Builds for Legacy Lost - Part 2

Here we are, back at it again with some deck builds. Today's article will delve into the decks my friends and I made for Valentina and Sol. It's a pretty self-explanatory article, so let's go ahead and dive right in to the meat:

J/Ruler: Invading Demon of Water, Valentina // Valentina, Release Terror

Resonators:
4x Alice's Little Scout
3x Illusion Wizard
3x Illusory Projection
3x Moojdart, Lady of Illusions
2x Nightmare, the Ashen Dream
2x Titania, Prideful Queen

Non-Resonators:
4x Fishing
4x Plot of Water and Darkness
4x Space-Time Anomaly
2x Valentina's Reach
2x Separation of Body and Soul
2x Fated Reunion
2x The Scorn of Dark Alice
2x Magic Rebound
1x Black Moonbeam

Stones:
4x Remains of Attoractia
4x Magic Stone of Dark Depths
1x Water Magic Stone
1x Darkness Magic Stone

The original build my friend went with was a sort of "Apostles Valentina" that ran more Titania and had Adombrali and Messenger Familiar. The idea was to have more weenies in the form of Scout and Messenger to Incarnate for Adombrali, which searches for Titania, who would have a lot of targets to rest in the form of tokens. This deck ran way too many high-cost resonators, though, and not nearly enough token generation. After a couple playtesting games with it, we shifted it to its current form.

Fishing and Scout provide a good number of options for Turn 1 plays, which the previous iteration lacked. The reduced number of Titania and Moojdart meant unplayable cards wouldn't flood your hand early, and a few more control spells/spells in general means Valentina's Ruler ability will trigger more often, and gives the deck a little more reactive play options. The good amount of floaters/token generators in this deck means you'll always have fodder for her J-Ruler ability, for Titania's cost reduction, and an army for Moojdart to make big. We took Muul out of the original deck because it felt clunky, but we're thinking about putting it back in. I want to put the Messenger Familiars back in and see how the Apostle engine works with more token generation. Playing Valentina, Puppet Monarch would have good synergy with the J-Ruler effect too.

J/Ruler: Sol, Hierophant of the Helio Star // Sol, Dark Commander of Steam

Resonators:
4x Prokaryotic Being
4x True Successor of Certo, Volga
4x Runic Commander Demon, Akiot
2x Twin-Headed Dragon
2x Captain Hook, the Pirate

Non-Resonators:
4x Rune of Sol
4x Ancient Knowledge
4x Sympathy of Fire and Water
4x Ancient Heartfelt Fire
4x Steam Explosion
2x Ancient Barrier
1x World Flame Summoning
1x Rising from the Depths

Stones:
4x Magic Stone of Vaporization
4x Magic Stone of Hearth's Core
2x Fire Magic Stone

Here' Sol, the big man himself. There are a lot of options available to this guy, so nailing down one deck was hard. We knew we wanted to main deck at least 2 separate win conditions, so he could play differently depending on the match-up. Volga + Steam Explosion was the obvious first choice, which left the rest of the deck open to adding 1 or 2 more possible victory combo's. Volga will likely come out, though, given how easy he is to answer in most commonly played decks. He ends up eating a space-time or destruction spell and dying more often than not.

Twin-Headed Dragon is a good midrange play, giving you decent board control and locking down things like mana dorks to stall the opponent out and giving you a good tempo swing. He's also a Rising target, if you choose to go that end-game route. Hook is there for the same reason. The massive amount of chants, namely Sympathy and Heartfelt, provide a huge chunk of ramp to get your big spells out faster. Thanks to Rune of Sol, costly and situational spells like Rising and World Flame Summoning can be run as 1-of's and still be reliably seen. World Flame provides a good answer to a variety of things thanks to its utility, and Ancient Barrier slows down most, if not all, of the control and negation that opponents could throw at you.

This weekend we're probably going to be messing with this guy the most. Going B/U/R, and more of a burn route, is something we've considered. The synergy between Shadow of Lapis and Conjure Time Bomb, allowing you to potentially put 2000 damage on board on your first turn is astounding. Throw in an Invitation of Disaster and you've got game then and there. I want to tamper with Rachel's Smile in the deck too, being a good setup card for a big play. Prokaryotic Being (who we lovingly call Muk) is probably our favorite card in the deck so far, being able to hit stupidly high numbers. The trick in finding the right build is going to be finding Sol's niche; A role where he isn't just playing Mercurius' or Mars' deck with new cards.

And there they are! Those are the decks we're working with locally. This set had certainly given us a lot of tinker with, and most of the new Rulers have plenty of different variants you can work with. The coming weeks will definitely bring us some changes to these builds, and once the first few tournament results started surfacing using the new cards, I'm sure we'll see these multiple builds converging to one or two optimized ones.