This Week in Legacy: Hitting the Books
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're taking a first look at Secrets of Strixhaven and what cards from this set could see play in Legacy. In addition, we've got some Challenges from last week, our weekly recap, and a Showcase Qualifier to look at!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
College is for Studying!
We're going back to school to the university of Strixhaven with the release of Secrets of Strixhaven! While we don't have the full spoilers just yet, there's certainly enough cards we've seen so far that look to be interesting. This set has some new mechanics and some old ones (Flashback for example). One major new mechanic is permanents with prepared spells. This mechanic says as long as the permanent is prepared, a copy of the spell on the card (which looks just like Adventures/Omen frames) exists in exile and can be cast. Once the spell is cast, the creature becomes unprepared, and has to be prepared again in order to repeat that cycle. Among that there's just a bunch of keyword mechanics that look at some specific things.
Let's take a look at some of the cards that look interesting in Legacy.
Erode
Right off the bat we've got something super interesting. This is a really strong piece of removal, since it not only deals with creatures but also Planeswalkers for one mana. One upside here in Legacy is that very few decks tend to play a ton of basics, and if they are playing basics they tend to fetch them out quickly to beat Wasteland. Being able to remove a threat at instant speed for one mana is something special always, and this seems like a really good answer for a wide variety of things. Being able to deal with Kaito for one mana is solid for sure.
Yes, destroying permanents is not quite like exiling, but the flexibility is what makes this look good to me.
Flow State
Y'all. This card seems definitely like something people are going to try. It does not seem too difficult to get two cards off of this in Legacy. Getting an instant/sorcery in the graveyard seems very much like what a lot of decks are already doing, especially tempo strategies. Definitely getting vibes of Expressive Iteration from this one. I have to imagine that this thing does see play, and is it potentially really good? I think so. I could even see people jamming this alongside stuff like Stock Up which seems silly good.
Flashback
I always enjoy when we get cards like this, Flashback giving Flashback is pretty sweet. I think it's even better that this is an instant, though. I do think this could possibly see play somewhere in some form of weird combo list. One mana grant flashback is pretty groovy.
Colossus of the Blood Age
I always like to look at Artifacts that do things on ETB now that we have Sewer-veillance Cam as a card. This also does a thing when it dies, so that in of itself makes this one very interesting to me. Some things that stick out to me is mainly the fact that three damage adds up a lot more than two, which usually means less clicks on a platform like MTGO. This also doesn't target your opponent, so you can auto-yield with its trigger. That in of itself makes me curious because generally the clicks to target and stuff do add up. The other part is the dies trigger, which can be useful outside of the combo, where you can pitch cards from hand you need in the graveyard and also draw to what you need to win the game.
I also don't think there's any real shortage of getting this thing into the graveyard to do things with it. I don't think it also solves any real issues that the Sewer-Cam deck already has, but having more options is intriguing, especially more options that win the game through Null Rod and stuff.
Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer
Three mana Planeswalkers are always generally interesting, and this one being in black and being possibly castable via Dark Ritual is interesting. It having four abilities is where it gives me pause. They're all reasonable abilities on the front end, Surveiling into a -2 is neat enough. The ultimate is not so much of a big deal, frankly. I think the bread and butter of this will be in how good the various + and - abilities are. New Pox card? Maybe.
Grave Researcher
Speaking of things you can cast with Dark Ritual, I doubt this guy is any good, as he has to fulfill the condition of his upkeep trigger to actually become prepared, but having Reanimate on a creature seems kind of amusing? I don't know, I'm not huge on these prepared spell creatures in Legacy generally.
Emeritus of Ideation
Speaking of prepared spell creatures, this one has a card that's just not legal in Legacy, i.e. Ancestral Recall. However, five mana seems like quite a lot for a creature like this, and then you need one more mana to actually cast Ancestral. While this guy has Ward, it seems pretty easy to get rid of this thing before they could actually get a payoff. I'm not seeing it.
Witherbloom Charm
While Nic Fit isn't a deck that has been at the top of a lot of radars for a long while, I do think this is a card that actually seems pretty good in it. Not only does it let you sac your Veteran Explorer for lands, but you also get to draw two cards off of it as well. In a pinch, it can gain you life and also destroy smaller permanents.
Muse Seeker
I think awkwardly this probably isn't super good at all. Very easy to kill and while it's cool to have another sort of like Beanstalk-ish effect, you probably aren't actually spending five mana or more to cast a spell to actually fulfill the secondary part of the trigger.
Mana Sculpt
WIZARD MANA DRAIN?!? Yeah I don't know. The Wizard part seems pretty easy to fulfill with Tamiyo/Thundertrap, etc., and whatnot, but three mana with double blue pips does seem interesting. The awkward notion is that the decks this goes to have the Wizards for the mana in don't really have a solid payoff for the mana, unless they move to play cards like The One Ring.
The Dawning Archaic
Okay, like, yeah I guess you could make this thing cost super cheap to get it into play. It has to attack to get its trigger, so like, seems pretty easy to deal with especially with Karakas around.
Expansion Algorithm
This is probably worse than Radstorm given that the latter is an instant, but also like, you could theoretically get this one off Burning Wish which is sort of cool.
Immoral Bargain
Another Nic Fit card? Sacrifice a bunch of creatures for some permanent destruction? Seems amusing.
Prismari, the Inspiration
Show and Tell Storm deck incoming? Seems wild.
Weekly MTGO Recap
We had a fairly normal week this past week, with just the regular Challenge events in addition to the Showcase Qualifier from the end of the Premier Play Season. You can find the weekly data sheet here.
We had the following events this past week:
| Event Name | Top 32 Link | Data Sheet Link | Number of Players |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy Challenge 32 4/1/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 49 |
| Legacy Challenge 32 4/3/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 52 |
| Legacy Challenge 32 4/4/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 52 |
| Legacy Challenge 32 4/5/2026 - 1 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 43 |
| Legacy Challenge 32 4/5/2026 - 2 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 69 |
| Legacy Showcase Qualifier 4/5/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 29 |
Overall we had close to 300 deck entries for the week (not unique entries, just raw number of decks), which is pretty reasonable for a normal-ish week. All of the regular Challenge events on the week had at least 40 players in them, so that in of itself is nice, not having any events fire at just 32 players.
Let's take a look at the graphical data for the week.
Dimir Tempo was the most played deck of the week at around 42 copies. This is obviously down from last week because the week before had more events, so it's not a huge indication of loss in playability. However, the overall non-mirror win rate of the deck was just around 50.3% with this sample size. This seems pretty reasonable and pretty well in line for the deck's ongoing performance week to week. I think Dimir is a fine deck, but I do think it can be beaten and isn't like some overpowering tempo deck hovering over the entire format.
Oops was the second most played deck of the week, and it had a slightly better win rate overall this week at a 55.5% non-mirror win rate. Now to be clear, this is just for this week and not a sustained win rate, and we'd have to look at how things go over a whole month or two to really get a feel for where this deck is, so take into account sample size and whatnot and don't just assume it's a 55% win rate deck. It definitely had a good week though, and I know this deck is contentious, but any deck in the format could have a good week, as we will see here.
Tron decks were the third most played deck of the week, as we are slowly seeing players pick up and adopt the full on Tron list. This deck contains a lot of haymakers and powerful cards, and its continued popularity means more players are trying it out. It had a solid 56.5% non-mirror win rate on 21 pilots throughout the week, and had some really good results through the week including several Top 8s and Challenge wins.
Coming up in fourth for the week was the Mardu Energy deck, which despite having a good amount of results also had a good amount of poor performances which resulted in it having a 48.8% non-mirror win rate for the week. Now I don't think this means the deck is horrific, because decks tend to float down and above 50% a lot, I just think the deck's good results were pretty balanced by the bad ones and that more players did worse with the deck than the ones who did well. It happens quite a bit. I like this deck a lot, and I think it's kind of sweet to have a really solid looking aggro deck in Legacy.
Sneak and Show rounded out the top five decks of the week, finding itself at a pretty solid 57.7% non-mirror win rate, which is pretty wild. I think the deck just had a strong week of performing, as it did well in Top 8s and also won at least one Challenge on the week.
All in all this looked like a relatively fine week of Legacy. The rest of the decks below the Top 5 cutoff all had reasonably varying performances, and there was a lot of variety in the format's top tables over the week.
Legacy Challenge 32 4/1/2026
The first Challenge event we're covering was the Wednesday event. This event had 49 players thanks to the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Oops was the most played deck of the event this week, and its win rate was quite good at a 60.47% non-mirror win rate. Tron also did extremely well. Sneak and Show and Boros Energy performed rather poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Tron | 1st | Univerce |
| Dimir Tempo | 2nd | DrPP |
| Izzet Tempo | 3rd | Otazz |
| Loam Pox | 4th | TeaW1thRum |
| Dimir Tempo | 5th | haveaboavida |
| Mardu Energy | 6th | Selfeisek |
| Oops! All Spells | 7th | RatherBplayingMTG |
| Azorius Tempo | 8th | duke12 |
Pretty cool Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Tron that won.
This deck has made a lot of waves lately. It turns out that Planar Nexus enabling as many Tron lands as possible is just very good, and tossing haymaker after haymaker eventually just wins you the game. I also absolutely dig Extinguisher Battleship in the sideboard.
In Second Place we had Dimir Tempo.
This is a fairly straightforward looking list. Some interesting numbers on some cards though, like three each of Daze and Ponder. Don't usually see less than full four Ponder nowadays.
Also in this Top 8 we had Loam Pox.
This deck definitely seemed to drop off the map for a while despite how good it seemed from Eternal Weekend, but I think it's still a very reasonable deck to play around with. It's always great to see a deck playing Zuran Orb in Legacy.
Legacy Challenge 32 4/3/2026
The second Challenge event we're covering was the Friday event. This event had 52 players thanks to the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Both Dimir Tempo and Doomsday were well played here, with Dimir having a good win rate and Doomsday not doing so well. Lands did very well too.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Colorless Painter | 1st | XanaZero |
| Oops! All Spells | 2nd | choutin |
| Tron | 3rd | Tunaktunak |
| Dimir Tempo | 4th | kentaro_hokori |
| Lands | 5th | xDingusKhan |
| Dimir Tempo | 6th | _INF_ |
| Mardu Energy | 7th | LucasG1ggs |
| Izzet Sewer-Cam | 8th | DNSolver |
This is a super interesting Top 8. At the end of the event it was Colorless Painter that won.
Planar Nexus just enables so many strategies, it's so crazy good. Painter only having to play two copies of Grindstone over the course of the main and side is wild, but there's tons of ways to find it with both Urza's Saga and Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. Pretty cool stuff.
In Second Place we had Oops.
Choutin has a very specific build of Oops, usually only leaning on one copy of Narcomoeba, but it has a full four copies of Poxwalkers that it can use to shotgun Cabal Therapy to ensure its game plan.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had an Izzet Sewer-Cam build.
While a majority of the gameplay with Sewer-veillance Cam is with Painter builds, having access to a build that doesn't need to worry about the Painter stuff is pretty cool. This build gets to leverage Cori-Steel Cutter as a bit of a backup plan to the Sewer-Cam combo.
Legacy Challenge 32 4/5/2026 - 2
The final Challenge event we're covering was the last Sunday event. This event had 69 (nice) players thanks to the Legacy Data Collection Project.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dimir Tempo was the most played deck of the event, but its overall win rate was not that great. Tron did very well here, as did Doomsday.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Tron | 1st | mei0024 |
| Boros Energy | 2nd | itstime |
| Blue Tron | 3rd | TrueFuturism |
| Esper Vial | 4th | Carroz |
| Omni-Tell | 5th | Redhotphil87 |
| Red Stompy | 6th | HyuugaHeir |
| Lands | 7th | theMutz |
| Dimir Tempo | 8th | ReformedPaolo |
This is a neat Top 8. At the end of the event it was Tron that won.
This continues to be a very powerful deck and I think it is definitely something to keep an eye on as time goes on. You get access to so many cards that are individually powerful that your opponents need to answer or probably lose the game.
In Second Place we had Boros Energy.
Having both Squelcher and Voice of Victory is just incredibly powerful. Multiple Squelchers does a great job of protecting your creatures, while Voice of Victory makes it impossible for your opponent to interact with your turns while also generating threats to throw with Goblin Bombardment.
Also in this Top 8 we had a Blue Tron build.
One very interesting thing is no copy of Urza's Saga in this list, but you are really leaning on a whole mess of blue spells and stuff like Stock Up and Thundertrap Trainer to find the cards you need. It's a pretty interesting list.
Legacy Showcase Qualifier 4/5/2026
This week was also the Showcase Qualifier for the end of the Premier Play season. This is an invitation only event in which players gain access by Top 8'ing a Showcase Challenge or by doing well in a Last Chance Qualifier event. This particular event had 29 players in it thanks to the Legacy Data Collection Project. These events often tend to have a bit of a skewed metagame due to the fact that they're often attended by very strong players, deck specialists, and people who study what their opponents will be on and deckbuild accordingly.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
As noted, these events tend to have a very skewed metagame. Mardu Energy was the most popular deck, followed by Dimir, Lands, and Tron. Both Mardu and Lands sat right on the line of 50%, while Dimir did very well and Tron did poorly. Of the decks here, Aluren did the best (as we will see) on one pilot.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Aluren and Tell | 1st | einstein9998 |
| Dimir Tempo | 2nd | xfile |
| Sneak and Show | 3rd | JPA93 |
| Lands | 4th | storm994 |
| Mardu Energy | 5th | Sorathrix |
| Dimir Tempo | 6th | Martin_Dominguez |
| Oops! All Spells | 7th | xDingusKhan |
| Death and Taxes - BW (Yorion) | 8th | Sharkcaster_Mage |
Very sweet Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Brady Munroe on ALUREN.
I think this deck is very good, and Brady is a very powerful player, but having a bunch of strong ways to win the game is very good. One thing that strikes me is how much cleaner this build looks than the builds that started popping up after Formidable Speaker came about. It's much more focused, and I think that's a really good thing.
In Second Place we had Dimir Tempo.
I think this is one aspect of how often these events can be pretty skewed metagame-wise. Main deck playset of Barrowgoyf isn't very stock, but in a field of a lot of decks like Mardu Energy, it's extremely good at holding down ground combat, while also being a massive lifelinking threat.
Speaking of Mardu Energy, we had one copy in the Top 8.
Pretty solid looking list here. Bowmasters is a powerful inclusion to the Energy shell, and the extra tokens that come from all the token-generating threats in this deck can be used for both Goblin Bombardment and Cabal Therapy.
Around the Web
- BeExcellent has a video on Mono Black Helm. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook is playing Mystic Forge-less Forge. Check it out here.
- Sharkcaster has a league with SUPAH SHREDDAH. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
Now that Leagues are posted throughout the week, let's find some Spice!
Sewer-Cam!
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
