Metagame Movements

in Legacy –

Orcish Bowmasters effect on Legacy

At first glance, this card might seem innocuous – just a decent rare from the new Lord of the Rings set. But as we read the card thoroughly, it should dawn upon us that we have a game changer on our hands. Let’s break this card down:

Orcish Bowmasters are a flash threat that has a floor of pinging any target and making two 1/1 bodies. This is in itself marginal, but still quite decent. Once you take its trigger into account this card looks strong against more and more archetypes. Its clause of triggering upon any of the opponents draw beyond the first of the draw step means that it is a hoser of blue. It is designed to be strong against the cantrip cartel, and it does this quite effectively by pinging for 3 times 1 and growing its Orc Army token by +3 faced with a Brainstorm. This means in other words that one of the realistic best case scenarios of this card is:

You are on the play and play a land turns 1 and 2. Your opponent does the same, but wants to Brainstorm on their second turn, maybe to find that third land or a 1 CMC threat. Boom, you flash in Orcish Bowmasters and they take 4 points of damage and face down a 4/4 token and a 1/1, which threatens to turn future cantrips into more pain. Faced with this potential do you even dare fire off that Brainstorm, if you don’t have a removal spell at hand? How about the turn 2 Ponder on the draw to find a second land? You have to do it and then you risk facing Bowmasters with a 2/2 token and taking 2 points of damage. And you presumably still have to spend a removal spell to get rid of the Bowmasters ASAP. Is this game ending? Probably not instantaneously, but it will feel like it. You can land a blocker like Tarmogoyf and get some well-deserved peace from the attackers, but the rate of virtual card advantage on Bowmasters is just great.

The pinging

How about the effect of pinging for 1, how relevant is that? Decks like DnT, Dnt/Initiative with Esper Sentinel, Painter with Welder and Delver will be sad to lose one of their creatures to the first ping. If that happens, then Bowmasters is effectively close to a 3 for 1. The person wielding the unfriendly Orc Archer traded for a card with just the ping and has two bodies on top of that. The token might seem unimportant but future Bowmasters will grow the 1/1, so it is not nothing.

Between being good against 1/1s and being good against cantrips means that this is highly maindeckable. When will the card be unimpressive then?

The bad to medium matchups

If you choose to maindeck this card, when will you be sorry for your choice? Let’s list up some of the decks that don’t really care about Bowmasters:

Lands

Cloudpost

Storm

Mono Red Rabblemaster/Moon

Mystic Forge Combo (although a draw 7 is a big token boost)

Temur Cascade

So basically decks without cantrips and x/1’s. That’s a very small part of Legacy.

Matchups where Bowmasters are good to great

• UR Delver (Pinging small Delvers, DRC’s + cantrips)
• Death’s Shadow (Pinging Strix, making blockers + cantrips)
• DnT/Maverick (Pinging most of the creatures)
• DnT/Initiative (Pinging some of the creatures)
• Cephalid Breakfast (So good…)
• Elves (Glimpse Elves almost unplayable)
• Painter (Pinging Welder, punishing second chapter of Fable)
• 8 Cast (Just the cantrips)
• Reanimator (Take 14 from your Griselbrand activation and give me a 8/8, you say?)
• Show and Tell (eot flash threat is fine plus the Griselbrand interaction)
• All blue control decks (Pinging planeswalkers, making two bodies, cantrips).

Beyond these known versions of archetypes we are likely to see more black being splashed for people to be able to play Orcish Bowmasters themselves and it so happens that Bowmasters is one of the best answers to Bowmasters. Therefore, we might have a subgame in the metagame where the decks naturally weak to Bowmaster will partially revolve around being somewhat immune to the card and/or using it in the strategy. On the other hand this will incentivize players to turn towards the few decks that enjoy playing against a 2-drop with almost no impact on their game. But beware, because with black also comes discard.

A change in colors

When people start splashing more black, then we will see more Thoughtseizes and Griefs. Grief is already popular and so black removal spells and more discard should be on the horizon. Discard is usually not nice for the unfair decks to face, at least when it is paired with Force of Will, so this might be part of the equation. Land based strategies don’t care about discard nor Bowmaster though, so it seems like these decks have a lot to gain in the coming metagame evolution.

Which cards are naturally strong or even necessary against Bowmasters? Cheap removal, sweepers, large bodies and more niche choices like Veil of Summer and Absolute Grace are some of the options.

Going for gold?!

And how about exploiting the trigger of Bowmasters? Will people find ways to trigger it without the help of the adversary? Most likely, but it’s hard to say if there will be a middle ground where such a strategy is worthwhile. Cards that interact favorably are for instance Burning Inquiry, Echo of Aeons, Geier Reach Sanitarium and Loran of the Third Path. Day’s Undoing notably doesn’t work favorably with Bowmasters because it ends the turn.

The evolution of the metagame

I imagine that a few people will try to max out on Bowmasters from its release, but most people will simply add a few copies to their deck initially, if they are already playing black. As the weeks progress I think the numbers of Bowmasters will rise, because they are so good against opposing Bowmasters. People are not going to want to stop playing blue, so they will look for solutions to the little menace. This card is going to be a headache for control players, but playing more sweepers or adding Stoneforge Mystic might help, instead of relying on just planeswalkers and cantrip effects. From a Delver player’s perspective, Delver might have to get cut, and DRC will have to be played with caution. Cards like Murktide, True-Name and Tarmogoyf are robust threats and cards like Gut Shot or Spell Snare might once again be playable.

My gut feeling is that there is so much to gain by playing this card, very little to loose and so few ways to answer it cleanly or at an advantage with overall good cards beyond your own Orcish Bowmasters, such that it will be the new centerpiece of Legacy. 

It will be playable in a variety of shells, from Tempo to Midrange and even Control and possibly even being a versatile juke out of a Combo decks sideboard. 

Am I over exaggerating the effect of this new kid on the block? It’s possible. Maybe a token that grows and a few pings here and there is not going to change all that much. Let’s see, shall we!

Best of luck in your upcoming tournaments, be they ELM qualifiers or naught!

With love from the ELM crew,

Tue Bo-Chassé