Modern: Violent Outburst is banned!

Today, Wizards of the Coast published its latest Banned and Restricted update for Magic: The Gathering, with changes only for the Modern format, where Violent Outburst is banned.

In the announcement, Dan Musser explains that Temur Rhinos, the main archetype where the card is present due to its interaction with Crashing Footfalls, had an increase in Metagame share proportional to when Rakdos Evoke was the best deck in the format before Fury's ban on the past announcement.

The card choice was made based on the interaction of Violent Outburst with low-cost or free spells, as the Cascade mechanic allows them to be cast even during the opponent's turn, reducing much of the risk in using them due to the possibility of protecting the combo with Force of Negation.

With the ban, Cascade lists are expected to adopt Ardent Plea and Demonic Dread as replacements, requiring the use of a fourth color, in addition to limiting the combo to its controller's turn.

Check out the full statement below:

In our previous Modern update, we removed Fury and Up the Beanstalk from the environment. Doing so has returned Rakdos Midrange to an acceptable level without deleting it from the metagame entirely. Since then, we've seen Temur Rhinos, Living End, Golgari Yawgmoth, Amulet Titan, and Izzet Phoenix rise in metagame share. More recently, players have had some success with Leyline of the Guildpact from Murders at Karlov Manor in Domain Zoo and Rhinos variants featuring Scion of Draco and Leyline Binding.

Over the past Regional Championship season, Temur Rhinos has begun to approach previous levels of Rakdos Midrange metagame dominance. While we want to preserve the cascade strategies as viable options in Modern, we'd like to remove one of the more powerful aspects of their strategy. Namely, the ability to cascade into a payoff card at instant speed. Casting Violent Outburst during an opponent's turn reduces a lot of the risk inherent in such a strategy. It allows the cascade player to untap with all their mana open and Rhino tokens or cycling creatures ready to attack. Both decks also include Force of Negation, which costs zero mana on opponents' turns, enabling a streamlined defense of the combo.

Violent Outburst is banned. Removing Violent Outburst from the format will necessitate cascade players to adopt Ardent Plea or Demonic Dread and force them to play on their own turn more often, weakening both cascade strategies and reducing them to an acceptable level of metagame share, much like the Fury ban did to Rakdos Midrange.

The update also unrestricted Ponder in Vintage, restricted in the format since 2008. In other formats, the announcement elaborates they are satisfied with the current state of the Metagame for Standard and Pioneer, while keeping an eye on Orcish Bowmasters in Legacy as it delves into more archetypes.