Since the dawn of organized time, humans beings have been reading reports about how other people did relatively well at Magic: the Gathering tournaments. And today we continue that grand tradition with another exciting tournament report – first place in the 5.27.23 MTGO Legacy Challenge with Old School RG Lands!

This is my first time winning a Challenge and I’m feeling pretty hyped and long-winded, so this report is gonna be a bit long. But don’t worry, I’ll break it into some sections for you so you can skip the rambling if you like:

Decklist
Musings about Lands
The Event Itself
Final Thoughts

Part 1 – Decklist

Part of the reason I was even motivated to play in the challenge this week was that Jarvis Yu had recently written an excellent Lands guide. I particularly liked it because Jarvis was coming at the deck from a relatively different angle than others have before. His list is a lot closer to traditional Lands, leaning hard on Loam and the core land-based engines to carry you through fair matchups, with respect to graveyard combo and Painter in the board.

The list I chose to play was pretty close to his. In particular note the 4 copies of Dark Depths and 3 copies of Maze of Ith. Many lists in the past weeks have been playing 3 Depths and 2 Maze in favor of other tools like Ancient Tomb to power of Sphere of Resistance, but to my mind that dilutes the core combo/control gameplan. Note also the inclusion of Manabond and Gamble. This version of the deck is heavily focused on assembling Loam plus an accelerant, and eschews the midrange cards that many other recent lists are playing (more on that later). Last, there are relatively few Saga targets in the maindeck and only one (Needle) that isn’t typically a good topdeck. Again, we’re focused on doing Lands things, no time for messing around with Shadowspears or Soul-Guide Lanterns.

Still, I did presume to improve upon the master and made some minor tweaks to Jarvis’ list. I swapped a Grove for a Canopy land, reasoning that since we were so much more focused on the Loam plan, we should play a land that can protect us against Surgical and other graveyard hate. I also swapped one of his Gambles for a Sylvan Library. The two cards fill very similar roles and I just felt I wanted a split.

In the sideboard I made further changes, cutting stuff like Trinisphere and Emrakul to lean in on graveyard hate. I also played a 2/1 Force of Vigor/Collector Ouphe split instead of just the full 3 Force of Vigor, and I played a second Minsc over the fourth Pyroblast. But these are relatively small changes overall and in essence, the deck was unaltered – I was just hedging for certain matchups.

With all that said, Jarvis’ approach to Lands in his guide got me thinking, and I hope you’ll forgive me if I wax philosophical for a bit about Lands and how it can be built. As a philosophy doctorate and a Lands player who is committed enough to have a Lands tattoo, I assure you am qualified.

Part 2 – Musings about Lands

Let’s ask ourselves a question – why is Lands any good? How can this pile of lands with miscellaneous abilities actually win games? To this we could give any number of answers. Maybe its the fact that we can attack from multiple angles, maybe it’s how broken Tabernacle is in conjunction with Wasteland, or maybe it’s just that we’re very good at abusing Urza’s Saga. All of these are true, but when it comes down to it there is one card whose printing brought this deck into existence, and there is one card that the deck fundamentally revolves around: Life from the Loam.

Lands is the Life from the Loam deck. Every card in the deck revolves around maximizing Life from the Loam. In return, Life from the Loam lets us cast Ancestral Recall every turn for the rest of the game. This is obviously busted as hell, and even before stuff like Depths combo and Urza’s Saga, Loam decks were a thing in Legacy. Those other printings only made the deck stronger and allowed it to keep up with power creep.

Viewed through the Loam-focused lens, we can see how all the cards in Lands fit together. Exploration and Manabond let you undo the basic drawback of Life from the Loam, which is the fact that you can only play one of the cards it gets you every turn. It’s no good drawing three cards a turn if you can only play one at a time, so lets go ahead and fix that. The rest of the deck follows the same pattern. Crop Rotation not only helps you find the right land to start recurring, but it also can fill the graveyard. Mox Diamond is the best mox in the game when you can get the land right back. Punishing Fire means more hits for Loam’s dredge, Maze and Tabernacle mean more time to capitalize on the value you get from Loam, and the Depths combo lets you turn your lands into something genuinely lethal. And Gamble, of course, is essentially just additional copies of Loam itself. All these cards are in the deck because they let you realize the full potential of Life from the Loam.

Now of course, Magic is complex, and I’ll grant this is only one way of seeing the deck, but I think it’s an interesting approach. If we now build on this, we can start thinking about how Lands should be built in the current day. Broadly speaking, there are probably three primary approaches to Lands in today’s community. First let’s say there’s Old School RG Lands of the kind I chose to play in this challenge. Second, there’s Sphere Lands, which plays 4 maindeck Sphere of Resistance as part of its core gameplan. And last there’s what you could call ‘Midrange Lands’ which plays more removal, more Saga targets and maindeck creatures like Endurance. This list from the recent Showcase is an example.

All three of these approaches are reasonable options. Sphere Lands and Midrange Lands both made top 8 of the recent Showcase Challenge, which is arguably harder than winning a regular Challenge, so I won’t sit here and say those versions are wrong or bad. But if we think of Lands as a Life from the Loam deck, it’s clear that these two are deviating from that plan. Sphere of Resistance has great synergy with Mox Diamond and Wasteland, sure. But Sphere of Resistance makes your busted spell that you want to cast every turn cost more mana, and doesn’t really help Loam do anything in its own right. And in order to accelerate out Spheres you have to play cards like Ancient Tomb which do nothing for Loam except make you pay extra life to cast it. To my mind, Sphere Lands is more of an Urza’s Saga deck than it is a Life from the Loam deck. Which is fine, because Saga is a very powerful card, fully capable of carrying a whole deck on its shoulders. But it seems to me that that deck would probably be 8cast or something with deeper prison and artifact elements, not a Lands shell with four additional Sphere of Resistance added in.

Which brings us then to Midrange Lands, which to be honest was probably the default way to build Lands until Jarvis’ guide was made public (that’s part of why I found his work refreshing). For a long time we’ve toned back the Loam plan because, well, Loam has lost a bit of its luster. Force of Negation being a common maindeck answer to the card, and Prismatic Ending answering a lot of the pieces Loam needs to really flourish both put a damper on the Loam engine. This, together with the way Urza’s Saga provided a pretty solid creature-oriented gameplan, pushed Lands players to hedge a little into a plan B. We started playing maindeck Endurances and Lightning Bolts, neither of which have any synergy with Life from the Loam, but both of which are just solid good cards. Add in Minsc and Boo and utility Saga targets, maybe a splash of blue cards, and you got yourself a stew!

However, this kind of deck often would play only 3 Depths, and sometimes even only 3 Stage and 2 Dark Depths. This isn’t because Dark Depths is bad in the current meta (actually, I think Lage is pretty good right now), but because it doesn’t fit the primary gameplan of just “playing the good cards.” You certainly wouldn’t see Gamble or Manabond in this kind of list either. Instead, you have your Shadowspears and Endurances taking up those slots.

Comparing Midrange Lands to the Old School RG Lands build that I took into the Challenge, it’s clear that the latter is much more focused on optimizing Life from the Loam. We play all the land-based threats together with extra accelerants and ways to find Loam. While things could change, I think this approach is best suited to the current meta. The blue decks are all trying to out-fair each other, so Force of Negation is almost absent from lists since it’s a two-for-one. These fair decks can’t really keep up with Landcestral Recall every turn, so they are easy prey for your engines. Post-board, they may have a handful of Surgical Extractions but if you maneuver carefully and extract maximum value from your Loams you can play through those well enough. There isn’t as much reason to split the difference and play midrange, and the Loam-focused way of building Lands with 4 Depths and extra tutors/accelerants allows for a lot more free wins where they just don’t have the answer and you quickly steamroll the opposition.

Ok, I think I’ll wrap this too-long aside up here. Hopefully it’s been interesting. It could certainly just be that I personally prefer the classic version of Lands, but I wanted to spend a bit of time thinking it through. What’s more, I think what I’ve said above is supported by the way the games played out. So thanks for joining me, and let’s get on to the games themselves!

Part 3 – The Event Itself

I had to wake up around 4am to play this thing so it was cold and dark in the house and my silly hairless cat was upset at being woken up but we padded over to the office and fired up the ol’ MTGO. I had put together the list the night before so I made myself a cup of tea, pulled a blanket over my legs, and sat down to wait for round 1.

Round 1 – UR Delver

Game 1: My opening hand has Grove, Exploration, Saga, Loam, Loam, Karakas, and Bog. We keep those. My opponent opens on Land, Ponder, which is everyone’s favorite Delver start to sit across from. A few turns later, I’ve Punished a Dragon’s Rage Channeler with Fire, but my opponent has an Iconoclast and maybe 5 tokens, so things aren’t looking too good.

Luckily I have Loam, Wasteland, and Exploration, plus a Saga about to hit three counters. I get to three, float the mana and go for Map into Tabernacle. Then Loam digs up Wasteland and my opponent is down to one land. After they pay for their Iconoclast, I pick up Punishing Fire with Grove and kill their last creature. They scoop.

Game 2: I keep a decent seven with Loam, Pyroblast, Map, Saga, Crop Rotation, Bog, and Taiga. Interaction and selection aplenty, but no acceleration. They lead on DRC into Bauble, and another DRC joins the first soon after. It’s the end step of my second turn when they Bolt me, hit Delirium, then untap and swing in for 6. I Bog them to buy some time and then Map into Blast Zone to clear the board.

At this point I’m at 8 with a pretty lackluster set of mana sources in play. My opponent has mana and a Wasteland, but no threat as yet. They burn a Surgical on my Saga after Wasting it and then play a True-Name Nemesis. Been a while since I’d seen that card. Unfortunately I can’t really kill it very fast so it gets a few hits in as I Loam up Blast Zone, tick it up to three, and activate it. But I’m only at 2 life and their next threat, together with a Wasteland for my Maze, wins them the game.

Game 3: This was a bit of a silly game. My opener has Wasteland, Saga, Endurance, Diamond and the mana to do all those things. They burn an early Wasteland on my Saga and start developing a board of Iconoclast tokens and Dragon Rage Channelers. However, my side of the field has an Endurnance and I’m at too high a life total for them to just attack me willy-nilly.

When I drop a Taberancle, they quickly give up their Iconoclast. And then I draw a second Endurance and start taking the fight to them. They chump with all their creatures and the board is clear, but the very next turn they land True-Name again. This time, however, I have more life than them (19 to 11) and I have two attackers and a Maze. I start attacking in and Mazing the one they block so it can’t die to Bolt.

A few turns of this go by and they are getting dangerously low on life. They develop a Murktide, but in the meantime I’ve found a Saga and a Depths to go with my Stage. We get there.

1-0

Round 2 – RUG Delver

Game 1: I’m on the draw and my hand has Mox, Punishing Fire, and, you guessed it, a ton of lands (Wasteland and Tabernacle notable among them). They lead on Trop into Delver. I try to bait them into Dazing my Mox so I can Tabernacle their Delver, but they don’t go for it so I settle for just playing the Tabernacle.

I Waste their next land and am taking hits while I slowly develop my mana when they play an Urza’s Saga. Was not expecting that. Luckily Tabernacle makes it awkward for them to make constructs, so it’s still just Delver beats. Saga threatens to be threatening for a few turns but eventually I assemble the combo and kill them. Saga is cool tech for Delver and it did find a Soul-Guide Lantern that ate my Punishing Fire. Still, not sure it’s the move in general.

Game 2: My opening hand has Loam, Exploration, Map, and Wasteland. Easy keep. They Force my Exploration, which makes me sad, and they have a Delver starting to beat me down. Goyf then joins Delver and I’m just sitting here thinking about what have I missed, where have I been? Delver players are really digging deep these days with Goyfs and Sagas and Iconoclasts and True-Names.

All these old cards are starting to actually chunk me pretty hard and they have the Force of Negation for my Loam. However, with all this done they are pretty low on resources. I manage to land an Endurance, which shrinks their Goyf down to a 2/3 so that they can’t really attack at all. A few turns later I’ve assembled Stage+Depths (playing 4 Depths is gas) and the game is over.

2-0

Round 3 – Painter

Game 1: I’m on the play and my hand makes Lage on turn 2 if I can only draw a land. I draw a land.

Game 2: They play Magus of the Moon. I play Collector Ouphe. Their creatures are better at attacking and I don’t find Punishing Fire.

Actually to be fair it wasn’t that simple; they did some very cool stuff where they recurred Breya’s Apprentice with Welders since they couldn’t meaningfully attack with their ground creatures into my 2/2, so that was kinda cool.

Game 3: After seeing Magus (and I should have known this for game 2) I bring in Minsc and Boo since he’s an utter beating against fair decks, especially if my opponent keeps a hand that’s Magus plus not much else.

I am rewarded when my opening hand has two Diamonds, Saga, Stage, Minsc, and some other random lands. That’s a turn two Hamster, baby. I make a Hamster. They make a Bridge to Ensnare it. I fling my Hamster at their face to draw 4 cards. This finds me Depths so next turn I fling Marit Lage at their face to win the game.

3-0

Round 4 – Nic Fit

I like playing against Nic Fit because their deck is just cool and does nifty stuff. Also they have essentially no answers to Marit Lage so I can acknowledge the coolness of their deck while also not feeling threatened by it. 4 Depths gang rise up!

Game 1: I have to mull to 5 to find a reasonable hand. That hand has Diamond, Dark Depths, Wasteland, Waterlogged Grove, and Crop Rotation. It’s only 5 cards, but if I can just avoid having the Crop Rotation plucked from my hand, these 5 cards will make us a turn 3 20/20.

They get out two Veteran Explorers, and although they are able to sacrifice both of them and get a pile of lands, it’s ultimately not important. Marit Lage joins the fray and the witch sweeps all before her.

Game 2: My opponent correctly boards in Leyline of the Void, but my hand doesn’t have Loam. Instead, it has Diamond, Exploration, Stage, Stage, Saga, Maze, and Grove. Saga into Map means we have the combo already, and when I draw Crop Rotation that means we have it on turn two.

Their Collector Ouphe trips me up a bit but I draw a mana source off the top and make a turn 2 Lage. They cast Deed and pop it for zero in what I can only be the last gesture of the doomed, shaking their fist at the sky as Marit Lage devours the universe.

4-0

Round 5 – Reanimator

At this point I’m feeling pretty psyched. The next two rounds are both win and ins for me, since all the 5-1s will top 8. Just gotta pull out one more win!

Game 1: I look them up so I know they’re on Reanimator, but even on a mull to 5 the best I can do is find a hand that has natural Bojuka Bog. Hopefully that’s good enough?

Spoiler: it isn’t.

Game 2: Looking at their recent finishes, it seems like this player doesn’t play Show and Tell, which is nice because bringing in Pyroblast really screws up my board plan. In Game 2 I’m able to find a 6 that can Crop Rotate on turn 1, though it’s pretty bad aside from that.

Unfortunately, my opponent has a very good 5-card hand that allows them to end step Entomb turn 1 and then use Dark Ritual to set up Exhume into the follow-up Entomb when I go to Bog them. I do exile a creature, but there’s still a creature there when Exhume resolves, and my hand is pretty trash, so I’m dead.

First loss of the event, but that’s ok. My opponent had turn 1 with protection and then turn 2 through Bog on a mull to 5, not much we can do there.

4-1

Round 6 – Sneak & Show

When I saw that I was paired against JPA for this round I almost just gave up on the event. Two win-and-ins and they were both against combo. And the second was against the deck that is my nemesis, piloted by a master no less.

Still, I always say that even your bad matchups in Legacy are never quite that bad since every deck is doing powerful things. Maybe we can hit the right side of variance and pull through.

Game 1: My hand has Exploration and Saga plus Wasteland, so I keep figuring I can maybe pressure them a bit. I’d prefer a combo hand but this is probably as good as it gets without mulling to oblivion.

I play out the Exploration into the Saga and soon we’re making Constructs. When Saga pops off I grab Needle to block Griselbrand, though in retrospect this may have been wrong since my opponent was getting low on life already – Sneak Attack might have been better. In the meantime they’re cantripping around to find their combo.

They do manage to put in Sneak Attack, and I go into the tank. I have two 4/4 constructs and my opponent is at 7. I have a Maze in play, Needle on Griselbrand, plenty of mana, and Crop Rotation in my hand. They have 3 unknown cards and two Lotus Petals to activate Sneak Attack with.

I can’t beat two Sneak Attack activations with just my Crop Rotation into Karakas. But I can Maze my attacker to stop them from gaining life. So I just go in for the attack. Luckily they only have one giant lifelinker – Griselbrand. Atraxa would have been worse since that would refuel them. I Maze my blocked attacker and put them to three. Then I rotate for Karakas on my turn, just to play around a hardcast Force of Will.

Luckily they don’t have anything else to put in and they scoop after seeing their next card. Snuck by on that one!

Game 2: I mull to 6 to find a hand that has Loam, Dark Depths, and Exploration. No actual interaction for their combo, but we can make Lage fast with this hand if we only find the other piece. And I play 10 copies of the other piece so…

I draw Map, it resolves, and they scoop with the combo on board. We got there!

5-1

Quarterfinals – Reanimator

This was the same player as we met in Round 5, and I was eager for revenge. Reanimator is actually not a bad matchup for Lands since we have game one interaction with Crop Rotation and Karakas, and we can always just make a 20/20 and overpower whatever creature they’ve put in. Still, one never can tell since their deck can go very fast and play through interaction pretty well.

Game 1: My opener has Crop Rotation, Diamond, Depths, and two Loams. This means I can interact with their combo and threaten my own if they go slow.

They are on the play but on a mull to 5 and they play Swamp into Thoughtseize. I look at my hand and I realize I have no colored lands – Diamond is my only green source. The cute play here is to Seize the Diamond and strand my whole hand. However, I’m much more likely to draw another green source than I am to draw another Crop Rotation, and Crop Rotation is my primary avenue of interaction. So I think Seizing Diamond here is a trap.

Luckily, it’s one my opponent falls into. They take Diamond. I draw Stage: combo assembled. Then I draw a green source. Luckily their hand was slow so it’s not too late and I play the land to hold up Crop Rotation. This means that while they are able to go for it before my Lage comes together, I have Crop Rotation for Bog, and then I make Lage before they can try a second time.

Game 2: I mull to 5 on the draw but my hand is straight gas. My opponent also mulled to 5 so I’m pretty confident that they can’t beat my grip of Surgical, Endurance, Crop Rotation, Fetch, Grove.

Their hand is understandably slow so nothing happens for a bit. When I draw a Grafdigger’s Cage a couple turns later it feels like the last nail in the coffin. So with that in play, although they are able to Unmask my Endurance, their only action is hardcasting Grief, which they do with a Dark Ritual. In response to this, I rotate for Saga. Saga is a much faster clock than 3/2 menace, and it finds a Soul-Guide Lantern to join my Cage. We get there.

6-1

Semifinals – MonoBrown Aggro

I looked this player up and saw that they were on some deck with Karn, the Great Creator. I hate that card. I glanced at the rest of the list and assumed it was one of those insane Mystic Forge decks that just dump their entire hands and kill you in two turns.

Luckily it was not one of those decks. Instead, it was essentially a reworking of the old Eldrazi aggro decks, this time with artifacts instead of Eldrazi. Karn, Scion of Urza, Saga, and Nettlecyst means you have a ton of Construct-type things floating around, and they can hit very hard very fast. That said, Eldrazi has always been a good matchup for Lands, even if it’s very play/draw dependent thanks to Chalice.

Game 1: I’m on the play, which is good, but I have to mull 5, which is bad. I end up keeping a very sketchy hand of Loam, Map, Crop Rotation, Saga, Stage. I figure I can Map for a green source and hope for the best. At this point I’m still thinking they’re on Forge combo so my main plan is to play for Lage, which this hand also sorta does, albeit slowly.

I play Stage into Map, but they Waste my Stage right away. Still, I get a little lucky and draw a green source (16 green sources is great), so it’s not all bad. They drop a Chalice, which blanks my Crop Rotation, and then play Wasteland into Nettlecyst. In the meantime I’ve managed to Loam back the original Stage, so with Map I can assemble the combo pretty soon here.

Although my plan is pretty telegraphed (I have Stage and Map in play), my opponent does not keep up their Wasteland. Instead, they tap out for Karn, Scion of Urza. I’m guessing they wanted the pressure since Nettlecyst was just a 2/2 at the start of their turn.

But hey, when you get an opening, you exploit it. So I know I’m going for the combo, but I tank a bit on what to do with Saga when it hits the last chapter. My options are really just Needle or another Map, so it’s gotta be Needle, but what to name? I look at the list of theirs I saw online and think about what can beat Lage… it’s their 1-of Karakas. So I name Karakas and Lage takes us home.

Game 2: This time I’m on the draw, which means a turn one Chalice can snag my Explorations, turning a good hand into a pretty bad one. That’s pretty much what happens. I have to mull to 5 again, but Lands mulls pretty well and my 5 is pretty cracked. I have Loam, Diamond, Exploration, Stage, and Wasteland. If Exploration resolves and they don’t have Leyline, this hand should win pretty handily.

Unfortunately they have the turn 1 Chalice. So I have to be content with just playing Diamond into Loam and going slowly. My opponent, however, is not going slowly, and they have Rishadan Ports and Wastelands of their own to slow me down further. They play Karn, Scion and pump out a couple constructs. I can’t defend myself against this on top of Wastelands and their Sagas, so I go under pretty quick.

Game 3: In this game my opening 7 is Exploration, Diamond, Forest, Wasteland, Stage, Taiga, Maze. This kind of hand is the classic Lands trap hand where you have a ton of acceleration but no actual engine or action.

But I keep it anyway. Not because I’m a risk-taker, but because this hand has a lot of very live draws, together with the tools to stall for a bit. With Stage in hand, we have 10 cards that make a 20/20, six of which make it on turn 2. On top of that we can find Loam or Saga off the top as additional engines. Saga would even get us to the 20/20 if we want it to. So while it’s not all of anything, it’s half of every great pair in the deck, so any other half completes us nicely.

They mull to 6 and I lead on the dream Lands opener of Diamond into Exploration into two lands for 3 mana on turn 1. Their first turn is Tomb for Ratchet Bomb to destroy my Mox. That’s fine. I draw Force of Vigor and Waste their Tomb. I just need the game to go slow so I can assemble something here.

Next turn brings me a Map, so the combo isn’t too far off. Then I draw Loam and it’s off to the races. They do get some pressure on me with Karn, Scion again, and they have a Karakas for my first Lage. But Loam plus Exploration is pretty hard to beat and their deck can’t really disrupt it without Leyline. I Waste their Karakas and make Lage again, stopping to Force of Vigor their constructs on the way. We’re on to the finals.

7-1

Finals – UB Shadow

I looked this player up and saw they favored Doomsday, so I figured I was in for a struggle. After the first couple turns it became evident that they were playing Shadow and I relaxed a little. Shadow is a pretty good matchup for Lands.

Game 1: I go to 6 and keep Diamond, Loam, Gamble, Grove, Depths, Wasteland. They Force my Diamond though, which I thought was interesting. This was maybe a high-variance play where they could conceivably have tagged my only green source but if they guess wrong they basically just submitted to a zero mana Hymn. Though it does slow me down, of course.

So I just play out Grove. It’s been a while since I’ve played with Gamble and I thought about Gambling for Exploration here but I didn’t since I only have four cards in hand. They Thoughseize my Gamble on their turn, so it doesn’t really matter anyway I guess.

From here the game moves pretty slowly. I cast Loam, but they Daze it. I don’t mind too much since they haven’t developed any threat aside from a Strix in the meantime.

Eventually a Loam resolves and I put in Tabernacle. We begin a merry game of sacrificing Strix to Tabernacle only to cast Reanimate on it to draw a card again. Which again, is fine with me. My life total isn’t going down, so I’m happy. This goes on until they play out Death’s Shadow. At this point the field looks like this:

They sacrifice the Strix to Tabernacle. So now, what’s the play? I want to make Marit Lage here, but I’m torn on what land to sacrifice. I could sac the Tabernacle, but that land is doing good work for me. I could sac the Wasteland, but I want to Waste them. And if I sacrifice Yavimaya, make Lage, and Waste them, then I won’t have mana for Loam next turn.

So I opt to sacrifice Grove. This line is pretty bad if they have Wasteland plus an answer to Lage, but they pitched Petty Theft to Force of Will way back on turn one. Unfortunately, they do have exactly Petty Theft + Wasteland. When the dust settles I have just a Tabernacle in play, and they have a 3/3 Death’s Shadow. In retrospect I should have led with Wasteland and then moved to the draw step when they floated mana – this would have let my Yavimaya live to see another day, at the very least. But hindsight is 20/20, just like the Lage they stole from me.

The next turn their Shadow grows to an 8/8 and I know I will be dead soon. But luckily Lage smiles on those who summon her as often as I do: I draw Maze of Ith. Even the Shadow of Death itself cannot escape Ith’s confounding Maze, and I soon draw a green source to start Loaming. My opponent, however, has three Daze in row and a Force of Will on top of all that, so it’s a tense few turns of praying to dodge Wasteland. But finally a Loam resolves and that, together with an Exploration I had drawn earlier, puts the game quickly out of their reach.

Game 2: I keep a 7 with a Diamond, Saga, Pyroblast, Stage, Grove, Wasteland, and Fetch. Seems fine. I draw an Exploration and start going off to the races. When they Wasteland my Saga though I’m a bit worried since that’s basically all my gas.

So I play Stage, copy my Wasteland, and then Waste their Watery Grave. Apparently that was their only land, because they miss their land drop the next turn. So while they do have two Surgical Extractions and cast both of them to gut my deck of Loams and Sagas, they also don’t have any mana to do anything else. Eventually I draw the Depths to go with my Stage and activate it to make Marit Lage, a 20/20 black avatar creature token with Flying and Indestructible.

8-1

Part 4 – Final Thoughts

My final thought is this: Lands is awesome! Ok but seriously it is a very fun deck and I hope more people pick it up, even if that means that Delver will start playing Blood Moon to beat us. I actually think there is an interesting phenomenon in Legacy where there are many viable decks, but most decks are quite tricky, with lots of specialized lines and narrow windows for optimal play (you’ll notice I mentioned just a few of the times I misplayed in this event above). What that adds up to is that there are decks that are well-positioned, but which have a very small player pool and relatively few experienced players in any given event. The result is what actually happened with Lands – no finishes after the bannings, and then 3 in the top 16 of the Showcase and decent results in the last two weekends of Challenges.

Then, as more people pick up the deck, the win rate will fall because it’s tricky to play and easy to hate. And in the long run that leads to the nice cyclical metagame we all love. All this to say, don’t discount a deck just because it has no finishes for a while. Fair blue puts something in every top8 because 50% of the field is fair blue. If your pet deck isn’t rocking it out lately, chances are it also only has 0-1 players in any given event, so don’t let that stop you from playing it (though if you’re still playing Sylvan Plug in 2023 maybe you can give that one up).

As for the deck itself, I think probably one of the fetches should be the second Yavimaya, and the 3rd Punishing Fire is probably a flex slot. That said, play 4 Depths, play 3 Maze, play Lands, and have fun! And let’s all collectively pray that fair blue keeps cannibalizing itself, that Reanimator remains the only true combo deck with a meaningful meta share, and that Toxicrene never comes to MODO. Thanks for reading this way-to-long tournament report all the way to the end. Until next time, may your life be full of loam and your loam be full of life.