Legacy Update: Insights and Trends for April 2026

Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, and this week I am back at it! I had a weird two weeks off, primarily due in part to being really sick (pretty sure I had the flu, it sucked) the first week and then being out of town for Spring Break the following week. We're gonna touch base on how Legacy is looking at the moment, as well as a look at the Banned & Restricted announcement from last week. In addition, we've got our weekly recap and some Challenge data from last week.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Banned & Restricted Announcement 3/23/2026 - No Changes to Legacy
While I was out of town, we had a Banned & Restricted announcement on 3/23, and while I am a week late to the party I do think it's important to mention it. Let's see what they had to say about Legacy this go-around.

While I would like a little bit more here, I do think this does a pretty good job of calling out some pretty firm aspects of where Legacy has been at lately. It is exceedingly true that Dimir Tempo has taken a hit and it is largely because players are finding holes in the strategy and learning how to beat it. Even just calling out D&T here is important because decks like D&T often have strong matchups versus Tempo strategies (it's pretty common that D&T and Delver is a classic matchup where the skill of the D&T pilot really determines how things go, and usually in D&T's favor) but also I like that this acknowledges something that has been occurring in Legacy for some time: the rise of Energy as a common archetype in the format.

Boros and Mardu Energy have certainly become very important parts of Legacy. They are fueled largely by the same core cards of Guide of Souls, Ocelot Pride, and generally things like Amped Raptor and Hexing Squelcher/Voice of Victory. I think it's great to see a non-blue actual aggro deck be a firm part of Legacy as a format, and Energy really allows this to exist.

I also think it's nice to see that Wizards recognizes that Oops! All Spells' metagame share and win rates have diminished as well, on average week to week the deck is showing that it sometimes has a good week, but mostly is fair to middling to even poor performance. I don't think there's any real reason to touch this deck at the moment, as the data just doesn't give good justification for it.

As far as whether Legacy has gotten more fair or not, I tend to mostly disagree with this. I think we've seen a lot more combo in the format, despite the fact that Tempo is still the quote unquote "top dog" of the format, there is a lot of various combo decks that have proven to be very good. Sneak and Show, Omni-Tell, and even decks like The EPIC Storm are all performing quite well, and are prevalent in events. That being said, Swords to Plowshares is called out here as a big sign of fair gameplay, and I will concede that is true, that Plow is showing up a lot more than it was prior. I think a big portion of that is folks gravitating towards the Phelia/Quantum Riddler style tempo decks because of how powerful those two are, and the fact that those decks get some good tools to fight combo post-board.

Regardless, I agree with making no changes at this time. Legacy seems like it's fluctuating still back and forth, and a more rock/paper/scissors style gameplay is continuing to prevail, and that's not a bad place to be. New cards have created new decks and bolstered decks that were not prevalent before, and the format does not appear to even be remotely solved.

Legacy Metagame Review April 2026
It's been a little bit since we did a full metagame review, so I figured it was a good idea to do so. This covers from the card-ref:Entomb ban in November all the way to up to this past week's events, with a total number of 6,433 entries overall. This is an estimated amount of almost 35,000 matches of Legacy, which is super sweet to see.

Let's start by looking at some graphical data. From a macro archetype standpoint, Tempo is still the big top strategy of Legacy, but right below it is Spell Combo and I'm not super surprised about this.

Still, Dimir Tempo continues to be the most popular single deck in Legacy, boasting a 52.7% non-mirror win rate. It's a pretty reasonable place for a deck like this to be, as it doesn't feel incredibly overpowering or broken. It's pretty clear that while Dimir is popular, it's not the best deck in the format and has holes in it that players are finding in individual events.

Izzet is also incredibly popular, but not nearly as popular as Dimir is, but still enough to be the second most played deck since the bans. As a strategy, it's only boasting around a 49.8% non-mirror win rate, which isn't great. Both Tempo decks continue to be okay decks to play if you have the skills to play them, but they're not destroying the format by any means, and I very rarely see players complaining too much about Tamiyo even. I still think Tamiyo is probably long term a card that could be banned, but right now it seems like things are well in line with Legacy power level.

Oops! All Spells has remained fairly popular, but it does continue to drop off and isn't really gaining as much ground week to week as decks like Dimir do. Dimir is over 800 copies since the ban, while Oops is just a little over 400. Its non-mirror win rate is also currently around 53%, putting it right in a range that's extremely reasonable for Legacy power level and standards.

I know players have a lot of strong feelings about this deck, but the data just doesn't seem to suggest making a change to it right now. If Oops ever encroaches that 55%+ win rate over time and also sticks in popularity over that time to be one of the most popular decks, I think we'd have a lot more to consider, but it's just not doing that. The deck is popular largely because of its price point for a lot of players, but the rest of the format is figuring out how to beat it and what decks work best against it.

Eldrazi has definitely become one of the more predominant Ancient Tomb/Stompy strategies. The deck had fallen off quite a bit after Sowing Mycospawn was banned, but players have managed to figure out the deck's current construction and it sits at around 51.5% non-mirror. Again, this pretty much right in line with Legacy power level.

This deck seems to be a lot more popular than Red Stompy is at the moment, and I think a lot of that has to do with the raw power level of Eldrazi's aggressive gameplay vs Red Stompy trying to be more controlling.

Sneak and Show also is fairly popular over this time frame, sitting at around a 52% non-mirror win rate which again does not seem too bad. Realistically, much of the current decks in the format are in this range of win rates, and nothing seems like it is firmly overpowering.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the current state of Legacy. Yes, people are still going to wax poetic on Tamiyo and Oops! All Spells, but I don't think the data suggests any real action for those things yet. There's a wildly good variety in the format at the moment. Decks like Energy variants, Lands, etc. are all appealing things to play, and Tempo doesn't seem like it's crushing the format for once, and in fact feels like players are finding paths to beat Tempo up because of its popularity. I don't think there will ever be a Legacy format where Tempo isn't wildly popular, but having it be popular AND also be attackable is realistically a great place.

Weekly MTGO Recap
We had a fair number of events this past week, including multiple Legacy Last Chance events for feeding into the Showcase Qualifier at the end of the season here. This added number of events accounted for around 446 entries in events over the whole week. Here's the full list of events plus their associated links.

Overall Legacy seems pretty fine this week. Dimir Tempo is still the most played deck, and its win rate is pretty reasonable overall. Oops! All Spells had a pretty okay week here, with a 52.3% non-mirror win rate. This past week also had quite a bit of the Tron deck showing up and it looked quite good. Riddler Tempo variants performed the best out of everything. Decks like Izzet, The EPIC Storm, and Affinity all underperformed. This looks pretty good for a weekly snapshot of the format, in my opinion.