After Monday’s massive bans rocked the format, we’re starting to see some welcome innovation in MTG Legacy. Interestingly, a lot of this innovation seems to be coming in the form of nostalgic throwbacks. Earlier in the week, for example, we saw the return of the notorious Worldgorger Dragon Combo in a Reanimator list. Today, Beware_the_water cruised to a 5-0 finish in the MTG Online Legacy League with a spicy take on Gruul Lands.
This deck combines the classic Legacy Lands Control strategy with the Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows combo from Magic’s past. The result is a deck that can definitely win games, albeit very, very slowly. As with many of the interesting new lists that are cropping up in the post-ban landscape, it’s unclear whether this one is here to stay or not. In either case, it’s always great to see classic Magic strategies thriving in the modern game.
Gruul Lands In MTG Legacy
For the most part, Beware_the_water’s list is business as usual for Gruul Lands in MTG Legacy. The deck is aiming to use tools like Crop Rotation to assemble both Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage, then ride the resulting Marit Lage token to victory. This plan often takes a good while to execute, however, which is where this list’s big innovation comes in.
If you haven’t seen it in action before, the Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows combo is pretty simple. You cast Punishing Fire normally, either burning your opponent’s face or one of their small creatures. Then, you tap Grove for red mana, gaining your opponent a life in the process. This will trigger Punishing Fire’s graveyard recursion effect, letting you spend the red mana you just made to return it to your hand. This gives you a renewable source of burn that you can use again turn after turn.
This isn’t an infinite combo, but it does provide a lot of slow, grindy advantage over the course of a game. You can use Punishing Fire to keep your opponent’s board in check. Once that’s under control, you can then use it to actually deplete their life total, one painstaking point at a time.
This combo would be a good fit in Legacy Lands by itself, but Beware_the_water takes it a step further by adding Freestrider Lookout to the mix. This creature gives you a new way to find the key lands you need, provided you can consistently commit crimes. Using Punishing Fire against your opponent just so happens to count as a crime, so you can reliably nab a couple of extra lands every turn cycle with this.
Control And Crush
As fun as these newcomers are, they ultimately play a supporting role to the core Legacy Lands game plan here. For the most part, Beware_the_water is still aiming to win via Dark Depths, and the deck offers plenty of ways to do so.
Crop Rotation is the big one, but the deck also runs Life from the Loam to help find more lands as well. The self-mill this card offers also pairs perfectly with Walk-In Closet, turning your graveyard into a second hand when it comes to lands. This makes it much easier to find the two halves of the Thespian’s Stage/Dark Depths combo, as well as find Grove of the Burnwillows if you need to leverage the combo above to draw things out.
Playing lands from the graveyard also lets the deck pursue a secondary land destruction plan. Wasteland and Ghost Quarter both feature here, letting you whittle down your opponent’s resources to stall the game. This lock becomes particularly effective when you add Exploration to the mix, since you can then take out multiple lands per turn. With no mana to cast their spells, suddenly the Punishing Fire combo alone can easily deal with your opponent.
Beware_the_water runs a number of other Control tools, too, all within the land base since it’s the most accessible part of the deck. Maze of Ith can deal with big Reanimator threats, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale can handle wider boards, and Karakas can make quick work of legends. You can grab any of these tools through the methods discussed above, or via Expedition Map, which, in turn, you can get with Urza’s Saga. Saga can also get other answers like Ghost Vacuum and Pithing Needle, giving the deck a ton of play in most scenarios.
A Surprising Upgrade
While Beware_the_water’s Gruul Lands list may seem too slow for current MTG Legacy, the addition of the Punishing Fire combo actually helps it a great deal. While it definitely still has rough matchups, this variant of the deck feels better positioned than the default version right now.
Izzet Delver has always been a great matchup for Lands, and this remains true here. An early Marit Lage lets you effectively stonewall everything the deck is trying to do. Aggressive starts can still catch you off guard sometimes, however, which is where Punishing Fire lends a helping hand. The card can remove Delver of Secrets itself, as well as Brazen Borrower, giving you more breathing room in the early game if you need it.
Red Stompy is a tougher matchup, since Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon totally blank your game plan. Punishing Fire helps, however, since it can take out the latter, even under the blanket red mana restriction, which makes it an invaluable tool against this deck.
The weaknesses of this deck become more apparent in Combo matchups. Against the likes of Mystic Forge Combo and Painter, there’s not a ton Gruul Lands can do except race. Pithing Needle helps out a bit, but in general these other Combo decks move faster than you, and will therefore win more often than not.
Overall, while it doesn’t solve all of Lands’s problems, this new brew is a good direction for the deck given the current metagame. It may seem silly to be playing Punishing Fire combo in 2025, but it’s actually anything but.
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