Metagame: First Impressions from the November 10 Banlist

On November 10th, Magic: The Gathering released its latest Banned and Restricted update—perhaps the most anticipated of the year due to the state of the Standard format since rotation—and, as expected, it took Vivi Ornitier, as well as the cards Proft’s Eidetic Memory and Screaming Nemesis.

But the changes weren't limited to Standard: High Tide returned to the Pauper banned list, Heartfire Hero left Pioneer, and Legacy players finally got rid of Entomb—a card that became too efficient due to the addition of more powerful cards that turned Reanimator into a Tempo Deck with a combo finisher—and Nadu, Winged Wisdom, in addition to bans in the Brawl format.

There's a lot to discuss, so let's get straight to the point.

Standard lost three cards with the new banlist.

The banning of Vivi Ornitier — and the irony of it being the Final Fantasy card with the shortest lifespan in Standard — was expected by anyone who has followed the format since rotation: free mana is always a problem and Vivi, while having troublesome gameplay patterns alongside Cori-Steel Cutter, became a worse threat when its usage restriction was bypassed by the Agatha’s Soul Cauldron combo.

The surprise, in part, comes from Proft’s Eidetic Memory, but not by much: the announcement compared the card to Up the Beanstalk, and while that similarity seems partially hyperbolic, there is indeed a resemblance between the two—both enchantments have become progressively better as new expansions have been released.

Up the Beanstalk gained more traction with the Overlords cycle in Duskmourn, while Proft’s Eidetic Memory benefited greatly from Winternight Stories, Tersa Lightshatter, and their interaction with Quantum Riddler. As exemplified several times in the Challenges, an archetype without Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and more focused on Proft would be a strong contender.

The surprise, however, was the decision to act. Wizards of the Coast tends to be conservative with bans in Standard and was already removing the possibility of playing a combo from the Izzet shell, which would lead players to go for the Proft line without Vivi.

The path was clear, and instead of being permissive and letting it be seen how the format would adapt without needing to dedicate too much hate to Cauldron, they decided to remove the alternative that all players would go to—with this, Wizards ensured that Standard needs a fresh start, even if this is initially paved by Dimir Midrange.

But before we talk about what awaits in the future, we need to look one last time at the recent past: Screaming Nemesis, while not as notorious as Vivi Ornitier, was a design mistake. The perfect counterplay to the decks that Mono Red Aggro usually deals with would eventually become a problem if, for some reason, last season's bans weren't enough… and they weren't.

It might be a consequence of the three-year rotation, or because the archetype always finds a way to reinvent itself, but Mono Red Aggro remained one of the best decks in Standard and, at times, even became more popular than Izzet Cauldron, as it was an easier strategy to pilot and faster to farm Leagues.

Screaming Nemesis was the only "troublesome" card left over from the previous batch, even though it presented the same problems as Monstrous Rage regarding punishing blocks and combat as a whole, not to mention the interactions with Scorching Shot or Witchstalker Frenzy.

Mono Red still has the potential to reinvent itself, and it will have to do so with much more than just adding a replacement for Screaming Nemesis — whose slot should initially belong to a card like Tersa Lightshatter — as it will also have to establish a new list that doesn't focus primarily on countering Cauldron with Razorkin Needlehead, which might be replaced by Zhao, the Moon Slayer.

It's not the end of times for Mono Red, and it can remain a strong archetype in Standard, but it can no longer ignore the restrictions that, for years, served to keep it in the role of policing the format, instead of limiting the creative space of other strategies.

As for the future, the only certainty at the moment is that more competitive players will migrate to Dimir Midrange in the first few weeks, which will cause other competitors to bet on techs like Fire Magic to deal with the various X/1 creatures run by the archetype.

Other strategies worth watching include Simic Counters with Jackal, Genius Geneticist and Ouroboroid and the various variants of Cosmogrand Zenith decks — but all this happens while we also have the release of Avatar: The Last Airbender next week, which should further shake up the competitive Metagame and establish a kind of "second rotation" to Standard when combined with the banlist changes.

In short, Dimir will be the deck to beat in the coming days, but it may lose that position in two or three weeks as the format adapts and the cards from the new set play a role in the Metagame.

The banning of Heartfire Hero in Pioneer aims to broaden the diversity of games in Magic Arena, according to Wizards of the Coast's announcement — which leaves a bitter message that the company is more focused on mediating the format through this platform and the Best-of-One gameplay experience than evaluating Pioneer as a competitive environment, even if they mention the diversity of archetypes.

There is also misunderstanding about why Mono Red Lynx is the most popular deck in the format: players tend to opt for aggressive archetypes with a low complexity ceiling when they want to play Leagues, have quick wins in Ranked to collect daily rewards, or when they don't know the format well enough to choose a more elaborate strategy; just as Kuldotha Red was extremely popular in Pauper, Red Mice is its equivalent in Pioneer.

This doesn't remove the card's inherent problems, just as it didn't remove those of Kuldotha Rebirth: Heartfire Hero creates too many free wins in Best-of-One and is a card that sequences a little too well with Manifold Mouse in Best-of-Three, where four damage on turn two can easily multiply to twelve or more on the following turn and opens the way for Sunspine Lynx to finish the game.

Another issue with the card was the way archetypes needed to make concessions in their interactions to deal with it, since traditional removal spells were easily punished with a Monstrous Rage and four more damage in response, although cards like Torch the Tower remain relevant as long as Arclight Phoenix exists.

There are some comments mentioning how Sunspine Lynx or Screaming Nemesis should have been banned along with Heartfire Hero if the goal is to weaken Mono Red and add more diversity to the format, but according to Wizards, using Magic Online data, Pioneer is diverse, and there is sufficient density of answers to deal with Nemesis, while Lynx plays an important role in the Metagame as a regulator against greedy mana bases.

Overall, Mono Red Mice becomes much weaker, and it's likely that the Mice package will be replaced by another option if Manifold Mouse + Emberheart Challenger + Monstrous Rage doesn't prove to be enough—but we shouldn't expect a substantial change in the Metagame because of this, just a reduced amount of free wins.

Nadu, Winged Wisdom was a grotesque design mistake which should never have been changed at the last minute to please the Commander audience, from which it was also banned for the same reason it left Modern and Legacy—it creates patterns of long and miserable games.

The ban was a matter of when, and that time has come.

Entomb, on the other hand, is a much more interesting ban because it speaks a bit to how Magic has developed in the last five or six years.

Essentially, this card already goes against the principle that one-mana tutors that are too reliable can be dangerous in eternal formats, and what kept it in Legacy for so long is that Reanimator was a linear strategy whose glue of consistency was finding a creature on the first turn and casting Reanimate on the same turn, or the next.

This strategy was policed ​​by Tempo decks, especially Delver of Secrets lists and variations, and was also very passive to targeted hate, which put the archetype in a position not unlike Show and Tell and other strategies aimed at cheating on mana costs — except that Reanimator traded resilience for speed.

What changed, and serves as a sign of the times in which Magic lives, was the overall quality of the cards.

Reanimator had to settle for bringing an Inkwell Leviathan, Griselbrand or Sire of Insanity and hope they would carry the victory, and they relied on an "all-in" plan where everything relied on playing around the disruption with Thoughtseize, Duress, and Unmask.

Atraxa, Grand Unifier changed this route and gave the archetype access to Force of Will, and around the same time, versions that mixed Reanimate with Grief began to emerge, as well as running Troll of Khazad-dûm as a means of having a target to bring back in the slot of a land that also served as food for Grief.

With the banning of this version, Psychic Frog emerged, which, for Legacy, was a mistake and not just for Reanimator, and with it banned, the archetype continued to adopt more effective cards that allowed it to play as a Tempo deck with a consistent combo.

Upon reaching this point, Reanimator became unsustainable, and Entomb a bit too efficient. A relic of Legacy's past, whose changes to the game over the last decade have made it a dangerous tool for the Metagame.

The banning of High Tide was, in part, expected due to the mix of non-interactive game patterns and logistical problems presented by the archetype in live tournaments.

We mentioned the dilemma surrounding the card in another article and the Pauper Format Panel opted to consider the risks to the format that a spell-sequencing combo presents to the Metagame.

With High Tide out of the picture, Tempo archetypes may take a hit in terms of results, as these served as their natural predators, but Mono Blue Terror should remain one of the best decks. Non-interactive archetypes, on the other hand, may suffer a bit more now that sideboard slots can diversify to deal with other decks.

Another natural movement from this ban will be, even if for a brief period, the return of slower Midrange decks that lacked the necessary tools to deal with a turn three or four combo.

A few weeks ago, Brawl had its first Metagame Challenge, which sparked discussion about what adjustments the format needs before being considered a competitive scene.

The above bannings aim to address, for the most part, universal cards that fit into almost any strategy and guarantee easy access to quick mana, except for Mana Drain, whose banning can also be categorized as due to the ramp nature that the card offers.

It's a good first step, and it would be interesting to see Brawl develop into a more competitive environment, but more attention will be needed to other cards as the Metagame develops.

That's all for today!

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

Thank you for reading!