Jumping Into Legacy

Hello internet, my name is Blue, and today I want to go over one of Magic’s oldest formats: Legacy. With the August ManaTraders Series starting soon featuring Legacy, I thought I’d take the time to share my experience over the last week practicing and preparing for the format, in case anyone else would like to participate in the event but is new to the format like myself. Full disclaimer before we get too far into this; I’m no expert into Legacy by any means. This is merely just my thoughts over the format based on a week of playing. With that out of the way, let’s get into it, shall we?

Initial Thoughts

Before I even began playing, I had my doubts I’d enjoy the format. I expected every game to be over by turn three at the latest or Oko, Thief of Crowns to make me feel like I was playing modern again. Honestly though, my biggest concern was that I’d be too unfamiliar with the cards being played that I’d be too out-of-touch with the format.

Boy was I wrong

Every single game I played, I had an absolute blast playing. I played against Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath a total of three times the entire week, a huge breath of fresh air since he’s currently all over modern, standard, and pioneer. Next, I saw a lot of Oko, Thief of Crown‘s, but he felt like just another strong card. He didn’t feel overly oppressive at all, and I was playing a creature-based aggro deck! We’ll get more into what exactly I was playing shortly, but I wasn’t dreading Oko hitting the table as I did in modern, pioneer, or standard. Oko in Legacy felt like Deathrite Shaman does in Pioneer. I understood it was a good card, but it didn’t make me feel miserable playing against it like in other formats. All in all, my initial expectations of Legacy were completely turned on their head.

What I Played

As I said a moment ago, I was playing a creature-based aggro deck, and I did really well with it overall. I took my current favorite modern deck in Mono-Red Prowess and made some Legacy upgrades to it such as Chain Lightning and Fireblast and I stomped a lot of decks. Even with Uro seeing minor play and Oko seeing tons, Legacy doesn’t play a ton of spot removal outside of the occasional Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay, Lightning Bolt, or Swords to Plowshares, so a majority of the time my creatures stuck around. I had so many games where they were just over by turn three because I stuck two prowess creatures and dealt well over 20 damage over those three turns. If you’re not familiar with Legacy but want to get in, I’d recommend it as a great starting point as it’s both budget-friendly as far as Legacy goes and will help you familiarize yourself with what’s going on in the format.

Legacy Mono-Red Prowess

Lands

18 Mountain

Creatures

2 Blistercoil Weird
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Soul-Scar Mage
4 Bedlam Reveler

Instants

4 Gut Shot
4 Lava Dart
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Fireblast

Sorceries

4 Chain Lightning
4 Faithless Looting
4 Light up the Stage

Sideboard

3 Abrade
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Blood Moon
2 Sulfuric Vortex
2 Cave-In
2 Magmatic Sinkhole

The sideboard is a bit rough as I’m not that familiar with Legacy, but I designed it to fight things I know are in the format and things I’m mostly scared of going into different games. First, Abrade is for Chalice of the Void matches where they get Chalice down on one and our entire deck does nothing as a result. I haven’t seen Chalice too much since I started playing, but Abrade doubling as a removal spell for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Dreadhorde Arcanist, Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow, and other must-kill threats means it’s probably the best sideboard card in the deck.

Second, Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast are for blue-heavy control decks like Temur Delver or Ninjas and blue-based combo decks like Sneak and Show or Thought Lash combo. The two-two split is mostly to play around Surgical Extraction and other similar effects, though it’s mostly irrelevant.

Next, Blood Moon is basically the Back to Basics of Mono-Red. While not as back-breaking as Back to Basics, it does hurt greedy mana bases and can make Lands unable to win if they don’t find an answer to it.

Sulfuric Vortex is here to fight life-gain. As I mentioned earlier, I ran into Oko quite often and Uro is played somewhat in the format, so it doesn’t hurt to have some number of ways to stop opponents from gaining life. In conjunction with dealing two damage every turn, Vortex is quite good against control decks aiming to stay alive with Uro and Oko gaining life.

Lastly, Cave-In and Magmatic Sinkhole are mostly for opposing aggro decks. One of my test games I played against Arclight Phoenix combo and Cave-In was super clutch to stay alive and steal the game post-sideboard. Sinkhole hasn’t come in quite as often as the other sideboard cards, but when I do bring it in, it usually ends up winning me the game.

If you noticed, I don’t have any graveyard hate in the sideboard, and I don’t know if this is correct or not. On one hand, it completely shuts down the decks it’s good against like Hogaak and Reanimator if I draw it. On the other, those decks are way too fast for Prowess to realistically keep up with or even race, so if I don’t draw it, I’m losing the game regardless. If you decide to play the deck, I guess it’s up to you what you think might be best.

Afterthoughts

After playing Legacy for about a week from having never played the format at all prior, I had a ton of fun. I feel pretty good about the format at this point with a bit of practice in, so now I’m going to switch over to the deck I want to play, Grixis Delver. To my understanding, Temur Delver is the best version of Delver, but I like Thoughtseize too much to give it up for Oko, Thief of Crowns and Hooting Mandrills. That being said, if I don’t do well with Delver because I refuse to play Temur, then I’ll switch to Ninjas, which plays similarly to Delver, except I draw a lot more cards and get to play Thoughtseize!

#ShamelessPlug

Remember earlier when I said I was practicing for the ManaTraders Series? If you’re not familiar with the event, then allow me to explain. The ManaTraders Series is a completely free MTGO tournament hosted by our sponsor, ManaTraders. It’s free to enter but prize support is significantly higher for subscribers. If you want to learn more about the event itself, follow the link here! If you want to sign up for ManaTraders, whether it’s to play in the ManaTraders Series, to play more casually, or to help support the site, follow the link here! Use promo code “ORACLE” for 20% off the first three months of your subscription!

Wrap-Up

Overall, I’ve had a lot of fun playing Legacy and I hope to do well in the ManaTraders series this month. I did horribly in the last two and it would feel so good as a Magic player and content creator to perform well in a tournament for a format I had never played until a week or two prior. If you want to keep up with me and how I do in the event, follow my Twitter here @TheRealBlueMTG. While you’re there, don’t forget to follow the site @MTGOracle and our sponsor @Mana_Traders! That’s all from me for now. This is Blue, signing out!