Featuring some of the best cards from Magic: the Gathering’s history, Legacy is filled with extremely efficient cards, powerful combos, and some turn-one win conditions. With access to just about every card ever printed, there are plenty of cards and decks for you to pick from.
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Many of the best decks in Legacy rarely change, with the biggest upheavals coming from ban list announcements and the occasional Modern Horizons set. Shifts in the meta can cause decks to change in popularity, but most of the best decks in Legacy are pretty well-established. If you’re wondering what to play in your next Legacy event, these decks are a good place to start.
10 Death And Taxes
Using some of the best disruption and Stax cards in Magic, Death and Taxes is all about making the game more difficult for your opponents so you can better control the board. The Taxes elements come from creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Mother of Runes, making all your opponent’s spells cost one more and effectively turning off single target removal spells by giving creatures protection from a color of your choice.
Once you’re ready to move to the Death portion, an equipment package with Stoneforge Mystic, Batterskull, and Kaldra Compleat can quickly close out a game.
9 Death's Shadow
Death’s Shadow is an extremely efficient deck named after its main creature, Death’s Shadow. A one mana 13/13, Death’s Shadow gains -X/-X, where X is your life total. To get that life total down below the '13' threshold, you have a bunch of cards that have an additional way to lose life.
Cards like Street Wraith, Snuff Out, and Thoughtseize help reduce your life and get your Death’s Shadow to a good number to start punching through your opponent’s creatures.
8 Painter
While mill is often criticized as a more casual win condition, it is a huge threat with the Painter deck in Legacy. This combo deck is based around two cards, Painter’s Servant and Grindstone. When Painter’s Servant enters the battlefield, you choose a color. Every card in your and your opponent’s deck is now that color in addition to their original colors.
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Grindstone is a one-mana artifact that you can tap and pay three mana to have the target player mill two cards. If those two cards share a color, which, thanks to Grindstone, they do, you get to repeat the process over and over again until your opponent runs out of cards. The rest of the deck is a combination of removals and ways to find your combo pieces.
7 8-Cast
The evolution of the classic Affinity decklists from Legacy eras long past, 8-Cast is built around locking your opponents out of the game and drawing tons of cards with efficient spells and artifacts.
Thought Monitor and Thoughtcast can easily become one-mana draw spells, reducing the cost for each artifact you control. Emry, Lurker of the Loch allows you to return your cheap artifacts to play, while Chalice of the Void shuts down your opponent’s spells. Kappa Cannoneer is the latest addition to the deck, giving it a bigger beater to quickly close the game.
6 Selesnya Depths
A somewhat recent shift in Dark Depths decks has seen the deck move away from black-based lists to a green and white list, often splashing red for Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. Selesnya Depths functions more like a midrange deck with a combo finish. The crux of the deck is to use Thespian's Stage to copy Dark Depths, automatically creating a 20/20 flying, indestructible creature token.
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Replacing black with green allows you to play Knight of the Reliquary to tutor up your combo lands and attack with a solid creature. Crop Rotation, Elvish Reclaimer, and Knight of the Reliquary all help find your lands reliably, and the addition of Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes provides a secondary win condition.
5 Mono-Red Prison
Similar to Death and Taxes, Mono-Red Prison seeks to cut your opponent out of options and capitalizes on the delays it causes with efficient creatures. The basic prison package includes Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Blood Moon, locking players out of spells and mana and forcing them to pay more for any spells they get to cast.
Once you’ve locked your opponent out of the game, you can cast your creature spells, including Goblin Rabblemaster and Legion Warboss to make lots of tokens and Fury for a double-striking attacker that deals damage when it enters the battlefield.
4 Elves
One of the most straightforward decks in Legacy, Elves involves playing lots of Elves.
Your Elves get larger thanks to Allosaurus Shepherd and the massive amount of mana you can generate off of Gaea’s Cradle. If that isn’t an option, you can always cast Natural Order for a Craterhoof Behemoth and overrun your opponents that way.
3 Reanimator
Reanimator is another fairly straightforward deck, though it involves some planning to get it right. You essentially take a massive creature like Archon of Cruelty or Griselbrand and either discard or put it in your graveyard, and then put it into play with cards like Reanimate, Exhume, and Animate Dead.
Reanimator decks run plenty of hand disruption with Grief and Thoughtseize to hamstring your opponents.
2 Doomsday
Doomsday is an all-in deck based around the titular card. Doomsday has you losing half your life to exile your library, replacing it with five cards of your choice. Those five cards are generally some combination of disruption in the form of Force of Will, a draw spell like Deep Analysis or Edge of Autumn, Thassa’s Oracle as your actual win condition, possibly some mana accelerant like Lotus Petal, and Cavern of Souls to ensure your Oracle resolves.
The five cards you choose will vary depending on your board state, but once Doomsday resolves, you just have to ensure Thassa’s Oracle resolves to win the game.
1 Izzet Delver
Izzet Delver has long been the top deck in Legacy. An extremely efficient deck, Izzet Delver relies on one-mana creatures like Delver of Secrets and Dragon's Rage Channeler to create solid flying creatures and then prevent your opponents from doing anything with a strong counter package.
After casting a few spells, you can land a Murktide Regent as another flying finisher to close the game.
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