Opposition is a terrifyingly powerful Magic card that has dominated its share of Standard and Extended formats, but has only seen marginal play in Legacy since then. A few weeks ago, we saw a crazy take on Green-Blue Opposition, featuring a giant pile of mana creatures, Elvish Visionary, and Wirewood Symbiote to try to grind out fair decks while setting up a backbreaking Opposition to lock your opponent’s lands for the rest of the game. The problem is that Opposition was the only real haymaker. Since the deck’s debut, some people have been tinkering with ways to add more power to the deck. Here’s one exciting take:

Bant Opposition ? Legacy | tapedecky, 5-0 Legacy League

• Creatures (23)
• 4 Coiling Oracle
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Shardless Agent
• 4 Stoneforge Mystic
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 3 Deathrite Shaman

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 3 Tamiyo, Field Researcher

• Spells (14)
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 3 Opposition
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Lands (20)
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 3 Tropical Island
• 3 Tundra
• 3 Wasteland
• 2 Polluted Delta
• 2 Windswept Heath
• 1 Bayou
• 1 Scrubland
• 1 Underground Sea

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Abrupt Decay
• 3 Thorn of Amethyst
• 2 Meddling Mage
• 2 Rest in Peace
• 2 Swords to Plowshares
• 2 Winter Orb
• 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

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The key difference here is that there’s no Elvish Visionary plus Wirewood Symbiote engine. The purpose of that engine was to help generate extra mana to fight through soft counters, extra-untapped creatures for Opposition activations, and extra cards to flood the board with creatures. The crux of the Blue-Green deck was to end the game with some Gaea's Cradle shenanigans while your opponent is locked underneath Opposition. The problem with that plan is that it sort of makes you a worse version of the Elf combo deck. Sure, you have Opposition, but Elves is a better Wirewood Symbiote deck and a better Gaea's Cradle deck.

Instead, tapedecky has cut the cute value package in favor of more cards that can win the game on their own. Stoneforge Mystic and Tarmogoyf are cards that can apply enough pressure on their own to close out games, and this is particularly true when Opposition is involved to lock up key blockers.

The trick here is that Opposition isn’t the only powerful four-drop that tapedecky is playing. Tamiyo, Field Researcher makes a Legacy debut here as yet another way to clear the way for the deck’s various attackers, or to help grind out value in creature-oriented mirrors.

The last exciting inclusion is Shardless Agent, which gets a lot more interesting in a three-color variant of this deck than in a straight two-color variant. This means that you gain access to hateful two-drops like Meddling Mage and even Winter Orb out of the sideboard, and Shardless Agent gives you extra looks at finding them.

All told, this is an exciting deck that appears to have a little more going on than it may first appear. Opposition is a powerful card that hasn’t been fully explored in Legacy, and there are lots of ways to combine mana creatures, powerful four drops, and value midrangey creatures in such a way that you can easily exploit the power of Opposition.