This article is meant to be a short and straight analysis of the current state of the Legacy format according to the last 2 big tournaments: Star City Games Open Series 2011 – Boston (268 players) + Spanish Legacy Nationals – Alcoy (318 players). I’m not going to judge wether Legacy is a healthy format or not. I’m leaving that to you and to the mtgthesource.com community. Right now I’m just going to focus on the numbers obtained by the most played decks in these two tournaments.
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Discover what’s hidden behind the deck numbers right after the break!
The following are the top16 players and decks from both events. I’ve added 3 extra columns to the table that numbers the amount of Force of Will, Mental Mistep and Brainstorm played by each player:
Tournament Name: SCG Open Series – Boston (268 players)
| Deck Name | Player | Position | #FoWs | #MMs | #BSs |
| NO RUG | Alex Bertoncini | 1 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| U/W Stoneblade | Kurt Spiess | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Reanimator | Rob Castellon | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| NO RUG | Bobby Sullivan | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| NO RUG | Matt Boccio | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| NO RUG | Jonathan Sukenik | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| Aggro Loam | Christopher Gilley | 7 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| U/W Stoneblade | Max Tietze | 8 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
| U/W/R Stoneblade | Joshua Cicio | 9 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| U/W Stoneblade | Scott Hinojosa | 10 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| NO RUG | Douglas Kimball | 11 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Esper Stoneblade | Michael Caffrey | 12 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| U/W Stoneblade | Jeremy Tibbetts | 13 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Bant Stoneblade | David Houghton | 14 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| Zoo | Jonas Sinacola | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NO RUG | Dan Jordan | 16 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
Tournament Name: Spanish Nationals – Legacy – Alcoy (318 players)
| Deck Name | Player | Position | #FoWs | #MMs | #BSs |
| GW Zenith | José Salvador Requena | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Team America | José Antonio Peralta | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Team America | Alejandro Delgado | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Merfolks | Adrián Rodríguez | 4 | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| NO Bant | José Ángel Cantero | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Reanimator | Carlos Vásquez | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| ANT | Carlos Moral | 7 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| BUG Landstill | Francisco Adalid | 8 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Zoo | Antonio González | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NO Bant | Mauro Dupré | 10 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Team America | Víctor Martínez | 11 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Sneak Show | Luis Alberto Nuñez | 12 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Team America | Javier Camuesco | 13 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Reanimator | Álex del Valle | 14 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Merfolk | Antonio Martos | 15 | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Reanimator | Aurelio Crespo | 16 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
And these are the archetype distribution for both tournaments:
As we can see in the first chart, there’s two clear archetypes that dominated the Boston tournament: NO RUG and Stoneblade. Both playing blue but with a different end-the-game strategy: Natural Order or Stoneforge Mystic. In the second chart (Spain), the deck distribution is more balanced featuring up to 9 different archetypes and with only one deck with outstanding numbers: Team America.
If we combine the numbers represented in both sheets we obtain that:
- 27 out of 32 are blue decks with counterspells. [84% of the decks that made top 16]
- 26 out of 32 ran some number of Brainstorm. [81% of the decks]
- 28 out of 32 ran some number of Mental Mistep. [87% of the decks]
- 26 out of 32 ran Force of Will. [81% of the decks]
Out of 128 possible played copies of each staple (FoW, MM and BS) there were used:
- Force of Will: 101/128 [78%]
- Mental Mistep: 105/128 [82%]
- Brainstorm: 103/128 [80%]
Instant thought:
Your chances of making top16 are really poor if you aren’t playing blue cards like Force of Will, Mental Mistep and Brainstorm. If you aren’t going to play blue but want to make a top16 performance, you can only play Zoo.
I could do the exact same analysis for every other card played, including Natural Order and Stoneforge Mystic, but I focused the analysis on these three blue cards because they are the ones clearly dominating the format. So, in my opinion, it’s not about Natural Order or Stoneforge Mystic, and surely not about Show and Tell like many people complain about. I believe it’s about how Mental Mistep has impacted Legacy in addition to the other two blue Legacy’s MVP, Force of Will and Brainstorm.
To finish up with this article, if you’d like to know why NO RUG performed so well in SCG Boston, let me recommend you the article that our new contributor, Jonathan Alexander Kurz, posted few days ago:
Tuning NO RUG: What Would Kibler Do?
Thanks for reading!