A cEDH Player Takes On Legacy

by (artist)

Why did I, Michael LeVine, a competitive EDH player known for bringing less-than-popular Stax and hatebears strategies to tables full of Oracles

Because I got COVID. Sickness prevented me from attending Okotoberfest in November, so I elected to try out Legacy a few weeks later. But another part of me really wanted to get back into a 60-card format where I could cast Dark Ritual

I started playing local weeklies and Junior Super Series events in Mercadian Masques block and Invasion block, so Rebecca Guay's Dark Ritual

Learning Legacy

Despite primarily playing EDH, I watch a lot of Legacy content. My favorite Legacy content creators are hate bear enthusiast Phil Gallagher and cEDH champion Brian Coval. Over the last year, Phil was experimenting a lot with black decks making use of the traditional Legacy Stompy shell: Ancient Tomb

Stompy decks of all colors generally interest me. The decks abuse fast mana in order to accelerate out aggressive creatures, like Goblin Rabblemaster

Does this play pattern sound familiar to you? It does to me, because it's exactly how I like to play my competitive EDH decks. In cEDH, fast mana allows stax players to deploy their hate before other players combo off, at which point that can use that time to find their own win condition which ideally attacks on a different axis.

Heliod, Sun-Crowned

In cEDH, I prefer my stax decks to have an "I win" button. I'm best known in the cEDH community for playing Heliod, Sun-Crowned

To be honest, I've won plenty of games with combat damage! Heliod is an attractive Commander because he's able to grow your team and use lifelink to win the combat races that tend to evolve out of staxy board states, but to me it becomes competitively viable because it can both enter the red zone in long games and quickly combo out in short ones.

Unfortunately, Legacy Stompy decks usually lack combo win conditions, relying on their three-to-four-mana-value beaters and the broken fast mana of the format to quicken the clock, but there is one slightly uncommon archetype that does: Mono-Black Stompy.

Black Stax

While white is the primary hatebear and stax color in Commander, black actually has a fair number of hate pieces and can more than fill out a 60-card deck. cEDH favorites, like Dauthi Voidwalker

But Dauthi Voidwalker

This isn't a problem in Legacy, and with main deck Leyline of the Void

The deck is rounded out by Karn, the Great Creator

Seeing Phil play various forms of the black Stompy list on his channel, with and without the Helm combo, convinced me that I'd also enjoy playing this deck in Legacy. I looked at several lists, constructed a sort of consensus list to start with, made a few TCGPlayer orders, and started to get games in. 

A big shout-out to my two testing grounds: the mythical creature-named application that-shall-not-be-named and Gamestoria, an LGS in Queens, NY with a popular Legacy weekly. I practiced for a few weeks before going to Eternal Weekend North America, a yearly event that brought 468 players to compete in the Legacy Championship, and I didn't do too bad! 

Eternal Weekend North America

My 0-2 start led to a 5-0 run which left me in contention to possibly make top 8 but more likely prize. Unfortunately, I fell short and ended the weekend at 6-4. Despite the outcome, I was hooked! The deck really felt like my favorite cEDH decks, and I wanted more. 

I made some changes after Eternal Weekend, as a new menace haunts Legacy: the Initiative! This made-for-Commander mechanic is very powerful in 1v1, with decks aiming to take the Initiative turn 1 and then use the left side of the dungeon to quickly defeat their opponent. The popularity of the Initiative had led to a resurgence of an old favorite of cEDH players from the Flash Hulk era: Cephalid Breakfast combo. 

This deck aims to use the combo of Cephalid Illusionist

I realized my deck lacked good ways to interact with these decks while also having a less consistent and slower combo win condition. While I might have a decent match-up against Initiative, I didn't stand a chance if I ran into an Oracle. 

Torpor Orb

Coincidently, I made my name in cEDH playing Heliod during the Flash Hulk meta, where people cast Flash

A constant debate in the Mono-White EDH discord, where I am a slightly absent moderator, is whether or not we should play Torpor Orb

Coincidentally, for these two reasons it's incredibly strong in my Mono-Black Stompy deck. It shuts off Oracle in my Breakfast and Doomsday matchups, but it also shuts off the primarily white Initiative decks that rely on ETBs just like Heliod does. That same tension I've struggled with as I refined my Heliod cEDH deck directed me where to attack the current Legacy metagame. 

I made a few other tweaks, mostly to solidify my match-up against Urza's Saga

SCG Con: Legacy $10k

In January I took this iteration of the deck to SCG Con's Legacy $10K, a 169-person tournament with a rather nice prize pool. I managed to make top 8 at SCG Con with a 6-1-1 record, intentionally drawing in round 8 to secure my spot at 5th place in Swiss and 6th place overall after losing my quarterfinals match, winning a nice $500 prize (I immediately converted into three sealed blue APAC basic land packs, which include my favorite Swamp by Ron Spears and favorite Mountain by Rebecca Guay).

Going 6-1-1, I defeated two Breakfast decks in part thanks to Torpor Orb

In round 7, with a 5-1 record, I played in the feature match on Anuraag Das's stream (coincidently, Drake Sasser of Commander's Herald and Playing with Power was casting), and defeated Mono-White Painter, an uncommon take on Painter piloted by my friend Eddie that's reminiscent of the Oswald Fiddlebender

As you can see, the format is fairly diverse! I didn't see a single Initiative deck, which seems to all get trapped fighting each other just outside of the top tables. I intentionally drew my 8th round to lock in top 8, and then lost to Delver in my quarterfinals match. While I believe my deck has the advantage against Delver, it's also the deck whose strategy differs the most from cEDH deck strategies, so I'm still learning how to play against it, and my opponent, David Kaplan, is a skilled pilot who 100% outplayed me. You can watch that match here and cringe along with me when you notice the fatal misplay I made two turns in a row in game two. 7 rounds of Legacy seems to have fried my brain! 

Since David and I play at the same LGS, I hope to avenge my loss in the near future!

Final Thoughts

So, just some concluding remarks. Legacy is a great format, and if you love cEDH, I think you might like Legacy as well. And for Legacy players, I think the opposite is also true! I've learned a lot from cEDH that has informed my play in Legacy, and think just as much about Legacy will inform my play in cEDH (spoiler: it already has - I slotted the Painter combo into my Heliod deck at Marchesa last year and it performed quite well). 

Over the last year, Rebell and I have been playing a lot of 60-card formats, and I think our mutual support of each other's 60-card interests has made us better Magic players overall. While I definitely think EDH's significantly higher variance make deck optimization quite different from Legacy (if you like math, read more here), the skills each format teaches are highly transferable, and I may even start playing rotatable formats again in hope to learn even more about Magic as a whole. Can you imagine: me, playing Standard?

Sideboard here.