Zvi Mowshowitz says, in a format with so many cards the natural fear is that combination decks will run wild. There are a number of cards that have caused problems in the past that are legal in Legacy. You can play Lion’s Eye Diamond and Lotus Petal! Another potentially amazing card is High Tide. If these decks proved too good, they might overrun the format and turn it into a war to see who could pull off the fastest combo. Those two seemed like the primary contenders that have been found so far. In a format with so many cards the natural fear is that combination decks will run wild… The control role belongs to a deck called Landstill. Landstill uses Wasteland, Mishra’s Factory and Faerie Conclave to win under a Standstill if both players refuse to break it, which means that if they play the Standstill with no threats on the board for either player than their opponent will be forced to let them draw three cards. They also get to back this up with Force of Will and Swords to Plowshares along with such classics as Wrath of God and Nevinyrral’s Disk. You have to love the classics.
There were also some other candidates for the control role. A red version of Landstill uses Fire/Ice instead of Swords to Plowshares. It has some advantages over the white version, but I think that they can’t offer as much as white can. A more interesting option is to play all three colors, which is not all that difficult when you get to use duallands and fetch lands. What it means is that you won’t get to play with any basic lands at all, with all the vulnerabilities that implies. There are also multiple Survival of the Fittest decks: The good creature Red/Green decks, the “angry” Tradewind Survival decks called ATS, the bizarre concoction of cards known as Full English Breakfast and other variants too. That’s one of the great things about Survival, you can do almost anything that you want to with it.
Beatdown can take many forms, but red is by far the most popular. Goblin Lackey is legal, so the Goblin decks will get a lot of free wins. The combination of that and AEther Vial gives you a lot of fast starts and the deck is not that slow even if it gets no such help. A traditional Goblin draw will work fine too, and Goblin Matron gives you a lot of flexibility and a decent long game when combined with Goblin Ringleader. Red can also do more aggressive but less resilient Goblin builds, outright Sligh builds with Jackal Pup, Lightning Bolt, Fireblast and Ball Lightning, or even pure burn strategies. There is a lot of very good burn available. There are also potentially Fish, Elves, White Weenie and a number of other creature decks that could be of interest but none of them have the same raw power as the red decks do. Read more.
Dave Humpherys
