This Week in Legacy: Frog-B-Gone
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be diving into this past week's Banned and Restricted Announcement that hit Legacy! This is the meat and potatoes of the article this week as these bans were substantial enough that looking at lists from this past week's Challenges won't really glean much for us, so they're not being included.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Banned and Restricted Announcement 12/16/2024 - Frog and Bauble are Banned!
This past week was a Banned and Restricted announcement that impacted the Legacy format. You can read the full announcement here, but yes indeed both Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble are both banned.
In a roundabout way, we expected this to be the outcome for Legacy for this BnR announcement. Psychic Frog most assuredly was being discussed even before the Grief ban, and multiple people were quite upset with Vexing Bauble's existence in Legacy enabling multiple combo decks to bypass the format's typical safety valves. Let's break down what was said on each card and give some thoughts on it.
Psychic Frog
I think Wizards hits the nail on the head hard here. Frog's value as a threat and an enabler to the combo game plan and being able to flip back and forth between that capability while allowing the Reanimator deck to bypass graveyard hate in general is quite rough, but really it's Frog's effect on the overall metagame that contributed to this decision. Frog most certainly homogenized deckbuilding to the point where it was simply not realistic to add multiple colors to these Dimir based decks. Even the Beans decks that early on were utilizing Frog died out of the metagame thanks to the rise of Dimir Tempo and UB Reanimator.
Getting rid of Frog was a correct thing to do, honestly. The card did nothing to increase the diversity of both decks and play patterns. Its ability to sidestep common ways to beat the Reanimator shells while also remaining the best Tempo threat in non-Reanimator shells is pretty crazy. Both UB Reanimator and Dimir Tempo had solid win rates at all three Eternal Weekend events while also maintaining the largest metagame share overall. Frankly, I'm fine with this being the expected ban and I believe no one will shed any tears for Frog (even if he is a little cutie).
I also appreciate that Wizards mentioned cards like Entomb and Reanimate as cards they considered, but ultimately, they looked like cards that would not solve the fair game plan issue of things like UB Reanimator. Legacy has long been a format where these kinds of cards are generally okay, and I think if they were to touch a card at all it would probably need to be Troll of Khazad-dum, but I'm also content to see what these Dimir decks do before looking at any further bannings to this shell specifically.
Vexing Bauble
I didn't really expect this to be the more contentious of bannings, because nearly every Legacy player I've spoken to about this card basically wanted it gone. I think more or less the big thing to note here is that Wizards is functionally outright stating something about Legacy here that they never have before: "One of the pillars of Legacy is free counter magic." This is important to note. Force of Will is a safety valve for Legacy. It does prevent a lot of really degenerate combo decks from running over the format. Without Force of Will, a lot more cards would end up being banned, so when something circumvents the safety valve in such a way that it is exploitable by multiple combo-centric strategies, then we start having an issue.
And that's where the contentious part of this comes in. I've read a lot of "well the blue players were unhappy so they got a card that made non-blue decks good banned" and I'm going to be real. That isn't what happened here at all. The decks all playing Vexing Bauble ranged from the aggressive decks (Red Stompy) to some really powerful proactive combo (Painter, Mystic Forge, even Sneak and Show), forcing decks to be even more Force-centric decks in the hopes that they had enough countermagic to beat a Bauble plus whatever the Bauble deck's next play was. Here's the thing though, all of these decks were actively reasonable strategies in Legacy prior to Bauble existing, and more than likely will continue to be reasonable strategies going forward. Decks like Red Stompy and Painter especially aren't going to get 100% worse because of losing Bauble, and that's fine! Non-Blue strategies do deserve some love and deserve their limelight, but at the same time we do need the Legacy safety valves. There is indeed a balance there, and it's not a measure of "non blue's too good, better ban" it's a measure of "this card takes things a little too far".
What I am happy here to really see is that Wizards is making a statement of what they think Legacy is. This continues to move closer to my thoughts on what Wizards should say as a mission statement as to what they believe Legacy is to them. Having something like that in place can help set expectations for Legacy players to understand what the format is about, and I like that Wizards is thinking about that.
I've played my fair share of Ancient Tomb decks and Bauble was just kind of a truly absurd card that quickly shot up from initial obscurity into format breaker and I'm frankly okay with it being gone. The card was designed for Modern and needing to deal with things like Fury and Grief (things that no longer exist in Modern hilariously enough) and had a lot of problematic interaction with a format like Legacy.
Commentary on Nadu
The Banned and Restricted announcement did make a note about Nadu, Winged Wisdom and that Wizards is keeping a close eye on the card. It's interesting to consider if Wizards may ban the card at some point, but I agree with their stance that the card is not currently overpowering and should not be banned. Yes, Nadu is powerful, and yes it has some logistical things to it, but I think it sits pretty well within Legacy's parameters for power right now. In addition, some of these
Was This Enough? What Does Legacy Look Like?
Something that I've seen a reasonable amount of chatter on is that these bans weren't quite "enough" in regards to what is going on in the format. Specifically I think several folks think that Wizards should have went deeper and attacked decks like Eldrazi as well, largely due in part to cards like Glaring Fleshraker, Sowing Mycospawn, and Kozilek's Command are still around in the format, not to mention the fact that Psychic Frog going away likely means that Orcish Bowmasters comes back quite a bit, and a lot of players already weren't super happy with Bowmasters.
I'm not a fan of sledgehammer bannings, especially in Legacy. Legacy takes time to make metagame conclusions and making 1-2 card bans has traditionally worked quite well for Legacy overall. I don't think there's a good reasoning to ban over five plus cards like some would like to see just because of "needing to shake up" the format. Needing to shake up the format is not a solid line of reasoning for banning anything, and it never will be.
So what does Legacy look like post-banning? Well, I do think a lot of people will look immediately to decks utilizing Nadu, Winged Wisdom as a strategy that will certainly be very good. Nadu being mentioned as being on something of a "watch list" will enforce players looking at Nadu as being very good, so I do expect that to be a set of decks (including Breakfast, Elves, and Midrange Nadu) that will have some play, but let's look at some of the decks that were already near the top of the format. Of these, I think both Breakfast and Nadu Elves seem incredibly strong, but Nadu in general is a good card and even the Midrange variants will likely be reasonable places to start approaching post-Frog Legacy.
UB Reanimator is a quandary for sure. The deck still has some chops as a deck that can play Orcish Bowmasters, but it's tempo plan is suddenly far worse with Frog gone. There might be some shift to Barrowgoyf in the deck, and I don't think the deck 100% goes away but I definitely think it relegates to being a worse deck than it was before. It just depends on whether that is slightly worse or really worse, honestly.
Troll of Khazad-dum is still a very powerful card and still a strong Reanimation target. The card I do think ends up being dropped is Metamorphosis Fanatic because losing the ability to just pitch it to Frog is really rough on the card overall. Decks still might play maybe one, but decks were already heavily cutting the card to two copies.
Dimir Tempo as a deck is primarily in a position where it doesn't seem like there's enough threats in straight Dimir to warrant only playing two colors. I suspect we will see decks like Grixis Delver come back out of this development, as Grixis makes the most sense overall for Tempo to be leaning into. Dragon's Rage Channeler, Nethergoyf, and Bowmasters all seem like good cards to go together, and Lightning Bolt seems like a very playable card again.
Eldrazi is also a deck that will still be quite good, because nothing from the deck was actively hit by this banning. Eldrazi was not playing Vexing Bauble over Chalice of the Void and having cards like Sowing Mycospawn make it a solid deck to consider post-Frog Legacy. Kozilek's Command is still an incredibly powerful card, and still worth exploring in Legacy.
In terms of other Ancient Tomb decks near the top of the format, both Red Stompy and Mystic Forge are interesting to consider. Of the two I think Red Stompy still continues to look like a reasonable deck. Primarily the deck needs to go back to a Chalice of the Void base, but Pyrogoyf and Broadside Bombardiers is incredibly powerful and I doubt that the deck goes anywhere anytime soon.
Mystic Forge is a deck that is most impacted by the Bauble ban, because it functionally rebuilt itself around the card in a lot of ways. The deck likely needs to move into space of cards like Defense Grid to be good, but that mana difference of one mana vs two mana is a huge deal and makes the Forge deck less resilient to countermagic and stuff like Force of Vigor while also being a bit slower overall and I think that's a good thing. Decks like this need to have some inherent way to manage beating them.
Doomsday as a deck was split on utilizing Psychic Frog and Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student as a Tempo Doomsday gameplan. I don't think Tamiyo on its own is good enough to warrant the Tempo gameplan, and without Frog the deck likely reverts back to typical stock Doomsday variants. I don't think this changes the deck's current position in the format at all.
A genuinely real question here is what this particular set of changes does to Control decks, specifically both Beanstalk Control and Jeskai Control. Eldrazi is a somewhat problematic matchup for these decks, primarily due in part to Sowing Mycospawn being a very powerful card against Control in general. Being castable and uncounterable with Cavern of Souls and being able to snipe a basic land while also being able to fetch a Wasteland is very problematic. Control can struggle with this because they need to develop their mana, and both major Control shells have some strict mana requirements, but it's certainly possible that Control especially Beans could come back.
There's a number of decks we haven't seen in a while either, so I'm curious if players will attempt to see if decks like Lands, Depths, etc. are any good in the post-ban world. Cradle Control is another deck I would like to look at because it has a ton of ways to approach the current metagame as a toolbox strategy.
I suspect this weekend's events to be somewhat chaotic as players shift around to figure out what they would like to be playing. Players are generally going to shift to decks they feel comfortable with as the metagame will begin to coalesce. Still, I am pretty happy with these changes and I'm looking forward to seeing where Legacy lands next.
Paper Events - Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy 18 & 19
Another round of Buffalo Chicken Dip Legacy events is incoming in the New Year! BCDL 18 is taking place on 1/25/2025 in Houston at Asgard Games, while BCDL 19 is in Columbus, OH on 2/1/2025 at The Warp Gate! Prizes include an Underground Sea for First Place and a Tundra for Second Place.
You can find all of the information including how to sign up for both events over here.
Around the Web
- Bazaar of Boxes went to EU Eternal Weekend! Check out their wrap-up here.
- Chrono Moon posted their thoughts on Legacy BnR in a video. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook posted a live BnR reaction. Check it out here.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
