Anyone who’s played Modern and Legacy should be aware of the massive gap in power level between formats. Many cards that rule the Modern format, like the entire Boros Energy package, and a majority of other top-tier archetypes, aren’t even close to powerful enough to show up in Legacy. That’s why, when a Modern combo top eighted a massive 351-player Legacy event, players were shocked.
Generally, on the rare occasion that this happens, a Modern player will have wanted to try out Legacy and brought their pet deck to the event. This time around, a Legacy expert brought Yawgmoth Combo to the event over other Legacy archetypes for a very specific reason. This could be the breakout Legacy deck that players have been looking for.
Yawgmoth Combo
MTG player Lacobo P. piloted Yawgmoth combo to a top-eight finish at the European 4 Seasons Legacy event over the weekend. Outside of Once Upon a Time and Gaea’s Cradle, Snuff Out in the sideboard and a couple of Dual Lands, this is a carbon copy of the Modern archetype in function, but the ratios of cards are a bit different.
For reference, Yawgmoth combo wins the game by creating a loop with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and two Undying creatures, like Young Wolf. Undying allows creatures to come back into play after dying if they don’t have a +1/+1 counter on them, and puts said counter on them when they return. Yawgmoth’s ability sacrifices a creature and puts a -1/-1 counter on another creature for the low cost of one life.
Since those counters cancel out, you can sacrifice an Undying creature to target another one with Yawgmoth. This will allow you to repeat the cycle infinitely, drawing cards until you have no life left. Use something that nets you life, like Dredger’s Insight, and you can draw your entire deck.
This particular list wins the game with Walking Ballista and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. This combo can turn your Undying +1/+1 counters into damage, killing the opponent with ease. While this is a less popular win condition in Modern variants of the deck, a lack of Chord of Calling and an unusual number of Soul Cauldrons make this a lot more feasible.
If you’re thinking this combo is unusually clunky for Legacy, you’d be 100% right. Despite being banned in Modern, Nadu, Winged Wisdom exists in Legacy, and it is a strictly better combo deck. Despite this, Lacobo decided to play Yawgmoth because it has stronger matchups against some of the most dominant Legacy archetypes. Dimir Reanimator, in particular, is becoming an issue in the format again, and this deck has a great matchup with it.
Dominant Matchups
The last two Legacy ban announcements have targeted Dimir Reanimator. Despite losing Grief and Psychic Frog, Dimir Reanimator remains the best archetype in the format. Being able to play both a fair and an unfair game is incredibly difficult to combat, but Golgari Yawgmoth does that exceptionally well.
It’s unusual to see any Agatha’s Soul Cauldron play a full playset of the card, but in Legacy, there’s a very strong reason to do this. The card doubles as both a combo enabler and a graveyard hate piece for Dimir Reanimator. This deck also plays a 3/1 split of Endurance between the main deck and the sideboard, further strengthening the deck’s graveyard hate capabilities.
Endurance also resets your deck in situations where you need to draw deeper into it with Yawgmoth. Scavenging Ooze in the sideboard fills out the graveyard suite, enabling an exile ability under Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. The fair game out of Dimir Reanimator, on the other hand, completely falls behind Yawgmoth’s combo plan.
Dimir Reanimator isn’t the only popular Legacy deck that depends on the graveyard, either. Oops, All Spells and Nadu Breakfast combos also utilize the graveyard to win the game extremely quickly.
For Dimir Tempo matchups, Yawgmoth combo has another extremely powerful tool to rely on: Grist, the Hunger Tide. Beating this Planeswalker is difficult on its own, but if you manage to get it under an Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, winning a fair game becomes almost impossible for the opponent.
Delighted Halfling is also incredible in Legacy. Capable of protecting your Yawgmoth from Force of Will, Legacy’s most common interaction, can struggle to find a foothold. Between Halfing, Gaea’s Cradle, and Ignoble Hierarch, you should be able to consistently ramp into Yawgmoth.
Finally, Green Sun’s Zenith ties everything together, allowing you to find whatever you’re missing. Whether you need Halfing to get through countermagic, Endurance to reset a graveyard, Grist to remove a threat, or Young Wolf to start comboing, the Zenith does it all.
Bad Matchups
While Yawgmoth combo targets some of the Legacy’s most popular decks with ease, it struggles against some of the tier-two archetypes that the format offers. Omnitell and Sneak and Show, in particular, seem like bad matchups. An early Show and Tell into Omniscience isn’t something that this deck can really do anything about. You need a few turns to set up a Haywire Mite to even have a chance against this. All of that said, Omnitell is certainly on the downswing at the moment.
Yawgmoth combo might also struggle against Beans Control. Keeping Yawgmoth off the board shouldn’t be too difficult for the archetype, and with tons of card advantage built in, finding an answer to Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and Grist shouldn’t be too difficult.
Despite this, Yawgmoth combo appears to have a very strong matchup against the most popular decks Legacy has to offer. If you’re looking for something a bit different to play in Legacy, or just want to play Yawgmoth, Thran Physician again, this is probably the best format to play the card in right now.