In one of the most anticipated banned and restricted announcements in recent memory, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) took a sledgehammer to Standard in today’s mid-year B&R update by banning seven cards in the format.
After an overwhelming presence of red aggressive decks in competitive fields, the three red cards headline this batch of banned cards. More than 53 percent of the players at the most recent Pro Tour played either Izzet Prowess or Mono-Red Aggro and the Top 8 consisted of four copies of each deck. Monstrous Rage overstayed its welcome thanks to the Mice package from Bloomburrow while Cori-Steel Cutter simply was too strong to exist in a format without enough efficient and reliable answers to the equipment.
At this point, it’s clear the tools to challenge Cori-Steel Cutter’s dominance don’t exist in the environment. For these reasons, and in the interest of metagame diversity, Cori-Steel Cutter is banned.”
Jadine Klomparens
After dealing with the red decks, WotC turned its eye to Up the Beanstalk and Abuelo’s Awakening. If Mono-Red Aggro is on one end of the power spectrum in Standard, Azorius Omniscience is on the other. There is no going bigger than an Omniscience combo kill and that happening reliably on Turn 4 is too strong for Standard. The deck was a known quantity and still made up 20 percent of the Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY field.
Combo decks like Azorius Omniscience are something we want to exist in Standard, but when too strong, they warp the format around them and reduce the number of viable decks. This version of Omniscience has proved too powerful and consistent. For these reasons, Abuelo’s Awakening is banned.
Jadine Klomparens
The other deck looking to go big was Zur Overlords or Domain Control, a strategy that relied on Up the Beanstalk and the Overlords from Duskmourn: House of Horror and other expensive spells that are made cheaper if certain conditions are met. Similarly to Cori-Steel Cutter, Up the Beanstalk is incredibly difficult to interact with profitably and provides an endless chain of card advantage. Up the Beanstalk has already been banned in Modern and with more cards coming in future sets that would work with it, the enchantment from Wilds of Eldraine had to go.
Lastly for Standard, Hopeless Nightmare and This Town Ain’t Big Enough round out the bans. Both cards are strong in the Pixie decks and Dimir Bounce strategies allowing an attrition-style gameplan that can take out opponents without a combat step. This Town Ain’t Big Enough’s interaction with Stormchaser’s Talen created loops that could outlast opposing interaction while the spell also worked as a powerful tempo play.
As for other formats, no other tabletop format was touched, but a couple minor changes to MTG Arena-only formats were announced.
Cori-Steel Cutter was suspended in Alchemy, pending a rebalance, Counterspell was unbanned in Historic, and Tibalt’s Trickery was banned in Pioneer best-of-one play.
