Four-color decks have been around for a long time in Legacy and have gone through many variations. There is, of course, the original Czech Pile, created by the Czech player Thomas Mar, which is simply just a pile of the best cards in Legacy put together. Since the creation of that deck, Legacy players across the world have fine-tuned it for all combinations of colors, trying to create the best pile of cards in Legacy.
At the beginning of March this year, four-color decks took quite a beating when Expressive Iteration was banned in Legacy. Iteration was very helpful in smoothing out the deck’s draws and ensuring that the deck found all the colors it needed while also finding interaction. With Iteration gone, four-color decks slipped quietly out of the meta for several weeks.
Thankfully, this did not last long. As with most things, Magic players adapted and overcame the obstacle, and four-color control returned with a vengeance. Famous Legacy all-star Anuraag Das, otherwise known as Anzidmtg, put together a new build of the deck and brought it to a top-eight finish in the MTGO Legacy Challenge a couple of weeks ago. Let’s take a look at the changes he made to get the deck back into the meta!
New Additions
The first major update that has to be pointed out is that this is now an 80-card Yorion deck. While starting every game with an eighth card is a powerful effect, four-color control has not always wanted or needed this to be successful. The drawback of playing 80 cards was a hazard for creating a consistent deck with a consistent plan, and Yorion was often just a 4/5 flier for eight mana, which is not exactly the most powerful thing in Legacy.
However, as we learned with the Modern four-color deck that used to be the boogeyman of the format, when Yorion can come down in the late-game and flicker cards with enter-the-battlefield abilities, Yorion becomes an end-game bomb. This is the exact reason why Yorion has been added to four-color control in Legacy, as the deck has begun to take a different approach to winning its games.
The change in strategy for four-color control comes from a brand new addition to Legacy that has quickly been seeing more and more play. Staff of the Storyteller may seem like it is not quite at the same power level as most other Legacy cards, but this can be a game-changer in the right deck.
At face value, Staff of the Storyteller makes you a 1/1 spirit with flying and draws you a card for three mana. Admittedly, this is not the most powerful effect in Legacy. However, when you have multiple creature tokens entering the battlefield and start drawing an additional card every turn, this can grind away your opponent until you’re left with seven cards in hand and a board full of creature tokens.
To do this, we need cards that create powerful creature tokens and help us maintain control of the board state and push forward our strategy. This is done with the cards Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes.
It is no surprise that Fable of the Mirror-Breaker has entered into the Legacy meta, since it has already found a place in every other format. If you play Staff of the Storyteller on turn two, followed by Fable on turn three, the 2/2 goblin shaman token will immediately put another story counter on the Staff.
Then Fable allows you to rummage two cards away, and then the third chapter allows you to keep making creature tokens, which keeps putting story counters on the Staff. These two cards together are an absolute value train, and I’m surprised we didn’t see this sooner.
Minsc & Boo has a very similar interaction with the Staff. Not only do you get an absolutely busted planeswalker that both attacks your opponent’s life total and draws you cards, but Minsc & Boo creates a creature token during every one of your upkeeps.
Usually, if you already have a Boo token, you choose not to create a new one, as you will have to sacrifice one to the legend rule, but with Staff in play, it’s much different. Even if you already have a 7/7 hamster in play, you can choose to create a 1/1 token, which will trigger your Staff, and then sacrifice the 1/1. This gives you an extra card every single turn with the Staff and can help to quickly end the game.
While this is powerful, it gets even better once you add Yorion into this mix. Imagine that you have successfully got the Staff, Fable, and Minsc & Boo in play and are drawing cards and making creature tokens. Now imagine that you put Yorion in your hand and cast it, flickering all three cards.
When those cards come back into play, you get another 1/1 spirit, a 2/2 goblin shaman, and another 1/1 hamster, and you put three story counters on your Staff. If you weren’t already winning, now you’re even farther ahead and have a 4/5 flier in play. Once this deck starts doing its thing, it doesn’t take long for the game to spiral out of your opponent’s control.
The Shell
Outside of these new cards, the rest of the deck looks just like every other four-color control deck out there. You have card draw, counterspells, and removal, the three things you need to be a control deck in Legacy. All the regular cards you expect to see in a Legacy deck are here, such as Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, and Swords to Plowshares. However, there are a couple of cards that aren’t as widely seen, and they were added for good reason.
The first card that isn’t always included in four-color control decks is Terminus. Terminus used to be one of the most played cards in Legacy when Miracles was a tier-one deck, but since then, it has only been a one-of in some decks. However, now that this deck revolves around creature tokens, it has now found a place once again.
This deck plays four copies of Terminus and for good reason. Unlike other builds of four-color control, this deck doesn’t care if all of its creatures get put on the bottom of the library since they are all tokens.
Being able to cast Terminus and immediately get your hamster token back with Minsc & Boo or casting Yorion and flickering your permanents to get back your creature tokens is terrific. You can also play your Uro and put it into the graveyard, wait until you can Terminus, and immediately escape Uro from your graveyard.
Another card that doesn’t always see a lot of play in four-color control is Narset, Parter of Veils, of which there are three copies. It is a very bad day when you minus Narset and miss on a noncreature, nonland card, but with this deck, it’s improbable.
The only creature in the deck is four copies of Uro, so altogether, there are only 34 cards that this doesn’t pick up. That means that over 50% of the deck is noncreature and nonland, so the likelihood of getting a card with Narset is very high.
You will be miles ahead of your opponent if you can activate Narset twice, get two cards, and keep her on the battlefield. Stopping your opponent from drawing extra cards helps to keep you ahead of them, and if you can find a Staff of the Storyteller with Narset, you will quickly have more cards in hand.
Final Thoughts
Earlier this year, I assembled my first Legacy four-color control deck and was very excited to start playing it at events. When Iteration got banned, I was sent quickly back to the drawing board and have been trying to figure out a new strategy for getting this deck into the top tiers.
As an avid fan of Anuraag Das, I was overjoyed to see him bring this deck to the top of a Legacy Challenge. The ability to accrue incremental value over time and then overwhelm your opponents is what draws me to this deck, and I love this take on it. I was a big fan of Yorion when it was legal in Modern, and I am thrilled to continue playing it in a format I love.
Due to the combination of dual lands and fetchlands, I think it’s pretty clear that four-color will always be a viable archetype in Legacy. Being able to play every good card in a format has been a strong strategy throughout Magic’s history, as also seen with the Modern four-color control deck that caused the ban of Yorion in Modern.
As new cards get added to the format, this deck will continue to improve, especially if Wizards keeps printing Commander cards without thinking of the Legacy implications. Even when a card gets banned from this deck, ten more powerful spells are ready to fill the slot, making this deck impervious to bannings.
I will try out this build and compare it to the 60-card version I have been on, but we’ll have to see if I adopt the plan fully. While I love Yorion, and I appreciate this deck's raw power, I don’t love playing with 80 cards in my deck in paper. Shuffling 80 double-sleeved cards is a nightmare, especially when you have to fetch 20 times in a game!
You can find the full decklist here.
Comments