Revitalization of Legacy
The Revitalization of Legacy is an unofficial event in the history of Legacy. It is mostly an spontaneous phenomenon that came from the Magic community.
What it is
Due to the format's need for Reserved List cards for deckbuilding - mostly the old dual lands, there has been a difficulty for the entry of new players into the format.
Some would even argue that Legacy was a dying format some years ago and many attributed that to the Reserved List and the old duals.
But with recent printings players have grown increasingly bolder to experiment with strategies and ways to play Legacy without needing Reserved List cards.
The phenomenon happened probably because of the desire to play the format mixed with the budget limitations the average player has.
The result is that players have engaged into innovative deckbuilding in a format that was once seen by some as "unwelcoming" to experimentation.
The reason for that sensation was that (due to the high power level of the decks in the format, the presence of scary turn-1 combos, free counterspells and etc.) players were inclined to think a rogue strategy could not survive in such a high-power meta.
But what was already a growing phenomenon intensified once free spells landed in the Modern meta - most notably Force of Negation.
This broke (in some players) the notion that Reserved List cards are a must, that all land-base has to have old duals and that certain strategies would not survive Force of Will - after all, many strategies were already surviving Force of Negation in Modern.
Decks that contribute to the phenomenon
Essentially, decks that find competitive results and don't require Reserved List cards to attain competitive results are the ones that help the format grow and draw in the players that could not afford Reserved List cards.
Some strategies have been around for a while and have been known to have never needed Reserved List cards:
- Burn
- Death and Taxes
- Mono Blue Show and Tell (also known as Omni-Show)
- Mono-Blue Merfolks
- Titan Post/12-Post
- Affinity/Robots
And other strategies evolved from the "simplification" of existing strategies (usually cutting down the supporting colors) or emerged from sheer experimentation of the community until they became competitive strategies on their own:
- Mono-Red Storm
- Mono-Blue Delver
- Mono-Black Reanimator
- Mono-Black Turbo-Depths
- Mono-Blue/Mono-Green Infect
- Mono-White/Mono-Red Painter
- Belcher
- Oops, All Spells!
- Dredge (Manaless/5-Color Led-less/Mono-Blue)
- Death's Shadow (Mono-Black, Black-Red, Grixis)
- Mono-Red Sneak Attack
- Goblins
- Slivers
- Humans
Through experimentation, the community found that some strategies could survive on their own with only their core color. Whilst before, it was thought that they craved another color to perform competitively.
Innovation through replacement and simplification
It is noticeable that most of the replacements that occur happen in the land-base of the deck and the colors the deck will have access to.
To preserve the competitive aspect of a strategy and its speed, sometimes players opt to exchange - for example - a highly expensive City of Traitors for Sandstone Needle or Ancient Tomb. Such is the case of the evolution of Mono-Red Storm.
In other cases, the change is to simply eliminate supporting colors adjacent to the deck's strategy in order to simplify the land-base. Such is the case of Mono-Black Reanimator and Mono-Blue Show and Tell, for example.
The player's experience
This is an important topic when it comes to consider playing a certain strategy.
Firstly, Mono-Color versions of existing strategies have their limitations. It's a good thing to keep in mind since greatany of the decks that allow new players to join Legacy tend to be Mono-Color decks.
The limitation is: instead of selecting from the total pool of possible competitive choices for a certain deck, the player chooses from a more restricted pool of competitive choices.
This can impact a player's experience if they feel a desire to cast Brainstorm in a Mono-Red Sneak Attack deck.
But if the player doesn't feel like they need to in order to feel accomplished in playing their deck, it isn't an issue.
Notice that the problem won't reside in the power of the deck, but in how the player wants to experience the deck.
Growing bolder
There have been some decklists appearing in MTGTop8 of decks that challenge the need for old duals in competitive play.
This has happened with multiple instances of players not wanting to play Mono-Color versions of their decks and, instead, going along with what would be considered a Modern-style land-base for the deck.
Even established decks like UR Delver have been challenging the notion of old dual lands when most decklists included Steam Vents alongside with Volcanic Islands.
And that is because paying the 2 life for an Island-Mountain ended up being better in the long run than the basic lands that gave way to the shocklands.
In some cases, there have been Reanimator decks running solely on shocklands - and that says a lot since Reanimator is a deck that cares about having life points to pay for Griselbrand.
Living End and Kroxa Control are two rogue decks that have performed well in competitive play and both ran Modern-format lands with no old duals in them.