Battle of Wits is an interesting Magic card. One of the first pieces of knowledge that gets passed to new Magic players is that they should never play more cards than they absolutely have to. Battle of Wits forces you to question this tried and true principle of good deck-building. How much consistency are you willing to sacrifice if it means that you get some number of free wins by just ramping into Battle of Wits? We've seen people try this in various Standard formats. We've seen builds featuring Scapeshift in Modern. This is the first time I've seen Battle of Wits in Legacy:
Battle of Wits | Legacy | CalebD, 5-0 Legacy League
- Creatures (31)
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 1 Primeval Titan
- 1 Reclamation Sage
- 1 Scavenging Ooze
- 1 Sylvan Safekeeper
- 1 Tireless Tracker
- 3 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
- 3 Vampire Hexmage
- 3 Vendilion Clique
- 4 Baleful Strix
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- 4 Snapcaster Mage
- Planeswalkers (7)
- 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
- 4 Liliana of the Veil
- Instants (27)
- 3 Diabolic Edict
- 4 Abrupt Decay
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Crop Rotation
- 4 Fatal Push
- 4 Flusterstorm
- 4 Intuition
- Sorceries (49)
- 2 Hymn to Tourach
- 3 Maelstrom Pulse
- 4 Duress
- 4 Green Sun's Zenith
- 4 Into the North
- 4 Life from the Loam
- 4 Living Wish
- 4 Ponder
- 4 Preordain
- 4 Serum Visions
- 4 Sylvan Scrying
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 4 Toxic Deluge
- Enchantments (14)
- 2 Pernicious Deed
- 4 Battle of Wits
- 4 Search for Azcanta
- 4 Sylvan Library
- Artifacts (13)
- 1 Engineered Explosives
- 4 Expedition Map
- 4 Lotus Petal
- 4 Mox Diamond
- Lands (101)
- 1 Forest
- 2 Snow-Covered Forest
- 1 Island
- 1 Snow-Covered Island
- 1 Swamp
- 2 Snow-Covered Swamp
- 1 Bojuka Bog
- 1 Dryad Arbor
- 1 Fetid Pools
- 1 Karakas
- 1 Tundra
- 2 Ancient Tomb
- 2 Barren Moor
- 2 Ghost Quarter
- 2 Lonely Sandbar
- 2 Tranquil Thicket
- 3 Blooming Marsh
- 3 Botanical Sanctum
- 3 Creeping Tar Pit
- 3 Dark Depths
- 3 Darkslick Shores
- 3 Thespian's Stage
- 4 Bayou
- 4 Bloodstained Mire
- 4 Flooded Strand
- 4 Marsh Flats
- 4 Misty Rainforest
- 4 Polluted Delta
- 4 Scalding Tarn
- 4 Tolaria West
- 4 Tropical Island
- 4 Underground Sea
- 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- 4 Verdant Catacombs
- 4 Wasteland
- 4 Windswept Heath
- 4 Wooded Foothills
Caleb Durward's idea here is pretty straightforward. The Dark Depths plus Thespian's Stage combination is really easy to piece together, even in a 200+ card deck. You've got access to everything from Living Wish and Crop Rotation to Intuition and Into the North to help you piece the combo together. A high density of powerful cantrips means that you have some help piecing together the right combination of acceleration, disruption, and combo pieces.
The power of this deck is that you have the ability to generate wins out of nowhere. Between Ancient Tombs, Lotus Petals, and Mox Diamonds, it's not unreasonable to power out a Battle of Wits on the third or fourth turn. Even if you can't, you can play a more controlling game using Intuitions and cantrips to dig for sweepers, Flusterstorms, and other interaction to force through combo pieces.
If people are trying to do too many cute things in your local Legacy events, maybe this is a good way to make a statement. Caleb has found a way here to add enough tutors and power to this deck to offset the inconsistency of the Battle of Wits deck. But let's be clear, the deck is still going to have enormous issues with consistency. Your deck is just too big to ensure that you're able to execute one of your gameplans or find the answers and disruption you need for particular scenarios.
One of the most exciting questions that this deck raises is this: what other Battle of Wits shells exist in a format as vast as Legacy? What kinds of disparate combinations of strategies and powerful singletons can you play with when you have 200 cards to work with? It's certainly an interesting question, but I'm not sure that it's one that we'll see explored any time soon.