And the winner for LML April is... Lands! :/ For a while I’d been ruminating on whether an all-lands deck could be viable in Legionnaire Magic... and though I ultimately decided it probably wouldn’t, toward the end of last year I worked on acquiring cards to assemble a highly land-centric deck (perhaps in the spirit of Legacy Lands), leveraging a handful of support cards like Ley Druid, which allows for multiple activations per turn of Thawing Glaciers, Heart of Yavimaya, Kjeldoran Outpost, etc. The Outpost has been a restricted card in our meta ever since it infamously took down Legionnaire Night 1 back in 2019, so I graciously appealed for an exception for this month, although the plan was never to win. I definitely feel a strange mix of pride for how well the deck performed and embarrassment for not anticipating it better.
The Lands deck’s only win conditions were 4 Kjeldoran Outposts and 4 Mishra’s Factories (aside from technically being able to attack with Ley Druids) and it attempted to use lands for as much heavy lifting as possible (38 out of 61 total cards). Thinking the deck might struggle to even win a game or two, I included a pair of catch-all Swords to Plowshares, a Balance, and a Disenchant. These absolutely put in work, but the bigger stars were the three Sylvan Libraries (insane card selection with Thawing Glaciers), two Crusades, and two Fastbonds, which more than once resulted in “busted” starts when drawn early. Zuran Orb played a critical role in the final match, and the deflating feeling it elicits from the opponent when they almost had you is palpable for sure. While I regret that the deck was able to post an 8-1 game record across its league and “friendly” duels, it ended up being extremely skill-testing and fun to play, with lots of interesting decision “trees” (haha) at every point.
But enough about Lands—take a look at the rest of these decks! Eight players this month allowed us to run “Swiss” style pairings, with the idea that it might be desirable to pair winning and losing decks in subsequent weeks. The downside was that matches couldn’t all be scheduled in advance, and ultimately the group decided that random pairings are preferable going forward. I loved playing against Jimmy’s Prodigal Fungusaur build in the “championship” match, packing multiple awesome gameplans that also synergized well together. Billy and I had stellar duels in week 1, and while Jim got mana-hosed in both our league games, the third game we played afterward was much closer, and his deck was a fantastic throwback to his W/R LN4 pile, incorporating several super sweet cards. Also: Wings of Glory! Jason might’ve been pushing the power level with 4x Serra Angel, but he knowingly compensated by neglecting to run spot removal, instead relying on the likes of Cockatrice, Serras, and Meekstone to provide defense. I love how the strength of our meta continues to coalesce around its participants despite widely differing approaches to brewing. Finally, this month Paul joined the league with an amazing B/G concoction, Greg brought to bear his notorious Earthbound and Down, and Adam netted his first LML match wins! Great decks and games all around.
Everyone still digging LML? We’ve had three solid months so far, and while I’m sure summertime will get busy (but hopefully also provide more opportunities for in-person play with the warmer weather), I’m willing to keep running this thing as long as people keep playing!
 |
| mattfs5’s Lands (9 points) |
 |
| jimmyc018’s U/G Prodigal Fungusaur (6 points) |
 |
| seodfac’s U/G Tolaria Goodstuff (6 points) |
 |
| whiskeyjack_jg’s Wings of Glory (4 points) |
 |
| old_school_unlimited’s Blood of the Inferno (3 points) |
 |
| khade’s Earthbound and Down (2 points) |
 |
wanderingspecter24’s U/G/W Reprise (2 points)
|
 |
| deegs_esq’s B/G Wretched Lure (1 point) |
Comments
Post a Comment