After a 15 year retirement from MTG I've started playing again. This is my first attempt at a Legacy deck and would love feedback. I have an extensive collection from Revised through Urza's Saga, with some earlier cards. The expensive cards you see listed I have in hand to work with, most of the less expensive cards that came after Urza's Saga but before M13 I would have to purchase/trade to acquire (no worries).
When I used to play long ago I always wanted to make a deck that took advantage of Mana Flare, but never put it together, so I started there and built around the question: How can I make Mana Flare work without helping my opponent? I suppose the modern lingo would call this a sort of "prison/burn" deck (I'm still figuring this lingo out). Here's how it works.
Winter Orb is a must on turn 2 to mess with your opponents ability to generate mana (mulligan if you have to).
You use a combination of Mana Flare and
Heartbeat of Spring
with either Candelabra of Tawnos or
Magus of the Candelabra
to allow you to untap lands and generate a large mana pool, which you use to cast Banefire for the win.
Kaervek's Torch
serves the same purpose, but could still be countered. Are there better alternatives?
Hammer of Bogardan
serves as a slower way to do this until you get Banefire. Hammer of Bogarden also gets around pesky discard/counter (which I hear is rampant in Legacy) and provides one more means for dealing with creatures.
The one place I think this deck gets into real trouble is with fast creatures, thus the
Forcefield
, Ghostly Prison, and as a last resort good old
Ali from Cairo
.
Enlightened Tutor serves to either complete the mana generating combo or to grab something to aid in creature control.
One thing I was thinking about, but have very little knowledge about is recycling things out of the graveyard (especially direct damage). Does red have anything along those lines other than
Hammer of Bogardan
? Something easier to get back out and keep recycling for damage?
The sideboard is really up for grabs and the maybe board has tons of things I was thinking about at one point or another. For instance, early on I was thinking about early creature control and late game win and was considering Earthquake and
Hurricane
combo with Circle of Protection: Red and Circle of Protection: Green, which I later rejected as earthquake would nuke my
Magus of the Candelabra
and i don't have a spare $750-900 to buy 3 more Candelabra of Tawnos (actually I could but my wife would probably
Murder
me -haha).
Eventually I want to try this out at a local FNM where they run legacy once a month. The deck I'll play will either be this deck, a discard/control/counter B/U, or a Stasis deck (but I know the latter will make people hate my guts - not my idea of a good first impression, haha).
Comments much appreciated, especially since this deck is still in the conceptual stage. Show some love if you feel inclined to do so and Thanks for looking!
