True-Name Nemsis at SCG DFW

note: this was submitted to Star City Games website after winning the event where they normally publish the winner's reports. Cedric told me that he was unable to publish it at the time because they already had enough Legacy content for the week. - Ty (3/10/21)




Regarding My Stoneblade List

My name is Ty Thomason and I won the Legacy Open in Fort Worth. I intended on writing an article about my deck in detail, but the team at StarCityGames.com has already produced several great pieces of analysis of the deck. If you think a professional Magic writer is a real job, just look at the quality that Patrick Chapin, Todd Anderson, and Chris VanMeter have put out in such a short time since my tournament success. I'm definitely out of my league in both writing skill and time to spend on thinking about Magic.

It means a lot to me to have my deck so universally praised by those writers. I think it justifies my win as more than a fluke, but a reflection of conscious decisions I made during the deck building process and during the matches. I want to give a recap of my experience with the deck, as well as address some of the comments that have come up in the articles already written about the deck.

The inspiration for the deck came to me by way of Darin Minard. His two-color Stoneforge deck with four Mishra's Factory is what got me to switch to Stoneblade from Miracles. While I might not agree with all of his card choices, especially when it comes to the right number of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, the major framework for the deck came from him. All I really did was add True-Name Nemesis and update some of the surrounding cards for the resulting environment from that card seeing print.

Playing 24 lands with no Wasteland and four Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a personal preference of mine, but I think more people should do it. I don't like losing to Stifle+Wasteland+Daze, so I make sure I can survive the early game attacks on my mana. I also like playing Jace, and I've never heard a good reason why I shouldn't play four. Having Jace as a major threat in the deck makes it hard for your opponents to completely shut you down. I defeated Joe Bass in the top 8 of the tournament because he drew a bunch of cards like Swords to Plowshares while I was slowly putting the game out of reach with Jace. I would tell anyone thinking about playing less than four Jace to really ask themselves why. Just because it isn't good in every matchup doesn't mean you shouldn't play four. No one is debating the presence of four Swords to Plowshares. And if you are losing because you have too many Jaces stuck in your hand, it's not because you drew the extra Jaces, but because you didn't draw enough land.

The Vendilion Cliques and the Sword of Fire and Ice are actually very relevant versus other True-Name Nemesis because they enable your non-TNN creatures to race, especially Batterskull tokens. The Supreme Verdict is a nice catch all that also kills TNN. I've received many questions about the Celestial Flare however. It's on the short list of cards in these two colors that can deal with opposing True-Names while not also destroying your own. It also can kill a surprisingly relevant number of creatures in Legacy, from Nimble Mongoose to Delver of Secrets to Griselbrand. I only cast it once during my tournament, despite rarely siding it out, and it killed a Goblin Guide after the attack trigger resolved. Shane Remelt, who played the same list to a 14th place finish, actually killed the big black demon in a match! I had Haibing Hu run a list similar to this at a GPT the weekend before the Legacy Open, and I put one Celestial Flare in his sideboard just to see. After witnessing him kill an Etched Champion, and later on a True-Name Nemesis that dared to block, I was sold on at least one. I swapped the Path to Exile that was previously in the main deck with the Celestial Flare, but I'm not entirely sure it was necessary. It probably will be necessary going forward.


The biggest criticism of the deck by others is that it appears to be weak against the unfair decks of the format. This might be true, especially game one, but I think the sideboard does a good enough job. One quick note about Detention Sphere: it is only there for the Show and Tell matchup. Do not bring it in if it is at all possible that it could get Abrupt Decayed or Pyroblasted or Qasali Pridemaged, unless you like getting completely blown out. I brought it in versus the UB Death's Shadow deck because I was fairly certain he couldn't kill it, but against most decks it is too slow or too risky.

The last two cards I cut from the sideboard were Disenchant and Sword of Feast and Famine. I really like the black and green sword in general in legacy since many of the creatures people play are those two colors. I've used it to success at holding back a Griselbrand, or attacking through it to win. It was good in the mirror to win Batterskull mirrors, but with the rise in popularity of True-Name Nemesis it wouldn't be as good, so I left it at home. Disenchant is a reasonable effect that I almost always want one of, but I couldn't make room for it. I thought Manriki Gusari would have a bigger impact in the matchups where I wanted it.

I played the trial on Saturday afternoon after I dropped from the Standard Open. In the trial I defeated Belcher, Goblins, and Painter Servant, and lost an incredibly close and complex match to Joe Lossett playing Miracles that involved some of the best games of Legacy I've been a part of in a long time. I did get fairly lucky in matchups during the Open. My pairings by round were UWr Miracles (win 2-0), UWr Delver (win 2-1), Burn (win 2-1), UWr Delver (win 2-0), Welder/Metalwork.dec (win 2-0), UWr Miracles (win 2-0 vs Joe Bass), UB Death's Shadow (win 2-0), Merfolk (ID), Storm (ID), UWr Miracles (win 2-1 vs Joe Bass), UB Death's Shadow (win 2-0), and Storm (win 2-1). The hardest matches were against Burn and the finals against Storm. Who knows, maybe if I had played against more Show and Tell and Reanimator I might not be writing this article right now!

If I was going to play in Grand Prix DC, I would definitely be playing this list or a variation of it. I probably should go to the GP anyway, maybe I'll make it on a last minute flight. I'm in an awkward position where I need PWPs to have byes for next season, but I can't play in PTQs because I've already qualified and since I qualified at a GP, I don't get the nice 1000 point bonus that PTQ winners get.

There are too many people to thank individually for my success, but I would like to give special props to the Asgard Games Legacy crew, especially Simon Christie, and to my usual partners in crime for deck construction Will Lowry and Casual Chad.

Thanks for reading.

Ty Thomason