Magic: The Gathering players recently went through the nail-biting experience of waiting to see what cards are going to get axed during the latest banned and restricted announcement. This time around, however, there was the pleasant bonus of having a few cards released back into the wilds of Modern as they’re finally removed from the ban list after years of purgatory.
The latest round of bannings is the first to occur after the game made some major changes to Commander’s separate ban list. This past October saw the Rules Committee, an independent group that monitors the health of the incredibly popular Commander format, handing the reigns to Wizards of the Coast. This move left some players with plenty of concern over the future of the format, though so far, WotC has kept their hands off the format.
Instead, the December 16 bannings and unbannings focused primarily on shifting around the Modern and Pioneer formats, while also touching on Explorer and Legacy with a few targeted bans as well.
What Happened To Modern?
The majority of the changes to Magic came from the Modern format, which saw both bannings and unbannings shake up the meta. The changes are:
Bannings
- Amped Raptor is banned.
- Jegantha, the Wellspring is banned.
- The One Ring is banned.
All three bannings have huge ramifications for the format, with each one banned with the goal of opening up the meta to more diverse decks. With Jegantha, the Wellspring specifically, the deck’s companion restriction was causing many of the decks to shift to having a fairly homogenized meta.
See, Jegantha works by setting a special rule on your deck construction. If you choose to have this Elk as your companion you can only include cards in your deck so long as they don’t have more than one of any single mana in the mana cost. This reduces the creativity players can make in their deck building, which makes the format feel a bit stale. Jegantha getting banned makes it the fifth of the ten Companion creatures from Ikora to get banned, making it quite possibly the most problematic mechanic to be introduced to the game so far.
The other major card banned from Modern is The One Ring, the Tales of Middle-earth breakout card. This legendary artifact has less of a direct impact on Modern’s meta than Jegantha, but thanks to its colorless nature, it is even more pervasive since any deck can make room for it. Boros Energy was putting The Ring to good use, but the fact that it can slot into practically any deck to provide both card advantage and protection, Isiludur’s Bane had to go.
The third card to be banned from Modern, Amped Raptor, is an uncommon card from Modern Horizons, and was primarily banned to take Boros Energy down a peg. By banning Amped Raptor and not another card from the deck, it ensures that the core of the deck remains, though reduced in power, and other decks that might want to make use of some of the other fun card aren’t impacted.
Unbannings
- Faithless Looting is unbanned.
- Green Sun’s Zenith is unbanned.
- Mox Opal is unbanned.
- Splinter Twin is unbanned.
Interestingly, Wizards decided that since the release of many sets and three Modern Horizons sets the meta of the format has shifted far enough to have plenty of answers for cards that previously were dominating the format years before.
Among the cards returning to the game, Splinter Twin seems to be the most problematic among them. Seeing how the powerful enchantment led to all sorts of problems back in the day, it’ll be interesting to see if combo decks can make a return. Green Sun’s Zenith is an amazing tutor spell exclusively for green creatures, getting banned for being able to get anything from a Dryad Arbor to a Primeval Titan.
Is Jegantha Getting Banned Anywhere Else?
What a poignant question! Yes, the Elemental Elk is also getting the banhammer in both Pioneer and Explorer. Despite the different formats having their own metas, Jegantha, the Wellspring is being banned for much of the same reasons. Being able to snag yourself a bonus card from the sideboard when you’re running low is just too good of a strategy to have in the back pocket, making that companion restriction an easy concession to make.
Jegantha was pushing out many of Standard’s most popular cards before they would even get a chance to shine in Pioneer, so the decision to ban it was easy to make. Since Explorer is intended to be Arena’s mirror to Pioneer, Jegantha got the ban there as well.
How Is Legacy Holding Up In The Bans?
Not one to be left behind, Legacy also got its own round of bans this time around, with Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble being removed from the format. Last time Legacy was hit with a ban, it was with the Elemental Grief with the intention to reduce the prominence of Dimir Reanimator.
While it worked a little bit, the deck has been taking up much of the meta still, to a tune of more than twice that of the next most played deck. The teams at Wizards of the Coast narrowed down the culprits responsible for this high play rate to the Psychic Frog, a relatively new card from Modern Horizons 3. This little amphibian has it all, card advantage, a free discard effect that also pumps it up, and a little bit of evasion, all for just two mana.
Part of what led to Psychic Frog getting banned is that the card is also found in Dimir Murktide decks as well. The tight mana restrictions and a need to play it on curve pushed out other colors from the decks, bringing the variance among decks down to a small amount. The possibility of banning other cards was discussed, but members of Wizards were concerned that banning anything else would wipe Reanimator as an archetype out of the meta entirely.
The other card banned from Legacy is Vexing Bauble, a somewhat unassuming uncommon artifact also from Modern Horizons 3. Vexing Bauble shuts down any spell that is cast without paying any mana for it. As it turns out, there are a lot of popular Legacy cards that rely on spells that are cast for free.
While the Bauble might not be as format-warping as cards like Jegantha and Psychic Frog, it can be just as oppressive and frustrating to play against, especially since it is just one mana to play and can replace itself on later turns once you draw an extra copy or two and no longer need the protection.
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