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Sweet Tweets: #Jundstice

Reuben provides a detailed breakdown of the Magic community’s reactions to rumor then fact of one of the most interesting ban announcements in recent years.

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It started out with the usual prediction and punditry. Twittergicians hemmed and hawed over whether their favorite cards (or least favorite) would survive the ban hammer. Self-fancied oracles attempted to Predict the changes to various formats. Hopeful speculators filled up their carts with Earthcrafts and Ancestral Visions and hovered their cursors over "Buy It Now" buttons across the Internet. You know, the usual. There are always rumors that crop up this time of year in Magic circles.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the banned and restricted announcement earlier this week…

Notable Magic personality and avid social media man Frank Lepore (@FrankLepore) and Pro Tour stalwart Gerard Fabiano (@Gfabs5) thought they had come upon the scoop of the year: the @wizards_magic banned and restricted announcement…several hours early. Frank, as one of the ambassadors of the game, was beset with a tough decision: to keep this precious information to himself (and perhaps use it for personal gain) or to share the information with the public at large. He chose the way of truth (as all comic book good guys should) andposted his B&R announcement on his personal Facebook page.

And that’s when all hell broke loose on Twitter.

It was spectacular. Over the course of a few short hours, Magic players went through the five stages of grief twice—first in reaction to the Lepore report and then to the actual bannings. Oh, the actual list was really quite interesting too! Don’t forget the reality of Modern and #MTGPauper getting major shake-ups, even if the prospect of Survival of the Fittest, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Balance getting a chance to Rise from the Grave in various formats was titillating.

Of course, now we know that the "leaked" list was bunkum, but at the time it was quite the scandal. What follows is a detailed hour-by-hour breakdown of the Magic community’s reactions to rumor, then fact, then to the actuality of one of the most interesting ban announcements in recent years (the banning of Bloodbraid Elf and Seething Song in Modern).

Or, as @lsv and friends came to call it, #Jundstice:

January 27, 2013, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

January 27, 2013, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

January 27, 2013, 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

January 27, 2013, 10:00 pm – January 28, 2013, Midnight (Announcement Time)

January 28, 2013, Midnight – 2:00 AM

You can read the official banned and restricted announcement by @eriklauer on @DailyMTG here.

Next Day Reactions

So while we may be done with the Hurricane level of bluster, conjecture, and commentary for a few months, as Mr. Chapin (@thepchapin) pointed out, it never really ends…

To everything (Tweet, Tweet, Tweet), there is a reason (Tweet, Tweet, Tweet)…

Reuben Bresler

@MoxReuby

Event Coverage Coordinator and Twitter Admiral for StarCityGames.com

Listen to the @InContention podcast! It’s the official podcast of the StarCityGames.com Open Series with @kstube, @affinityforblue, and myself. Listen in at InContentionMagic.com. Our most recent episode, Can’t Standard It, can be found here.