Banned and Restricted: My Speculations for the next Announcement!

In case you haven't been properly updated, Wizards announced last Thursday, January 20th, that next Tuesday, January 25th, there will be a Banned and Restricted update for various competitive formats.

As this moment always brings some excitement to players and the community, I decided today to bring my speculations about what, I believe, will be banned next week, based on the representation of these cards in the format, their impact on the Metagame and on the health of the competitive landscape, and also based on the standards used by Wizards in recent bans, especially in eternal formats.

It is always good to point out that, like any speculation article, this article has an opinionated and analytical content, and like any topic about bans, it is open to debate and counterpoints about my positions.

However, I also point out that this article does not particularly reflect my opinion on what should and should not be banned. For example, I believe that Pioneer is in a good place and adapting to the Metagame changes to the point that it doesn't need a direct intervention, but that doesn't mean that I can simply, based on my personal conviction, disregard the possibilities that can occur in the format.

My position is that of a spectator. We cannot decide by opinion or personal taste what should be banned, and many times the decisions made when banning cards can create unpleasant feelings or even anger in parts of the community, and accept that we are not absolute masters of the truth because of our convictions about a card game is a good way to mature our perspective.

I've seen a lot of negative and aggressive backlash over the last few days with the announcements that took place for Pauper on January 20th, and I couldn't help but think that these reactions could have been avoided if we saw the game changes as they present themselves, and not as what we would like or expect them to be, but unfortunately, I'm sure we'll see more scenes like these occur in the next announcement for the other formats.

That said, let's get to my speculations for next Tuesday:

The most controversial card in Standard is still Alrund's Epiphany.

Izzet Epiphany is the deck with the best results in the last 90 days in Standard and, although it is not as present as Mono-White Aggro or Mono-Green Aggro in recent placements, it is common that in high-level tournaments such as the Set Championship and other events with a significant amount of professional players, the archetype usually makes up the majority of the Metagame and the Top 8 slots, which is because Izzet Epiphany and its variants, such as the Izzet Dragons greatly reward the player for the right decisions they make, while severely punishing every wrong decision.

However, the problem with Alrund's Epiphany these days is that it is still a card that composes and promotes a strategy that is widely criticized by the Magic community for creating an anti-game state where a player will have multiple turns and win the game without the opponent having any opportunity to interact.

Speaking of interaction, the fact that you can exile Epiphany through Foretell makes it even more difficult to interact with the through means like discard, basically requiring the opponent to be playing with counterspells, or be faster than you at winning the game before you close the combo.

Because of these situations, I think the ban will most likely remove Alrund's Epiphany from Standard, and if it doesn't now (possibly because Wizards now has nerfs and rebalances in Magic Arena through Alchemy), I think then will never happen during this season.

Esika's Chariot is also considered a problematic card for the ease with which it produces a quick and powerful snowball effect in the game, being a threat that needs to be answered immediately, or it could dominate the game on its own.

The fact that this artifact produces two tokens when it enters the battlefield means that even if you destroy it with some effect like Abrade, it has already generated an immediate value that will be problematic the next turn, and even if you can simply remove the creatures it creates, any other creature that comes into play can crew the artifact to attack with it, and if that creature is a token produced by some effect like Old-Growth Troll or Wrenn and Seven, it becomes even more devastating.

At the end of the day, Esika's Chariot is simply too easy to abuse and to create situations in the game where casting one or two copies of it puts you in too advantageous a position for opponents to deal with as effectively.

So, I wouldn't be surprised if it is banned from Standard next Tuesday.

Less likely options

Despite Goldspan Dragon being very present in decks with red and being a card that was nerfed in Alchemy, I don't think it is so oppressive as to need a ban in Standard, but as could it become overrepresented in the Metagame in a field where Mono-Green is weakened and Izzet Epiphany no longer exists, besides the fact that it also establishes a huge advantage in mana that can be used for the most diverse purposes, Wizards may decide that the format will be better without it.

The biggest payoff for playing with monocolored decks these days is the existence of Faceless Haven as a powerful manland capable of setting a relatively high clock, while the fact that it has Changeling can make some occasional difference.

The problem is that its existence simply makes it much more advantageous to play with a monocolored list and have the best manland of the format as a payoff than trying to play with two-color combinations, technically limiting the space that many aggressive decks can have in the Metagame.

Therefore, they might consider that Faceless Haven standardizes too much the way Aggro lists are built and remove it from Standard to increase the diversity of this strategy.

Delve Spells are some of the most powerful spells released in Magic: The Gathering in the last decade, and both Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are so powerful that they are banned from Modern and Legacy, and restricted in Vintage.

While much of the success of these cards in other eternal formats is directly connected to their interactions with Fetch Lands, banned on Pioneer, the format has refined itself to the point that there are many ways to take huge advantage of the cost reduction offered by these cards.

For example, archetypes like Izzet Phoenix and Four-Color Ascendancy commonly runs Treasure Cruise as part of their main draw engine, and both manage to fill the graveyard with tremendous speed through low-cost cantrips, in particular, Consider, a cantrip released in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt that offers two extra cards in your graveyard in addition to the draw, further streamlining the number of cards needed to cast Cruise.

Consider is also widely played in other archetypes to cast Dig Through Time quickly, such as Azorius and Dimir Control, which also don't have much trouble having enough cards in their graveyard to cast Delve's spell for a low cost.

Finally, we have Temporal Trespass, which I wouldn't consider on my list if it weren't for the fact that Izzet Phoenix is ​​using more and more copies of Fate Reforged's extra turn alongside Galvanic Iteration, creating a similar situation to what Izzet Epiphany does with Alrund's Epiphany, except that normally your birds will be 3/2 creatures with Flying and Haste, not counting the occasional transformation of a Thing in the Ice that is at stake.

Although Consider is the card that increased the potential of Delve Spells, I believe it would be a mistake to remove it because of cards that are fundamentally broken since its release, and given Wizards' banning standards, I believe it is much easier for them to remove the three spells that can be abused by various archetypes than the new cantrip.

Winota, Joiner of Forces, banned from Historic for a long time and remains so even after the format's bizarre power level increase, has always shown potential to become a problematic creature in Pioneer, for its powerful interaction with the most several non-humans, such as Mana Dorks like Llanowar Elves and Gilded Goose alongside powerful humans and with a high impact on the game.

With Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Winota gained the payoff she needed in the form of the Werewolves, Human-type creatures with a huge impact on the game when they enter the battlefield through her trigger, which transform into non-humans if players don't cast spells and that still allows the deck to play fairly like an efficient Midrange with a potential “free-win” with its main card.

Although I believe that the format has adapted to the point that Winota is no longer a threat to the Metagame, as we believed it to be a few months ago, she creates a chronic problem for Pioneer where all humans released in the future can collaborate for her to break the format to the point of requiring an emergency ban, something Wizards seeks to avoid doing in its eternal formats, which would lead to a situation where we would have to deal with this issue longer than we really wanted to.

As the card that will always offer this risk is Winota herself, I suppose Wizards will come to recognize the threat she poses to their long-term releases to the point of adding her to the format's Banned and Restricted list.

Less likely options

Lurrus of the Dream-Den is a predominant part of many decks in Pioneer: Boros Burn, Boros Heroic, Orzhov Humans, Rakdos Arcanist, Auras, and Azorius Ensoul, but none of them are really prevalent in the format these days, and their deckbuilding is not as standardized as Lurrus makes it to be in other formats, like Modern because there is a real concession in using it as a Companion for a vast majority of these archetypes (to the point where we see versions of Rakdos with Lurrus and without Lurrus, as well as versions of Red-Based Aggro and Humans that also don't run the feline).

So, I don't think this is the moment or situation where the most famous Companion in the game needs to be banned from Pioneer.

Much of the success of archetypes like Izzet Phoenix or Four-Color Ascendancy is also because they are the best Expressive Iteration decks in the format, with it being one of the best card selection spells ever released, played in virtually all competitive formats, and if Wizards' proposal is to significantly weaken these decks, it is possible that Strixhaven's sorcery will be banned.

However, it wouldn't make sense to me to remove Expressive Iteration and leave Delve Spells, and a ban on both would do too much damage to these archetypes, and I believe (or prefer to believe) that their proposal with bans are to never permanently removing an archetype from the format, but rather balancing it to increase diversity.

I'm putting these two cards together because I believe one of them will leave the format, not both.

I think Modern is the format that best capitalizes on Lurrus of the Dream-Den to the point that it essentially defines how Tempo and Midrange decks need to behave and be built into the format.

In addition, Ikoria's feline is present not only in Midrange, but also in the most diverse categories of existing archetypes, ranging from Aggro, such as Prowess or Burn decks, to Aggro-Combo archetypes, such as Hammer Time, Control as Grixis and Dimir Control also use Companion, in addition to other less established strategies, such as Mill.

This recurring presence of Companion in the format is primarily because Modern has undergone some significant changes in the last year and has come to be dictated especially by mana efficiency, where plays need to be impactful with the least amount of investment as possible, as we see with cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer or Dragon's Rage Channeler and, if you need to invest more mana to cast something, they need to set the game to irreversible states most of the time, such as Shardless Agent, Primeval Titan, Omnath, Locus of Creation or Murktide Regent.

And in this kind of format, Lurrus of the Dream-Den becomes even more important because it offers a mighty recursion engine alongside the most diverse ways to grind and get value in the game for archetypes that, commonly, don't usually have as much engine or gas to extend games, giving it an additional breath, with mechanics that can easily be abused through it (like Mishra's Bauble and, on a smaller scale, Dress Down and Seal of Fire) and making it a card that needs to be answered at any cost.

Given how much it is present in the most diverse archetypes and has standardized, even with a lot of collaboration from the sets released in the last two years (especially Modern Horizons II), certain deckbuilding categories and how much these lists manage to use it with little or no concessions, it is possible that Lurrus of the Dream-Den will be banned next Tuesday.

Every Companion needs cards that can be used to get the most out of its mechanics and abilities, and Mishra's Bauble is one of the best effects to use with Lurrus of the Dream-Den.

But even if the Companion didn't exist in Modern, Coldsnap's artifact would still be widely played because it offers a number of advantages for many decks these days: Bauble makes it easy to enable Delirium for Dragon's Rage Channeler and Unholy Heat, grants Revolt triggers for cards like Fatal Push, interacts absurdly well with Fetch Lands to remove something unwanted from the top, or with discard spells like Thoughtseize to get further information from the opponent's hand and top, counts as an artifact for Urza's Saga and, not least, is a free spell that draws a card.

Among all these qualities, the fact that it is a free spell is precisely the one that most leads me to believe that, eventually, with or without Lurrus, Mishra's Bauble will be banned from Modern for being too useful and efficient for the format's standards, in addition to knowing the company's tendency to want to prevent free spells from being a positive exchange of cards in their controller's hand.

Less likely options

Urza's Saga falls into a category similar to Mishra's Bauble: Modern Horizons II's land/enchantment does too much for many archetypes, being widely used in the format by the most diverse decks.

Its presence is so strong in the format that it is among the four most played cards in Modern today, ahead of even Mishra's Bauble, which is in sixth. And even strategies that have little or no link to artifacts can use it to extract value, as is the case of Jund Sagavan, which seeks to abuse the land's effects by reusing it with Wrenn and Six, in addition to recent lists that have swapped Dragon's Rage Channeler for Elvish Reclaimer for more consistency in grinding matchups with the land.

The only reason I don't think we're getting a ban on Urza's Saga is that while its presence in the format is greater than the two cards above, it offers unique game patterns for each of the decks in which it is present. In addition to being, alongside Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, one of the main cards of a set dedicated to the format.

I've seen some players commenting on the possibility of banning Yorion, Sky Nomad to weaken existing Four-Color Goodstuff decks in Modern today, but there doesn't seem to be a plausible rationale for its banishment in the format because the creature is just a payoff for something that the archetype already proposes to do: Fill the list with the best cards of the format and bury the opponent in a gigantic wave of value and card advantage.

Would these archetypes reduce the number of cards in their lists without Companion? Probably, but they manage to play very well with just their maindeck shell against a large portion of the format, getting to the point that Yorion doesn't make that much difference until way later in the game, and in the worst case and depending on the version, you can always add a copy on Maindeck to fetch with Bring to Light, if you want.

So, I don't think a ban on Yorion, Sky Nomad would really be relevant to affecting Goodstuff lists.

The only common sense that most players have today, and the only certainty I have, is that something will be banned from Legacy to weaken the Izzet Delver decks and the other URx that predominate in the format since the launch of Modern Horizons II.

The issue is that there is no general agreement on what should be banned, and I don't feel that Wizards know Legacy well enough to make long-term, surgical decisions, and will only remove cards that seem the most problematic because the shell of these archetypes are too efficient.

And while new lists like Four-Color Control have appeared, and Izzet Delver has been on a notable decline in recent weeks, I think the time is right for a direct intervention that impacts this and other archetypes, given how infrequent bans are in Legacy

Given the circumstances under which some cards have been banned from the format recently, and how present it has been in the general Metagame and how much of a difference it makes in a format where the means of protecting it are more efficient, I think that, except for commercial reasons, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer will almost certainly be banned from Legacy next Tuesday for offering too much card advantage with a single threat, plus the extra mana you get from the Treasure tokens has a much higher value in Legacy than in Modern, given how common it is to have a low-cost spell to play on top of your opponent's deck.

In addition, Ragavan has essentially changed the format's structure, and many of the other lists that are succeeding in the current Metagame have as one of their biggest advantages using cards that URx decks cannot usually capitalize on, such as Reanimator, Elves, Lands, among others.

So, because of how influential and impactful Ragavan's existence is to the format, I believe the albino monkey will leave Legacy next Tuesday.

I don't think just banning Ragavan will be enough to balance the Metagame for a situation where the format will be less URx-oriented, and among the other possibilities, I believe that Expressive Iteration or Murktide Regent are the most likely to leave with the monkey.

Less likely options

I've read debates about banning Prismatic Ending for offering Control decks too efficient an answer for every occasion, being able to be used for one mana to deal with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer or a Marit Lage, while it can be used for three or four mana to deal with Teferi, Time Raveler or Jace, the Mind Sculptor, so that lists that run white don't have to worry about diversifying their removals and can follow a pattern of up to 4 Prismatic Ending and up to 4 Swords to Plowshares.

The thing is, I can't imagine this being bad by the standards that Wizards tries to propose for the game, plus Legacy has evolved to a point where this category of answer can actually be necessary for the health of the Metagame.

Urza's Saga is very present in Legacy, and is very efficient in supporting the most varied archetypes, ranging from artifact-oriented lists like the Painter Stone and 8-Cast to decks where the land is just a piece of support and wincondition, such as Lands and Jeskai Sagavan.

According to the Cards Realm data, Saga is on 23% of the lists on our Metagame page, a relatively high number comparable to its representation in Modern and only 3% less than the presence of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer currently.

However, Urza's Saga has brought some archetypes that were in the confines of the lower Metagame Tiers into the competitive scene, and Saga's banning would likely send most of them back there, potentially decreasing the format's diversity.

Therefore, I'm not so sure that Urza's Saga can be banned to the point of considering it as a probability.

These are my personal thoughts for what might happen in the Banned and Restricted update on Tuesday, January 25th.

Also, Urza's Saga will probably be restricted from Vintage due to its high representation in decks and for offering a very efficient tutor for several of the format's most powerful cards.

However, as I don't know the Vintage Metagame and its competitive scenario, I preferred not to delve into this subject.

I've also decided not to talk about unbans in this article, as it's a gray area that I particularly believe we won't get into in this next announcement. Nothing in most formats feels worthy or relevant enough to be unbanned (except for Splinter Twin in Modern, but that's just a manifestation of my personal wish) to the point that it didn't seem pertinent to comment on it.

What are your expectations for the next Banned & Restricted announcement next week? You are welcome to leave your ideas in the comments!

Thanks for reading!