'No Way to Prevent This,' Says WotC, Where This Regularly Happens
{The Fantasticar} is obviously broken. It was broken to anyone who read the text box once without a single playtest game. It has lame-ducked Vintage and Legacy since the moment it was legal. It has broken Raker Shops in Vintage and has turned every deck in Legacy into variants of Oops, All Spells.
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This is a mistake Wizards of the Coast (WotC) makes time and time again and doesn't seem to learn anything from. WotC R&D comprises elite former tournament players and designers who have been making Magic cards for decades. It is confounding how a room of professionals could look at that card file and greenlight it.
[embed]https://x.com/Scoop_Phase/status/2070284263182725480[/embed]
In the Eternal Durdles set review, we identified the very obvious openings of cast {The Fantasticar} and any [0]-mana spells to effectively end the game before the opponent takes a game action. It took zero seconds to solve.
Amidst WotC's ongoing, soft-footed lack of effective format curation for Legacy, which is a dozen-plus banworthy cards deep still to be addressed, WotC needs to course-correct. These types of failures and lack of accountability via swift bans and restrictions are unsustainable.
Make Structural Changes
Since the release of War of the Spark in 2019, WotC has yet to issue a banned-and-restricted announcement that actually identifies or solves the problems plaguing Legacy within a reasonable time frame. The community expects the banned-and-restricted announcement to be embarrassingly out of touch.
If maintaining a healthy Legacy format is not a priority for WotC, then they need to outsource it to a governing body that cares. They did that for Magic: The Gathering Online, outsourcing it to Daybreak Games; they can do the same for any of their formats.
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Commander Problem
Commander is the worst thing ever to happen to 1v1 play. WotC adopted Commander, a format they did not design, wholesale as their flagship format. They made no changes to the format upon that adoption. They accepted the starting life totals at 40, the mulligan rule, Commander damage being 21, and seat one also drawing a card on their first turn.
[embed]https://x.com/IamActuallyLvL1/status/2069497577251209422[/embed]
Leaning into 4-player for its popularity is fine, but only if they separate those cards from 1v1. Mark Rosewater has always said that Magic is always evolving, but for some reason, WotC's ability to effectively curate Legacy does not.
{The Fantasticar} will not make a meaningful difference in Commander. Even in cEDH, it might see play and maybe be cool for those who put 16 power into play against three opponents' combined 120 life. It has, however, ruined Vintage and Legacy, as have so many other cards designed for Commander before it.
[embed]https://x.com/maxtortion/status/2070178196939837852[/embed]
Do Something
Does WotC actually want players to play their game? Cards like {The Fantasticar} end the game before it can be played.
Hopefully, WotC performs a mass audit of Legacy on the June 30, 2026, scheduled banned-and-restricted announcement and bans a dozen cards. If they stay on their current course, which is the expectation, they'll say a lot of words that mean nothing and kick the can down the road.
We've been craving for WotC to believe in themselves enough to demonstrate that they care about their players as much as, if not more than, their shareholders. If they have to print Marvel slop to be heroes to their shareholders, at least they could ban the problems to be heroes to their players.
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Featured image: {The Fantasticar} by Maxim Ruabtsev