Yeah, yeah. People know me as the guy who knows nothing else except milling. And i’ll get to that topic on my next post. But for now, i’ll have you know that before I fell in love with milling, i’ve always had a thing for the slivers.

The thing is, the slivers have (and I doubt if i’m wrong) ALL the generic abilities in all of Magic. Abilities like haste, flight, trample, and the more impressive ones like shroud, mana production, and destroying ANY permanent. Throw in an ability to make them indestructible and i’d probably be tempted enough to buy 5 PLAYSETS of it. Hehe. Well, indestructibility is still one more thing they don’t have, but I hope they soon do.

Now if I could just find me a copy of Aether Vial…

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Moving on, I’d like to give an overview of how the current legacy metagame looks like. As much as I’d like to give a report based on local data (I’m from the Philippines), I don’t have enough type 1.5 tournaments under my belt to justify what I would write. With that said, I’ll write about the information that I have read from different MTG websites like channelfireball.com and starcitygames.com. I’m a big fan of the articles written on both sites and my main goal for today is to introduce everyone to recent deck archetypes that have been making Top 8′s in large legacy events in the US.

First off the list is:

Hive Mind

- took 1st place in recent Starcitygames Seattle Legacy Open last July 24, 2011, as piloted by Ben Swartz

Decklist:

Artifacts
3 Grim Monolith

Enchantments
4 Hive Mind

Instants
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Pact of Negation
3 Pact of the Titan
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Summoner’s Pact

Legendary Creatures
3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Sorceries
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell

Basic Lands
3 Island

Lands
3 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Mental Misstep
1 Slaughter Pact
3 Spell Pierce
3 Firespout

The first time I saw this deck making Top 8 (Top 6 in Starcity games Cincinnati Open last July 17, 2011), the legacy novice in me thought “How the fuck does this combo deck win with a key spell that has a cmc of 6″?? Of course, this was before I took a good look at the list and found a couple of things that make this deck so freaking awesome. Let’s state all the win conditions that this deck has:

1. Resolving Hive Mind, then casting one of the “Pact” spells; this in turn would cause the opponent to copy said pact and when it’s their turn, they’re unable to pay for the upkeep cost which makes them lose the game
2. Cheating Emrakul, Aeons Torn into play via Show and Tell
3. Cheating Hive Mind into play (if I’m not mistaken, as early as Turn 2 , thanks to Ancient Tomb) via Show and Tell then casting one of the “Pact” spells

Damn, those are sweet win conditions! Seeing that there are 3 Hive Mind decks that are Top 8 in Seattle Open (event after the Cincinnati Open), I can safely say that this deck could be the new “boogeyman” in Legacy.

Duh! Slivers of course!

I actually used to have a sliver deck but it wasn’t out wasn’t fast enough. It was the time of the Weatherlight block. It couldn’t keep up with most aggro decks in its time. At least, not without investing (monetarily) a lot in mana. Well, adding that I was a novice back then and the only mana source I could think of were lands. I had difficulty fixing the mana colors, while I wanted to build my very first five-color deck.

Fastforward to 14 years later, I still fancied the slivers. I kept my old deck intact, I didn’t actively work on it but I always kept my eyes peeled for whatever I could do to make it better. In fact, the mana base I used for my original sliver deck turned out wonderful for my Sunburst deck.

With a few tweaks, it could pull any color of mana I needed. But even though it could do that, it still lacked the speed and couldn’t refill my hand.

I lost touch with the subsequent sliver incarnations but when I came upon a dude selling a bunch, I grabbed the opportunity. I then realized what I really needed was the Gemhide and Dormant Sliver (plus the Heart Sliver for haste) and I had an engine going to keep drawing and casting Slivers almost at will.

It feels funny going aggro after such a long while, in fact my colleague actually calls me “boy control” because every one of my decks was a control deck of some sort. It’s only now that I came back to making an aggro deck after so many years. And I’m so excited!!!

For lack of better term, I think it’s called “Nerd-gasm”.

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It would seem that mono black control is making a big come back. A really big come back, at that. I think this its in preparation for the upcoming expansion after m12, innistrad.

Now while this is a very welcome development, I’m more excited about how they seem to have taken to milling. They made Jace 3.0 with milling as a major ability. Plus they came up with a row of other creatures and spells for the sole purpose of milling.

And if you know me well enough, you know I live to mill. Even as I’m swyping this, I feel giddy just thinking about the possibilities of making a brand spanking new miller deck.

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I may need another blog just to let all the steam out. Hehe.

Anyway, my colleague had asked me whether I’d consider joining him on a legacy tourney as a kind of a team member. I’m flattered, because although I love the game with all my heart, I haven’t joined any tourney yet. Yeah, sure. I’m the one to write about magic and yet I’ve never joined a tourney… The way I see it, it’s not about hope many games you’ve won or lost, but how much you love the game itself. But still, I’m seriously considering it.

Especially that I have an objective in mind. To win a tourney using cheap ass cards.

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Yup. Everything and everyone is in its place, because if not, dissidents are enslaved, slain, disassembled, or worse, turned into mindless drones. A perversion of their former selves.

Though it’s been some time now since the phyrexians have taken over mirrodin, hope is not entirely lost. There are still pockets of resistance willing to fight the phyrexians down to the last man, woman, ogre, goblin, elf, vedalken, leonin, construct, equipment.

And also, the survivors have two secret weapons  they don’t even know  about. The powerful planeswalker Karn, the recently liberated creator of their plane. And to a lesser extent, Urabrask, the red phyrexian praetor.

Although phyrexia has been declared the victor in the war, it would not be a great surprise if mirrodin would be visited again in one of magic’s later blocks. Of course, you know that we can’t let the bad guys win, right?

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Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bust. As per my previous article, I already recognized the flaws but I wanted to see for myself. I ran several play tests and found the following issues.

It’s good against some creature decks. It’s packed with tons of removal spells but it has difficulty against black decks because its cheapest removal spell has 3 cmc and it can’t deal with black creatures. (Hideous End)

There is no assurance that I can draw the Bloodchief Ascension on the first turn. Which means either I find a way to dig it up fast or find a way to stay alive until I get it.

I’ve decided to try and tough it out but stay on the offensive. Thus, I’ve decided to go black – red.

Splashing red, I believe, gives me options in doing two things: have cheap removal spells that isn’t color dependent and secondly, the ability to deal 2 damage on a whim.

Besides, it’s been a while since I last made a black-red deck, so this should pose an interesting challenge for me.

I’ll post my tentative deck list later when I figure out how I want to do this. I’m tempted to go type 1 just because most cheap burn spells belong in legacy, if not extended.

I will also need to invest in lands, because tap lands just don’t cut it. Hmm… Man-lands? Maybe… Inkmoth nexus? Nah. Too expensive.

I’ll post the results of my new formulation next time.

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Anyway, the only reason I copied this is because this is the first miller deck I saw that has Plan A, B and C without even using a sideboard. The main engine for the infinite combo is composed of Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank. Granting that Bloodchief Ascension already has three quest counters on it, the infinite mill/damage can be triggered either by having the opponent lose life or putting any card into the graveyard.

Deck List of “Mindcrank Ascension”

1  Bojuka Bog
4  Inkmoth Nexus
1  Mystifying Maze
16  Swamp

2  Geth, Lord of the Vault

4  Bloodchief Ascension
4  Contagion Clasp
4  Decimator Web
2  Everflowing Chalice
2  Grim Affliction
4  Grindclock
4  Hideous End
4  Mindcrank
4  Sign in Blood
2  Spread the Sickness

I tried playing this against a few of my friends and it fared pretty well, although I found some kinks in the deck and will be editing the components soon.

Primary problem is that there are too many 4-of’s in the deck. I don’t think I need 4 copies of Decimator Web. This is a very useful card in the sense that it’s a swiss knife for winning. You can have your opponent lose 2 life (good for Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank), mill for 6 cards (the whole point of the deck) and put a poison counter on your opponent (Plan C). But it’s casting cost is a little too high in my deck when I would prefer to finish off the game as soon as possible. I need to limit my casting cost to 3 at the most (except for Geth).

Secondary problem is that weenies can be a problem. I have a lot of creature removal spells in the deck but I can’t deal with an entire swarm rushing at me. I need a mass kill. I’m looking at Black Sun’s Zenith as a weenie removal (although a bit expensive) and works well even against fatties since I can proliferate the -1/-1 counters later on. The BSZ can also take care of Shrouded creatures.

Third problem is that I need to deal at least 2 damage to my opponent in each of 3 turns to have the Bloodchief Ascension go online. It’s easier said than done and although I can proliferate the Quest counter, it still means I would need 4 mana to put an additional quest counter on the Bloodchief Ascension. To  have the Ascension go online as soon as possible means I must be able to deal 2 damage each turn. For this, I have to turn to creatures that deals at least 2 damage either when they enter or leave the battlefield or spells that can siphon opponent’s lives. Think of Blistergrub and/or Exsanguinate

The another problem is dealing with control decks. I need to find a way to disrupt opponents from controlling the tempo. I guess, included here is the fact that my deck is very vulnerable against Enchantment/Artifact hate. It’s such a trouble having to build up 3 counters on the Ascension, only to have its existence revoked on a whim. Unfortunately, I haven’t thought of a solution for this, short of going dual color with blue to give me access to counterspells (which I try to stay away from).

In general, I’m actually pleased with the way the deck works. I just need to give way to more play tests find more kinks in its armor.

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My ultimate goal is to make a swiss knife of mill decks, able to survive against beat downs, weenies, controls, aggro’s. But I realized that there’s just no such thing as an all in one deck. Just as magic is dynamic, that no one color is superior than the other, there is no deck that is clearly superior than the rest. Of course there are tournament champions, but only because it’s the right deck for the existing meta game. Simply put, I haven’t given up on my mill deck yet. I just have to learn how to side board properly.

The way things are going, I may just do a pure black mill. The upcoming cards in new phyrexia are the key. Mindcrank and bloodchief ascension can mill out your opponent’s entire library as soon as bloodchief ascension has enough counters. A problem that is easily remedied by way of proliferation.

I’ve always been a johnny at heart, and a miller by passion and it’s only now that my dream deck MIGHT become a reality.

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