Legacy: 2025 Rewind

Greetings, Legacy community! 2025, a relatively rocky year for Legacy, is almost over, and there is no better time for us to revisit what happened throughout the year than December, the official rewind month!

I've mentioned before that December is my favorite month of the year. My birthday, my dog's birthday, Christmas, and New Year's, it's all in December. Plus, these rewind articles are my favorite as well. So, let's go over what happened throughout the last 12 months!

Unlike 2024, which started out quite slow, 2025 started just a few weeks after an important banlist update. On December 16th, 2024, Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble left the format. Frog might have been popular in many archetypes, but it ended up getting the axe solely because Wizards of the Coast wanted to make Dimir Reanimator less dominant once again. As we'll see soon, they were unsuccessful, as this list just started playing Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student instead and moved on.

As for Bauble, it was, pardon my language, an evil card. It was a cheap, accessible way for any color to simply ignore a very important part of the format. Some players might say it was somewhat fair in Prison archetypes, but what really made it broken was the fact that Mystic Forge lists could use it offensively. In this list, it both worked as a Defense Grid by stopping cards like Force of Will and Daze and destroyed other combo lists entirely.

WotC had good intentions, but only Forge really faded out after this update, and Dimir Reanimator stayed on top.

This month also brought us Innistrad Remastered, which didn't give us any new cards but reprinted a few very interesting ones, particularly the banned Hermit Druid. This was a sign that maybe WotC could afford to bring it back from the banlist.

The big news in February was Aetherdrift, the new set. This set, as a whole, didn't impact Legacy much, apart from one exception. Players experimented with Chandra, Spark Hunter and Ketramose, the New Dawn, but the great addition from Aetherdrift was Stock Up. On its own, a 3-mana sorcery that essentially draws 2 cards doesn't seem useful in Legacy. But that's not the whole truth: Stock Up plays around Orcish Bowmasters' effect and allows us to dig deep so that we can find our combo pieces. It also works really well with Ancient Tomb. This card put Show and Tell lists back on the map and ended up seeing play in other archetypes. It even saw some play in Vintage!

March brought us another round of bans and another attempt to contain Dimir Reanimator without breaking it apart entirely. This time, Troll of Khazad-dûm took one for the team. The idea was to make this list less consistent and make some reanimations less efficient, as they would be restricted to Entomb targets. Once again, as we'll see soon, this was inefficient.

The second ban was a lot more controversial. Sowing Mycospawn was both beloved and hated. Its defenders believed it rehabilitated Eldrazi and Cloudpost Ramp in Legacy, while its attackers believed it prevented decks more geared towards attrition, like 4- and 5- color Control, from seeing play.

At the end of the day, WotC took the attacker's side and claimed their idea behind this ban was to open space for these decks. Nonetheless, this didn't actually happen.

In February, Aetherdrift only brought us just a single new card, but Tarkir: Dragonstorm, in April, brought many of them:

Clarion Conqueror became a great sideboard card. It could hit several different decks at once.

Voice of Victory both protected combo lists and Nadu, Winged Wisdom lists. It was also fuel for decks like Mardu Tokens.

Cori-Steel Cutter put Izzet Delver back on the map. It was a recursive mechanism that put a lot of pressure on opponents and was resilient to regular removals, unlike the now retired Young Pyromancer.

Rakshasa's Bargain, with the Sowing Mycospawn ban, put Sultai Control on another level.

Ugin, Eye of the Storms was the first step to put Forge Combo back on top after Vexing Bauble was banned.

Mistrise Village seems to have been made with Show and Tell in mind.

May was quite lukewarm for Legacy, as it didn't bring us any new releases or bans. We spent this month waiting for the greatest and most popular release of the year (if not for Legacy in particular, for the game overall).

During the spoiler/review season, WotC announced a rule change that impacted Legacy considerably: from June onwards, effects like Blood Moon no longer destroyed Urza's Saga. Instead, it "froze" them in their current chapter for as long as they remained in play.

June brought us the highly anticipated Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy. This set, based around one of the most iconic RPG franchises in the world, was an immediate success. It not only put the MTG community back under the spotlight but also attracted fans of the original franchise that hadn't yet ventured into the TCG world.

For Legacy, in particular, this set was quite frustrating. Its power level was more aligned to Standard, and it didn't give us a lot to work with. Tifa Lockhart might have been the only one that inspired a new archetype. A few other cards saw play in consolidated archetypes as support.

There was also another banlist update on June 30th. Which brings us to...

We expected July to change a lot, considering all the great changes that would go into effect. We hoped Legacy would find balance and peace.

However, June 30th only brought us two words: No changes.

By this point, the last new release to greatly impact Legacy had been over six months before (as 2025 didn't have anything like a Modern Horizons for us), and now we got an empty "no-ban" update. This created ripples in the community.

Legacy became so stagnated that many players stopped consuming, playing, and overall interacting with the format in the following months.

August brought us Edge of Eternities. This space-inspired set was more like Tarkir and less like Aetherdrift for Legacy, and a few cards in it ended up becoming very relevant in the format:

Starfield Shepherd saw play in some white aggro lists, particularly those that played flicker effects.

Speaking of flicker effects, Quantum Riddler first showed up in control lists, but it seems to have found its real home with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd.

Frenzied Baloth (also known as Questing Beast's child) is an interesting and popular addition in Green Sun's Zenith lists, particularly in Maverick.

What was 8-Cast took a new, very successful form when Pinnacle Emissary came along. This new Robot and the next card we'll mention became the most relevant cards in Legacy from this set.

Tezzeret, Cruel Captain was what we needed to reconstruct Forge Combo and put it on the top of the format after its fall from grace once Vexing Bauble was banned.

Finally, Eumidian Hatchery brought back Golgari Pox and made it relevant in Legacy again.

The last days of September brought us Marvel's Spider-Man, but it's as if they didn't. This set didn't impact Legacy at all. The only card that saw some play and wasn't completely irrelevant was Steel Wrecking Ball, which we could play in Karn, the Great Creator lists. This was a truly forgettable set.

WotC didn't release anything in October 2024, and they didn't release anything in October 2025. Nonetheless, the first Eternal Weekend in the U.S.A. took place that month. It was a great representation of what Legacy had become: smaller than the year before, 3 decks in the Top 8 were Dimir Reanimator, and 3, including the winner, were Forge Combo.

The rest of the Top 8 was 1 Nadu breakfast, the third most dominant deck in the format, and 1 Golgari Pox, an outlier that also played Eumidian Hatchery. Legacy was singing its swan song by this point.

Two great things happened this month. The first was the new Universes Beyond Avatar: The Last Airbender set, which we were all excited for after the controversial Spider-Man set. And it proved to be quite interesting for our format. Many cards in it were impactful, like the critical Badgermole Cub, but we can also list Meteor Sword, Boomerang Basics, Katara, Waterbending Master, and Wan Shi Tong, Librarian as relevant cards from this set.

The best of the month, though, at least for Legacy, had been announced a few days before this set came along: Entomb and Nadu, Winged Wisdom were banned. After rounds after rounds of bans that didn't do anything, WotC finally decided to do something meaningful to shake up the format.

Entomb was clearly far too powerful compared to the rest of the other cards, and Dimir Reanimator had turned into everything WotC didn't want: if you're going to build a deck centered around cheating monsters into play, you have to actually commit to this idea and not just play 10 cards, like this version was doing. And Nadu was simply a mistake. It was banned even in the format it was designed around, Commander. We definitely won't miss it.

The European Eternal Weekend also took place in November. This was the first big tournament after the bans and was actually quite interesting. Pinnacle Affinity ended up winning, and the top 8 was quite diverse. Definitely a ray of hope for Legacy.

The last month in 2025 brought us the last Eternal Weekend in Yokohama, Japan. The big winner was the most popular deck in the format right now, Izzet Tempo. Though there were 3 Dimir Tempo in the Top 8 as well (none made it into the top 4), overall the meta at this event was quite diverse.

Now, Legacy is renewed and quite interesting. It even has more space for Control lists, which spent most of the year on the sidelines.

2025 was, mostly, a rocky year. Inefficient bans, low-impact sets, "no changes" on June 30th... It was a lot. I saw with my own eyes players taking a break from the format. WotC took a long time to do something relevant, but they eventually did. Though some players doubted the last bans would impact the format the way they wanted because they considered them not enough and that Forge, the main untouched deck, would dominate as a result, that wasn't what happened. We are now going through a period of renewal.

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

Thank you for reading, happy holidays, and see you next time!