Anthony Rivera here, winner of the 2020/21 AZ Legacy Masters Series. Before saying anything else, I would love to thank the stores and the tournament organizers for the series, as putting on any event while having to navigate the last two years is a massive undertaking. The series was very impressive, considering it was organized by a small group of guys in their free time.  

The List: 

Card Choices: 

3 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth: I want as many free wins as possible. I also want a shooter’s chance against any combo deck in the format. Playing three copies of Yavimaya first and foremost gives you way more natural turn three 20/20s. Also, the extra green mana opens up turns where you can cast multiple Crop Rotations to combo off out of nowhere. With so many colorless and non-mana producing lands in the deck, I pretty much always want one copy of Yavimaya on the field, especially with Endurance out of the sideboard.  

3 Rishadan Port, 1 Ghost Quarter: I want to be able to disrupt any deck in the format. Rishadan Port is not something that Cloudpost or Bant players are expecting to play against these days. Additionally, firing off a fast Urza’s Saga and then using Rishadan Port or Wasteland to make sure that the opponent can’t answer the constructs is a very solid game plan in fair matchups.  

3 Expedition Map: The Ragavan/Daze decks are very susceptible to specific lands. At any given point, you are going to want Tabernacle, Karakas, Bojuka Bog, Maze of Ith, or Wasteland. These cards allow you to make it into the midgame, when our chance of winning sharply increases. When we sideboard, playing multiple copies of Expedition Map allows us to take out the Crop Rotations against the Force of Will/Daze decks while still allowing us access to direct tutoring. Finally, playing multiple copies of Expedition Map allows us to chain Urza’s Sagas without relying on Life from the Loam (and thus the graveyard).  

1 Ancient Tomb: Casting a turn one Sphere of Resistance is our best plan against most combo decks, and I want to mulligan less and increase my chance of having a second turn.  

1 Shadowspear: This card is insane, and 21/21 creatures with lifelink and trample are also insane. 

1 Pithing Needle: This is the ultimate answer to Aether Vial, equipment, Griselbrand, fetchlands, planeswalkers, and Wastelands—the list goes on. The card is extremely powerful in game one, when the effect is not usually expected. Its most common use is to name opposing Wastelands so we can run amok with our lands without fear of harassment.  

The goal of this list is to be aggressive and play to the board quickly. I am not running any card draw or card advantage engines outside of Life from the Loam. I’m relying on Loam to be enough when I need to grind and Urza’s Saga to be enough when Loam is answered.  

All this flows into the sideboard, with Endurance as a turn zero answer to graveyard and Thassa’s Oracle decks, Force of Vigor as a turn zero answer to Blood Moon and broken starts from 8-Cast, and Pyroblast as the best answer to the format. 

Sphere of Resistance is the catch-all answer to anything that we don’t have a plan for: Aluren, Cephalid Breakfast, and Hullbreacher combo decks, among others. It’s just the best plan against random decks, especially with our land disruption plan.  

The two Chokes come in and out as meta calls, but with the best control decks being blue-based, I like having the option to shut them out of blue mana for the easy win. Bringing in Choke and Sphere of Resistance is NOT my sideboarding plan against Delver. Choke comes in against the Jeskai decks, which aren’t as aggressive.  

Please let me know if I missed any unusual cards, as I would be happy to discuss my choices further.  

The Event: 

As this was a 16-player invitational, the first part of the event was a race to three wins before three losses, and the second part of the event was the Top 8 single elimination event that we all know. I came into the event as the points leader of the series, with three Top 8s and multiple 9th–10th place finishes.  

Round 1: BR Reanimator 1-2 

My opponent is a standard noninteractive player who typically plays BG Depths. He has a GP Top 8 with the deck, but he has not been playing it in the current meta. I put him on 8-Cast or a random deck. He went the Spike route, playing Griselbrand. This round does not last long. 

Game 1: I keep a great hand, but he has the turn one . . . 

Game 2: I have the turn one Sphere of Resistance and follow it up with an Urza’s Saga and a turn two Sphere of Resistance.  

Game 3: My first hand is almost the nuts. I have a turn two Marit Lage with Crop Rotation backup, but I feel like it isn’t good enough, so I mulligan for something better. I end up mulliganing to four cards, keeping a hand with a turn one Sphere off Urza’s Saga, but he goes off on turn one. I never saw a single Endurance.  

Round 2: Jeskai Hullbreacher 2-1 

I would attribute the less-than-perfect gameplay during this match to the fact that most of us have not played Legacy since November due to a postponement of the Masters Series from December to January. 

Game 1: My opponent plays some fetchlands, and I tap my only red source, which gives him a window to flash in Hullbreacher, untap, and play Day’s Undoing. I completely forgot Hullbreacher had flash.  

Game 2: This time, my opponent was the one who was a little rusty, and I am able to needle his fetchland off of an Urza’s Saga trigger. I was able to prolong the game with Rishadan Port and Blast Zone long enough to win with Punishing Fire (weird, right?).  

Game 3: This was a weird game. I wasteland a Volcanic Island on turn one and play a natural Pithing Needle on Scalding Tarn, as he had already cracked a Flooded Strand. (My thought was that he would have played the Prismatic Vista if he had had it.) I get a Sphere of Resistance down, and we trade back and forth for a while. On a crucial turn, he cracks another Flooded Strand without remembering that his only Volcanic Island was in the graveyard. Thus, he couldn’t meltdown my board. Resolving Meltdown would have been a big deal.  

Eventually he taps out for a planeswalker, which I blast, and I get to untap and resolve a Choke to go with my Sphere. I was sitting on Choke/Red Elemental Blast for a while, as the game was very slow, and with the Sphere down, I never had the chance to resolve the Choke with Red Elemental Blast backup.  

This was a big win, and my mana disruption played a huge role.  

Round 3: UR Delver 2-0 

This was another good matchup against an extremely good player who knew that Lands would be represented at this event. These games were not particularly close, as I had it all in both games, with Loam, Wasteland, Tabernacle, and acceleration.  

Game 1: I have early Wastelands along with Loam and Exploration. Dredging Loam quickly finds Tabernacle. 

Game 2: I have basically the same hands as above. He is able to cast Surgical Extraction, targeting Wasteland and then Loam. Thespian’s Stage and Rishadan Ports allow me to keep an active Wasteland and him low on mana until I am able to get an active Urza’s Saga.  

Round 4: Yorion Death and Taxes 2-0 

Game 1: An early Pyrite Spellbomb stops Stoneforge Mystic from ruining my day. Pithing Needle stops the Vials from helping him out, and I can keep him low on mana while I beat down with constructs from Urza’s Saga.  

Game 2: I have another turn one Pyrite Spellbomb to disrupt my opponent, and my constructs get too big too fast.  

Round 5: I have the Bye 

Top 8: 

Match 1: BR Reanimator 2-1 

Yay . . . I wish I was a better sport, but I did text my fiancé to say I would be heading home shortly. Just like my last match against Reanimator, the games in this round were all decided on turn one.  

Game 1: I have the Crop Rotation, but he has the turn one Griselbrand. I love interactive magic.  

Game 2: I have the turn one Sphere, and he can’t get out from under it.  

Game 3: I keep a seven card hand with Mox Diamond, Rishadan Port, Crop Rotation, Endurance, Exploration, and two Maps. He mulligans to five and leads with a turn one Thoughtseize. He takes the Crop Rotation, which means I have to commit more resources to keep his graveyard clear. We play draw go as I tutor for lands with Expedition Maps, and eventually, I have two copies of Endurance. I cast one to start to beat down, and he doesn’t draw anything that would allow him to beat the Endurance and Exploration (to pitch) that were still in my hand.  

Match 2: UR Delver 2-1 

Game 1: My opponent allows me to resolve a turn one Exploration, signaling that he does not have counter magic. On his second turn, he taps his Volcanic Island and then plays Wasteland, activating it targeting my Thespian’s Stage. I have Crop Rotation, so I make Marit Lage in response, and we move on to game two. 

Game 2: I keep a slow hand with Loam, and he has Surgical Extraction. He plays a Dragon’s Rage Channeler and attacks me to zero while finding multiple Wastelands for my Urza’s Sagas. I drew nothing of much importance. 

Game 3: I go aggressive with Mox Diamond and Urza’s Saga, and he cannot stabilize. 

With both of my games over relatively quickly, I was able to watch some of the best magic that I have ever watched. Arizona’s best Death and Taxes player was giving a master class on how to stone-face a Torpor Orb, playing three-mana Gray Ogres to beat both Jeskai Hullbreacher and Jeskai Control. Both games were on stream, and we were going wild in the casting booth. I couldn’t have watched from the tableside, as I would not have been able to keep quiet.  

Match 3: Yorion Death and Taxes 2-1 

Game 1: I keep a slow hand that doesn’t have any way to pull ahead quickly, and we play back and forth. He has two copies of Mother of Runes and a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. I make a play error that goes unnoticed, and with the stream delay, the judge wasn’t able to try to rectify the error until we were multiple plays down the line. The judge explained that I still had a Crop Rotation in my hand that shouldn’t have been there. Instead of both of us getting warnings and continuing to play, I decided to concede in good faith.  

I was supposed to sacrifice a fetchland to cast a Crop Rotation through the Thalia tax to get a Karakas to bounce Thalia, but instead I fetched for the Karakas directly, paying two mana but never playing the Crop Rotation. Additionally, I drew my last fetchable source that turn, so there was no way to easily rewind the game state that would have not involved the judge having to “take my word for it.” 

Game 2: This was a super fun game, and it most likely decided the event. I get an early Punishing Fire and miss a land drop. On my opponent’s turn, he plays his fourth land and casts Armageddon. He makes a land drop the turn after, but I am stuck drawing off the top. In the best turn of events, I draw land, land, Loam to restock. After I cast one Loam, he slams Rest in Peace to shut me down again. I had two copies of Force of Vigor to stop anything egregious from happening on the other side of the table, and eventually I can start looping the Dark Depths combo. I end the game at 88 life, when he had finally run out of Swords to Plowshares effects.  

Game 3: Game three was not as interesting as game two. I have an extremely fast start with double Mox Diamond, Loam, and Urza’s Saga, and I can slow him down with Rishadan Port while I attack through his creatures.  

Final Thoughts and Changes 

I have always been super happy with my list and was very happy with the results of the tournament, obviously. In the week since I first typed this up, Ragavan has been banned and Boseiju, Who Endures has been spoiled. I figured I would finish out by discussing those topics. 

Ragavan was an obvious ban and should have never been printed. When it was spoiled I felt like most of the format knew the card was a mistake and we had to live in a fake format for months. This led to people stepping away from the format and hopefully the ban wasn’t too late to bring people back. On paper the ban will not change much with Delver being back in the UR decks (and still being tier 1) but now we get to see the power level of the DRC/Murktide/Iteration shell without the velocity and “Oops I win” factor of the monkey.  

That brings me to the new Boseiju, Who Endures. A few months ago, I made a make-believe card that should be printed that I felt would “fix” the format. I believe it was ‘WW, Instant: Destroy Target Creature or Permanent’. Wizards came and printed Prismatic Ending and completely revitalized control decks in legacy. I feel like if we were going to create a “dream” card for lands (besides a Sphere of Resistance land) this would be about as good as it can get.  

I do not feel the card will be format defining by any means, but for Lands players to no longer fear Blood Moon or Back to Basics game 1 (2/3) is huge. Slotting 2 of these into the main deck and being able to free up sideboard slots is also amazing as we can potentially have room for the 4^th Endurance and the 4^th Pyroblast. Expedition Map is now a more viable tutor as it puts the card in hand and those of us who are playing three Expedition Maps (me) should always have access to the card when needed. Lands players will have to formulate a plan to deal with the Bant/4c players that have started winning events, but I trust that the combo decks will keep them in check for the most part.  

Thank you for reading and I would like to thank the Lands discord for being the best community in Legacy. Please look to the team at AZEternalMagic for future events and hopefully I can run it back in 2022! 

Introduction

I launched the Competitive Lands Project at the beginning of this year. It is designed to showcase Legacy Lands from a competitive perspective. You can learn more about this initiative via this article or this introduction video.

Season 1 is now complete and I focused on playing and tuning Bant Lands for the entire season. I have played the deck in 6 Prelims on MTGO and it’s now time to draw some conclusions. But before we start with that here are the hypotheses that I had when I started this season.

• I was worried about playing against the Blue-Zenit deck with RG Lands and my hope was that Swords to Plowshares would help in this matchup.
• I did not think that Planeswalkers would be popular and I was hoping that Constructs + Pithing Needle would be enough to combat walkers. Karn in particular felt horrible to play against but I was not predicting that card to be heavily played.
• I did not think that I would miss Punishing Fire against the Tribal decks but this remained to be seen.
• Flusterstorm is the only card that I can think of that is good against TES, Show & Tell and Doomsday, and I expected Bant Lands to be better against spell based combo decks.
• Elvish Reclaimer felt great in the meta but I did not think that I would have room for Urza’s Saga and Reclaimer in the same deck. For reference here are examples of my initial Bant Saga Lands and Bant Reclaimer Lands decklists.

My Results

I played 24 Legacy Prelim matches and won 19 of them. This is a win rate of +79%, against excellent opponents, and is way over my expectations. I am of course super happy with the result. I want to add a caveat to the metashare and winrates posted in this article as they are based on very small sample sizes. I don’t think that we can draw too many conclusions based on these numbers without also taking into account how the matchup felt when I played them. My deck did in fact feel strong against both fair and unfair matchups. I had a healthy mix of spell based and permanent based hate vs combo and when I had a good draw I felt almost unbeatable (even against hard matchups). 

The table below shows my results split per archetype. It also shows the metashare that I expected vs the metashare that each archetype realized.

Archetype	Realized Meta	Expected Meta	My Score
Daze	25%	27%	5-1 (83%)
Karn	21%	5%	3-2 (60%)
Control	17%	21%	3-1 (75%)
Graveyard	13%	14%	2-1 (67%)
Depths	8%	4%	2-0 (100%)
Dark Ritual	8%	6%	2-0 (100%)
Brew	8%	2%	2-0 (100%)
Tribal	0%	11%	–

Daze Decks

I expected Daze decks to be 27% of the winner’s meta and my prediction was spot on as I played against them in 25% of my matches. Bant Lands felt very strong vs the Daze decks (even stronger than RG Lands). My removal cost 1 mana so my deck is lean and this matchup is all about gaining a mana advantage. I am not going to write a detailed matchup guide here but I did write about Lands vs Delver before and, although that article is a bit old, the basic concepts and strategies still apply today.

I went 4-1 against UR Delver and 1-0 against Jeskai Murktide to a combined winrate of 83%. I cannot really complain about that. My strategy in these matches was to try to stay ahead on mana and (when I could) play in a way so that I would not lose to Ragavan or Murktide. This went well and the only match that I ended up losing was when my opponent had Karakas for my Marit Lage in both game 2 and game 3.

Here are some quick notes on playing against UR Delver.

• They have 0 answers to Marit Lage in the main and 3 answers in their sideboard (1 Karakas and 2 Submerge). This means that Marit Lage is very safe in G1 but it gets riskier in the post sideboard games.
• Shadowspear is a game changer in this matchup and it completely takes over any kind of race. Shadowspear + Construct can often race even a Murktide.
• It’s better to be proactive than reactive and this is why I like Elvish Reclaimer and Endurance so much in this matchup. Your opponent will have many cheap threats and just overloading on one for one removal is risky. Reclaimer can play defense but at the same time help us work towards a Marit Lage or Constructs + Shadowspear.
• Their best cards are Ragavan, Wasteland and Murktide. Turn 1 Ragavan (blanks our Wastelands) into turn 2 Wasteland (blanks our Dark Depths and Saga) can make it difficult for us to win (especially if we are on the draw). Murktide kills in just a few turns and it can mice some wins for our opponent if they also have a timely Wasteland for our Maze of Ith.   

I only played against UR Delver once on camera and it can be found here.

• Episode 7: Bant Reclaimer Lands vs UR Delver.

Karn Decks

Going into this experiment I said that I wanted to “dodge” the Karn decks. I only expected Karn to take up around 5% of the winner’s meta and I thought that it would be very hard to beat a resolved Karn with Bant Lands. I ended up playing against Karn decks 21% of my matches so this prediction was completely off. Part of the reason that my prediction was so off is that I had labeled 8-Cast as Urza’s Saga instead of Karn going into this experiment. It turns out that 8-Cast decks have started playing Karn so that was a mislabelling from my side. But on top of this various blue Painter decks started popping up in January and these decks all played Karn.

I went 1-0 against 8-Cast, 1-0 against Bomberman and 1-1 against Painter and 0-1 against Mystic Forge. This gave me a combined record of 3-2 and actually a positive winrate against the matchup I wanted to dodge. It turns out the matchup is not as bad as I had feared. Here are some quick notes.

• Needle on Karn makes these matchups alot easier and I will blind name Karn with my needles.
• Shadowspear beats Sai, and Shadowspear is a big part of the reason why 8-Cast is a favored matchup when they don’t draw Karn.
• Marit Lage can still mice some wins in 2022.  

I played against Karn decks 3 times on camera and you can find them here.

• Episode 7: Bant Reclaimer Lands vs Bomberman.
• Episode 6: Bant Saga Lands vs 8-Cast.
• Episode 2: Bant Saga Lands vs Painter.

Control Decks

I expected Control decks to take up 17% of the winner’s meta and this prediction was a bit low as I ended up playing against Control in 21% of my matches. Going into this project I was fearing the Blue-Zenit deck, and this deck was in fact the contributing factor for me choosing to play white over red removal. It turns out that the Blue-Zenit deck is currently only the 3:rd popular Control deck online and the current split is something like 50% Uro Piles, 40% Jeskai Hullbreacher and 10% Blue-Zenit. Punishing Fire and Pyroblast seems very good against Jeskai Hullbreacher and it is not clear to me that Bant Lands is the best configuration for this meta. 

I am also not sure that Bant Saga Lands is actually favored vs Blue-Zenit. I played against McWinSauce on Omnath Pile (that is like Blue-Zenit on steroids) and it did not feel good. I only felt that I won the game where my hand was good and their hand was bad and this is not where I wanted to be vs blue control. Blue-Zenit gets a lot easier for a Lands list that is centered around Elvish Reclaimer, Flagstones and Uro though. It turns out that when we want to then we are the best ramp deck in Legacy, and I believe that my match against mei0024 in Episode 7 highlights this.

I went 3-1 vs the Control decks and this is a good result in my opinion. I feel that the Uro Piles are the easiest of the Control decks as they can have a real hard time killing me on time if I handle Uro. My overall strategy against Uro Piles is to get the Stage + Saga online and eventually find Karakas via an Expedition Map or Crop Rotation. They will now spend their cantrips and card draw looking for something like Dress Down. If they find it then the game goes and if they don’t find it then they lose. But even when they do find Dress Down they are still on a route to lose the match because now the entire match revolves around time and they will be behind on the clock as they have many more game actions to perform each turn. I think my match against Bant Control in Episode 2 shows this pretty well.

I played against Control decks 4 times on camera and you can find them here.

• Episode 7: Bant Reclaimer Lands vs Blue-Zenit.
• Episode 6: Bant Saga Lands vs Omnath Control.
• Episode 3: Bant Saga Lands vs 5c Control.
• Episode 2: Bant Saga Lands vs Bant Control.

If you want to learn more about Lands vs Control then I recommend that you read my in-depth article about the matchup.

Graveyard Decks

I expected Graveyard decks (Reanimate and Madness) to take up 13% of the winner’s meta and this was spot on as I ended up playing against these types of decks in 14% of my matches. Reanimate won the Showcase Qualifier Event in December last year and it was on everyone’s mind when I started this project. I think having access to white removal really helps against Reanimate as (even with 3 Endurance) it can sometimes be hard to stop them from reanimating a creature and Archon of Cruelty is non-legendary so it cannot be bounced with Karakas. Having Swords to Plowshares as a clean answer to Archon will win some otherwise unwinnable games against Reanimate. I think my Bant Saga Lands has a healthy mix of permanent and spell based hate and I feel comfortable playing against Reanimate with this configuration.

Madness is an interesting matchup that reminds me a lot about Hogaak. It is more explosive but it lacks the combo finish with Altar. Historically the Lands strategy has been good against these “go wide” types of Graveyard decks as Tabernacle, Bojuka Bog and Marit Lage are all great in the matchup. I also think Bant Lands is favored vs Madness and I went 2-1 in the matches that I played against them.

Elvish Reclaimer is an absolute all star against Graveyard decks and if we get to untap with him then it feels hard to lose. He dodges all the artifact and enchantment hate that Reanimate plays, and he puts them in a difficult spot because they won’t have many turns to find an answer before he finds Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage. Reclaimer also acts as an extra Maze of Ith against Madness, and he will find anything that we need from Tabernacle to Bojuka Bog and Dark Depths. I absolutely love a proactive card that can play defense!

I played against Graveyard decks 3 times on camera and you can find them here.

• Episode 6: Bant Saga Lands vs Madness.
• Episode 3: Bant Saga Lands vs Madness.
• Episode 2: Bant Saga Lands vs Madness. 

Tribal Decks

I didn’t face a Tribal deck (Elves, Goblins or Death & Taxes) in any of the Prelims that I played. However, I did manage to get a testing session in with EronRelentless. We tested Bant Saga Lands vs Reclaimer Elves. My goal with the session was to figure out if Punishing Fire is needed to reliably beat Elves. 

My strategy in the pre board games was to keep a hand with light disruption (Swords or Tabernacle) plus a turn 3 Marit Lage. This went really well as I won both pre board games. Shadowspear was surprisingly good here as a way to Trample over Endurance. 

My strategy in the post board games was the same as in the pre board games but I also had the option of landing Spheres and Tabernacle to completely prison the Elves player out. I went 2-1 in the post sideboard games, and the only game that I lost was one where my hand was filled with interaction but no clear path to victory. 

I think this demonstrates that Punishing Fire is not needed to beat Tribal decks. What about the Death & Taxes matchup? I have tested this before and found that Urza’s Saga beats everything that they do outside a turn 2 Stoneforge into Kaldra. This means that maximizing Saga every turn and saving our removal for Stoneforge (or the Kaldra gem as our removal exiles) should be good enough. Post sideboard we can even destroy the Kaldra itself with Force of Vigor if we activate Shadowspear to make their permanents lose Indestructible. 

My testing session against Elves can be found here.

• Episode 5: Elves Testing.

Dark Ritual Decks

I expected 6% of the winner’s meta to be on spell based combo (Storm or Doomsday) and this was pretty accurate as I ended up playing against these decks in 8% of my matches. Bant Lands is well suited to face these decks after sideboarding. We run a healthy mix of permanent based and spell based hate. For example against Doomsday we have the following relevant interaction:

• Spell Based
  • 3 Endurance
  • 3 Flusterstorm
  • 4 Crop Rotation (for Ipnu).
• Permanent Based
  • 1 Thran Foundry (+4 Saga to find it)
  • 1 Ipnu Rivulet (+7 ways to find it)
  • 4 Sphere effects + Wasteland

We also have a pretty decent clock with Constructs, Reclaimer and Marit Lage. It’s very hard for Doomsday players to build a pile that can beat Ipnu Rivulet and I therefore find that Lands have inevitability in the matchup. Unless we die on turn 1 or turn 2 then we will be able to find Ipnu and lock up the game. But if our opponent rushes then they play into our spell based interaction and can get destroyed by a timely Flusterstorm or Endurance.

I went 1-0 vs Doomsday and 1-0 vs Ruby Storm to a nice 100% winrate against this historical bad archetype. You can find my matches below: 

• Episode 7: Bant Reclaimer Lands vs Ruby Storm.
• Episode 3: Bant Saga Lands vs Doomsday.

Other Decks

I played against “other decks” in 4 of my matches. I went 2-0 vs Cloudpost and 2-0 vs Lands. There is not much to say here really other than that Urza’s Saga has given us a new route to victory against these Crop Rotation decks. Saga is a safer kill than Marit Lage and I ended up going for that route in most games. I also think Prismatic Ending was excellent against Lands as a cheap way to remove a Mox Diamond or Exploration or Marit Lage.

You can find my matches here.

• Episode 6: Bant Saga Lands vs Lands.
• Episode 3: Bant Saga Lands vs Cloudpost.
• Episode 2: Bant Saga Lands vs Cloudpost.

Conclusions

It is time to draw some conclusions from the experiment with Bant Lands. As I wrote in the introduction 24 matches is a very small sample size but when tuning magic decks we need to draw conclusions based on incomplete data as there is just not enough time to get large datasets. My conclusions here are therefore based on magic theory and backed up with the games that I have played these last few weeks. 

Hypothesis 1: I was worried about playing against the Blue-Zenit deck with RG Lands and my hope was that Swords to Plowshares would help in this matchup.

Conclusion: I don’t think that Swords to Plowshares is enough to swap the Blue-Zenit matchup. Sure, it helps but they are still favored against Bant Saga Lands. If we want to beat these decks then we need to play their game i.e. we cut Saga and play Reclaimer, Flagstones, Uro and Field of the Dead ourselves.

Hypothesis 2: I did not think that Planeswalkers would be popular and I was hoping that Constructs + Pithing Needle would be enough to combat walkers. Karn in particular felt horrible to play against but I was not predicting that card to be heavily played.

Conclusion: Planeswalkers were more popular than I had expected. Control decks started playing T3feri (that is amazing against Urza’s Saga) and Narset, and the Karn decks were more popular than I had anticipated. Constructs plus Needle do a decent job at combating walkers though. I love that Needle can shut off a walker before it hits play and this ensures for example that Karn won’t be able to tutor for Ensnaring Bridge before getting killed. I did play some Leagues with RG Lands (with Spellbomb instead of Needle) and I missed having access to Needle in these Leagues. It even turns out that I had a positive record vs Karn decks with Bant Lands. Punishing Fire would improve the situation vs walkers though and it seems good vs the deck with Narset, T3feri and Hullbreacher.

Hypothesis 3: I did not think that I would miss Punishing Fire against the Tribal decks but this remained to be seen.

Conclusion: We can beat Tribal decks with other strategies than recurring Punishing Fire. 

Hypothesis 4: Flusterstorm is the only card that I can think of that is good against TES, Show & Tell and Doomsday, and I expected Bant Lands to be better against spell based combo decks.

Conclusion: I felt favored vs spell based combo (including Doomsday) with Bant Saga Lands. Game 1 is awful but in the post sideboard games then we have a healthy mix of spell and permanent based hate, and we have plenty of tutors to find our hate. We also have a decent clock to back this up.

Hypothesis 5: Elvish Reclaimer felt great in the meta but I did not think that I would have room for Urza’s Saga and Reclaimer in the same deck. 

Conclusion: Elvish Reclaimer was the card that impressed me the most in Season 1 of Competitive Lands. He is great vs Daze decks and any deck that does not run removal (Elves, Madness, 8-Cast, etc). If we can protect him with Flusterstorm then he can also do major work against control decks ramping us towards Field of the Dead with Flagstones.

Next Season

I will be taking a break from the Competitive Lands Project while I plan Season 2. We just had a B&R announcement where Ragavan got the axe. I have posted my thoughts on what this menas for the Legacy meta, and I hope that you will come back and watch Season 2 when it starts in a few weeks time.

Thanks for reading!

• Episode 8 – New Legacy

Season 1 Recap

Here are all Episodes in Season 1 in case you missed something.

• Episode 1 – Introduction
• Episode 2 – Bant Saga Lands Prelim
• Episode 3 – Bant Saga Lands Prelim with Casey Lancaster
• Episode 4 – Legacy Super PTQ Prep
• Episode 5 – Elves Testing vs EronRelentless
• Episode 6 – Bant Saga Lands in Prelim
• Episode 7 – Bant Reclaimer Lands in Prelim
• Episode 8 – New Legacy