As I was sitting thinking about the new and improved "legend rule" that is now upon us, I had a thought. If legendary cards now enter the battlefield, and you get to choose which one remains, there HAD to be a way to exploit that. And I think I may have thought of one....
Here's the idea: play a second copy of a legend you already have in play that pulls another creature back from the graveyard when it enters, and pull back the other copy you just sacced due to the legend rule. When THAT one re-enters, rinse and repeat...until you feel like stopping. There's very little the opponent can do about it.
Okay, that's great, but not exactly a wincon. Similar tricks usually have an infinite lifegain or infinite card draw or something tied in. So what's the trick here?
Infinite damage. In other words, a guaranteed win unless your opponent has a quick kill spell or something else to disrupt it.
Here's how this works, in a nutshell:
Step 1.) Ramp and/or get a card in play that lets you drop expensive creatures onto the battlefield on the cheap. (Sneak Attack and Elvish Piper are the primary ones in the mainboard here.)
Step 2.) Get Bladewing the Risen into play OR your graveyard. Time of Need and Jarad's Orders can help you get him where you need him.
Step 3.) Play another copy of one of those legends, or play Bifurcate if Bladewing is in play, then trigger his ability to fetch a Dragon from your graveyard. It works because the legend rule kicks in before you resolve Bladewing's ability, so you can choose one to sacrifice, and THEN choose a target Dragon from your graveyard to return to play.
That's great, but now we just have an endless loop. What good does THAT do us? Well, that is the fun part.
Check out Pandemonium and Warstorm Surge. Play a creature with one of them on the table, and that creature deals damage to a target player (or creature) equal to its power.
Yeah, see where this is going? Mwaha.
Bladewing #2 enters the battlefield. You sac one, send it to the graveyard, then bring it back when the "return a Dragon from your graveyard to the battlefield" ability triggers. Rinse and repeat, deal damage each time with the red enchantments, game over.
To ensure you live to get there, we've got a few ways to speed things up. As mentioned before, Elvish Piper and/or Sneak Attack can get the expensive Bladewing into play much faster than you could otherwise. Or just ramp up the old-fashioned way with Axebane Guardian and Overgrown Battlement...who also help provide some early protection thanks to their high toughness.
Yes, this is a one-trick pony, and it may not even work. I put Iname as One in there as an emergency backup (works like Bladewing, but only if hard cast from your hand), but still, things have got to come together nicely for this to go off. When it fails, I think it will fail spectacularly. But when it goes off, the look on your opponent's face will surely be priceless.
What do you think of the idea? Anything you can think of to make it better/more reliable? Help me out here, folks, and maybe we can actually make this janky thing work!
Thanks in advance for any comments/reviews. As always, I'm happy to give your comments rep points if they're helpful to me!