My last Legacy Power Rankings were made few weeks after the Arcum’s Astrolabe, Oko, Thief of Crowns and Dreadhorde Arcanist ban. Today’s Legacy Power Rankings also come after a major shake up, and that’s Modern Horizons 2, which saw plenty of cards joining Legacy and taking it by storm. Out of the new inclusions, most notably Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Endurance are major players, as well as other important cards like Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Murktide Regent, Urza’s Saga, Prismatic Ending, Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and more.
1. Izzet Delver
Once again, Delver of Secrets sit on top of the Legacy Power Rankings, and it’ll be very hard to take the Daze and Wasteland deck down this time around since Modern Horizons 2 powered it up even more!
I used to generalize the Delver decks together, since we used to have a plethora of different versions between Temur, Grixis, Sultai and Izzet. With Modern Horizons 2 though, the Delver world united itself around Izzet Delver being the superior color combination, since now it has two new powerful one-drop threats with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Dragon’s Rage Channeler, a very good top-end threat (Murktide Regent) and finally a card advantage engine in the form of Expressive Iteration.
The deck still suffers against Bant Control with Endurance and Prismatic Ending, as well as Chalice of the Void, but it’s much more consistent now, and that’s enough for it to hold the top spot for this iteration of Legacy Power Rankings.
2. Bant Miracles
Legacy Bant Control by Ozymandias17
Artifact (2)
Enchantment (2)
Land (19)
Our very own Anuraag Das has worked a lot of Bant Miracles, and he’s responsible for the deck’s success, dominating the Magic Online Challenges with it and tuning the list.
The deck features Ice-Fang Coatl and Swords to Plowshares to control the board and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and Jace, the Mind Sculptor to go over the opponent, as well as very many new tools from Modern Horizons 2.
First, we got Endurance, which is both a hate card against graveyard decks as well as Thassa’s Oracle, but it’s also a three-mana 3/4 reach, whose stats are perfect for dodging Lightning Bolt and blocking Delver of Secrets. It’s definitely a great addition to the deck.
We also have Prismatic Ending and Abundant Harvest from Modern Horizons 2. The first one has the unique ability to disrupt anything from a turn one Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer to a Chalice of the Void, although make sure to spend two different colors of mana to dodge the Chalice. The second one is a cantrip that Anuraag has been speaking highly of since Strixhaven, as it guarantees consistency and it’s a green card for Endurance.
3. Doomsday
Doomsday is the best combo deck in Legacy. I might be too generous with the Bant deck and it’s entirely possible that a Doomsday piloted at perfection is the second best deck in Legacy, although I’m a big Force of Will fan and chose that as my tiebreaker.
Kai Sawatari, a German/Japanase Magic player, has been rocking the MTGO Challenges these past weeks with Doomsday and the deck seems to be doing great despite the very high number of Force of Will, Force of Negation and Endurance floating around. In case you’ve never encountered the interaction, Endurance is sometimes able to disrupt a Thassa’s Oracle win if the graveyard and the deck size is higher than two when you’re casting Thassa’s Oracle. Of course, there are plenty of workarounds to this, but it’s definitely a new card to mention since this deck didn’t get any new tools with Modern Horizons 2.
4. Sneak and Show
If Kai Sawatari is the person to follow for Doomsday, then JPA93 is your go-to for Sneak and Show!
Sneak and Show is one of the oldest Legacy combo decks and it’s still picking up new cards. One new addition is Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, which JPA93 plays in two copies of in the sideboard, I’m assuming to bring in whenever on the play against decks that will unload a lot of removal and bring in a lot of counters.
The list I featured in my Deck Highlight last week is playing four of them in the main deck, and while that might be innovative, I think Ragavan does a better job a sideboard plan B in Sneak and Show.
5. Hogaak
Hogaak is the best deck if you want to prey on fair decks (Delver and Miracles) and don’t mind losing to the combo decks (Doomsday and Sneak and Show). That might not be the best strategy ever but it’s definitely a functional one since Hogaak does consistently well in tournaments since fair decks are usually more popular than combo decks.
Like Doomsday, it didn’t get any new card from Modern Horizons 2, which isn’t a great place to be since the format added a lot to Legacy, although only its already good matchups got some new tools, meaning that Hogaak’s positioning in the metagame might be improved as a result of that.
6. Elves
Much like Hogaak, Elves is good against fair decks and bad against combo decks.
Modern Horizons 2 didn’t bring a whole lot of new toys to the deck, but some lists feature one copy of Grist, the Hunger Tide, which you can tutor up with Green Sun’s Zenith, as it’s a creature both in the deck and on the stack while being a planeswalker in play.
Another factor that plays in favor of Elves lately is the fact that Plague Engineer is seeing very little play since Delver decks moved to be pure Izzet and Maverick decks also moved to be pure Selesnya.
7. Moon Stompy
Blood Moon is always a plan in Legacy. More so than Blood Moon, it’s Chalice of the Void, which thrives in a format with the most played deck, Delver, containing over 24 one-mana cards.
The new toy that Moon Stompy has adopted is Fireflux Squad, an hasty four-drop that can turn the tokens you get from Goblin Rabblemaster, Legion Warboss or Hanweir Garrison into real threats, shortening the clock on the opponent immensely
8. Selesnya Reclaimer
Legacy Selesnya Reclaimer by Sharkcaster_Mage
Creature (13)
Sorcery (4)
Enchantment (3)
Land (29)
Selesnya Reclaimer has been picking up in popularity in Legacy. The deck uses Elvish Reclaimer, Knight of the Reliquary and Crop Rotation to assemble Marit Lage while disrupting the opponent with Swords to Plowshares and Wasteland.
Modern Horizons 2 delivered a very important tool to this deck in Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, which will turn your Dark Depths into a Forest as well as making Knight of the Reliquary able to sacrifice any lands to its ability.
That might sound like a small deal, but the reason why Golgari Depths was the best home for Dark Depths through all this time was thanks to Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth allowing Dark Depths to tap for mana, making the deck function much better whenever you had those draws.
The deck has cut black entirely, previously splashing for Abrupt Decay and Plague Engineer. It’s now simply Selesnya because its mana base picked up another colorless land in Urza’s Saga, which you can tutor up a nice toolbox of artifacts between Mox Diamond, Retrofitter Foundry and Thran Foundry, which you can sideboard in against graveyard or Thassa’s Oracle decks, together with Endurance.
9. Mono-Green Cloudpost
Continuing to analyze the decks that have a good matchup against fair decks but struggle against combo decks, there’s Mono-Green Cloudpost, which was used by Into_play to win last week’s MTGO Challenge, cruising through a sea of Bant Miracles.
The deck tries to get a huge amount of mana with Cloudpost, Glimmerpost and Vesuva, protecting itself from Wasteland with four main deck Pithing Needle, and then slowly winning the game with Primeval Titan and various Eldrazi.
This deck also adopted a copy of Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth to make its many lands that don’t tap for mana able to do so (Dark Depths, Eye of Ugin, Glacial Chasm, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale).
10. Golgari Depths
While I previously noted that Selesnya Reclaimer might be a better deck than Golgari Depths now because of Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, we still can’t forget how strong and explosive Golgari Depths is. It’s till one of the best decks in Legacy, able to Top 8 consistently in the MTGO Legacy Challenges weekend after weekend, and thus still earns a spot on the Legacy Power Rankings.
The deck assembles Marit Lage faster than other versions, thanks to Simian Spirit Guide and Lotus Petal, and protects it very well with Not of This World, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek and Sejiri Steppe.
Overall, Modern Horizons 2 was a nice shakeup for the Legacy Power Rankings. Another deck that was reborn with the set is Affinity, which won a Legacy challenge the first weekend Modern Horzions 2 was legal, and then kind of disappeared as the number of Null Rod and Collector Ouphe started popping back up. Make sure to keep an eye out for it though!
