Colin Chilbert
5/1/2012 10:30:00 AM
For weeks we've seen the Avacyn Restored spoilers come in, and with them the wave of potential brews to accompany them. Now that the Avacyn Restored prerelease weekend has come and gone, we can start seeing these brews coming to fruition. Although the set won't see tournament play until next weekend, we can at least begin examining some potential decks that could make a splash in Legacy once it's legal.
I love brewing Legacy because the options are so vast, and there's always room to create something new, or at least something that's only been mildly explored. To have such possibilities and that kind of potential in a card pool so large is like a dream come true for the constant brewer. Avacyn Restored offers us something completely different this time around with miracle cards, so deckbuilding will be even more intriguing. Although history seems to lean towards the unlikelihood that many new brews, if any, will have a big impact on the format, it's still interesting to see what kind of innovations are going on.
In my article last week going over the Avacyn Restored spoilers, I highlighted a short list of cards that seem poised to have the most potential in Legacy. I identified these as the most likely to see play, or at least will have the most exposure. Of the cards listed I only want to go over a few:
Griselbrand,
Cavern of Souls, and
Temporal Mastery. I guess I'll also throw
Terminus in there as well because it's similarly applicable to decks containing
Temporal Mastery, so it's actually a few plus one. These cards all seem to be among the most obvious to be players in the format, at least on paper. We'll have to wait and see over the next few weeks what actually does work out and what fails to live up to expectations.
I'm not really presenting any actual “brews” here, but rather updates to existing archetypes. Such is the case given the bulk of new the playable cards. There of course are a number of literal brews popping up (think
Food Chain and Misthollow Griffin), but I'll reserve this for decks that I believe have a better shot at taking that next step.
Of the new things happening with Avacyn Restored, this is what I think will be the most significant. I'm a huge fan of
Sneak Attack right now, and the addition of
Griselbrand over
Progenitus makes the deck much better than before.
Progenitus is a fantastic creature, but is poor with
Sneak Attack and lacks the flexibility that
Griselbrand opens up. Although the new
Demon is vulnerable to removal, it makes up for this with its bargain ability to find answers to handle that. Provided it does given the deck runs a whopping twelve counters, it can easily ride it to victory. This is also relevant for any matchup where counters are at a premium, such as other combo decks. It isn't very good for a
Sneak Attack player to cast
Show and Tell dropping Emrakul only to die the following turn to a
Tendrils of Agony, so having
Griselbrand to draw 7-14 cards ensures that kind of nonsense doesn't happen as often.
The other important element
Griselbrand brings to the game, through its draw ability, is the possibility of comboing more than once. This is critical for matchups that have ways of dealing with your creatures. Being able to follow up a turn where
Griselbrand was dropped with a turn that puts Emrakul into play helps get around things like Jace or
Karakas (provided they didn't have them the turn prior). This is also relevant when you absolutely need to attack with Emrakul and don't have one. Opening up possible plays using
Sneak Attack to drop
Griselbrand, draw a handful of cards to find Emrakul, then drop Emrakul and win, are paramount to the deck's flexibility and creating winning situations out of losing ones. Previous iterations of the deck couldn't win in these scenarios because
Progenitus took the slot, and having this new option helps turn those losses into wins and then giving this deck a better place in the metagame hierarchy.
Outside of
Sneak Attack, the addition of
Griselbrand can also help boost the playability of Reanimator. It can easily take a single slot away from Jin-Gitaxias, which gives that deck an instant-speed draw effect and lifelink to make up for Reanimate's life loss all in one. It can be risky to its draw at times in that deck, but for a single slot it seems worth trying out.
I won't claim to be a specialist of Goblins and the example decklist isn't necessarily the gold standard. It is however a building point for what we're trying to accomplish with it.
For years, Goblins preyed on Legacy as its whipping boy. Over the last year or two it's fallen out of the limelight, becoming a whipping boy itself. A number of things factored into this; new printings, increasing combo decks, blue decks getting ridiculous new creatures making tempo decks powerful...and so on. But in essence, the biggest problems that led to Goblins' downfall were essentially two-fold:
1. The deck couldn't reliably win through larger creatures (i.e. Tarmogoyf) and struggled.
2. The deck struggled against tempo decks and got blasted by cards like
Daze.
The addition of
Cavern of Souls is a huge turn in the right direction to bring Goblins back to prominence. Although it doesn't solve the first issue, it single-handedly improves every blue-based matchup. The deck can now cast a turn one Lackey without fear of counters and win off the back of it, or actually play
Warren Instigator (which now merits consideration) because it no longer needs to worry about
Spell Snare or
Daze. Same goes for any other creature in the deck. Additionally, this makes Gemplam Incinerator much stronger because more creatures will resolve, opening that possibility to hit bigger creatures like
Tarmogoyf or
Knight of the Reliquary. Between
Cavern of Souls and
AEther Vial, Goblins is now a formidable deck against anything blue, and puts a lot of pressure on them to hit removal spells early and often. Since blue takes up such a large portion of the metagame, this makes Goblins an attractive option.
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With the right maindeck configuration and sideboard options for tougher decks like GW Maverick, combo decks, and other weaknesses, Goblins can be a great deck. Given it doesn't need to dedicate much space for blue now, options open up for more space against tougher matchups. To fully improve them it might require a splash, such as black for
Perish or Virtue's Ruin and some form of disruption for combo, but the deck at least has the tools coming together to compete on a consistent basis. I'm really looking forward to seeing Goblins attempt a comeback because it's almost sad how hard it fell given how good it was at one point.
Even though Goblins is arguably the deck that gains the most from
Cavern of Souls, there's a good chance there will be a few other decks that take advantage of it. GW Maverick immediately springs to mind; they run somewhere between 18-22 human creatures so there's an immense benefit there. It opens a lot for a number of other tribal strategies as well, so the brews will likely be a seen in droves with this card.
Now that we have the more obvious applications for some Avacyn Restored brews are out of the way, we can get into brewing goodness of miracles. There are a number of ways to abuse these cards, so it's exciting to see what will come of them. I have a few brews with them myself, but I'll at least start with a relatively simple deck that's easy to dissect. So let's take a look!
This decklist is pretty straight forward. Outside the additions of the miracle cards, the list doesn't really deviate outside the standard choices.
Temporal Mastery is solid in a deck like this because it creates the potential to swing the game either in your favor if it isn't, or completely blow the opponent out. Likewise,
Terminus gives the deck a great sweeper that allows it to remain in UW instead of Esper. This is critical for matchups like GW Maverick (Gaddock Teeg aside), where it now has a cheap sweeper in its core color so it doesn't need to reach for removal like
Perish out of the sideboard. Losing
Lingering Souls and the rest of the black cards is debatable, but it's difficult to fit all of these new elements in this deck when stretching to three colors.
Beyond specific choices, running miracles also changes the dynamic on the rest of the existing slots as well. It's worth examining what to keep in mind when building with them in the first place to make sure it's done correctly.
To start, there needs to be an abundance of library manipulation effects. Obvious statement is obvious. Without the ability to set the miracle card on top of the deck reliably, whatever the method may be, the cards are not going to get their full value.
Brainstorm is already a mainstay as is Jace, but I've bumped them to a full set and include an additional
Sensei's Divining Top to help support this. We'll probably see some brews down the road with
Brainstorm, more Sensei's Divining Tops, and some combination of
Scroll Rack and/or Jace; a ton of space dedicated to abusing miracles. Since that isn't the aim of this deck and is only a complement to the existing strategy, only nine slots were given in my list.
So the premise on how to build with miracles is there. But
Temporal Mastery is a bit trickier to build with than the average miracle. I've seen far too many brews that leave me puzzled and wondering why it's in the deck. It needs to mesh with certain strategies and elements that support its effect to actually get full value for it. If it's in the deck it needs to be abused, otherwise it seems like a waste.
There's really just one thing to keep in mind when looking to put it in a deck: there needs to be decent ways of taking advantage of the extra turn. Simply playing an extra land and getting a draw are hardly game breaking. Even attacking with a
Delver of Secrets twice isn't going to be a big advantage most of the time (not necessarily a bad play, but that's not my point here). But attacking with a
Batterskull two turns in a row? Or using Jace to gain insane card advantage, building up to another Temporal Mastery? Those are the type of plays you want to get out of
Temporal Mastery; taking things that easily swing the game and doubling the value of them. Effects that you can do turn-after-turn that have a large impact on the game are ideal for abusing, so that's what you need to focus on when trying to gain extra turns.
Taking this in mind, it makes a lot more sense as to why some things are in the deck. There are some choices that need to be taken into account due to the presence of miracles. For instance, I've chosen to add
Sword of Feast and Famine to the equipment package to further take advantage of
Temporal Mastery. By going up to three equipment, this increases the chances of naturally drawing them given they are all insane with an extra turn. Swinging twice with
Sword of Feast and Famine attached is devastating for most decks, and is difficult to come back from. I've also made sure the deck had at least three copies of
Mishra's Factory to increase the odds of having a creature wield the equipment. They also help on their own to attack for more damage with the extra turn given this deck can often be in positions where they reach for those last few points of life.
Vendilion Clique could likely find room in the maindeck, but I've been unimpressed with it as of late so I've relegated them to sideboard status for now.
So that's what I've been looking at recently. These aren't all the brews I've explored, but these three decks paint a picture of what I think Avacyn Restored offers Legacy. Overall, I really like the set and am excited to see what comes of it over the next few weeks. I definitely think
Sneak Attack decks will be on the rise, and
Griselbrand will prove to be a menace in those builds. It's just a simple upgrade to an existing slot, similar to the addition of
Faithless Looting in Dredge. Tribal strategies will likely see a tremendous boost in popularity, at least in testing, and I expect to see a number of new things being tried out here. For all we know, maybe some odd tribes like knights or zombies or even slivers can slip through the cracks and become playable from the addition of
Cavern of Souls.
As for miracles, I'm on the fence. I'm on record saying I don't believe they're the utterly broken cards everyone believes them to be and are overhyped. The requirements to satisfy them, both in deck construction and in play, weigh heavy in considering them for your deck. However, the possibility for them to succeed is there. My prospective Stone-blade brew is a fine example of that. I'm not entirely sure if the deck is great or if it's worse than the existing Stone-blade decks, but it's a new option for people to explore and it'll be interesting to see how things unfold.
Until then, I hope you have fun brewing with Avacyn Restored and find some way to break those miracle spells. And I look forward to seeing all the neat new things that people come up with!
Thanks for reading!
- Colin Chilbert
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