Wizards of the Coast issued a memorable Banned and Restricted Announcement this week – especially for players of the Modern format, which has received a slew of high-profile changes.
This announcement was scheduled as part of Wizards’ regular monthly cadence, but few outside the Play Design team would have anticipated it being so significant. A total of five cards were banned and another two unbanned across five different tournament formats, far more than the average for one announcement.
The changes to Modern also make this the first B&R to impact a Premier-level format – one featured at Regional Championships and the Pro Tour – since Vivi Ornitier and two other cards were banned from Standard in November 2025.
These Modern bannings put a hole through two decks which have stood out for their extreme resilience at the top of the metagame, rather than a totally overwhelming winrate: Boros Energy, and Amulet Titan.
The first ban fell on the format’s most popular creature spell, removing Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury from Modern legality.
While Boros Energy may be Phlage’s most common and iconic home, senior designer Carmen Klomparens characterized this change not as a strike against Energy, but against Phlage itself – and its two-card “combo” with fellow MH3 rare Arena of Glory:
“Our decision to remove a card from this pair (in lieu of attacking another part of the deck) is because this consolidation of variation hasn’t been localized entirely in Energy variants. We’ve also observed that most aggro and midrange decks in the format either adopt the combo or almost disappear from the metagame.”
Arena of Glory was considered the healthier card to leave out of this pair, with Klomparens stating a hope that players might now explore other, more fringe creature options to power out hastily.
The other big Modern banning was Lotus Field: a land which stands alone in its ability to tap for three colored mana, and which has become a huge enabler for one of Modern’s most consistent archetypes.
Amulet Titan is unmatched in its ability to ramp off a Lotus Field, abusing the interaction with its signature Amulet of Vigor to massively accelerate its mana as soon as Field enters play. Considering that four-to-six mana is often critical mass for the deck to go infinite and win, Lotus Field can take entire turns off the time an opponent has to block the combo.
Klomparens again provided a detailed justification for this ban. In addition to Amulet Titan’s prolonged tournament success, she cited specific concerns around the influence of Lotus Field builds on tournament logistics and their ability to freely outmaneuver a lot of potential counterplay while combo-ing off.
At the same time, she made it clear that the Play Design team are respectful of Amulet Titan and other long-standing archetypes, and the general desire of most Modern players to have established decks remain playable in this “Eternal” format:
“We take bans against historically iconic archetypes very seriously and don’t want to outright kill the deck. This move is meant to de-power the deck in a direction that addresses some other pain points we had identified in the past.”
While it’s unclear whether the loss of Lotus Field will lead to a broader recalculation of how Amulet Titan decks are constructed, the archetype has had its metaphorical wings clipped more than once in the past and survived. It seems likely to do so again, even if that means returning to more straightforward, combat-centric wincons.
Just as notable as these bans was the unbanning of two cards in Modern: Violent Outburst and Umezawa’s Jitte.
Both cards had been placed on the banlist at a time when they were dangerous outliers: Outburst had been fuelling an all-Crashing Footfalls metagame, while Jitte was a polarizing and oppressive one-card engine, almost unbeatable for creature decks.
But as Klomparens wryly observed, Magic has changed a lot since 2011. Umezawa’s Jitte is no longer a boogeyman even in slower, creature-heavy formats like Commander. While cascade is still very powerful in conjunction with “costless” spells like Footfalls or Living End, 2026 Modern has significantly better tools to fight back for as little as one mana.
“Ultimately, Modern is a strong format that can absorb a lot, both in terms of power level and tolerance for novel play patterns,” Klomparens concluded. “We hope these unbans inspire players and make people happy to experiment in Modern.”
In other formats, Legacy fans appear to be (mostly) celebrating the ban of Undercity Informer, one of two signature kill cards which enable the infamous “Oops, All Spells!” combo deck. As the name suggests, the deck is built to contain zero actual land cards: this allows Informer or Balustrade Spy to mill your entire library in one shot to set up Thassa’s Oracle.
Where “Oops!” was once considered fringe and even appreciated for its novelty, the addition of MDFC lands provided a terrifying boost in consistency and power. The deck has rapidly worn out its welcome thanks to the ultra-fast, all-in nature of its gameplay – which many players describe as “trying not to play Magic”.
While Klomparens stated the ban was not intended to make Oops unplayable, cutting their valid win conditions by half is a fairly unambiguous move to push the deck back to “novelty” status.
In Pioneer, Cori Steel-Cutter as an attempt to curve the steadily-rising dominance of Izzet shells. The justification is very similar for when the Cutter was banned from Standard: while there are a lot of very good cards in blue-red, this one has the most unique and deleterious effect on how decks have to counter Izzet.
The announcement rounded out with the banning of Sewer-veillance Cam in Alchemy and the experimental unban of Bonder’s Ornament in Pauper. The former was targeted due to its interaction with Vivi Ornitier, which in Alchemy is modified to have a tap ability.
The unbanning of Bonder’s Ornament is intended to give a little momentum back to slower control decks, which have retreated from the metagame since the time when it was originally banned. Writing the official justification, Gavin Verhey noted that the Pauper community had responded positively to the idea of unbanning Ornament over the last month, and that the card’s ultimate fate would be reviewed again in the August announcement once new data is collected.
Standard saw no changes this month, based on the rather balanced string of results from recent Pro Tour and Spotlight Series events. The next B&R announcement is scheduled for June 30th.
Tom’s fate was sealed in 7th grade when his friend lent him a pile of commons to play Magic. He quickly picked up Boros and Orzhov decks in Ravnica block and has remained a staunch white magician ever since. A fan of all Constructed formats, he enjoys studying the history of the tournament meta. He specializes in midrange decks, especially Death & Taxes and Martyr Proc. One day, he swears he will win an MCQ with Evershrike. Ask him how at @AWanderingBard, or watch him stream Magic at twitch.tv/TheWanderingBard.