Legacy: 2012-03-10
Played at: Magic United, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Attendance: 25 players, 5 rounds, cut to Top 8.
Final Score: 2-2-1.
Deck piloted by: Deckschrobber
Tezzie in Legacy.
original deck here.
Main board:----
// Lands
1x Flooded Strand
4x Marsh Flats
1x Academy Ruins
1x Underground Sea
1x Vault of Whispers
2x Tundra
1x Scrubland
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Polluted Delta
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Plains
1x Island
2x Seat of the Synod
1x Ancient Den
// Spells
3x Sword of the Meek
4x Sensei's Divining Top
2x Chrome Mox
2x Ensnaring Bridge
4x Thopter Foundry
1x Humility
1x Oblivion Ring
3x Enlightened Tutor
4x Brainstorm
3x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3x Mox Opal
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Force of Will
// Sideboard: 15 Cards:
SB: 1x Pithing Needle
SB: 1x Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 2x Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 1x Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1x Aegis of Honor
SB: 4x Counterbalance
SB: 1x Engineered Plague
SB: 1x Humility
SB: 1x Oblivion Ring
SB: 1x Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1x Academy Ruins
primer:
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the Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek combo is a very simple, elegant two card combo. unfortunately it is also a very fragile combo... one Surgical Extraction and your whole game plan can fall apart.
you sacrifice your Sword of the Meek to your Thopter Foundry, giving you a Blue Artifact Thopter Token with flying and one mana. as the 1/1 comes into play you may return the Sword of the Meek that is now in your graveyard to the battlefield and attach it to the newly created token. repeat this process until your mana sources have been depleted. and you can do it all at instant speed!
as mentioned, it is a very fragile combo. so you need to wait to get it online until you have board control. as an alternative win condition you do have your Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas who can turn your artifacts into 5/5 creatures stomping down hard upon your opponent.
the deck has a 3rd win condition: Jace, the Mindsculptor. his +1 ability is extremely powerful once you've established board control and builds up towards JTM's ultimate aka the win condition.you survive all this by quickly emptying your hand and hiding behind your Ensnaring Bridge. and your Humility can also help a long way to this.
post side boarding the deck can be transformed to a Counter Top deck for more control / throw off your opponent's side board strategy.
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tournament report:
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first round i'm paired against Combo Elves. i mulled to 6 and my opponent mulligans down to 5 card on the play and has a decent opening. the next couple of turns are a draw, go from my side and not too spectacular on my opponent's side either. by the 5th turn i resolve a Humility that destroys the combo pieces of the elf deck. unfortunately by now there are already so many creatures in play on his side that it takes only two turns to finish me.
side boarding for match two:
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor and 2x Swords to Plowshares leave my deck in favor for an Oblivion Ring, Humility, Engineered Plague, Ensnaring Bridge and an additional Enlightened Tutor.
not the strongest side boarding decision ever made on my part. should have gone the transformational Counterbalance route with it. Not that it would have mattered much as by turn two my opponent resolves a hard cast Emrakul, the Eons Torn. i had no answer and probably should have left my mana open instead of putting a Swords of the Meek onto the battlefield. to be fair, i don't even really know when and where i should have intervened in the Elf Combo even if i had the cards to do so.
0-2, 'great' start of the day. :(
round 2:
mono-white soldiers deck piloted by a girl who doesn't play a lot of magic.
she is off to a good start and keeps putting out new threats every turn. Humility once again saves the day as it stops her soldiers from getting all kinds of nasty bonuses. she has me down to 5 lives when i get my Sword of the Meek / Thopter Foundry combo online with mana to spare. my flying Thopter army is starting to assemble and gains me life in the process. the Ensnaring Bridge is working my favor as she has now a couple of Honor of the Pure(s) on the board and i still have a few cards in my hand... the story ends with me crawling all the way back up to 22 lives and a defeated opponent.
boarded out an Oblivion Ring and a Sword of the Meek to replace with an additional Humility and the Engineered Plague.
my opponent is off to a flying start while i need to mull quite a bit. put a Humility into play which is soon followed by an Engineered Plague... which obviously gets set to Soldiers, wiping her board completely. have an Ensnaring Bridge, empty out my hand and ride the Jace to victory. fun, fun stuff! ... at least from my perspective.
2-0 win!
round three i'm up against a Stoneblade / Vendilion Clique deck. i'm making mistake upon mistake. failing miserably to do even the simplest things correctly, guess i got tired and lost my concentration. a 0-2 loss ensues. quickly get myself something to eat and drink in time for the 3rd round.
4th round i'm up against the same deck piloted by a different player. knowing a bit what to expect i'm happy to start playing with the new supply of energy from the food and drink... though i'm dreading the match up.
match one is pretty fierce and i get pushed into a corner quite rapidly but manage to survive and kill my opponent with animated 5/5 artifact, courtesy of Tezzert, Agent of Bolas. don't recall how i boarded against this deck but the next match my opponent resolves a Pithing Needle on Tezzert, Agent of Bolas and lets me freely assemble my Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek combo... onto victory but then the proverbial bell sounds and the round ends...leaving my with just 2 turns to kill him which isn't enough.
5th and last round for me against a Belgian opponent who i have trouble understanding. his deck is a weird White / Blue / Red combination with the best of all those worlds. counters a lot of my stuff, burns away the other and keeps on beating me with his Vendilion Clique but somehow i manage to beat him with my humility and 5/5 artifacts. match 2 i'm losing again fast, or so it seems. get my Thopter / Meek Sword online and hide behind Ensnaring bridge with an empty hand. my opponent is getting grumpy. i'm climbing back up from 6 to 26 lives quite rapidly and beat him steadily with a few tokes but the main aim of my damage are his Elspth, The Knight-Errant and his Jace, the Mindsculptor. in the end i win and my opponent almost exploded with frustration. did make many a playing errors, chief among them was my eagerness to create new tokes whenever he attacked with his fleet of tokens. should have just made enough to block and waited to make the rest at the end of his turn...so they would not die from Wrath of God(s) and such...which they did, repeatedly. also, it is really a good idea to play a land when you can so you have an additional mana to build a token and make use of your JTM's abilities...causing leaving it sitting around unused is pretty useless.
all in all it was a fun but long day and i surely have whole lot to learn still about how to pilot this deck and the legacy format in general.
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food for thought:
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contemplating if i should kick out the Academy Ruins out of the sideboard. see its purpose but haven't even used the main deck one once even though it was in play occasionally. side boarding to the Counterbalance deck is something i find very intimidating. not sure what to take out nor how to play CB.
looking forward to playing this deck again.
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