what bothers me even more than Nadu not being playtested is that they explicitly said they were trying to design it for Commander and made hasty changes to it in deference of what Commander players would think of it. It also bothers me quite a lot that, even without playtesting, not one of the many people who looked at it remembered the existence of 0-cost repeated targeting, despite Cephalid Breakfast already being a fairly prominent deck. just feels like a really tunnel visioned process, where the tunnel isn't even pointing at the format that's in the name of the set, but, as always, at Commander.
@@TheKazekyo Yeah, It's like they were thinking of Nadu like Feather, the Redeemed and forgot that they put "or ability" on it. I mean, how could they miss that lightning greaves - one of the most played commander cards - works like shuko if you have more than one creature.
yeah they need to just stop making cards with commander in mind.... EDH players will find a way to break cards that aren't already designed to be broken they really don't need to be handed cards that will break other formats
I honestly think that a lot of the people that work at WotC are absolute garbage at actually playing Magic. It's the only reason I can see that cards like this, or stupid mistake cards like Thoracle or Underworld Breach make it to print. The fact that they don't see this coming from a mile away, even without playtesting, tells me they're trash.
How do you not take one look at her and say "combo her with a repeatable 0-cost ability" even if you don't know enough about Magic to know whether a card like Nomads exists?
seems to me from reading the ban announcement that wizards thinks they have infinite time, when in my world the longer their formats aren’t fun the less people will be playing in the future…
I don't think its that deep, they operate on corporate time where 3 months is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I think they are just blind to that fact that for a casual hobby 3 months can feel like an eternity when its unfun.
Yeah, they followed up the admission that Grief should have been banned months ago with, "so we decided every two months is too fast of a ban cycle and now it will only be 3 times a year". This in the same article that explained that Psychic Frog MIGHT need a ban but they aren't sure yet and want to get more data first. Just...wow.
And it's sad because commander has a non-wizard controlled ban list that gets emergency bans when needed. But when commander intended cards break other formats wizards refuses to ban them.
Your evaluation of Bowmasters heavily indicated that it warps the format to incentivise players to use *newer* cards that are powercrept out of being in danger.
Whenever they are thinking of releasing a card without play testing just post the stats on social media first and people will break it for them in a couple of hours
It isn't that they forgot to playtest, rather they don't give themselves time to. I have 0 clue why they don't finalize card text as one of the first things they do when making a set.
Not even 2 seconds into this and I want to preemptively say (once again) that these kinds of videos of yours are EXACTLY why I Patreon you. Your gameplay content is exquisite, to be sure... I love the "Director's Commentary" behind deckbuilding & play decisions, as well as insight into your thought process behind what the other player might or might not be doing... but goddamn, I love these analysis videos of yours. #chefskiss
Agreed. I don't even play Legacy, but it's always interesting to hear insights on the format from an expect, if for nothing else to see how they match / clash with my own opinions strictly as a viewer of said format. For example, my first reaction to the banlist announcement was a groan over Urza's Saga getting restricted in Vintage, but NOT banned in Legacy. As a viewer I'm just so damn tired of that card, especially when used by both Phil and BoshNRoll as a glue to keep janky deck requests together, usually leading to samey videos where the decks just do Urza's Saga things and very little else, often sideboarding the actual jank out to stay competitive. From what I remember, at least Phil had very opposite opinion in a video months ago, pointing out how it helps deck diversity in Legacy and how its banning might just lead to more stagnant and samey meta overall.
There's a certain irony to spending 1 more mana on your removal spells so they can't be countered by Daze. I get it. You're correct. I just find it amusing.
Daze is a terrible card in terms of balance and fun and should've been kicked out of every format but Vintage a long time ago. You have to play around it constantly even if your opponent is tapped out.
@@EGarrett01 It's entirely possible that if you remove Daze from Legacy (on top of Grief) that combo becomes too dominant in Legacy. And I'd much rather play against some creature + Daze deck than a deck that tries to combo-kill me.
Excellent analysis and foresight. I'm surprised you didn't mention Stonecoil Serpent as a one card stone wall for Frog (it also dodges Abrupt Decay as a bonus, which I could see coming back with a vengeance)
It's ok to make mistakes and design cards that are strong but not broken on the first glance (Tarmogoyf, Grief), but Nadu and Ragavan don't have a hidden power, a lead designer should see that - there is no excuse. It took me about 10 seconds to think about Shuko and Nomads.
I played Eldrazi at the BCDL Open this year. I went up against Painter (blood moon and painter), Mono Blue Stiflenaught (with back to basics), Oops All Spells (killed me t2 and then transformed into Belcher and killed me t1 on a mull to 5), and then turbo depths with the full wasteland package. I dropped after going 0-4. Eldrazi is not good against bad matchups, and I have a feeling its bad matchups just got better.
I 100% agree with your take Phil. Psychic Frog was immediately identifiable as a card of similar to higher power level than Dreadhorde Arcanist. The decision to kick the can even further down the road each time to evaluate the health of the format seems irresponsible, especially given then admission to various oversights during the design process. I think a design advisory note at somewhere after 30 days from the release of each set to comment on the overall perception of the format health by the design team would go a long way, even if they do not allow bans to happen other than designated times they mentioned out of consideration of major events. Magic seems to be gaining a lot of steam lately and being kind to the larger community and good stewards of the game's health is the bare minimum we should expect from a company benefitting from such large successes.
"Psychic Frog was immediately identifiable as a card of similar to higher power level than Dreadhorde Arcanist." -- in theory yes, but in practice a lot of people overlooked it or quasi-overlooked it. But yes, after seeing it in play for a few games, people really should realize that it's at least as good as Dreadhorde Arcanist.
@@lightworker2956 It was partly a cognitive bias on the part of it being an upgraded version of a card that existed but didn't see play. Playing against it quite a lot in local tournaments and places like Baltimore solidified that it's definitely a problem that affects more axes than DHA did, especially since it wins in combat so much of the time where Arcanist couldn't just always get in the red zone.
One ban announcement every 4 months isn't enough to keep up with the pace they are printing broken cards. If they keep this philosophy of only banning the most oppressive card or two each time, then the stuff that slips by is going to accumulate without being addressed. Phoenix in pioneer, energy in modern, psychic frog in legacy... if they wait to ban these until December, not only will the formats be out of balance until then, it means they'll miss whatever broken next thing they print in Duskmourn, and there will be another period of stale metagame.
I just want WoTC to do a test. Pick a format and say "this is the format where we will be banning and unbanning cards very frequently" and say it upfront so people know what they are getting into. That format now has an identity of the fast banning format, and now WoTC can have info about if players like this sort thing, or if they really hate it as they WoTC currently thinks they do. Maybe it's impossible to do now cause people are established in their formats, but when they make a new format in a few years just like they made Pioneer to have a place for old standard decks, this would be a good way to give that format an identity in a crowded field
Pioneer: YEEESSS, YEESSS. This format is playable again! The midrange deck actually has to play midrange, *I* can actually play play midrange now instead of "I showed you my Vampire plz concede"! Phoenix decks will probably spike in popularity but that's fine by me. They can have their treasure cruises for now. Modern: The nonsense card is banned, people can get back to working with the actually fun MH3 cards. A lot of people also wanted the ring to go, but I have a feeling WoTC is waiting to gather more data on the post-Nadu energy decks to see what to do about them. If ring was banned right now, I'd worry that we'd just be letting energy rule the world unless they also got a ban at the same time (not sure what card though, it's kinda a good stuff pile) Overall though, I just wish Wizards would, if not go back to ban as needed, have a much more frequent ban schedule. Your format being unplayable for over a season is even worse than your deck getting banned imo.
Psychatog was my favorite creature when I first started playing magic. And legacy is my favorite format. It makes my heart hurt to see the card that's a shoutout to Psychatog, now become the card that ruins legacy deck diversity for at least 4 months, and probably destroys any excitement for legacy content at eternal weekend. Wotc massacred my boy.
As a modern player I 99% agree with this video. The exception: If this banning was about bringing back fun to formats, the Ring absolutely had to be banned out of Modern. Watching your opponent chain his Rings is 10 times more annoying and unfun then getting Grief Scammed T1. While you can draw out of a T1 Grief Scam fairly easy (which, as a Grief lover personally, happens most of the times with so much cheap removal in modern atm) you can not work against chaining Rings.
I found the explanation of the Nadu debacle quite concerning, actually; in particular, the bit that says Nadu was designed for Commander. If they hadn't playtested Nadu in Legacy and overlooked an interaction specific to that format, that would be one thing, but the fact that a visibly-pushed rare wasn't even considered in the set's namesake format? What the fuck were they thinking? While WOTC takes responsibility for several things in the blog, they don't seem to acknowledge that this split focus (or, maybe more accurately, their singular focus on Commander) is what caused this problem. Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with Commander, I understand it's Magic's most popular format and of course WOTC wants to keep milking that cow. But they already made "Modern" Horizons 3 Commander decks - including new cards not legal in Modern! If that's not enough of a nod to Commander, why are they making a set targeted at Modern at all? Just make more Commander products and leave Modern alone; it already gets a steady of influx of cards from standard-legal sets. The format would be much better off without the MH sets anyway imo. Edit: forgot to comment on the The One Ring's absence from the banlist. It's an absolute travesty of design even if it wasn't broken, but it also is. I don't know what WOTC is thinking not banning it.
@@dm9910 they originally designed it primarily for modern, they just decided to change it last minute because the design wouldn't be fun in Commander, then didn't have time to play test the new version. I see the main issue being allowing such a large change to the card after the point they could no longer play test. I agree the article when it says that had the card been properly play tested, they likely would have caught the issues pretty quickly. It also seems like simply making it no longer legendary would have solved the issue with it being unfun as a Commander without having a large effect on it's power level elsewhere.
What you said: "creatures in legacy have become tougher since bowmaster was everywhere, and now it's only a 2-3x" What you meant: "bowmasters made it a bad idea to play small creatures, so now it gets played slightly less because it doesn't get to nuke those creatures all the time anymore"
These both express the same sentiment. Bowmasters is great when it's terminate and awful when it's raise the alarm. The metagame shares of Bowmasters and other x/1 creatures will alternate similar to a predator prey population graph
@Pokemoki I think this ebb and flow cycle is a bad one, though. It appears to be the same thing we have with dredge and classic reanimator (which is an instance most players agree is healthy), but it isn't the same. This is a different beast and should be treated as such. It isn't just one or two weirdo archetypes being shut down by a card that's useless against pretty much anything else, this is entire swaths of the cardpool and longstanding legacy pillars being rendered somewhere from "bad idea to play" to "dead in the water on arrival at event" because Bowmasters is always going to be a defensible enough inclusion for any deck that can play it just because it also theoretically pressures the cantrips that we'll never touch (even though it doesn't really impede the cantrip decks at all). The inclusion of "it pressures brainstorm decks a little bit" alongside "I kill anything with 1 toughness, no questions asked" means that it's not just a dead card if people aren't playing the thing that's heavily punished (X/1 creatures), because it'll always have the argument of "yeah but it's at least okay against ~50% of the format" as a baseline. Bowmasters isn't like surgical extraction; it's not a narrow but powerful effect that doesn't do anything for you some amount of the time. It's 2 very different and reasonably defensible effects that combine to make it an evergreen card that murders a portion of the metagame that probably isn't doing anything wrong while it claims to be there to ask the ponder and brainstorm shells what they're up to. It's never a "don't include" if you can cast it because it has game against half the format; the question is never, "Should I play Bowmasters?" It's, "How many of them do I want to play in this list today?" It's like a predator/prey population chart if every time the rabbit poked its head out of the burrow, there was a 60% chance a fox would grab it instantly because the fox will also gladly eat the squirrels that run around freely if it can catch them. That fox will be there if there are rabbits or not; so it makes leaving home a losing proposition for rabbits every single time.
What legacy cards is Bowmasters really eliminating from viability? It hits a few solid ones from Death and Taxes (namely Thalia and summoning sick Mothers), but I don't know of too many former mainstays that are x/1s in the format. Painter still plays its Welders, Delver still plays 8 one-drops that start as x/1s, is there any real deck that Bowmasters has killed?
@drpibisback7680 the entirely of the classic elves shell, most of the things DnT wants to be doing. Remember our old friends ice-fang coatl and baleful strix? Forget about them, those losers are x/1s AND punished for drawing a card. Actual factual delver is the 45th most played creature according to goldfish because it isn't as likely to NOT BE AN x/1 as DRC in early turns (some of those are debatable weirdos like faerie macabre or spirit guides that are only technically creatures but pretty much never used that way) There are 2 creatures in the top 10 that die to bowmasters. One is brazen borrower, which is a bounce spell first and foremost. The other IS bowmasters. After that, you get DRC at 20th, welder at 30th, and 3 more weirdos (haywire mite, the new nantuko, and nomads en-kor) and noble hierarch that squeak by in front of delver. There are 10 total x/1s in the top 50 creatures. One of those is bowmasters, 2 more are really just removal spells (brazy B and haywire mite), 2 give themselves protection in some form (sylvan safekeeper's shroud, new nantuko being used as an enchantment first and only then being a 1/1 if you kill the first thing), 2 aren't x/1s for very long, and the rest are combo pieces you want to kill on sight anyway or can be held until they do the thing. For an X/1 to be playable it has to be either -bowmasters -a creature incidentally (2x), -protect itself from being pinged (1x) -not be an x/1 most of the time (3x) -or be best-in-class at a specific thing to the point where you lose more win% by not including it than by letting it get sniped sometimes (3x) Bowmasters doesn't have the prey and is still a top dog in the format as "just raise the alarm." Meanwhile you have to be doing one of the above to make any other x/1 viable. If you think this is healthy instead of a boot on the throat of x/1s, you're kidding yourself at this point.
if they banned bowmaster then people could play baleful strix and ice fang again and they would help stifle the power level on psychic frog. we would have better answers to frog without bowmaster in the format. that being said frog might still be too strong.
@ThrabenUniversity I pretend I want to do something interesting.... in reality I ended up staring at my Grixis Delver list for 45 mins attempting to decide if I was really about to cut a 4th lightning bolt for a 3rd Fatal Push.... Honestly..... i almost wonder if it's starting to make sense to cut lightning bolts altogether for a mix of Fatal Push & Pyroblast. If I am, for example, packing 3 pyroblast, 3 fatal push, 4 force of will, 1 pact of negation as my removal ... I'm struggling to imagine too many threats in the current meta that won't be tackled by one of these answers. I may change an underground sea to an island if non basic land hate goes up in demand in the sideboard. ...not convinced to drop money on tamiyo yet. I guess she would replace Delver? I'll let smarter people than me figure that one out.😅
31:30 - We all know that the true power of the deck will be revealed once the next ban list kills off the frog. They shall call it "Eldrazi Winter: 2 (Electric Boogaloo)".
The big difference between psychic frog and dreadhorde arcanist is deciding if you want the efficient stats of the frog or the fact arcanist also saves you on mana by letting you free cast the spells. Dreadhorde also interacts with costless suspend spells in ways that psychic frog could far and away never abuse. I think they both enable similar but different strategies. With psychic frog as you mention you're pitching your echo of aeons but with dreadhorde arcanist you'd probably rather cast a free bolt from the yard. Totally different play patterns, widely different forms of advantage as well with dreadhordes restrictions on only giving you advantage from instants or sorceries already in your yard, which by no means helps with deck thining or digging into your deck the same way frog does.
My personal evaluation is both the frog and the arcanist are kinda doofy but at least with the arcanist i got to run my crappy pet "cast manaless suspend spells" deck with electrodominance and dreadhorde arcanist giving me free casted restore balance and ancestral visions lmao.
Fair points, but I still think they're primarily two-mana Ophidians with some quirky upside. They're more similar than different, imo, and because Dreadhorde deserved a ban so does Frog.
I am a known cantrip enjoyer, and though Frog is certainly banworthy, I will enjoy playing with it for several months. The decision of how much to feed a Frog, especially in the face of opposing threats, or even to attack at all or simply to hold up your psychic blocker, is interesting to me. Will UWx control make a comeback? If the battlefield is the most important zone, and tempo decks run the show, that seems like a good reasin to slot in 4 Verdict and go to town. I also wonder if this new metagame will be ripe for exploitation by decks like Dredge. MahfuzVanGogh was already having success with Dredge in the Cage/Leyline/Hearse-ridden Grief format, and seeing everyone pivot to Grixis and Dimir and Sultai has me licking my chops. You could even play our new psychic friend in Blue Dredge, if you were feeling froggy :3
Abrupt Decay was literally the first card I was thinking about when the psychic frog meta segment started. In general I find it weird I've almost never seen it in Legacy videos.
I want to see the bug beanstalk midrange deck that was doing really well before the rise of riskanimator with the inclusion of frog. I think that is going to be a really good shell
modern player here The one ring was about 10 times worse than anything grief was doing (in MODERN) people qere not even scamming it into play anymore, or at least it was not even the primary play
@@amazingusername2174 I mean, I can't belive they wrote the sentence "While Grief is not currently seeing as much play as it has in the past next to " In the interest of making the format more fun, we are banning Grief today." i follow competitive league of legue of legends and a huge scandal happened when they nerfed pyke mid (a weak champion) after one of the devs lost to it twice this literally feels the same
@@EllipticalReasoning hahaha, we can agree on that maybe but having a dev tilt in soloQ and then nerf a champ is not really professional, for a guy who's profession is balancing a game
I think a big part of Eldrazi's strength was it was good in the face of hand disruption, due to its strong lands and a pile of good topdecks that do roughly the same thing. It might get more players because Dimir reanimator players are looking for the next best thing, but I don't think the deck is actually going to improve against the field.
I'm happy to see Grief finally get deleted, but I agree with you in that I'm not looking forward to more lame U/B in Legacy and lame W/R energy in Modern. Back to Pauper I go...
An idea that I have had for a modern deck is a more legacy style jeskai control deck that uses snappy, tamiyo and subtly to leverage flare of denial, and use that to force through big haymakers like forth erolingas. Now that Nadu has been banished, it might be time to experiment with it. For legacy, I kind of want to try a yorian BUG beans deck with both frog and nadu, maybe even include uro, run it with bristly bill. Would be fun. Probably not the optimal build of the deck but I don't plan on playing in any tournaments.
Hey Phil, thanks for the nice content. I think you are right since the best comparison to the frog is dreadhorde and it ended up being banned. Im curious to know your opinion: is the frog better than dreadhorde (draw vs free spell)? Bowmasters had similar numbers not too long ago and the format adapted and people are not asking to ban it anymore, any chance the same could happen with the frog?
Thanks for the insight, if it helps at all - I love the super competitive - but repetitive - content as much as the janky brews to see if some forgotten card from my childhood is actually busted. Especially after a card like Grief is banned. I think it will have a larger impact than you think. Those turn 2 plays that definitely answer a frog and can't be countered, they can't just rip it out of your hand turn 1 off a etb tapped surveil land. Sure they can Thoughtseize, but that's a worse enough setup turn for a reanimator shell that without the extra selection dropping a frog on 2 isn't going to As Often snowball into inevitable wins the way it did. I dunno maybe frog needs to go, but I like having powerful creatures like that in the format. I think there's enough answers at a pace of the game you can comfortable interact with it. Definitely play em if you got em while you can xD 4 months left haha
Personally I am excited that grief, one of most hated card designs of all time, got erased from tournament magic, but I’m also a bit hesitant to jump back into legacy for the reasons you laid out; I’m also a fan of ancient tomb stompy decks or low-to-the-ground red or white decks and finding a way to navigate legacy without cantrips, and (quite relevantly for eternal weekend) my paper collection reflects that. Eternal weekend was a very anticipated event as I enjoyed it a lot last year after finally attending and competing in it for the first time, and I feel rather lost this year to the point that I am considering playing the modern open event instead of the main legacy event that weekend. It would be nice if I and others can find a way to carve a path with that segment of the format come EW, but the writing is on the wall and it spells F R O G. As much as I love frogs, they’re super fun in standard, even if I wanted to put the time into a frog deck to prepare for EW, I might not be able to borrow the cards I would need by then anyways because everyone I know would likely just be playing the same thing and thus using those very cards. I’m not despairing yet but I’m very cautious about fully diving right back into legacy even though grief is finally gone. As a side note, it feels especially bad given that they banned stickers and thus the goblins deck that used them early last year when they had the option to ban grief, which just kind of compounds the issue of not banning grief then because a major piece of acceleration that could perhaps outpace the frog is just… gone. I know stickers as a whole aren’t great for tournament logistics but it still feels bad for your tier 1.5 deck to get banned while the tier 0 deck at the time just mysteriously survives. It feels weirdly targeted, even though I assume it wasn’t intended to be.
As a long time viewer of Brian's content, and a newer viewer of yours (woo, contamination pox!), I was excited to finally have enough of a disposable income to start playing legacy on Magic Online, right around when rescaminator was becoming a prominent force in the format. I stopped playing after a week, because of how unfun two grief triggers was to play against. Now, with the ban, I'm absolutely thrilled to get back into Legacy, and in the mean time I've even bought a few true duals in paper to start a lands deck in 7 point highlander, and hopefully I'll be able to build a legacy deck out of the bones of that... When someone in my area actually starts organising legacy events again 😅
I dunno, sir. Combo was still about 30% of the format without Rescaminator (17-20%), more than Control, Tempo or Aggro. Aggro is basically only Eldrazi. Tempo is Grixis Delver, UB Frog, and Stiflenought. Control is in the trash. Aggro might get a bump or it might just diversify between Eldrazi and Init. Tempo will be a more prevalent version of what it is already. The real possible winner is Control as removal becomes relevant again. And Combo will probably still be around 30-5%.
With Grief gone, my 3-drop stompy might have a curve after all for Caves of Chaos Adenturer. But I am liking just going wide with token swarms and lock pieces.
still wishing they would ban bowmasters... because a format that has access to x/1 creatures has more viable decks and more answers to things like the frog. e.g. a format with combo elves and spirit of the lab might do a great job keeping frog in check. however, sadly, wizards is still cool with deleting x/1 all creatures from the card pool.
I think there's a very good chance that frog will decimate the meta, but I want to believe that there are enough decently playable answers that it doesn't actually turn out that way. Null elemental blast, fatal push, and the aforementioned unlicensed disintegration are answers that can also be used against other cards, but red blast will likely be the most common answer. All we can do is pray they are enough to make stop it as a threat.
Personally, I think the frog is a fun card and there can be many different builds around it, so it wont get boring. I think there are also many, many other decks that will be played not using frog, especially in paper at the LGS and also at big events. Not everyone has all the cards and people have favorite decks. And not everyone is all about going top8. Most people just wanna have fun with a serious deck, not necessarily „the top deck“. I enjoy your content a lot and I hope you‘ll have some videos with leagues where you try to show what the serious (!) non-frog alternatives can do in the meta. Painter, Nadu, Stiflenought, Eldrazi, Moon-Stompy, MonoBlack(-Helm), lands, maybe even D&T and show and tell. Beans? Jeskai Control? Be part of our way to Eternal Weekend, Phil! Accept the challenge and send frogs to gy and exile 😉 Best greetings from Hamburg in Germany 😃
I've been playing legacy primarily for roughly eight years now so maybe I'm jaded, but having some Uxx tempo shell at the top of the format feels like just he thing hat legacy is most of the time and is a core part of the format's identity. At least post-Grief I have some hope of making decisions that might matter and can more reliably cast cards in games (even if they're not winning reliably). Pre-ban I was really on the fence about whether I thought that Frog would be too good as the defacto best thing in the format to do, but I can at least imagine ways in which the format can stabilize to keep it from being too homogenous or otherwise pushing things out of the format. As you noted there are plenty of things that can actually answer Frogs that are reasonable to consider in legacy. If the format is left in ruins because of Frog decks I'm honestly not sure that's as much of an indictment of Frogs as it is the general format of legacy and acceptance of the Uxx tempo shell just having too much going for it. I won't say that I'm optimistic, but I can at least understand why WotC felt it was worth a shot to leave it be. Maybe we learn a much more valuable lesson a the end of this, or maybe something else just dies for Uxx tempo's sins.
With Grief being banned, does BR Reanimator come back to the top of the pile for the people still looking to cast Reanimate or do we stay UB frog reanimator.
I actually was thinking of that echoes frog deck from little bit ago already lookin at cutting the reanimation package and leaning more into interaction and the echoes package. Also hoping stiflenaught comes back more
Jeskai can be a antifrog solution. Going old school. Stp, Pyroblast, back to basics/blood moon, Tamiyo, snapcaster, supreme verdict. Such a deck has won this weekend in Belgium, it should be on mtgtop8 soon.
Fair point. We might get a rock - paper - scissors metagame where Jeskai beats Frog beats combo beats Jeskai. Although I also feel that we haven't explored Frog nearly enough yet. Maybe the best Frog deck isn't a Delver-style deck at all.
Let’s hope you have more fun in the coming weeks. But to be honest, replacing rescaminator with a frog tempo with daze FoW and FoN may be as depressing 😅
Despite the awkwardness of playing it into a flying heavy metagame, I do wonder if white initiative that leans heavily on Anointed Peacekeeper can keep up in the frog world. If Lands and Frog is good, preemptively naming Maze of Ith, Wasteland, and Psychic Frog could be a decent answer overall. Still has an issue with Murktide and hands that are all in on initiative seem questionable into Psychic Frog.
Man, I agree partially with what you have said, but fundamentally the frog is not a broken card (unlike Nadu in Modern), it is a compilation of several very strong abilities in the current best colours in legacy. I believe there are many tools to try and combat it - strix, coatl, swords, ending, blasts, scryb ranger, leovold, maze, hullbreacher, teferi… Whether they will be good enough, we are yet to see.
I may not view Frog as deleterious to legacy because it shifts towards a turn 2 format. I think daze's efficacy is reduced if there is a reliance on 2 cmc threats like Murk and Frog and I think it would benefit the format to include more on board removal instead of just focusing on the stack. Make Misdirection Great Again.
I think a bug frog beans shell can be pretty decent. Frogs bowmasters leo uro backed up by force daze brainstorm and ways to kill the frog that cant be countered. You just get to be a go over the top of other delver type shells seems fun. Maybe good maybe trash idk yet lol
I've been testing a lot since the ban to try and see what I want to play. UB reanimator will still be a top deck, I played against 2 with Emperor of Bones. It is still a consistent turn 2-3 deck. It just doesn't have the protection anymore. The UBx with Tamiyo, Psychic Frog, and Murktide will probably be the number 1 deck, because if you throw everything at the frog Murktide kills you. If you hold out for Murktide the frog will bury you in card advantage. I still think Eye of Ugin will get banned. With Glaring Fleshraker, Sowing Mycospawn, Thought-Knogt Seer, with 12 lands that produce 2 mana, Eye of Ugin consistently makes 4 mana on turn 3. I don't think anything else in the deck is really that powerful. I also want to add a few more deck ideas that may come back. Without grief I don't think there are many decks that can keep up with mono red stomp with the 12 goblins and fury. Plus all the pyroblast and moon effects. Also Naya or Abzan depths. I've been just playing GW, but adding Pyroblast or Abrupt Decay would be great.
I'm mostly a modern player. Nadu needed to go weeks ago, and grief going right now seems kinda tone deaf. Aspiring spike out out an excellent video talking about the ban I highly recommend you check it out. Thanks for the content Phil 🙏
I THINK, psychic frog is good. I think having decks running creature removal isn't the worst thing in the world. I think the frog can put you in a bad spot if you go all in discard your hand and then it gets delt with. It leaves you low on resources, and then instead of being a card engine is does the opposite. I think there is an opportunity for wizards to print a can't be countered removal spell as an uncommon for any color that can't currently deal with it. I like the idea of slow steady bans. You definitely have your finger on the pulse much more than I do, however there are a lot of strong cards in legacy, so unless one is terribly oppressive, I dont think we should be slamming the ban hammer too quick. I think it gives players time to see if they can solve the puzzle, I'd argue that's half the fun of magic. It may turn out players can not solve the puzzle, but at least we are given time to do so. It's a strong card, and it will shape the meta, but I think a few months is ok to have it around and see what we can do as players and see what cards are printed (and hopefully play tested) that can make cards like this and other cards in the future less oppressive. Things like delver have been good for awhile, free counter magic is strong, so as you pointed out removal that gets around that could balance the format beyond psychic frog. Love your videos, love ones like this that talk about the meta, from someone who knows that they are talking about.
I think banning Daze would make combo too powerful. I'd much rather play against a deck with Daze and creatures than play against Oops all Spells or Necrodominance. And daze keeps those decks in check.
With all the powerful creatures coming out of the UB shell and the key cards in eldrazi, maybe its time to bust out the gilded drakes and volatile drakes?
I trust legacy players about their own format and that Psychic Frog is pretty broken, however Legacy is not a format that I see much of, especially compared to Modern. And sometimes the best way to understand how broken something is, is to actually see it in action.
Remember, you can be fair for almost 2 years in a format, if the blue tempo shell is picking you to do broken things, you are the one being banned. See you in six months for the Frog's ban. Also, I'm quite surprised but pleased a Rakdos card is getting a ban in Pioneer Sorin was probably the good card to ban.
I am happy they did not ban psychic frog. We are playing Legacy. We need to be able to deal with creatures like this. It dies to white and black removal and is pyroblastable. I would like to see what happens. Please always ban slowly.
Issue is "there are no wrong threats, only wrong answers." If you play a bunch of removal, then sure sometimes you kill the Frog, but sometimes you sit there with a handful of useless cards against an enemy that doesn't care about your removal. Meanwhile Frog is always relevant. Though admittedly part of why people are so unhappy about the lack of Frog ban is that the next ban period is only December. If bans happened more frequently, it'd be less painful.
I quit MTG during the release of MH2. I was already very unhappy with the FIRE development process and MH1. WoTC seems to really take their time banning cards and I think normally that might be a good thing but when you are just pumping broken stuff into the metagames constantly there a constant broken metagame. Then WoTC often responded by banning cards that had been legal for a decade vs banning the card in the box they were currently selling which also broke several other decks. I was mainly a modern player and I am glad I got out when I did if not wish I did it a bit sooner.
Yeah. If they're going to be relatively conservative with regards to bannings, they should have more frequent banning rounds (or even just "we ban whenever there's a problem").
Indeed. The issue with painter is that while it's great against certain decks, there are decks against which neither Pyroblast nor a turn 3 - 4 combo kill is a great plan. For example, good luck with Painter against an enemy that goes land, Dark Rit, Necrodominance, draw 19, kill you at instant speed during their end step.
@@lightworker2956 Yes, its always have a bad feeling not to play a Force of Will deck. I prefer to lose against a fair deck instead to a fast combo deck. Painter have that problem, but i like painter the most because the games are usually going long. And i drive to tournament for playing not waiting to the next round.
I've been watching for a while, and I remember back when RB was the Reanimator flavour of choice. It was a good deck and - while you'd prefer to reanimate one of the fatties - there were plenty of games where the player would bring back Grief and win that way. I remember points in 2021-22 where it was one of the strongest decks in the format. But before that (2017-18 time) UB was more common. Ignoring the Frog - which IMO did not define the archetype, but maybe pushed it over the edge - the only cards a contemporary list has that a post-MH2 2021 list would lack are Troll of Khazad-dum, Atraxa and some Surveil lands - none of which seems like the key ingredient for success to me. What changed to shift things to UB? I can see Troll's printing as a powerful tool for the deck. I can see the banning of Ragavan de-toothing Delver so Reanimator didn't have to be as all-in on the combo. But it always felt to me more like Scam started to take over Modern, and people tried porting it and realised it was powerful enough to compete in Legacy too. Was it as simple as that? I know your philosophy for Delver is it's too strong when it gets two-mana card advantage. So I'm curious, what would you say happens in the format to make UB Reanimator stronger than RB (or vice versa)?
Shame they didn't hit Psychic Frog. I am not a fan of Bowmasters at all either, so I am hoping that they print more 1 mana dorks, that's similar in body to Delighted Halfling.
i actually respect the choice to not ban psychic frog, i do still believe that so much innovation COULD not necessarily was but could have been held back by grief and a frog meta game could develop in multiple directions like these bug or grixis lists you mention. personally I want to see how these develop without "jumping the gun on psychic frog" ultimately however i do believe frog will need to be banned I just like the choice to not ban it in this anouncement. that being said I do believe december being the next chance is FAR too late and completley screws eternal weekend because while we may see innovation for a month or so its going to be very psychic frog centered innovation which is not healthy long term similar to Greif, exactly as you posited in your "legacy is broken" video.
Hey Phil. Long time first time. You said that any serious tournament players should be looking to play frog and learn the play patters running up to Eternal Weekend. You also have Painter as a good choice into the frog metagame. I have been playing painter since March of this year with the intent of playing it in Etrnal weekend. I don’t have a ton of opportunity to play magic outside fnm. My LGS has super good players and many EW top 8’s in the store with a champion as well. My idea was that I would have roughly 100 matches of Painter under my belt before EW. Would you recommend I build the tier 1 Frog deck and learn that over the next 3 months( 30ish matches) or continue on Painter as I have built up a lot of mechanicals skill with the deck. Anyone is free to chime in! Thanks!
Hey man it’s good against the predicted meta, you have a lot of experience ... you’re not just sitting there and saying “Griefs banned! Let’s play Maverick!” If painter beats frog and everyone is about that Amphibian Lifestyle...
I have 4x foil grief and 4x foil frogs. And...I'm happy for the grief ban 😊 Im already bored to sit down and play tons of frog mirrors now. I play every Legacy deck, i have them all. But i want a fun format. Not a frog format.
Wasn’t it funny that when all the evoke elementals came out grief was considered one of the weakest one and solitude was busted now it’s turns out grief is busted and solitude is the fairest one, we don’t talk about the blue one it’s bad if it could do any nonland permanent it’d be better or if they added it could stop any triggered ability it’d be much more on par with solitude. I guess they didn’t want to give blue more free shit cause they have all the counter spells. I wanna see a new cycle but with less powerful abilities it the can be played from exile after evoke like a green one that returns a card from your graveyard, red one does 3 to a creature, black makes them sac a creature and you lose 3, white flickers creature or planeswalker and gives a +1/1 counter or 1 loyalty, and blue taps and stuns a creature
I am split what is in season and legacy player to preface where I am coming from. By that I mean I play legacy as a sub to when I want a change of pace from playing the current format for Rcqs. So, I think wizards took the low hanging fruit in each format, and did not put time into the after affects of the bans. \ \ I think starting with legacy that as you said grief was priority one and they got that, but psychic frog is another expressive itiration, ragavan nimble pilferer, dreadhoard arcanist and any others I missed. I think that while they could have banned frog this card is just another instance of good tempo card that pushes the daze force threat shell over the edge and even after frog goes I think that this will continue be the issue for every value card in the future and so I think it might be time for daze to go, and stop the chain. I have put thought into the idea that daze stops combo and to that I think that we have enough sideboard and sometimes even main deck-able cards like vexing bauble and force of negation to remove the need for daze in the format. \ \ Moving onto Modern, the current RCQ format when writing this. I think that they took a little more care with this format than legacy, but still missed a little. Modern thanks to modern horizons and beyond the multiverse is very much an eternal rotating format where your old cards are still playable; however, the backbone has to be the newest and pushed card set vs the addition of the new cards to existing archetypes. So while legacy is what modern use to be, I have to look at modern differently because of such. So for bans we got grief and nadu in modern. Nadu is the grief in legacy and then grief is where I say they put a little more effort into modern legacy. Where they missed is the overall tone of modern health where MH3 cards are now the complete backbone and previous mh/multiverse cards are the secondary leaving little room for any other decision cards. I think that the tone could have been kept if during this ban announcement they hit the one ring in addition to something from boros aggro. Some thing along These bans would allow decision cards (format choices) to have some room to breath in the format. \ \Thirdly Pioneer, It has been a little while since this was in season, but the Low hanging fruit still holds despite new cards from standard sets. Banning Sorin and Amalia were must haves. The fruit that was sitting a little higher in the tree was picklock prankster or even treasure cruise. I think that the two remaining decks of the triple-piller (mono-g, rackdos-m, and phoenix) should have been removed to allow for more diversity and while sorin got hit from rackdos I think that maybe something else should have gone to in order prevent a strong comeback of the actual rackdos midrange. Monogreen was successfully reduced by removing the flexible combo card Karn, so having nothing taken from phoenix allows format to stale out quicker than if the triple pillar was completely removed. Something I have to mention is that pioneer is diverse like legacy in that it has multiple strong decks like legacy, although unlike legacy and even modern there is no base generic cards in it that makes it possible to switch between decks other than lands of course. \ \Finally Standard for me I think is great from wizards simply because we had multiple sets rotate out, and the format still has archetypes from staples of the previous format and new decks that have vastly newer cards that can keep up and even help other cards reach the spotlight that the cards couldn't. Now I do think wizards took the low hanging fruit of not banning anything and just letting rotation do the work for them. I think that the longer rotation is going to catch up to them and while rotation keeps standard from getting into the eternal issues. it brings the issue of having either a great format or a really miserable one. \ /Sorry for the essay length originally meant to give just brief comments, although I also did not just want to seem like I was just making rash judgements on each topic I brought up. May this post be fruitful HAHA.
Respectfully , I tried getting behind the “Frog shoulda been banned right now” & you brought up a lot of things, valid or otherwise… but I think the simplest response is, just let it happen. If it’s going to be that good, I want to see it, & we’ll ban it in December. Let the card do some damage - I think banning just Grief is good enough for now - let Frog have a few months if it’s going to go; can’t just ban after barely 3 months with it. Some cards were in Legacy way longer & did way more dmg than Frog ever could at its current point in existence.
after the eggs second sunrise deck you would think that 0 mana anything would always be on wotc mind. actively saying that they didnt play test is wild. thats like stating that you dont do your job
It sounds like there’s a really annoying BUG deck that plays the Delver/Daze/Force shell with Leovold, Frog, and Beans. Just all the advantage, none of banned cards. Push and Decay for in-play stuff.
when you say “all the advantage, none of [the] banned cards” are you trying to imply that you’re allowed to have a few banned cards, as a treat? because this is not true lol
@@domotoro3552 Yes, this decklist gets to run a 1-of Grief, because it doesn’t run a reanimated package /s More like all of the card advantage cards (Frog, Beans, Leo), and no Grief. More of an “all the fun for me, no fun for thee”.dec.
Grief was one of my favorite printings in Magic ever. It really felt like black got an iconic free spell in the way blue had Force of Will. The Modern format over the past few months showed that metagames could adapt to the point where Grief scamming wasn't even a tier 1 strategy. It's a shame that Wizards decided to axe the evoke elemental instead of the One Ring, whose metagame saturation was around 35%. But I guess the Universes Beyond money was too much. Now Grief players don't have a home.
I think you’re fairly unique in this opinion, sorry to say. Edit: sorry, didn’t realise the entire comment was about the modern ban, I thought you segued into talking about the legacy ban. That makes much more sense.
I think Grief was probably acceptable (though not particularly fun) based on my limited experience with the format and the opinions I have seen from competitive players.
I find it funny that modern players, legacy players and pioneer players are all complaining that this was at least one ban too few. Modern it feels like the one to watch should be the one ring, pioneer something like treasure cruse for the phoenix deck and legacy probably the frog
This is probably the natural progression of things. Veil of Summer also blanking the uncounterable removal that Phil listed seems extremely strong, with the obvious exception of Sudden Edict.
what bothers me even more than Nadu not being playtested is that they explicitly said they were trying to design it for Commander and made hasty changes to it in deference of what Commander players would think of it. It also bothers me quite a lot that, even without playtesting, not one of the many people who looked at it remembered the existence of 0-cost repeated targeting, despite Cephalid Breakfast already being a fairly prominent deck.
just feels like a really tunnel visioned process, where the tunnel isn't even pointing at the format that's in the name of the set, but, as always, at Commander.
You wanna know what's worse? They've designed it for commander but every commander player i've talked to also hate Nadu's play pattern
@@TheKazekyo Yeah, It's like they were thinking of Nadu like Feather, the Redeemed and forgot that they put "or ability" on it. I mean, how could they miss that lightning greaves - one of the most played commander cards - works like shuko if you have more than one creature.
yeah they need to just stop making cards with commander in mind.... EDH players will find a way to break cards that aren't already designed to be broken they really don't need to be handed cards that will break other formats
I honestly think that a lot of the people that work at WotC are absolute garbage at actually playing Magic. It's the only reason I can see that cards like this, or stupid mistake cards like Thoracle or Underworld Breach make it to print. The fact that they don't see this coming from a mile away, even without playtesting, tells me they're trash.
How do you not take one look at her and say "combo her with a repeatable 0-cost ability" even if you don't know enough about Magic to know whether a card like Nomads exists?
seems to me from reading the ban announcement that wizards thinks they have infinite time, when in my world the longer their formats aren’t fun the less people will be playing in the future…
I think that's a good observation.
I don't think its that deep, they operate on corporate time where 3 months is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I think they are just blind to that fact that for a casual hobby 3 months can feel like an eternity when its unfun.
All i see is commander when i see MTG anymore. Its kind of killed it for me.
Yeah, they followed up the admission that Grief should have been banned months ago with, "so we decided every two months is too fast of a ban cycle and now it will only be 3 times a year". This in the same article that explained that Psychic Frog MIGHT need a ban but they aren't sure yet and want to get more data first. Just...wow.
And it's sad because commander has a non-wizard controlled ban list that gets emergency bans when needed. But when commander intended cards break other formats wizards refuses to ban them.
Your evaluation of Bowmasters heavily indicated that it warps the format to incentivise players to use *newer* cards that are powercrept out of being in danger.
We forgot to playtest -Jitte- -Skullclamp- -Oko- Nadu
LOL
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it!”
-Winston Churchill
"We forgot to playtest."
Whenever they are thinking of releasing a card without play testing just post the stats on social media first and people will break it for them in a couple of hours
It isn't that they forgot to playtest, rather they don't give themselves time to. I have 0 clue why they don't finalize card text as one of the first things they do when making a set.
Not even 2 seconds into this and I want to preemptively say (once again) that these kinds of videos of yours are EXACTLY why I Patreon you. Your gameplay content is exquisite, to be sure... I love the "Director's Commentary" behind deckbuilding & play decisions, as well as insight into your thought process behind what the other player might or might not be doing... but goddamn, I love these analysis videos of yours. #chefskiss
Agreed. I don't even play Legacy, but it's always interesting to hear insights on the format from an expect, if for nothing else to see how they match / clash with my own opinions strictly as a viewer of said format.
For example, my first reaction to the banlist announcement was a groan over Urza's Saga getting restricted in Vintage, but NOT banned in Legacy. As a viewer I'm just so damn tired of that card, especially when used by both Phil and BoshNRoll as a glue to keep janky deck requests together, usually leading to samey videos where the decks just do Urza's Saga things and very little else, often sideboarding the actual jank out to stay competitive.
From what I remember, at least Phil had very opposite opinion in a video months ago, pointing out how it helps deck diversity in Legacy and how its banning might just lead to more stagnant and samey meta overall.
I'm looking forward to seeing how painter and red stompy do in the coming meta
Yep, I was thinking. Going back to main deck pyros
@@quantum_beebwut
@@quantum_beeb painter will be tier one for sure. Nadu, 4cc and UB tempo will be top dogs. Painter prays on all of those
There's a certain irony to spending 1 more mana on your removal spells so they can't be countered by Daze.
I get it. You're correct. I just find it amusing.
I had the exact same thought
Maybe they have two Dazes in hand :D
Daze is a terrible card in terms of balance and fun and should've been kicked out of every format but Vintage a long time ago. You have to play around it constantly even if your opponent is tapped out.
@@EGarrett01 It's entirely possible that if you remove Daze from Legacy (on top of Grief) that combo becomes too dominant in Legacy. And I'd much rather play against some creature + Daze deck than a deck that tries to combo-kill me.
Terminus is also a pretty sweet card against Daze + creature decks.
Excellent analysis and foresight. I'm surprised you didn't mention Stonecoil Serpent as a one card stone wall for Frog (it also dodges Abrupt Decay as a bonus, which I could see coming back with a vengeance)
It's ok to make mistakes and design cards that are strong but not broken on the first glance (Tarmogoyf, Grief), but Nadu and Ragavan don't have a hidden power, a lead designer should see that - there is no excuse. It took me about 10 seconds to think about Shuko and Nomads.
I don’t think grief was the problem. It’s grief and frog, which arguably should be banned as it’s a strong dreadhorde arcanistz
I played Eldrazi at the BCDL Open this year. I went up against Painter (blood moon and painter), Mono Blue Stiflenaught (with back to basics), Oops All Spells (killed me t2 and then transformed into Belcher and killed me t1 on a mull to 5), and then turbo depths with the full wasteland package. I dropped after going 0-4. Eldrazi is not good against bad matchups, and I have a feeling its bad matchups just got better.
I 100% agree with your take Phil. Psychic Frog was immediately identifiable as a card of similar to higher power level than Dreadhorde Arcanist. The decision to kick the can even further down the road each time to evaluate the health of the format seems irresponsible, especially given then admission to various oversights during the design process. I think a design advisory note at somewhere after 30 days from the release of each set to comment on the overall perception of the format health by the design team would go a long way, even if they do not allow bans to happen other than designated times they mentioned out of consideration of major events. Magic seems to be gaining a lot of steam lately and being kind to the larger community and good stewards of the game's health is the bare minimum we should expect from a company benefitting from such large successes.
"Psychic Frog was immediately identifiable as a card of similar to higher power level than Dreadhorde Arcanist." -- in theory yes, but in practice a lot of people overlooked it or quasi-overlooked it.
But yes, after seeing it in play for a few games, people really should realize that it's at least as good as Dreadhorde Arcanist.
@@lightworker2956 It was partly a cognitive bias on the part of it being an upgraded version of a card that existed but didn't see play. Playing against it quite a lot in local tournaments and places like Baltimore solidified that it's definitely a problem that affects more axes than DHA did, especially since it wins in combat so much of the time where Arcanist couldn't just always get in the red zone.
One ban announcement every 4 months isn't enough to keep up with the pace they are printing broken cards. If they keep this philosophy of only banning the most oppressive card or two each time, then the stuff that slips by is going to accumulate without being addressed. Phoenix in pioneer, energy in modern, psychic frog in legacy... if they wait to ban these until December, not only will the formats be out of balance until then, it means they'll miss whatever broken next thing they print in Duskmourn, and there will be another period of stale metagame.
I just want WoTC to do a test. Pick a format and say "this is the format where we will be banning and unbanning cards very frequently" and say it upfront so people know what they are getting into. That format now has an identity of the fast banning format, and now WoTC can have info about if players like this sort thing, or if they really hate it as they WoTC currently thinks they do. Maybe it's impossible to do now cause people are established in their formats, but when they make a new format in a few years just like they made Pioneer to have a place for old standard decks, this would be a good way to give that format an identity in a crowded field
Pioneer: YEEESSS, YEESSS. This format is playable again! The midrange deck actually has to play midrange, *I* can actually play play midrange now instead of "I showed you my Vampire plz concede"! Phoenix decks will probably spike in popularity but that's fine by me. They can have their treasure cruises for now.
Modern: The nonsense card is banned, people can get back to working with the actually fun MH3 cards. A lot of people also wanted the ring to go, but I have a feeling WoTC is waiting to gather more data on the post-Nadu energy decks to see what to do about them.
If ring was banned right now, I'd worry that we'd just be letting energy rule the world unless they also got a ban at the same time (not sure what card though, it's kinda a good stuff pile)
Overall though, I just wish Wizards would, if not go back to ban as needed, have a much more frequent ban schedule. Your format being unplayable for over a season is even worse than your deck getting banned imo.
The next ban announcement not being until December feels ages away.
@@ThrabenUniversityages feels like 4 months
i bought greasefang a week before amalia got previewed and now i can FINALLY play it again
"I showed you my Vampire, pls concede" LMAO
Psychatog was my favorite creature when I first started playing magic. And legacy is my favorite format.
It makes my heart hurt to see the card that's a shoutout to Psychatog, now become the card that ruins legacy deck diversity for at least 4 months, and probably destroys any excitement for legacy content at eternal weekend.
Wotc massacred my boy.
Psychatog knows what it did lol
The One Ring remaining in Modern and Grief getting banned seems strange.
As a modern player I 99% agree with this video. The exception: If this banning was about bringing back fun to formats, the Ring absolutely had to be banned out of Modern. Watching your opponent chain his Rings is 10 times more annoying and unfun then getting Grief Scammed T1. While you can draw out of a T1 Grief Scam fairly easy (which, as a Grief lover personally, happens most of the times with so much cheap removal in modern atm) you can not work against chaining Rings.
I found the explanation of the Nadu debacle quite concerning, actually; in particular, the bit that says Nadu was designed for Commander. If they hadn't playtested Nadu in Legacy and overlooked an interaction specific to that format, that would be one thing, but the fact that a visibly-pushed rare wasn't even considered in the set's namesake format? What the fuck were they thinking? While WOTC takes responsibility for several things in the blog, they don't seem to acknowledge that this split focus (or, maybe more accurately, their singular focus on Commander) is what caused this problem.
Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with Commander, I understand it's Magic's most popular format and of course WOTC wants to keep milking that cow. But they already made "Modern" Horizons 3 Commander decks - including new cards not legal in Modern! If that's not enough of a nod to Commander, why are they making a set targeted at Modern at all? Just make more Commander products and leave Modern alone; it already gets a steady of influx of cards from standard-legal sets. The format would be much better off without the MH sets anyway imo.
Edit: forgot to comment on the The One Ring's absence from the banlist. It's an absolute travesty of design even if it wasn't broken, but it also is. I don't know what WOTC is thinking not banning it.
@@dm9910 they originally designed it primarily for modern, they just decided to change it last minute because the design wouldn't be fun in Commander, then didn't have time to play test the new version.
I see the main issue being allowing such a large change to the card after the point they could no longer play test. I agree the article when it says that had the card been properly play tested, they likely would have caught the issues pretty quickly.
It also seems like simply making it no longer legendary would have solved the issue with it being unfun as a Commander without having a large effect on it's power level elsewhere.
What you said: "creatures in legacy have become tougher since bowmaster was everywhere, and now it's only a 2-3x"
What you meant: "bowmasters made it a bad idea to play small creatures, so now it gets played slightly less because it doesn't get to nuke those creatures all the time anymore"
These both express the same sentiment. Bowmasters is great when it's terminate and awful when it's raise the alarm. The metagame shares of Bowmasters and other x/1 creatures will alternate similar to a predator prey population graph
@Pokemoki I think this ebb and flow cycle is a bad one, though. It appears to be the same thing we have with dredge and classic reanimator (which is an instance most players agree is healthy), but it isn't the same.
This is a different beast and should be treated as such. It isn't just one or two weirdo archetypes being shut down by a card that's useless against pretty much anything else, this is entire swaths of the cardpool and longstanding legacy pillars being rendered somewhere from "bad idea to play" to "dead in the water on arrival at event" because Bowmasters is always going to be a defensible enough inclusion for any deck that can play it just because it also theoretically pressures the cantrips that we'll never touch (even though it doesn't really impede the cantrip decks at all).
The inclusion of "it pressures brainstorm decks a little bit" alongside "I kill anything with 1 toughness, no questions asked" means that it's not just a dead card if people aren't playing the thing that's heavily punished (X/1 creatures), because it'll always have the argument of "yeah but it's at least okay against ~50% of the format" as a baseline.
Bowmasters isn't like surgical extraction; it's not a narrow but powerful effect that doesn't do anything for you some amount of the time. It's 2 very different and reasonably defensible effects that combine to make it an evergreen card that murders a portion of the metagame that probably isn't doing anything wrong while it claims to be there to ask the ponder and brainstorm shells what they're up to.
It's never a "don't include" if you can cast it because it has game against half the format; the question is never, "Should I play Bowmasters?" It's, "How many of them do I want to play in this list today?" It's like a predator/prey population chart if every time the rabbit poked its head out of the burrow, there was a 60% chance a fox would grab it instantly because the fox will also gladly eat the squirrels that run around freely if it can catch them. That fox will be there if there are rabbits or not; so it makes leaving home a losing proposition for rabbits every single time.
What legacy cards is Bowmasters really eliminating from viability? It hits a few solid ones from Death and Taxes (namely Thalia and summoning sick Mothers), but I don't know of too many former mainstays that are x/1s in the format. Painter still plays its Welders, Delver still plays 8 one-drops that start as x/1s, is there any real deck that Bowmasters has killed?
Infect comes to mind as a now doa deck list since bowmasters hit the format.. maverick is probably in the same category
@drpibisback7680 the entirely of the classic elves shell, most of the things DnT wants to be doing. Remember our old friends ice-fang coatl and baleful strix? Forget about them, those losers are x/1s AND punished for drawing a card. Actual factual delver is the 45th most played creature according to goldfish because it isn't as likely to NOT BE AN x/1 as DRC in early turns (some of those are debatable weirdos like faerie macabre or spirit guides that are only technically creatures but pretty much never used that way)
There are 2 creatures in the top 10 that die to bowmasters. One is brazen borrower, which is a bounce spell first and foremost. The other IS bowmasters. After that, you get DRC at 20th, welder at 30th, and 3 more weirdos (haywire mite, the new nantuko, and nomads en-kor) and noble hierarch that squeak by in front of delver.
There are 10 total x/1s in the top 50 creatures. One of those is bowmasters, 2 more are really just removal spells (brazy B and haywire mite), 2 give themselves protection in some form (sylvan safekeeper's shroud, new nantuko being used as an enchantment first and only then being a 1/1 if you kill the first thing), 2 aren't x/1s for very long, and the rest are combo pieces you want to kill on sight anyway or can be held until they do the thing.
For an X/1 to be playable it has to be either
-bowmasters
-a creature incidentally (2x),
-protect itself from being pinged (1x)
-not be an x/1 most of the time (3x)
-or be best-in-class at a specific thing to the point where you lose more win% by not including it than by letting it get sniped sometimes (3x)
Bowmasters doesn't have the prey and is still a top dog in the format as "just raise the alarm." Meanwhile you have to be doing one of the above to make any other x/1 viable. If you think this is healthy instead of a boot on the throat of x/1s, you're kidding yourself at this point.
I really enjoy these kinds of videos, your point of view is clear and it's easy to understand.
If the Frog dominates the meta game, I fully expect Long Goodbye in sideboards for the mirror match.
Dark Betrayal is decent in a Dimir world too.
if they banned bowmaster then people could play baleful strix and ice fang again and they would help stifle the power level on psychic frog. we would have better answers to frog without bowmaster in the format. that being said frog might still be too strong.
I'm somewhat tempted to see if a monoblue Painter is viable with all the new blue toys in MH3.
I think it's much better to play traditional red painter since Pyroblast effects are going to be so strong in the new meta.
@ThrabenUniversity
I pretend I want to do something interesting.... in reality I ended up staring at my Grixis Delver list for 45 mins attempting to decide if I was really about to cut a 4th lightning bolt for a 3rd Fatal Push....
Honestly..... i almost wonder if it's starting to make sense to cut lightning bolts altogether for a mix of Fatal Push & Pyroblast.
If I am, for example, packing 3 pyroblast, 3 fatal push, 4 force of will, 1 pact of negation as my removal ... I'm struggling to imagine too many threats in the current meta that won't be tackled by one of these answers.
I may change an underground sea to an island if non basic land hate goes up in demand in the sideboard.
...not convinced to drop money on tamiyo yet. I guess she would replace Delver? I'll let smarter people than me figure that one out.😅
31:30 - We all know that the true power of the deck will be revealed once the next ban list kills off the frog. They shall call it "Eldrazi Winter: 2 (Electric Boogaloo)".
Always love hearing your input because I don't have a ton of time to keep up with everything 👍
Your finishing words reminded me of aragorn saying "let's hunt some orc!" and I absolutely love it.
Great video, thank you for sharing your thoughts!
The big difference between psychic frog and dreadhorde arcanist is deciding if you want the efficient stats of the frog or the fact arcanist also saves you on mana by letting you free cast the spells. Dreadhorde also interacts with costless suspend spells in ways that psychic frog could far and away never abuse. I think they both enable similar but different strategies. With psychic frog as you mention you're pitching your echo of aeons but with dreadhorde arcanist you'd probably rather cast a free bolt from the yard. Totally different play patterns, widely different forms of advantage as well with dreadhordes restrictions on only giving you advantage from instants or sorceries already in your yard, which by no means helps with deck thining or digging into your deck the same way frog does.
My personal evaluation is both the frog and the arcanist are kinda doofy but at least with the arcanist i got to run my crappy pet "cast manaless suspend spells" deck with electrodominance and dreadhorde arcanist giving me free casted restore balance and ancestral visions lmao.
Fair points, but I still think they're primarily two-mana Ophidians with some quirky upside. They're more similar than different, imo, and because Dreadhorde deserved a ban so does Frog.
Have been waiting for this since grief came out as being banned, love hearing your opinions about the meta :)
Gosh this was really helpful . Great content thanks so much
This was a great video - love the play vids but really enjoy these analyst vids
I am a known cantrip enjoyer, and though Frog is certainly banworthy, I will enjoy playing with it for several months. The decision of how much to feed a Frog, especially in the face of opposing threats, or even to attack at all or simply to hold up your psychic blocker, is interesting to me.
Will UWx control make a comeback? If the battlefield is the most important zone, and tempo decks run the show, that seems like a good reasin to slot in 4 Verdict and go to town.
I also wonder if this new metagame will be ripe for exploitation by decks like Dredge. MahfuzVanGogh was already having success with Dredge in the Cage/Leyline/Hearse-ridden Grief format, and seeing everyone pivot to Grixis and Dimir and Sultai has me licking my chops. You could even play our new psychic friend in Blue Dredge, if you were feeling froggy :3
Abrupt Decay was literally the first card I was thinking about when the psychic frog meta segment started. In general I find it weird I've almost never seen it in Legacy videos.
I want to see the bug beanstalk midrange deck that was doing really well before the rise of riskanimator with the inclusion of frog. I think that is going to be a really good shell
modern player here
The one ring was about 10 times worse than anything grief was doing (in MODERN)
people qere not even scamming it into play anymore, or at least it was not even the primary play
I really can't believe they banned Grief in modern.
@@amazingusername2174 I mean, I can't belive they wrote the sentence "While Grief is not currently seeing as much play as it has in the past next to " In the interest of making the format more fun, we are banning Grief today."
i follow competitive league of legue of legends and a huge scandal happened when they nerfed pyke mid (a weak champion) after one of the devs lost to it twice
this literally feels the same
@@doomkingraye7692 as a pyke main, pyke mid is a super stupid play pattern that really doesn't belong in the game, regardless of whether it's good.
@@EllipticalReasoning hahaha, we can agree on that maybe but having a dev tilt in soloQ and then nerf a champ is not really professional, for a guy who's profession is balancing a game
the one ring is fine your just bad at the game
I think a big part of Eldrazi's strength was it was good in the face of hand disruption, due to its strong lands and a pile of good topdecks that do roughly the same thing. It might get more players because Dimir reanimator players are looking for the next best thing, but I don't think the deck is actually going to improve against the field.
I'm happy to see Grief finally get deleted, but I agree with you in that I'm not looking forward to more lame U/B in Legacy and lame W/R energy in Modern.
Back to Pauper I go...
An idea that I have had for a modern deck is a more legacy style jeskai control deck that uses snappy, tamiyo and subtly to leverage flare of denial, and use that to force through big haymakers like forth erolingas. Now that Nadu has been banished, it might be time to experiment with it. For legacy, I kind of want to try a yorian BUG beans deck with both frog and nadu, maybe even include uro, run it with bristly bill. Would be fun. Probably not the optimal build of the deck but I don't plan on playing in any tournaments.
Hey Phil, thanks for the nice content. I think you are right since the best comparison to the frog is dreadhorde and it ended up being banned. Im curious to know your opinion: is the frog better than dreadhorde (draw vs free spell)? Bowmasters had similar numbers not too long ago and the format adapted and people are not asking to ban it anymore, any chance the same could happen with the frog?
Thanks for the insight, if it helps at all - I love the super competitive - but repetitive - content as much as the janky brews to see if some forgotten card from my childhood is actually busted.
Especially after a card like Grief is banned.
I think it will have a larger impact than you think. Those turn 2 plays that definitely answer a frog and can't be countered, they can't just rip it out of your hand turn 1 off a etb tapped surveil land. Sure they can Thoughtseize, but that's a worse enough setup turn for a reanimator shell that without the extra selection dropping a frog on 2 isn't going to As Often snowball into inevitable wins the way it did. I dunno maybe frog needs to go, but I like having powerful creatures like that in the format. I think there's enough answers at a pace of the game you can comfortable interact with it. Definitely play em if you got em while you can xD 4 months left haha
Personally I am excited that grief, one of most hated card designs of all time, got erased from tournament magic, but I’m also a bit hesitant to jump back into legacy for the reasons you laid out; I’m also a fan of ancient tomb stompy decks or low-to-the-ground red or white decks and finding a way to navigate legacy without cantrips, and (quite relevantly for eternal weekend) my paper collection reflects that. Eternal weekend was a very anticipated event as I enjoyed it a lot last year after finally attending and competing in it for the first time, and I feel rather lost this year to the point that I am considering playing the modern open event instead of the main legacy event that weekend. It would be nice if I and others can find a way to carve a path with that segment of the format come EW, but the writing is on the wall and it spells F R O G. As much as I love frogs, they’re super fun in standard, even if I wanted to put the time into a frog deck to prepare for EW, I might not be able to borrow the cards I would need by then anyways because everyone I know would likely just be playing the same thing and thus using those very cards. I’m not despairing yet but I’m very cautious about fully diving right back into legacy even though grief is finally gone.
As a side note, it feels especially bad given that they banned stickers and thus the goblins deck that used them early last year when they had the option to ban grief, which just kind of compounds the issue of not banning grief then because a major piece of acceleration that could perhaps outpace the frog is just… gone. I know stickers as a whole aren’t great for tournament logistics but it still feels bad for your tier 1.5 deck to get banned while the tier 0 deck at the time just mysteriously survives. It feels weirdly targeted, even though I assume it wasn’t intended to be.
As a long time viewer of Brian's content, and a newer viewer of yours (woo, contamination pox!), I was excited to finally have enough of a disposable income to start playing legacy on Magic Online, right around when rescaminator was becoming a prominent force in the format. I stopped playing after a week, because of how unfun two grief triggers was to play against. Now, with the ban, I'm absolutely thrilled to get back into Legacy, and in the mean time I've even bought a few true duals in paper to start a lands deck in 7 point highlander, and hopefully I'll be able to build a legacy deck out of the bones of that... When someone in my area actually starts organising legacy events again 😅
One of us. One of us.
I dunno, sir. Combo was still about 30% of the format without Rescaminator (17-20%), more than Control, Tempo or Aggro. Aggro is basically only Eldrazi. Tempo is Grixis Delver, UB Frog, and Stiflenought. Control is in the trash. Aggro might get a bump or it might just diversify between Eldrazi and Init. Tempo will be a more prevalent version of what it is already. The real possible winner is Control as removal becomes relevant again. And Combo will probably still be around 30-5%.
With Grief gone, my 3-drop stompy might have a curve after all for Caves of Chaos Adenturer. But I am liking just going wide with token swarms and lock pieces.
still wishing they would ban bowmasters... because a format that has access to x/1 creatures has more viable decks and more answers to things like the frog. e.g. a format with combo elves and spirit of the lab might do a great job keeping frog in check.
however, sadly, wizards is still cool with deleting x/1 all creatures from the card pool.
I think there's a very good chance that frog will decimate the meta, but I want to believe that there are enough decently playable answers that it doesn't actually turn out that way.
Null elemental blast, fatal push, and the aforementioned unlicensed disintegration are answers that can also be used against other cards, but red blast will likely be the most common answer. All we can do is pray they are enough to make stop it as a threat.
I'm thinking about the new meta. As a DnT player, I might include 1 or 2 Sanctifier en-Vec in my lists.
Personally, I think the frog is a fun card and there can be many different builds around it, so it wont get boring. I think there are also many, many other decks that will be played not using frog, especially in paper at the LGS and also at big events. Not everyone has all the cards and people have favorite decks. And not everyone is all about going top8. Most people just wanna have fun with a serious deck, not necessarily „the top deck“. I enjoy your content a lot and I hope you‘ll have some videos with leagues where you try to show what the serious (!) non-frog alternatives can do in the meta. Painter, Nadu, Stiflenought, Eldrazi, Moon-Stompy, MonoBlack(-Helm), lands, maybe even D&T and show and tell. Beans? Jeskai Control? Be part of our way to Eternal Weekend, Phil! Accept the challenge and send frogs to gy and exile 😉 Best greetings from Hamburg in Germany 😃
Top legacy decks prediction:
1. Grixis delver
2. Eldrazi aggro
3. UB reanimator
I've been playing legacy primarily for roughly eight years now so maybe I'm jaded, but having some Uxx tempo shell at the top of the format feels like just he thing hat legacy is most of the time and is a core part of the format's identity. At least post-Grief I have some hope of making decisions that might matter and can more reliably cast cards in games (even if they're not winning reliably). Pre-ban I was really on the fence about whether I thought that Frog would be too good as the defacto best thing in the format to do, but I can at least imagine ways in which the format can stabilize to keep it from being too homogenous or otherwise pushing things out of the format. As you noted there are plenty of things that can actually answer Frogs that are reasonable to consider in legacy. If the format is left in ruins because of Frog decks I'm honestly not sure that's as much of an indictment of Frogs as it is the general format of legacy and acceptance of the Uxx tempo shell just having too much going for it. I won't say that I'm optimistic, but I can at least understand why WotC felt it was worth a shot to leave it be. Maybe we learn a much more valuable lesson a the end of this, or maybe something else just dies for Uxx tempo's sins.
With Grief being banned, does BR Reanimator come back to the top of the pile for the people still looking to cast Reanimate or do we stay UB frog reanimator.
I actually was thinking of that echoes frog deck from little bit ago already lookin at cutting the reanimation package and leaning more into interaction and the echoes package. Also hoping stiflenaught comes back more
Jeskai can be a antifrog solution. Going old school. Stp, Pyroblast, back to basics/blood moon, Tamiyo, snapcaster, supreme verdict. Such a deck has won this weekend in Belgium, it should be on mtgtop8 soon.
Fair point. We might get a rock - paper - scissors metagame where Jeskai beats Frog beats combo beats Jeskai.
Although I also feel that we haven't explored Frog nearly enough yet. Maybe the best Frog deck isn't a Delver-style deck at all.
Let’s hope you have more fun in the coming weeks. But to be honest, replacing rescaminator with a frog tempo with daze FoW and FoN may be as depressing 😅
To sum up:
- UG Infect is still bad (Have it ever been good?)
- Manaless Dredge can steal some G1s again
I don't play combo elves, but I'd love for combo elves and other x/1 combo decks to come back, so Bowmasters should go for deck diversity.
Despite the awkwardness of playing it into a flying heavy metagame, I do wonder if white initiative that leans heavily on Anointed Peacekeeper can keep up in the frog world. If Lands and Frog is good, preemptively naming Maze of Ith, Wasteland, and Psychic Frog could be a decent answer overall. Still has an issue with Murktide and hands that are all in on initiative seem questionable into Psychic Frog.
Man, I agree partially with what you have said, but fundamentally the frog is not a broken card (unlike Nadu in Modern), it is a compilation of several very strong abilities in the current best colours in legacy. I believe there are many tools to try and combat it - strix, coatl, swords, ending, blasts, scryb ranger, leovold, maze, hullbreacher, teferi… Whether they will be good enough, we are yet to see.
I could apply your exact same logic to Dreadhorde, and yet it was ban-worthy.
I may not view Frog as deleterious to legacy because it shifts towards a turn 2 format. I think daze's efficacy is reduced if there is a reliance on 2 cmc threats like Murk and Frog and I think it would benefit the format to include more on board removal instead of just focusing on the stack. Make Misdirection Great Again.
I think a bug frog beans shell can be pretty decent. Frogs bowmasters leo uro backed up by force daze brainstorm and ways to kill the frog that cant be countered. You just get to be a go over the top of other delver type shells seems fun. Maybe good maybe trash idk yet lol
I've been testing a lot since the ban to try and see what I want to play. UB reanimator will still be a top deck, I played against 2 with Emperor of Bones. It is still a consistent turn 2-3 deck. It just doesn't have the protection anymore. The UBx with Tamiyo, Psychic Frog, and Murktide will probably be the number 1 deck, because if you throw everything at the frog Murktide kills you. If you hold out for Murktide the frog will bury you in card advantage. I still think Eye of Ugin will get banned. With Glaring Fleshraker, Sowing Mycospawn, Thought-Knogt Seer, with 12 lands that produce 2 mana, Eye of Ugin consistently makes 4 mana on turn 3. I don't think anything else in the deck is really that powerful. I also want to add a few more deck ideas that may come back. Without grief I don't think there are many decks that can keep up with mono red stomp with the 12 goblins and fury. Plus all the pyroblast and moon effects. Also Naya or Abzan depths. I've been just playing GW, but adding Pyroblast or Abrupt Decay would be great.
I'm mostly a modern player. Nadu needed to go weeks ago, and grief going right now seems kinda tone deaf.
Aspiring spike out out an excellent video talking about the ban I highly recommend you check it out.
Thanks for the content Phil 🙏
I THINK, psychic frog is good. I think having decks running creature removal isn't the worst thing in the world. I think the frog can put you in a bad spot if you go all in discard your hand and then it gets delt with. It leaves you low on resources, and then instead of being a card engine is does the opposite. I think there is an opportunity for wizards to print a can't be countered removal spell as an uncommon for any color that can't currently deal with it. I like the idea of slow steady bans. You definitely have your finger on the pulse much more than I do, however there are a lot of strong cards in legacy, so unless one is terribly oppressive, I dont think we should be slamming the ban hammer too quick. I think it gives players time to see if they can solve the puzzle, I'd argue that's half the fun of magic. It may turn out players can not solve the puzzle, but at least we are given time to do so.
It's a strong card, and it will shape the meta, but I think a few months is ok to have it around and see what we can do as players and see what cards are printed (and hopefully play tested) that can make cards like this and other cards in the future less oppressive. Things like delver have been good for awhile, free counter magic is strong, so as you pointed out removal that gets around that could balance the format beyond psychic frog.
Love your videos, love ones like this that talk about the meta, from someone who knows that they are talking about.
tbh banning daze would be a very interesting idea but its kind of like fow and brainstorm where its part of legacies identity
I think banning Daze would make combo too powerful.
I'd much rather play against a deck with Daze and creatures than play against Oops all Spells or Necrodominance. And daze keeps those decks in check.
Psychatog -> Psychic Frog. Ah, it makes sense now.
With all the powerful creatures coming out of the UB shell and the key cards in eldrazi, maybe its time to bust out the gilded drakes and volatile drakes?
FINALLY THE GRIEF BAN BABYYY. Yay for being able to at least attempt to cast my spells!
I trust legacy players about their own format and that Psychic Frog is pretty broken, however Legacy is not a format that I see much of, especially compared to Modern. And sometimes the best way to understand how broken something is, is to actually see it in action.
Yeah I am sad, haven't played since April and can't see myself playing until at least December if I ever return at all 😢
Remember, you can be fair for almost 2 years in a format, if the blue tempo shell is picking you to do broken things, you are the one being banned. See you in six months for the Frog's ban.
Also, I'm quite surprised but pleased a Rakdos card is getting a ban in Pioneer Sorin was probably the good card to ban.
I am happy they did not ban psychic frog. We are playing Legacy. We need to be able to deal with creatures like this. It dies to white and black removal and is pyroblastable. I would like to see what happens. Please always ban slowly.
*points to Dreadhorde Arcanist* We've seen this before. "Play more removal" does not work as advice against 2 mana, snowballing card advantage.
Issue is "there are no wrong threats, only wrong answers." If you play a bunch of removal, then sure sometimes you kill the Frog, but sometimes you sit there with a handful of useless cards against an enemy that doesn't care about your removal. Meanwhile Frog is always relevant.
Though admittedly part of why people are so unhappy about the lack of Frog ban is that the next ban period is only December. If bans happened more frequently, it'd be less painful.
The Summer of Grief is over. The Fall of the Frog is now!
The Schadenfreude watching Grief prices plummet
The price already was low because everyone knew it would be banned.
I quit MTG during the release of MH2. I was already very unhappy with the FIRE development process and MH1. WoTC seems to really take their time banning cards and I think normally that might be a good thing but when you are just pumping broken stuff into the metagames constantly there a constant broken metagame. Then WoTC often responded by banning cards that had been legal for a decade vs banning the card in the box they were currently selling which also broke several other decks. I was mainly a modern player and I am glad I got out when I did if not wish I did it a bit sooner.
I pivoted my Guildpact deck to Guildpact beanstalk deck with Physic frog in the deck
I believe they missed not removing treasure cruise from Pioneer and Ring from modern
Yeah. If they're going to be relatively conservative with regards to bannings, they should have more frequent banning rounds (or even just "we ban whenever there's a problem").
34:00 OH I GET TO HAVE GRAVEYARD FIGHTS??? LETSGOOO
You are absolutly right.
If i am going to Eternal Weekend then i need to play frog or painter with 6-8 Pyroblast let see.
Indeed.
The issue with painter is that while it's great against certain decks, there are decks against which neither Pyroblast nor a turn 3 - 4 combo kill is a great plan. For example, good luck with Painter against an enemy that goes land, Dark Rit, Necrodominance, draw 19, kill you at instant speed during their end step.
@@lightworker2956 Yes, its always have a bad feeling not to play a Force of Will deck. I prefer to lose against a fair deck instead to a fast combo deck.
Painter have that problem, but i like painter the most because the games are usually going long. And i drive to tournament for playing not waiting to the next round.
I think lands suffers incidental cards like Harbinger of the Sea, consign to Memory, tamiyo that Xerox Shell would play any ways
I've been watching for a while, and I remember back when RB was the Reanimator flavour of choice. It was a good deck and - while you'd prefer to reanimate one of the fatties - there were plenty of games where the player would bring back Grief and win that way. I remember points in 2021-22 where it was one of the strongest decks in the format. But before that (2017-18 time) UB was more common.
Ignoring the Frog - which IMO did not define the archetype, but maybe pushed it over the edge - the only cards a contemporary list has that a post-MH2 2021 list would lack are Troll of Khazad-dum, Atraxa and some Surveil lands - none of which seems like the key ingredient for success to me.
What changed to shift things to UB? I can see Troll's printing as a powerful tool for the deck. I can see the banning of Ragavan de-toothing Delver so Reanimator didn't have to be as all-in on the combo. But it always felt to me more like Scam started to take over Modern, and people tried porting it and realised it was powerful enough to compete in Legacy too. Was it as simple as that?
I know your philosophy for Delver is it's too strong when it gets two-mana card advantage. So I'm curious, what would you say happens in the format to make UB Reanimator stronger than RB (or vice versa)?
Shame they didn't hit Psychic Frog. I am not a fan of Bowmasters at all either, so I am hoping that they print more 1 mana dorks, that's similar in body to Delighted Halfling.
i actually respect the choice to not ban psychic frog, i do still believe that so much innovation COULD not necessarily was but could have been held back by grief and a frog meta game could develop in multiple directions like these bug or grixis lists you mention. personally I want to see how these develop without "jumping the gun on psychic frog" ultimately however i do believe frog will need to be banned I just like the choice to not ban it in this anouncement. that being said I do believe december being the next chance is FAR too late and completley screws eternal weekend because while we may see innovation for a month or so its going to be very psychic frog centered innovation which is not healthy long term similar to Greif, exactly as you posited in your "legacy is broken" video.
Hey Phil. Long time first time.
You said that any serious tournament players should be looking to play frog and learn the play patters running up to Eternal Weekend.
You also have Painter as a good choice into the frog metagame. I have been playing painter since March of this year with the intent of playing it in Etrnal weekend. I don’t have a ton of opportunity to play magic outside fnm. My LGS has super good players and many EW top 8’s in the store with a champion as well. My idea was that I would have roughly 100 matches of Painter under my belt before EW.
Would you recommend I build the tier 1 Frog deck and learn that over the next 3 months( 30ish matches) or continue on Painter as I have built up a lot of mechanicals skill with the deck.
Anyone is free to chime in!
Thanks!
Hey man it’s good against the predicted meta, you have a lot of experience ... you’re not just sitting there and saying “Griefs banned! Let’s play Maverick!” If painter beats frog and everyone is about that Amphibian Lifestyle...
I have 4x foil grief and 4x foil frogs.
And...I'm happy for the grief ban 😊
Im already bored to sit down and play tons of frog mirrors now.
I play every Legacy deck, i have them all. But i want a fun format. Not a frog format.
I play against Lands regularly in paper in my small paper group and yes my buddy has a Tabernacle
Is your shirt here an Into the AM?
I've been saying this whole time, Nadu's ability is *literally* a misprint
don't forget about fatal push for psychic frog.
pauper shining with its absence from the banlist.. not even mentioned with a "no changes"...
Wasn’t it funny that when all the evoke elementals came out grief was considered one of the weakest one and solitude was busted now it’s turns out grief is busted and solitude is the fairest one, we don’t talk about the blue one it’s bad if it could do any nonland permanent it’d be better or if they added it could stop any triggered ability it’d be much more on par with solitude. I guess they didn’t want to give blue more free shit cause they have all the counter spells. I wanna see a new cycle but with less powerful abilities it the can be played from exile after evoke like a green one that returns a card from your graveyard, red one does 3 to a creature, black makes them sac a creature and you lose 3, white flickers creature or planeswalker and gives a +1/1 counter or 1 loyalty, and blue taps and stuns a creature
I am split what is in season and legacy player to preface where I am coming from. By that I mean I play legacy as a sub to when I want a change of pace from playing the current format for Rcqs. So, I think wizards took the low hanging fruit in each format, and did not put time into the after affects of the bans. \ \ I think starting with legacy that as you said grief was priority one and they got that, but psychic frog is another expressive itiration, ragavan nimble pilferer, dreadhoard arcanist and any others I missed. I think that while they could have banned frog this card is just another instance of good tempo card that pushes the daze force threat shell over the edge and even after frog goes I think that this will continue be the issue for every value card in the future and so I think it might be time for daze to go, and stop the chain. I have put thought into the idea that daze stops combo and to that I think that we have enough sideboard and sometimes even main deck-able cards like vexing bauble and force of negation to remove the need for daze in the format. \ \ Moving onto Modern, the current RCQ format when writing this. I think that they took a little more care with this format than legacy, but still missed a little. Modern thanks to modern horizons and beyond the multiverse is very much an eternal rotating format where your old cards are still playable; however, the backbone has to be the newest and pushed card set vs the addition of the new cards to existing archetypes. So while legacy is what modern use to be, I have to look at modern differently because of such. So for bans we got grief and nadu in modern. Nadu is the grief in legacy and then grief is where I say they put a little more effort into modern legacy. Where they missed is the overall tone of modern health where MH3 cards are now the complete backbone and previous mh/multiverse cards are the secondary leaving little room for any other decision cards. I think that the tone could have been kept if during this ban announcement they hit the one ring in addition to something from boros aggro. Some thing along These bans would allow decision cards (format choices) to have some room to breath in the format. \ \Thirdly Pioneer, It has been a little while since this was in season, but the Low hanging fruit still holds despite new cards from standard sets. Banning Sorin and Amalia were must haves. The fruit that was sitting a little higher in the tree was picklock prankster or even treasure cruise. I think that the two remaining decks of the triple-piller (mono-g, rackdos-m, and phoenix) should have been removed to allow for more diversity and while sorin got hit from rackdos I think that maybe something else should have gone to in order prevent a strong comeback of the actual rackdos midrange. Monogreen was successfully reduced by removing the flexible combo card Karn, so having nothing taken from phoenix allows format to stale out quicker than if the triple pillar was completely removed. Something I have to mention is that pioneer is diverse like legacy in that it has multiple strong decks like legacy, although unlike legacy and even modern there is no base generic cards in it that makes it possible to switch between decks other than lands of course. \ \Finally Standard for me I think is great from wizards simply because we had multiple sets rotate out, and the format still has archetypes from staples of the previous format and new decks that have vastly newer cards that can keep up and even help other cards reach the spotlight that the cards couldn't. Now I do think wizards took the low hanging fruit of not banning anything and just letting rotation do the work for them. I think that the longer rotation is going to catch up to them and while rotation keeps standard from getting into the eternal issues. it brings the issue of having either a great format or a really miserable one. \ /Sorry for the essay length originally meant to give just brief comments, although I also did not just want to seem like I was just making rash judgements on each topic I brought up. May this post be fruitful HAHA.
18:57 Which Psychic Frog is best in life?
Respectfully , I tried getting behind the “Frog shoulda been banned right now” & you brought up a lot of things, valid or otherwise… but I think the simplest response is, just let it happen. If it’s going to be that good, I want to see it, & we’ll ban it in December.
Let the card do some damage - I think banning just Grief is good enough for now - let Frog have a few months if it’s going to go; can’t just ban after barely 3 months with it. Some cards were in Legacy way longer & did way more dmg than Frog ever could at its current point in existence.
after the eggs second sunrise deck you would think that 0 mana anything would always be on wotc mind. actively saying that they didnt play test is wild. thats like stating that you dont do your job
It sounds like there’s a really annoying BUG deck that plays the Delver/Daze/Force shell with Leovold, Frog, and Beans. Just all the advantage, none of banned cards. Push and Decay for in-play stuff.
when you say “all the advantage, none of [the] banned cards” are you trying to imply that you’re allowed to have a few banned cards, as a treat? because this is not true lol
@@domotoro3552 i don't think that's reasonable to read at all from that sentence?
@@domotoro3552 Yes, this decklist gets to run a 1-of Grief, because it doesn’t run a reanimated package /s
More like all of the card advantage cards (Frog, Beans, Leo), and no Grief. More of an “all the fun for me, no fun for thee”.dec.
0:56 - The RC has left the chat....
I really don't think the frog is that oppressive
It is a totally different card if you start the game with 2+ cards in hand to answer it
Grief was one of my favorite printings in Magic ever. It really felt like black got an iconic free spell in the way blue had Force of Will. The Modern format over the past few months showed that metagames could adapt to the point where Grief scamming wasn't even a tier 1 strategy. It's a shame that Wizards decided to axe the evoke elemental instead of the One Ring, whose metagame saturation was around 35%. But I guess the Universes Beyond money was too much. Now Grief players don't have a home.
I think you’re fairly unique in this opinion, sorry to say.
Edit: sorry, didn’t realise the entire comment was about the modern ban, I thought you segued into talking about the legacy ban. That makes much more sense.
I think Grief was probably acceptable (though not particularly fun) based on my limited experience with the format and the opinions I have seen from competitive players.
Great, i will wait till December before i consider playing paper legacy. Has alteady been a year. I might be done. Sad times.
I find it funny that modern players, legacy players and pioneer players are all complaining that this was at least one ban too few. Modern it feels like the one to watch should be the one ring, pioneer something like treasure cruse for the phoenix deck and legacy probably the frog
No comment video was great!
Ooh, what about Nadu, Leovold and Psychic frog all in one deck… it’s all very… BUG
This is probably the natural progression of things. Veil of Summer also blanking the uncounterable removal that Phil listed seems extremely strong, with the obvious exception of Sudden Edict.