*Poesjuh* (Hoorn) (109)

20-6-2012 19:46:00

Ik kwam opeens op EDH forum wat tegen over prijsstijging van Land Tax, om me vervolgens te bedenken; het is de 20ste! Dus bij deze:

Banned list announcement 20 juniAnnouncement Date: June 20, 2012
Effective Date: July 1, 2012

Standard, Extended, Modern, Vintage
No changes

Legacy
Land Tax is Unbanned.

Commander
Griselbrand is Banned.
Sundering Titan is Banned.

Changes to Magic Online-only formats are now announced monthly in the Magic Online Community Group blog.

For the complete list of all banned and restricted cards by format, click here.


While the Legacy metagame is healthy, the DCI is still interested in occasionally unbanning some cards to see if they improve the format. The top tournament decks in Legacy include Reanimator, RUG Delver, and Sneak and Show. Land Tax has been banned since 2004, doesn't seem to directly add to the top decks, and could make the format even more diverse. While there is always some risk in unbanning a powerful card, the DCI thinks this is a reasonable risk to take.

The DCI looked at the results of competitive Standard events. We found that while a high percentage of the participants played WU Delver decks, that the win rate of those decks was very close to par. For instance, in a recent MTGO PTQ, the win rate of WU Delver decks against non-Delver decks was a bit under 51%. In general there are decks that the Delver deck is strong against, and decks that it is weak against, but on average the deck tends to get results close to average. Additionally the number of people playing high level Standard events is the highest ever.

Looking at the Magic 2013 card set, it appears that there may be more tools for other decks than for the UW Delver deck, though time will tell if this bears out. The DCI will continue to observe how this plays out, but is taking no action.

Griselbrand was relatively simple choice. We knew all along it was pretty busted. While we had a glimmer of hope that the batch-of-7 card draw would help mitigate the obvious problem of a player being able to draw so many cards immediately (like Yawgmoth's Bargain, unlike Necropotence), it simply didn't. Griselbrand's Lifelink ability, allowing you more resources to draw cards with, coupled with being a creature and therefore easier to get into play (not to mention repeatedly) for far less than his mana cost, led to quite degenerate game states.

Sundering Titan has long been a card on the edge. The decision to get rid of it came from the combination of two points. One, it simply created undesirable game states. It was too easily both intentionally abused and unintentionally game-warping, especially since its ability triggers on both entering and leaving the battlefield. Two, there has been a fair amount of community distaste for the card, and we agreed that the card overwhelmingly creates a negative experience for players. Listening to the ever-growing and ever more-involved community is important to us.

There's an M13 card—Worldfire—that's been generating some talk. We're going to keep a close eye on the card after its release to look at its impact and potential impact on the format, but there's no reason to panic and pre-ban it. Banning cards is about what they do, not about what they might do, so like we did with Griselbrand, and despite what we see as a likely outcome, we'd like to see some evidence of it first.

As a side note, remember that there is ongoing Kokusho testing, so no decision will be made on it until the September update, at the earliest.