As part of a massive Banned and Restricted announcement, Wizards of the Coast banned Oko, Thief of Crowns, Arcum’s Astrolabe, and Dreadhorde Arcanist in Magic: the Gathering’s Legacy format.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s other news: bans in Modern, Pioneer, and Historic, plus the unbanning in Vintage and the change to the cascade mechanic.
Interestingly, Wizards said that these bans are the result of community feedback rather than on the power level or impact of the cards in the format. “While balance hasn’t looked problematic in Legacy,” Wizards said, “we’ve heard community feedback that a few cards have come to draw too much of the focus for deck building and gameplay.”
Snoko
The first card on most people’s list of complaints was Oko, Thief of Crowns. Since its release in the Fall of 2019 in the Throne of Eldraine expansion, Oko has been banned in Historic, Modern, Pioneer, Standard, and Brawl—so why not continue erasing the card from all Magic formats by banning it in Legacy, as well?
Wizards agrees, at least somewhat. Legacy has “an especially high overall power level,” Wizards said, so they had “been waiting to see whether it would fall in line with the average power of the rest of the metagame.”
“Over time, we’ve seen Oko continue to remain a major metagame presence and a contributor to lower diversity,” they continued. “With its huge card pool, Legacy is a format that should offer tremendous variety of deck-building options and reward innovative deck construction and tuning. Because of its power and flexibility, Oko can provide an easy answer even to unanticipated threats and defenses and generally homogenizes gameplay patterns in a way that’s counter to the spirit of the format. Therefore, we’re choosing to ban Oko, Thief of Crowns.”
But Oko wasn’t operating alone in Legacy. The most common Oko shell was the so-called “Snoko” archetype, which combined Oko, Thief of Crowns with Arcum’s Astrolabe and other snow cards to ensure the deck never had an consistency issues.
“Arcum’s Astrolabe…has contributed to the power and consistency of Snowko decks,” Wizards said. “Traditionally in Legacy, deck builders need to make choices about whether to have easy access to many colors or build a mana base that’s resilient to disruption like Wasteland and Blood Moon. Arcum’s Astrolabe allows mana bases to have both high color flexibility and high resilience to mana denial that’s a uniquely important part of the Legacy metagame.”
“Ultimately, we think a narrow class of decks having such resilience for a relatively low investment is an advantage that leads to less metagame diversity,” Wizards concluded, and Arcum’s Astrolabe is now banned in Legacy.
Legacy Snoko
Dreadhorde Arcanist
In perhaps the most surprising ban on a day full of surprising bans, Wizards also decided to ban Dreadhorde Arcanist in Legacy.
“Dreadhorde Arcanist has proven to be powerful and game defining in a way that further adds to cards and strategies that were already among the most powerful, like Temur Delver,” Wizards said. And they believe that these problems were only going to get worse with today’s ban of Oko, Thief of Crowns. “Without Oko, we anticipate that Dreadhorde Arcanist strategies would only become more prominent.”
“Ultimately, the community sentiment we’ve heard is that Dreadhorde Arcanist makes gameplay revolve around it too early in the game and that too many games come down to whether an opponent can immediately remove it,” Wizards concluded. “Therefore, we’re choosing to ban Dreadhorde Arcanist in Legacy.”
Legacy Temur Delver
| Creatures (11) 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Dreadhorde Arcanist 3 Young Pyromancer Planeswalkers (3) 3 Oko, Thief of Crowns Spells (27) 4 Brainstorm 1 Chain Lightning 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Ponder 2 Preordain 1 Spell Pierce 3 Stifle 4 Daze 4 Force of Will | Lands (19) 1 Flooded Stran 1 Misty Rainfores 1 Polluted Delt 4 Scalding Tar 1 Snow-Covered Islan 1 Snow-Covered Mountai 2 Tropical Island 3 Volcanic Island 4 Wasteland 1 Wooded Foothills Sideboard (15) 2 Blazing Volley 2 Blue Elemental Blast 2 Pithing Needle 3 Red Elemental Blast 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Ancient Grudge 1 Null Rod 1 Sylvan Library 1 Klothys, God of Destiny |
Where Art Thou, Uro?
When Wizards revealed last week that they were planning to ban Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath in Pioneer, Modern, and Historic, they also mentioned that they were considering banning Uro in Legacy. However, that ban did not come to pass in today’s raft of bans.
“[W]e did discuss banning Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath in Legacy,” Wizards said, “but we feel its power level is more in line with the overall power level of Legacy (as compared to Historic, Pioneer, and Modern). The bar is high for what three- and four-mana spells need to accomplish in Legacy, and we believe Uro can coexist as a competitive but not dominant option.”
“Additionally,” Wizards believes that “the bans of Oko, Thief of Crowns and Arcum’s Astrolabe should significantly decrease the metagame share of existing decks that Uro naturally slots into.”