r/MTGLegacy

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/banned-and-restricted-may-18-2026

>!Undercity Informer is banned!<

With the recent BNR update, we released a bit early this week. We took some time to talk about a local 1k we played in before diving into the BnR and its effect on legacy and modern. If you'd like to skip to the BNR talk we included timestamps. As always, any and all listens/comments/shares are very much appreciated.

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The BCDL Legacy Open 5 weekend is happening August 22^(nd) and 23^(rd) at the Warp Gate in Columbus, Ohio. Event sign up goes live Wednesday 5/20 at 8 pm EST at the links below. Full details can be found on the pages below or reach out to Rob on Twitter at bcdlegacy. All events proxy and gold border friendly!

Legacy Open 5 Weekend Event Pages

8/22 Main Event https://topdeck.gg/event/buffalo-chicken-dip-legacy-open-5

8/23 Legacy https://topdeck.gg/event/bcdl-legacy-open-5-sunday-legacy

8/23 Premodern https://topdeck.gg/event/bcdl-legacy-open-5-sunday-premodern

Weekly and monthly Legacy events in Panama City, FL. https://topdeck.gg/floridalegacyclub

When it comes to decks in Legacy, it seems like the Mono Black Pox variant of Pox has the most amount of trouble finding its own identity in Legacy, we see this among the decklists people play which are often shown on websites like MTGTop8 and MTGGoldfish. I have found that many lists have too many differences, this is a sign the deck is unsure what it wants. There are usually a lot of deck building issues among these lists, but I think that often comes down to how people want Pox to look like vs what is practical for competitive play. I don't think Pox as a competitive deck is locked behind a paywall of Mox Diamonds, is the BG Loam Pox deck functionally superior? Yes, I am willing to credit the deck for that, but is it the only way to compete with Pox? I think absolutely not. When it comes to competitive play my bar for tournament viability is if the deck can remain mostly stable in the Legacy environment at a MTGO League level at the minimum, I say from my point of view and select others who have given the deck on there a chance that deck is competitive in some meaningful capacity. Is it a deck I would sell off to people as a credible play for Eternal Weekend? No, but I would think not every Legacy player needs to play at the absolute highest level of competition within their environment. It's not impossible, I have shown Mono Black Pox top a couple major Legacy events that were less than Eternal Weekend with a few hundreds of players. It's possible, its just very unlikely.

Mono Black Pox is often ignored when it comes to optimization, this is because the deck is not the best way to play Pox, but there is definitely ways to play Mono Black Pox competitively minded vs a solely for fun mindset. Let's assume the player is locked out of Mox Diamonds, what is the best thing they can do which is still within the realm of Pox? For most serious players pricing of cards is a non-issue, they will find ways to attain Mox Diamonds through any means necessary, but not everyone has the same amount of luck and are locked into budget decks and Mono Black Pox is a very low cost and affordable in comparison to its green partner. One of different features of Mono Black Pox is Dark Ritual over Mox Diamond as a Mana accelerant, to capitalize off this. Mono Black Pox will run more 3 mana cards than BG Loam to increase the odds of a payoff and unlike BG, this opens the door to 4 mana cards as well, but aren't always ran because most payoffs for 4 aren't that great. From a competitive point of view, the biggest fear is casting Ritual into a pay off and having it immediately countered, this can sometimes be you -2 for their -1. When most decks using Rituals often feed into a combo win if it resolves, the payoff is not guaranteed to win you the game, but from my experience Mono Black Pox without rituals is just worse, its the one card outside of discard that helps your fair deck keep some amount of pace for select combos.

I would like to address what I think is wrong with the average Mono Black Pox list, a good chunk of the players feels the need of slotting in historical fun of cards that seem like they could be good in paper, but end up being sub-optimal in actual practice. What are wrong with these fun ofs? These cards thrived in a timeline where Legacy wasn't all about Mana efficiency, it is hard to cast these cards in the ideal situation because often the opponent just deploys a creature like Tamiyo that often invalidates any impact that these cards attempt to induce and these cards include, but aren't limited to Hymn to Tourach, Sinkhole, etc. What is wrong with these cards? They are generally only impactful in a winning position or a neutral board state as they don't interact with the problem at hand which is Tamiyo which is a one mana card advantage engine neutralizing the impact of your 2 drops by building clues. When you oversaturate your decklist with these cards that are only impactful in specific situation (I seen deck lists with 4 ofs for both), you flood out in dead draws the moment an opponent gets a card advantage producing card into play since they don't win you the game and they don't address the permanent in play. A lot of fun ofs are either one for ones or unimpressive two for ones in a format full of two for one Flowstates.

What can Pox do to maintain tournament playable status? I think one of many ways is to also know how other decks work, if Pox is running too many unique cards that other decks are not, there is a likelihood that there is something wrong within the construction of the deck and the player doesn't realize it since they aren't playing the deck enough. If black decks sometimes get identified with something like Barrowgoyf, there is a good chance Pox should be on it also given that BG Loam Pox plays the card despite the nonbo with Smallpox. The card is not only around the busted power level of Legacy, it is also a Ritual payoff that Pox fuels the stats of the deck well. When looking at other deck lists, I also see various issues among the lists, they could be lists skimping out on lands because the player wants more spells, but that can be a disaster long term, Pox self taxes its own mana base and all those fancy spells mean nothing when there isn't the right mathematical amount of land drops to suffice so between the self-mana taxing properties of Pox and lack of one mana cantrips, Pox should be running more land then your average Legacy deck. The lack of one mana removal can be bad too when the best decks involve one mana creatures, Daze, and Wasteland. Mana sinks are also a vital part of Pox in my opinion to ensure you have something productive every turn when casting spells isn't available, Urza's Saga, Ripples of Undeath, Castle Locthwain, etc.

* Here is an example in what I perceive as a well-rounded deck list: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7785256#paper *

*The deck has been tested and has achieved good results more so than bad. 26 Lands may seem like a lot to those not experienced in Legacy, but the BG Loam Pox deck already normalizes 25-26 lands, the deck has 4 Smallpox and 3 Saga that taxes its own mana. If you flood out mana, I ensured the deck had mana sinks to adapt to mid to late game mana floods. 4 Eumidian Hatchery, Hogaak, and Currency Converter help ensure the deck can cast Smallpox at a profitable gain. The one of Ghost Quarter provides more Hatchery consistency. The 4 one drop removal ensures you have timely removal and can play vs Daze. There are win condition essentials like Bowmasters, Barrowgoyf, and Urza's Saga. The Saga line covers a lot of scenarios when tutoring on demand. There are 4 main deck flipped Tamiyo outs and the Planeswalkers to help control games with by actively disrupting every turn. The sideboard was constructed with blind meta in mind, I went with cards that address tempo, go wide board states, big mana, combo, graveyard interactions, etc. When unsure about Pox, I hope you consider my lists, I would say with confidence I am one of the more active Mono Black Pox players and do whatever I can to keep them up to date. The list is customizable if you think there are a lot of pure combo decks, you can cut something like a one drop removal for Inquisition of Kozilek to have a near 50% rate of opening turn one discard.

*The status of Karn Pox, I am currently more positive than negative with this composition also, but it does have more weaknesses like it doesn't offer much if the deck is being rushed early and the Plan B Karn Pivot can be hard to utilize if you don't have Legacy experience. I decided to showcase the Barrowgoyf Pox list that will likely yield better results for the average Legacy player. The Karn Pox deck also struggles knowing what it wants in the sideboard due to select Karn targets limiting it. I am by no means the only way to go about Mono Black Pox, but at least these lists were tested in hundreds to thousands of matches to improve them.

*The status of Slasher Pox variants, I have done some amount of testing with the card in events and was left mostly unimpressive. The creature looks mid at most in actual practice, Smallpoxing it means you wait two turns to attack again, but sometimes two turns is all the opponent needs. Its a cool card when there are pure combo decks being played, the damage output is severe and it trades favorably vs Barrowgoyf and beats Pox mirros, but the few things it thrives at Barrowgoyf either almost does just as good or exceedingly better. I wanted them to work, but the synergy with Slasher is mid at most when other decks with synergy equate to something busted.

Hello gamers, I recently have picked up cards to play maverick as my frist legacy deck (probably a hard choice but hey I like picking one deck and playing it) I need resources and recommendations I have a decklist that I will post i based it off of some of the decks of mtg top 8. Any help will be appreciated as I start learning the format.

https://moxfield.com/decks/j5jd5ql4zUiwVCIvrCZm9Q