Legacy: 10 Best Cards of 2024 for the Format

The end of 2024 is approaching, and with it, we begin our retrospective on how this year was for Magic: The Gathering. In addition to the changes that occurred in the game, we can also evaluate which were the most important cards that the new releases brought to each competitive format.

Today we will discuss Legacy, the format affected by Modern Horizons 3 also had some pleasant surprises with cycles like Surveil Lands, which surprisingly found space alongside Old Duals.

The year was also busy for one of Magic's oldest environments: cards like Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble changed the dynamics of the Metagame, and now that they are banned, Legacy enters 2025 with a clean field, but still with risks of more bans next year caused by cards from MH3.

10 - Pre-War Formalwear

Pre-War Formalwear has become a staple of Death & Taxes and a few other Stoneforge Mystic-based strategies. Its recursion as a toolbox that can be found by a key creature from these archetypes has made it an essential piece of equipment for Legacy this year.

9 - Planar Nexus

Starting our long journey of cards from Modern Horizons 3 to Legacy, Planar Nexus came in one of the expansion's Commander decks and with a peculiar ability: being all non-basic land types at once.

Its inclusion made it possible to use Urza’s Tower in Legacy to generate three mana, improved and expanded the amount of Locus in Cloudpost lists, and turned it into an important piece of some of the format’s Big Mana, with the potential to grow over the years as new cards that care about land types are released.

8 - Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student

Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student was one of the cards with the greatest potential for Legacy when Modern Horizons 3 came out due to its interaction with Brainstorm and other cheap cantrips, and while it had a hurdle in some archetypes that it couldn’t overcome, its position in strategies like Stiflenaught and Beanstalk Control seems secure today.

7 - Consign to Memory

Legacy gained many powerful colorless cards in Modern Horizons 3, including a new Eldrazi package that revitalized the archetype in the Metagame and a card that locked free spells for the entire time it was legal.

Consign to Memory was the format's answer to addressing these issues, and it did so well enough to be the most played card of the North American Eternal Weekend. It also became another important enabler for Stiflenaught, cementing itself as a staple, and should remain so as long as powerful colorless cards make up a portion of the metagame.

6 - Kozilek's Command

Speaking of powerful cards, none of them were as flexible as Kozilek's Command. The colorless version of the famous cycle that began in Lorwyn is one of the most versatile cards in dealing with different threats and strategies this year, while also allowing topdeck filtering and/or ramp.

Another relevant function of this card was to enable some lines with Glaring Fleshraker that allow archetypes to perform an efficient “combo-kill” with both cards and an absurd amount of mana, and such versatility gave it spots in Eldrazi archetypes (obviously), and in other decks with easy access to colorless mana such as Mystic Forge Combo.

5 - Nadu, Winged Wisdom

What can we say about Nadu, Winged Wisdom? I was hesitant to put it on the Best Cards list for Legacy given that it is the worst card design of 2024, but we can't deny its impact on the format's Metagame: Nadu Zenith is one of Legacy's main competitors today and, with the recent bans, some believe it will dominate in the same way it dominated Modern, eventually culminating in a ban in 2025.

Yes, it was the worst Magic card released this year, a testament to how much a lack of testing and last-minute changes can ruin formats, but in terms of power level, it presents itself as one of the pinnacles of Legacy and shouldn't leave it for some time.

4 - Surveil Lands

How good does a land cycle have to be to make it to Legacy, where Dual Lands and Fetch Lands dictate the mana base while Wasteland keeps nonbasic lands in check?

Few had faith that Surveil Lands would have a use in Modern, and even fewer in Legacy, but in practice, Surveil is definitely better than Scry and the land typing has allowed archetypes to include one or two copies of Surveil Lands to filter the top on turns where we won't be using the fetched land, or even to positively interact with a deck's game plan, such as playing an Undercity Sewers to try to find a target for Reanimate on top, or to feed Murktide Regent.

This versatility has made Surveil Lands the best cycle of cards for Legacy 2024, a pleasant surprise given that they came from a Standard set.

3 - Glaring Fleshraker

Glaring Fleshraker is that uncommon that we don't pay much attention to until we see what it actually does. In Legacy, what it does is establish a new win line for decks like Mystic Forge or Cloudpost while also being a powerful support for the Eldrazi archetypes that grew considerably in 2024 due to Modern Horizons 3.

Now, without Vexing Bauble, these decks will have an extra challenge to maintain in the Metagame, but Glaring Fleshraker will still be one of the pillars that make up one of their ways to win the game while chaining multiple colorless spells in a turn.

2 - Psychic Frog

What Psychic Frog did for Legacy is very comparable to cards like Dreadhorde Arcanist and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. And like its peers, Frog proved too strong for the format's environment, becoming a powerful attrition tool that further pulled Reanimator into the spotlight while ensuring its survival as a "fair combo-kill" deck after the banning of Grief.

Combo or Tempo archetypes are very dangerous when they have card advantage tools. Psychic Frog, like its predecessors, proved to the Legacy community and Magic that there are certain limits that cannot be crossed when giving new tools to the best decks, which culminated in its recent ban.

1 - Vexing Bauble

We cannot disregard the contribution that Vexing Bauble made to Legacy by offering the opportunity to change the status quo of the format, shaking the pillars of Force of Will and Daze and making players imagine, for six months, what Legacy could be like without these free spells holding back degenerate strategies.

Bauble was the ultimate test, the opportunity that the format never had to “lock down” the interactions that have permeated its essence for over two decades, and it presented the consequences. Now, we know the response was not good and Legacy would not remain healthy if power creep removed free spells from this the Metagame's regulator role at the lowest possible cost and with the smallest imaginable concessions.

Through the controversies evoked by this card and the short but also long period in which it was a maindeck staple for several archetypes - especially those with Urza’s Saga - Legacy rediscovers its position, understands its pillars and, in the end, sees that the need for Force of Will remains as present today as it was back in the format's origins.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!