RIGHT CHOICES?
Announcement Date: March 6, 2023
Legacy:
Expressive Iteration is banned.
White Plume Adventurer is banned.
Effective Date: March 6, 2023
The list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here.
LEGACY
Since the last update, the Legacy metagame has evolved such that two major archetypes combine to make up a large portion of the field. These are the perennially popular Izzet Delver and the recently enabled Mono-White Initiative. With their combined presence approaching 30% of the field in some circles of competitive play, we’re choosing to ban one card from each deck to lower their respective win rates and metagame shares.
Izzet Delver has been popular for quite some time in Legacy, and it has picked up some notable recent additions, including Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Murktide Regent, and Expressive Iteration. While we acknowledge and agree with the many Legacy players who enjoy the play patterns of Izzet Delver and similar archetypes, our data indicates a need to take the win rate and popularity of the deck down a notch to allow for more metagame diversity and innovation. Our choice is to ban Expressive Iteration, as the card quality and quantity it provides allows Izzet Delver to easily adapt to stay on top of any changes in the metagame.
In addition to removing a generally strong card, our hope is that by removing Expressive Iteration, we reinforce Izzet Delver’s historical strengths (efficient one-for-one exchanges) and weaknesses (lack of sources of card quantity) in a way that leaves the deck more vulnerable in the metagame.
Since the release of Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, the initiative mechanic has had a large impact on the Legacy format and continues to rise in popularity. The current second most popular deck uses fast mana to power out an initiative creature, gaining an early advantage that’s difficult to recover from. To reduce the consistency and speed of this gameplay pattern, we’re choosing to ban the efficient three-mana initiative creature White Plume Adventurer.
According to our data, these two decks are holding each other in check, as well as stymieing additional metagame movement. Therefore, we’re choosing to impact both decks together. We’ll continue to monitor if these changes are enough to open up the metagame and evaluate further changes if needed going forward.
Expressive Iteration is one of the 2 things to ban in the delver deck in my opinion. Expressive is one but my option would have been Dragon Rage Channeler. Both are strong card advantage. With Dragon Rage Channeler it starts as an early threat like Delver of secrets. It is also an engine for Murktide. I think Expressive is in enough decks that it doesn’t warrant the ban but Dragon Rage Channeler does.
White Plume adventurer is a good choice. With most of the initiative cards being 4 cost the 3 cost being banned should slow it down a little bit.