Legacy Labyrinth (Competitive)

by dknight27 on 31 March 2025

Main Deck (60 cards)

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Deck Description

Labyrinth: "You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one"
-Mikhail Tal

Root Maze might be the most unbelievable card I've seen in this game that has never gotten any serious play or recognition. Slowing down lands AND artifacts is literally ludicrous, even before artifacts became their own mega-deck taking advantage of the monster lands that pump out mana or advantage. Even without the meta-interaction of slowing down every artifact that wants to tap the turn it comes into play for massive advantage (One Ring, Moxes, the Keys, Lotus Petal, etc), it shuts down mega mana accelerants in the two Monolith cards, as well as combo artifacts (Grindstone, Goblin Charbelcher, Isochron Scepter, etc), so those lightspeed artifact decks get the double whammy. They lose their turn 1 double mana land and can't dump their whole hand in a turn. Truly, a glorious interaction.

As for slowing down lands, Maze comes with an extra bit of tomfoolery. The universality of fetchlands in every deck that's not artifact or some stupid combo means that it will take opponent 2 full turns of doing nothing to get access to a single mana by playing a fetch land. The fetch comes in tapped, then the land it fetches comes in tapped. And, if this all happens turn 1, you literally get a minimum of 2 free turns for the low, low price of a one-drop enchantment.

If you're on the play, you get your land (fetch or otherwise), you drop Root Maze. If opponent doesn't have a Force, they're essentially sunk. Best case scenario, opponent drops a mana-producing land (maybe some moxes) and passes. You've got an active land now, and a deck with 25 one-drops, so you drop your second land (which is tapped) and maybe drop a Tamiyo, or Prismatic Ending a Mox, or get your selection going with Ponder/Brainstorm, or (most devious of all), hold up Stifle for the fetchland activation. Or, perhaps you just throw out Wasteland and smile, knowing you've sunk opponent's battleship. Opponent untaps land 1 and either fetches into a tapped card (that you can Stifle) or has to face a full game of always being 2 turns behind you and playing into a barrage of one-drop interaction and cheap engines that make getting off the ground next to impossible.

Root Maze being a one-drop is just silly. It's hard for me to accept that I haven't seen its potential until now, but you live and learn I suppose.

The rest of the deck tries for very cheap Bant good stuff to take advantage of the situation as well as capitalize on a few fun interactions you can engineer.

Life From the Loam is fun anyway, but in a deck that slows down lands it actually gets even better, as you can recycle Wastelands causing true havoc, or just make sure you hit your landdrops every turn and not bleed to death or let opponent combo off needlessly because everything is on ice. This is thrown into maximum overdrive when combined with Intuition, which lets you pitch a Loam, Uro, and whatever tech land you need for 3 mana at instant speed. It sets up your wincon, and TWO engines, and other than counter it or mess with the grave, opponent can't do much about it.

There's also the fun little synergies, like Stifling your own Uro to enter more quickly, or using Karakas to save Uro or Tamiyo from removal or as chump blocks. You can even use Teferi to bounce your own Root Maze if you need, especially with Uro active (who drops lands), letting you get down some much needed untapped lands for the interaction to come. You can always just replay Maze M2 for a single G if you want/need, or you can hold it as Brainstorm fodder once you don't need it anymore.

Feedback appreciated

Deck Tags

  • Legacy
  • Bant
  • Competitive
  • Control

Deck at a Glance

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Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

634008

Deck Format


Legacy

NOTE: Set by owner when deck was made.

Card Legality

  • Not Legal in Standard
  • Not Legal in Modern
  • Not Legal in Vintage
  • Legal in Legacy

Deck discussion for Legacy Labyrinth (Competitive)

Running only 4x Swords to Plowshares seems dubious at best. Also maybe Terminus? Given how Root Maze *probably* plays out.

Now, my favorite card is Smallpox, so Root Maze as a card is right up my alley, but I think it has seen so little play because, in practice, the sort of decks that can spare slots to play it are also the kinds of decks that cannot really capitalize on making the opponent stumble. And ofc the card slows you down just as much. Unlike Smallpox, it is much much harder to build a deck that breaks the symmetry, and much like Smallpox, the main issue you will run into is that yes, your opponent is doing fuck all on low resources, but so are you. And this is not really a problem you need to solve per se, but you do need to minimize it. Pox does this with Liliana of the Veil and Urza's Saga for example.

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Posted 07 April 2025 at 18:42

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I want so desperately to find something overlooked by the masses that just copy and paste the same meta. I've got lots of ideas on how to try to use Maze to do so, but I don't know if it will be what I'm looking for or not yet. The most obvious answer seems to be to stick it in a weenie agro deck (probably white/green) and just smash faces with it. Paired with stuff like Esper Sentinel, it's an engine of doom that you can have on line turn 2 with a big ol smile as you start poking opponent and quickly ramp up to 3-4 damage a turn until you're so far ahead that it doesn't matter anymore. I also really want to experiment with it in a Stasis build, which has always fascinated me anyway.

As for minimizing the lock on you while using it, I am toying around with just running various 2-color builds that don't need to run many fetches so you're up a major amount of tempo, as you're only losing a turn a land instead of 2, and you can max out your cheap-ass stuff. Maybe a GU control build or something like that, I'm still toying around with the idea obviously.

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Posted 10 April 2025 at 19:24

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I think free spells and haymakers might be the way. In legacy, an Up the Beanstalk Simic deck with Murktide Regent and at least 6 forces, cantrips, Tamiyos, and all that shite, could maybe work? I am not sure, but I really like the card (not as much as you tho xD).

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Posted 11 April 2025 at 00:08

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I've been pondering the old Beanstalk quite a bit lately, many ideas in the works on that one.

Do you think Maze could be worked into a Pox build? It already runs green for Loam and denies resources as a 1-drop and you can use it to take advantage of the tempo jump in Pox since you run Mox Diamond and Dark Ritual, so you can get a major jump in tempo and slam the Maze and smile. Like, think how great it would be to do a turn 1 land, Thoughtseize away the counter, drop the Mox and land the Maze. Now you've got a minimum of +3 tempo and you get to see an extra few turns to be able to Pox their land/critter/hand or just immediately follow it up with a Wasteland once they burn through the two turns of fetching.

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Posted 11 April 2025 at 06:15

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It's really hard to say without giving it a whirl whether that could work. Though my experience with pox makes me lean towards a No. The way you lose most of your games with decks like Pox, assuming your deck doesn't just outright fail to function to begin with ofc, is that you hit just the right pressure points, you disrupt them and before you can turn the corner and get them to zero permanents or life points they storm off, or topdeck a The One Ring or Show and Tell in an Omniscience, etc.

Now it could be that Root Maze can really only be good in critical mass disruption decks, like bordering on Stax, or that it needs the sort of home that I described in my first comment, where free spells and extremely heavy hitting threats are used to capitalize on an opponent who is really stumbling with their fetch lands.

Some things that come to mind for the more staxy pathway are:
Spreading Algae + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Tangle Wire??
Patchwork Automaton, Sphere of Resistance type builds

For what it's worth, if the card is playable at all, it's probably so in legacy with how prevalent fetch lands and soul lands are in the format. Looking forward to what sort of nonsense you brew with the card next!

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Posted 12 April 2025 at 00:12

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I'd suggest Amulet of Vigor as a good combo piece with Root Maze to negate it's negative effects on your side of the board.
Also instead of Prismatic Ending I'd go for Stroke of Midnight as it allows you to target anything without restriction at instant speed.

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Posted Thursday at 02:24

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Stroke of Midnight does not exile and cannot be cast for 1 or 2 mana, getting rid of a Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar or an Animate Dead for 1 or 2 mana respectively is often what games will be won or lost by.

Amulet of Vigor is interesting, maybe worth it in a Tangle Wire balls to the wall Root Maze deck

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Posted Friday at 20:34

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I am experimenting with that very thing right now. I'm looking at incorporating Fallow Earth and lots of ways to play it (and other devastating 3 drops) turn 2, so you can potentially do turn 1- drop land into Root Maze, opponent plays tapped land (hopefully fetch) and pass. Turn 2, drop Ancient Tomb tapped and pass, opponent cracks fetch land or untaps single land, plays another tapped land, and either has 1 open land or 2 tapped lands. Turn 3- drop Fallow Earth, play a tapped land, you're at 3 lands (and 4 mana) vs opponent's 1 land and ahead sooooooooooooooo much tempo that the game's over if you draw into anything that does anything to advance a win condition. I am, however, having trouble figuring out what I want that to be, beyond Saga gaming and maybe a Black Vise it can fetch

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Posted yesterday at 04:22

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Plow Under?

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Posted 13 hours ago

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I was pondering that as well. Also Primal Command and Stunted Growth for similar reasons, but I'm unsure if they fit correctly. I'm very unfamiliar with accelerated mana builds (I almost always play fair control with engines), and it's hard to imagine ramping to a 5-drop with GG that I can't just cheat into play with a Dark Ritual and an Ancient Tomb + land that produces black.

I then had a swerve idea to go for that in some sort of maverick deck that uses mana dorks (fixing the ramp and green problem), so perhaps that's where those ideas could fit. You could theoretically get away from the full prison package but still run Maze in there too, as your dorks get around the tap problem.

I'll probably end up trying for both

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Posted 11 hours ago

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