Legacy: No Bans and How Will This Affect the Format

Greetings, Legacy community! The highly expected new banlist update finally came and took a bunch of cards... out of Standard.

Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage were left untouched. As expected, the various MTG communities, several for each format, reacted in many ways. As we are part of the Legacy community, today we'll review how WotC's decision to keep the format as is will impact it.

Please note that each player has a different opinion on the state of Legacy today, what are the most problematic cards in the format, what WotC should change and how, if they should at all. Some players agreed with WotC's decision, some didn't. As it usually happens with these things, there is no right or wrong answer. Everything is very subjective.

The only thing we can offer you in this article is our own subjective perspective, and certainly some of you will agree with it, while some will disagree. All of you have your own opinions about Legacy, as you should.

As for our personal perspective, we'd like to state plainly right away that we don't agree with WotC's decision and the reasons they gave us for it. Nonetheless, I'd like to try to review how it will impact the format without really going into what I think they should have done.

TCG formats overall, not only MTG formats, often evolve into what we can call a "resolution", that is, when players "resolve" the format, or when the format becomes "saturated". The main decks establish themselves and settle into their rightful tiers in the meta, and which decks beat which and which are the best decks in the format becomes common knowledge. Resolved formats can change and become "unresolved" again through three main ways: inclusion, removal, and innovation.

The first, inclusion, or adding new cards to the mix, is the most common way. A fresh new set breathes new life into the format with new interactions, introduces new tools to already existing decks, and inspires new archetypes. New sets naturally impact formats with smaller card pools, like Standard and Pioneer, more. However, WotC changes even eternal formats when a new set comes along. Another way to add new cards to these formats is to actually reintroduce old cards to them - cards that were banned before come out to play and once again start seeing play.

Speaking of banned cards, removing cards through bans, that is, removal, is the second way to change a resolved format. WotC can remove cards that are distorting the format in ways they don't consider healthy, either because their win rates or play rates are simply too high, or because they create inadequate game patterns. They can simply remove these cards to open space for new ideas. Other TCGs, usually digital TCGs, often change a card, that is, they nerf them instead of banning them, but their goal is the same: to change the format.

Finally, even in formats considered "resolved", some genius player can always figure out a new way to break the game and create a new archetype other players haven't considered before. They can also just figure out a way to refine a concept other players discarded and considered unplayable and build a deck that breaks the status quo. This is much easier said than done, considering this type of innovation typically comes with new cards, but I've seen it happen over the years in many formats and TCGs. Some players are constantly looking for ways to "break the format", particularly when they're resolved.

This leads us into the state of Legacy now, which is nearly always resolved, considering it has been 3 months since a card was banned and the new set, Final Fantasy, didn't change much. Some players are trying to be creative and find answers, but, though a few of them have been successful by themselves, like TonyScapone, who got great results with Storm, no one else managed to replicate their performance. Legacy might be diverse, but it is heading towards stagnation, that is, when most players start playing only what the entire community considers the "best deck in the format", Dimir Reanimator currently. Dimir Tempo is a close second.

Soon, a new set will come along, Edge of Eternities, and we can always hope the new cards will change the format, particularly the new planeswalker, Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. However, considering how little past Standard-legal sets have impacted Legacy, this might be foolish. So, until the next banlist update, in November, Legacy will most likely become less diverse and start tapering towards the decks that players consider most viable. It will become a resolved, flat format.

A very important factor to consider is that, apart from Vintage, Legacy is the format with the biggest gap between its online and tabletop versions, mostly because of their largely different economies. The two metas are incredibly different. On tabletop, how available and cheap cards are is what molds local metas, whereas, in Magic Online, how much each deck costs is nearly nothing in comparison.

So, if I want to play what I consider to be the best deck in the format, I probably won't have the resources to do that on tabletop. However, online, all I need to do is rent a deck from any service that does that. So, the online format tends to set the tier-1 decks apart from the others pretty heavily because more players play them. Add that to the large data WotC collects from the thousands and thousands of online matches played every day, and it's no surprise that Magic Online is what they consider when it's time to make decisions.

A great example that shows how different the online meta is from the tabletop meta is Oops All Spells. After this recent banlist update, when the community started discussing the "no changes", I often found comments like "I don't care if they ban cards from Oops or not because no one plays that at my LGS". This is reasonable, considering Oops is not popular on tabletop, but it is incredibly popular online. While LGSs only organize at most one or two tournaments a week, on Magic Online you can play League after League. If you perform reasonably well, you can even play several in a short amount of time and get some rewards. So, a fast deck that lets you play 3 Leagues in the same amount of time another deck would only let you play 1 attracts grinders. This deck definitely has an online presence big enough to become a relevant topic.

Tabletop formats, which center around how available cards are and how much local players like a certain style ("I only play control!", "Elves or death!", "I want to see the world burn!"), are indeed impacted less by these "no changes". Particularly as local metas are naturally less inclined to "resolve", but, when more important tournaments come along, like the Eternal Weekends, even local metas will become stale.

Overall, in my view, the feedback on the June 30th banlist update was more negative than positive, but we haven't reached a consensus at all. Any sort of change would have at least encouraged us to search for new alternatives and explore different archetypes. However, as WotC decided to leave the format as it is (with one deck dominating 20% of the format and another creating really problematic game states), many players (me included) felt WotC didn't really think things through when they considered the state of Legacy right now.

Their reasons for this decision were also quite inconsistent, particularly when they mentioned only 1 Reanimator list top 8'd the biggest Magic Online tournament. This take basically ignores the tons of data from the last cycle, and the many top 8 rankings dominated by this archetype. It is also 3 times as popular as the second most popular deck in the format. Their reasons for not taking any action against Oops, particularly that, according to them, its play rate and win rate aren't unacceptable yet, go against their own reasons for banning Sowing Mycospawn. This card wasn't popular in any deck that had an absurd play rate or win rate, but they stated it was making the format less diverse. And a deck that simply pushes non-Blue decks out of the format (have you ever lost the dice against Oops with a deck that doesn't play Force of Will?) got a pass for the second time in a row.

Maybe Edge of Eternities will lead us all into a fresh new format, but, to be fair, we'll most likely just have to endure months of the same old meta until November. Even then, WotC might avoid changes because the Eternal Weekends will be just around the corner. I've already seen players saying they'll take a break for now because they would rather not face the same decks over and over again, and that they would give other formats, like Modern, Pre-Modern, or Pauper a chance instead.

Things aren't looking good for Legacy in the following months. We've had worse formats (anyone remembers Oko, Thief of Crowns?), but they haven't lasted this long without intervention. Or without WotC adding powerful cards to the mix to shake up the formats, like they did with the Modern Horizons releases.

I must confess, I took a break to clear my head so I could finally write this article. I definitely wasn't the only one disappointed with this banlist update. But our format will go on because we, as players, will go on, regardless of whether Wizards of the Coast cares or not.

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

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!