August 26, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement
August 26, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement
Announcing changes to Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Explorer effective August 26, 2024.
Pioneer:
- Amalia Benavides Aguirre is banned.
- Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is banned.
Modern:
- Nadu, Winged Wisdom is banned.
- Grief is banned.
Legacy:
- Grief is banned.
Vintage:
- Urza's Saga is restricted.
- Vexing Bauble is restricted.
Explorer:
- Amalia Benavides Aguirre is banned.
- Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is banned.
As is tradition, this B&R announcement begins by saying that they will be changing the frequency of B&R announcements.
And then there's this:
It is worth noting that we don't plan on changing the current Standard B&R philosophy, meaning we still only want one window per year, barring an emergency, where we consider taking action in Standard.
I'm not sure I get the concept of non-emergency bans. If a card needs to be banned, ban it immediately; if it doesn't, don't ban it at all. This once-a-year interval makes even less sense for Standard than for other formats, since a year is proportionally longer for Standard.
I understand that they want people to feel confident that their chosen deck won't disappear at a moment's notice, I just don't think that's worth the trade-off of making everyone put up with an unbalanced format for months.
People who buy cards want assurance their cards will remain legal.
The following happened to me no fewer than three times when I played standard:
New card comes out, and seemingly does ok
I don't buy any
Card starts to dominate
I try to play around them
I constantly lose, and cave
I buy a playset
Card is banned
I'm just saying if they'd banned it after the "card starts to dominate" stage they could have spared you and everyone else from the "try to play around them" stage, saving both money and heartache.
Of course, in my fantasy world, they would stop constantly pushing power level so much, and we'd all have to go through this whole cycle a lot less often.
Also, I can't speak for everyone, but I caved and started playing decks with Sheoldred, and I'd still be delighted if that card were banned tomorrow. Admittedly I spent Arena wildcards on it rather than actual money. But the point I'm trying to make is, I'd rather have a fun Magic format than economic recompense. The purpose of spending the money in the first place is to have fun playing Magic. Making Magic affordable is a laudable goal (which they could pursue in numerous other ways, many of which they are currently ignoring), but if making it fun doesn't come first, what's the point?
Pioneer player here. Thank GOD Sorin and Amalia are gone.
Definitely agree that banning Sorin is a better move than removing Vein Ripper. Sorin existing basically means that they can't print any powerful/high cost vampires ever, and so removing him gives more creative freedom for the future.
And removing Amalia is great because of how the counterplay to the combo was sometimes just pushing for a draw. Not fun for anyone, and the draws just end up pushing the match into turns every dang time.
I feel like I would have been fine with them banning Treasure Cruise and Fable, but I guess they didn't want to just shatter the format, just shake it up gently.
Great updates all around, kudos to Wizards for doing what needed to be done. Good changes to timing too.
I'm shocked they banned Nadu instead of some bad half-measure like Shuko though.
@andrew @MysticKetchup I'm also surprised they didn't ban around it. I guess it's because they originally intended it to just be a commander card, so they're okay with it not being in Modern?
It was originally meant to be a Commander card. Based on the other article they put out about Nadu, it looked very different during testing and got changed to its current iteration right before the set was finalized and was never properly playtested.
Yeah that's a good point, I guess since it was admittedly for Commander they were find letting it leave the 60 card formats.
Not gonna miss any of these cards
All good bans here, I think they're still 3-6 months behind on Legacy tho.
The Vintage bans really surprised me, both of those are much needed imo and I'm glad they did something about them. Vexing Bauble kind of nerfs the entirety of why anyone plays Vintage, and Urza's Saga is just ridiculous with that many cheap powerful artifacts.
@MysticKetchup Good news for all formats
As a quick question, is this the single largest B&R announcement in Magic history? Bans/restrictions in 4 of the 5 major formats (Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage), each hitting serious meta decks? I'm a relatively newer player, so I don't know if they've ever shaken up so many formats at once.
It's certainly up there.
The standard banning which hit the NEO meta, and the banning of the Mirrordin artifact lands are all up there too, but were I think more format specific.
@meant2live218 @MysticKetchup some of the Mirrodin block bans were similarly wide sweeping, but had to hit more cards in each deck.