Metagame: What can be banned on May 18

In 2026, Wizards of the Coast changed the cadence of Magic: The Gathering's banned and restricted announcements, aiming to have more intervention windows throughout the year. According to the preview released at the end of 2025, the next announcement should happen at May 18.

Given the scheduled release of upcoming sets, this banlist update might also be the best opportunity to look at competitive formats from a broader scope, since it will be the banlist with the longest gap between expansions in 2026, possibly making it the best window to perform maintenance on the overall Metagame.

Below, we discuss possible interventions and the current state of the Metagame for Magic's main competitive formats!

Standard is in an interesting spot. The numbers Frank Karsten presents show that despite the high presence of Izzet decks at Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven, no variant had a standout win rate. On the other hand, Landfall was the highlight of the event, followed by Nature's Rhythm variants, which have positive win rates against Landfall.

You can interpret Standard's current state in two ways: the optimistic take is that despite the high representation of Izzet variants — and these are categorized as different strategies — the Metagame is stable and diverse enough for archetypes like Selesnya Ouroboroid and Azorius Tempo to make Top 8, for Dimir Excruciator to have the best record in the Standard rounds, and for a dozen different strategies to finish at 7-3 or better.

The pessimistic take is that Standard's Metagame is suppressed: out of 23 decks with an 8-2 or better record, only four were non-Izzet and non-Landfall: Selesnya Ouroboroid and Azorius Tempo (with High Noon) in the Top 8, Dimir Excruciator and Four-Color Control in the Swiss rounds. The Metagame opens up from the 7-3 results onward, but it doesn't change that the best of the best in Standard's portion of the Pro Tour was overwhelmingly composed of the dominant strategies.

In this scenario, we could argue that Standard has diversity. However, a specific category of strategies and the individual quality of certain cards might also be a cut above the rest.

These include Badgermole Cub and the combination of Stormchaser's Talent with Boomerang Basics.

Anything that can guarantee extra mana tends to become troublesome at some point, and Nature's Rhythm and Landfall lists take advantage of the extra mana from each dork with Avatar's most sought-after mythic. Not to mention that Landfall decks are great at using Cub in more varied ways, such as Earthbending a "Fetch Land" to guarantee extra Landfall triggers on following turns.

Stormchaser's Talent and Boomerang Basics are in a peculiar spot in Izzet decks: both work well together, but they don't necessarily always need to be in the same list. Most Prowess versions run both, and half of the Lessons lists have a set of Stormchaser's Talent to complement Boomerang Basics.

Talent is only as good as the ways we have to reuse it, and it becomes fair without This Town Ain't Big Enough. Boomerang Basics, however, does a bit too much by replacing itself in its owner's hand while having the flexibility to delay the opponent by a turn in specific circumstances.

Banning Boomerang Basics would remove these cheap, unwanted interactions and force Prowess to rethink its slots — likely switching to Elusive Otter — and force Lessons to play more around Monument to Endurance triggers without relying on a cantrip that resets its main win conditions. Neither deck would die from this intervention, but two of the dominant Izzet archetypes would lose consistency.

That leaves Spellementals. Of the three, it's the most practical to answer and play around with. With a modest but impactful weakening of the other Izzet competitors, it becomes easier to dedicate additional slots against Spellementals, ultimately leading to a more balanced Metagame.

Wizards has been more conservative in preserving Standard's environment and avoiding interventions unless necessary due to a broken Metagame. A scenario where some decks might be suppressing others, but those others still manage to put up results, doesn't reach the point of a broken competitive environment—combined with the Spotlight Series happening in late May in Japan, a "No Changes" is the most probable update.

Pioneer has seen some small changes since the last update, but the Metagame's status quo remains the same.

Golgari Midrange's position at the top of the format today largely reflects the state of the Metagame regarding Greasefang, Okiba Boss and Cori-Steel Cutter decks as troublesome archetypes, since it's the best color combination to answer those strategies' key cards with Culling Ritual, Abrupt Decay, and others.

Greasefang and Cori-Steel continue to set the pace in Pioneer and almost unilaterally define what's competitive or not in the Metagame, which remains static with little to no novelty in Top 8 positions or Top 32 representation in Challenges since the release of Badgermole Cub and the Lesson package in Avatar. This stability, welcome in other times, continues to hurt Pioneer's popularity among the general public — without substantial changes, there's little reason to try new decks and strategies when the established archetypes work so well and are so restrictive.

In the absence of innovations or exciting lists appearing in competitive events, the public perception of Pioneer as a "stale format" or, worse, "a dead format," tends to grow until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the last update, Wizards of the Coast mentioned the game-clock issues involving Amulet Titan, but Modern's Metagame remains stable, and we're in the middle of an RCQ season — the most logical outcome is a "No changes."

Last week, I published an article about how Sneaky Snacker is appearing more frequently in various Pauper decks and gained even more slots with the release of Pursue the Past, which revitalized Inside Out while also making it easier to include in Gates decks.

Snacker is now among the top ten most played cards in Pauper and is the most played creature in the format's maindecks, with representation between 22% and 25%, always as a four-of. The card also has almost no drawback: some argue that including it means "losing" four slots in your deck, but the reality is that if there were something better in those slots, Sneaky Snacker wouldn't be there — most lists are simply assuming they have 56 cards plus four pieces that add free value and generate card advantage from effects their deck would already be playing naturally.

Adding to this issue is the fact that graveyard hate is the most played category in the format today. Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus are the first and fifth most played cards, respectively, and Faerie Macabre is the second most played creature in lists.

Their popularity isn't just about Snacker, but about how Pauper today is a format where the graveyard is an essential resource, with Mono Blue/Dimir Terror and Spy Combo among the main competitors, while Jeskai Ephemerate, Caw-Gates, and Azorius Familiars are other strategies with some recursive graveyard lines where having disruption on board makes a difference.

Today, Sneaky Snacker and Spy Combo are the two biggest risks to Pauper's health — although I believe each element of the current Metagame has a counterbalance that keeps it in check. Snacker is too present and generating value for archetypes with little to no concession to run her, establishing a homogenization of maindeck cards and giving every archetype capable of discarding cards and drawing three cards in a turn the ability to have, on top of their core game plan, a go-wide line that's difficult to fight.

Spy Combo is different. Of all the archetypes that use the graveyard, it's the only one where, if most decks fail to find graveyard hate, they have no chance to recover and will lose the game instantly. This urgency enables various lines and allows playing around any telegraphed hate like Nihil Spellbomb, motivating more lists to use Faerie Macabre, whose effects are less broad but harder to telegraph since it's free and comes from hand.

By Pauper's historical standards, that kind of archetype tends not to be healthy for too long.

Banning Balustrade Spy would remove consistency from the combo but not kill it entirely: Destroy the Evidence, while costing more mana and not being found by Lead the Stampede, offers another way to put the entire deck into the graveyard. The list becomes worse, and less consistent and might potentially die, but it still exists.

Removing the "one-card combo" line might be the best option: the problem with resolving Balustrade Spy is that it dumps both Lotleth Giant and Dread Return into the graveyard. Then you just sacrifice a few creatures and end the game. Banning Dread Return in Pauper also wouldn't kill Spy Combo, but it would force it to find one more piece and pay more mana in the process — whether by using Exhume or swapping Lotleth Giant for Haunting Misery as the win condition.

Refurbished Familiar was a common target of criticism when we posted a video on the YouTube channel mentioning Sneaky Snacker, with comments going as far as saying it's "criminal" to think about banning Snacker instead of Familiar.

The resentment toward the card comes from the bitter feeling it leaves in a match when the opponent sequences several copies against you — no one likes being unable to play, and one of the lines in Glint Hawk lists involves grinding out resources by bouncing Refurbished Familiar — and from the endless hatred against Affinity caused by the various bad Metagames the archetype has brought since Modern Horizons II's release.

There's a difference between a card being unpleasant to play against and being oppressive. Familiar falls into the first category, alongside several others: no one likes losing "for free" to a Guttersnipe with Fireblast / Lava Dart; getting hit by a Spellstutter Sprite only to see it bounced back to hand next turn by a Ninja isn't fun; two Tolarian Terrors on the same turn with Counterspell mana up is frustrating when it happens; and a Leonardo, Big Brother coming down from a full White Weenie board is annoying.

Just because a specific pattern generates unpleasant game experiences doesn't mean it should be banned, even when it comes from a strategy whose overall sentiment is very negative, like Affinity's history, where hate remains very vocal because, despite the long string of bans, it continues to be among Pauper's Tier 1.

Banning Refurbished Familiar now would be like banning Counterspell because taking out Gush, Daze, Treasure Cruise, Mystic Sanctuary, Fall from Favor, and Cloud of Faeries wasn't enough to reduce the presence of blue decks in Pauper.

Speaking of blue, there's the case of Tolarian Terror. Few plays are more frustrating than the opponent having two Terrors on board after you've exhausted your resources, or you spending your mana and paying the Ward cost only to get hit by a Force Spike / Spell Pierce and feel like you put in too much effort for nothing. By itself, that doesn't justify a ban, but it raises a red flag about the effectiveness of that built-in protection.

The PFP has previously mentioned that Tolarian Terror was on their radar, depending on the presence of blue decks in the Metagame, but the ban never happened. Since then, Dimir Terror has emerged in the format, blending the blue shell with Sneaky Snacker and Abandon Attachments, increasing its presence in recent months. It might be time for the PFP to take the action they considered last year.

But that action could come at a heavy cost with the unbanning of Bonder's Ornament, another possibility raised by the committee in recent announcements. Ornament was banned due to Tron's rise as the best deck in the format and for forcing various strategies to include copies of it to "fight" the opponent's copies, but Pauper in 2026 has enough tools to deal with it and a Metagame too fast for a Big Mana deck like Tron to dominate again.

Each intervention mentioned above, however, would benefit Bonder's Ornament decks: banning Snacker would weaken Madness Burn; banning Dread Return could kill Pauper's only fast instant-win combo; and banning Tolarian Terror would weaken Blue Tempo — the three natural predators of the "fair decks" that used Ornament would take a considerable hit, opening space for slower strategies to shine.

It's an option, but one that must be carefully considered, given the artifact's history.

Legacy is going through some changes as the Metagame adjusts to the inclusion of Flow State, which hasn't — so far — shown numbers that would make it as threatening to the Metagame as Expressive Iteration was in the past. On the other hand, the new spell was, by far, the biggest new addition to the format this season.

All Spells remains a chronic problem in the format, pulling the Metagame between having Force of Will to stop the combo on turn zero, winning the die roll, and having good counterplay on turn one, or accepting defeat on the draw if your deck isn't blue. However, Wizards has avoided intervening in the archetype and has even stated in one of the announcements that they consider it one of the things that makes Legacy "unique."

Eternal Weekend 2026 was announced last week, with the season starting on October 29. There's still plenty of time until the first events, and the pattern for bans and interventions in Legacy tends to either precede a major tournament or happen after it — in either case, it seems unlikely that this will be the banlist that targets Balustrade Spy or Thassa's Oracle.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!