Legacy: May 2026 Banlist Review

Greetings, Legacy community! This week, we got another banlist update, and, considering the last times we got updates, I didn't expect much besides another "No Changes". I didn't even stay online refreshing the page to see if Wizards of the Coast would do something.

I was dealing with the frustration of my actual life when I got a message on my phone. "Is this real?" it read, and below there was a screenshot of the new banlist update.

Legacy - Undercity Informer is banned.

Until this banlist update, I believe no other popular deck in Legacy was as divisive as Oops All Spells. Many players (me included) didn't like the fact it was a thing in this format, and I'm being nice about it. Some of us thought it was a great, cheap way to attract new players because it didn't cost much money and was very competitive. Some players weren't fans of this archetype but didn't think it was performing well enough to be a threat. It was also contained by some of the main decks in the format, like Dimir Tempo and Azorius Blink.

Any discussion about Oops All Spells was fated to turn sour quickly. However, as it survived the last banlist updates unscathed and hasn't been that popular lately, we thought we'd keep debating it and that WotC would let it free in Legacy. Well, we were definitely caught off guard.

The most critical argument in this debate was how much game pattern and win rates mattered. We still haven't reached a consensus regarding this question. Some of us believe a high win rate justifies a ban, while others say game patterns matter more. Sowing Mycospawn, for instance, is a great example of a card that "needed to be banned" because of the game pattern it promoted.

The main question, however (and this was mentioned in the banlist update), is that Oops encourages a problematic game pattern. In the words of Carmen Klomparens, from WotC: "The degree to which the deck can win on turn one is frustrating and feeds some of the worst stereotypes about games in Eternal formats feeling decided before one person gets to play. While the deck is answerable and there are some strategies that are very good at countering it, it's ultimately throttling what decks are reasonable to play in Legacy."

And that is it, basically. Legacy has space for turn-1 decks, and by turn-1 decks I mean specifically decks built to win before the opponent has a chance to react. Decks like Storm and Doomsday can eventually win on turn 1 but are not built with that in mind. Nonetheless, these decks were always considered sort of "memes" or "risky bets" because they were too fragile and inconsistent. Oops changed that, and for a long time was in the top tiers of the meta.

We felt the impact of a deck like this becoming so popular for a long time: most decks were forced to play a significant number of 0-turn answers in their sideboards, like Leyline of the Void, Faerie Macabre, or Surgical Extraction. Decks that couldn't access Force of Will were left with no choice except to pray in game 1. Only a few things are more frustrating than not even being able to play because you lost the 50/50 on the dice. Even though other decks were able to contain Oops, the message was that, if you couldn't play Force of Will, you were sabotaging yourself.

This ban was welcomed with a big sigh of relief in Stompy communities, as this game style really struggled to play around Oops. Other non-blue decks were also not that sad to see this card go.

They said something in the announcement that isn't exactly wrong. This ban is not supposed to kill this deck, like other past bans. But how can this deck survive if half of its enablers were pushed out of the format? The truth is that this archetype is still playable, even without Undercity Informer. But it will become a lot less consistent.

I see 3 ways we could still combo on turn 1 with a decent number of enablers:

The first option is playing Beseech the Mirror. If you use Bargain, you can use it to get Balustrade Spy and combo in the same way. The only downside is that you'd have to play Chrome Mox as well to have enough artifacts for Bargain, and the 3 mana might not be a problem for Dark Ritual but are more complicated to get with Spirit Guides. Furthermore, Chrome Mox may cost you resources that are already rare in a deck that mulligans a lot.

The second option is playing Lively Dirge, which in practice works like a 5-mana Balustrade Spy but is vulnerable to Force of Negation, Spell Pierce, and Spell Snare. Having one extra mana is also crucial because this deck doesn't have a large margin for error.

Finally, this deck can become a sort of Oops/Goblin Charbelcher hybrid, which it sort of already is considering the most popular sideboard game plan. All we would have to do is get the sideboard game plan and add it to the main deck. We would also have to play Lion's Eye Diamond, which would make the main combo less consistent as well.

Anything you do will inevitably make this deck a lot worse than before, and, considering the format was already sort of hostile to it, this could be enough to kill it once and for all. If there were less Leyline of the Void in the meta, it could survive, but it would still be less consistent.

Undercity Informer was the target this time, but it certainly wasn't the only thing WotC could have banned. These cards got a free pass this time:

Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is one of the most powerful cards in Legacy. It's a 1-mana planeswalker that meets several criteria that got other cards banned in the past. It wasn't even mentioned in the article this time, but as long as it is in Legacy, we'll be thinking about banning it.

Planar Nexus wasn't mentioned directly, but it is key in Big Mana lists that take advantage of its interaction with Urza's Tower to create a truckload of mana, particularly Colorless Tron. My guess is that the fact it is being mentioned now is a way for WotC to pave the way for a future ban. But my actual guess is not Nexus itself. I'd bet on Candelabra of Tawnos, which is not the most important card in this list at all, but it has become quite problematic because of the rift it caused between digital MTG and tabletop MTG.

I believe that, in the future, to make Tron less relevant, Candelabra will take one of the team, and this will solve the issue regarding how accessible it is on tabletop and digital platforms.

Finally, Flow State has been quite relevant lately, and it is basically a reprint of another card that has been banned (Expressive Iteration), but they believe it is still too early to do something against it. Even more considering that now the meta will have more space for non-blue lists.

I can say I was honestly surprised by this week's banlist announcement. Nonetheless, I've always thought Oops promoted unhealthy interactions in Legacy, particularly as it pushed aside decks without Force of Will and was highly frustrating for those who faced it. So, I was glad that at least something was done about it.

Overall, I understand that Legacy is quite diverse, and I believe that these changes will actually be quite good.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!