Legacy is an expansive format. Much like Modern, there’s really no way to predict exactly what kinds of decks you will run into when you play in a Legacy event, so it’s hard to properly determine the metagame. My philosophy is to just play a powerful deck, and even within specific deck choices, play powerful and versatile cards that can be devastating to a variety of archetypes.

Still, a few decks have shown time and time again that they can rise above and perform in Legacy. While there are tons of viable decks beyond this list, these are my Top 5 Legacy decks.

#1: Miracles

Ah yes, the deck that everyone hates. Personally, I think Miracles is a good deck, but not broken. It’s one of the decks I am considering for GP Columbus next month, but it’s not my top choice. There are a number of strategies that are strong against Miracles, including many of these other Top 5 decks. What keeps Miracles coming back again and again is that it is extremely consistent and efficient at what it does.

Miracles plays the best defensive cards, but has a proactive game plan. Make no mistake, Counterbalance is an aggressive card because the longer and longer it sits in play, the more and more it constricts the opponent’s options until they can’t win anymore. It may take another 10 turns for Miracles to actually close out the game, but they won a long time ago. Or maybe they drew—I don’t know, the clock is a real thing.

Recent Miracles lists have been playing Predict for card advantage. Predict plays like a mini-Dig-Through-Time in that it can clear bad cards off the top of the deck and give you 2 fresh ones. Clearly it is way worse than Dig, but it still plays a similar role, and having access to a card like this can give Miracles a fighting chance against some of the decks that normally prey on it by 2-for-1ing it a bunch, like Shardless Sultai.

#2: Grixis Delver

There are a wide variety of playable Delver archetypes, but Grixis is putting up the best results. To me, that comes as no surprise. Grixis has the most flexibility of all the Delver strategies and can play a variety of roles well.

It has the best threats of all the Delver lists. Deathrite Shaman is still a hell of a card, and Young Pyromancer is one of the best creatures in Legacy. Young Pyromancer has always been an underrated card. For a long period of time, I felt like it was the best creature in Legacy and while it’s not as powerful as it was when Treasure Cruise was legal, it’s still quite good.

In addition to having powerful threats, Grixis Delver also has some of the best disruption since it gets access to Cabal Therapy alongside Young Pyromancer to really tear apart the opponent’s hand, and it can also play grindy cards like Painful Truths in the sideboard to switch to a less tempo game plan and to a more grindy game plan post-board against slower decks.

I think Grixis Delver is also favored against Miracles, something that other Delver lists can’t boast. Having a good Miracles matchup is pretty key to being successful in Legacy.

#3: RG Lands

This list is from RG Lands expert and GP SeaTac winner Jarvis Yu.

A number of people have switched over to playing Dark Lands, a lands variant that is playing black for cards like Thoughtseize, Abrupt Decay, and Dark Confidant in the 75. I believe that version is simply worse than regular old RG Lands.

Lands has a weak Miracles matchup, but a strong matchup against most of the rest of the field. There are a lot of decks that are dead to a 20/20 Marit Lage, which is capable of coming down as early as turn 2 with the right draw. There are a lot of other decks that can’t beat the grindy inevitability of Life from the Loam, Punishing Fire, and effects like Wasteland and Rishadan Port to attack your mana.

One other huge factor that makes Lands great is that it gets a lot of free wins. There are a lot of decks out there that have atrocious Lands matchups, and it’s hard to overstate the value of free wins every now and again. Some of the other top decks like Miracles or Grixis Delver don’t get free wins, and missing out on that is a real loss.

#4: Storm

This is Sam Black’s Ad Nauseam Tendrils (ANT) list from the MOCS Championship a few weeks ago.

Much like Lands, one of the big reasons to play a deck like Storm is that you get a bunch of free wins. Sometimes you get paired against a deck like Elves that has little chance of beating you, and you often will win game 1 against players who don’t know what you’re playing and thus don’t know what kind of a hand they need to keep, or players who don’t have the right cards in their deck yet to be able to stop you.

The deck is also fast and surprisingly resilient. It’s capable of playing through a lot of hate, including hand disruption and countermagic. The best cards to combat Storm are permanent-based hate—things like Chalice of the Void, Meddling Mage, Rest in Peace, Counterbalance, and so forth.

The addition of Dark Petition really helped Storm a lot by giving it more ways to play through hate, and more ways to find anti-hate cards. While permanent-based hate is the best way to fight Storm, Storm decks also have access to cards like Abrupt Decay after sideboard to fight it.

This is not a deck I would sleep on. It’s important to have a plan against Storm.

#5: Eldrazi

I don’t think that I’ve found the best way to build Eldrazi yet, but this list from Magic Online is starting to push in the right direction.

Eldrazi is good for two reasons: The first is that Chalice of the Void is one of the best cards in Legacy, hands down. This deck not only gets to play Chalice of the Void but gets to play it in a shell that’s aggressive enough to kill the opponent before they can start to play through it.

The other reason is that Eldrazi kind of gets around cards that are traditionally fairly strong in Legacy. Lightning Bolt doesn’t do much against this deck. Force of Will is weak against Cavern of Souls. Counterbalance is a joke.

This deck does suffer from some of the same problems that have traditionally plagued archetypes of this nature. Chalice of the Void isn’t good against every deck. Eldrazi doesn’t have a lot of interaction against certain cards or combos. The deck plays a lot of lands and thus is prone to flooding out. Still, despite these issues, this is still one of the best decks in Legacy and a deck to have on your radar. One of the reasons I think Lands is a good choice for GP Columbus is specifically because Lands has a great matchup against the tentacled beasts.