Today’s article has been submitted to us by Patrick Bateman from Sheffield Legacy.
Come with me, and I will take you on a journey to a land of stormy seas, where wispy tendrils of fog precede an agony of claustrophobic grey mist. We can delve into the secrets of a realm teeming with wealth, or ponder the downfall of the abandoned wastelands. We can travel there through sheer force of will, and yes, these are all card name puns. I’m not sorry. Oh! Also, there are volcanic islands. That one wasn’t really a pun, I didn’t think it through…
This weekend we had the pleasure to host a legacy tournament at Patriot Games in Sheffield. 31 players battled it out to take home some high end legacy staples as prizes. With revised dual lands going to anyone who made it to the top 4, there was a lot on the line, so people definitely brought their A game.
While many entrants travelled for the event, there were many local faces too. Whether it was Jimmy “acceptable magic player” Wild, or Alastair “Knows everyone in the room and has an accent” Kennedy, you were bound to see a familiar face. We have been running fortnightly legacy events at Patriot Games on a Wednesday for the last few months (The next one is on Wednesday the 25th of October if you wanted to stop by!), and during that time we have slowly been introducing people to the legacy format. Thanks to a large number of spare decks (and some slightly questionable card choices), we have been able to give people who have never considered legacy due to the high cost of entry an idea of just how fun the format can be. Once you’ve reanimated a Griselbrand on turn one, the concept of turning your standard deck into a couple of Badlands suddenly seems like a pretty good idea.
We did our best to foster a friendly relaxed environment, and make it as easy as possible for people without competitive play experience to feel comfortable on the day, and this ended up paying dividends. We had a number of players borrowing decks who had little to no experience with either their decks or the wider format, and everyone in attendance endeavoured to help each other when there were uncertainties. It was great to see such a generally positive atmosphere in spite of the prizes on the line, but that is something many of us have come to expect of the legacy community.
But back to the day, we started our first round at 11:30, and we played straight through till the top 8 was done and dusted at 6pm. There were some fantastic and innovative decks – while many of the more common decks in the meta-game represented in Death and Taxes, Storm, Reanimator and delver variants – there were some more left field decks like Alluren, mono black depths reanimator and even Popeye stompy/stax.
While we are talking about decks, have a look at the top 8 decklists available HERE.
One of the best things for us to see was how many of the more budget decks did well. We had a number of burn players on the day. With one in the top 8 and another just missing out, burn performed very well despite being one of the more budget options in the format. You can build a legacy burn deck for less than many current standard decks. The top 8 list did have a green splash for some sideboard cards which more than doubled the price of the deck, however mono red alternatives for those cards exist. Have you been playing modern recently? You might find that your modern deck has a legacy equivalent that you can bring almost straight out of box! Legacy burn is cheaper than it’s modern equivalent, and many of the modern decks can be adapted and powered up with a few of the cheaper old cards.
Legacy is one of the widest formats in Magic, the number of decks that you can bring to an event and do well with far outstrips any other constructed format available. With so many different decks to choose from, there is bound to be one that suits both your wallet and your playstyle. If you’ve never thought about playing legacy before, why not give it a try? We can lend people decks to give them a feel for the format, and if you like it, help you get started on working towards building your own. Come down to our fortnightly legacy event, on the 25th of October, and we will be happy to give you an introduction!
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