2: Moon Stompy
This deck has just always been getting more additions lately and as a result the deck has gotten to the point where none of its threats are really ignorable in the vast majority of contexts. Ring, Bombardiers, Pyrogoyf, Fable, Fury can all end games very quickly. Gone are the days of some threats just not being quite good enough in every situation, now almost all the time, every threat is a must answer. Whether that be directly countering or removing threats or contesting them with a board presence of your own you cannot sit idly. Chalice and Blood Moon will almost always be strong in Legacy unless the format slows down a decent bit. This deck has just shed a lot of the inconsistency that used to be inherent to Ancient Tomb strategies historically, and for that has pushed this deck to the top of the format.

3: Delver
At the moment I like RUG Delver over Grixis, but UB Delver has been popping up recently and I admittedly have very limited experience with that version of the deck. Bowmasters is in a weird spot in Legacy at the moment where it’s either fantastic or it’s Raise the Alarm and Legacy in the state it’s in right now, being very fast and punishing, I don’t really like having cards with this cost in my main deck so that makes me less high on the Black touching versions of the Tempo king. Delver has taken a fall from grace in the last year and a bit. The format has sped up and its powerful card advantage tools keep getting taken from it. Just like Reanimator however, the fundamental core of the deck will always be strong enough to compete at the top in Legacy. Delver is sort of stretched thin these days by combo and stompy decks being the last bastion of good fair decks in the format, it is evident that the fair tools it has access to are losing their long-held grip on the format.

4: Eldrazi

Yet another Ancient Tomb deck that has gotten a lot of additions in the last year. The Modern core of the Eldrazi deck came entirely from Modern Horizons 3 injecting a bunch of pushed small Eldrazi into the format and completely revitalizing Eldrazi shell. The deck interacts very well with lands creatures and all of the above in addition to getting to play classic Stompy lock pieces like Chalice and Trinisphere as well as getting The One Ring as a never-ending stream of threats. I also want to give a mention to Oops All Spells, but I have literally no experience with that deck since it has been rebuilt, but it has been seeing a fair bit of play and success online, enough to possibly warrant a slot among the best decks at the moment, but I can’t really say myself.”

Your overall feelings on the state of legacy at the moment?

“I want to love Legacy, but the current state of the format is among the all time worst I’ve ever played in my opinion. There are two main metrics I use to measure how good I think a format is; how diverse and healthy is the metagame, how healthy and diverse is the gameplay? At the moment I think Legacy isn’t doing very well in either of those categories.

Legacy is extremely fast and extremely punishing at the moment. The format is in one of the fastest states it has ever been. The Legacy metagame at the moment is beyond plagued with Stompy and Combo decks. The only truly fair deck that I would consider good is Delver and there have only been a small handful of truly good fair decks besides Delver in the last few years of Legacy and almost all of those decks have still been Daze Tempo decks. Macro Archetype (Combo, Control, Midrange, Stompy) diversity within Legacy has been pretty unbalanced in the past few years and at the moment is very unbalanced. Combo and Stompy are very heavily represented in Legacy right now, Control has not been good for a long time. Currently, Lands based strategies, classic Blue Control and Fair Blue or Non-Blue Midrange outside of Delver are absent from the top of the format and haven’t been great choices for a while.
What about the gameplay? I can think of formats that have had very dominant decks resulting in a pretty unhealthy metagame where the saving grace of the format is that even though there are clearly dominating banworthy decks, the gameplay is still deep, interesting and enjoyable. Legacy currently despite not having a clearly dominating deck at the moment doesn’t produce the greatest gameplay either in my opinion. I think the biggest gripe I have with Legacy gameplay is Stompy decks (Ancient Tomb + Lock pieces and powerful threats enabled by mana acceleration). Stompy decks can generate some pretty unfun or uninteresting game play, being able to effectively win the game on the first turn by locking out the opponent from playing the game with Turn 1 lock pieces after winning the die roll. As the opponent you’re forced to have Force of Will or scoop up your cards and go to the next game. Ideally I’d have this type of game play relegated to a smaller portion of the Legacy format than it is now, because it can be rather miserable. I’m not against its existence, but I think it’d be better if it was in a bit more moderation. Similarly, fast combo decks can Force check you and the diversity amongst abundance of combo decks at the moment in Legacy seriously stretches fair decks pretty thin.

In short, fast and linear decks in Legacy have developed and gotten a lot stronger in previous years, where fair decks have faltered and struggled to keep up with the pressures of powerful proactive strategies. The metagame has trended increasingly less fair, and gameplay has felt worse to me following that trend.”

What card or cards would you like to see banned or unbanned at the upcoming B&R announcement and why?

“I don’t really have any particularly strong takes on what to ban or unban in the format, but I think a lot would have to change to get me to think Legacy was a greatly healthy format again. I’d look at unbans to try to elevate underpowered macro archetypes, midrange and control, but I think it may be a bit too dangerous and there aren’t great unban options outside of cutting Daze’s tenure in exchange for the freedom of cards like Expressive Iteration, Dreadhorde Arcanist, Psychic Frog or Ragavan. Other unbans like Library of Alexandria and Survival of the Fittest may just not be impactful enough to balance your supreme Blue overlords. I think powering down the format is the direction I’d take at the moment. No pillars aren’t sacred (except Brainstorm lmao) if we want a lower power-level format, prepare for some things you aren’t ready to hear.

So what if we power down? This would exclusively involve banning. I’d want to ban cards to balance the wildly imbalanced macro archetype diversity in the format right now by taking down the overly dominant macro archetypes.

Ancient Tomb
I would want to address Ancient Tomb in some way. I don’t like the gameplay these decks lead to when they are so prevalent in the format. Vexing Bauble already caught a ban for the sins of Ancient Tomb in the last B&R update, I think the One Ring could potentially be another casualty. I am also not against just ripping off the band-aid and saying goodbye to the powerful enabler that Ancient Tomb is, but that comes with a cascade of a couple bans that should be aimed at powering down the format a lot.

Daze
Daze gives tempo decks so much breathing room to bully everything else in the format into playing a turn behind. Almost every single good Fair Blue deck in recent years has had Dazes. The combination with efficient threats and Daze has been the last bastion of hope for Fair Blue in Legacy for a while and it would be nice to see the deep world of other fair blue control and midrange decks be opened up again. Banning Ancient Tomb would go a long way and banning Daze would allow more expensive midrange and control cards the room to flourish.

Combo
Without Daze or Ancient Tomb, combo is likely to reign supreme. The only issue is how diverse combo decks are in Legacy currently, but by far the most prevalent combo deck is Reanimator. Banning Reanimate would likely ensure a version of the deck still exists. Banning Entomb would outright kill Reanimator as we know it. Show&Tell decks take a hit from Ancient Tomb being banned, but there are still Dark Ritual combo decks in Doomsday and Oops that remain pretty competitive in the format right now and would be poised to become top dogs. Maybe there’s a world where Dark Ritual is the common thread that shouldn’t be here.”

How do we dethrone the reigning King of the North, Conrad?

“Do you want to become royalty? The short answer is to improve at Magic. There are a lot of factors that go into improving at Magic, but if I’m to put it simply.

Play your weekly Legacy tournaments, play the competitive 1Ks, 2Ks, etc. that we are so lucky to have in Toronto and the GTA. Play Magic Online Challenges. Play other formats even!

Be critical of your own play, always look for ways you can improve or play better in the games you played in a tournament. You’ll get nowhere if you blame luck all the time for your woes.

Play good decks and come prepared to tournaments. Know your list, know your sideboard plans, know the decks in the format.

Seek the perspectives and opinions of better players and be ready to listen and apply what they say. Include better players in part of your preparation for tournaments. Ask me, ask Dom Harvey, ask Conrad about anything Magic related, we won’t bite.”

If Eternal weekend was next weekend, what deck would you play and why?

“I’d simply play UB Reanimator, I believe it is the best deck at the moment, I have a wealth of experience piloting the deck from prior iterations and those combined make me think it’s the deck that would give me the best chance to win.”

Final thoughts?

“I’ve written almost 2k words in my responses combined, there is a lot to pore over. But the one thing I hope you take away from reading my responses was improvement at Magic. I love to elevate other players and help them improve at the game. If you want to get better at Magic, I’m happy to help you accomplish your goals.”