Spoiler Highlight: Boltwave in Legacy!

Hello, Legacy friends! Another spoiler season for a new set has just started, and, this time, we got Magic Foundations and its supplemental booster set, Foundations Jumpstart. I confess I'm a bit old now and all these sets confused me a bit, even more after they announced Universes Beyond sets will be legal in all Constructed formats. However, now that I made some coffee and actually understand what is going on, we can take a look at everything new that will be coming to Legacy in a few weeks.

We'll start with a bang:

This is, perhaps, the most obvious card for an archetype that I have ever seen since I started writing for Cards Realm: it screams "Burn"! This deck already uses cards less efficient than this spell, so, now that it is here, it will automatically be included in all versions of it. It's only a matter of which card we'll remove to add the 4 copies of Boltwave this deck needs.

Other decks that focus less on burning your opponent's life points will not be that interested in this card for as long as Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are available.

Ok, that's it.

Wait, not so fast.

Legacy, in particular the tabletop version, is not a cheap hobby. I stopped playing MTG in 2012, and, when I returned in 2018, I was shocked when I saw how the cost of certain products increased since then. In the following years, many other cards in this format also became even more expensive. As a result, whenever a new player wants to try out this format, they always ask the same question: is there a "cheap" deck I can build?

Obviously, there is no single answer to this question because each person has a different budget. Decks like Death & Taxes and Merfolk are the most common suggestions because they practically don't use any cards from the Reserved List. However, they still demand some investment because they use cards like Wasteland, Aether Vial, Stoneforge Mystic, or Force of Will. The simplest answer to this question, and unarguably the cheapest competitive deck you can use, is still: Burn.

Let me say this straight away: Burn isn't a great deck, and won't "win you many tournaments, yay!". But the truth is that you'll find many decks like this in Legacy. It's true, they aren't exactly at the top of the tiers, and thus won't win many games. But they can win, and, on a good day, they can, yes, get you a trophy to bring home. If you look at the decks that were at the bottom tiers of the meta when we last analyzed this format, you'll realize many of them get to top 8 quite frequently, even if they're not dominant forces in the format.

The face of the format might still be Magic Online, where budget restrictions can be smaller and a deck like Burn practically disappears, but, in tabletop LGS tournaments, Burn is still very popular. Example: when I analyzed the online data available, I found Burn is 0.2% of the Magic Online meta, but, when I analyzed the numbers from the Brasília circuit (a local tournament I have analyzed since 2022), I found it represented 2.88% of the format. You'll find this percentage in other places as well - that's because tabletop Legacy is more limited due to the card pool available, and many players end up using the most accessible archetypes.

So, I usually say Burn is tabletop Legacy's "litmus test": if your deck can't deal with Bolts and similar cards bringing your life total to zero consistently on turn 4, you need to rethink your strategy and play better answers. Specially because you'll most likely face a Burn deck when you play tournaments.

Burn is the most objective deck in Legacy, but many players still question what type of deck it is. Most of them, as well as many websites, classify it as an Aggro deck. However, a few still argue that it is a combo deck, as the goal is to gather 6 or 7 cards that deal 20 or more damage and throw them at your opponent as fast as possible. The best way to do this is to deal 3 damage for 1 mana, and the first options that come to mind when we hear this are quite straightforward: Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Spike.

After those three, you'll probably come up with more limited options: Rift Bolt forces you to wait a turn, and your opponent can stop it with Vexing Bauble. Skewer the Critics only costs 1 mana if you can activate Spectacle - it seems easy, but it won't always be this easy. After that, your options cost 2 mana and aren't exactly what you want.

Boltwave is a fourth, unconditional 3-damage option that costs 1 mana and should improve this deck even more. The question is which card we'll remove to play it. First, the most expensive damage options we have, like Exquisite Firecraft are definitely the most obvious targets. Among the 1-mana options, Rift Bolt seems the less efficient to me, considering Vexing Bauble has become quite common in the meta.

Speaking of Bauble, its popularity in the metagame is a blessing in disguise for Burn: this new artifact became the most common lock artifact in the format, and this certainly weakens Fireblast. However, if you want to play Bauble, you need to give up one of Burn's biggest enemies in this deck: Chalice of the Void for 1, which is usually a nightmare for this archetype. It simply lost space in Legacy.

This deck's best feature if you're looking for budget decks is its mana base, which only plays basic lands. In a format where a dual land costs an arm and a leg, you can easily understand why this is the most popular budget deck.

There are no secrets in the list above: it plays Goblin Guide, Monastery Swiftspear, and Eidolon of the Great Revel as permanent sources of damage, then the 16 unconditional 3-damage spells that cost 1 mana, and 4 Fireblast, the best Burn finisher since forever.

The last slots are 3 Price of Progress (it used to be 4, but now that Blood Moon is popular, many decks have preferred more basic lands) and conditional 3-damage spells - Skewer the Critics and Rift Bolt.

In Magic: The Gathering, there's an unspoken rule that transcends all formats: when in doubt, there's always Mono Red! Whether it is Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, or Standard, there's always a red deck that can squeeze out a win from other decks by dealing damage directly - they're simply less or more efficient depending on the meta.

In Legacy, that deck is Burn, and it just got a great card. So, get ready to see even more damage being dealt on your tables.

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Thank you for reading, and see you next time!