Legacy: Player engagement masks growing meta issues.

Legacy is showing a strong pulse this week, clocking a Final Health Index of 77.3. The major takeaway is the format's incredible resilience, underscored by booming player engagement and high event turnout, despite lingering metagame homogeneity concerns. We are seeing major increases across the board in participation, suggesting players are deeply invested in solving the evolving puzzles presented by recent set releases.

The raw numbers confirm the engagement story: Player Growth is booming at 96.0, fueled by paper participation jumping dramatically to 4126 players last month. Event Growth is also robust at nearly 89.0. However, the Metagame Diversity Score sits at 74.7, lower than the recent 2023 peak of 76.3. Crucially, the super-archetype balance is incredibly stable. AGGRO (41.4%) and COMBO (40.9%) hold a near-perfect equilibrium, a distribution highly consistent with the format’s historical five-year average.

Looking at the Top 10, UR Aggro remains the undisputed top dog this week, claiming 10.4% of the competitive field. The next tier is clustered tightly, featuring Eldrazi Aggro and Dimir Tempo both at 6%. This reinforces the dominance of aggressive and tempo strategies, although specialized decks like Death & Taxes, Maverick, Artifacts Blue, and Dragon Stompy still carve out small but important slices of the pie, keeping the Archetype Distribution Score high at 93.5.

The B&R update was a non-event, maintaining the status quo, though the B&R Health Score sits slightly lower at 65.0, reflecting underlying community tension. The pulse of the format is currently dominated by Nadu, the Warding. This combo piece, leveraging zero-cost creatures, has generated massive community buzz and concern over its high ceiling, reminiscent of early discussions around Oko, Thief of Crowns. We are also seeing Esper Control utilizing cards like Snuff Out and Subtlety rise as resilient answers to the format's dominant tempo decks. While Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer remains the most complained-about creature, the meta is adapting, leading to cautious optimism that the diversity seen at the top tables is sustainable, despite persistent anxiety about power creep.