Legacy received a well-deserved shake-up in March with the banning of White Plume Adventurer. After months of mono-white Initiative terrorizing the Legacy meta, a significant piece of the deck was finally removed from legal play, allowing other strategies to emerge from their hiding places. If you are new to Legacy and missed out on the era of mono-white Initiative, you can read my article on it here!
However, Initiative is not dead in Legacy! White Plume Adventurer may have been a powerful card, but many cards in Legacy still contain the Initiative keyword. Some players tried to make the most of Seasoned Dungeoneer, while others switched tactics completely.
Not long after the ban, a Red-Green version of Initiative emerged, and it has proven itself to be another tier-one contender. This version functions similarly to the mono-white version, except this version gets to play all of the most powerful Red and Green cards. Let’s examine how Initiative has adapted to this new Legacy field!
The Initiative Cards
Legacy players can’t play White Plume Adventurer anymore, and sometimes Seasoned Dungeoneer just isn’t enough. So why have players begun moving toward the Gruul colors? Like in the mono-white version, the RG version of Initiative also hosts two powerful creatures that grant the player the Initiative.
The first card shouldn’t be a complete stranger to most Legacy players, as it was sometimes played in a Boros shell or a mono-red build during the White Plume Adventurer era of Legacy. Caves of Chaos Adventurer may have very vanilla stats, but once again, since it gives you the Initiative, it’s an absolute powerhouse.
A 5/3 creature for four mana may seem weak in Legacy, but a couple of things about this card make it strong in this deck. The first is that it gives you the Initiative. If you aren’t aware of why the Initiative is good, you can read about it in my last article about Initiative in Legacy, which can be found here.
The second reason is not very intuitive, and that is that Caves of Chaos Adventurer has trample. This is normally not that impressive, as getting through a couple of points of damage isn’t a very powerful ability, especially for a five-power creature. But remember, if our opponent gets the Initiative, the only way to get it back is to deal combat damage to our opponent.
If our opponent can get a couple of chump blockers, getting the Initiative back could be a huge problem. However, all we have to do is one damage to get it back. Caves of Chaos Adventurer can trample over your opponent's chump blockers, making it harder for your opponent to keep the Initiative.
The third reason Caves of Chaos Adventurer is excellent is its attack trigger. If you don’t read carefully, you might think this only matters when you’ve completed a dungeon, but read it again. You can play the exiled card for free if you’ve completed a dungeon. But if you haven’t completed the dungeon, you can still play the card for its regular mana cost.
This additional card advantage is huge for this deck. Since it is “play” and not “cast,” this also works for lands you exile. Getting a free land or spell each turn can put you way ahead of your opponent, and combined with the additional advantage of the Initiative, you will quickly leave your opponent in the dust.
While Caves of Chaos Adventurer is very powerful, the second Initiative card is a little lackluster, comparatively. Undermountain Adventurer is powerful because it grants you the Initiative. Vigilance can be helpful, as it allows you to attack your opponent to gain the Initiative and block to keep it, but that’s about it.
You can almost treat Undermountain Adventurer’s activated ability like it doesn’t exist in most cases. Yes, sometimes being able to tap it for two mana will be helpful, but with the most expensive card in the deck being only five mana, this ability will go unused. The only reason you might be excited to make six green mana is to cast an enormous Shatterskull Smashing, but that’s about it.
What fast mana do we get to use?
Most of the fast mana will be familiar since it was also used in the mono-white version. The land package is almost identical, using Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors as Sol Ring lands. However, since this is a two-color deck, the mana base can’t be as greedy as the mono-white mana base. Instead of the full play set, only six Sol Ring lands are run, usually with only two copies of City of Traitors.
Chrome Mox should be another familiar face to Legacy Initiative players. Pitching your extra cards to get Initiative a turn earlier is usually the best thing to do, especially since the Undercity's first room helps refill your hand. Some players may notice that, unlike the mono-white version, this version of the deck doesn’t run Lotus Petal.
The reason for cutting Lotus Petal is that the deck can easily replace it with arguably better cards. So far, Wizards of the Coast has printed two cards that both allow you to exile it from your hand to add a mana to your mana pool. Luckily, one of these cards is green, while the other is red.
Elvish and Simian Spirit Guide serve the same exact purpose in this deck: to get out your Initiative creatures faster. However, unlike Lotus Petal, The Spirit Guides are also creatures and have been known to be hard cast in dire situations to gain the Initiative from an opponent or protect your Initiative.
What else makes this deck so powerful?
This is where the fun begins; talking about all the absolutely busted cards that we get to run in this deck. In recent years, Wizards of the Coast has been pushing the power level of many cards, namely red and green cards. This deck gets to run most of the powerful new additions that Magic has received.
I’m going to start out with my favorite, since the card is just so sweet. While Minsc & Boo, Timeless Hero was designed for Commander, it has done quite a number on Legacy as well. The fact that we get to play this absolutely busted card alongside an absolutely busted ability like the Initiative is absurd.
The turn Minsc & Boo comes out, we immediately can make a 4/4 Hamster with trample and haste. On the next turn, we can either turn it into a 7/7 or throw it at something, dealing four damage and drawing four cards. And if our opponent manages to kill Boo? We get to make another one on every single one of our upkeeps.
Minsc & Boo is one of those cards, similar to Initiative, where if we get it onto the battlefield, the amount of card advantage we get from it will quickly overwhelm our opponent. Minsc & Boo also works perfectly with Initiative, creating a creature every turn that can immediately attack our opponent and trample over their creatures to steal the Initiative. I get excited every time Minsc & Boo is added to a new deck, and this is no exception.
The next card that recently has been a multi-format all-star is Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. If you need an explanation of what this card does or why it’s good, you clearly haven’t played Standard, Historic, Explorer, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, or Commander in the past year. This Saga has seen play in every format that it is legal in, and it is no wonder.
While Fable is powerful for all the reasons we already know, it has an additional purpose in Initiative that makes it even better. Sometimes when playing Initiative, you have the problem of your opponent gaining the Initiative, and you can’t get through their blockers to take it back. When Fable flips into the Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, that is no longer a problem.
Simply activate the Reflection to copy your Caves of Chaos Adventurer or your Undermountain Adventurer, and the token will give you back the Initiative upon entering the battlefield. Not only does this get you the Initiative back, but it also can push you through the Undercity even faster, finishing the dungeon and gaining you monumental value.
If you get two Reflections of Kiki-Jiki out, you can do the end-of-turn trick where you make tons of Reflections and then, on your turn, use them all to make tons of copies of Caves of Chaos Adventurer, triggering the Initiative every time. Then, you swing with all your copies and exile a bunch of cards off the top of your library, all of which you can play. If you believe in overkill, this is a feat to achieve.
Fury is the third powerful card you get to play in this deck, which also needs no introductions. A modern all-star, Fury can easily be played in this deck and allows you to clear the board of potential attackers and blockers, protecting the Initiative. There are a plethora of red cards to pitch to Fury, and you can also pitch Fury to your Chrome Moxes.
If you can hard cast a Fury, it is a tough creature for your opponent to block repeatedly, especially if you can put two counters on it with the Forge room of the Undercity. Fury can wipe your opponent’s board and quickly close out the game with combat damage, which is exactly what this deck needs.
Because the deck only contains two green cards that we are actually casting (Minsc & Boo and Undermountain Adventurer), it is also a safe Blood Moon deck. Most of these Initiative Decks are running some combination of Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon, which can easily be cast on turn one to turn off decks relying on fetch lands or dual land mana bases.
While the Initiative deck only runs two Forests, it can still generate green mana with Chrome Mox and Elvish Spirit Guide, and the deck also runs green cards that can be cast for free, such as Once Upon a Time. Once Upon a Time can allow us to find our Initiative creatures or Sol Ring lands, depending on which we are missing.
The rest of the deck is pretty stock to most Initiative decks. It runs a playset of Chalice of the Void since the deck runs no one-drops in the main deck. Sometimes the deck also plays Trinisphere for the same reason. There is usually a playset of Cavern of Souls to ensure our Initiative creatures successfully make it onto the battlefield.
Final Thoughts
As I predicted in my last Legacy article about Cephalid Breakfast (found here), Initiative is far from dead. Initiative players did exactly what I thought they would and pivoted into different colors. While the strategy may have been hurt slightly by moving from a mono-color deck to a two-color deck, I believe the addition of other powerful cards like Minsc & Boo and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker have kept this deck on the same power level.
While the RG version hasn’t been as popular as the mono-white version, I’m not sure that is because of the power level. I think that when White Plume Adventurer got banned, that gave permission for a lot of Legacy players to go back to their pet decks. Mono-white Initiative was a very powerful deck, but it got so much attention because everybody was either playing it or Delver, so it always got high representation.
If you loved mono-white Initiative and are bummed that it is no longer the powerhouse it was, you should try out this RG version. As long as the Initiative keyword is printed on a Legacy legal card, it will always be a part of the format. I think the only way Initiative isn’t a tier-one deck is if Wizards bans every Initiative card with a mana value of less than five.
If you hated the mono-white Initiative strategy and are glad it is gone, you likely won’t love this deck. However, aside from the power level, I think some players hated mono-white Initiative just because it was absolutely everywhere. Now that it is less prevalent, now might be a good time to try it out!
I also recommend this deck to mono-red prison players. While the mono-white version played similarly to a Death & Taxes deck, the RG version plays very similarly to mono-red prison, especially with the use of Blood Moon. If you enjoy permanently mana-screwing your opponent on turn one, this might be the deck for you!
Whether or not this is the most played deck in the format, Initiative should always be respected as an archetype, whatever color it is. If you hate Initiative decks, rejoice that you don’t have to play it five times in a row every Legacy League. If you love Initiative decks, rejoice that you still have the option to play them!
You can also find the deck list here.
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