Howdy folks and welcome to yet another edition of Buying Tabernacles in the Pendrell Vale Region! Or rather, a little bit of Legacy, where we’re not selling real estate (no matter how spam clickbaity the title is). This week we’re talking about Red/Green Lands.
Lands, while having one of the most clever Facebook group names ever (which somehow manages to attract actual Real Estate Agents), is a popular archetype centered around a prison combo hybrid capable of playing both the long and grindy games as well as the short and quick combo games. The primary combo of the deck is centered on making a copy of Dark Depths with Thespian’s Stage to get a 20/20 flying indestructible tentacle monster into play.
In addition, the deck uses mana denial in the form of Wasteland and Ghost Quarter as well as creature control in the form of Maze of Ith and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale to cut down its opponent’s resources.
The Core of the Deck
The biggest card at the core of RG Lands is quite obviously Life from the Loam. Loam is one of the biggest engine pieces of the deck, giving it ways to recur and dig until it can assemble its game win, or just continually grinding through the use of Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows.
This deck is well positioned against creature decks such as Delver (with the recurring removal plus Tabernacle) but can also be decent against various combo decks. However, really fast combo decks can often be hard for Lands to match. Storm in particular is a pretty bad matchup (especially in Game 1) because often the Lands player has no agency in the game, and no interaction with the Storm player’s game plan.
For this deck we did another 5 game set, and we did unfortunately go 1-4 with this list. Partially this was due to variance and some misplays, but also due to matchup lottery (getting paired against Storm twice is rough).
Let’s take a look at our matches.
Match 1 vs Grixis Pyromancer (Record: 2 – 1 WIN)
Match 2 vs TES (Record: 0 -2 LOSS)
Match 3 vs ANT (Record: 0 – 2 LOSS)
Match 4 vs Eldrazi Stompy (Record: 1 – 2 LOSS)
Match 5 vs 4C Loam (Record: 0 – 2 LOSS)
Post Thoughts
In retrospect, a bit more practice with this list before I started my match run would have helped me get into the groove of things; this deck is nowhere near the easiest deck to play, and there are tons of little decisions that can either punish or reward you. I most assuredly punted some plays here and there. Still, the deck is really quite fun and rewarding if you can put the time and effort into it.
Wrapping Up
That’s all the time we’ve got this week folks! Next week we’re gonna be taking a look at something really sweet, a Red/Black Prison list that is really a lot of fun to play.
Joseph is an avid player of eternal Magic formats, including Vintage and Legacy. As a Nic Fit player who will tell anyone who will listen about his deck, Joe spends his time analyzing and playing on Magic Online and various online platforms, while prepping for competitive events. To follow more Joe, check out his Twitter!