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Life in Legacy
by Keith McLaughlin | posted at 2010-04-02 01:24:00
tagged: MTG, Magic, Magic the Gathering, StarCityGames, StarCity, SCG, Open, Legacy, StarCityGames.com, Orlando, Keith McLaughlin, Life
(Keith McLaughlin has multiple Grand Prix Top 4 finishes. He blogs regularly at http://blog.3mcs.info/.)
In 2005, Wizards announced the first ever North American Legacy Grand Prix. Everyone expected the metagame to be predominantly Goblins, along with some Threshold, Landstill, Solidarity and Flame-Vault. My testing group quickly came across a fairly rough list for Life combo, but with some work and tuning we found that it had incredible matchups against Goblins, Threshold and a fairly wide variety of rogue decks, along with 50-50's against Landstill and Solidarity. Eventually, three of us (Doug M. Azzano, Jack A. Hutchings, and I) decided to run the deck, with myself making the strongest finish, landing in 15th place. You can find that tournament report here.
For those that aren't familiar with the deck, it's a three-card combo that grants the pilot infinite life. We require at least one card from each of following:
1. Nomads en-Kor, Shaman en-Kor, Shuko, etc.
2. Daru Spiritualist, Task Force, Angelic Protector, etc.
3. Diamond Valley, Starlit Sanctum, Worthy Cause, Condemn, etc.
The process is to use the card from (1) to target (2) an arbitrarily large number of times, before using (3) to gain life.
While there are certainly strong combos in Legacy that only involve two pieces, in Life, one has access to 8+ copies of each combo piece, along with several "Demonic Tutors:" Eladamri's Call and Living Wish. In addition, the pieces are very difficult to kill. With a Shuko in play, piece (2) becomes immune from all burn spells, granted you have a Valley or Sanctum ready. With an en-Kor and a piece from (2), all of your guys are immune from burn and become infinite toughness Walls. Finally, Diamond Valley and Starlit Sanctum are both uncounterable (aside from Stifle), and with an Aether Vial, all the guys also become uncounterable.
Shortly after that event, I took a break from Magic while I finished my undergraduate studies and the first few years of graduate school. I only participated in a few Legacy tournaments, including side events at PT Atlanta and GP Tampa, finishing in the Top 8 with my hardly updated list, and although the rest of the metagame had been slowly catching up in terms of raw power with cards like Tarmogoyf and new strategies like Dredge, 43 Land and Merfolk, Life was still running strong.
When I heard about the StarCityGames.com Open series, my interest in Magic was revitalized and I decided to start testing for Legacy. Although I was very impressed with the strength of the newer decks like ANT, Reanimator and 43 Land, the consistency of the Life deck and its strong position in the metagame were enough to convince me to stick with it, though with some minor tweaks: adding Duress to strengthen the Merfolk and CTP matchups, a single Doran in the main to allow Eladamri's Call to act as the "third piece", and removing blue from the deck to improve the manabase.
Here is the list:
Dark Life
4 Shuko
4 Duress
2 Condemn
2 Plains
1 Forest
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
Sideboard:
1 Karakas
A few card explanations:
Doran, the Siege Tower: As mentioned above, this guy works as piece (3), given the opponent has no blockers, or if the opponent chooses not to block while you have a Vial on three. In some games it is important to protect Doran from Swords to Plowshares by having a Diamond Valley ready to kill him off.
Mistveil Plains: This serves multiple purposes. First, in game one against CTP, it's sometimes very difficult to actually win the game despite being at infinite life. Having access to Mistveil Plains ensures that you cannot deck, and allows Life to stack its library (when it is empty). Second, it saves Life from Painter's Grindstone and Brain Freeze. And finally, Life can keep putting Doran or Felidar Sovereign back in the deck if either is countered or killed.
Condemn: Makes the Zoo matchup a near auto-win, while also giving the deck an un-Stifle-able third piece when necessary.
Pithing Needle: Needle is kind of a wild card. It's very nice at stopping Wasteland, Pernicious Deed, Rishadan Port, and Sensei's Divining Top, but most importantly it gives the deck a way to shut off Jace, the Mind Sculptor which would otherwise give some Merfolk and CTP lists a very strong "out" to infinite life.
Progenitus: Against decks with Wasteland, Progenitus replaces Mistveil Plains as the preferred solution to getting decked. Additionally, when sideboarded in it makes Painter's Grindstone combo nearly worthless (the game would end in a draw).
Matchups
Goblins. A complete auto-win. At GP Philadelphia I played against Goblins on the order of seven or eight times. I don't believe I dropped a single game.
Dredge. Very favorable. I haven't lost a match to Dredge in about eight tries. They'll try to attack your hand with Cabal Therapy, but the deck is so redundant that it usually doesn't matter. The only way you can possibly lose is if you get Iona'd, and that's only if you don't have Living Wish to get Karakas. Leyline after board is extremely strong, since the turns Dredge spends trying to deal with it gives you more than adequate time to combo off.
Zoo. Very favorable. They can definitely take a game from Life in some matches, but they have to be on the play with a very strong hand, likely with multiple copies of Path to Exile.
Merfolk. Favorable. This matchup really depends on their build. Jace, the Mind Sculptor and lists with Swords to Plowshares can be problematic, but both are fairly uncommon.
Enchantress. Favorable. They have no way to stop you from going off and getting Felidar Sovereign.
CounterTop Progenitus. Even. Life definitely wins over half of the games in this matchup, however, it's typically very hard to end the game aside from decking. This means that you almost absolutely have to win game one, otherwise the best you can do is get a draw; there simply isn't enough time to win both games two and three.
ANT. Slightly unfavorable. Although Life is about a turn slower than ANT, they are slightly more vulnerable to hand disruption. A Duress hitting a key element in the ANT player's hand can sometimes be GG. Additionally, it's not too uncommon for ANT to simply kill itself.
43 Land. Unfavorable. This used to be unwinnable for the Land deck, but then they started running Mindslaver. Probably the only way to win game one is to draw both Pithing Needles, stopping Explosives and Mindslaver/Academy Ruins, or to Needle Ruins while Explosives is in the graveyard. In games two and three, an unanswered Leyline is GG.
Reanimator. Untested. I can't imagine this matchup being very difficult. Iona is the only threat that isn't laughable, and a Living Wish even solves that problem.
Probably the only thing that hurts this deck as a tier one contender is the inability to finish some games. At the SCG Open in Orlando, this wound up being the difference between 9th and 24th place, as Taylor Raflowitz's Pernicious Deeds and removal spells were enough to hold me back while time expired, despite sitting on infinite life, ending our match in a draw.
I'll almost definitely be in attendance at the Atlanta Open, and while I'm definitely interested in changing things up, running Life again is a strong possibility. For future updates on the deck feel free to contact me on facebook or on my blog, http://blog.3mcs.info.
Keith McLaughlin
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Keith McLaughlin has been slinging magical cards since 1996, with top four finishes at Grand Prix: Atlanta '03 and Grand Prix: Boston '05, top 16 finishes at Grand Prix: Philadelphia '05 and U.S. Nationals '05, and more recently, a 10th place finish at SCG Open Orlando. He is currently a full-time Ph.D. student studying solid-state physics at the University of South Florida, has recently authored