Might as well write another takedown of yet another stupid explanation by Carmen Klomparens...
Carmen Klomparens said:
Undercity Informer is banned.
Overall, Legacy looks … pretty good! We're seeing new cards hit the format, new decks pop up, and different decks are taking turns winning each week. That doesn't mean things can't be improved, however. A lot of what's shifted in Legacy over the last year is a direct result of games decompressing and the banned list working as a tool to empower what Legacy players love about the format.
Blatantly pushed Modern Horizons cards flooding the format and wrecking the old metagame, while cool cards that should have been unbanned years ago and were banned in a totally different era languish on the ban list. Not my idea of "pretty good."
With the release of Modern Horizons 3, Legacy saw a massive injection in power in a very short time. Few archetypes gained quite as much as the Oops, All Spells! decks that had existed in the format for over a decade.
Yeah, because you banned the other ones! Also, All Spells going from a fringe Tier 2.5 deck to a kinda-sorta Tier 1.5 deck is big for the archetype, but barely relevant for the format as a whole.
The game plan of the deck is straightforward. Use Undercity Informer or Balustrade Spy, targeting yourself to mill your entire library. From there, use a combination of Narcomoebas, Poxwalkers, and Bridge from Below to cast Cabal Therapy and shred the opponent's hand before killing with Dread Return plus Thassa's Oracle. Pact of Negation provided combo insulation from hand, and Memory's Journey protected combo pieces in the graveyard from the likes of Surgical Extraction or other forms of graveyard hate.
She's leaving out the part where the deck has to have zero lands in order for this to even be possible, which means slogging through a mulligan hellscape to maybe just lose to yourself anyway. Even if the deck gets a viable fast hand, it might not also draw protection against opposing hate cards, and even if it does draw protection
and rituals
and a way to get mana from zero
and a rogue, the protection might not line up against the specific hate piece the opponent uses. The gameplay is "straightforward" compared to a lot of decks, granted.
For a lot of its lifetime in Legacy, the deck was an affectionate demonstration of what was possible with Magic's game engine. It's extremely novel that something like this can exist, after all. That novelty wears off very quickly whenever the deck is strong enough to be a regular contender in the format.
Do you want that to be the criterion for whether your deck gets to exist in a format? Not dominance, not its effect on the metagame. But
whether some WotC employee thinks that the novelty is still fresh or has worn off? That is not how decisions are made in a healthy tournament format.
Over the last couple of years, the deck's presence in the metagame has ebbed and flowed but hasn't ever dipped below the most popular half-dozen or so decks. In a lot of ways, this isn't inherently problematic of a combo deck, but Oops, All Spells! being an extremely repetitive "one-card combo deck" is problematic.
I suspect that "or so" is doing some heavy lifting there. And I should clarify for anyone who's seen me rail against previous Legacy bans in the past few years that at least a lot of those were targeted at a deck that was either the overall probable #1 deck in the format or at least an easy top contender. But the All Spells archetype has never reached that position in Legacy. MTGTop8 has the archetype at 4% of the metagame. It makes frequent appearances in top 16s and fewer in top 8's. It's just not one of the best decks in the format and never has been.
I also caution that in a format where the Reserved List curtails access to most of the best decks, it is foolish to cite the
popularity of a deck (not even metagame penetration, but popularity) of a deck that contains no Reserved List cards as being meaningful.
We've been hesitant to act against the deck in the past because it largely didn't put up a concerning win rate.
This signaled to us one of two possibilities. It could be that it's a deck that people like to play although they're losing. This is something that we like to see out of decks because it communicates passion for a specific strategy. Alternatively, it could be because it's the deck that provided an early access point for people who are new to Legacy.
Why "hesitant" there? Why not just wholly uninterested in banning cards from this deck? Why was the deck on the chopping block in the first place? We saw this before with Nadu, Winged Wisdom. There was a deck that wasn't actually a problem for the format, but WotC, or at least Carmen here,
didn't like it. That shouldn't be a metric!
One of Legacy's greatest strengths is that it rewards long-term fandom and mastery. It's a format brimming with people who have played with their cards for over a decade and have spent even longer than that collecting some of them. For anyone who's newer to the format, it can be extremely daunting to take those first steps toward becoming a regular Legacy player. This is also something that we hope prospective Legacy players have access to.
I'm not going to pretend that the Reserved List doesn't make this concept a non-starter. It does.
Unfortunately, the last few months have seen Oops, All Spells! make a largely unhealthy impact on the format, with its win rate consistently rising over the last few months. The degree to which the deck can win on turn one is frustrating and feeds some of the worst stereotypes about games in Eternal formats feeling decided before one person gets to play. While the deck is answerable and there are some strategies that are very good at countering it, it's ultimately throttling what decks are reasonable to play in Legacy.
False. If scrubs can't stop All Spells, then they're probably not going to be winning against Dimir Tempo or Sneak and Show either. This archetype isn't some toxic gatekeeper holding back a legion of interesting rogue decks that could otherwise beat the top decks. Yes, the All Spells deck wins against bad decks because it's fast, but the top decks win against bad decks for their own reasons. This argument that Oops, All Spells throttles the playability of decks in Legacy doesn't hold water. It's not even being played at enough of a rate to have such an effect.
Those factors led the team to ban Undercity Informer but keep Balustrade Spy legal.
Kind of nonsensical, I'd say. Balustrade Spy is slightly better in the deck than Undercity Informer. So by banning the weaker version, you're showing that the ban isn't based on any kind of attempt at objective analysis, but on a heavy-handed impulse to curate the format.
Our intent with this ban is to preserve the existence of the deck but de-power it to make it more of an opt-in experience rather than something that players are going to play week in and week out.
What?
Goblin Charbelcher decks are cut from a similar cloth as existing versions of Oops, All Spells! and were an acceptable part of the metagame for a long time.
But now they're not? What?
This gives us faith that a version of Oops, All Spells! at a more tenable power level can still serve the players who earnestly love playing this sort of deck, while reducing the footprint the deck has in the metagame, by virtue of it being far less consistent.
No, idiot. You killed the deck. Can someone get this moron's grubby paws away from Legacy? At this point, the list of people I
wouldn't trust to manage the format better than her is becoming surprisingly short.
That said, we're going to continue monitoring the deck as it evolves from here and won't hesitate to take further action against it as the future necessitates.
What would that even look like? It was a small part of the metagame before you banned Undercity Informer.
Watching the rest of the Legacy metagame develop is a treat.
You're a stupid, moronic, idiot.
We've seen Dimir Tempo's metagame share come down over the last couple of months, Izzet decks are using Flow State from Secrets of Strixhaven to great effect, and we're seeing the white decks cement a foothold in the metagame. There is one deck that's caught the team's eye that is worth calling out:
We've seen the newest shape of Colorless Tron surge up the standings of both metagame share and win rate. The deck hasn't displayed the longevity necessary for the team to feel we need to step in, but if it maintains its win rate and growth of metagame share much further, we're going to explore what options we have to keep Legacy healthy.
Dammit!
