Legacy with 8 Bitterblossom

The very first Legacy deck I ever wanted to build was Counter-Top, although Reanimator holds the title for first deck actually built. Ever since I built Counter-Top, it has gone through many life changes including dropping and adding colors semi-weekly. The only color that is absolutely required is obviously blue as that gives us the Counterbalance, which we kinda named the deck after, but also for a wall of other counterspells and Brainstorm. Each support color offers a wide variety of choices for other cards, and I have delved into each of them for these purposes recently:

White:
Humility
Moat (if I had the money to throw at it)
Swords to Plowshares
Stoneforge Mystic
Enlightened Tutor

Black:
Thoughtseize
Engineered Plague

Red:
Firespout
Grim Lavamancer
Red Elemental Blast

Green:
Krosan Grip
Tarmogoyf (I have never used it, but many decks do)

Multicolored:
Rhox War Monk
Thopter Foundry

Artifacts:
Sensei Divining Top
Ensnaring Bridge
Sword - Fire/Ice, Feast/Famine, of the Meek
Engineered Explosives
Pithing Needle

I am probably missing a couple cards, but you get where I'm going.... there's a ton of options out there! You can probably see I haven't delved much into Black, instead having played Bant or USA most of the time, but it's time to get funky now! I have been playing Thopter-Sword as my kill condition for as long as I have played Counter-Top and sometimes it is awesome while othertimes it's simply lackluster. The combo is fantastic, but sometimes it is also restrictive. I can only usethe combo if I am not casting other spells, but at the same time it can be hard to assemble as it really strains where my Enlightened Tutors are going. Neither Thopter Foundry or Sword of the Meek do anything by themselves, which can really make things awkward. Compare that combo to Counterbalance-Top where both are perfectly fine cards by themselves (in fact I just built Painted Stone which plays Top with no Counterbalance just because it's that good).

So I don't want to spend $288 on a set of Tarmogoyfs (and I really don't care for Goyf as a win condition because he is just a fat guy... theres nothing exciting about him, and he can get chump blocked all day), but at the same time the Thopter-Sword combo is too difficult to assemble and use to make worthwhile.... Also, we need a proactive game plan or else we are begging to get walked on.... I think we need some advice from the Fae.

One of the guys at our store, ADB (not his real name or initials, no one knows why he is called that, not even him), is a fantastic faeries player (2nd place at a recent extended PTQ) and took Faeries and transformed it into a Legacy deck. Another guy at Toys, Nick, who doesn't play Legacy said he wants to break into Legacy with 8 Bitterblossoms - 4 real Bitterblossoms and 4 Stoneforge Mystics which is the "Bitterblossom" of Standard. My biggest concern with playing the deck was that I wanted to outdraw my opponents, but then Bob Maher walked by and said hi, and I knew I was golden. I think Bitterblossom is a fantastic substitute for Thopter-Sword although there are differences to take note of:

Pros:
-Bitterblossom takes 1 card, not 2 to make dudes
-Bitterblossom doesn't require any further mana investments after it's played

Cons:
-Bitterblossom only produces 1 token a turn, where sometimes you need to produce an instant army for chump blocking
-Bitterblossom makes you lose life instead of gaining it

So we are trading life and the ability to swing out every turn for cards and mana eh? You know, there's a reason Channel and Necropotence are banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage. Burning a little life is totally worth it! Now that were in black, we can also play Thoughtseize, and we can acquire the aid of Bob Maher himself to draw us a few cards. I know, more life loss ca seem a little Dark, but I'm Confidant that we can level up this deck's synergy a little more by combining Bob with Sensei's Divining Top! I have seen Bob-Top be utilized as a draw engine before, but we're also playing Top to lock up the world with Counterbalance anyways, so we're just maximizing value.

Finally, let's move along to that there Stoneforge Mystic. This guy, as you have seen in Standard, can do nice things with a Sword of Feast and Famine, but if you have never seen it grab a Sword of Fire and Ice, you've been missing out! This card is sick, especially against aggro decks where you can pick off their guys with every swing (especially Goblins)! For those of you keeping track at home, with Sword of Fire and Ice puching through for damage while Bob is in play, you are drawing 3 cards a turn. However, we will be losing a ton of life from Bitterblossom and Dark Confidant, so I want to have a Jitte to gain us life, while also offering the splash damage of picking off weenies and pushing through extra damage when you need it. So with all that in mind, here's what I'm currently sitting on:

4x Bitterblossom
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Umezawa's Jitte
4x Dark Confidant
14

2x Counterbalance
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Thoughtseize
4x Enlightened Tutor
2x Spell Pierce
27

1x Moat
1x Pithing Needle
1x Engineered Explosives
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
6

Lands

Now the first thing to notice is that we have a 47card deck before adding lands, and we only have 15 blue spells in the deck including the 4 Force of Wills. This is a very awkward position to be in as we both need to remove 8 cards from the deck AND add probably 5 more blue cards to the deck. Looks like something has to give, and everything looks fairly important. The first thing I thought of was to actually drop blue as a whole and make a BW disruptive aggro build. 2 cards of note to be used in that deck would be Tidehollow Sculler and Vindicate which would allow us to be very disruptive and still apply pressure with equipment et all. Let's see where this takes us:

4x Bitterblossom

4x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Umezawa's Jitte
4x Dark Confidant
4x Tidehollow Sculler

4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Thoughtseize
3x Duress
4x Vindicate
1x Pithing Needle
4x Scrubland
4x Marsh Flats
5x Swamp
5x Plains
2x Flooded Strand
1x Polluted Delta

This deck does look fairly interesting to me simply because it's something I haven't conceived before. I feel like this would play out like an aggro-rock deck. But bakc to that there Counterbalance issue. I really don't know where I can make cuts or where I should go with the deck, whether it's a more aggressive deck, like the Faeries deck ADB made, or more of a control deck that applies light early pressure like what Nick is thinking about. I am currently stuck on the fence as going either route would make me feel like I'm missing a little something. I was actually planning on having a finished rough Counter-top deck by the time I was done writing this post (these posts are more a stream of conciousness as opposed to an editted essay), but I guess not.

Until next time, stay classy!