Wizards of the Coast has announced one of the biggest banning waves Magic the Gathering has ever seen, along with a rule change that will significantly alter a number of formats.
Leading the bans is Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath. We already knew this one was coming, but it’s now official that it’s banned in Pioneer, Modern and Historic. As already discussed, Uro was just too darn good: it it gave life, card draw and a big creature way too early, making any deck not playing it at a significant disadvantage.
Joining Uro in Historic is Omnath, Locus of Creation. It had already been suspended, but after a review period it was decided to make the sawitch to a permanent ban.
In Pioneer, Uro is joined by Teferi, Time Raveler and Wilderness Reclamation (Teferi caused big problems during his time in Standard, but Wilderness Reclamation would just be too powerful without him).
The ‘Oops! All Spells’ deck archetype is also being gutted, with key components like Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer being banned. Oops! All Spells worked by having nothing but Zendikar Rising’s MDFC lands, which don’t count as lands while in the deck. You’d then mill your entire deck with Balustrade Spy or Undercity Informer, ands then use your mana base to play your big, game-winning cards from the graveyard. It was an archetype that was very tricky to interact with, making its ban an easy choice. For a great video on the Oops! All Spells archetype, check out MTGGoldfish’s SaffronOlive.
In Modern, Tibalt’s Trickery has the dubious distinction of being the first card from Kaldheim to be banned in any format. Tibalt’s Trickery is causing upset in Standard too, as countering your own 0-mana spell with it allows you to bring out massive cards way ahead of the curve. However, in Modern, the addition of Cascade (which we’ll hear more about later) causes even greater problems, as you could play one 0-mana spell and then end up filling the board with big creatures on just the second turn. In a similar vein, Simian Spirit Guide allowed for big, early-game combos thanks to its essentially free mana, forcing it to also be banned.
The other two bans for Modern (alongside Uro) are Field of the Dead and Mystic Sanctuary. Both were lands that enabled very linear, uninteractive styles of play, and nobody likes playing against someone who is sat there playing solitaire every turn.
Legacy sees the second of the two Throne of Eldraine bans in this wave, with Oko, Prince of Crowns. It’s already banned in Standard, Brawl, Pioneer and Modern due to how effectively it can answer almost any threat on the board: it fills you up with food tokens, shuts down any artifact or creature, and even swaps out your enemy’s creatures with your own. A card that helped beef up Oko even more in Legacy was Arcum’s Astrolabe, a snow artifact that offered some easy snow mana, putting it on the chopping block too.
With those two gone, Dreadhorde Arcanist was identified as a new potential problem card, forcing it to be pre-emptively banned in this new, Oko-less landscape.
Finally, Vintage is actually unbanning a card: Ikoria’s Lurrus of the Dream-den. Lurrus is infamous for being one of the Vintage format’s four total bans, as its Companion requirement of having all cards have a mana cost of two or less wasn’t enough ofr a setback for Vintage players. However, with the Companions rule change forcing you to now pay three mana to get it into your hand before playing, Wizards is testing the waters and seeing if Lurrus has been suitably nerfed. He’s not entirely out of the woods, though, as if he continues to cause problems, Wizards will simply re-ban him.
Speaking of rule changes, the last major change for this update has been the much-requested overhaul to the Cascade mechanic. Following Kaldheim’s launch, the card Valki, God of Lies//Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor was causing massive problems in formats with Cascade, as you can cheat out a powerful Planeswalker incredibly early. The problem was Cascade only looked for a card’s mana cost to determine if you could play it without paying the cost, it didn’t actually care about the cost of the side of the card you chose to play.
With the new update, you can only play the spell if the mana cost is less than the card you originally Cascaded from. This means you can only play Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor if you Cascaded from a more expensive card, firmly pushing it back in the mana curve. This is a request that has been made a lot since Kaldheim’s launch, and one that effectively shuts down Valki decks without impacting too harshly on any other Cascade-heavy archetype.
While the MTG community is often against bans, I think these are a mostly good thing. I think the few pre-emptive bans like Dreadhorde Arcanist in Legacy and Wilderness Reclamation in Pioneer feel slightly heavy-handed, but it shows Wizards is trying to correct some of the problems that have been festering in the different formats for some time now.
It also, once again, raises concerns about Throne of Eldraine. This ban wave bans two cards in two different formats from just the Eldraine set, making it one of, if not the, most-banned set in the game’s history. This is ignoring previous bans for Once Upon a Time, Fires of Invention, Cauldron Familiar, Lucky Clover and Escape to the Wilds. Adventures continues to dominate the Standard format, and basically every viable deck archetype revolves around a key Eldraine card in some way.
Whether the answer is an early set rotation to specifically push Eldraine out, or just ride it out until the September set pushes it, Theros: Beyond Death and Ikoria out of Standard, is entirely down to Wizards of the Coast. I just hope we don’t see Eldraine plaguing ban lists for too much longer.
On the positive side, we’ve only needed one ban from Kaldheim so far. Considering Zendikar Rising’s launch lead to the bans of Uro and Omnath, for Kaldheim to get away with just Tibalt’s Trickery suggests maybe it’s a tighter, better-balanced set. Of course, people are still feeling out the new set and all its tricks, so this could be wildly wrong. But I do appreciate how hands-off Wizards is being with Kaldheim so far.
