Back in the early, formative years of Magic: The Gathering, Wizards of the Coast was much more fast and loose with how cards were written and templated. This led to a lot of extremely confusing designs, whose wording still perplexes players to this day. Perhaps the most notorious example of this is Chains of Mephistopheles, a black enchantment from Legends. This card’s main saving grace was that it didn’t really see play anywhere, but that may not be the case for long. In yesterday’s Legacy Challenge, a player went 5-0 with a Mono-Black Midrange deck running a pair of this card.
This deck comes to us via M1KY, and it’s a novel combination of lockdown and beatdown. It combines some of black’s best straightforward threats, with cards like Chains that limit your opponent’s options. The result is a list that can attack on multiple axes, despite its simple initial appearance. Whether it’s able to leave a lasting mark on Legacy or not remains to be seen. For now, though, it’s just great to see some fresh ideas in action.
Mono-Black Midrange In MTG Legacy
M1KY’s Mono-Black Midrange deck is an interesting mix of ideas we’ve seen in Legacy before. We’ve seen Chains of Mephistopheles included in some Pox decks in the past, for example, and the same is true for Sinkhole. Opposition Agent, too, has been a solid player in various Control decks in the format before now. The innovation here is bringing all of these disparate disruption tools together to create a deck that can oppress your opponent from all sides.
Card draw is extremely common in Legacy, with the likes of Brainstorm and Ponder being super-staples of the format. With Chains in play, players have to discard each time they draw outside of their draw phase. This means your opponents will be unable to rely on their draw spells and will instead be forced to play a ‘fair’ game with the resources they have.
Tutoring is one way around this restriction, and is something we also see a good bit of in Legacy between Entomb and Urza’s Saga. Opposition Agent helps M1KY address this by shutting down the opponent’s ability to tutor cards. You also get some nice extra value yourself, as Agent lets you play the cards they would’ve tutored for. This is also a nice way to punish the ever-present Fetchlands in the format.
With these two cards keeping your opponent’s resources in check, Sinkhole is the final piece of the puzzle. Land destruction is rough at the best of times, but when your opponent can’t draw or tutor cards to compensate for it, it’s downright diabolical. By setting up this lock and blowing up your opponent’s lands, you can pull well ahead with the other half of the deck.
Bringing The Beatdown
As you’d expect from a Legacy deck called Mono-Black Midrange, there’s more than just disruption going on here. M1KY pairs the package above with some of the most efficient Mono-Black threats and removal ever printed. These let them go on the offensive once things are under control.
Creatures-wise, there are some real heavy hitters in this list. Nethergoyf is a big beater with resilience later on, thanks to Escape. Barrowgoyf is similar, offering a scaling threat that can buff itself while also generating card advantage if it connects. These cards may be simple, but once your opponents are stripped of their resources, you’ll find them highly effective.
This pair is backed up by multi-format all-stars Orcish Bowmasters and Dauthi Voidwalker. Bowmasters serves as redundancy for Chains, since it heavily punishes card draw. It’s not quite as restrictive, but it is great at dealing with early boards. Voidwalker is just a very efficient threat that plays beautifully against Dimir Reanimator and Izzet Delver.
Setting up a lock, then using the above creature suite to close out the game, is the core strategy here. To help you get there, M1KY also runs perhaps the best Mono-Black card of all time, Dark Ritual. This turns a single black mana into three, allowing you to power out multiple threats or multiple lock pieces at once. Dropping it turn one on the play into a Sinkhole and Nethergoyf is insane, but it’s also great at springing surprise Opposition Agents on your opponent.
Rounding things out, M1KY also runs some of black’s best removal and disruption. Fatal Push, Snuff Out, and Thoughtseize all make appearances here. These help deal with your opponent’s early threats, thus making your eventual lock more effective when you establish it.
Back In Black?
M1KY’s Mono-Black Midrange deck is certainly innovative. Whether that innovation will translate into success in current Legacy is another question. The current top decks are pretty well-established at the moment, so it could be tricky for a newcomer like this to break through.
Dimir Reanimator, the current top dog of the format, actually seems like a pretty favorable matchup here. A lot of the cards in M1KY’s list, mainly Opposition Agent and Dauthi Voidwalker, are excellent sideboard cards against the strategy. Having them in your mainboard gives you a ton of play against them right out the gate. You can get caught out if they draw their countermagic early. A lot of the time, however, this should be a decent matchup.
Mono-Red Prison is another solid matchup. Other than Wasteland, this deck only runs Swamps as its mana-producing lands. This makes it much less vulnerable to Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon than other decks. This means you can play a fair game against them a lot of the time, which you’ll likely win due to your potent lock pieces. Chains is particularly good against The One Ring, for example.
Mystic Forge Combo is a bit rougher. Since it’s aiming to win through the titular Mystic Forge, it doesn’t actually need to draw or tutor cards a lot of the time to do so. This means your usual lock pieces are less effective, leaving you reliant on early Sinkholes to stop Forge in the first place.
Overall, M1KY’s Mono-Black Midrange deck is surprisingly well-positioned right now. Give it a try if you’re looking for something a little different and have $2,000 to spare for the Chains of Mephistopheles.
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