Introduction: Legacy Changed a lot with the New Sets

Unusually, recent sets bring so many high impact cards into the Legacy format and I thought it is time to revisit Legacy and take stock of where it has landed.

Between War of the Spark, Modern Horizons and even Core Set 2020 (M20) a lot of very strong cards have entered the format and changed the landscape significantly. Most importantly, the 3 mana Planeswalkers: 《Narset, Parter of Veils》 and 《Teferi, Time Raveler》 as well as 《Karn, the Great Creator》 from War of the Spark, 《Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis》 and 《Wrenn and Six》 from Modern Horizons and 《Veil of Summer》 from M20 have made their presence known.

Especially, 《Wrenn and Six》 and the combination with both 《Wasteland》 as well as Fetchlands have made 4 Color Delver and control strategies very strong. The ability to both fix mana, help against opposing mana denial as well as pick of pesky one toughness creatures have made life tough for decks like Death and Taxes or Elves which were very strong before.

To combat these more grindy approaches more people have turned to either combo decks like Storm or Sneak and Show, which are also strong choices against the new kid on the block: Hogaak, or people have gone the other way and try to leverage the combination of 《Ancient Tomb》 and 《Chalice of the Void》 and combine it with various other hate cards like 《Trinisphere》 or 《Blood Moon》.

Miracles is also still a solid choice with lots of Basic Lands to battle both Wrenn/《Wasteland》 and 《Blood Moon》. 《Narset, Parter of Veils》 as a new addition which is obviously very strong in a format filled with cheap cantrips.

My Deck Choice

I recently played a tournament with a couple hundred players and was deliberating between Storm and 《Death’s Shadow》 which would have been good choices in my opinion, so I’ll go into both decks as I would currently recommend them.

I ended up deciding on Storm. Storm is very well positioned as I stated above, although it does have trouble against the 《Chalice of the Void》 strategies. It is also in the interesting spot of being weak against 《Veil of Summer》 as well as very happy to play it itself.

The list I decided on was the following:

Retrospectively I was very happy with the deck, losing only to the Chalice decks on the draw. It’s possible that one 《Hurkyl’s Recall》 is better than the second 《Engineered Explosives》.

All the midrange decks, especially with 《Wrenn and Six》, are very good matchups as well as the other blue decks in general. Other combo decks can be tough, but especially post sideboard with 7 discard spells, 2 《Flusterstorm》 and 3 《Veil of Summer》 games tend to be very interactive.

Overall I can always recommend this deck, since it is very consistent and resilient and fast enough to race most other decks in the format. There is a lot of play to it in general, but if you can get the wraps in to achieve the necessary proficiency it is a lot of fun to play.

Another Candidate

Another deck I was considering would have been a great choice as well is Dimir Shadow. I wasn’t sure how much 《Veil of Summer》 would see play since that card is a real beating against it, but it wasn’t played that much. The card being green and somewhat narrow made it less popular than I had feared.

Also Hogaak was a bit of an unknown quantity going in, but while it did show up in reasonable numbers it didn’t seem to really be able to break into the format in the winner’s circle.

What I would have played and which I have tested to strong results is this:

Death and Taxes is not as popular as it used to be which is a great news for us because it is one of the hardest matchups.

One of the new additions that I made recently was 《Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy》 and I have been very happy with it. I started with 2 copies at the beginning but added the 3rd immediately. The biggest weakness I found the deck to have was the relative lack of threats. You only really need one to win a lot of the time, since you can easily protect it and they end the game so quickly, but having only 7 threats could make it hard to find one in time. Another issue was a relatively low number of blue cards for 《Force of Will》, with most of the deck being black. Jace helps with both of these issues and has been good in almost all matchups.

Conclusion and Bonus Deck

I can heartily recommend those decks in the current metagame, but if you like small white creatures and can’t stop playing Death and Taxes instead of my Dimir-based decks, then please try a brand-new tech bellow.

A friend of mine innovated on the deck to overcome the 《Wrenn and Six》 infestation by adding 《Squadron Hawk》 and 《Force of Virtue》 which seems like a good idea to me and he was doing very well with it.

Thanks for reading,

Marc (Twitter / Twitch)