Welcome to another UOL Legacy League everyone! 

Before we dive into the meta report, I’d actually like to give a huge thank you and sayonara to Dank_confidant, who’s been Legacy T.O. at UOL for a while now. He’ll be stepping down from his role after this season to focus on real life stuff. He ran Legacy with both passion and great humor and will be missed. 

If you want to see all of our decklists and the current standings for Legacy, check out our Legacy format page.

Macroarchetypes

The breakdown of the marcoarchetypes this season looks like this: 

Only four aggro or tempo decks and seven combo decks is quite unusual for the Legacy meta. The presence of only a pair of decks designed to slow the game down on top means we’re looking at a league that is likely to be brutally fast and hard hitting. I expect to see a lot of very frenetic, bloody games. 

When we break this down into deck archetypes, we once again see our usual glorious UOL spread of decks represented: 

Only three decks have more than one representative, meaning we have fifteen distinct decks being played by eighteen players. You’re highly unlikely to be facing the same deck from round to round, and that means that matchup knowledge will be very key in deciding these matches. 

Let’s break down some of the decks we see here. 

8Cast

Neither of our 8Cast pilots managed to convince themselves to play the new hotness, Kappa Cannoneer, which means they’re on the much less explosive version of the deck. 8Cast was still great before Cannoneer, however, and will still be a threat. The card advantage engine backed by counterspells and light prison elements also sports an artifact toolbox thanks to Urza's Saga. It can play the beatdown in combo matchups and the control in tempo mirrors quite well. The sideboard can be configured to the meta and boasts silver bullet artifacts such as Aether Spellbomb can be slotted in as 1-ofs due to the power of Urza's Saga. I’d be quite shocked if one of these two didn’t end up in the Top 8. 

Nusk went with a slightly different-from-the-norm version, with a lean towards the Affinity decks we saw just after MH2 was released. The playset of Ornithopter enables fast and consistent Emry, Lurker of the Loch and powers up Retrofitter Foundry. The white splash for Ethersworn Canonist and Esper Sentinel is also quite potent. 

Depths

Depths has been a historically underrepresented strategy in UOL. Last league’s winner, ssch21, decided to follow one league win on combo with another league on a different combo to aim for the back-to-back. This deck is very annoying to face, as you have to deal with both a combo gameplan of Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage backed by a Sylvan Safekeeper as well as a green toolbox midrange plan built around Green Sun's Zenith backed by tons of great white removal. Disrespect the fair side, and Elvish Reclaimers will beat you down. Deal too much on the fair side, and you’ll face the Wrath of Marit Lage, a black, flying, indestructible 20/20 creature token. The only knock I have against the deck is not finding room for at least one copy of Boseiju, Who Endures. 

TES

Our runner up for the Crimson Vow season decided to half run it back. He’s on Tendrils of Agony, but something a little more mainstream than Peer Into the Abyss Storm. It’s zachinflames’ time to shine on TES! 

The current version of TES is tuned to deal with Force of Will quite handily, playing six Silence effects. However, that may just mean a lot of free slots to sideboard out this league, since we actually have only eight pilots playing Force of Will. The rest of this deck is all action, however, and quite capable of stringing together explosive turns that win on the spot. The lack of Force of Will in the league means Zach will have to play around more static prison elements postboard, but I do think this looks like a great metagame choice.

Jeskai HullDay

One of the control deck flavors of the month is UWx Hullbreacher + Day's Undoing. This deck is very annoying for both blue mirrors, where Hullbreacher can be deployed in response to cantrips naturally, and for non-blue decks, where the board is controlled til the combo is pulled off and the gamestate is essentially unrecoverable. 

Pinecone has brought a more all-in version, featuring mainboard Narset, Parter of Veils and the greatest thief in the multiverse, Dack Fayden. Dack + Notion Thief has been playable in the past, and while Hullbreacher isn’t quite as punishing as Thief, it still will quickly lock opponents out of their hands. 

Trinket Stompy

The award for the most Neon Dynasty cards in this league goes to Viperfang on Trinket Stompy. A deck specialist to a T, Viper has been playing this for a while to varying levels of success. He’s the type of pilot who complains about his Chalice of the Void on 0 getting blown up, hears me joke about Synod Sanctum, and then puts it in the sideboard. 

For this league, Viper has packed three cards from NEO: Moonsnare Prototype and Otawara, Soaring City in the main and The Reality Chip in the side. Moonsnare Prototype can use noncreature artifacts like Chalice of the Void to ramp out other cards. Otawara, Soaring City is a good catch-all bouncer. The Reality Chip is one Viper is personally very high on, valuing it close to a Future Sight. 

Temporal Doomsday

The final deck I want to look at is our dear T.O, Dank’s: it’s time to jam a Doomsday, stack two Temporal Mastery on top, and kill someone with a Murktide Regent. 

There’s been a not-insignificant amount of stir over this deck (before Kappa Cannoneer hype drowned it out). Dealing with both the Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration/tempo side of the deck makes you naturally weaker against the Doomsday side and vice versa. Temporal Mastery is good in both plans as it lets you chain into lethal turns with creatures naturally on board, bait out counters, or even build effective pass-the-turn piles with Doomsday. Force of Will, Daze, and Malevolent Hermit // Benevolent Geist are all great at protecting a Doomsday you’re trying to resolve. Dank has also packed the best anti-blue Doomsday pile tech in Cavern of Souls, naming Wizard for an uncounterable Thassa's Oracle. He also has great fair matchup tech with the ability to simply cast Dark Ritual into Liliana, the Last Hope to snipe every creature off the board and threaten an ultimate as early as turn 3 with the pair of Temporal Mastery. 

This is a super spicy pile. In general, Temporal Mastery has always seemed like an underutilized card in Legacy, since our plethora of cantrips let us set it up and the tempo shell of Delver has always had the capability to just kill people. 

Wrap

That’s all I have time and room to write about now. What are your favorite decks from this season? What would you want to pilot into this? Is there a deck I should have covered, but didn’t? Let us know in the comments or feel free to hit us up on social media.