Surprise! Wizards of the Coast just dropped a big Banned and Restricted Announcement today, and I can promise you that it’s spicy! Let’s not waste any time, and get right into it
The Hammer
Pioneer:
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Lurrus of the Dream Den
Lurrus of the Dream Den
Companion — Each permanent card in your starting deck has mana value 2 or less. (If this card is your chosen companion, you may put it into your hand from outside the game for {3} as a sorcery.)
Lifelink
Once during each of your turns, you may cast a permanent spell with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard. is Banned
—
Modern:
-
Lurrus of the Dream Den
Lurrus of the Dream Den
Companion — Each permanent card in your starting deck has mana value 2 or less. (If this card is your chosen companion, you may put it into your hand from outside the game for {3} as a sorcery.)
Lifelink
Once during each of your turns, you may cast a permanent spell with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard. is Banned
—
Pauper:
-
Galvanic Relay
Galvanic Relay
Exile the top card of your library. During your next turn, you may play that card.
Storm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn.) is Banned -
Disciple of the Vault
Disciple of the Vault
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may have target opponent lose 1 life.
is Banned
-
Expedition Map
Expedition Map
{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this artifact: Search your library for a land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.
is Unbanned
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Tabletop and Magic Online Effective Date: March 7, 2022.
Letting the Cat Out of the Bag
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So the big deal here is that
Lurrus of the Dream Den
Lurrus of the Dream Den
Companion — Each permanent card in your starting deck has mana value 2 or less. (If this card is your chosen companion, you may put it into your hand from outside the game for {3} as a sorcery.)
Lifelink
Once during each of your turns, you may cast a permanent spell with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard.
is being banned in both Modern and Pioneer. For Modern, Lurrus has become a very controversial card. It’s one that the community either loves or hates, and both sides are very vocal about it.
From WotC‘s data, Lurrus was a big contributing factor in the homogenization of play and deck building. As Modern continues to age, the overall strategy of the format tends to favor cheap and efficient spells. Lurrus compounds on that and didn’t pose enough of a drawback to play him for the rate at which he is played.
What’s more, Pioneer is in a place where Lurrus does see a fair bit of play, not as much as Modern, but a fair bit. In a similar vein, as Pioneer ages and the card pool expands, it’s possible that we see the overall meta strategy move towards that of Modern. Thusly, Lurrus is getting banned sooner, rather than later.
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Pauper Changes
Pauper is a very interesting place, and the changes here were enough that Gavin Verhey had to do a completely separate article to detail everything.
The long and short of it here is that when
Chatterstorm
Chatterstorm
Create a 1/1 green Squirrel creature token.
Storm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn.)
was banned, Storm fell out a little bit. But with the printing of
Experimental Synthesizer
Experimental Synthesizer
When this artifact enters or leaves the battlefield, exile the top card of your library. Until end of turn, you may play that card.
{2}{R}, Sacrifice this artifact: Create a 2/2 white Samurai creature token with vigilance. Activate only as a sorcery.
, Rakdos Storm has risen immensely in power, and thus Galvanic Relay is banned.
For the
Disciple of the Vault
Disciple of the Vault
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may have target opponent lose 1 life.
decks, the
Atog
Atog
Sacrifice an artifact: This creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
banning was a big blow, but the deck was very resilient. Players found new ways to abuse this card and the deck still had high win rates overall. With one of it’s bad match ups, Storm, being hit in this B&R, combined with the negative play patterns and high win rate, Disciple also gets the axe.
Lastly, we have an unban of
Expedition Map
Expedition Map
{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this artifact: Search your library for a land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.
. When
Prophetic Prism
Prophetic Prism
When this artifact enters, draw a card.
{1}, {T}: Add one mana of any color.
and
Bonder’s Ornament
Bonder’s Ornament
{T}: Add one mana of any color.
{4}, {T}: Each player who controls a permanent named Bonder's Ornament draws a card.
got banned back in January, Tron took a pretty big power hit. It fell back in line with the rest of the format, but players were no longer incentivized to play it.
The Pauper Format Panel felt that they did like the power that Tron was at, but definitely want to see the deck be played as well. They decided to unban Map because when it was banned, the impact was minimal. So unbanning it shouldn’t throw anything out of whack, but should give players who like the deck a little more to work with.
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Overall, a very cool announcement! What’s exciting for me is to see how the Modern Metagame shifts around no longer having access to Lurrus. Make sure to check out the full announcement for more details. What are your thoughts on this? Are you happy with these changes? Let us know!