Over the last couple of weeks, a Black-based, midrange Eldrazi brew has broken out onto the Modern scene in a big way. It’s been putting up dominant numbers in Magic Online leagues and reasonable performances in paper events as well. Given that Oath of the Gatewatch has brought a number of other interesting and powerful cards into the mix, it was only a matter of time before someone tried to port the deck to Legacy. Here’s Caleb Durward’s take:

Thought-Knot Eldrazi Black ? Legacy | Caleb Durward

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Matter Reshaper
• 4 Oblivion Sower
• 4 Reality Smasher
• 4 Thought-Knot Seer

• Spells (18)
• 1 Dismember
• 2 Batterskull
• 2 Umezawa's Jitte
• 2 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 3 Trinisphere
• 4 Chalice of the Void
• 4 Mox Diamond

• Lands (26)
• 2 Bojuka Bog
• 2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 3 City of Traitors
• 3 Eye of Ugin
• 4 Ancient Tomb
• 4 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Eldrazi Temple
• 4 Wasteland

• Sideboard (14)
• 3 Ratchet Bomb
• 2 Duress
• 2 Memoricide
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 2 Vampiric Link
• 2 Slaughter Pact
• 2 Damnation

Buy This Deck

This deck combines a lot of interesting, moving pieces into something which could be enormously powerful. There have been many Ancient Tomb decks looking to steal games with early copies of Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere. In that sense, this deck is no different. The most important distinction is this deck doesn’t have to choose a splash color based on what threats are reasonable. Forget Gathan Raiders, Spawnwrithe, and Sea Drake. Instead, we have a powerful and explosive Eldrazi engine.

The backbone of the engine is the same as its modern counterpart. Eldrazi Temple, Eye of Ugin, and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth help you power out Eldrazi on the cheap. The combination of Bojuka Bog and Oblivion Sower allows you to grab extra lands, especially off of your Wastelands and opposing fetchlands. Once you find an Urborg, it doesn’t matter if you get a bunch of fetches you can’t do anything with. All that extra mana allows you to use Eye of Ugin to chain together Eldrazi, burying your opponent in card advantage, and gives you enough resources to freely move around equipment and rebuy Batterskulls.

The real power of this deck is in the new inclusions from Oath of the Gatewatch. In particular, Thought-Knot Seer is easy to cast on turn two given the plethora of Sol lands, and provides a disruptive body immune to Lightning Bolt and Abrupt Decay, tussles with Tarmogoyfs, and provides a very fast clock against non-interactive opponents. Back that up with Reality Smasher, a giant, hasty threat which helps to put even more pressure on cards like Dismember and Swords to Plowshares, and punishes opponents for using them.

This combination of early disruption, powerful threats, and late game power gives this deck the potential to be a real force in the Legacy metagame, and I can’t wait to see if this potential is realized in the coming weeks.