Explaining the bans of The Meathook Massacre and Yorion, Sky Nomad

Announcement Date: October 10, 2022

Standard:

The Meathook Massacre is banned.

Modern:

Yorion, Sky Nomad is banned.

MTG Arena Effective Date: October 13, 2022

Magic Online Effective Date: October 10, 2022

Tabletop Effective Date: October 10, 2022

View the list of all banned and restricted cards by format.

As is often the case, the Standard card pool rotation with the release of Dominaria United caused quite a shakeup, with cards from the new set finding their places into decks, and many of last year's cards shifting context within the new metagame. As the format has settled into place, the color black has proven powerful and prolific, and makes up the foundation of many of the top decks. Despite that commonly shared color, we're seeing good diversity among competitive decks and strategies, and player engagement with the format has been healthy.

To provide a small push against the color black's play rate among competitive decks, we're choosing to ban one black card. We discussed several different options, as no single black card stood out as a major power outlier played by all decks containing black. Ultimately, we decided that banning The Meathook Massacre was the best choice, as it's one of the most powerful black cards in the format, is especially powerful against specific archetypes (decks relying on a lot of small creatures), and has had its time to shine in Standard for over a year.

With The Brothers' War on the horizon, we anticipate the new cards entering the format to provide tools for other decks and color combinations. In the meantime, we expect this little shakeup will help keep Standard enjoyable and trending toward an even healthier spot going forward as the card pool expands.

Modern has been in a healthy place since the last banned and restricted update, with good diversity among archetypes and even the most popular competitive decks occupying a relatively small slice of the metagame (about 5–6% each, on Magic Online). However, as tabletop Modern play continues to rebound since the height of the pandemic, we've decided to enact a change that we've been considering for some time by banning Yorion, Sky Nomad.

Yorion most commonly appears as a companion in Four-Color Omnath decks, which show a strong win rate and, according to our matchup data, are likely to continue to rise in popularity. In addition to game-balance concerns with the deck, we're also factoring in the physical dexterity requirements of playing with a large deck for tabletop. We're wary of the metagame reaching a point where players are playing the deck because of its perceived strength and win rate despite not enjoying how cumbersome it can be to operate.

While these physical dexterity issues exist to a lesser degree in other formats (like Pioneer), Modern specifically entails more shuffling and other physical card manipulation because of the deep card pool of card-selection spells, fetch lands, and so on. Cards encouraging large decks, like Battle of Wits, have existed in the past, but usually on the fringes of competitive play rather than as one of the strongest decks.

Finally, we've also heard from many players that the repeated triggers caused by Yorion and many of the cards surrounding it can lead to repetitive gameplay patterns and long games with lots of downtime between the other player's actions. It's important that the net player experience playing with the top decks is a fun one, and while we're okay with such decks existing, it can make the format less enjoyable when these patterns are associated with one of the strongest decks over a long period of time.

Therefore, to make Modern as fun and accessible as it can be for all types of players, Yorion, Sky Nomad is banned in Modern.

Overall, Pioneer looks to be in a good place as we head into the Regional Championship Qualifier season throughout November and December. We're seeing a wide variety of strategies employed by the most popular decks. The most played deck on Magic Online is Rakdos Midrange, with about 13% metagame share. None of the top 20 most played decks have a non-mirror match win rate of more than about 53%. In general, we've heard a lot of positivity from players about the state of the format.

We'll continue to keep an eye on the health of the format, especially as it undergoes more competitive pressure with the Regional Championship Qualifiers. As things currently stand, we don't anticipate any changes before or during that season.

The Legacy metagame is looking healthy, with top decks all having strengths and weaknesses against each other. Since the ban of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer in January, the most popular deck, Izzet Delver, has had its win rate trend downward. According to Magic Online data, it represents about 9% of the field and has an overall non-mirror match win rate of 52%, with both positive and negative matchups against the next ten most played decks.

The past year has brought several new, impactful cards to competitive Legacy, including Unlicensed Hearse, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Ledger Shredder, Leyline Binding, and more. We're excited to see the format continue to grow as new cards lead to new strategies. As always, we'll continue to monitor how the metagame develops, but right now, things seem to be in a good spot.

Likewise, we think Vintage is in a relatively good spot. Magic Online data shows greater archetype diversity recently than we've had in some past cycles, in part because of new card additions to the format. Displacer Kitten and Vodalian Hexcatcher are examples that feature prominently in their respective decks. Other new cards like Boseiju, Who Endures are finding a home in a variety of decks.

We're aware that many of the current top decks make powerful use of Tinker and are often categorized together. But within that category, there's a good amount of diversity in terms of how those decks can be built and the play patterns they follow. We're also seeing healthy amounts of "good stuff" decks, Vengevine variants, and Workshop variants in the metagame. Overall, we think Vintage is in a good place right now and don't anticipate the need for changes soon.