Magic the Gathering: Nadu, Sorin, and Grief All See Bans Across Multiple Formats

Magic: The Gathering just rolled out a new banning, taking aim at problematic cards in Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and more. These bannings are effective immediately and are designed to help target the biggest issues facing various constructed formats. Before you start to lose yourself to grief over these bans, let’s take a look at everything that was revealed in the August 26 Banned and Restricted announcement. 

Everything Banned In The August 26 Announcement

Legacy

• Grief is banned.

Those Evoke Elementals just can’t catch a break. First Fury is banned, then they’re all axed out of Historic on Magic: The Gathering Arena. And now Grief is getting kicked out of Legacy. To be fair, it has a very legitimate reason to get the banhammer.

Turns out Reanimator decks are pretty darn good in Legacy, with both Reanimate and Animate Dead available to player, giving you ample ways to bring Grief back from the grave to rip apart your opponent’s hand in the first few turns of the game. 

While Legacy also has the best graveyard tech in Magic, it still wasn’t able to do enough to stop the engine that Dimir Reanimator decks were able to get going. It turns out that Grief wasn’t the only card on the chopping block in Legacy, with Magic’s eyes fixed on Psychic Frog as well, but Grief ultimately was the better choice.

Modern

• Nadu, Winged Wisdom is banned.
• Grief is banned.

Well well well, look who it is. The Bird everyone knew was a problem got the ban in the August announcement. With Nadu’s power pretty evident early on, players knew that the Bird was very likely getting cut, and as such, it created a weird power dynamic when it didn’t back in June. 

That has led to a rather uninspired Modern format for the past few months. Players have been jamming Nadu decks because it’s hard to beat the best, but also, if everyone is playing the same deck the format becomes boring. 

Wizards of the Coast recognizes this problem and what caused it. Since the Pro Tour would have been a week after the June B&R announcement, Wizards didn’t want to disrupt players who had been testing decks in the months leading up to the tournament, leaving them to the wolves with very little time to either learn a new deck or try to make do with what they have. 

While hindsight is always 20/20, it is good to see that Wizards recognizes its mistake and will be working to navigate these situations better in the future. 

Also, Grief is banned in Modern for not being fun. While not as good in Modern as it is in Legacy, it can still cause games to be just miserable, especially when you’ve already had to mulligan down a card or two, just to have another two cards ripped from your hand. 

Notably, The One Ring is still being watched carefully. There’s no deck that abuses The One Ring in a way that is too oppressive, but it is still a very powerful card that has some potentially problematic possibilities. Who knows, maybe with Nadu gone The One Ring can go on to live out its terrorizing potential.

Pioneer

• Amalia Benavides Aguirre is banned.
• Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is banned.

Sorin might have been around in Pioneer for quite some time, it wasn’t until the release of the powerhouse Vein Ripper that the ancient planeswalker really became a problem. Being able to cheat out the Vein Ripper on turn three, giving you a flying 6/5 with a brutal ward effect, was a bit too good, taking up more than 30% of the RCQ meta. 

Combine that with the fact that the deck also has access to cards like Thoughtseize and cheap removal spells, and you’ll leave your opponent with little to no ways to stop your Vein Ripper. And even if they can, they have to fight through Sorin and some serious card disadvantage. 

Amalia Benavides Aguirre is a bit of an oopsie in Magic. When combined with Wildgrowth Walker, you get a runaway combo that can easily trigger Amalia’s board wipe effect, leaving you with a 20/20 powerhouse and your opponent with not much to do.

There’s also a way to relatively easily give Wildgrowth Walker indestructible, leading to a game state that can’t progress, forcing a draw. 

Explorer

• Amalia Benavides Aguirre is banned.
• Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is banned.

Explorer is set up to mirror Pioneer, just the digital version on Arena. As such, since Pioneer had Amalia and Sorin banned, Explorer did too. There’s not much more to add about these bans, other than hopefully, they will allow some other decks to shine on Arena.

Vintage

• Urza’s Saga is restricted.
• Vexing Bauble is restricted.

Vintage is a format that rarely sees any major changes to the ban and restricted list, so when it does, you know it’s a big deal. Both Urza’s Saga and Vexing Bauble have been restricted down to just one copy per deck; not a complete banning, but a significant change to how the cards will be used. 

The reasons for both these restrictions are pretty straightforward. Urza’s Saga lets players access practically any artifact in their deck, since many Legacy decks run a solid package of artifacts, letting them turn into a toolbox for whatever situation you need. 

On the other hand, Vexing Bauble shuts down some of the most powerful cards in Vintage. Since so many spells are free, between Force of Will, Moxes, and more, a single artifact that can shut down a solid chunk of your deck isn’t great. Since the original intent of the Bauble was to cut down on Modern Horizon’s free spells, like Grief, Force of Negation, and Living End, it was restricted to keep letting Vintage run free with their free spells.

A Quick Note About B&R 

Since the previous B&R announcement threw all sorts of wrenches in the health of various metas, Magic will be making these announcements alongside the RC and RCQ seasons. This will lead to fewer announcements, but ones that will be able to monitor the meta of the different formats better. 

That said, Standard is still on its three-year rotation and Magic is perfectly happy with the way it is shaping up. They will keep going with just one ban window per year, with the caveat that they can jump in in the case of an emergency. 

The next banned and restriction announcement is set for December 16, 2024, so keep an eye out there in case any cards get wildly out of control now that the metas are free to explore new strategies. 

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