Offenders vs. Oppressors: The Case For Banning Orcish Bowmasters

Magic: The Gathering · by Phil Blechman · June 22, 2025

Written by ForceofPhil

The Legacy community has been ablaze in speculation about what action Wizards of the Coast (WotC) will take in the June 30, 2025, banned and restricted (B&R) announcment. EternalDurdles.com has published a handful of articles from various players and content creators:

Every Legacy-focused YouTube channel and Legacy podcast, including Eternal Durdles, have spun the clicky-baity wheel that is the possible decisions that a company, that isn’t incentivized to meaningful support Legacy, will take to correct its current ills.

This article will first lay out what the collective assessment, as I understand it, regarding what action(s) WotC should take on June 30 is. Then, if a goal of the B&R is to boon Control's metashare, I'll explain why Orcish Bowmasters is the main Oppressor, and why it should be banned on June 30.

What Ills, Yo?

The era of post-Modern Horizon 3 B&Rs, during which UB Reanimator has reigned, has seen combo hover around an ~50% metashare. Through the past three B&Rs, the narrative of Control macro-strategies' metashare suffering in the low teens and needing to be remedied has held a headline.

Sowing Mycospawn was banned in the March 31, 2025 B&R. Much of the community's sentiment at the time was that Sowing Mycospawn soft-banned control strategies from seeing play because uncounterable Strip Mine + Wasteland as early as turn 2 was insurmountable and that sleeving up a Control strategy was voluntarily conceding the Eldrazi and Planar Nexus match-ups. I agreed with Sowing Mycospawn's ban and am happy to never see it again.

However, Control's metashare did not improve following Sowing Mycospawn's ban. According to MTGTop8 at the time of this article's publication, Control remains only 14% of the meta compared to Combo's 55%. Why didn't the ban of Sowing Mycospawn help?

Why Ban | Oppressors vs Offenders

Power Level

Aside from Ante, Conspiracy, Stickers, and Attractions, I believe there are four rationales for why a card or strategy should be banned. The first is the easiest: power level. Cards like Ancestral Recall, Balance, and most other Vintage-restricted cards too powerful to exist as a four-of in Legacy.

There are plenty of cards currently Legacy legal that likely fall into this category that the community and WotC have collectively agreed is the acceptable power baseline without explicitly saying so.

Ancient Tomb

Ancient Tomb is the poster child —undoubtedly beyond a reasonable power level in the context of current Legacy, but accepted as the family member we never want to see but still invite to holiday dinner. The sunk-cost fallacy is potent.

Urza's Saga

Urza's Saga has loomed around the ban conversation, especially with the new rules change that turned its interaction with Blood Moon effects and Harbinger of the Seas into a positive. If Urza's Saga were ever to join the banlist, it would be because it falls in this category.

Entomb/Reanimate

"The argument to ban Entomb, thereby gut-checking Reanimator, is primarily arguing that it is too powerful for Legacy. The same can be said for arguments calling to ban Reanimate. Both are the most powerful options in existence for their effects. Right now though, like Urza’s Saga, they are unspokenly classified as Offenders, a category we’ll discuss in a handful of paragraphs"

Without WotC explicitly stating what they believe to be Legacy's power threshold, the speculation of banning either Entomb and/or Reanimate is littered with vibes and amorphous "Pillar of the Format" and "Format Identity" defenses that have no substantive footing, nor will they until WotC is brave enough to commit to a measurable means for what they are.

Unfun

The second reason to ban a card is because it creates an experience so unfun that players want to stop playing the game. Gitaxian Probe and Arcum's Astrolabe are easy examples.

Unfun cards may fall into another category as well, but that's typically overshadowed by the rancid experience they create. The tricky aspect of unfun cards in ban discussions is that their relevance in that discussion is tied to their play-rates (not their win-rates).

Initiative

For me, an example of Unfun is the Initiative mechanic. Although represented on the ban list via White Plume Adventurer, all other Initiative effects remain legal. There aren't calls for ridding the format of an effect that Aaron Forsythe said, to my face in front of a live MagicCon audience, was a mistake. Initiative is not currently present in ban discussions because Initiative strategies are nonexistent in the current competitive meta.

Sensei's Divining Top

For others, an example of Unfun is Sensei's Divining Top. Arguments that it was banned because it caused rounds to go to time are disingenuous; a strawman easy to support since no one likes rounds going to time. That rationale presumed rounds went to time directly due to Sensei's Divining Top, but rounds still go to time at large events.

The more accurate reason Sensei's Divining Top was banned was because a large enough portion of playerbase found its continuous game-action requirements souring to their experience. So much so that someone put a sign that read "Ban Sensei's Top" in the WotC parking lot:

Sensei's Divining Top wasn't too powerful for Legacy and the logististics arguments are not substantive. For many, Sensei's Divining Top was so unfun, people were willing to harass WotC employees at their place of work. While the stated rationale for Sensei's Divining Top's ban is a false narrative, the real reason — a large enough percentage of the playerbase found it unfun — is sufficient and reasonable for a ban.

Grief & Sowing Mycospawn

For nearly all of us, Unfun was what led to Grief's ban on August 26, 2024 and Sowing Mycospawn's ban on March 31, 2025. Had any of these cards not had the play threshold the community believed to be over the line, they might still be legal, much like:

Nadu, Winged Wisdom

Nadu, Winged Wisdom looms in the ban conversation because of the unfun experience it generates of monotonous, solitaire-like game actions that are undeterministic for victory but ostensibly end the game. WotC's on record saying "Nadu, Winged Wisdom was a design mistake."

Nadu's metashare at the time of this article's publication, however, is 10% between Breakfast (5%) and Bant Nadu (5%). Although 10% for something unfun is double that of Oops! All Spells!, half of Nadu's representation is within a combo deck that can end the game before Nadu is relevant.

Nadu will continue to touch-and-go from the top of the community's ban priorities for the entirety of its existence in the format. As long as WotC continues to firehose power in new designs while wielding a soft, tentative, "let's wait and see" approach to Legacy bans, Nadu is safe.

Unfun is the reason why Oops! All Spells! will likely cease to exist come July. At sub 1% of the meta, perhaps the community would prioritize other bans instead, but at 3-5%, it's become a prime target.

Offenders

Offenders are cards so individually powerful that nothing else is relevant to the game. They ask next to nothing in deckbuilding within the context of Legacy and unilaterally take over games they appear in such that those games becomes wholly about them and render other game actions moot. This can also incentivize faster combo formats, as players gravitate toward decks that can ignore Offenders by ignoring the opponent.

Murktide Regent has loomed in ban discussions because an 8/8 flier for UU is an offensive rate. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath was once in the conversation as a redundant play pattern that, at the time, overpowered all removal that wasn't Swords to Plowshares.

Dragon's Rage Channeler, a 3/3 flier for R that sculpts draws and enables graveyard synergies for simply playing the game as it would be otherwise played, is forever just past arm's length of B&R discussion. All these cards are shielded from the B&R by more egregious Offenders that have been allowed to rot the format.

The experience