Grand Prix DC is coming up, featuring the Legacy format. This is an exciting time for Legacy, seeing as how we just had the Bazaar of Moxen and Eternal Weekend, featuring all manner of Show and Tell combo and Mono-White Mother of Runes decks. What might we see in Legacy this weekend? What's the newest sweet deck in Standard and Modern? Let's get started:

Plenty of people have tried to find a way to break the heroic mechanic in various red and white shells. What happens when you add Blue to the mix? That's what Razhael tried to find out with his UWR Heroic brew. Let's take a look at his list:

Blue-White-Red Heroic - Standard | Razhael, 4-0 Standard Daily Event

• Lands (20)
• 4 Hallowed Fountain
• 4 Island
• 4 Plains
• 4 Sacred Foundry
• 4 Steam Vents

• Creatures (20)
• 2 Artisan of Forms
• 4 Battlewise Hoplite
• 4 Favored Hoplite
• 3 Judge's Familiar
• 2 Nivmagus Elemental
• 3 Phalanx Leader
• 2 Triton Fortune Hunter

• Spells (20)
• 3 Aqueous Form
• 3 Boros Charm
• 4 Gods Willing
• 4 Hidden Strings
• 1 Ordeal of Heliod
• 3 Ordeal of Thassa
• 2 Triton Tactics

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Aqueous Form
• 2 Fabled Hero
• 3 Gridlock
• 3 Mizzium Skin
• 1 Ordeal of Heliod
• 3 Rootborn Defenses
• 2 Wavecrash Triton

Buy This Deck

This deck is similar to the blue-based tempo decks we've seen in Standard formats past. You try to stick a threat on turn one or two, then start beating down while leaving up protection. The key is that this decks uses cheap spells and the heroic mechanic to grow threats to huge proportions. Auras like Aqueous Form and Ordeal of Thassa let you refuel, while your scrying spells and heroic triggers let you dig for gas.

The key to this deck is that Boros Charm gives you game against Supreme Verdict and Doom Blade. Gods Willing lets you crash in for lethal against the devotion decks and also protects you against spot removal. The interaction between heroic and Nivmagius Elemental is especially cute: you can cast an Instant or Sorcery to get a heroic trigger and then exile it to the Elemental to double up on big guys.

Could this be the basis for mainstream heroic decks with future sets? I certainly hope to see more spell-based aggressive decks featuring the heroic mechanic in this Standard format.

When you think about control decks in Modern, what comes to mind? Probably the Blue-White-Red Cryptic Command decks or Gifts Ungiven rock decks. That's not what wheatley505 thinks a control deck should look like. He's brewed up a budget Blue-White deck featuring hits like Pristine Talisman and Blue Sun's Zenith:

[Cardlist Title= Blue-White Control - Modern | wheatley505, 3-1 Modern Daily Event]

• Lands (25)
• 4 Calciform Pools
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Hallowed Fountain
• 5 Island
• 3 Plains
• 4 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Tectonic Edge

• Spells (35)
• 3 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 2 Condescend
• 1 Detention Sphere
• 2 Dissipate
• 2 Dissolve
• 2 Gideon Jura
• 4 Path to Exile
• 3 Pristine Talisman
• 4 Serum Visions
• 4 Spell Snare
• 3 Supreme Verdict
• 4 Think Twice
• 1 White Sun's Zenith

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Celestial Purge
• 1 Disenchant
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Negate
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 4 Terminus
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Buy This Deck

I like what this deck is trying to do. The combination of Pristine Talisman and Calciform Pools put you in a good position to battle much of the format. You can interact on your opponent's turn and still cast Blue Sun's Zenith for reasonable amounts, while lifegain forces your opponents to overextend into your sweepers.

Pristine Talisman is especially awesome against decks like Blue-White-Red and Scapeshift, because they have a very limited number of threats available to them. Pristine Talisman adds up to a lot of life over a long game, and can make it very difficult for your opponent to actually kill you. Eventually you can resolve a White Sun's Zenith or just deck your opponent with Blue Sun's Zenith.

If you're looking to give this deck a try, it looks like there are a few easy ways to upgrade the deck. It's likely that some number of Sphinx's Revelation, Snapcaster Mage, Cryptic Command want to be included, but clearly weren't necessary for wheatley505 to put up results. You could go as far as to add Spreading Seas to improve the Urzatron matchup, but that seems unnecessary with the counterspell suite.

I don't know if this style of deck will deveop into a real player in the Modern metagame, but I certainly hope it does. Pristine Talisman control decks are among my favorite decks of all time, and I'd love to see them be successful in Modern.

Let's dive into the format of Grand Prix DC, Legacy. We've had a couple of huge Legacy events in the last few weekends, as well as increased interest in Magic Online events, and that means plenty of sweet decks, including this Grixis take on Young Pyromancer control from TrollSlayer:

Grixis Control - Legacy | TrollSlayer, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event

• Lands (21)
• 1 Badlands
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 3 Grove of the Burnwillows
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Tropical Island
• 3 Underground Sea
• 2 Volcanic Island
• 2 Wasteland

• Creatures (12)
• 4 Baleful Strix
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 4 Young Pyromancer

• Spells (27)
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Cabal Therapy
• 1 Dismember
• 1 Flusterstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 3 Liliana of the Veil
• 3 Punishing Fire

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 1 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Engineered Explosives
• 2 Ensnaring Bridge
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Notion Thief
• 1 Perish
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 1 Punishing Fire
• 2 Red Elemental Blast
• 1 Vendilion Clique

Buy This Deck

I really like what this deck is trying to do. Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows is a powerful engine in the Legacy format, capable of invalidating entire archetypes on its own. This combo also interacts very favorably with both [card]Liliana of the Veil and Young Pyromancer to let you play more of an attrition game against the conntrol decks of the format.

The only matchup that looks like it'd be especially problematic is combo, and even then you have Force of Will backed by Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy plus more interactive elements out of your sideboard to shore up that matchup.

The most surprising exclusion from this deck is Life from the Loam. It finds both Grove of the Burnwillows and Punishing Fire, lets you lock opponents out with Wasteland. You can even generate cards with Loam and Jace or Liliana. It seems like there should be at least one copy somewhere in the 75.

What if you're looking to combo instead of grinding out games with Punishing Fire? Back when Gatecrash first hite the scene, there was a brief surge of combo decks featuring Undercity Informer and Balustrade Spy that quickly fell off the radar. With everyone looking to hate on Show and Tell combo and Delver, BrandonL thought it was time to revive this all-in combo deck:

[Cardlist Title= All Spells - Legacy | BrandonL, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event]

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Angel of Glory's Rise
• 1 Azami, Lady of Scrolls
• 4 Balustrade Spy
• 4 Elvish Spirit Guide
• 1 Laboratory Maniac
• 4 Narcomoeba
• 4 Simian Spirit Guide
• 4 Street Wraith
• 4 Undercity Informer
• 1 Wild Cantor

• Spells (32)
• 4 Cabal Ritual
• 2 Cabal Therapy
• 4 Chrome Mox
• 4 Dark Ritual
• 1 Dread Return
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Lotus Petal
• 4 Manamorphose
• 1 Pact of Negation
• 4 Summoner's Pact

Buy This Deck

The combo here is pretty straightforward. You use Spirit Guides and Lotus Petal to generate mana, use Manamorhose or Summoner's Pact into Wild Cantor to get Black, and ritual out an Undercity Informer or Balustrade Spy.

Then you mill your whole deck, since you play zero lands. From there you can flashback a few Cabal Therapys to clear the way and then Dread Return Angel of Glory's Rise. She rebuys Azami and Laboratory Maniac, which lets you draw up to two cards from your empty deck to win the game.

This is the ultimate in glass cannons, and is very capable of comboing off on turn one or two. The problem is that you lose to basically every kind of disruption in the format, so you're all-in on winning before hate matters. If you feel like rolling some dice, this might be the deck for you next weekend.

Maybe you'd rather do something a little different. Legacy is generally defined by Ccmbo, control, and tempo decks, but that doesn't mean we can't make space for a ramp deck. Cloudpost is good enough to be banned in both Modern and Pauper, and zahori is looking to find out what it can do in Legacy:

[Cardlist title=11 Post - Legacy | zahori, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event]

• Lands (26)
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 4 Cloudpost
• 1 Eye of Ugin
• 1 Glacial Chasm
• 4 Glimmerpost
• 1 Island
• 1 Karakas
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Tropical Island
• 3 Vesuva
• 2 Volcanic Island

• Creatures (0)

• Spells (25)
• 3 Bonfire of the Damned
• 4 Brainstorm
• 1 Candelabra of Tawnos
• 4 Crop Rotation
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Mox Diamond
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 3 Repeal
• 4 Sensei's Divining Top
• 3 Show and Tell

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Chalice of the Void
• 3 Flusterstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 1 Show and Tell
• 3 Swan Song
• 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant

Buy This Deck

This deck seems very well positioned right now. You've got Glimmerposts to buy time against Delver decks, many of which won't be able to beat a Primeval Titan, much less hardcast Eldrazi. You've got maindeck Karakas against Show and Tell, which should get you the time you need to set up Eye of Ugin. On top of that, Counterbalance control decks aren't exactly set up to fight against Eye of Ugin plus Eldrazi in this format.

So what's the problem? The issue is that your game one against combo is very dependent on finding Karakas and having that be good enough. Out of the sideboard you have a ton of hate for those decks, but you can still just lose early on if things don't go as planned.

The most interesting thing in this deck is Bonfire of the Damned as your only Red card in the maindeck. This means you're always live to just win against creature decks. Crop Rotation also does a ton of work, giving you access to Glacial Chasm, Bojuka Bog, and Karakas at will.

Is that kind of utility enough to overcome the inherent weakness to Wasteland, the card that defines Legacy? I'm certainly excited to find out.