Ever since Vivi Ornitier was forcefully evicted from Standard, the format has cleaned up significantly. There were a few issues along the way, but the metagame has been relatively balanced recently, with multiple viable decks at any given tournament.
Sadly, looking at the Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed metagame breakdown, it appears that Standard’s good run might finally be ending. A new villain has been crowned, and players are already calling for bans.
Badgermole Cub Dominance
Badgermole Cub-focused decks are a clear outlier going into Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed. The two top archetypes of this event are essentially two variants of the same strategy, utilizing the Cub alongside a bunch of mana dorks to power Nature’s Rhythm. It’s extremely easy to land a turn three Craterhoof Behemoth with this package, swinging in for lethal damage before your opponents even get started.
While one archetype works towards Brightglass Gearhulk and the other sticks to its Simic roots, the three Rhythm decks represent 34.6% of the field. For reference, many of Magic’s most broken strategies, like Nadu, Winged Wisdom combo and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis Dredge, had smaller metagame representations at past Pro Tours than this.
That said, this is still making the issue look smaller than it really is. Badgermole Cub is also a core component of the resurging Bant Airbending combo deck, and appears in a few decks in the “Other” category. This brings the final total of players who registered Standard’s problem card to 44.8%. Needless to say, this is an extremely dominant percentage, and it already has players comparing the little guy to the previous boogeyman of the format.
Players Call for Bans
While Badgermole Cub is obviously a problem, it plays a very different role in Standard than Vivi Ornitier did. While Vivi created a combo deck that wasn’t really beatable, players are complaining about Badgermole Cub’s ubiquity. The sheer burst of mana that this card offers is unrivaled by the rest of the metagame, forcing green players to heavily build towards Badgermole Cub or get run over by it. This exact interaction is already beginning to push Landfall decks out of Standard.
This also impacts deckbuilding heavily across the format. With Badgermole Cub threatening consistent turn three kills, other players have no choice but to consistently answer the card or lose the game. We saw a similar situation in Modern when Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer was first introduced. If you didn’t kill the Monkey on sight, winning would be near impossible.
It’s not like Badgermole Cub came out of nowhere, though. This card has been a problem since its release in Avatar, prompting players to repeatedly call for bans, but past metagames have handled the Cub better. Izzet Lessons’ dominance kept the Cub in check until now, but the deck has since dropped off significantly. Elementals and Reanimator are both awful matchups, forcing Gran-Gran to take a step down.
Next Ban Window is Surprisingly Soon
While Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed looks like a bloodbath, we still have an event to play. A fair few new archetypes powered by Lorwyn Eclipsed cards will be seeing their professional debut here. If one of the other registered archetypes manages to keep Badgermole Cub down, we could be back to a balanced metagame.
That said, if Badgermole Cub ends up as broken as it looks, Wizards of the Coast has taken precautions to prevent the Vivi Ornitier situation from repeating. There are tons of 2026 ban windows for MTG, and the next one is just two weeks away. Badgermole Cub could be banned as early as February 9th, following its dominance at the Pro Tour. If Wizards want to give the little guy a bit more time, it could also get the ban hammer on March 23rd. This means that, in the likely scenario that the Cub does end up being too much for Standard, Wizards of the Coast will have no excuses to keep the card legal for months on end.
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