Metagame: First Impressions of the December 16th Banlist

The latest Banned and Restricted announcement for Magic: The Gathering in 2024 was certainly one of the most impactful of the year, especially for the Modern format, where the unbans of classic staples, some of which have been out of the format for over a decade, promise to cause changes in the Metagame.

With only a few hours since the announcement, the community is already moving en masse to adapt to the changes: Splinter Twin has already disappeared from the Marketplaces, players are already putting group searches for four copies of Green Sun’s Zenith, among others.

So let’s delve deeper into what happened this Monday and how it affects the competitive Magic: The Gathering format scene.

The banning of Jegantha, the Wellspring makes so much sense because Companion is the most broken mechanic in Magic's history, but the explanation given by Wizards feels off: Jegantha, for the most part, is not a card that makes players stop running piece X or Y to have a Companion - it is the Companion we use because there is no concession whatsoever in adding it to the Sideboard.

Decks like Rakdos Prowess don't get better because they can run or cards in their lists, they just have such a solid base of single-colored mana cards that there's no justification for not including Jegantha. Sure, it can now run Glistening Deluge or Brotherhood's End, but are those cards it wants?

The biggest gain in removing it from the format was removing the "if all else fails, there's my Companion" from Aggro. Just like with Lurrus, archetypes like Boros Burn, Prowess, and others have always relied on Jegantha as that creature we could pull in longer games to secure those last points of damage - and the fact that it dodges Fatal Push and other common removals against those archetypes was a huge bonus.

Interesting choice, not specifically necessary, but one that will cause some changes in the Metagame (and make me rewrite the Auras deck guide that was already ready). There were other options that should be mentioned and/or considered, such as Treasure Cruise and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, but Pioneer is currently in a diverse scenario in which there is no absolute best deck against the rest.

Just like the announcement, we will separate the changes for Modern into two categories: what leaves the format and what returns to it.

The One Ring was one of the most interesting designs Magic has ever had, but it was a mistake: another copy of it in your hand should not be a benefit, since it allows to play another “extra turn” and draw more cards. The combination of pseudo-Time Walk with Ancestral Recall for four mana made all Planeswalkers or other card advantage engines obsolete in Modern - and when the best Aggro was using the artifact to ensure an efficient attrition plan while 60% of the Metagame was running The One Ring, it was clear that the artifact would be a problem.

I didn't expect the banning of The One Ring to come with this announcement: Boros Energy was the current problem and Wizards tends to be very conservative with changes in Modern - that wasn't the case this time: in addition to banning two troublesome cards, three unbans promise to change the Metagame.

My question now is what happens to the decks that relied heavily on The One Ring. Can the Eldrazi archetypes, regardless of which they are, remain relevant without the card? Can Belcher and other archetypes that used micro-interactions with it still remain relevant? I have no doubt that Jeskai Control or Black-Based decks will continue in the Metagame even without their main source of card advantage, but this could be a huge knockout for Big Mana.

Amped Raptor seems like the safe choice to deal with Boros Energy. Free Spells are a problem in the format and Raptor offers the equivalent of Cascade for two mana with less cost restrictions, since it feeds off the shell of Guide of Souls and Galvanic Discharge. Furthermore, being an uncommon, it was the least financially aggressive card to ban. It's the right choice if they want to keep Boros Energy in the format as one of the main decks, but without - at first glance - remaining so broken.

It seems like a mistake to me. Yes, Amped Raptor offers a very efficient two-for-one in an archetype entirely dedicated to this mechanic, but another card is much more explosive and feeds both the Energy package and the alternative game plan, with Ocelot Pride a little too well: Guide of Souls.

The interactions between Guide of Souls and the rest of the list make Boros Energy an ultra-efficient Aggro with a more efficient attrition game plan than the Midrange - and the interaction between Ajani, Nacatl Pariah that resembles The One Ring also doesn't help keep the deck fair.

It seems worth keeping Guide of Souls in Modern and removing two key cards from the current versions of Boros Energy to see what direction the Metagame will take, but it won't be surprising if, at the end of these three months, we conclude that Boros/Mardu/Jeskai Energy is still the best deck in Modern and with a higher win rate than the rest of the format.

Although the justification for banning Jegantha from Modern is almost the same as for Pioneer, it seems like a mistake to remove it from the format now: unlike the newer format, there are real concessions to using this Companion in Modern, especially due to the Evoke Elementals, or with other free spells that have multiple colored costs.

Even Domain Zoo, the archetype used as an example to justify this change, is a strategy that requires concessions when it comes to including this Companion or not in Games 2 and 3, since it needs cards like Obsidian Charmaw or Endurance while no two-colored cost card that could enter the deck seems to deserve a slot now that we don't have Jegantha, except if it's for a very specific Meta Call.

A brief history: There are two decks in Modern that I spent many years playing with. One, my favorite deck of all time, was Death's Shadow. The other was Splinter Twin - and it's possible that I only got interested in Death's Shadow in its Grixis iteration because it was very similar in some patterns with Izzet Twin.

Of the four cards announced, Splinter Twin was the most exciting, but probably the least impactful. As mentioned in the Wizards article, Modern has changed. Modern Horizons sets have greatly increased power creep in recent years, and the environment in which Splinter Twin returns is inherently different from the one in which it was banned. There are more efficient responses.

But just as there are more efficient cards to deal with the combo, there are also more interesting homes. Teferi, Time Raveler provides more protection, Force of Negation can join it to guarantee a free spell on the turn we cast Deceiver Exarch, the alternative game plans - which previously involved Tasigur, the Golden Fang or Tarmogoyf - now feature much more efficient creatures that demand immediate responses like Psychic Frog, and the cantrips includes Preordain and other cards.

I don't think Splinter Twin will be as strong in Modern as it once was, but if the Saheeli Rai/Felidar Guardian combo has found slots in goodstuff stacks in the past, it's possible that a combo with fewer response windows could find a home in the Metagame eventually.

Amulet Titan lost The One Ring and gained a near-automatic replacement with Green Sun's Zenith, which increases the consistency of securing its combos. But we need to look outside this archetype as well.

There are a dozen cards or archetypes that could be slightly better with Green Sun’s Zenith, but that might not reach the competitive level: Prime Speaker Vannifar, Aftermath Analyst, Endurance, Grist, the Hunger Tide, Samwise Gamgee, and Devoted Druid are some of the first pieces that come to mind, but we should also not discount the possibility of a toolbox archetype similar to what we see in Legacy, with Collector Ouphe, Gaddock Teeg, Endurance, among other key creatures, possibly with a two-card combo as well.

The potential for Green Sun’s Zenith will only grow. Eventually, new green pieces that enable efficient answers or even new combos will emerge, and the piece that will unite these various cards will be a one-mana green tutor from Mirrodin Besieged.

Mox Opal gives way to several artifact lists to return to the Metagame: from lists like Affinity in its classic iterations to the current ones with Kappa Cannoneer, or the Grinding Station lists until we find Urza, Lord High Artificer decks.

Modern has a history with free mana that took away cards like Simian Spirit Guide and, in the past, Mox Opal. But Wizards has a point in saying that the answers against artifact have improved a lot and are capable of holding back any archetype focused too much on them, and even if they aren't, I believe it will take a while until we realize the impact it can have because Opal is not broken in beatdown plans, but in archetypes that can extract value from it after being used with other interactions.

In 2019, before it was banned, Faithless Looting was commonly compared to Brainstorm in Modern: it enabled so many archetypes and generated so much value for them that its interactions were comparable to that of Legacy's most famous cantrip with Fetch Lands. Today, we can only wait and see.

There are many decks that could want this card: from Ruby Storm to other versions of Goryo's Vengeance, the return of Hollow One a few months ago, a possible new iteration of Arclight Phoenix with Faithless Looting and maybe even Psychic Frog, Dredge gets a boost with this unban, not to mention what it can do alongside Nethergoyf, Dragon's Rage Channeler and/or Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury, among other options.

It doesn't feel right to try to predict too much where Faithless Looting will go. It's in the same category as Preordain in terms of potential viable options for it, with the added bonus of benefiting greatly from Modern's existing graveyard interactions.

A new old staple of the format, have a set ready when needed.

The Legacy bans are the least impressive and most predictable of the announcements. Both Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble are too efficient for the format, and there was no circumstance where keeping either would be healthy, while removing one would cause the other to grow too much in the Metagame and be out of the format in three to six months.

Now, there's some debate about banning Nadu, Winged Wisdom for the same reasons it was banned from Modern and Commander: the play style it promotes is miserable to play against and watch - and since Legacy has a lower in-person play rate, it's possible that the numbers won't show Nadu as a problem in online events (after all, the opponent benefits from letting the player loop while the clock runs) and will mask its problem in tabletop tournaments. If that happens, it will be months before Wizards steps in.

Non-deterministic combos have a history in Legacy with the Four Horseman, where the player used Mesmeric Orb with Basalt Monolith to mill indefinitely until they had three copies of Narcomoeba to play Dread Return, reanimate Sharuum, the Hegemon, which returned Blasting Station to sacrifice Narcomoeba while revealing Emrakul, the Aeons’ Torn to reshuffle the entire deck and repeat the process.

Nadu follows a similar path, and if its results become significant enough, it will be inevitable to ban it due to the problem it will cause in Eternal Weekends and other major Legacy events throughout 2025.

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!