Is it a Good Time for Fast Combo in Legacy?
This current Legacy format has seen an emergence of powerful and consistent non-Blue decks to a degree that I haven’t seen in recent years. Decks like Mono-Red Prison, Dark Depths (both Turbo, or otherwise), Lands, Death and Taxes, Eldrazi, and Elves have all been putting up a fair amount of results recently, and this is no accident. While some of these decks have gotten new printings that have powered up their respective archetypes (like Chandra, Torch of Defiance in Mono-Red and the Eldrazi Preconstructed deck being printed), these decks have all risen to prominence because they can prey on the Blue-infested metagame. Decks like this have always existed, and have occasionally gone to extremes just to demolish the Blue Principle of Legacy (Sylvan Plug, for instance). In the past, though, these decks have always lacked some level of consistency and power that would keep them from reaching the top of the format.
Now, though, with new cards and a very focused top of the metagame (Public enemies #1 and #2 being 3-4 color decks with minimal basic lands), these decks can tune very specifically to gain a significant edge in those matchups. In turn, the Blue decks can adapt to an increased presence of these decks. While there are a lot of options for adapting Blue decklists to a hateful metagame, there is one other option which people have been making to take advantage of this metagame: Goblin Charbelcher.
First, a decklist from the MKM Series 2018 Legacy event.
I have personally seen many more Belcher decks recently than ever before, and I think this trend is directly related to it. Even more so, I think it’s a very logical and good decision for players to make in this metagame. Belcher has always gotten a lot of hate from Legacy players. While a turn 1 kill is very appealing, the fact that it almost always folds to a single Force of Will usually makes it a poor choice in Legacy. 60-80% of the decks that get played in this format play Force of Will, and if you ever have to take the chance at a turn 2 or 3 kill, the door is opening to so many other pieces of disruption. However, Belcher is the perfect deck to answer a bunch of non-blue decks that are preying on the predicted Legacy metagame. Never having to pass the “Force of Will Test” makes these matchups relatively easy, and Belcher is able to consistently present a kill on the first turn or 2 of the game. While some of these decks have disruptive pieces which can present a problem, like Thorn of Amethyst, they do need to have a turn before that’s a problem.
While the growing trend of powerful non-blue decks does make this deck more appealing, there are now and always going to be a lot of Blue decks that exist. Grixis Delver is still by far the most popular deck in the format, and Czech Pile and Miracles are next in line. This is a risk that will always exist when choosing this deck, but based on metagame percentages alone, I don’t think there has been a better time to choose this deck.
On top of this, Belcher does play Empty the Warrens, which can go a long way towards playing through a Force of Will. One options is legitimately to hope one’s opponent makes a poor judgment call and you can get an Empty on the stack before a Force is cast.The other is to sequencing and time spells to make it so that a Force of Will has to be cast prematurely, thus not losing many resources in the exchange.In addition, they don’t always have a Force of Will, so sometimes you will even beat a blue deck by going off before they know what hits them. However, Blue decks will always be a problem for this deck, despite all of this, and things don’t really get much better in the sideboard games. Xantid Swarm and Guttural Response are good cards, but having to face 2x as much countermagic is still a huge issue.
This is all to say that if the metagame was entirely flooded by blue decks, I most certainly would not be advising this choice, even if the deck has some solid anti-blue options. However, Legacy doesn’t quite look like that right now, and non-blue decks are more popular than ever. While I would personally feel comfortable at the moment taking this deck to an event, it might not be right in every metagame. Metagame numbers as presented by a website don’t accurately represent what people actually play. A local 1k might have 31 blue decks and you playing Charbelcher, so that would not be a good choice. But in a SCG Open or a GP right now, this actually seems like a great choice. In the early rounds, you might be able to play against some people who are inexperienced in the matchup and can steal a few games with Empty the Warrens, even if they are playing Blue.
One final item that warrants mentioning is the sister deck to Belcher, Oops All Spells. By design, this deck is more resilient to Blue decks because of Pact of Negation and Chancellor of the Annex, and is roughly as fast against the non-blue decks. That being said, if you can’t go off on turn 1, an active Deathrite Shaman completely blanks your ability to win. Even more so, the deck often sideboards into a Belcher-based strategy because of its susceptibility to graveyard hate, and thus doesn’t have too much sideboard versatility. I’m not sure which deck is more consistent, but I think these two reasons are enough to make it a worse choice overall than Belcher.
Belcher might have its flaws, but in the world of Red Prison and Dark Depths, I can’t think of a better time for it.
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