The Hobbit Format Update - Banlist and Watchlist Announcement
Summary of Changes
- Flawless Maneuver – Banned
- Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh– Added to Watchlist
- Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful – Added to Watchlist
Flawless Maneuver - Banned
Over a year and a half ago, in November of 2024, Flawless Maneuver was added to the watchlist for the first time. It stayed there for six months, until we ultimately decided that it wasn’t a problem because it was simply a protection spell.
There are many free spells in the format, but most come with a significant alternative cost, such as exiling a card from your hand or sacrificing a creature. Flawless Maneuver is different. In the current format, its alternative cost is effectively nonexistent. In addition, data on the format’s most-played interaction shows that Flawless Maneuver cleanly blanks 7 of the 15 most-played removal spells and 6 of the 15 most-played sweepers.
Combined with the increasing number of low-mana-value threats, this gives Flawless Maneuver an enormous impact for a card that costs nothing. It can function as both a protection spell and a combat trick, while also blanking an opponent’s board wipe and creating a fog by making your creatures impossible to attack through. In many games, resolving it at the right moment can be enough to win outright. More importantly, it allows white decks to overextend with little fear of reprisal, narrowing the range of effective interaction and creating significant feel-bad moments.
The biggest abuser has been Rograkh/Yoshimaru, a deck that often serves as an early-game removal check. Protecting Yoshimaru on the first turn can mean that an opponent loses their only opportunity to remove it before the deck gets too far ahead to recover. But Rog/Dog is only the clearest example of a broader problem. Flawless Maneuver has become too efficient and too broadly applicable to remain legal.
The effect that once seemed reasonable as a simple protection spell has become too powerful in the current format. Thus, we have decided to ban Flawless Maneuver.
Rog or Dog
The pair of Boros ‘legends matter’ commanders have been a tier 1 deck for a long time. With the aggressive printing of legends from Universes Beyond, the deck is reaching a critical amount of aggressive and impactful legendary creatures.
The deck has been consistently winning tournaments or placing in the top 4 in the Chilean, Mexican, and Northern California paper metas. Recently, the community deliberately increased its play presence to generate more data for us. Despite this non-organic metagame growth and putting more pilots through the deck, its performance didn't meaningfully deteriorate. Over the last three months, both commanders have maintained a highly resilient win rate sitting around 67% to 68%. Many players in the community have been vocal about their dislike of the deck, and we want to be sure to show that we are not turning a blind eye to it.
We are not taking further action at this time, as we want to see whether removing Flawless Maneuver brings the deck’s power level more in line with other top-tier decks in the format. Both cards are being added to the watchlist because banning either one would affect the deck in different ways, and we need more time to determine what outcome we ultimately want. Our goal may be to simply bring the deck down to a healthier power level, or we may decide that a more significant change is necessary to remove it from the metagame entirely.
Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh - Added to Watchlist
We have now seen enough tournament play to understand how much Rograkh is contributing to the deck. The interaction between Rog and Dog is doing a lot, and while that's generally what we want from a deck's pieces, Rograkh is likely doing a little too much.
Banning Rograkh as a commander would handicap and slow down the deck, as it would mean that you can’t leverage the fact that you have a 0-mana commander. This removes early scaling on Yoshimaru and makes cards like Arachne, Leonardo, Gut, and Guild Artisan a lot worse. Furthermore, a 0-cost 0/1 body is incredibly easy to boost and turn into a free resource for cards like Flare of Duplication.
Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful - Added to Watchlist
On the other hand, banning Yoshimaru as a commander basically removes the deck from the meta entirely. This is an incredibly popular commander, very often seen with Rograkh, but also with Esior and Keleth among others. Boros is quite often a problem in Tiny Leaders, and Yoshimaru enables half of that equation. The Dog is very strong on its own, but its gameplan is much more linear. It comes in a small package that if left uncontested, often grows large, requiring multiple pieces of removal to deal with it.
While Merry, Esquire of Rohan can be a good substitution, the deck will be slower and will lack the early scaling and late-game threat that Yoshimaru provides. In the past, the protection of Flawless Maneuver made it near untouchable. We hope that removing Flawless Maneuver is enough to tranquilize Man's best friend. Watchlisting both gives us a chance to see how players pivot and what consistent tournament play looks like without the protection of Flawless Maneuver.
Slimefoot & Squee
During the last BnR announcement, we mentioned that Slimefoot and Squee had the best win rate in the data we had at the time. Since then, we have gathered more entries, and the numbers show a metagame successfully adapting.
After the announcement, the deck's overall historical win rate lowered significantly from 72% to 63%. Furthermore, over the last three months, its performance dropped even further to 57.14% across recent matches. While 63% does still sound more on the higher end, it's not unusual for the amount of data we currently have access to. In order to get a perfectly accurate win rate, we would need thousands of games, which the format is not currently large enough to produce on its own.
Because its performance is actively declining as players learn the matchup, we have decided to fully close the conversation on this deck.
be unbanned in the future if we believe it would benefit the meta at that point, so don’t assume this card will never be coming off the banlist.
Final Notes
We appreciate the community's continued passion, feedback, and tournament reports. The data and insights you contribute directly shape these decisions.
A special thank you to Committee Consultants, Adri, Buldozer, and Nushio for their insight, data, and contributions to compiling this update.
Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and as always. . .