Infinite mana combo. With [Advanced Floral Invocations] and [Wildheart Invoker] it is a certain win. Maybe the new best deck in the format and a reasonable metagame balance to Summitfest combo. But again it takes forever to win and wastes everyone's time.

Please don't include overlong infinite combos in non-paper formats where you can't just say "I make a million forests".

I only ever play against this or badger combos (ouroboroid, squirrels or craterhoof, sometimes all at once).
This deck, however, is the worst. I have to sit there on the off-chance that their draws are shit. Even with counterspells, I have to sit there witnessing their solitaire game until they manage to fish out their wincon (thor, traumatic critique or mathemagics; hardly ever storm conditions).

Izzet and Ornate Imitations are everywhere, but we got nothing. Now with badgermole cub banned in standard...I think this is the death knell for me. I can't stay in this format

Hello all. My name is Tarmy and I really like alchemy. I play it a lot. Honestly it’s my favorite format. I know a lot of magic players hate it but I don’t care. It’s fun. It’s really fun right now because there are a lot of busted cards running around because of Alchemy: Strixhaven, and because it’s much different than standard with way less sets since they changed the old rotation system. Anyway I know it seems like I only post to complain but it’s easy to critique the things you love. But let’s be real. Something went and chewed its way out of the blast doors and the mad scientists that are the Alchemy dev team need to find a way to wrangle an unleashed monster and nerf it a bit

https://moxfield.com/decks/d2Gc3zvGHE6cC2uQQgyTxA

This is the deck I have been curb stomping with. The only real trouble the deck has is mirrors and occasional aggro and green deck nut draws but for the most part feels pretty unbeatable a lot of the time. It’s clear that Prismari is the Gryffindor of the Strixhaven school and WOTC is the Dumbledore handing them 150 house points “for being the most courageous”. Right at the end. Anyway, I want to go over the cards that need to be nerfed because quite frankly there are a lot of them. Starting with the most broken.

[[Inspiring Easel]]

I have a group chat of friends that are all avid magic players. We mostly play commander these days but back in the day we played a lot of modern. One of our friends is a judge. They are all paper players so every now and again I like to send them alchemy cards to see what they think. Everyone who saw it was like wtf. Why would they make this. It’s insane. I know I thought the same thing when I first saw it. It is far and away the strongest 2 drop mana rock ever printed.

I’d like to change things up a bit so I will present my proposed nerf first then breakdown each change and why I think it needs to happen

Easel
Comes into play tapped
Tap: add U or R. Spend this mana only to cast an instant or sorcery.
Tap: Choose an Instant or Sorcery in your hand. It gains Incoporate 1UR

At a bare minimum this fucking thing needs to come into play tapped. Having a 2 drop rock that can already fix for any color of mana or activate to eventually copy a spell shouldn’t be a thing. You should have to wait a turn to figure out what to do and it also stops the turn 3 double illuminating lash. Also after playing it with Interdisciplinary Studies it can’t fix for any colors of mana. Crushing mirrors by being able to tutor a [[Naturalize]] in an Izzet deck is unfair.
The copy cost is way, way too low. 3 mana to copy a spell that the Easel can already ramp for may even still be too good but free [[Fork]] without having to even use a card is way too cheap. Bravo on making Incorporate playable though devs, but the monkeys paw really curled up on that one.

[[Summitfest Closing Ceremony]]

Another card that made my friends go wtf, the idea is very simple. People love rituals. Hell one of my favorite cards in magic to cast will always be Dark Ritual. But rituals are busted. They are among the most banned cards in all of magic so the logic is simple. If we make the ritual more expensive, it won’t be as broken. Wrong. In an environment where Easel and Tablet are legal, turn 4 cast Summitfest win the game is very, very doable. I actually think this is an easy fix.

Summitfest.

Covercast (super cool ability btw, alchemy devs if you are reading this please do more of these effects.)

Starting Intensity 5

Add X mana in any combination of U/R where X is this cards intensity. Draw a card.

By starting the card mana neutral akin to [[Manamorphose]], and only growing it by 1 when triggering covercast it makes this card much, much more reasonable. Your first one will not generate mana by itself, you would have to cast Rapturous Moment first and it slows the deck down a tic, but it’s still super easy to win the game with Thor.

[[Interdisciplinary Studies]]

Boy this one flew under the radar for me. But then I put on my thinking cap and realized something. In the first Strixhaven set [[Divide by Zero]] ended up being banned in standard. What got it banned wasn’t its spell bounce, but Learn.

Learn is an absurd mechanic. [[Wish]] is one of the strongest effects in magic. It allows you to have access to your sideboard from your main board. A simple but deceptively powerful effect, and if you look at this decks sideboard you will realize that we have access to not only answers to decks that can harm us, but game finishers like Capstone too.

WOTC learned their lesson and printed only lessons without learning lessons cause learning lessons is broken. But the dev team said naw lets a do a learn card. And honestly, it’s not completely unreasonable but the shell it’s in supercharges this card. I think the nerfs on Easel and Summitfest are much more important, and if they happen and are meaningful this card probably doesn’t need a nerf, but if I have to I would say make it a sorcery to match the power level of Stock Up. There is a reason why most Wish effects are sorceries.

[[Illuminating Lash]]

The sleeper agent of the format of the if the sleeper agent was a terminator and the German shepherds at the gate are furiously barking at it. This card has been OP since the day it was released and I’m honestly glad the more broken cards shed a spotlight on this monster.

Black sees very little play in alchemy for a simple reason: this card. Why play [[Fell]] when you can play cantripping Fell? This card is so far above the power scale it’s nuts. Copying it with Easel leads to easily the most broken plays I’ve ever made in magic. Imagine you an are green player at your local modern tournament and you opponent shows up and casts a Wrath of God that draws them 2 cards. This is how strong this feels. Nerf is very simple: 2 damage instead of 3. 3 makes it cantripping Lightning Bolt. That is too good. It should be cantripping Shock.

[[Consumed by History]]

Pyroclasm wasn’t good enough, eh? This and Lash combine to make this deck typically dominate green decks which ultimately have the speed and consistency to beat you, but access to either and god forbid both just cements this deck as the top of the format. Not to mention copying with Easel and being able to clap bigger cheeks. I actually like this card a lot. Simple nerf: Make the Unearth 4. Dropping it from 5 will allow aggro to get back on their feet and really pressure the greedy combo player and gives an awesome high risk high reward dynamic to an undercosted board wipe.

In conclusion the rest of the standard cards can’t be nerfed but still get some discussion. Tablet is the strongest 3 drop mana rock ever printed and has perfect synergy with everything in the deck. Thor is what really jumped this deck up in power, before I ran [[Indris]] and it was good conjuring Storm Bolts into the deck, but Thor wins games extremely fast. Rapturous Moment is the glue holding the whole thing together, being the other card that makes mana and generates higher intensity with Covercast leading to Summitfests that can generate 20 mana by themselves. Eat your heart out [[Mana Geyser]]

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. All I’m saying is that this deck is broken, and the broken feeling you get playing it feels great, but yeah. It’s far and away the best deck in the format and something needs to be done about it.

(Arena Devs if you are still reading do this: Summitfest is Covercast 5 since it triggers off of casting 5-drops so do like Covercast 2 that triggers off of 2s. Do like a Grizzly Bear that’s like a Relentless Rats and gets a perpetual buff every time you cast one and you can put as many of them in the deck as you want please WOTC I am begging you do this it will be awesome)

Hi, I just started playing Alchemy (bo3, mythic) again and so far I've encountered Vivi, lessons, control etc.

Is this a thing atm or was it just bad luck?

To be able to do this with 5 mana is insane. I even withheld Aetherize and obviously (as predicted with Omniscience down) wasn’t enough.

This is incredibly annoying and frustrating to play against. Omniscience needs to be banned from Alchemy unless they plan to further nerf it.

https://mtga.untapped.gg/constructed/alchemy

Untapped at "What's in Alchemy?"

early 2007 BLB to FDN rorate out

early 2008 DFT to TLA rotate out.

This assumes that Alchemy has the same rotation as Standard. If so I missed the memo.

DraftSims at "2026 Alchemy Rotation: Current Sets and Exactly How It Works"

https://draftsim.com/alchemy-rotation-mtg-arena/

Fall 2026 BLB to TDM

Fall 2027 EOE and others

Draftsims has Alchemy rotating in the Fall.

My understanding is the it will happen at the same time as Standard with the first set of a new Year such that the next rotation will be 'early 2027'. Unlike Standard Alchemy will rorate every 2 years. So my undertstanding is:

early 2027 BLB to TLA rotate out (a whopping 9 sets, all the sets of 2025 plus the three 2024 sets that squeaked in)

early 2028 ECL to StarTrek rotate out. (all the sets released in 2026)

Hi there,

within the past days I was checking some articles and I found several opposing views regarding the Rotation topic. I have two questions:

1.) The Standard rotation is postponed to January/February 2027. Some people say the Alchemy rotation will also follow to January 2027 and others claim Wizards of the coast will keep the Alchemy rotation in Fall 2026.

2.) The Foundations set is legal in standard for 5 years. Will it be also legal in Alchemy for 5 years?

Thanks.

Have had a hankering to make an insect-themed deck for awhile now and have been seeing some neat ones trickle with recent sets.

Does anyone have an insect deck they enjoy for Alchemy? Could be paired with other related creature types that get a lot of tribal bonuses.

I'm wanting to build a themed brawl deck around these two. Looking to make it flavor-themed as both characters are stranded on a planet, but also playable if possible. Any ideas?

Hi folks,

I thought I’d test the water after the Aquatic Subtlety nerf, in advance of the Marvel release. I did the count all in Mythic (90%-#1800), playing the games over the last three days, and piloting around 10 different decks. As always, a reminder that 100 games isn’t really large enough to statistically pin down the meta, but I think it does give an indication. It’s been three months since I did my last Snapshot in Ranked and apart from the Aquatic Subtlety nerf, the Secrets of Strixhaven releases have also had a fairly significant impact on the meta.

Note: Decks using Secrets of Strixhaven cards, or cards with recent buffs, are bolded in the list.

The 100 decks I faced:

21x Badger (7xG, 6xUG, 3xRG, 2xWG, 1x WUG, 1xWBG, 1xUBG, 5x didn’t see Badger)

11x Simic X-Spells (3x Badger)

9x Easel/Ceremony Control (6x UR, 2xWUR, 1xWURG)

7x Izzet Spells (3x Cutter/Talent, 1x Burn, 2x Archaic, 1x Spellementals, 1xEmeritus)

6x Aquatic Omni

4x Azorius Fliers (1x Naktamun/Birds)

4x Mono-Red Aggro (1x Aggro/Burn)

4x Izzet Lessons

4x Rakdos Lizards

2x Orzhov Repartee

2x Orzhov Control (1x Discard)

2x Elves (1xG (Badger), 1xBG)

2x Enchantments (1xW, 1xWU)

2x Mono-Black Warp

2x Mono-White Lifegain

2x Orzhov Bats

1x Mono-Green Counters

1x Mono-Red Goblins

1x Boros Discard

1x Dimir Faeries

1x Simic Ramp

1x Mardu Ark

1x Sultai Reanimator

1x Temur Manifest Dread

1x Boros Graveyard

1x Izzet Vivi

1x Izzet Elementals

1x Mono-Black ?

1x Mono-Black Midrange?

1x Boros ?

1x Golgari ?

1x Mardu ?

Deck categorisation

It’s always a bit of a judgement call as to where one deck ends and another begins. I take ‘Badger’ to essentially be Badger Ramp, with more of an emphasis on mana dorks than other decks that play Badger but don’t optimise it quite so highly. I included five Ouroboroid decks in with the Badger decks even though I didn’t see Badgermole Cub at all, because I don’t see any reason why people wouldn’t have been playing it in them!

The Easel/Ceremony Control deck is somewhat varied in terms of the lists played – again, Easel is played elsewhere, but this deck goes bigger. Izzet Spells is even more varied, and maybe it would make sense to separate out the Cutter/Talent Prowess version from the others, but they probably play 40-50 of the same cards, so that’s my justification for combining them.

Comparing with the March Meta Snapshot

·         Badger has eased off slightly (again) but is still dominant.

o   While Mono-Green is still most common, we’ve seen a slight move away from it to other colour combinations.

·         Aquatic Omni is only slightly down. 6% is still a reasonable meta share – still far too much for my liking! It can still win, certainly, but it’s hard to tell so far whether it’s strong enough to survive. The continuing presence of the deck in the meta is probably one of the main takeaways for me from the Snapshot. I think it’s probably too soon to judge whether the nerf was successful, but it’s definitely not the case that it has immediately disappeared, as we’ve seen with some nerfs in the past.

·         Simic X-Spells has appeared as a major player in the format. Sometimes but not always playing Badgermole Cub, there are a few other differences in builds, but the deck does seem like it’s got legs.

·         Easel/Ceremony Control is another major player – mostly in Izzet versions, but with some variation. It can sometimes be slow and inconsistent, but there’s no doubt that it can win games. This is now the dominant Control deck in the format.

·         Dimir and Orzhov Control both had some presence in March (playing various builds), but these have largely disappeared.

·         Lifegain had a bit of a presence in March, but this has mostly disappeared. It’s possible that the March numbers were just variance, as they were up on the December numbers.

·         Izzet Spells and Izzet Lessons are up a bit, returning to numbers a little bit closer to December. Izzet Spells has picked up a few new tools.

·         Azorius Fliers and Mono-Red Aggro continue with a moderate presence.

·         It’s also interesting to see an uptick in Rakdos Lizards. Some of you may recall that I had Rakdos Lizards as a new entry on my Tier List in May, so this is consistent with my own experience.

·         In March, I saw a couple of decks using TMNT cards, but these largely seem to have disappeared.

·         Apart from Simic Badger, I’ve personally had good success recently with Mono-White Enchantments (Zenith), Azorius Birds (Galecaller), and Simic Frogs, none of which have a major presence in the meta. (It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Frogs around, but a 10-0 winning streak in Mythic convinced me to keep playing, and although my winrate did drop off, it’s still been solid.)

Comparing with the June Event Metagame Snapshot

Three big differences stand out to me:

·         I faced virtually no Badger decks when I was playing Events earlier this month. That’s a huge difference to the dominance of Badger decks in Ranked.

·         Azorius Fliers is much more common in Events.

·         Given that Aquatic Omni had an even larger presence in the Event than in Ranked, the Event meta could be changing more significantly than the Ranked meta following the Aquatic Subtlety nerf.

Meta dominance

Note: Just a caution that the calculations below are very dependent on how decks are classified.

Meta dominance – top deck:

October 2024 – 12%

December 2024 – 11%

March 2025 – 9%

May 2025 – 21%

September 2025 – 18%

December 2025 – 28%

March 2026 – 24%

June 2026 – 21%

Meta dominance – top two decks:

October 2024 – 22%

December 2024 – 21%

March 2025 – 17%

May 2025 – 40%

September 2025 – 27%

December 2025 – 37%

March 2026 – 33%

June 2026 – 32%

Meta dominance – top four decks:

October 2024 – 40%

December 2024 – 34%

March 2025 – 29%

May 2025 – 50%

September 2025 – 39%

December 2025 – 51%

March 2026 – 46%

June 2026 – 43%

From this picture, we’re in a better place than we have been since December last year, but still worse than in 2024/early 2025. My preference is for a very diverse meta, so I still think that Badgermole Cub should be nerfed. The Simic X-Spells and Easel/Ceremony decks need a bit more time to be played (even though I’m personally not a fan of Easel/Ceremony in the meta). This Snapshot doesn’t tell us anything about deck strength, but certainly people think they’re worth taking for a run, so it will be interesting to see whether they sustain their current level.

Colour balance

Blue is now essentially the dominant colour in Alchemy BO1, trailed by Green and Red. White and Black have very little presence, relatively speaking. This seems like a bit of a problem to me, or perhaps a symptom of a broader problem. As I’ve said before, a more even balance would be great.

Cards seeing the most play from recent set releases

TMNT had only really just come out when I did my last Metagame Snapshot, so I would include it here along with Secrets of Strixhaven, but the only card seeing very wide play (since Sewer-veillance Cam was banned) is North Wind Avatar. In contrast, a good number of SOS cards are being played, and the strike rate for SOS Alchemy is very high.

Secrets of Strixhaven

Flow State

Tablet of Discovery

Traumatic Critique

Daydream

Erode

Great Hall of the Biblioplex

Flashback

Geometer’s Arthropod

Rapturous Moment

Secrets of Strixhaven Alchemy

Inspiring Easel

Scalar Scholar

Variable Solutions

Summitfest Closing Ceremony

Interdisciplinary Studies

Expansive Reapplication

Consumed by History

Anina, Natural Parallelist

Phoenix of Iteration

That’s me for now. Keen to hear your thoughts!

Aquatic Subtlety

• "Draw two cards, then put two cards from your hand on the bottom of your library in any order." (was "Draw two cards, then discard two cards.")

It will be interesting to see how much difference this makes. I'd personally love if this makes the deck noncompetitive, but maybe it might just create a shift to including more discard outlets?

Also a few other less impactful changes:

Infestation

• "Evoke 1BB, Pay 3 life." (was "Evoke 2BB, Pay 2 life.")

Oura, the Imitator

• Becomes a 2/3 (was a 2/2)

Trackhand Trainer

• Becomes a 1/2 (was a 1/1)
• "3UU: Draw a card." (was "4U: Draw a card.")

The Aquatic Subtlety nerf means this isn't as useful going forward as it might have been, but I thought I may as well post it anyway, just in case it's of interest to anyone. I'll keep it a bit briefer than usual though.

This is my first time doing this for the Event rather than Ranked. It's from 1st-15th June.

The 100 decks I faced:

21x Aquatic Omni (incl. 3x probable)

16x Azorius Fliers

6x Ouroboroid (3x G, 1x UG X-Spells, 1x UG Badger, 1x RG Badger)

4x Simic X-Spells (various builds)

4x Izzet Lessons (1x Paradigm)

4x Izzet Control (Paradigm/Ceremony/Tablet/Easel – various builds)

4x Izzet Prowess (1x could have been Vivi?)

3x Izzet Vivi Combo

3x Mono-Red Goblins

3x Mono-Green Landfall (1x Ouroboroid)

2x Boros Ark

2x Discard (1x WR, 1x WBR)

2x Temur Harmonizer

2x Dimir Dragons

2x Mono-White Lifegain

2x Golgari Lifegain

2x Mono-Red Aggro

2x Cats (1x W, 1xWG)

1x Mono-White Enchantments

1x Mono-White Repartee

1x Mono-Black Control

1x Orzhov Control

1x Selesnya Aggro

1x Selesyna Bunnies

1x Dimir Mill

1x Simic Ramp

1x Jeskai Midrange

1x Mono-Green ?

1x Azorius ?

1x Orzhov ?

1x Boros ?

1x Selesnya ?

1x Simic ?

1x Golgari ?

--

As you can see, Aquatic Subtlety definitely needed the nerf.

As others have commented, Azorius Fliers is more common in the Event than in Ranked.

Only 2 Badger decks (that I saw) out of 100 is pretty crazy. I do think the Ranked meta has adjusted a little bit to cope better with Badger, but this seems like an overbalancing to me (or strange variance).

I've bolded decks using new(ish) cards - they have some presence in the meta, which I think is good.

I'm looking forward to seeing how things shift following the Aquatic Subtlety nerf.