Without Control, Embrace Humility

Magic: The Gathering · by Phil Blechman · June 24, 2025

Written by Sam Feldman

For many, 2025 has been a tough year. The global neoliberal order, which looked impregnable in 1994, is seemingly starting to crumble for real. There are many worrying signs: war, state violence, volatile markets, a captured media (this blog excepted). On top of all that, Legacy has been in a pretty bad place.

Cyrus Bales (Crucible of Words) makes many good arguments in his article June 30 B&R - The State of Legacy. Essentially, he advocates for banning Undercity Informer, Balustrade Spy, Entomb, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and maybe The One Ring. If that were the banlist update on June 30th, I'd be pretty happy. You could make a case for banning Up the Beanstalk and Nadu, Winged Wisdom, too.

Cyrus frames his argument by assessing the metagame percentages. Control is way down and Combo is way up. I agree with Cyrus that this is a fundamental problem with Legacy. Many players, myself included, enjoy playing with and against Control in Legacy.

It's worth diving deeper into our Legacy discontent, the missing Control archetype, and the rise of Combo. For fun, as a sort of cipher for exploring the dynamics, I'll focus on the quintessential Control card: Swords to Plowshares.

Isaiah 1-2

In Isaiah 1-2, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, God despairs at the desolation of the old kingdom of Judah, and promises His return. Throughout the kingdom of Judah, there was a loss of morality and respect for the one true Lord.

At the time of Isaiah, Judah was an occupied vassal state to the Neo-Assyrian empire (2 Kings 18). An extinct Mesopotanian religion was practiced in the Neo-Assyrian empire, and its authority must have posed a considerable challenge to the Israelite religion.

The “sinners” and “rebels” in Judah (Isaiah 1:28), in Isaiah's opinion, are making a big mistake. The Lord is all powerful, and His kingdom of heaven on earth will be re-formed. When that happens:

For out of Zion shall go forth the law,

And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

And rebuke many people;

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

And their spears into pruning hooks;

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

Neither shall they learn war anymore.

—Isaiah 2:3-4

I appreciate Magic’s interpretation of this passage. The card Swords to Plowshares is a hyper-efficient way to interact with creatures. Playing a Swords to Plowshares deck in Legacy means creature combat matters and the battlefield is a contested site worth controlling.

In the Book of Isaiah, God is interested in consolidating his theocratic state power. The Neo-Assyrian empire had a theocratic mandate to state power, assuredly in direct opposition to the theocracy Isaiah hoped to achieve. (1)

In practice, turning spears into pruning hooks means driving out, converting, or eliminating infidels, pagans, and strangers. In what might be an unrelated coincidence (maybe loose, as far as academic rigor is concerned), a Mesopotamian ruler of an earlier Assyrian kingdom coined the axiom “Peace cannot be made without conflict.” (2)

Turning Swords to Plowshares is unambiguously not a neutral act of God. To achieve heaven on earth, as Isaiah wants it, there will be winners and losers. The rhetoric is part of a struggle for control of society, of the battlefield, an imposition of a certain will on the world. In a sense, it is a violent imposition of “peace.”*

*Writer's Note: There are so many ways to read the Bible. If I’m wrong, no offense intended.

Control In Legacy

As Cyrus noted, in June 2025 Legacy, control is way down. There are too many different threats to answer. The best Wrath of God effects are narrow and weak relative to the best creatures. Swords to Plowshares can only do so much.

Since Combo is so strong, a package of Wasteland/Daze/Thoughtseize seems like a more appropriate way to fight the field. As a result, we see a relatively strong showing from Aggro/Tempo decks.

I personally like playing Combo strategies and appreciate their place in the metagame. Combo tries to win in unique ways, transforming the game and the decisions each player makes. The fact that two different matches of Legacy can be about wildly different things is an aspect of the format that I enjoy.

Agency

Currently, no Combo deck is more infamous for making a Legacy match about something else than Oops! All Spells! I've played the deck for about two years and have a pretty good sense of its strengths and weaknesses.

Playing Oops! All Spells! is a rush. I get a lot of leverage shifting the paradigm from what my opponent might have expected. How prepared is my opponent to mulligan to five for the Force of Will? That's a play they should make some percentage of the time.

Part of why I like Oops, All Spells! is because it reminds players that some aspects of life are out of their control. Sometimes, they mulligan to five for the Force of Will and still miss. Sometimes, Oops! All Spells! mulls to oblivion.* Sometimes, the game goes on for six turns or so, the Oops! All Spells! player does everything right, and loses anyway.

*Writer's Note: this happens less with Boggart Bog and Fell Mire, but it still happens. To avoid mulling to oblivion, I’ve recently kept a wide range of hands with Undercity Informer or Balustrade Spy but lack mana to varying degrees of success.

Lack of Control

The problem Legacy players have with Oops! All Spells! is the same existential problem faced by all of us in this chaotic and unknowable world: lack of control. It's okay to lose; to not have had a chance, that's life sometimes. We want to impose our will on a game of Magic, but sometimes Magic resists that, and has a lesson to teach us: Humility.

There are many points in our life in which it's important to try to change the world for the better. There are other points at which it's okay to let go. As essential as it might seem to achieve some type of domination over our world, that's not all there is to life.

Life is surprising. It forces you to constantly reevaluate your priors. It is too short.

After I finish a match of Oops! All Spells!, if my opponent doesn't seem too put off by the whole experience, I like to talk with them about their day, other formats they play, etc. You meet all sorts of people in New York City. I bird the match next to me, or step out onto 27th Street to get some air. The city is buzzing, as always.

Humility — Key to the City by Sean Murray

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References

Religion and Ideology in Assyria, Pongratz-Leisten, Beate, 145 (De Gruyter 2015)
Pongratz-Leisten 2015, 16, citing Peter Machinist's “The Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta I: A Study in Middle Assyrian Literature” (Yale 1978), | "Literature as Politics: the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic and the Bible”, Machinist, Peter (The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 1976)

Featured image: Humility by Phil Foglio