[Legacy 101] The Most Broken Sorcery in Legacy

Quick, make a guess! What's the most broken sorcery in Legacy? Life from the Loam? Natural Order? Or even *gasp* Green Sun's Zenith? (What's with the color green nowadays?) Nope, nah, uh-uh. The most broken sorcery in Legacy is still blue – it's Show and Tell.

Here's why:

When Playing Becomes Cheating

In case you haven't realised it yet, Magic is a game of resources. We players are limited by fundamentals of life, money, and choices. Nope, it's not that we're wasting our youth and cash slinging cardboard in a place with guys and (at most) a girl. It's that players are limited by the life points they have (life), the mana they can generate (money), and the number of cards in hand (choices).

Show and Tell is a card that breaks one of the fundamental limits of the game – it allows players to cheat on mana costs by sacrificing 1 card in hand (casting the Show and Tell itself). In essence, when you plop a Random Dork (Progenitus/Blightsteel Colossus/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn) into play, you convert 2U and 1 card in hand to 10, 12, or even 15 mana (minus the cost of the card your opponent puts into play). Now who wants to play with Dark Ritual or Seething Song?

That alone only puts it in the same genre as cards like Eureka/Hypergenesis/Natural Order, which does roughly the same thing – cheating a big fatty into play. What makes it more broken is that it has fewer restrictions, making it integrate far better with other plans.

Take Sneak Attack for example, the monsters that you want to Sneak into play can be plopped onto the battlefield via Show and Tell (but not always by Natural Order). It's so easy to just add Show and Tell for a plan B. This is the same for any deck that seeks to cheat fatties into play – Reanimate, Stifle Dreadnought + Mosswort Bridge, even Doomsday + Shelldock Isle.

And it's not Just about Creatures

To break the card even further, some Show and Tell decks have incorporated other forms of combo kills that do not rely on plopping monsters into play. Like, even Emrakul can be dealt with by Oblivion Ring, and Progenitus can be raced. Try besting 2 radically different strategies with a 15 card sideboard without diluting your deck.

One of the best examples is Legacy Hive Mind. Hive Mind + Pact kills almost instantly and is immune to whatever creature kill spells you have against Emrakul. Another deck, in fact the original deck, that tried to break Show and Tell is Dream Halls. In addition to enabling a cheap Progenitus, Show and Tell provides a faster route to resolving Dream Halls and makes for a combo kill via Cruel Ultimatum. Cruel? In Legacy?

Summary

Now if it's not clear enough, Show and Tell bestows a deck with more power and brings an alternative kill condition that requires tangential answers.

What's the next SnT deck then? Let me know any combo you know of that benefits from addition of Show and Tell!

Further Reading

Sneaky Show
Dream Halls decklist
Doomsday Show
Legacy Hive Mind
Aeon Bridge
NO Show
Hyper Show
Jedi Emreka

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