Living in Legacy

Posted on June 3, 2016

Last week started what I expected to be a few weeks of Eternal Masters previews. Instead this set went from zero to finish in less than a week, leaving little suspense and mixed reviews overall. While Standard has remained G/W dominant, Eternal prices have been all over the place these past few weeks, and the full set reveal did not help them settle.

Standard was still won by G/W, but there were a few new, interesting additions to the top tier, even if they do lag behind tokens a bit. Humans decks have made a resurgence, placing the Bant Humans variant I covered last week, an old Mono-White throwback list, and this new addition to the top eight standings in Minnesota.

W/R Humans ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Shota Takao 2nd Place GP Minneapolis

There is nothing too expensive in the main deck outside of Kytheon, Hero of Akros, but we do have a set of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in the sideboard, further cementing his true dominance over the format. If this trend continues, it is likely Gideon will approach $40 at some point after the next rotation. I have a hard time believing this card won’t show up as soon as GP Columbus in Legacy, as it is certainly playable and that could be the push he needs to break into Eternal status and the stable price tag which comes with.

While there are not as many expensive cards in the deck to target for easy gains, it does give us a few cards which have been neglected so far and may gain some real value over the coming months. Now that Eternal Masters has been fully previewed, things will return to normal before Eldritch Moon, which can only further help some of these cards' cases.

Needle Spire — These lands have really been all over the place since their release, and the Oath of the Gatewatch lands suffered much greater than the Battle for Zendikar lands outside of Hissing Quagmire. So far, we have not seen the strongest lists to support this particular land, but this deck needs a playset for fixing but also has the ability to enhance the Double strike. Even a single Always Watching can suddenly be the scariest card on the table with this land open.

Thalia's Lieutenant — While there are cards to spec on which may gain enough trade value to move before rotation, I prefer to focus on cards that will still be relevant in the fall, and Thalia's Lieutenant has already proven to be a staple. While we are going to lose a number of strong Humans come rotation, it is all but guaranteed we will be seeing a whole new lot of them this fall, as we already know Kaladesh is a city plane primarily occupied by Humans. Additionally, the fact Reflector Mage is still in the format leads me to believe Thalia's Lieutenant has only seen the tip of the iceberg in Standard. The verdict is still out in Modern, but I have been toying with the same four color brew, and, though I have not played much over the past few weeks due to the Legacy craze, it has still been doing well in what limited testing I have been able to do. Lieutenant is a key piece, even more so with Aether Vial in the deck.

So while Standard has seen some minor changes, Modern, and more so Legacy and Vintage, has seen some real price spikes and dips given the full preview release late last week. Some of these spikes have been primed for a while, and those typically will overshoot the eventual value. A good example of this is Library of Alexandria, which topped out around $1000 and quickly fell back to the $500 range. A few weeks will decide where these cards’ values will fall, which will certainly be much higher than their previous points but perhaps a little overvalued at first.

I have seen a number of lists floating around involving cards which avoided being reprinted, and most of them have already reacted, meaning there is not much opportunity to get in on the initial spikes. Instead, I like to focus on the cards in the set that may be undervalued given the discrepancy between how much product will be printed and how much product people think will be available. The current EV in this set is lower than the MSRP, and, while the set may be a little underwhelming, the value is there long term. Cards like Deathrite Shaman will not be below $5 forever, and even if this new Eternal Masters series only draws a small amount of Legacy and Vintage players in, it will continue to build that base and, by proxy, the demand for these staples. The Casual and Commander cards will likely take the largest hits, but even then the choice reprints such as Imperious Perfect at rare instead of uncommon means prices won’t take as much of a beating.

Alternate art cards also tend to recover much quicker, something like Chrome Mox, a now Mythic, will now have demand for both copies, and that price, on MTGO especially, has plummeted far beyond what the card will likely recover to, especially if Storm picks up. MTGO has already seen that shift as Infernal Tutor rose nearly $10 this week, and I would anticipate the paper market will follow suit shortly. This card is a player in both Legacy and Vintage and is seen as a four of in some lists, including my pet deck, Spanish Inquisition.

Spanish Inquisition ? Legacy | Ryan Bushard

Lands (2)
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

While I am excessively biased toward this deck, and you will likely never play against it, the deck does showcase a number of combo cards across the format and it doesn’t really hold to the typical standard by passing the Force of Will test. In short, this deck is about as all in as you can go in Legacy. I have played the deck over a dozen years and iterations and I will say you should only pick this deck up if you love doing immense amounts of math during each match and truly enjoy the look on your opponent's face when you win before they get a turn. With this list I run about a 67% turn one win giving about a percentage point by adding the Death Wish for a little resilience against decks that may have a main deck Leyline of Sanctity or some other problematic card I cannot otherwise answer. On top of that, I get to run the man plan after board against heavy counter decks. There could not be a better horse to ride into battle than Death's Shadow for me, so ,as I said, I have some bias but most cards in this list that avoided the reprint will be on the upward trend given their play in various forms of combo.

Another deck that got a fairly strong boost in availability is Shardless BUG. It’s my favorite fair deck as well, which I may look at putting together shortly after release. This is one of the premier tempo decks of the format and a lot of the $5-$20 cards saw a reprint which really makes it a prime time to pick up the rest even if you need to hold off on duals and just use shocks for now.

Shardless BUG ? Legacy | Ryan Bushard

This deck does have a demanding mana base, but the relative meat of the list is really not all that bad given the incoming reprints. I have seen versions running cards other than Tarmogoyf as well, if you need to start out budget or do not have your copies from Modern. If you currently have your modern sets of Liliana of the Veil, Goyf and Ancestral Vision, the rest is about to be as available, and will be as cheap as it ever likely will be, including Force of Will, Wasteland, Shardless Agent, Deathrite Shaman and more. Nothing you would be picking up outside of perhaps Verdant Catacombs feels bad for a quick reprint, and even those cards that inevitably will be reprinted are in enough demand to recover nicely.

So far we have covered two combo decks, a control deck and now a midrange tempo deck, giving a strong all-around approach if you are looking to get into the format; though, looking into other Storm variants outside of Spanish Inquisition is likely the correct choice. Next week we will come back to Standard and wrap up Eternal Masters, highlighting cards that would be good to snag right at release and what it may be better to let cool off for a month or so. If you have any questions or comments on any of the lists, or have others to share that just became a little more budget friendly, feel free to post below or find me on Twitter.

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand