Wacky Wednesdays: Legacy Edition

Welcome back everyone.  As promised at the end of my last article, today I will be discussing a deck that caught my eye back in July.  I was watching a Legacy open, seeing the usual slew of powerful blue spells fly around, when this appeared on camera.  All I can say is, it was beautiful.

Before we begin, I did not create this deck. That credit goes to Chris Wolfmeyer.  I merely witnessed it in action and felt the need to share what I saw.  With that in mind, behold Leylines.

Leylines by Chris Wolfmeyer

90th at StarCityGames Legacy Open, 27 July 2014

Land x2 City of Brass x4 Mana Confluence x4 Serra's Sanctum x1 Tree of Tales Artifacts x1 Helm of Obedience x4 Serum Powder

Other Spells x4 Leyline of Anticipation x4 Leyline of Lifeforce x4 Leyline of Punishment x4 Leyline of Sanctity x3 Leyline of the Meek x4 Leyline of the Void x4 Leyline of Vitality x4 Opalescence x4 Crop Rotation x3 Suppression Field x4 Enlightened Tutor x2 Idyllic Tutor

At first glance, this seems like a terrible deck.  However, the longer one looks at it, the more one realizes that this deck is full of little synergies that allow it to function and potentially take down its opponents on the first turn. 

Besides the myriad of leylines, the two cards this deck must absolutely hit in order to function are a copy of Serra's Sanctum and a copy of Opalescence.  Imagine this scenario if you will:

Your opening hand is 4-5 leylines of any type, Serra's Sanctum and a copy of Opalescence.
You are on the play and begin the game with the leylines in play.

You play the sanctum and tap it for enough to play Opalescence.

Because each of the leylines have been under your control since before your last upkeep none of them have summoning sickness!

If you started with 5 in play, attack you opponent for 20.  They lost before they ever had a turn.

  

The rest of the deck is composed of a back-up plan and ways to get the necessary combo pieces into you hand quickly.  Have you noticed the inclusion of a single Tree of Tales?  Think that is odd?  I certainly did until I realized that you can tutor for the land using Enlightened Tutor and sacrifice it to Crop Rotation to get Serra's Sanctum.

    

Enlightened Tutor Tutor can find both Opalescence and Helm of Obedience.  What's the Helm for you ask?  Well, it is the back up plan I mentioned earlier.  I happens to combo quite nicely with Leyline of the Void.  With both the Helm and Leyline in play, you can activate the Helm's ability, but since the milled cards never hit the graveyard, the Helm keeps on milling until your opponent has no deck.

Serum Powder is in the deck to allow essentially "free" mulligans.  I you end up with a terrible opening hand (as is very possible with a deck with only 11 lands) and a Serum Powder, you can exile it as long as you aren't exile all of a single combo piece and try again.  I witnessed Chris do this three times, exiling 21 cards, and go on to win the game.

The final thing I want to mention about this deck before I go is the natural defenses it had against many decks in Legacy.  By simply playing leylines, this deck can shut down decks like Burn (Leyline of Sanctity) and Reanimator (Leyline of the Void).

Well, that's all for this month.  If you enjoyed this deck, let me know in the comments down below and be sure to join me next month as I have another wacky alternate win con to show off!