Blue-based decks with Deathrite Shaman had been the most successful strategies in Legacy for a while. Czech Pile even won two of this year's MKM Series events! All came to an end, however, with the most recent ban update, which decided the death of Deathrite Shaman. We asked some notable players for their opinion …

Nicolas Crepelle, MKMS Rome Legacy champion: “I think without Shaman the metagame can evolve between strong old strategies like Tempothresh/Miracles and some new technologies. I'm sad about the end of Czech Pile, but overall I think it's a good change.”

Julian Knab, lifetime leader for MKM Series Top 8s: “The. Best. Thing. Ever! Legacy got so boring and dull over the last six to ten months and I’m so thankful for the fresh take we get now. I’ve played Legacy for almost its entire existence as a format and like many players I consider 2010/11, right before the release of Innistrad block—no Delver, Terminus, Griselbrand—to be the very best era of the format. I’m not surprised most bans of the last years have pointed towards ‘repairing' the format back to exactly that era.”

Nicklas Krull, Modern champion and first in the race for the 2018 MKMS Power 8: “While I don't like bannings in general and don't think this one was neccessary, I can see why they did do it and hope it shakes up the meta in a way people want it to be shaken up. Giving the fans what they want isn't always the best idea. Look at how hyped everyone was when Sensei's Divining Top got banned and just a couple weeks later lots of those people who pushed for the Top ban declared the meta the worst it had ever been. Personally I liked what Deathrite Shaman did to the format and the ban did kill my pet deck Esper Delver. Obviously I am displeased, but it is what it is …”

Tomas Mar, member of the MKMS Power 8 and creator of Czech Pile: “I'm obviously disappointed about the Shaman ban because this makes my deck quite bad now. I'll have to build and test a new one. Also in general, I think the move was super bad and suggests that no one actually bothered to test the format. If you ran at least one of either black or green, you could always play almost any deck/color/cards you liked and there were endless possibilities. I get that the card is strong, but if you were one of those players who don't like to copy decks or just wanted to play something a bit different, you could, and if you tested a lot and played good cards, it could end up one of the best decks in the format. Now variety will go down and there will be a lot of combo players, like a lot!

Philipp Krieger, WMC semifinalist and veteran of three MKM Series Top 8s: “It reduces the metagame back to Reanimator, Storm, and Canadian Threshold.”

Francesco Giorgio, two-time GP Top 8er: “I am not a Legacy expert, but I would not have touched a card like Deathrite Shaman because, while it is very powerful, the decks that played it were all very interactive and generated interesting games to play and watch.”

Andreas Müller, Grand Prix and MKM Series champion: “I don't really think the card itself was overpowered, and the decks it was played in weren't either. For example, Grixis Delver and Czech Pile were not tier zero decks. They were just tier one. Miracles on the other hand was indeed clearly better than the other decks in the format when Sensei's Divining Top was legal. Altogether the Deathrite ban opens up a lot of possibilities for the format, which is cool.”

Felix Bolland, third in the race for the 2018 MKMS Power 8: “I think it's great. I didn't want to face these 4-color goodstuff decks anymore. I'm really looking forward to seeing actual archetypes again. Also, I'm not scared of Reanimator, because I think there is enough hate to keep it in check.”

Marius Hausmann, Legacy champion of MKMS Milan 2017: “The same as with Sensei's Divining Top: good choice to ban, but two years too late again. I think we'll see many more different cool decks now with a slight edge for unfair stuff like Reanimate and Show and Tell. In my opinion, they should have banned Griselbrand too. That's by the way exactly the same thought that Angelo Cadei had some weeks ago.”

Joao Choca, GP grinder with multiple Top 16 finishes: “I strongly disagree with both bans. I think Legacy was a fairly stable format, with a number of tier one decks—Delver, Lands, ANT, Miracles, Pile, Sneak, Mono-Red Prison, Death and Taxes, et cetera—with nothing coming close to resembling Top-Miracles dominance. However, the existence of a Legacy PT—or part of it anyway—means that Wizards feels the need to change things, for the sake of giving pros a chance to ‘break it.'”

Thoralf “Toffel” Severin, veteran of two MKM Series Top 8s and three GP Top 8s: “I personally like it, because I feel the Shaman pushed a lot of decks out of the environment and was too generic. No proof or objective facts behind this statement.”