Jump to content

[MtG] Banlist Announcements, Apr. 24


Recommended Posts

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/april-24-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-04-24

 

Standard

No changes.

Felidar Guardian is banned as of April 26.

 

Modern

No changes.

 

Legacy

Sensei's Divining Top is banned.

 

Vintage

Gitaxian Probe is restricted.

Gush is restricted.

 

Commander

Leovold, Emissary of Trest is banned.

Protean Hulk is unbanned.

 

Duel Commander

Chrome Mox is banned.

Mox Diamond is banned.

Breya, Etherium Shaper is banned as commander.

Vial Smasher the Fierce is banned as commander.

Yisan, The Wanderer Bard is unbanned.

 

And now we deal with so many more months of Copycat. Sorta makes sense that they aren't gonna ban it with potential new hate cards: if Manglehorn et al aren't good enough at the Pro Tour, we'll probably see a ban then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

top is a Suprising ban. It's been on the chopping block for ages and I was pretty certain wizards was OK with it in legacy. I'm not upset though. playing against top is one of the most obnoxious things in this game. Rip Vintage mentor. I knew it was only a matter of time before gush was back on the restricted list.

 

As for standard, Banning cards is really the wrong approach to balancing the format. the small card pool makes banned cards carry so much more weight. Amonket answers aren't great but they're an improvement from the lack of any answers we had before. I'm pretty certain standard will be skewed towards powerful walkers until we get a downfall or dreadbore reprint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems silly to not ban Cat Combo. I get they really don't want to ban anymore cards. I get the bans in January didn't work out making those look worse and amplifying that risk. I get that. But Cat Combo is going to be a dominate deck for the next year and a half unless something is done about it. It warps standard and actively makes it unfun for a number of people. They are going to have to bite the bullet sooner or later and no amount of data is going to change that.

 

Can't speak to the legacy and vintage bans since I don't play those formats.

 

I am excited to see Protean Hulk is unbanned. Now to find which decks want him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

karador or meren is ideal. they already try to set up lark or body snatcher combos and hulk gives them a huge amount of redundancy, and value.

I'm for sure going to make room for it in Karador. Getting Karmic Guide + Seer just wins me the games since from their I rebuy Hulk who gets me Mikaus which lets Karmic Guide rebuy Hulk again to get Lark. From their I just get Blood Artist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

there's a ton of different ways to combo off with hulk and they all fit nicely into meren and karador. Plus once you start going off with hulk it's near Impossible to stop since you can keep doing the combo at instant speed. Even through grave hate the combo is incredibly resilient.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heres the issue with waiting, it still has a really real cost. One of my friends works at a LGS and he has said that interest in standard has been pretty low. 6 more weeks of this is likely to result in even more waning of interest. And even in the best case scenario that something comes along and they don't need to ban the combo, its existence is going to have a negative affect on standard for as long as it remains and that is a long time still (18 months).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People playtesting already say its looking like a 1 deck meta. Not good. These problems have been evident in standard since Theors block. Its a shame it took so long and 3 bannings for the development team to see the issues with their current design philosophy. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People playtesting already say its looking like a 1 deck meta. Not good. These problems have been evident in standard since Theors block. Its a shame it took so long and 3 bannings for the development team to see the issues with their current design philosophy.

I also think part of the issue is that the best removal spells in the format, Unlicensed and Push, are best in aggressive decks. Honestly, while I don't think Copy Cat is an indicator of much of anything, rather its Mardu that is a perfect storm of aggro cards, aggressive removal, and card advantage engines that all happened to come together for a very stupidly powerful decks. I'm curious how it compares to other standard decks throughout the history of the format.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...