TNT Legacy *3-2 2nd*

Hello everyone! Yesterday I went to the weekly Legacy event down at toys, as I always try to every week, and for the second week strait we had 8 people! 6 of the 8 were repeats from last week, so it be early to say this, but I think we have a good legacy core built that we can expand around. Back even just 1 month ago I was the only local player in the events besides Benzo, who would play if there was an odd number, but this week we had myself, Henry, Tron, Joe, and Benzo as the frequest Toys players popping in for the night.


I actually wasn’t sure if I would be able to spin some tops this week because I was at an Eagle Court of Honor that afternoon in another town completely opposite from toys, but just as I left I got a text from Joe saying there were 6 or 7, and they were all ready to go. Another 8 man!!??!! I almost didn’t even take off my Boy Scout Uniform just to make it to the event faster. There was a bit of communication error between myself and Joe, and the event started without me, but only by a couple minutes. Benzo wasn’t playing in it, so I just pulled up a chair across from him and dived right in! (For reference, I am playing the exact same 75 as last week)

Round 1: Benzo, MB Skrew You
I was late to the event, and despite my rushing, I was soon found sitting around with nothing to do. I have played against Benzo’s mono-black deck before, and it’s always to no avail. His deck combines mana ramp thanks to Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and card advantage from Bob Maher and Phyrexian Arena to put himself in a position where we can crush you with the power of his cards, and his Nantuko Husk is a 51/50. His deck was simply too fast for mine, and I lost 0-2 probably 10 minutes in.

0-2
0-1

Round 2: Crazy Infi-Artifact Combo
I was against a gent named Keith who I had played against last week. He was piloting Belcher last week, but Keith is to Legacy as I am to Standard: one who can never play the same deck twice. This week he had a pseudo Countertop control deck (although I never saw Countrbalance, someone else said it was in there though) that had an infinite combo kill. Here is how the kill went:

{
Start with Auriok Salvagers in play, play and pop Lion's Eye Diamond floating 3 white.
Use 2 of the 3 white to return LED to hand, play for free, add white, return infinitely.
Using this infinite mana loop, start looping aether spellbomb's draw ability until you draw Pyrite Spellbomb.
Recurse Pyrite Spellbomb infinitely, shooting your opponent for 2 each time.

Sounds simple, right? Take a moment using those instructions and write down what you have to do to kill your opponent who is at 20 life, assuming yoy have Salvagers in play, with LED and Pyrite Spellbomb in hand..... How many actions are involved to kill your opponent?

I didn't do it out completely, but after 15 steps, you will have your opponent at 18 life instead of 20, Lion's Eye Diamond will be back in your hand, Pyrite Spellbomb will be in the graveyard, and there will be a single red mana floating in your pool. Because of that floating red, every 3 times we run through this cycle, we can reduce 3 steps from the next cycle.

20 life / 2 per cycle = 10 cycles required
10 cycles = 7 cycles without discount + 3 cycles with discount (4, 7, 10)
10 cycles = (7 * 45 steps) + (3 * 42 steps)
10 cycles = 315 + 126
10 cycles = 441 steps

So all in all, if your opponent asks you to play out this entire combo, you are going to have to walk them through 441 different actions that will ultimately lead to them being dead.
}

WOW! That's complicated! So you can see why my opponent really groaned when I asked him to play out the combo during our game 1. I understood how it worked, but I had a Counterbalance in play, and I was hoping to disrupt him. I had Misty Rainforest on top, so I was able to counter his Lion's Eye Diamond when he tried to cast it after popping it for WWW, which turned off his entire combo kill. That game 1 I was beaten down to 10 before getting Thopter-Sword popping and came back to kill him.

Game 2 was rather rough for me as he had answers to everything and I wound getting beaten down by 2 Trinket Mages that was joined by a third for the final blow.

Game 3 was a test of pure willpower, endurence, and overall who has more outs. This game went so long that we both had only about 20 cards left in our library by the time it ended. As it turns out, Engineered Explosives on 2 is quite good against me. He dropped one of those rather early and waited as long as he could before popping it off. My Top survived, which triples the speed of my topdecking, and my Sword was in the graveyard, which is where it wants to be, so it wasn't long until I draw a Counterbalance, tutored a Foundry, and got back to work. He had more Explosives, I had Krosan Grip. He had more Explosives, I had Force of Will. He had Acamy Ruins. Now he can never run out of Explosives!! Through some tricky counter-top action I was able to start bashing him profitably (of course he had Explosives on 0 to ruin my day!). However, the getting in eachother's way didn't stop there: he had Goblin Welder! Another card that he uses to help recurse his Explosives, it can also be used to target me. I used Thopter Foundry, sacrificing Sword. In response to the activated ability resolving, he tapped Welder to kill the Foundry and bring back the Sword. Now we can rinse and repeat this a couple times and soon all of my Thopter Foundrys are in the bin. I was able to remove to Welder eventually, and bashed him down to 7 with 6 tokens in play, one equipped to the Sword (7 power) on board, and he scooped. Thankfully for me he didn't see that he could Acadamy Ruins the Engineered Explosives to the top of my deck at the end of my turn, so he scooped.

If that took you a long time to read, it should resemble how long it took to play. I didn't check the time the round started, but it ended at 8. Considering the event started at 5:30, I think our match went 90 to 100 minutes!

2-1
1-1

Round 3: Henry, Zombies
Henry sat down and immediatly said how he felt bad about this matchup. I agreed with him, although I wasn't going to announce it. My infinite thopter combo should be able to stop him, and the lifegain is a nice treat. Game 1 came with a flurry of pain for me as I was very quickly dropped down to 2 life before I could assemble the combo. Slowly yet surely my life total creeped back up. I was gaining 6 life then losing 5. Gain 6, lose 5. It worked out in the end though as I crawled up to 10 life before dropping him to 0. Game 2 I wasn't able to put together the combo as quickly, but an on-curve Humility was my lifeline. Without it I was dead in just 2 turns, but with it I stabelized at 6 life and quickly went up to 16 and dropped him to 0. Thanks to Humility I can trade his cards with my free tokens, which is huge for card advantage reasons.

2-0
2-1

At this point, I thought we were all done because normal 8-mans should only have 3 rounds, but the powers that be decided a cut to top 4 was necessary. The top 4 was myself, Joe, Tony (3-0), and Matt. I was the 4th seed and was placed against Tony, who was playing the same infect deck the 4-0-1ed with at FNM, but with a few legacy toys like Hymn to Torach, Dark Ritual, and Extirpate.

Round 4: Tony, Infect
I though thanks to his Rituals I would lose fast, but he had a very slow start. I was able to assemble the Thopter-Sword combo, which allowed me infinite blockers, and an eventual counter-attack. The same thing happened game 2, except he attacked with an Inkmoth and double Vampire's Bited it to bring me to 7 poison, but that was the last strike he got in, and I came back with Thopters.

2-0
3-1

Round 5: Matt, MUD Control
Matt was playing the same deck as last week, using mana ramp from City of Traitors/Ancient Tomb plus lockdown cards like Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Lodestone Golem to prevent me from being able to play any spells. I got lucky when I beat him last week, but this week I just folded 0-2.

0-2
3-2

Overall I had a great time and won $10 for my perils. I used that $10, and immediatly turned around and did a 4-man BSS draft. I drafted a RG Dinosaurs deck, which I have grown to really enjoy with some interesting Synergies coming from Ferravore/Barrage Ogre/Heavy Arbalist + Myr Propagator. I went 2-0 with it, and my bomb first pick: Blackcleave Cliffs! Yeah, it was that bad... Regardless, I really enjoy drafting the Dinosaurs deck, and it's always good to see how having Beseiged first (it really does!).

That's all for today, until next time, stay classy!