Alright, let’s cut straight to the chase. Last week, I whet your appetites for the newest Planeswalker to be spoiled, Mr. Fayden. This week, I give you my first pass at several varieties of lists that we can jam our new Superfriend into. These are by no means finished products, as we have yet to have any chance to actually test them out and optimize them. I should also mention that we may yet get even crazier new cards for Legacy in Conspiracy, since WotC has never shied away at a chance to introduce mega-pushed, format-warping cards in sets that bypass Standard and Modern. That said, let’s run through some of the ideas that have been stewing in my head.
The first list isn’t incredibly original. I’m just jamming Dack and a tutorable Liquimetal Coating into an existing Tezzeret shell. I mostly just like the fit due to that combo, but there are probably more powerful things that we can do with Dack than this.
Dack Tezzerator
| Creature (4) 4 Baleful Strix Instant (4) 4 Force of Will Sorcery (2) 2 Transmute Artifact Planeswalker (28) 3 Dack Fayden 1 Tezzeret the Seeker 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas 1 Liquimetal Coating 1 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Ratchet Bomb 1 Sword of the Meek 2 Ensnaring Bridge 2 Talisman of Dominance 2 Thopter Foundry 4 Chalice of the Void 4 Dimir Signet Land (22) 1 Academy Ruins 1 Mountain 1 Island 1 Seat of the Synod 1 Swamp 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 3 City of Traitors 1 Scalding Tarn 1 Volcanic Island 3 Underground Sea 4 Ancient Tomb 4 Polluted Delta |
Up next, we have a RUG list that seeks to abuse the interaction of Dack and Punishing Fire. If we have two P.Fires, his +1 just turns into a “draw two!” Other supporting cast members that can play friendly with Dack include Squee, Life from the Loam, and a single copy of Liquimetal Coating. A copy of Intuition helps tie all the pieces together. And who loves a full graveyard more than ‘goyf?
Punishing Dack
| Planeswalkers (6) 3 Dack Fayden 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor Creatures (12) 3 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Deathrite Shaman 1 Squee, Goblin Nabob 4 Tarmogoyf Spells (19) 1 Liquimetal Coating 4 Brainstorm 3 Force of Will 1 Intuition 4 Lightning Bolt 2 Spell Pierce 1 Life from the Loam 3 Punishing Fire | Lands (23) 1 Academy Ruins 1 Forest 3 Grove of the Burnwillows 2 Island 3 Misty Rainforest 1 Mountain 3 Scalding Tarn 2 Tropical Island 3 Volcanic Island 3 Wasteland 1 Underground Sea |
This next list is quite deranged. I think I just liked the name “Dack Stax,” and felt that I needed to make it happen. I’ve actually goldfish tested this one using a randomizer in Excel (I guess I could’ve also just proxied some Dacks), and tweaked the numbers to get this to a point that I was happy with. The early iterations had some hella clunky draws, and I’ll be honest, this version does, as well. I initially ran only two Jaces, but found that with the acceleration that this deck has, it’s not uncommon to power out a turn two Jace, so a third copy was pretty worth it. This deck has some serious nut-draw potential. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the clunky draws do exist, and playing four copies of Chalice makes it hard for us to fix that with cantrips. Still, I think this has potential. It’s pretty filthy when you can get a live Smokestack, and you’re coating their permanents with metal and stealing them with Dack. If there were a flex slot here, it would probably be Staff of Nin.
Dack Stax
| Planeswalkers (7) 4 Dack Fayden 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor Spells (29) 4 Chalice of the Void 3 Crucible of Worlds 2 Ensnaring Bridge 4 Izzet Signet 2 Liquimetal Coating 4 Mox Diamond 4 Smokestack 1 Staff of Nin 3 Trinisphere 2 Transmute Artifact | Lands (24) 1 Academy Ruins 4 Ancient Tomb 4 City of Traitors 1 Island 1 Mountain 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Tolaria West 4 Volcanic Island 4 Wasteland |
Here, we have a Grixis midrange deck, putting Dack into the slot that would typically be occupied by Lily. My favorite interaction in this list is the Dack-Notion Thief combo, where you get to turn Dack’s +1 into “draw two; target opponent discards two.” It feels a little inconsistent, and probably could use a little more synergy, but I think we have something worth building around. Maybe we should try to find room to jam in the trifecta of Intuition–Academy Ruins–Liquimetal Coating, since that seems like a fine play in any Dack list.
Grixis Dack
| Planeswalkers (5) 3 Dack Fayden 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor Creatures (14) 3 Baleful Strix 4 Deathrite Shaman 2 Notion Thief 2 Snapcaster Mage 3 True-Name Nemesis Spells (18) 4 Brainstorm 1 Dismember 4 Force of Will 4 Lightning Bolt 2 Spell Pierce 1 Spell Snare 2 Thoughtseize | Lands (23) 3 Bloodstained Mire 1 Island 1 Mountain 4 Polluted Delta 3 Scalding Tarn 1 Swamp 1 Tropical Island 3 Volcanic Island 4 Underground Sea 2 Wasteland |
The last list that I want to explore for this week is a take on Sam Black’s Zombie-Bombardment and some of the newer Pyromancer-based builds. You might notice the conspicuous absence of countermagic, particularly Force of Will, in this list, but I felt that we didn’t have enough blue cards to support Force (at least in the main), and there wasn’t enough room to cut enough red/black to make it work. Blue is the tertiary color, here, and it’s mostly just to get Dack out.. but I can’t resist Brainstorm, so we’re playing that, too!
Grixis Dack (zombie-bombardment)
| Planeswalkers (3) 3 Dack Fayden Creatures (19) 4 Blood Artist 4 Bloodghast 4 Gravecrawler 1 Rotlung Reanimator 2 Tymaret, the Murder King 4 Young Pyromancer Spells (16) 2 Goblin Bombardment 4 Brainstorm 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Cabal Therapy 1 Faithless Looting 2 Gitaxian Probe | Lands (22) 4 Badlands 3 Bloodstained Mire 3 Polluted Delta 3 Scalding Tarn 2 Volcanic Island 3 Underground Sea 4 Wasteland |
There were also two ideas that I tried to flesh something out, but couldn’t quite find a mix that I was satisfied with posting. I’ll leave the challenge to you to come up with something. I tried to come up with a Dack-dredge list and a Painted-Dack (Grindstone-Servant combo) list, but ended up getting.. uhh.. “brewer’s block.” I think solid lists exist for each of those, though, especially if Dredge ultimately decides to up their land-count (and maybe cut the LEDs) with the new-found ability to run eight copies of City of Brass.