Half-Measures

 The latest Banned and Restricted announcement went out today and...

~sigh~

They banned Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. 

I'm not surprised mind you: that card is very, very good. Almost certainly too good. 

But this isn't going to change anything. That's why I'm bummed out about it.

Even worse was this line:

However, we feel this is a large change and would like to see how the metagame adapts before considering if other changes are necessary.

The threat suite in a U/R Delver deck isn't the problem that people think it is. It's the countermagic-specifically Daze- and card selection suite (Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm). It's been obvious to me as a non-competitive observer, that these cards are the problem. That's the engine. 

I'm going to tell you what the future will be and it's easy: the U/R Delver decks are going to up their Delver of Secrets count to four (some had gone down to as few as two), and then they're going to go right back to the well: True-Name Nemesis, Brazen Borrower, Monastery Swiftspear or Magmatic Channeler, maaaybe Ethereal Forager taking up the slack.

It'll take about a month, so from the outset people might feel "hey, it worked!" and then once the UR players have it figured out, we will be right back where we started.

Because you know what doesn't change in the lists from year to year? 4 Brainstorm. 4 Daze. 4 Ponder. Preordain seems to have been replaced by Expressive Iteration but adding an additional color clearly hasn't disrupted the deck. 

The point is that the Delver decks, which have dominated* Legacy for a decade now, will continue to do so. 

*By 'dominated' I mean: been a constant deck to beat, first or second in the listings of something players have to be aware of, always Tier 1. 

If you want to make "a large change" to Legacy, then some of those four cards have to go. Personally, I think Brainstorm would be the card to really crack the format open, but I concede that the splash damage is too much for people. Players would likely revolt. Daze and Ponder however are just too efficient for what they do. 

I would very much like to see a format without Daze and Ponder. Let Ragavan roll: Legacy is already incredibly efficient at finding answers to threats like this. 

WotC made a bad choice and we're going to be dealing with this again in a few months because the Delver decks won't skip a beat, or they will, being "really good" instead of "oppressive"*...until the next efficient Blue or Red or Black card is printed and we're doing this all over again. 

*Read: "well, at least it wasn't as bad as when Ragavan was there, right?" Except it will be just as bad, players will just have had a break from it.