This Week in Legacy: Troll of Khazad-Don't!
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 the Legacy Banned & Restricted Announcement on 3/31/2025. Because of this change and how much it actually impacts, I will not be covering this past weekend's events.
Legacy Banned and Restricted Announcement 3/31/2025 - Troll of Khazad-dum and Sowing Mycospawn are Banned
We got a Banned and Restricted Announcement on March 31st, 2025, and there was an overall expected change to to the Legacy format. Both Troll of Khazad-dum and Sowing Mycospawn are banned in the Legacy format. You can read the full announcement here but we'll be breaking this down in chunks to discuss below.
Let's start by digging into the first part of the announcement, shall we? This section on Legacy was written by Carmen Klomparens, and it's very well thought out.
This first bit is calling out some really important stuff here. Primarily that Legacy was doing a good job of "emulating" a balanced format. Realistically, I think this is very important to call out. Numbers and metagame percentage and win rates all paint part of the picture, but sometimes there's subtle nuances to their numbers. Is Red Stompy good because the alternative is that Eldrazi is too good? Stuff like this. "Emulating" is a huge nod to the fact that while it seems like Legacy looks "healthy", it really isn't. The call-out here on slower macro-archetypes like Midrange and Control having been pushed out of the metagame is big, because it's fairly true. Lots of the classic metagame share on more Midrange decks has just evaporated for the most part. That's not to say that Control shells don't show up. Several players have had good success with Esper Stoneblade, and Jeskai Control kicks around here or there, but the numbers on these are very far and few between.
The other thing that is worth calling out here is the consideration of player sentiment over the format, and event attendance having trended downward as a result. Even myself as a data nerd knows that win rates and metagame share simply aren't everything when it comes to managing a format. Sure, it is important to keep in mind, but it isn't an end-all be-all. The community and format at large is something that should be taken into account in conjunction with that, and raw player sentiment on current Legacy has been very low.
Troll of Khazad-dum
I have heard a lot of mixed things about the reaction to Troll of Khazad-dum being a card in consideration for banning. Troll in general seems like it's a weird card to ban, but the impact the card had on deckbuilding in general is rather important to establish. Troll wasn't just a land, it was an Underground Sea for the purposes of Daze and Brainstorm as well as being a target for Reanimate and Animate Dead. This glue holding these pieces together is incredibly notable. Dimir Reanimator continued to be a powerful deck through the banning of Psychic Frog, and honestly a large part of that is due in part to the existence of Troll of Khazad-dum.
Troll's deckbuilding functionality is really what pushed the card. Even if your opponent has a removal spell for a Reanimation threat, Troll is a ready made threat that gets to come back out when your opponent is ran out of those removal spells. Needing multiple removal spells to answer this deck is rough, and especially when your Reanimation threat is also a land that lets you cast Reanimate with Daze backup by grabbing Underground Sea. Furthermore, the fact that you could do this with Wasteland (another classic Tempo card) is huge. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Troll functionally was unblockable 90% of the time while doing all of this. Super menace was a very real thing.
In addition, within the context of the other top decks of the format, Troll also let you get through a Blood Moon by getting a basic Swamp, which often defeats the purpose of this sort of counterplay.
Some thoughts have been thrown about on whether or not the Dimir Reanimator shell would adopt cards like Oliphaunt or Generous Ent from the same cycle of cards. I personally feel like Oliphaunt is very bad, it's way easier to remove and block and there's a lot about the card that is hard to deal with, and it doesn't get Underground Sea. Generous Ent is a strong card, but it also doesn't get Underground Sea. That being said, there's certainly a shell that exists in Mono Black / Golgari Reanimator to be good and Ent seems like a reasonable card there that gets a Bayou. However, that firmly puts this deck in the world of full-on Reanimator, not a Reanimator Tempo shell that gets to play Force of Will or Daze.
I'm currently happy with this ban of Troll. I do wish that we could have maybe touched something like Entomb, but I'm curious to see where this deck goes from here.
Sowing Mycospawn
If you would ask most Legacy players what one card they actually really didn't like about Modern Horizons 3, the number one at the top of that list was almost always Sowing Mycospawn. More discussion was generated over this card in general over the power of this card. Mycospawn really does do it all, like the blurb here says. Being able to fetch any number of different utility lands or cost-reduction lands like Eye of Ugin, Karakas, etc. is extremely powerful, but when you combine this with its land exile effect and being able to fetch Wasteland you are put in a position where you can completely decimate your opponent's mana in short order.
Eldrazi's existence is often noted though that its overall metagame share is a lot lower than decks like Dimir Reanimator. A large portion of this is due in part to the existence of Mono Red Stompy as a deck, effectively overloading the format with Blood Moon effects. Some people will point to this as a reason that the metagame is keeping a deck in check, and in some cases it is just that. In this case, it is notable that Red Stompy is good against a bunch of other decks in the format currently (and we'll get to that) but that Eldrazi is a huge enough of a reason to play the deck that it's somewhat overwhelming a bit. Eldrazi still showed up just enough to really compress the format on these play patterns.
I've certainly heard a lot of statements over whether or not Mycospawn was 100% responsible for the death of Midrange/Control, and I don't think it was 100% responsible at all. I do think it bears some responsibility for the speed the format was running at as was noted. I can't say for certain if we'll see a big resurgence of Control, but it's certainly possible.
The compression and environmental reasons of this card's existence, owing to the fact that the card was simply just designed poorly for lining up against a format like Legacy, is why this guy is gone. I have truly heard some statements on the fact that Eldrazi's play rate and win rate don't justify this ban for a problematic play pattern to be gone because it's not played "enough", and as I noted earlier, I don't think taking just win rate and metagame share is the end-all. There's a lot more nuance and subcontext that exists, and a lot of consideration given to the overall compression and speed of Legacy given as well.
I am certainly not upset to see this card go away, personally. I think it's a rather poorly designed card and I won't shed any tears for it.
Going Forward
The BnR did leave us with this final paragraph about Legacy.
I think it's important to call out decks like Oops! All Spells especially here, because frankly I do believe that one of the big winners of this BnR. Oops didn't get touched and I think it makes sense to recognize that it is definitely a deck that can capitalize on this. Red Stompy is another deck that has continued to look quite good and it's something called out here as well. I think it's also another big winner and I feel like there will be a space for dealing with something like The One Ring realistically for those decks. I don't relish the idea of banning any of the MDFC cards, but they have definitely created a lot of mana consistency in these decks.
Another thing to consider is just how well Reanimator does adapt to this change. I suspect it will be rough but I do think there will be space for a Reanimator shell. Whether that shell is still extremely oppressive and powerful is what remains to be seen. I do think Troll's loss does do a lot of things to the deckbuilding aspects of the current shell, and possibly may pave the way for a more all-in version.
As to whether or not we see Control/Midrange piles back in force, I do think we'll see a lot of players attempting to play these decks. The optics is that Mycospawn hurt control, and people will play control because Mycospawn is now gone. Whether that sticks, will also remain to be seen.
All in all, I'm firmly in the camp of "okay" on these bans. I'm even genuinely pleased to know that my expectation met reality. Do I think there could have been a slightly heavier touch? For sure, but I think we always think that for most bans. Should unbans be in the consideration pipeline? I do think that should be something to consider as well, but maybe once the format has had some stabilizing.
What are your thoughts on the BnR? Should more cards have been banned? Should there have been unbans? Let me know in the comments below.
Around the Web
- Eternal Durdles has announced some upcoming changes to their channel. Check it out here.
- StrassDaddy has a video on Deck Building using Hypergeometric Calculators. 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!
