WotC Announces Zendikar Rising Standard Update Coming Next Week

The official Magic: the Gathering Twitter account announced today that an update intended to impact Zendikar Rising Standard is coming next week.

We're closely monitoring developments in Standard. In order to avoid disrupting this weekend's tournaments, we intend to provide an update on the format early next week.
— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) September 22, 2020

With Zendikar Rising available on Magic Arena and Magic Online for just six days, action already appears to be on its way. The tweet implies that Standard is closely being monitored and that something will be banned or unbanned, but they don’t want to disrupt events scheduled for this weekend.

The SCG Tour Online Championship Qualifier and Season Two Championship are set for this weekend and both are Standard. Early results from Challenges and Magic Online indicate Four-Color Ramp decks built around Lotus Cobra, Omnath, Locus of Creation, and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath are warping the format. The deck is capable of incredibly powerful starts with more than 20 mana’s worth of spells being played as early as the fourth turn. On top of its fast ramping ability, the deck can challenge control decks going long with threats that replace themselves and card advantage engines like Escape to the Wilds and Felidar Retreat.

Four-Color Ramp

teslacow

1st Place at Magic Online Challenge on 09-20-2020

Standard

Creatures (17)

Lands (20)

Spells (23)

Sideboard

Players weighed in on Twitter immediately with most calling for an Uro ban, something that has been thrown around for months with the card’s impact on not only Standard, but almost every format in the game.

Can’t wait for this to be “Uro’s banned” and have the omnath decks not care or be affected in the slightest. Its not even clear Uro is better than other 3 mana ramp options in those shells. I’m already down to 3 Uro’s in mine and think dryad might be better https://t.co/UXr9Ydikkv
— Zach (@A22en) September 22, 2020

#DefundUro https://t.co/3XHzaWeLOA
— Cedric A Phillips (@CedricAPhillips) September 22, 2020

Over the 20 years starting from the new Standard deck construction rules in 1997 through the end of 2016, there were a total of 22 cards banned in Standard.

Since the start of 2017, 19 cards have been banned in Standard. It's about to be 20+. https://t.co/ni3d3G7OEj
— Max Kahn (@MaxPlaysMTG) September 22, 2020

Six cards. Omnath, Cobra, Uro, Embercleave, Winota, Clover. Problems in Standard are less about balance and more about the style of games being played, and leaving any one of these means you’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop. Rip the band-aid off.
— Bryan Gottlieb (@BryanGo) September 22, 2020

FWIW, if there are bans (which I'm not convinced from that tweet there will be, after a reread), I assume they're gonna hit Uro, and it will solve approximately 0 problems in Standard. https://t.co/TkaBpcD8K2
— Nick Prince (@nicknprince) September 22, 2020

While the update won’t impact tournaments set for this weekend, it will invalidate close to two weeks of Standard testing for the 2020 Season Grand Finals set for October 9-11.