Now that's it's been a few days into Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble's bannings, does Grixis Control have what it takes to meet the meta in its formative stages? We kinda think so! Check out these 5 amazing matches!

Decklist: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6815457

https://youtu.be/_4_QhvhLE3g

Hey everyone!

I’m working on setting up a new Discord server called MTG Single Unban. The idea is simple but fun: players can unban one card of their choice and then build decks to compete in Modern and Legacy formats against others who’ve unbanned their own single card. It’s a way to explore what the formats could look like with one personal tweak to the ban list!

I realize I’ll need help to get the discord running smoothly, as I’m not very experienced with Discord setups. Things like organizing channels, roles, permissions, and bots are a bit beyond me right now. My current neckneard isn’t big enough yet to figure it all out on my own.

If this concept sounds interesting to you and you’d like to help bring it to life, please let me know! I’d love to collaborate with others who have experience or ideas for making this discord server a great place for the MTG community.

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope some of you are as excited about this idea as I am!

Greetings Legacy Players!

First I want to say it was great seeing everyone at Eternal Weekend Pittsburg! Thanks for everyone that came up to say hello, chat, and show off their BCDL gear!

We are happy to announce our first events of 2025!

A new format is upon us! Come sling spells with a great group, and feast on delicious dip. Want to play something new? Test a deck before buying in? We are playtest friendly, so bring your brew or bring your best for the chance to win dope prizes.

Texas:

Buffalo Chicken Dip 18 - 2K - Saturday, January 25th

Hosted by Asgard Games in Houston, TX.

Minimum Prizing:

• 1st Place – Name on the Golden Chicken Trophy and a revised Underground Sea
• 2nd Place – 1 Revised Tundra
• 3rd and 4th Place – 1 Revised Savannah each
• 5th – 8th Place – 1 Alliances, Dominaria Remastered, or Eternal Masters Force of Will each
• Prize Pool increases at 46 players and 54 players! See event page for full details.

Playtest Friendly!

See event page for full details

Buffalo Chicken Dip 19 - 2K - Saturday, February 1st 2025

Hosted by The Warpgate in Columbus Ohio.

Minimum Prizing:

• 1st Place – Name on the Golden Chicken Trophy and a revised Underground Sea
• 2nd Place – 1 Revised Tundra
• 3rd and 4th Place – 1 Revised Savannah each
• 5th – 8th Place – 1 Alliances, Dominaria Remastered, or Eternal Masters Force of Will each
• Prize Pool increases at 46 players and 54 players! See event page for full details.

Playtest Friendly!

See event page for full details

**If you got a flier from us at EW - the original date was the 25th - but we didn't want to have both events on the same day - this is the correct date - thanks for your understanding**

Feature matches will be live streamed at the BCDL Twitch

To keep up with latest info follow Rob and I on Twitter /BlueSky:

https://x.com/BcdLegacy / https://x.com/BCDL_Carey / https://bsky.app/profile/bcdl-carey.bsky.social

Thanks for your continued support everyone! We couldn't do this without you!

-Carey

Hi there,

After 20 years I decided to go back to paper magic. I've been slowly rebuilding my collection focused on Legacy and I was curious if you guys recommend some LGS/group where people play Legacy around NYC or North Jersey (Ideally Bergen county). I'm happy to join some league, even though my return to paper magic is more for the collection/social aspect of the game.

Thank you in advance!

Licurgo

In honor of this week's BnR I decided to make my break down of the announcement free to all members of my Patreon. No need to purchase a membership, just follow and you can view my article for free.

12/16/2024 BnR Reaction

Hello,

I've been working on a "Eternal Weekend" cube and as part of the research I did a compilation of the Eternal Weekend Legacy and Vintage Championships. I shared this data with Adam of the MTG Elo project and I know it was useful to them, so after polishing it a bit I decided to share it since it might be interesting to other people out there too.

I also did two cubes which feature all the cards that made the top8 of a Legacy or Vintage Championship.

I am missing some attendance numbers and there might be some errors here and there because I did everything manually, so any help to improve the data is much appreciated.

I plan to develop the docs with the full top8 in the future. I also think it will be great if some people much more tech savvy than me would do some stadistics like who has more wins, more top8s, the most played cards or archetypes, etc.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

Hey y'all,

Now that the dust has settled (somewhat) regarding the B&R, I've noticed a divided reaction. If you are part of the group of players, however big or small, that is still dissatisfied at the handling of Legacy balancing, metagame and (un)bans, please do read further.

We over at https://lowlandermtg.com/ are trying to build something player-driven and player-managed, and extremely Legacy adjacent. Now, when January hits, we will have our very first community vote, and we would love your participation. That means that everything on the banlist is fair game to discuss, and we will similarly add sets to the card pool based on player input. Only with your presence and input can cards like [[Brainstorm]], [[Yawgmoth's Will]] (and whatever else tickles your fancy) have a shot at being unleashed, along with adding sets that you love. All tournaments from January onward will use the updated legality.

If you have ever wanted to build a new type of Legacy from the ground up, where every addition and (un)ban is done by the very players themselves, you are most welcome. If you have ever wanted to have your own voice be heard regarding format balance, we might be the community for you. If you enjoy and love Legacy as is, you are still most welcome, we are not trying to compete with or feel superior to the Legacy experience, we simply offer something different.

Feel free to join us over at https://discord.com/invite/WMwCbn3EXu and feel free to ask any questions as well.

I expect to get downvoted into oblivion, but I hope you don't in the interest of having an honest discussion. I firstly want to say that the logistical issues with Sensei's Diving Top are very real and very valid. At the same time, at the highest level of play, control, by in large, isn't nearly as strong by comparison to other archetypes. Yes it can see success, but in a world of Nadu and Eldrazi, and Tempo getting toys every other minute it feels like, I feel like control decks need some help. Is there a discussion to be had about unbanning top? If we did, why isn't it as simple as shorten round times by 5 minutes (which over 10 rounds is still almost an extra hour over the course of the day? Why can we see if counterbalance is still the best thing to be doing with top and, if it is, getting rid of counterbalance instead? Counterbalance with top obviously ate a lot of time spinning each time an opponent cast a spell... at least top can cleanly enable miracles. If I also recall at the time, Top also helped fuel some other archetypes as well (painter and Doomsday back then). I dont think in today's world top is too strong in terms of power level. Every archetype except control feels like it's been getting a ton of love (beanstalk is really the only time in recent years that felt like control actually got something of substance), and I feel like the archetype needs a little boost to keep up. Is the logistical part alone enough to keep Top on the ban list?

Hey everyone, I run a decently sized LGS in Central Florida and in the coming month we are upgrading to a bigger space with more play area. I want to start a legacy league at the store with weekly play and was curious how you all have seen it done at other locations. Any help is appreciated!

Is there any hope for a triumphant return (or really any return) even if the meta will be dominated by bowmasters? 8cast was my first intro to legacy and I loved the playpatterns but I'm also a shitter so I have no idea if it will be playable going forward. My hope/assumption is that it's gone from unplayable -> not in a good spot?

I think with how fast legacy was before the bans a reactive 2 drop was just too slow but it does a good job of slowing down Nadu and it’s obviously nuts against Urza’s saga. I feel like these are going to be two of the most pressing threats of the format and so maybe even maindeck [[dress down]] might become a thing. I appreciate some builds of Nadu you’re only stopping them combo on their turn but that might be enough time for an answer especially if snuff out comes back into the meta with frog gone.

It doesn’t seem to be like a control deck, the deck is too creature heavy and I guess has minor control elements to it, but it feels more like a conservative Aggro deck with a combo plan with Natural Order, it doesn’t seem to be controlling games that much until like the sideboard plan where you have non-creature spells like discard and removal. A lot of the deck has like creatures that accumulate stat bonuses over time that tutor for situation specific cards like Maverick was trying to accomplish.

Today I played against a Nadu elves (with Yorion) deck in mtgo. I've spent around 15min (real time) watching the opponent comboing during several turns (well, I was doing other things meanwhile). How it's supposed I should play against it?

It is a blue deck, which means it plays counterspells. It also plays white, which also plays swords, prismatic ending and Teferis. And also plays green that make its spells uncounterable.

How is supposed I should play against Nadu decks?

Will almost all games until end of March be like this?

Edit: I was testing UB tempo without frog, I have counterspells and removal. But I can also play UR tempo or UW variants.

Question

Of all the decks impacted by the ban announcement, UB Tempo is arguably hit the hardest. Is the deck dead now and should we switch to something else, like UR, RUG or Grixis? Or is it still good and should we just increase the number of other threats? Should we go more aggressive or even more midrange? Or will there be a multitude of options depending on playstyle, what do you think?

Result

I am quite surprised that the absolute majority (61 of 114) voted that UB Tempo is still good. When I first asked you in July, the absolute majority of you voted for Grixis and Psychic Frog was already legal and even in August it was still tied. I have to say I don't understand why you thought that Grixis was better when Frog was legal and now that Frog is gone you say it is still good. Maybe my mistake is the wording of the question ("still good" vs "the best")? Still, I will follow your verdict and experiment with UB for now.

View Poll

I figured bauble would catch a ban but this past Eternal Weekend North America I decided to build painter because my team and I decided we needed another deck in the rotation for events and testing. I always loved painter and had a good chunk of it already minus a few things. So my question is I want to learn the deck and discuss what to do deck building wise with folks who are much better than I am so if anyone has information or knows an account in social media I should follow please let me know. Thanks!

Howdy folks.

I guess I will get straight to the point here, I want to try and not only learn legacy, but play it at a competitive level. I have a few questions that are hard for me to think of answers for, at least not on entirely my own. The tl;dr to each question is in bold.

1. My history with competitive formats are actually quite limited, borderline terrible if I am being honest. A large part of my MTG life has been mostly kitchen table magic with friends up until about 2010, where I started shifting into EDH/Commander and eventually cEDH. I had played the occasional tournament for Modern or Standard here and there, and I played quite a bit of standard on Arena(never got past plat though unfortunately). Other than that, it has been mainly Commander/cEDH. What is a good resource I can use to see example decklists of either recent tournaments, or popular meta game decks? I did initially google this, but I wasn't sure if MTG Goldfish or if MTG TOP 8 were relevant websites people used to see accurate information. I mainly used a combination of EDHREC for casual recommendations, but largely used Moxfield to see other peoples decks for commander or cEDH, I also frequented EDHTop16 for some insight into the current meta game for cEDH.

2. Is the format in a healthy state? I played Yu-Gi-Oh! way back in the day, and we had a few unfortunate "Tier 0" meta formats for a long while. I would like to avoid something like that if possible, but some top 8/16 deck lists seems to run many of the same cards, which is a bit concerning. I understand my mentality about what even "is" a healthy format could be wrong based on how little I currently know but would be more than willing to change my outlook. Bonus points if you might have input regarding the MTGO popularity/health.

3. I understand the format is expensive sometimes, and that places do allow proxies most of the time. Do sanctioned events allow proxies? Some of the top decks I see hover around 3-5 thousand dollars. I don't mind at all slowly building up the funds to buy into the format, but having some sort of proxy friendly environment while I do so would be amazing!

4. Other than playing the game itself, I have been watching deck theory videos about the core philosophy about many of the games mechanics. Are there any good YouTube channels out there that can teach you about Legacy? I am a HUGE fan of content creators like Salubrious Snail and Rhystic Studies if it helps at all.

Thanks again for your help in advance!

Just wondering what the general consensus was regarding Mono Red Stompy post ban? Are we just switching Vexing Bauble back to Chalice of the Void and calling it a day, or is there more to it? I know I've been running a number of Red Blasts in my sideboard which is now a non-bo with Chalice.

Curious to hear how others are thinking.

I am not sure what cards would replace the 4 Vexing Bauble in my Cloudpost ramp list

For my Mystic Forge list I will go... -4 Vexing Bauble Go up to 2 Mox Opal if the deck is playing less than 2, otherwise +2 Voltaic Key +2 Basalth Monolith

Delver will probably go back to playing 4 Delver or splashing red to add Dragons Rage Channeler and Lightning Bolt.

Reanimator is probably best served dropping blue altogether and playing B/r reanimator.

What do you think?