turn. It may take a while to get used to the different combinations you can utilize. Remember that incandescent soulstoke can turn any elemental in your hand into a flash two drop until the end of the turn.

- Horde of notions can play any elemental or changeling card from your graveyard at instant speed. Both crib swap and nameless inversion can be cast repeatedly from the graveyard for an endless (albeit expensive) source of removal. Also remember that Horde of notions can cast nameless inversion on himself which could get in those few extra points for victory.

- Have fun with the deck. Make it your own. The deck is not a precarious combo deck that can’t afford to cut any of its spells. This is a very flexable deck that you can easily mold to your play style. Feel free to cut packages you don’t like and tailor it your style of play.

I don’t have any play testing reports but there was a great story that of how this deck combed out to victory. It was late in the game and we had both utilized several removal spells to clear the boards. My board was a cauldron of souls, incandescent soulstoke (with -1/-1 counter) and a flamekin harbinger against his sprouting thrinax and putrid leach. Mulldrifters had kept my hand pretty full and I had a reveillark, heartmender, mulldrifter and two lands in hand. I was at 9 and he was still at 20 or close to it. I hadn’t managed to do much to him at that point.

He cast bloodbraid elf into blightning (of course). I discarded heartmender and mulldrifter going to 8. He attacked with everything. I flashed in my reveillark with my soulstoke and blocked the leech with reveillark and bloodbraid elf with harbinger. He decided against pumping his leech but reveillark was sacked at the end of the turn because it was summoned with soulstoke. My harbinger died coming back with a -1/-1 counter. And I searched up a horde of notions. Thrinax connected knocking me to 5. My reveillark went to the graveyard bringing back heartmender and mulldrifter then coming back herself with a -1/-1 counter.

Heartmender removed all -1/-1 counters on my upkeep. I cast horde of notions and swung for 21 to end the game.

From dead in the water to overwhelming board control and victory in ½ a turn. Awesome!

If you have any comments or suggestions for this deck please let me know. I’m still fine tuning and tweaking it for future extended tournaments. Also if you have ideas for your own version of this kind of deck post that as well.

Next week I’ll be looking at the different flavors of control. Keep brewing Readers.

Riddle me this, Time Sieve.

Standard is a format many of us are pretty polarized over. In conversations, people either love it and won’t play anything else, Or they hate it and rarely even sleeve up a deck. With the recent exodus of the Alara block and rotation in for Scars of Mirrodin, standard got thrown into upheaval. Alara was a truly fantastic block. It had aggressive creatures, efficiency. It was well designed with some of the cards even ending up in the eternal formats.

Currently Standard’s Meta is in upheaval. It doesn’t really have an identity. The best decks right now are the ones left untouched by Alara’s rotation, decks that were previously tier 2 or worse. When compared to where we were last year when Llorwyn rotated out, standard looks a lot less promising. I’m still giving Wizards the benefit of the doubt. They’ve been putting out quality product for several years and I’ll wait until the second and third sets come out before I pass judgement on Scars.

Well standard players don’t give up hope because there’s a shiny new extended format that incorporates the great blocks of yesteryear. Wizards calls it Extended but we call it Ex-Standard. There is plenty of reason to be excited about this format. While Standard is still sorting itself out waiting for more of the Scars block, Extended gives you the chance to replay your favorite decks with new twists.

Extended is also a way for standard players to keep their old decks in rotation without having to always go out and buy new cards. Still have a Jund Deck? Keep it, its not going anywhere for a couple years. Remember throwing Faeries around. Sleeve them up and join the fun. UW control, mythic, naya shaman, keep them sleeved.

I know that Standard will right itself out eventually but Extended, I think, should be the format of choice for the time being. Most people familiar with standard will feel comfortable with extended. You probably still have a lot of the cards to build the top tier decks. And, like standard is currently, the format is still so undefined. The last major Tournament happened before Time Spiral rotated out so there’s a new, fresh, goyf free, meta-game to conquer.

My goal here is not to tell you what to play or how to play. I’m still a pretty big newb when it comes to stuff like that. Outside of FNM my tournament record is laughable. But what I do enjoy is deck building. Nothing gets my Johnny brain going like a new format to tackle and old decks that need a shiny new twist.

I also want to see more of a following for the extended format. There’s a good deal of high quality decks spread out over the last 3 years which provides an excellent foundation for deck builders. I want to look at the old staple decks and twist them up with some of the new cards.

The first deck I wanted to take a look at is Time Sieve.

Time sieve is by no means a tournament staple but it was persistant presence. Time Sieve is a deck for Nazis and people who watch the Saw movies. You enjoy torturing your opponent while you take 8 hojillion turns in a row, assemble every artifact in your deck and overrun them smiling at their misery of having watched you solitaire magic for the last 20 minutes. To play against time sieve is like getting your teeth pulled only less fun.

Time sieve is also not a fantastic deck to play. It relies on your opponent’s inability to interact with your game plan. A maelstrom pulse or timely counter can really throw you out of the game. It has achieved little tournament success but it still keeps coming up in the conversation. Why?

My Dad used to take me to the driving range to shank golf balls for an hour or so. I was terrible at it. Worse than I am at playing magic. Nearly every hit would shank left or right, knock old geezers out of their chairs or cause traffic collisions. But every now and again, I’d get that perfect form, head down, hips rotated, left arm stiff. And the ball would sail for 300 yards. That one shot made all the other crappy shanked balls worth it. The frustration piled up would be gone with that one swing.

Why Play time sieve? Because occasionally, when the deck, works it’s really fun to play. Admit it; taking 6-7-8-10-20 extra turns in row is fun. As frustrating as it is to play when it doesn’t do much; when it works, the damned thing sings.

The deck is not complicated. It doesn’t have a lot of plays. There isn’t a tool box of answers and finishers. It draws cards and takes extra turns. That’s it. Pre-scars the time sieve formula was this.

4x Kaleidostone

4x Prophetic Prism

4x Open the Vaults

4x Howling Mine

4x Time Warp

2-4x Time Sieve

(Thanks Andy)

This is the engine that draws the cards, takes the extra turns and recurs the artifacts drawing more cards. The phrase Wash, Rinse, Repeat comes to mind. You win with either a tezzeret animating your quintillion artifacts into 5/5 creatures, a glass dust hulk smacking them silly with a +876,242/+876,242 unblockable body, or sometimes even a thopter foundry in a pinch.

So with this core and these win conditions lets take a look at the artifact themed set that was just released and see if there are any other artifacts we can add to this.

…..Hmmmm….

….Really

Well there are two cards we can consider but only one of them an artifact. And the artifact is a legendary so we can’t have more than one out on the field….hoo boy.

But the additions are not insignificant. Let’s see what we have.

Riddlesmith: Combo decks like to dig for combo pieces and looting has been a popular way to assemble to pieces for victory. Riddlesmith offers two things to us. He allows us to dig for pieces we need to win and he fills up our graveyard for the first open the vaults pop. He gives an alternate win condition by putting big artifact creatures in the graveyard for later reanimation. He’s good…..IN THEORY (Is everyone on the forums breathing?). Lets see how he playtests.

Mox Opal: The new mox had everyone excited until we found out it wasn’t nearly as good as old moxes. It was a restricted legendary mox which left us pinning for the good old days. But it is what we have and it is no chump card by any means. The restriction will not be a factor in an artifact deck but the legendary rule could potentially be a problem. However with the number of sac outlets we have and the ability to loot for free with riddlesmith should over come this.

With this core and these new cards let’s see how our deck list looks.

1 Inkwell Leviathan
3 Jace Beleren
4 Riddlesmith
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Howling Mine
4 Kaleidostone
3 Mistvein Borderpost
2 Mox Opal
4 Open the Vaults
4 Prophetic Prism
3 Time Sieve
4 Time Warp

7 Island
3 Marsh Flats
4 Plains
2 Swamp

Inkwell leviathan and Sphinx of the Steel Wind make great discard targets for riddlesmith. Jace, like Howling Mine, provides excellent card advantage when taking additional turns. Other cards to consider would be Thopter Foundry, Executioner’s Capsule, Glass Dust Hulk, Negate, and elixir of immortality. I sleeved up this list and took it to asgard for some playtesting.

I played only a few games with this deck against white weenie. Not the strongest match up and I don’t have a sideboard but the matches did reveal a few things.

This deck consistently goes off on turn five. On turn five I’m casting my first time warp. On turn six I’m sacking artifacts to time sieve. On turn seven I’m returning the artifacts drawing cards and doing the things we love (or hate) about this deck.

I didn’t lose any game when riddlesmith was played. In six games I was able to play him at a relevant time (turn 2, 3, or 4) twice. And he cycled about 4-5 cards putting 2-3 extra artifacts in my graveyard. In a pinch he blocked lethal which allowed me to combo out next turn and win.

Inkwell leviathan and sphinx of the steel wind are not needed. I put them there as alternate win conditions to memoricide and they might make into the side board if that becomes a big part of the meta. Ultimately though by the time you pop your first vaults you’ve won the game. The rest is just an exercise in solitaring effectively.

A 2-4 record gives me a little more perspective in what I need to make a deck like this viable. Fast decks are going to over run you before you have a chance to set up anything. So having cards in the main deck to deal with fast decks is a must. This deck isn’t going to play the control game. It’s a tap-out style deck that doesn’t want to have to leave mana open for a counter or a safe passage.

Ratchet bomb is a great artifact to have in situations where you open against a boros, white weenie, or RDW deck. Main decking two with a third in the sideboard could be useful. An executioner’s capsule could also be called in a pinch to remove a problem creature. Path to exile and doom blade are effective as well and running two removal spells main board should be an issue.

My thoughts so far on this deck lead to the following changes.

Main deck

-1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind

-1 Inkwell Leviathan

-1 Tezzeret the Seeker

-1 Kaleidostone

+2 Ratchet Bomb

+2 Path to Exile

Sideboard

+1 Ratchet Bomb

+2 Path to Exile

+4 Negate/[card]Spell Pierce

+4 Wall of Tanglecord

+4 Safe Passage

The side board is rough but takes care of problems granted by Boros, white weenie and RDW. The wall of tangle cord has a large enough body to stop anything but titans. With a Mox or a Prism out you can give it reach too, in a pinch.

If you get a chance to play test this against an extended deck post your results on the asgardgames.net forums. My next article will explore interactions of mimic vat with strategies of yesteryear. Until then, keep brewing Asgard.

Hello everyone, and welcome to my Legacy column! I’m pleased to say that Will and DJ have asked me to write articles for the new and improved website, and I hope all those that take the time to read my article(s) enjoy them and hopefully gain some knowledge out of them. The main topic of my column/articles will be Magic: The Gathering, with a specific focus on the Legacy format.

I’d like to clarify this article, as well as future articles, is/are geared towards players that would like to gain a general knowledge of the Legacy format, for players that are new to the Legacy format, or for those that may be intimidated by the format and may feel uncomfortable asking questions. Almost every time I play Legacy at Asgard, I am asked questions about the format, such as “What’s the best deck in Legacy?” I intend to hopefully clear up some of these questions in my column, as well as to generate a spark of interest in some players that would otherwise not be able to learn about the format.

As a quick side note, I’m going to assume that readers of my articles have experience playing Magic.  If you do have any questions (about my articles, or Magic in general) please PM me on the forums and I’d be glad to answer them. I am Bulbasaur on the forums. Also please feel free to PM with suggestions for future articles as well as constructive criticism or ideas you may have.

For those that don’t know the exact list of which cards can/can not be played in a sanctioned Legacy tournament, per the Wizards of the Coast website, “Legacy decks may consist of cards from all Magic card sets, any edition of the core set, and all special sets, supplements, and promotional printings released by Wizards of the Coast.” In addition to this rule, there is also a list of Banned cards that may not be used in sanctioned Legacy tournaments, and that list may be found here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=judge/resources/sfrlegacy.

I’ve been struggling on what topic I wanted to write my first article on, and I’ve decided that I’m going to try and provide an overview of some of the decks that I consider Tier 1 (the best decks, or decks to beat – DTBs) in the format, with respective deck lists for each archetype that I would sleeve up for a major tournament.

For a quick crash course, the most basic way to look at the Legacy metagame is with a “rock, paper, scissors” mentality, where rock = aggro, paper = combo, and scissors = control. So let’s say in general, aggro beats control, control beats combo, and combo beats aggro. Of course the format is much more complicated and rich than that, and these generic rules don’t apply 100% of the time, but this is a good general idea of how the format works. Although these are the three main archetypes of Legacy, a deck may of course fall into two different categories: For example Merfolk, I would classify as “Aggro-Control,” while Bant Survival decks could be considered all three. In Part 1 of this article, I’m going to look at three decks that are considered Tier 1 decks that I think most clearly represent the aforementioned archetypes. First we’ll look at a version of what is considered to be the premier aggro deck in the format:

Note I will not be including sideboards in my deck lists for this article. Sideboard options for different archetypes will be a future topic of discussion.

Zoo: Suggested by Jeremy Crawley as a potential Legacy Deck, 10/4/2010:

---

Creatures (23) 4 Wild Nacatl 4 Grim Lavamancer 4 Kird Ape 4 Qasali Pridemage 4 Tarmogoyf 3 Knight of the Reliquary Spells (17) 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Chain Lightning 4 Path to Exile 3 Lightning Helix 2 Sylvan Library Lands (20) 3 Taiga 2 Plateau 1 Savannah 4 Wooded Foothills 3 Windswept Heath 2 Arid Mesa 2 Horizon Canopy 1 Forest 1 Plains 1 Mountain

The basic goal of a Zoo deck is the following: Play creatures, get rid of creatures that get in your creatures’ way, attack with your creatures, and use the remainder of your burn spells to finish off your opponent. It consists of some of the most efficient red, green, and white creatures ever printed, as well as the most efficient burn spells ever printed.  Let’s look at some of the card choices:

Wild Nacatl and Kird Ape: These are prime examples of efficient, under-costed, creatures. In combination with the original “Dual Lands” that count as 2 different land types, these are really the Zoo player’s best option for 1-drop creatures.

Grim Lavamancer: An excellent card at any stage of the game. Early game he can clear the way for your creatures, and late game he can provide the 2 or 4 damage needed to finish off your opponent. He is also a nightmare for two of the strongest decks in the format: Goblins, and Merfolk.

Qasali Pridemage: A 2/2 for two mana can always be good, but Qasali has 2 relevant, powerful abilities. Exalted is excellent in a multitude of situations, and his Disenchant ability can be a life-saver eliminating some of Zoo’s cards it has problems with, such as Counterbalance or Moat.

Tarmogoyf: The best example in Magic’s history of an under-costed creature. Tarmogoyf can potentially be an 8/9 for 1G. There aren’t any other creatures that come close to that power/toughness to mana-cost ratio. In a Zoo deck, Tarmogoyf will consistently be 4/5 or 5/6 by turn 3 or 4, thus, why it’s played.

Knight of the Reliquary: A late-game powerhouse. With the amount of fetchlands in a Zoo deck, Knight will consistently grow to 6/6 and higher. It can also create surprise situations in combat by blocking, activating, grabbing a fetch-land, and fetching again, thus permanently giving a permanent +2+2. Knight also allows for fetching Horizon Canopy which is good late-game. The shuffling along with the activation of Knight allows for synergy with Sylvan Library.

Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lightning Helix: These cards speak for themselves. Chain Lightning is played to put a sorcery in the graveyard to pump Tarmogoyf.

Path to Exile: The best removal spell in Legacy is Swords to Plowshares, yet Zoo decks will typically play Path over Swords. The reasoning is simple: You don’t want your opponents gaining in life.

Sylvan Library: Because Zoo doesn’t have access to some of the powerful blue draw spells in Legacy, Zoo lists will typically run Sylvan Library. In late game stalemates, this card will easily provide you with the necessary card advantage to win the game. Although its wording is somewhat complicated, the card basically works this way: Instead of drawing, look at the top 3 cards of your deck and put them back in any order, and then draw a card. If you want to draw 2 cards instead of 1, pay 4 life. If you want to draw all 3 cards you see, pay 8 life. 8 life may seem like a lot, but paying that 8 life may win you the game that turn instead of the next. It’s important to try to keep a fetch-land or two in play in case you don’t like what you see with Library, that way you can fetch, shuffle, and see 3 new cards the next turn. The same goes with activating Knight of the Reliquary.

Land Base: The land base is fairly straight-forward, running multiple copies of the Dual Lands that tap for green, white, and red mana. I include Horizon Canopy for late game situations where you may want to draw an extra card. Typical Zoo lists also run each of 1 basic land to combat the very commonly played Wasteland.

The second deck we’ll look at is the premier combo deck in Legacy:

Ad Nauseam-Tendrils

Suggested by Jeremy Crawley as a potential Legacy Deck, 10/4/2010

Instants (12):

4 Dark Ritual

4 Brainstorm

3 Orim’s Chant

1 Ad Nauseam

Sorceries (22):

4 Ponder

4 Rite of Flame

4 Burning Wish

4 Duress

4 Infernal Tutor

1 Empty the Warrens

1 Tendrils of Agony

Artifacts (12):

4 Lotus Petal

4 Lion’s Eye Diamond

4 Chrome Mox

Lands (14):

4 Gemstone Mine

2 City of Brass

2 Underground Sea

2 Volcanic Island

2 Polluted Delta

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Bloodstained Mire

First and foremost I will state that Ad Nauseam decks are not easy to play. If you are new to the Legacy format and are trying to decide on what deck you want to play, I would advise against Ad Nauseam until gaining a strong grasp of the format. The deck is very complicated, but equally as powerful. The second thing I’d like to say is I will openly admit that I am not a seasoned Ad Nauseam player. I typically play control-style decks (see the 3^rd deck I will discuss in this article), as combo is not really my style. My experience with Ad Nauseam-style decks is coming from the viewpoint of playing against them, not with them.

The basic goal of this deck is to find and resolve Ad Nauseam, followed by casting a lethal Tendrils of Agony. Notice the converted mana costs of most of the cards in this deck is 1 or 0, so it is not improbable to reveal 15+ cards with Ad Nauseam and lose than 10 life, enabling the player to easily gain 10+ storm count.

An initial question one might ask is “Why only 1 Ad Nauseam?” Note the interaction of Infernal Tutor and Lion’s Eye Diamond: Casting Infernal Tutor followed by activating Lion’s Eye Diamond allows you to search your deck for any card, presumably Ad Nauseam, and cast it, assuming you’ve left yourself with at least 5 mana to play it. Why only 1 Tendrils? See Burning Wish. (Note: Although the “Wish” cards state that a player may search for a card outside of the game,  in competitive play, players may only search for a card in his/her sideboard). By keeping an additional copy of Tendrils in the sideboard, we alleviate the problem of having to run 4 Tendrils in the main deck. Running more than 1 copy of Tendrils or Ad Nauseam increases the probability of flipping these higher-costed cards when resolving Ad Nauseam, resulting in unwanted life loss. Let’s look at some of the individual card choices:

Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame, Lotus Petal, and Chrome Mox: All of these spells provide the mana acceleration the deck needs to cast Ad Nauseam, as well as provide effective ways of increasing your storm count.  Note there are only 14 lands in the deck list I’ve provided, so think of  Lotus Petal and  Chrome Mox as lands 15-22 in the deck, but also as spells that increase storm count, make the deck more explosive, and provide mana fixing.

Brainstorm and Ponder: Two of the most powerful draw spells in Legacy. Playing these two spells in the deck allow the pilot to filter through the deck finding the cards needed to find/play Ad Nauseam.

Orim’s Chant and Duress: Combo decks’ weakest matchups are control decks. If Orim’s Chant resolves,  the combo player can safely attempt to win that turn. Duress takes cards that can stop the combo player from winning. Some of the more commonly played counterspells right now include Force of Will, Daze, Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, and Counterspell, which can all be problematic for combo players.

Infernal Tutor and Lion’s Eye Diamond: I would’ve included Lion’s Eye Diamond (LED) with the mana acceleration cards listed above, but I wanted to include these cards together to explain their synergy. To fully exploit the two cards, you must play Infernal Tutor, and then activate Lion’s Eye Diamond. Note that you cannot, I repeat cannot, use the mana generated from sacrificing LED to cast an Infernal Tutor that is in your hand when you activate LED.  Part of LED’s activation cost is discarding your hand, so you may not respond to this activation by playing cards in your hand. When Infernal Tutor resolves, assuming you’ve sacrificed your LED(s), the Hellbent clause of Infernal Tutor allows you to search for any card and put it in your hand, presumably Ad Nauseam. Just make sure you’ve left yourself with at least 5 mana to cast it.

Empty the Warrens: This is simply an alternate win condition rather than Tendrils of Agony.

Burning Wish: This card is mainly used to find Tendrils of Agony. Another valuable use of Burning Wish is it allows for a “toolbox” sideboard, i.e. a sideboard of mostly singleton sorceries that can help fight cards an opponent brings in after sideboarding, and make winning easier/possible. Examples of these types of cards are Ill-Gotten Gains (sometimes played maindeck instead of Empty the Warrens), Diminishing Returns, Eye of Nowhere, Thoughtseize, and Shattering Spree.

Land Base: This version of the deck is 4 colors, so including lands such as Gemstone Mine and City of Brass help ensure all colors will be available. One thing to notice is there are no basic lands in this land base, so the deck is extremely vulnerable to Wasteland, which is commonly played.

Before I move on to the last deck I want to discuss, I’d like to provide an example of “combo-ing off” as a demonstration to those that may not understand the deck at first, so let’s consider the following opening hand: Polluted Delta,  Lotus Petal,  Rite of Flame, Dark Ritual, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor. A hand such as this can use Infernal Tutor and Lion’s Eye Diamond paired with the mana acceleration to find and play Ad Nauseam turn 1 with 4 mana left over! Here’s one way to play this hand throughl: Play Polluted Delta, sacrifice it and find Underground Sea. Tap Underground Sea for black mana, play Dark Ritual (1 SC). Play Lotus Petal (2 SC), sacrifice it for red mana to cast Rite of Flame (3 SC). You now have 2 red mana and 3 black mana in your mana pool (RRBBB). Play both of your LEDs (5 SC), use RB from your mana pool to play Infernal Tutor (6 SC), and respond to your Infernal Tutor by activating both LEDs, sacrificing one for black mana and the other for blue mana. There is now 1 red mana, 5 black mana, and 3 blue mana in your mana pool. Infernal Tutor resolves, and now find Ad Nauseam. Play Ad Nauseam (7 SC), using 3 black mana and 2 blue mana, leaving you 1 red, 2 black and 1 blue mana left to cast any spells you reveal. You only need 3 more spells, 1 of which can be Tendrils of Agony, to reach lethal storm count.

The last deck I’m going to discuss will be what I consider the archetypical control deck of Legacy.

Counterbalance-Top

Suggested by Jeremy Crawley as a potential Legacy deck, 10/4/2010

Creatures (6):

4 Tarmogoyf

2 Vendilion Clique

Instants/Sorceries (21):

4 Brainstorm

3 Counterspell

3 Firespout

4 Force of Will

2 Spell Pierce

2 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares

Enchantments (5):

4 Counterbalance

1 Oblivion Ring

Artifacts (4):

4 Sensei’s Divining Top

Planeswalkers (2):

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (21):

4 Flooded Strand

4 Scalding Tarn

1 Misty Rainforest

3 Tropical Island

2 Tundra

2 Volcanic Island

1 Karakas

2 Island

1 Plains

1 Mountain

The main purpose of this deck is to abuse the relationship between Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top. When an opponent plays a spell, Counterbalance triggers. With this trigger on the stack, Sensei’s Divining Top can be activated to arrange the top 3 cards of your deck, hopefully finding a card with the same cost as the played spell, thus countering the spell. Also, note that with both Counterbalance and Top in play, a spell with a converted mana cost of 1 can essentially always be countered by activating Top’s 2^nd ability, which puts Top on top of your library.

The reason this deck is so powerful in Legacy is a high number of the cards that are commonly played in Legacy have a converted mana cost (CMC) of  1, 2, and 3. Notice that most of the cards in the deck cost that amount. Here is the breakdown:

0 CMC: 21

1 CMC: 16

2 CMC: 11

3 CMC:  6

4 CMC: 2

5 CMC: 4

A good CounterTop player must also know all relevant cards his/her opponent may be playing in order to maximize the efficiency of the Couterbalance/Top combo. As I suggested with Ad Nauseam, I would try to gain a good hold on the Legacy format before picking up a deck like CounterTop. For example, if I’m matched up against Zoo, game 1, I will usually “float” 2 cards costing 1 and 2 to make sure I can always counter most of their creatures and burn spells. Post-board I will float 2 and 3, with 3 always being on top to protect me against Choke and Krosan Grip. If paired up against Ad Nauseam, I’ll float 0 and 1 to make sure I can counter their mana acceleration.

Because CounterTop serves as the “Control” deck of the format, Countertop decks are constantly having to evolve to adapt to the Legacy metagame. Since the banning of Mystical Tutor, Legacy has seen a shift towards creature-oriented decks, such as Zoo, which I discussed above, and Merfolk, which I’m going to discuss in my next article. The version I have listed above deals particularly well with creature-based decks because of the inclusion of 4 Swords to Plowshares and 3 Firespout. Another version of CounterTop which features the Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo, uses Moat and sometimes Humility to shut down opposing creatures. I plan to write an extensive article on CounterTop variants in the future (it happens to be my favorite deck in Legacy), but let’s discuss the individual card choices of the above list for now:

Tarmogoyf: In the Zoo list above, Tarmogoyf is used purely as an aggressive creature. In this list, Tarmogoyf has two primary roles. If played early on, it can hold off opposing creatures. Late game, after you’ve taken care of your opponents creatures, it is one of your win conditions.

Vendilion Clique: Vendilion Clique fits excellently in this deck. Besides having a CMC of 3, which is relevant, Clique can fulfill other roles. It provides disruption, and provides with you valuable knowledge of what is your opponent’s hand, thus giving you an idea of what to float on top of your deck with Counterbalance. Late game, Clique can help you completely lock your opponent out of the game in combination with Karakas. Since Clique is legendary, after you attack for 3, you can bounce it back to your hand, and then play it at the end of your opponent’s draw step. If you know you can counter whatever is in their hand, just let them keep their cards! If not, choose to use Clique’s ability. Also in late game situations you can Clique yourself, allowing you to sift through your deck to find an answer.

Brainstorm: Brainstorm is the main reason I usually choose to play blue decks. I am convinced it’s the best card in Legacy. If played correctly, it is almost the equivalent of Ancestral Recall, but too bad we can’t play Recall. Brainstorm is especially powerful in CounterTop lists because of its synergy with Counterbalance, allowing you to decide which two cards out of your hand you want to float on top of your deck when Counterbalance-Top is online. Even when Top is not in play, you can still use a Brainstorm to counter a spell if Counterbalance is in play.

Force Of Will: There’s not really much for me to say about Force of Will because the card speaks for itself. Force of Will is the reason that combo decks don’t run rampant in Legacy, and is one of the cards that helps provide balance for the entire format. In most situations, Force of Will is the best counterspell, thus why it’s played in almost all decks that play blue.

Counterspell, Spell Pierce, Spell Snare: I like the 3/2/2 mix of these counterspells. Counterspell is used simply as a hard counter, while Spell Pierce and Spell Snare are both extremely efficient as well. Counterspell costs 2, which is relevant in this deck, and is also just plain good. Most of the versions of this Counterbalance variant I’ve seen only run Spell Snare and Counterspell with no Spell Pierce, which I can understand. Spell Snare is relevant in Legacy because some of the most powerful spells in Legacy cost 2. It also accounts for the somewhat low number of CMC 2 cards in this deck. Typically in my Counterbalance lists I try to include an even amount of 1 and 2 casting cost spells, but Spell Snare smooths this over somewhat. I was hesitant about Spell Pierce at first, but it’s proven to be very powerful, especially against combo. Personally, I would rather my opponent have to play around all 3 of these then just 2.

Firespout: As I discussed earlier, Legacy has shifted towards a more creature-based environment. The three main aggro decks that CounterTop players have to worry about are Zoo, Merfolk, and Goblins. Most of the time, a resolved Firespout can completely wipe your opponent’s board of creatures and allow you to stabilize.

Swords to Plowshares: This is the best removal spell in Legacy. The life gain your opponent gets as a result of Swords is almost always irrelevant. In dire situations you can actually use Swords on one of your own creatures for the life gain. The other option with a similar effect is Path to Exile, which I discussed in Zoo, but a control player cares a lot more about your opponent getting an extra land.

Counterbalance/Sensei’s Divining Top: These cards are the cornerstone of the deck, and I’ve already discussed their synergy and why they’re so powerful together, so I’m not going to discuss them further for the sake of avoiding redundancy.

Oblivion Ring: A 1-of Oblivion Ring is included for a couple reasons. It can be a silver bullet sometimes when you draw it. It costs 3 which is relevant, and planeswalkers, especially Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Elspeth, Knight-Errant, are seeing more play, so it’s good to have an answer to them once they hit the board.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor: I couldn’t believe this card when it was spoiled before Worldwake was released. It was insulting hearing how people thought that he wasn’t good. I already stated that I thought Brainstorm is the best card in Legacy, and with Jace I can Brainstorm for free every turn, which is totally unfair. An unanswered Jace usually means game over in a couple turns. His ultimate ability provides another win condition, and there is nothing more satisfying then exiling your opponent’s library from the game.

Land Base: A couple notes on the land base. The 2 Islands, 1 Plains, and 1 Mountain help ensure you can cast your relevant removal spells without fear of Wasteland. Merfolk and Goblin lists almost always run 4 Wastelands, so the basic Mountain and Plains are necessary. I don’t consider a basic Forest necessary because I usually try to fetching/playing Tropical Island unless I’m going to play Tarmogoyf that turn. The 2 basic Islands also ensure you can cast Counterbalance, without fear of Wasteland. I already discussed Karakas and it’s synergy with Vendilion Clique, but I also wanted to say it’s an answer to Emrakul, which has been creeping up more and more. The last thing about the land base is the ability to shuffle with your fetchlands. If you don’t like what you see with Top, just fetch it away and you get three new cards!

So this concludes my first Legacy article, and I hope those that took the time to read it gained something out of it. Again, if you have any questions, please PM me (Bulbasaur) on the forums or just ask me at the store and I’d be glad to answer them.

Thanks for reading,

Jeremy

Everyone playing Warmachine and Hordes must build an army. It is extremely important to build your army properly, or you will be playing with a handicap from the get go. Warmachine is an extremely skill based game. For example, if you give two equally skilled people two different  lists, one  sub-par, and one optimized, the player with the optimized list will win every time (Dice allowing, of course). This being said, why do we not all just end up with the same list? Well, that is because a player’s army is determined by each player’s unique playing style. Players’ minds work differently, and each player looks for different things in the game. Some people play to win, and some people just play for fun. There are also those that have fun by winning. In this article, I plan to discuss how to properly build a tournament army, while still maintaining your own playing style. Indeed, some prefer assassination style army lists, or attrition lists, or scenario lists. But which of these is best? There is no way to tell…with the exception of scenario lists being inappropriate for Hardcore tournaments.  Every list has a counter, no list is undefeatable.

The first thing we must do when we plan to build a tournament capable army is to pick for which tournament format we would like to build. Do we want to prepare for a Steam Roller tournament? Or are we planning to attend a Hardcore style tournament? Once we know for what we are building, we can then start to pick things for our list. First, we must pick a faction, which is wholly based on one’s playing style. In my opinion, armies like Khador, Cygnar, Menoth, Trolls and Mercenaries are better suited for attrition and objective play, while armies like Cryx, Retribution, Everblight, and Circle of Orboros are better for assassination and scenario. Now, obviously, these are wide generalizations, because really we need to pick a warcaster to truly decide what type of army we want to play.

So, the next step is to pick a warcaster for the army of our preference. To do so, we need to decide what type of army we want to play. This article is not meant to tell you what army to play, so  this is very general here. Nonetheless, different casters have different strengths and weaknesses, which is what we are here to discuss. Certain casters are identified as support, assassination, and control, which roughly coincide with the three types of army (assassination, attrition and scenario). Control and support casters will lend themselves more to scenario and attrition armies whether that be by killing the majority of the opposing army, or by simply stopping them from killing yours and winning by scenario, and obviously assassination is meant to destroy your opponents warcaster while leaving the majority of their army intact. Warcasters that are one man armies (ie: Garyth, Caine, Butcher) are generally lumped together into the assassination category. Casters that are control are generally used in scenario armies (pHaley, eHaley, Deneghra etc). Support casters (pStryker, Irusk, Morvanha) are best in attrition armies. Think about what you want your army to do, and pick from there. Some warcasters will fill multiple roles, meaning you can have a support warcaster playing inside of an assassination army. A very good example of this is Master Necro-tech Mortenebra who is an support caster that runs an assassination style army.

So now we should have picked our warcaster based on the information above.  Next we move on to picking the units that best compliment our chosen caster. Some people will want to run tier lists but they are seldom worth it, because the restrictions they apply to you are too drastic to really be worthwhile. In order to pick the appropriate units, we first need to discern the strengths of the casters. Assassination casters have a plan, and you have to know what that is. Garyth, Caine, eStryker are all planning to be delivered by their army to the opposing warcaster, and proceed to do what they do best to them. Support casters need a lot of units for them to support. Infantry or warjacks will normally be the focus of support caster lists. Attrition lists will need very tough units with a plan for survival.

Assassination lists have their assassination pieces – sometimes it’s the caster or sometimes it’s a model in the army (Such as Krayes Storm Clad, or the Mage Hunter Assassin with Adeptus Rhan. Or Mortenebra’s entire army) Units that can clear your route to their caster or do the assassination themselves should be part of our list. House Sheeyl Magister Solos are a very good example of this. They can push and pull things out of the way, or even slam things with combo smite. Gun mages are useful for moving your opponent’s models. Druids of Orboros are also very good for this. Spells like Force Hammer, Scourge, and spell that grants true sight are also good at clearing assassination paths. Units that can attack and then move like House Guard Halberdiers, Dervishes, and Nyss blighted swordsmen are all excellent examples of lane clearing models/units.

When enlisting support casters it is important to take quality units over utility units. For example, Iron Fang Pikemen are extremely potent infantry and when they are supported by spells like Iron Flesh and Battle Lust from Irusk they become some of the hardest things to deal with in the game. You do not need to take a utility unit that supports them – that’s what your warcaster is for. With Stryker as our caster, picking Storm Blades and putting Arcane Shield on them and Long Gunners with Snipe on them makes for a very solid start to an attrition army based on a support caster. Mortenebra does not have an assassination run without the warjacks she takes to do it. She needs fast, high MAT warjacks for her support spells to really mean anything.

Control casters are a little trickier. We need to take self-sufficient units to properly utilize a control caster, which makes their armies the most difficult to build. Support casters will spend the majority of their focus/fury hampering your opponent’s abilities to do things. Temporal Barrier, Crippling Grasp, Polarity Shield or some sort of cloud effect spell are  focus intensive leaving only a little extra for your army. Units like Mechano-Thralls are very good in armies like this as they are cheap, and can tie up a lot of enemy units for long periods of time if supported by Necro Surgeons. Notice how none of this particular unit combination requires anything from your caster. Units like Bane Thralls are good because they have stealth, which drastically increases survivability while not requiring aid from your warcaster. Units like trenchers will stop shooting armies from picking apart other things in your army while they are very survivable in their trenches This is a very good example of a quality standalone unit. The Great Bears of Gallowswood need no support from anything to be an amazing unit – so they fit well into control armies. Generally speaking, control based armies will be more infantry heavy and will have less Warjacks, as they require focus to be used effectively.

Now we should have the basics of our army down. Next, we need to add in the things we are missing. If our army is very heavily focused on shooting, how could it be better against close combat heavy armies? Does it need more shooting to stop them from getting to you? Does it need some sort of meat shield to get in the way to buy us time? Is our caster going to be protected against assassination, or will they be hanging in the wind? Do we need more magic? Do we get shut down by magic? Do we get shut down by shooting? This is why balancing the army composition is important. Armies focus on one main thing, but generally speaking, we want to have options to deal with what your army is weak against. For example, if you have a melee based Irusk infantry list with things like eEyriss, Spriggans and a Drakhun added in, these things would be able to help you deal with flanking solos and infantry units without diverting too much of your main force. Eyriss also adds the ability to remove spells/disrupt enemies. These examples are not part of the backbone of an army, but they provide different ways to disrupt the way your opponents plan to win. An example of a poorly diversified army  is one centered on House Sheeyl Battle Mages going against a Menoth army full of Knights Exemplar Errant’s that cannot be targeted by spells. Things would not go well for the Battle Mages. But if that army throws in a unit of House Guard Riflemen or Halberdiers, then now the Riflemen/Halberdiers can deal with the Errant while the Battle Mages do what they do to the second rank of the army. Diversity in armies is key. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket.

So, we have now built the majority of our army. The last step is figuring out how we intend to win the game. Do we wish to win by scenario? Do we wish to win by assassination? Do we want to try both? What’s our plan to do these things? It is possible to build many armies, but not all of them will have ways to win the game. They are sound lists — they play to the strengths of the warcaster, they are well rounded, and they have a game plan. Their plan has no method to effectively end the game. They have no assassination potential, and no way of clearing opponents off of objectives. Every army needs to have one or both of these things in order to be a good tournament list, and your plan should not be just, “We’ll see how it goes”. That attitude will cause you to lose the game.

To recap:

1.       Choose the warcaster/warlock.

2.       Choose what style of army you wish to build toward and for what tournament we intend to build.

3.       Put in the units essential to your strategy.

4.       Fill in any gaps by strengthening your weaknesses.

5.       Have a plan on how you intend to win.

Once we have done all of this, it’s time to start testing. Play a lot of games with a list before you throw it out, and make sure to play against different styles of armies, and different opponents. Well, that’s all I’ve got for you for in my first article. My next article will be over how to reduce the chance of dice screwing you over and how to properly look at game statistics.