Legacy Snack Control-Competitv

by dknight27 on 29 March 2025

Main Deck (60 cards)

Sideboard (0 cards)

No sideboard found.

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Deck Description

Snacking: you'll ruin your appetite and put on a few pounds with small treats here and there

Mono blue control deck that tries for some interesting synergy spread through multiple interactions. Basically trying to force the game into a long grind and using the synergy of multiple engines to turn that tempo into material and that material into a win.

The idea for the deck came with trying to play Kozilek's Command in a mono color deck to take advantage of how sick a card it is and the fact that you can get away with playing it because of some of the colorless land options. In this case, one Ancient Tomb means the Command goes off nice and pretty, and since blue control plays otherwise cheap cards, you can get away with running Ancient Tombs and not bleeding to death.

Command also helps you dig through your deck, which makes the regular blue cantrips/draw mechanics get kicked into overdrive, as it lets you run fewer threats/combo pieces and still have access to them. Ancient Tomb + 2 islands and a Command sees 2 cards you can scry past plus all it's other fun nonsense, that you can use to either store mana for your combo turn/blocking/whatever, remove a threat, or clear some grave. In total, that brings the cantrip count in the deck to 10 with an extra 2 Stock Ups and 3 Tamiyo chances for clue tokens, plus fetching the Undercity Sewers for the scry, so you're going to move through the deck at a quick, cheap, and profitable pace to find what you need, be they answers or action.

The next step was trying to utilize Ancient Tomb for more than just the Command (which is just a nice synergy, not the point of the build), which brought me to the realization that being able to pump for 3 mana on turn 2 meant you could cast Hullbreacher during opponent's endphase then mainphase your own Day's Undoing on turn 3, and that's the ballgame. You've got a full hand, mana to spare, a clock on the board, and opponent has whatever he's managed to field turns 1-2(and/or3). That's a hell of a quick synergy beat made possible by just a little extra mana that costs you a pittance in life (in relevance) and fits in with the Command synergy as well as some other fun twists, such as:
-accelerated Saga gaming (great win condition mixed with great stall tactic)
-hardcasting Force of Will on 4 lands when the game's ground to a halt
-popping a Stock Up for 2 lands
-cracking clues for 1 land (massively helps with Tamiyo)
-playing and activating your artifacts with 1 land
-utilizing Campfire to mitigate life loss and still produce mana
-hardcasting Lorien Revealed on 4 lands (hopefully allowing mana up for counters)
-cheating in Brazen Borrower for 4 lands in a turn
-hardcasting Devastating Tide on 4 lands if you can't miracle it
-pushing Jace in on 3 lands (mana up to counter)

The rest of the build builds off this idea indirectly. Saga is a win condition and a stalling tactic, and fetches answers, blue mana if you need it (Seat of the Synod), and/or your Campfire grind engine that makes absolutely perfect use of unused mana to keep you alive and ticking against decks with a damage clock and helps against decking by a Tamiyo mega draw and/or all the cantrips. Brazen Borrower stores itself so you can pull off your Day's Undoing and not lose it, plus you can bounce something and make opponent lose it (if you've got the mana/tempo), making it a delightful spot removal/damage clock combo. Same with Spellbomb.

Win conditions are also baked into the build in a lovely way, and apart from the single copy of Murktide (which admittedly has some anti-synergy with Day's Undoing), all work as engine pieces as well as wincons, maxing out the synergy like crazy:
-Tamiyo has the draw shenanigans and makes clue tokens that help with Saga tokens
-Hullbreacher is a decent beatstick, especially against an empty field and hand via the combo
-Borrower is a decent beatstick with flying
-Jace fixes problems and builds to a wincon (plus works with miracle for Devastating Tide if push comes to shove), and can bounce a threat that gets eaten by Day's Undoing or just kill tokens
-Saga tokens are going to be 3/3's (hopefully), but get big and bad with Tamiyo clues and Hullbreacher treasures

Thoughts appreciated.

(Note: I'm unsure of running the Dismember because of the potential life loss when stacked with the Ancient Tombs, but I'm currently for it because of the Undercity Sewers and Campfire plus the old 'the critter's gunna hit me for more than 4 anyway' argument)

Deck Tags

  • Legacy
  • Control
  • Competitive
  • Mono Blue

Deck at a Glance

Social Stats

3
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This deck has been viewed 201 times.

Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

049200

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 Snack Control-Competitv

I uhm, I cannot imagine I am saying this but I think this needs more Kozilek's Commands - a misbegotten card I abhor with spite of biblical proportions. Nevertheless, you cannot always rely on countering, blocking, or bouncing and countering opposing threats. I would really enjoy seeing how this plays out, but my instincts tell me more permanent solutions may be required. Wastelands too maybe? Big fan of the idea.

And maybe more commands is stupid? This is not a big mana deck, after all.

2
Posted 03 May 2025 at 18:41

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I'm right there with you, it makes no god damn sense why the card got made. Why on earth would you give the 'color' that pumps out mana better than any other color a utility card that maximizes that mana output better than any other card I've ever seen. Sometimes I think they don't look at their own game when they make cards. Why would they not have a program in place to run potential cards through that would identify obvious synergy so they can mitigate it/avoid OP obvious combos. Oh well.

My thoughts on only running 2 are that you need Ancient Tomb to do it (unlikely to get the other colorless lands stacked early), and that with all the card selection and cantripping, you're going to see one of the two copies relatively quickly anyway. I went back and forth for a while on the lands, as it would be lovely to not have to rely on Ancient Tomb to get the work done, but the life loss from some of the other options left me hesitant. One obvious fix would be to run Mystic Sanctuary so you can reuse one of the copies, which I could run over one of the Undercity Sewers (sorry Dismember). Putting in some Wasteland makes perfect sense, but I didn't know where to fit it (same problem as above) other than to cut a Saga and/or Sink into Stupor (which I don't really like in here anyway because of the bleeding and it's UU that doesn't take advantage of Ancient Tomb). I also thought about Academy Ruins so the Spellbomb loop of doom can happen, and maybe running Expedition Map to abuse with it, which combos perfectly with Saga and Ancient Tomb as well as fixing mana problems with Command.

Lots of work yet to do, without even looking at a sideboard (which I detest doing since I don't actively play in tournaments anymore), but I think the idea retains some merit, even if it has problems. There's so much synergy going on, something has to shake loose at some point.

It also just dawned on me that Ancient Tomb synergizes PERFECTLY with Intuition, which could potentially be worked in here somehow, and would set up the Spellbomb grave loop, Command and Mystic Sanctuary recycling, or some other shenanigans. That might be worth working into a deck of its own (maybe simic Uro?). Food for thought I suppose.

1
Posted 03 May 2025 at 19:32

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Oh, a spicy build! Love it. Haven't seen Kozilek's Command in action, but it seems quite strong and versatile. I feel like two is a good amount of them, but I'd probably try to play something to replay it. You talked of difficult of including Mystic Sanctuary in the deck, but fortunately you kind of have a spot for it already as Seat of Synod doesn't work with Urza's Saga because Seat doesn't have a mana cost and Saga only searches for artifacts with the specific mana cost of {0} or {1}. I'd also love to see Snapcaster Mage, but I haven't seen it a lot in recent years which makes me believe it has sadly been powercrept.

To my untrained eye Devastation Tide, Jace and Campfire seem out of place. Haven't ever seen Devastation Tide in any deck lists and to me it seems extremely clunky. Especially in a deck that already tries to use its cantrips to find the pieces of the combos or shuffle redundant things away. What I have watched of legacy, Jace has seemed slow. I believe it to be better in shells running Counterspell and more permanent removal (not bounce). Another Murktide would probably be a better addition and would turn corner faster when you have stabilised. Campfire seems worse than Shadowspear which can give your constructs trample to push damage better through. You'll almost always have construct or two when you have Shadowspear.

A few minor things:
-Three Spell Pierces feels like a lot. Some number of Dazes or Force of Negations could take their place. Daze would also work nicely with Mystic Sanctuary in a long game.
-Don't know if it would be too dermanding for the mana base, but a Counterspell or two would make the mid and late game better. Although I don't really know how Stern Scolding plays.
-Two Undercity Sewers seems a lot. It theoretically lets you cast Dismember, but having an untapped blue mana more often might just be better.

All in all, love the build. Please, post how it performs when/if you get to play it. Haven't been active with legacy in a few years and much has changed so all of my points might be moot in the post MH3 era. Cheers!

0
Posted Thursday at 22:04

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"Haven't seen Kozilek's Command in action" I have never envied anyone as much you xDD

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Posted Friday at 00:28

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I'm so out of it these days, I missed the Synod/Saga whiff entirely. Whoops.

I'm not active in pro play anymore, and haven't been for a long time at this point. I'm just a theory-enthusiast, and like trying to work outside a meta to see if it's still possible to compete without piggybacking on the bullshit nuclear strategies that overwhelm everything these days.

In regards to Tide, Jace, and Campfire, here was my reasoning:
-Tide has the easy miracle setup, works as a blue nuke (which is probably needed as this deck has very little direct interaction), kills tokens outright, combos with Day's Undoing extremely well, is more affordable with Ancient Tomb if necessary, isn't widely used in the meta, and can be bypassed/shuffled away extremely easily with all the topdecking/shuffling/setup
-Jace is the 'wincon' that's not actually meant to win on his own, he's just a way to actually finish out the game once you pull off the Day's Undoing hand nuke that's a one-of along with Murktide so it's harder to extract/discard/etc. Really, the deck wins once you land the Undoing, I just wanted to make sure it had a way to actually close out the game if opponent didn't scoop on the spot, and since you'll have all the time in the world to field/protect him, that shouldn't be an issue. And again, if you don't need him, all the topdecking/shuffling/setup can hopefully get rid of him for later. I was also hesitant to run more Murktides over just the one, as Undoing gobbles up your grave, so it's not an immediate Undoing then Murktide for the quick clock
-Campfire is my hedged bet against slower matchups and a way to capitalize on all the unused mana that control decks tend to accumulate once the game either reaches the 'draw go' middle game, or when you're bleeding out badly against decks that want you to bleed and Campfire helps mitigate that and still lets you use your Ancient Tombs for actual mana. Plus, since it's fetchable, you can just run the one copy and snag it if needed and otherwise forget about it in 95% of games

That's my rational with those decisions, I'm not sure if they're solid ideas or not.

I went back and forth with Shadowspear, and decided against it mainly because of the 3 rather than 4 Sagas and it's general uselessness (in here) without the Saga gaming token strategy (which this deck CAN do, but doesn't really want to have to). It would certainly help mitigate the lifeloss and would be a much easier equip with Ancient Tombs, so I might be way off base with that line of reasoning.

For Spell Pierce, I probably do need to switch some of it to some free counters, especially while running Stock Up, which I'd very much like to drop turn 2 and still have the shields up for that turn cycle. I'm always warry of running too many Dazes mainboarded cause they eat so much tempo, so I'd probably opt for swapping one Pierce for Force of Negation. That's my initial thought anyway.

I was afraid of Counterspell because of the UU in a deck that wants to play colorless lands, but I could see a copy or two being good topdecks in the middle game. I'll have to Ponder (ha) that one.

Stern Scolding is in there to hopefully shut down the nuisance Delver critters as well as Orcish Bowmasters, Glaring Fleshraker, Solitude, and all the stupid little combo critters that are run in popular decks that all happen to be weenie enough to get scolded.

I probably do need to cut an Undercity Sewers. One copy to fetch into for the Surveil is probably good enough, and that would let me run something that cuts down on mulligans due to slow starts.

Thanks for the feedback, it's greatly appreciated. I'm always trying to find some innovation to squeeze out of overlooked cards and/or combos, and that unfortunately goes hand in hand with overstepping, so it's always nice to have more eyes on an idea.

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Posted yesterday at 00:34

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