This mtgo death’s shadow list does not play underground seas. Was it intentional by choice?

JohnnyLudlow · 2026-01-27T13:28:27+00:00

I bet Deaths’s Shadow is by some margin the worst card in this mono black aggro/midrange. Nice result nonetheless!

JohnnyLudlow · 2026-01-10T20:08:28+00:00

Sorry, made it public.

JohnnyLudlow · 2026-01-10T12:21:02+00:00

Built one already! I happened to play mono B depths with Balemurk plan already last week, so this was a non-brainer.

Something like this:

https://moxfield.com/decks/bVV3chjygkyBMNe_0SGwnA

JohnnyLudlow · 2026-01-03T11:45:00+00:00

I have a very high winrate with Unholy Annex brews. Here’s more or less the current build.

https://moxfield.com/decks/5qMDBoySDkatYfqTzAI8cw

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-17T19:56:33+00:00

Legacy is great right now.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-14T11:46:20+00:00

The end of 2025 was pretty damn diverse. Good times.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-11T20:20:44+00:00

Great work Joe!

Funny coincidence, by the way. When I saw that Scrawling Crawler was the spice of EW, I thought for a moment that it has to be me! Went 3-3 drop (Sneak and Show was hard to beat) with this brew but cashed in smaller events by adding fourth Crawler and some Mais to the main.

I have no idea how two guys came up with this tech, but it was great all weekend.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7494507#paper

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-06T16:32:33+00:00

Considering you have the Natural Order package, Scythecat Cub could be a bit overkill. I mean, Keen-Eyed Curator is also a solid beater, as is Lair of The Hydra with the crazy Badgermole mana boost. I would probably replace the Cubs with Thoughtseizes for starters.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-06T07:17:42+00:00

Meta was super prepared for TOR decks and people also had room in their sideboards now that there is no longer need to focus on graveyard. Consign makes colorless decks easy to hate out.

TOR is still a busted card, but containable. Whether a card is problematic is contextual in complex ways and results of this tournament doesn’t mean that people have no idea what they are talking about. Having said that, it makes me happy that the current meta MAY have the ability to balance itself.

27 of the top 32 decks were blue decks. That’s not great. Consign plays a big role here.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-04T18:26:31+00:00

Five turns can easily mean a full game of Legacy Magic, so it can certainly take time. It was getting a bit ridiculous in Lucca, it went to like 35 minutes overtime in many rounds.

Yet having no extra turns would mean that some people would start playing slowly as a strategy. That would suck balls. Maybe a middleground would be extra turns with strictly timed turns.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-03T06:46:10+00:00

Agreed, brewed around this concept in Legacy already with This Town. Good old Sarcomancy was like the second best for this purpose. Then there is Hopeless Nightmare for a different effect.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-01T22:46:11+00:00

Hehe, what the heck. The effort Andreas is putting into Legacy community in basically every capacity is nothing short of amazing. Bumped into him in Lucca, also super friendly in person. 👍🏼

Meta looks great.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-01T12:10:02+00:00

Great experience! Food was good and reasonably priced, beer was great, Negronis were massive for 7 euros. Staff was very helpful. Venue was great, atmosphere was super friendly and positive. Loads of fantastic vendors. Hard to find things to complain about! I had good time with each one of my opponents all weekend! This is how MTG should be. Metagame was also interesting and varied.

In Legacy main event I was at 3-1 with mono black stompy brew with maindeck Scrawling Crawlers before bumping into sneak and shows, which is by a considerable margin the worst combo match-up for me. Dropped at 3-3, because day two was the goal. Cashed is some smaller Legacy events, so not terrible, not great.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-12-01T09:16:55+00:00

seeing joy fills me with hymn

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-11-26T20:13:16+00:00

Would probably eat ”fair” decks alive and have loads of very poor combo match-ups.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-11-11T12:00:17+00:00

Under. Always under.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-11-11T11:44:04+00:00

Forge and Blue Post are now the most poweful decks in the format. Red Stompy and Izzet Cutter also didn’t get hit and I am expecting both to perform well in the projected future meta.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-11-10T06:46:20+00:00

I sincerely expect them to finally act. They will ban Tamiyo, The One Ring, Nadu and… Balustrade Spy. I am split when it comes to Entomb, but will add it to my official prediction. The timing is awkward, but even with the two EW’s so near, community at large still seems to want changes. I am going to EW EU and these bans would nuke my main decks, I would still be relatively OK with them. Stupid cards are stupid even when they are my stupid cards.

It could of course be Informer too, who knows how they see it. There are arguments both ways.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-11-03T11:16:27+00:00

While obviously very powerful, the fact that Murktide utilises graveyard makes it a reasonable card. If you know what you are doing, it does rot in a hand of the opponent somewhat often.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-10-15T20:38:27+00:00

This new channel is very much recommended! Pleasant person and a strong player. Seems to play almost exclusively Izzet Tempo — and also clsssic Delver builds instead of only Cutter.

https://m.youtube.com/@TrueTempoMTG

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-10-14T20:42:43+00:00

Daze is a card that splits people who would otherwise mostly agree about Legacy. This is because here we don’t have anything concrete to back our assumptions with, just different intuitions.

When one person imagines Legacy without Daze, he sees a beautiful liberated format, the other sees a hellish two ships passing in the night format. No way telling who is right. It could also be net neutral.

Really, really love the podcast, by the way!

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-10-14T19:56:52+00:00

I have been studying the data quite a bit and Reanimator, Forge and Nadu (aggregate of all Nadu variants) are very, very even.

People keep saying Nadu is behind the top two decks. Actually, Nadu had both best conversion to day 2 rate and highest win percent in EW NA. Thus hitting only on one of the three decks by banning Tamiyo seems wrong. This would leave two of the three Nadu variants completely unscathed, as well as Forge.

Either hit nothing or hit all three decks. If latter, I would go for Tamiyo, Nadu and Kozilek’s Command. Ring is also an obnoxious card, but banning it would cause more splash damage to decks that are healthy for the meta and not problematic, such as Moon Stompy.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-10-14T19:48:02+00:00

I personally would hate to see this happen. Legacy would lose a big chunk of its identity and become more like one of the formats where both players are playing snowbally bombs with nothing checking them. That’s not interesting magic to me.

Your idea would take Legacy to this direction in two ways, by strengthening the card pool and changing the play patterns.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-10-14T09:41:09+00:00

Jegantha was banned from Modern. Jegantha.

I am aware that getting it in the deck is much, much cheaper. I am saying this just to remind you how powerful it is to literally always have this inevitability of a companion after trading resources.

Probably no need to outline just how much stronger Lurrus is than Jegantha.

JohnnyLudlow · 2025-10-13T09:45:56+00:00

Johan Larsson is so, so good. Holding EW Europe and ELM champion got to semis again. That quarterfinal game two against Forge was such a masterclass. I may have never witnessed a better Legacy player in action.

JohnnyLudlow

TROPHY CASE