Banned and Restricted Announcement – March 31, 2025
Banned and Restricted Announcement – March 31, 2025
Modern:
Legacy:
Pauper:
I personally think these are all positive bans. It’s unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.
Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth’s Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.
Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there’s tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I’d like to see Bowmasters gone next.
Breach is a card that should have never been printed.
I have no fucking idea how it got past playtesting. Yawgmoth's Will was, for a long time, the strongest non-power card in Vintage.
Daze, Reanimate, and Entomb existed for years without being a problem. Banning them would IMO be a sign R&D screwed up somewhere else.
I too would like to see Bowmasters gone, along with The One Ring, mostly so I can save my store credit. I'd rather drop $200 on ABUR duals than a playset of cards that can be reprinted or always have the banhammer looming over them.
Completely agree. I also think THB wasn't tested outside of limited, and I think nothing was starting with WAR.
I'm not sure I agree with their assessment of Standard, but I think what bothers me the most about it is the explosive powercreep in it over the past few years. Current day standard feels a lot like old (pre-MH1) modern, and I guess that was a fun format as well, but it's so high power compared to what standard used to be. There are some cards that contribute a lot to the explosiveness (Monsterous Rage for example), but every card that sees play these days does so many things that it's not even comparable to old standard anymore.
I guess I just wish we could have a lower power format again. It's wild to think today that Divide by Zero got banned in standard just a few years ago.
@TehPers @MysticKetchup the other way Standard doesn't compare to Standard of old, is that it now has more cards than Extended did.
I feel this way too. I didn't mind a lower power standard because I always had Modern (and then Pioneer) to go to. Admittedly I came in around SOI block and that was a very weak standard, but I thought the best time was during GRN/RNA block when there were so many decks that felt very strong and synergistic but not busted. I suppose they feel like casual Commander fills this void now
every card that sees play these days does so many things that it’s not even comparable to old standard anymore
This is my biggest gripe with design overall. It has shown its effects most predominantly in Standard since Standard was one of the slowest formats, but I think this problem has caused every format to get a lot faster.
I'm 100% with you, and I desperately want a non-limited, much slower format but I don't know how on earth we get there with Hasbro/WoTC making it pretty clear that they care way more about sales revenue than the game being fun.
This is well put. I'm not surprised by the lack of any bans in Standard, but at the same time... if I had my way I'd ban 20 or 30 cards from Standard, just with the goal of getting the power level back where it ought to be.
Good bans. I still hate long standard but not much to be done about that.
I‘ve actually started to like long standard, but imo this calls for more supensions (Not necessarily bans) keeping the 4-5 S-Tier decks in check to leverage on the huge card pool and take a chance at a really good meta with more variance than ever.
The format balance is healthy but it's just boring seeing the engine/staple cards for so long. Beans and Rage are perfectly fine power-wise but they just set the deck types way too much and everything has to conform to those cards. Sure, the threats have changed but the framework is stagnant
They keep reinventing Extended every four to six years, which was the old rotation schedule of Extended lmao. They would solve a lot of problems if they brought the format back and actually maintained a banlist. The format died due to U/B Faeries followed by Stoneblade pushing everything else out.
