Wizards of the Coast has announced the latest Banned and Restricted list changes for Constructed formats, posted to wizards.com on June 30th. This time there were no changes made to the premier formats of Standard, Pioneer or Modern, though Pauper and Legacy saw individual cards banned to counteract unhealthy metagame trends.
Compared to the sweeping, historic changes of the prior B&R, this announcement had more specific questions to answer. Most importantly, it was positioned to address the current state of Standard after that format was one of the few left unchanged last month.
At that time, Play Designer Jadine Klomparens admitted “the speed of Standard right now is faster than we would like” but that Wizards “expect the Standard metagame to continue to change and evolve” without need for any new bans. She then earmarked this June announcement as the point when changes would be made, if it was deemed necessary to intervene in Magic’s premier tournament format.
But it seems that whatever the balance team observed across the last month of Standard competition left them in no hurry to intervene. When the appointed time came last week, they once again announced “no changes” for Standard.
As Jadine explained this time around: “Standard is now more diverse than it was at the time of Pro Tour: Strixhaven… we continue to see churn in the format as players attack the top decks.”
“We don’t believe that this Standard’s gameplay problems are severe enough to warrant banning a card at this time.”
That’s a confident stance to take, given that publicly available data puts the combined metagame share of Izzet decks at ~32% in the past two weeks. Mono-Green and GW Badgermole Cub decks together represent another 34% of all tournament entries.
In practice, these numbers mean the vast majority of Standard matches have at least one side piloting either Izzet or Landfall, if not both sides. The repetitive nature of facing the same decks every round, particularly such fast and linear ones, colors player perception of the format even if those decks are technically “beatable”.
The Play Design team acknowledged that games are too fast on average, but clarified that “these problems still exist, but they aren’t insurmountmable”.
However, they defended the “no changes” decision on the grounds that the gigantic Standard card pool makes it “a format that does not get solved quickly”, and players are not yet out of ideas for how to counter these big decks. As proof, they pointed to the variety of other archetypes that have posted top finishes throughout May and June.
Ultimately, the situation in Standard remains the same as before: Play Design claim they will “continue to watch the format as it changes throughout the rest of the year”.
While Standard may have dodged bans again, other formats were under even greater pressure to take action. Pauper players had already identified an extremely cheap and powerful combo kill from the newly-released Marvel Super Heroes: attaching Hawkeye’s Bow to Seeker of Skybreak and then having Seeker tap to untap itself a trillion times.
Initial results showed that the combo was indeed as potent as first appeared, immediately impacting the metagame and showing clear signs of seriously warping the format as more players felt the power and picked up the deck.
It’s still quite unusual for Wizards to ban such a brand-new deck. But with two of the bigger Pauper events for the year taking place between now and the next scheduled B&R announcement, there would be a clear and significant cost if the Play Design team delayed this time. Instead, Gavin Verhey announced an immediate ban on Seeker of Skybreak, neutralising this dangerous combo.
Gavin also took the chance to confirm that a longer-standing public enemy, Sneaky Snacker, was on the balance team’s unofficial watch-list. “We’re not taking any action at this time,” he said “but it is a card we want to watch carefully this summer.”
The other deck expected to get attention this month after dominating statistically was Legacy Eldrazi Tron. Sure enough, the banhammer came down on Candelabra of Tawnos, removing one of E. Tron’s most powerful mana engines.
The only controversial aspect of this ban seems to be the specific choice of Candelabra as the card to ban, which has confused some Legacy pundits.
But as the announcement explained, Candelabra is the most likely card to do unhealthy things in other decks – in fact, it’s currently used in an equally-powerful revival of High Tide combo. It’s also on the Reserved List, so having it be core to multiple decks makes Legacy even harder for players to play in paper.
The announcement concluded by acknowledging the scary early performances by The Fantasticar in Legacy and Vintage. Play Design members Carmen Klomparens and Eric Engelhard made it clear this was too early to make a move, but they were watching the card’s results in case an urgent ban was required in either format.
The next regular B&R announcement is on August 10th.
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.