Wizards of the Coast held their weekly Pioneer Announcement on Monday and opted to ban three cards: Once Upon a Time, Field of the Dead, and Smuggler’s Copter.
This set of bans came after looking over the results of “a series of Pioneer PTQ tournaments [that] were held as a part of Magic Online’s Pioneer week” and how these cards were warping the competitive environment.
The decision to remove Once Upon a Time came after observing a “general prevalence and dominance of green decks as a group” with the green instant being “a key common factor to those decks’ success.”
The Standard all-star turned Pioneer dominator proved once again to be too strong, and Wizards decided to eliminate the problem before allowing it to completely take over. The main issue with the land, was its ability to enable ramp decks to “suppress control and reactive strategies.”
The 3/3 Vehicle, previously banned during its time in Standard, meets another ban in Pioneer after proving again to be too powerful of an enabler in aggressive strategies.
Wizards believes that this set of changes will ultimately “result in greater diversity among aggressive decks, a clearer role in the metagame for reactive and controlling decks, and a push toward better color balance among competitive decks.”
Future announcements regarding Pioneer are scheduled every Monday for the foreseeable future, but Wizards does not intend for every announcement to contain cards being banned from the format. The next Pioneer announcement will occur on Monday, December 9.
Read the original article from Wizards of the Coast.