The Spice Wars: Streets of New Capenna Legacy Meta

Welcome back to a very spicy and large Legacy League! We’ve got 33 players this time around for 6 rounds of Swiss and a Top 8 and a bunch of super spicy decks! This article was originally titled “”UOL Have to See the Spice We Got for our Legacy League,” that’s how spicy we’re talking. I’m diving in as quickly as I can, because I am hyped to talk about some of these lists.

Breakdown

The first thing to note here is our color distribution. 

Taking a quick look at MTGTop8 at the time of writing, 58% of decks represented play Force of Will, 51% Brainstorm, and 50% Ponder. Roughly speaking, we see a bit over 50% of the metagame on blue. Looking back at our past leagues, this tracks pretty closely, with our Neon Dynasty league featuring 63% of decks on blue, for example. This time, very, very few of us decided to play the inarguably best color in the format. As a group, we somehow all came to the consensus that we needed to simply hate on it, to kill it, and to burn it with fire. Blue is the fourth most popular color in its best format. There are exactly four copies of the card Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration. Legacy is alive and well. 

And while usually, we might chalk this up to there being nothing on the line besides the eternal glory of defeating your opponents and a lime green Legacy Champion role, we actually recently launched prize support for all our leagues and a premier event in the UOL Invitational that feeds from cumulative results, also with prizing. So when money and even greater prestige came into play, we actually had tons of people teching to beat the perceived meta and going anti-blue. With that exciting note out of the way, let’s talk archetypes.

We’ve got a pretty combo vs midrange heavy meta going on, though these raw numbers belie the fact that a lot of lists have aspects of both. Decks like Lands and Gone Fishing/HullDay can play as both combo and control lists, and flex between the gameplans when they need to. A deck like Depths often plays a midrange game while threatening a combo plan to put their opponents in zugzwang. If we break this down a bit further, we can get the following chart.

The most notable thing here is the severe lack of tempo, cracking in with just two 8-Cast lists and a single Delverblade. I think anyone who picked a combo deck this season is probably feeling pretty good, especially if they packed combo mirror boards. Those who’re on the more midrangey lists, especially without Thalia, are going to be hurting a bit more. And I pray for our lone Burn pilot, Confused. 

In terms of decks, we have a huge diversity. The repeats are three Taxes, two Painters, two Elves!, two Depths, two Gone Fishin’, and two 8-Casts. That leaves over half the league on unique decks. And let me tell you, there is some spice. And I’m not talking just some of your regular, pretty decent but bearable spice. I am talking about several people, myself included, typing in all caps in the league chat. We’ll start low, ramp it up, and then have some ‘normal’ decks at the end to cool back off. 

Cone’s 4c Loam

Loam players have been having a bit of an identity crisis for a bit. Punishing Fire, while still a good card, is not what it once was and the deck as a whole has fallen off compared to the halcyon days of 2019. The solution for some has been to drop the red elements and switch into blue. This is still a recent development and there’s a lot of experimentation. 

Our tournament organizer, Cone, decided she wanted to be on a Field of the Dead plan with Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and three powerful planeswalkers to accompany the usual Knight of the Reliquary. She’s also on the extraordinarily neat and spicy Slogurk, the Overslime, which has great synergies both with and against fetches, as well as with Life from the Loam. It acts as a Green Sun's Zenith-able Loam, and is a stick threat in its own right. Cone is also on some great singleton utility lands to compliment Field of the Dead: Bojuka Bog, Tower of the Magistrate, Maze of Ith, and Cabal Pit. And speaking of the Cabal…

Coffers Mid

Here’s our baseline for some spice, a nice habanero level burn. Xahfink is a madman. I applaud him for it. 

We’ve got a pretty solid basis here, with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Dark Ritual, Dark Depths, Thespian's Stage, Vampire Hexmage, and Expedition Map forming half of the first major iterations of Depths. We have some other good utility pieces like Thoughtseize and Dauthi Voidwalker that one might see in usual Depths builds. The usual ends here. 

Sorin the Mirthless? Golos, Tireless Pilgrim? Griselbrand? How in the world is that getting in play? Are we Entombing and Reanimateing like a Tin Fins offshoot? Cabal Coffers??

Oh yes, Cabal Coffers. The big mana combination with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, popular in many EDH shells, has come to Legacy. We’re looking at hard casting Griselbrand and Archon of Cruelty. We can easily cast the 2-of Invoke Despair. In a longer game, we can even potentially melt a Dark Depths the way Wizards (sort of) intended. This deck packs a ton of high power proactive and reactive plays in a super sweet shell with multiple angles of attack. I love it.

Devoted Configuration

A player with an unpronounceable name has decided to try and move a Modern combo deck into the wider and deeper Legacy field. Let’s talk Devoted Druid. 

Streets of New Capenna released with a new combo piece for Druid in Luxior, Giada's Gift. I actually wrote a thread about it when it was previewed and I highlighted a lot of elements in this deck: Devoted Druid as the combo, Walking Ballista as the payoff, and tutors in the form of Enlightened Tutor, Eladamri's Call, and Finale of Devastation. The divergence is in enablers and how all-in our protagonist is. 

Instead of utilizing Luxior, we see this is built on the back of two already-existing options in Vizier of Remedies and Swift Reconfiguration. The Vizier allows for Living Wish as a tutor option. Speaking of options, we see much more all-in combo options with Lotus Petal and Elvish Spirit Guide as well as Once Upon a Time. The sideboard also sees combo enabler all-stars Silence and Orim's Chant. This deck and player are all-in on exploding in your face as early as possible. Just beautiful. 

Karminova’s NO Applejacks!

A classic underdog deck returns with a vigor to try and reestablish itself. Applejacks is backs! 

Orcish Lumberjack is a sweet card. It allows you to absolutely turbo out mana thanks to adding a mixture of three red and/or green mana. The downside of sacrificing a Forest to do so is fairly large, but if you can drop a four mana play on turn 2 or a five mana play on turn 3, it is absolutely worth it. You know what a four mana play is? Green Sun's Zenith for a Ramunap Excavator. Now the downside is less brutal. 

We have tons of excellent finds for Green Sun's Zenith aside from Ramunap. Archon of Valor's Reach, Endurance, Knight of the Reliquary, Primeval Titan, and Titania, Protector of Argoth are all super sweet threats with effects. On top of that, the Knights package means utility lands and Dark Depths are back. Great land cards such as Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth widen the options to ‘jack into mana. Round out with utility from Sylvan Library, Swords to Plowshares, and Prismatic Ending and we’ve got a heck of a deck. Juicy as an apple, but as jacked as they come. 

WR Blade

Wait, I thought Stoneforge Mystic was limited to either blue decks or no additional colors? Is that a Fury and Solitude in the same deck? Look at that subtle off-white creature base. The tasteful thickness for Yorion, Sky Nomad. Oh my god, it even has a Squadron Hawk. 

Silly references aside, this was definitely tuned to wreck blue-based creature decks. Pyroblasts main, Squadron Hawk as an expendable way to refill after pitching to Incarnations, and great options for removal or racing in playsets of Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Prismatic Ending, and Lightning Helix. We even see small splashes for Ancient Grudge in the board and to extend Prismatic Ending’s range up to four mana without opening up to any blue hate. 

I love zachinflames’ brew here and think it would normally do well. The worry for him is that, in being so bent over to beat up on blue, he does open up some vulnerabilities to the other colors. Still, Fury and Solitude alone give him massive edges in fair matchups. We’ll see whether our ghost pepper can rise to the challenge, or if he’ll simply be smoky remains after being run through the fire.

Thousand Year Tide

Supervolcanoes and meteor impacts have caused some of the largest ever tsunamis in history. masinmanc is here to give us a tidal wave to exceed them all. It’s High Tide time baby!

Thousand-Year Storm is a hilarious way to get absurd stuff happening. Combine it with Time Spiral as a way to refill the hand and High Tide to generate even-more-absurd-than-usual mana counts and we’ve got some hilarious stuff going on. A lot of this is pretty standard Tide fare, but adding one little card can contextually change the operation of a deck in a huge way. 

The only regret I have in masinmanc registering this list is that he’s not on MTGO with it, because I want to see the client stack up ten thousand triggers and crash from the sheer absurdity. This has some carolina reaper level spiciness for the connoisseur of triggers and jank enjoyers alike. 

Green

I have no other way to describe the spice on this last piece except as nuclear level. I have never in my life been more surprised with each passing card I’d read. There’s spice, there’s brews, there’s spicy brews, and then there’s next-level functional brews so spicy you have your face melted off. You know it’s good when the man who brought Applejacks sends this image in the league chat. 

MegaScientist is indeed the schnastiest brewer out there. Check this list out.

A manabase so cheap I could probably talk most LGSs out of it for free. Six 1-drop dorks. Two Prowling Serpopards. Four Carnage Tyrant. Bane of Progress to destroy 8-Cast. Steel Leaf Champion on turn 2 astonishingly consistently. A huge upper curve of Worldspine Wurm, two Titan of Industry, and three Terra Stompers. Main-board Hurricane that can be a Fireball or lower-cost Plague Wind against Delver. 

In the side, we see 4 Allosaurus Shepherd, 2 Overrun, 2 Oversoul of Dusk, and 2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary. 

This is the kind of deck that reminds me why I love this game. It is so off-the-wall, but it has a sort of sense about it and rhythm to it. Just look at this selection of reactions to the lists going live and people seeing it for the first time.

MegaScientist was even kind enough to share their inspiration for the deck.

Words I’m positive every green mage ever can empathize with. 

This is the kind of deck that really underscores and reminds me that this is a game, something we do for fun. It’s something with a personal flair and a drive, whether it’s to optimize the most powerful storm list ever made or simply to not lose to control. 

It’s a game about community and building relationships. As much fun as it can be to go 5-0 in a league on MTGO, it’s much, much more fun when it’s experienced as a part of a community of players, getting together to do something we all love. 

This article is going up after our first round is done. MegaScientist was paired against Xahfink’s Coffers deck and went 0-2. 

I always try to have that attitude, win or lose. Find a goal and pursue it, have fun along the way, and just accept the punches as they come. MegaScientist has contributed to this league being one of the best in UOL’s history, in my opinion. 

Painter

Speaking of playing and having fun, win or lose, I’ve actually been able to get back and play with local friends again recently. There’s not very many of us, and we’re literally playing on a kitchen table. It reminded me of before this plague sent us all online and why I love this silly card game enough to have a veritable portfolio in cardboard. 

One of my buddies is on Painter. I tested against it on a few different occasions with a few different decks and he was just consistently kicking my butt. Not only that, his deck was so super fun to watch in action that I was just having a blast losing to it. I’d settled on a different deck for this league, tested for it, actually felt consistent about it, and was ready to go. But something was holding me back. 

So, at the literal 11th hour, with my mind completely gone from working three days of 12 hour shifts straight, I dragged up some lists. I settled some numbers. I got down to 62 cards main and found my cuts. I actually considered my sideboard plan even in this near-miasma of exhaustion and locked in my 75. 

I wanted to be alright into the 2-3 Taxes lists I knew would be present, so I opted for a full suite of Lightning Bolts. I wanted to be able to kill a Meddling Mage on Pyroblast, so I split it 3/1 with Red Elemental Blast. While I wanted eight Goblin Welder effects, I trimmed one to fit a Wurmcoil Engine to be able to race a Murktide Regent. I decided to only sideboard Grindstone to wish for with Karn, the Great Creator and play a pair of Imperial Recruiter as my extra Painter's Servants. This gives me an effective eleven Grindstones main and six Painter's Servants. 

For my Urza's Saga toolbox, I went with good all-rounders: Pithing Needle, Mox Opal, Retrofitter Foundry, Soul-Guide Lantern, and of course, Grindstone. 

In the board, I went for Fury and Abrade as Taxes hedges. Trinisphere was my main Storm plan, while Torpor Orb covered the likely case that some number of Doomsday would make it. Two Surgical Extraction and a Tormod's Crypt back up Soul-Guide Lantern, and I have three effective copies of Magus of the Moon against Depths decks to slow them down. Finally, Liquimetal Coating and Twinshot Sniper serve as great wishboard targets for Karn in both pre and post-board games. 

While I’d love to see some more blue to really unlock Pyroblast, I think a lot of my minor includes and decisions have given me a great shot in this league as well. It’s time to see if I can Top 8 my fourth UOL Legacy league in a row (though with a break for school during Neon Dynasty). 

Wrap Up

If you’ve made it to the end of this monster of a League metagame breakdown, thank you so much. We have plenty of other decks that did not make it into this article, including some more spice. Check out every deck in the league here. If it’s made you interested in maybe playing, please join the discord. We’re actually a super friendly group and often have players spectating each others’ games just to see what will happen. Just today, I witnessed a Reanimator player win through five Surgical Extractions (rebought with Day's Undoing), a Swords to Plowshares, and two Force of Will via an Archon of Cruelty’s enters-the-battlefield effect from Show and Tell while the opponent had the fifth Surgical in hand. We launch a tournament roughly per standard release or quarter, so chill around the server and discuss stuff while this league plays out and the next gets going.