Very soon now Magic fans, we will exist in a world without Return to Ravnica and what a different world it’s going to be; the old script of decks and tournament play will be scrapped and we’ll return to the primordial ooze of deck construction. Return to Ravnica was a powerful format and it is responsible for staples spread out throughout standard right now; you’ve got power houses such as Sphinx’s Revelation, Desecration Demon, and Pack Rats (You can probably tell which decks I played and hated based on this list). Now, let me begin by prefacing that I really don’t like this format, and I don’t presume to call myself an expert on it, so I won’t begin to tell you about decks that are going to either become dominant or stay dominant until the end of the tournament season. I have, however been playing in tournaments (Not gigantic tournaments, but mostly local events, a few larger) long enough to notice certain trends. One example of these trends is control typically taking hold or seeing more play towards the end of the first or second set in a block. Another trend you typically notice is at the beginning of a new block is a shift to one of the most powerful decks in the most powerful color. The deck is of course Red Deck Wins (RDW) and it can be seen to some extent in almost every single block in one form or another; today I’m going to talk a little bit about the ideas behind this deck both from a flavor and an actual game play perspective, and then I’m going to examine some of the decks played by various players played throughout Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage and try to apply some of the principles behind each of these cards.
This is the decidedly nerdy part of the column, so if you’re just looking for deck construction or points about RDW you can skip ahead to the next section. What is a red mage? A red mage is an individual usually of innate talent, who while not unintelligent, is often motivated and powered by their very tempestuous emotions. They do not act based on what may be considered pure or intellectual, but act based on their own personal code of ethics, personality, and mindset at that time. Red mages may be considered individuals who can be quick to anger, quick to appease, and overall very mercurial in their range of emotions; this isn’t to say that they aren’t loyal. Their loyalty belongs to individuals over organizations and they treasure the bonds to those that they are close to over the traditional organizational bonds that people typically give value to. As their power and their actions are based off of their emotions, these individuals are the most likely to “burn” themselves when it comes to their power, often times losing themselves in the throes of their power and succumbing to anger, fear or hatred. As a side note, it is not often that a red mage would tend to spend time in books studying or honing their skill, but tend to just fall back on their natural talent and strong emotion to win the day for them. All of these characteristics are reflected heavily in the game. The very concept of a red mage is fire and just like a fire, if you play red there’s a very good chance that you’re going to burn yourself out of tournament play. If you think about the various resources you have available to you in the game (I’ll explain all of these in greater detail in a later article), but red typically seems to draw its power from your current state of mind (your hand) and thinking about this from a flavor perspective, your emotional state begins by flaring up and giving you a large swathe of power, but you begin to tire quickly from expending too much mental energy from such emotions and your power begins to wane quickly. (burning out) Even the depth of cards in red lends itself to the flavor of the red mage in a very strong way; red mages typically have one or two strategies for solving problems, burn it or break it, and a red mage is not typically going to spend time examining the depths of their power meaning that the depth of things you can do in red is also pretty limited. Even all the way down to how well the decks place in tournaments is very conducive of the flavor or the red element; a very powerful contender, but not a winner over the hard work and diligence of another color except with a few very talented red mages.
I may be wrong and I may be biased, but I truly believe this to be the most powerful color in the entire game of Magic. I will say fair enough that decks of this color typically tend to fall flat on their face, but there’s a reason for that; the decks don’t have consistency. The printing of cards for this color is really only missing one thing and that’s the ability to draw or at least order your deck. There are exceptions, but for the most part those are either bad for one reason or another (Faithless Looting or Magma Jet), or they have a ridiculously high mana cost. (Past in flames) Even those these cards are either very expensive to play or have large downsides to them, I’m sure you’ve seen them run in plenty of decks and the reason for that is that they just make red so much better that you can’t not use them. Now let’s all address the 35-ton gorilla in the room, surely even with consistency problems why don’t the decks win more, I mean if they’re that good. Well, consistency is half of the equation, and probably a larger problem than you give it credit for (It’s what gives you games where all you do is draw mana, a death sentence in red), but the other half of the equation is that almost every deck has built in side board options just to deal with red. Red is the reason that Kitchen Finks is run for the most part; siding against RDW is even run in some RDW that runs white. If you don’t believe me then put together one of the decks that I’ve got listed below and run it against one of your own decks and see how you fair without your side board. I know there are special exceptions, decks that just run faster (Tron, Metalworker, Affinity, Monoblack Devotion, etc.) but by and large the basic shell of RDW is equipped to deal with most decks in a straight fight.
Let’s just make this point clear, yes RDW is extremely easy to run and yes it is used by people who are just getting into the game for reasons we’ll get into in just a second, but that doesn’t mean that it takes no skill to win with one; if you lose to it, it means there was some flaw or error in your play or deck that allowed you to be overrun by the red deck; they exist out there and if as opposed to coming up with a game plan and a side board, you just spend your time whining about how you lost to the deck, then you’ll never overcome your flaws when it comes to playing against red. Now that that’s said, choosing to play red is a very difficult choice, it is a color that will screw you eventually and refuse to play for you some games, just out of the blue. The other thing that you have to understand about red is that it is a mathematician’s deck; while white may have rule-makers, blue may have strategists, green may have conquerors and black may have tyrants, it is actually red that has the mathematicians. The red deck is designed to do more with less and work around a single number, the number 3. This is a deck that revolves around somewhere between 3 to 4 turn wins as consistently as possible by running cards that typically cost 1 to 3 mana, and deal about 3 damage. But why is this 3 so important? Well you might as well call it the Magic number in Magic; with most of the powerful stabilizing spells sitting at 4 to 5 mana, and decks typically taking the same amount of time to stabilize (begin to fight back against aggro strategies) this is the amount of time decks straight aggro decks have to pump in their hits consistently. Now, you’re probably asking yourself why 3 damage or 3 mana? In a typical hand over the course of 4 turns you will see 10 cards; that is the latest average time a straight aggro deck has to win a game, before stabilization can really begin. Taking into account that you want to play 1 mana until you have about 3 mana on field, that leaves you with 7 cards, or 6 if you played 1 mana every turn for 4 turns. In these 4 turns with 7 cards you have to deal 20 damage, meaning that you have to deal 3 damage with 6 cards, at least and 2 damage with your last card to take out the minimum amount of life. Alternatively, if you have 6 cards in hand, you have to deal 3 damage with 4 cards and 4 damage with 2 cards in order to take out the minimum amount of life. Did you know that this is one of the healthiest decks in the game of Magic? With most of your games lasting somewhere between 4 and 5 turns either way, decks like this allow you to do other things while competing in tournaments and can help you keep healthy by giving you time to go get something to eat or hang out with friends between rounds. Not to mention, your typical red burn runs with much cheaper cards than other decks in the same format, allowing newer players a chance to get more accustomed to the basic rules of the game before purchasing an expansive complicated deck that they may not understand.
There are a few archetypes of RDW that are run, and I will now attempt to explain each one:
First in our example of decks is a deck which took 4th in a Legacy open in Worchester on 06 July 2014.
The decklist is as follows:
As you can probably tell by looking, this is a deck that is designed to knock opponents off their feet and then keep them there, Goblin Guide, a powerhouse in almost every format in Red allows you to almost always get in 4 damage before he’s stopped. Grim Lavamancer acts as extra damage for all of the used up cards in your graveyard. Eidilon of the Great Revel works to punish players for playing cards with some of the most common mana costs in the whole format. One thing you’ll notice about the mana base of almost all red decks is the fact that they don’t run many lands compared to the whole of the deck, and they use fetch lands to try to thin the amount of lands that you will draw throughout the course of your game. Sulfuric Vortex not only deals damage to your opponent each turn, but it also stops your opponent from being able to gain life a powerful advantage over your opponent. Fireblast is a ridiculous spell that at the cost of 2 mountains deals 4 damage to something of your choice, which can mean the end of the game for your opponent in a lot of situations. Price of progress punishes players for playing the best and most commonly run type of lands in the format. Searing Blaze not only acts as outstanding creature removal, clearing a path for your creatures to swing and dealing 3 damage to your opponent at the same time. The rest of the cards main deck are typically used to just get in 3 damage the face to your opponent and push you one step closer to victory. As for the side board, you have Vexing Shusher (Stop your opponent from stopping you), Satyr Firedancer (Damage a creature each time you deal damage to a player), Mindbreak Trap (No more searching), Red Elemental Blast (Blue is a pain), and Smash to Smithereens (Metalworker ends games). Overall, this is a very powerful deck that places very well typically despite its consistency and hate issues, the one change I would issue would be to try to include 4 Vexing Devils in the deck, but I’m not sure where I would squeeze them in.
This is a goblin deck of my own creation, because Goblins have apparently fallen out of flavor with the game, I still love the deck and it still is competitive with the right side board. This deck like most of the decks of the same type tries to leverage the damage-dealing ability of its creatures to get in for enough damage to win the game before the opponent has the chance to get back on their feet. Ember Hauler is a powerful card, allowing you to swing in for 2 with the option to pop him and deal 2 extra damage to target creature or player. The Goblin Bushwacker appears with the ability to pump up all your red creatures, give them haste and pump up their power by 1. Goblin Chieftain allows you to get in there for as much damage as possible, by giving all your goblins haste and +1/+1. Goblin Guide, Searing Blaze and Lightning Bolt are strong for reasons previously mentioned. Spikeshot Elder is one of those rare hidden gems, being able to deal his power to target creature or player and being able to be used as many times as you want per turn, he has the ability to burn down opposing creatures and players, making him almost always a great play and also giving you a sink for all your extra mana. Legion loyalist further pumps all of your creatures and gives them first strike and trample, stopping your opponent from being able to just chump block and trade for all of your goblins. Then, you have Goblin Rabblemaster which will not only generate board presence for you, but will also swing in for a powerful hit when surrounded by other goblins. After that you have Goblin Grenade, at 5 damage for a goblin and 1 red mana, this card doesn’t really need any more explaining than that. You want to avoid drawing lands in this type of deck and that accounts for the lack of lands in the deck and the filterability of Arid Mesa mixed with the fact previously stated accounts for why there are so few lands in the deck. The last card in the deck, the Teetering Peaks allow you to burst your creatures quickly without having to lose a land spot and the 2 extra damage is a big help; can also boost Spikeshot Elder for a powerful ability enhancer. The sideboard of my deck deals with most of the difficulty that my deck typically ran into; affinity is a huge problem in Modern, so by running Shattering Spree, we attempt to slow them down long enough for us to take the win. Blood Moon or Sowing Salt is my way to deal with Tron and most other decks that are based around non-basic lands. Surgical Extraction is my way to deal with all of the combo decks that I don’t have another plan against yet, such as second sunrise back in the day; the card also helps against decks that base themselves around the graveyard and is a handy tool against Tarmogoyf. Dismember is really my only defense against creatures with protection from red as well as large creatures that goblins can’t really deal with. Finally, Pyrewild Shaman is my one card combo against Control, pumping what needs pumping and being uncounterable and instant speed, being a creature when I need another creature, returning to my hand to do things more than once every time I deal damage to an opponent, and being a goblin forever; working into the overall strategy of my deck. The only card that I left out which warrants inclusion in the main board of the deck is Arc Trail, just a value card with the ability to be heroic in the mirror match as well as a great solution to most of your infect decks.
By the Will of the Floral Spuzzem @DC4VP on Twitter
By: Daniel Clayton -The Will of the Floral Spuzzem
Today I want to talk about EDH. This is a format that was unknown like 6 or 7 years ago and has exploded in recent years into the giant that it is today. I think the reason for this has been a historically low entrance fee into the format, playing with cards that are considered unplayable in other formats, and with typically a larger variety of decks than you find in most other formats (for the most part; again this is not an article talking about your specific play groups but aiming at most if not all play groups in general). Additionally, it just seems really cool; for me it almost feels like one of the games I used to try to play with my Magic or Yu-gi-oh cards back in the day. I think the biggest factor of it all however is that the format is pretty fun for pretty much everyone who plays it regardless of skill level. It’s a format that for the most part leaves out some of the more fast-paced, rule-intensive aspects of the game (the 40 life, the stack is pretty much gone unless you count the odd blue deck here and there), and it’s replaced with awesome, very visual aspects of the game such as commanders, and infinite combos (which are very possible when you have double the life). Recently, however I’ve started to see a problem and that’s where people have started to see a problem with mono and no colored EDH decks. Let’s begin by stating this, yes I have a mud EDH deck, and yes I think that’s okay as a matter of fact, I think there should be more of us. If you’re not okay with this or offended by this, I guess you should stop reading now, but if you’ll continue with me I’ll begin to expand upon my ideas.
To get to the real heart of my “problem”, and to understand why I feel the need to “ruin the game for everyone” (These were actually things which were expressed to me by other players when they played against me), I believe it best to start with my background; that is to say, why I play the cards I play, and why I build the decks I build. Well, I’m the youngest of 3 brothers and my next closest brother to my age is 6 years older than me. That meant that not only did I get every hand-me-down that my brothers could pawn off on me, was pawned off on me, and I thought that whatever they were playing with was the coolest toy in the world. It was actually my oldest brother that really got me into the game as a matter of fact, he had left for the Marines, his Magic cards were left behind, and he said I could use them to play against my friends. If you’ve read my last article, you’d understand that I started right around the original Mirrodin, but we’ll get to that in just a little while. Anyway, my 14-year-old mind committed immediately to building the coolest deck ever, and this meant taking the best cards out of my favorite color from my brother’s cards. This basically meant a 1000-card green deck, using the biggest most expensive cards (mana-wise) I could find. The deck didn’t win much, but it was still fun to play was more like an EDH deck than I knew at the time. Anyway, this taught me two things, first you should never play a deck this large, you never get what you need when you need it and two it’s really hard to draw mana consistently when you have so many cards in your deck. (This had more to do with shuffling than anything else, really hard to shuffle 1000 cards all at once) This led me to my second deck, straight up mono-black with as many things with regenerate as I could find. This deck was actually a really solid amazing deck. It won a lot of games and was fun to play. Then came the next deck, the one that forever changed my perspective on the game. I tried putting two colors together, I figured that black was really cool for regeneration and kill spells, and red was really cool for damage, so why not the two together. The only problem in this deck was that mana-fixing wasn’t really a big thing yet, or it wasn’t at least in my deck. Additionally, I didn’t really know how to build a mana base for a multi-colored deck, so needless to say it didn’t work… at all… ever. I tried to fix it adding mana, taking it away, changing colors, etc. This drove me away from any multi-colored decks for a very long time. Additionally, Mirrodin became my favorite set, a great set with a ton of artifact creatures that were possible to build a deck around sounded amazing to me, and it really was a ton of fun to play. Well anyway, this general mistrust of multi-colored decks carried through with me to today and I still am not a huge fan of them, even though I run one or two. Well now let’s flash forward to just about 2-3 years ago and talk about my getting into EDH. I was talking to my friends after we had just finished a round of 20 to 30 casual games of Magic. I had gotten out of Magic after middle school and hadn’t really gotten back into it until my junior year of college. They had been amazed at the speed at which my decks had gotten more powerful from casual to tier 1.5 modern decks in the spans of just a year. They said, “Hey Dan, how about you build an EDH deck?” At first I was skeptical as most usually are, but they gave me the rundown and assured me I could build my myr EDH deck. (A throw-back to my favorite creature type) That’s really how the deck started for me, I just wanted to play myrs in a deck, but then it evolved. The commander’s that we looked through didn’t really do it for me, so we thought and we thought and we came up with one that I liked, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. The only problem with him is that there are no colors in his mana-identity so I couldn’t run the cards that I wanted in the deck; so with a certain amount of compromise and a whole lot of evolution the deck that I have today was born. Now that the deck was finished it came time to play it and play it I did, it was a strong deck that played well against all manner of players. Then I tried playing it in multiplayer and a funny thing happened, everyone attacked me. Everyone just assumed that my deck was too powerful and attacked me, and it was a pretty powerful deck, but not one that could handle three people at once. It did two things, sent me back to the drawing board and made me make a choice; either make the deck better or give up and lose every multiplayer game. It’s funny thinking back, because it makes me realize that if everyone hadn’t assumed that my deck was so powerful that even with three people stopping it later on wouldn’t be possible, this wouldn’t be true now. I decided to take the latter choice and made my deck better, and I’m honestly glad that I did. I stuck to my guns and was rewarded with a solid deck that can take what people are spitting out and spit it back with more gusto.
Let’s talk about this format for a little while guys, it is always lauded as a format with the most variety of gameplay and the largest variety of decks, playing cards that you will hardly see in any other format. I have to ask myself… Is this really true anymore? I’m sure it was at one point, but is it true anymore? I’ve gone to plenty of tournaments for EDH, (American rules not French, because that format sucks too much) and in the beginning you see a whole bunch of really cool decks that have unique commanders that you’ve never seen before, but by the end you see the same decks with the same commanders. You see the same strategies and you don’t really see much evolution past the basics. There’s a reason for this of course, some cards are just better than others, and the best cards naturally filter to the top, but I place pretty high in most of these tournaments and I’ve never seen anyone else running a deck anything like mine; and this is for a few reasons: it’s actually pretty expensive to build a deck like mine, it’s hard to build a deck like mine and make it unique and fun, and it gets a lot of hate.
There are two problems with having no colors in your commander’s color identity, namely lands and color identities you weren’t expecting. Believe it or not, there are a ton of cards that have color identities, ranging from mud permanents with a colored activation cost to lands that have awesome effects, but just have the problem of having the tap for white mana, etc. This means that you have to create a unique mana base, based entirely around lands that are either very expensive, or you wouldn’t expect to run in any deck (even an EDH deck). This means that your deck winds up with strategies far from your standard fare of creature rush go, power creatures go; you have to come up with and are encouraged to come up with strategies that are much rarer than this. It’s the type of decks where cards like Darksteel reactor can be a dangerous clock putting an eventual win on the board and making you win very quickly. It’s funny, but when I think about it, the things that are colorless are actually the best at producing mana. As such while it’s a little tricky to come up with a land base to support the deck, once you get 3 or 4 mana onto the field it’s not hard to get to 10 or 11 mana in just a turn or two. This makes the deck terribly reactive (opponents are shocked when I can consistently get out Kozilek every turn after turn 5 or 6 with the right hand), but terribly dependent on getting to the mana you need. This all points to what kind of lands do you run in a deck like this, and the answer is mostly simple T: add 1 to your mana pool. Usually you can add in a few that do this with an added little bonus, such as Desert or Quicksand. These lands really aren’t broken at all and with enough of them, they alone will get you there and the original list ran just these and it got there once in a while, but as I said the deck needed some kick, so I found some in some of the strongest lands in the game, lands such as Mishra’s Workshop, Ancient Tomb, and City of Traitors. This leads me into the expensive aspect of the deck; some of the best cards in the deck are some of the best cards in the game, and as such some of the most expensive as well. Let’s just look at some of the prices, Mishra’s Workshop (300, if you’re really lucky), City of Traitors (Sat at about 50 last I checked) and Ancient Tomb (20-25 last I checked); so about $400 in just 3 cards; when you add to all of that a commander that ranges upwards of 50 to 60 you’re looking at a pretty penny for a deck. On top of this building the deck is pretty tough, especially with the way I took it, the colorless creatures are pretty cool and even with such a limited card base you can still build a pretty cool creature deck, but artifacts for me should do things and so I feel that you really get value out of the mud EDH decks if they’re not creature-based. This combined with the severe limit to the amount of cards you can run, can make deck construction very hard at times especially with a more limited budget.
For some reason everyone involved in Magic either loves or hates Artifact cards; this goes for the players, the R&D, the rule makers, the writers, the creator, etc., etc. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone that plays the game that just feels so-so about the mud monstrosities. I generally get the line that my deck is broken, and I respond with it’s hard to deal with, but hardly broken, as a matter of fact, you can find more artifact removal in the game than you can almost any other type of removal. Additionally, there are a ton of removal cards, which can be a complete blow out for a deck like mine, just to name a few creeping corrosion, acquire, blood moon, price of progress, primal order, ruination, etc. Additionally, the game seems set on printing even more cards dedicated to pulling apart mud EDH decks like mine with cards like Bane of Progress. On top of hatred from the R&D and rules community of EDH, most of the players play against you and will group together to play against you. This is fine; however, as I said the deck that I run has evolved throughout the years and it’s mostly through interactions like this that my deck has made so many leaps and bounds. It became resilient able to recover from attacks that completely decimated the field for me so many times.
I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s mind right now… if there are any burning questions on anyone’s mind is… “BUT DO YOU RUN WINTER ORB?” And the answer to that question is of course I do, it’s a great card, and I always get the response… but omg it’s so unfair, how could you? The answer to that is simple, I want to win, and you don’t want me to win, so I have to stop you from stopping me. It’s sort of like saying why would you run a Vendilion Clique in your blue deck? I want to win, you don’t want me to win, so I have to stop you from stopping me. Additionally, I don’t understand why people say it’s the most broken card in the game, it just slows things down and it’s fairly easy to kill. Plus a lot of times it stops someone from completely taking over a game. Plus do you remember how I was talking earlier about the way that everyone and their mother hates artifacts, well this one card was my initial solution to the problem, and it worked so well at its job that I haven’t taken it out since.
I’m sure at this point you’re probably asking yourself, “He keeps talking about evolution, but what does he mean? A deck’s not alive, how does it evolve?” This is very true, but just like a living organism a deck needs to keep changing in order to overcome its challenges, or it is very soon lost and discarded to the annuls of history. This is the problem you see in so many formats and it’s one that has begun to make its way into EDH that is to say a deck being created and never being changed. As for my deck, I change it at least once a month if I have it on hand, taking cards out, putting cards in, etc., etc.; and it’s just this amount of change that allows my deck to flourish. In evolving I’ve come up with strategies that are so far from the original that I wouldn’t have thought of them in the original conception of the deck. This leads me back to the point I was trying to reach in the previous paragraph; that is to say the fact that if there is so much removal for my lands and for my artifacts then why are there so many out there that say that my deck is broken? There are two answers, first, my deck is very strong… artifacts are extremely strong, hard to deal with cards, yes. The second is many people are unwilling to change in all aspects, but especially in the construction of their decks; if someone wanted to they could deal with or at least try to deal with my deck handily, but they don’t instead giving up on this aspect and call the deck cheap. Anyway I feel as though we’ve gotten to the heart of the article however, and believe it or not it’s not that mud EDH decks are fair and you should let them into your play groups. Just realize that the decks are out there and they will show up in a tournament every once in a while, so be ready for them.
The point I’m trying to get across is to be willing to roll with the punches, not only in EDH, but in all formats, you are going to have to deal with decks that your deck can’t handle in its current form, so instead of complaining about it, you need to be willing to be flexible with your deck construction when it’s not working, or you need to see yourself out of the competitive formats.
By the Will of the Floral Spuzzem
Daniel Clayton
Twitter: @Dc4Vp
It is truly bizarre how the recent successes of Red decks in Standard seems to be porting over to Legacy. While this is very far from a new deck and also not unheard of to win in Legacy, it is not one of the dominant strategies. What it is though is a strategy which has been the identity of Red decks over the last twenty years through the history of magic. It is simple in design but requires the skill of a practiced mage in order to bring it to victory. But the framework of Legacy Burn is often the same as it uses only the very best of the best that Red has to offer.
While the Legacy Burn has more then twice as many instant or sorceries spells then non-land permanents there are some very deadly ones that are showcased here. The first is what has been dubbed as the best red creature printed with Goblin Guide as not only a source of hasty beats but also provides some valuable information about what’s coming up for the opponent. We also find Grim Lavamancer which with a mass of cheap spells and some fetchlands will often find the fuel for its fire from the graveyard to close out the opponent very quickly. The other creature in the deck is relative newcomer Eidolon of the Great Revel which is so deadly given the spells in the format generally all fall under three mana and therefore even to try and remove him is going to cause the opponent to feel the burn in the process. There is also a pair of Sulfuric Vortex which are most especially needed against lifegain otherwise you’d be entirely blown out by a simple Batterskull and the extra damage each turn is gravy. Then we get into the spells which fall into one of three categories: Burn, Burn or Burn !!! You have all the three points for one mana all-stars with the classic Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Rift Bolt and Lava Spike. Against any decks running creatures it’s not hard to trigger Landfall on Searing Blaze to not only blast the creature but also dome the player for an additional three. With so many decks running dual lands and other non-basics Price of Progress can easily count for anywhere between four to eight damage which will end games very quickly. And as a very efficient finishing move you’re able to sacrifice some Mountains instead of paying for Fireblast to burn up those last remaining points of life and fry up your opponent.
The best part of Legacy Burn is that you’re able to pull it together so affordably as the only real cost comes from the fetchlands which are certainly not the same as loading up on dual lands. While it may not be storming out a combo or cheating out a fattie, it is still a fun and efficient deck that is very useful as an entry point into Legacy. I would highly recommend this deck if you are looking to dip your toe into the Legacy pool for a taste as you’ll be spending a fraction of what the other decks cost. And definitely have a good time with this deck and use it as a way to learn what you like about the formats other decks.
We start off with the namesake of the deck or what I like to call The Flying Lightning Bolt in Delver of Secrets which is supported by 28 ways to flip, and should always be close to 50/50 on a blind flip if deployed on turn one to really lay down the beats. That is coupled with beatdown king Goblin Guide as a second option for a great first turn play to start laying down the beats. Given the plethora of instants and sorceries in the deck we also have Snapcaster Mage to rebuy a key spell that you’ve already used and then work on laying down the beats. As you can see this deck is truly a weapon of mass destruction. Support player Grim Lavamancer can either help clear the way for your army or throw additional fire in their face and will often find the graveyard stocked with any of the many spells or fetchlands. The deck has a stockade of burn with full sets both of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning which at one Red mana for three damage are amazing, and easily reused by a Snapcaster. There is also a one of Forked Bolt which can clear two defenders or a dude and to the dome, and a pair of Price of Progress which in Legacy will mostly net either six or eight damage quite often sealing the deal. The counter suite is modest but necessary including format staple Force of Will to keep combo decks in check and Spell Pierce. We round it out with some draw power from Brainstorm, Ponder and Gitaxian Probe to ensure a steady stream of low cost threats continue flowing to your hand.
