Wizards of the Coast (WotC) took action on three formats in today’s banned and restricted announcement, hitting multiple cards in Standard while scrapping The Fantasticar in Legacy and Vintage.
Standard
In a surprising move, WotC axed three pillars of the Standard format in one fell swoop. Badgermole Cub, Gran-Gran, and Stormchaser’s Talent all were banned as part of Play Design’s ongoing goal to slow down the speed of Standard, prevent snowballing games, and pay closer to attention to one- and two-mana spells in Magic’s premier Constructed format.
Badgermole Cub has been the focus of much ire since its release in Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender. While not being one mana, this mana accelerator pushed the format to its breaking point by forcing all decks to interact with it on time or try to win equally as fast by ignoring it. The redundancy in deck-building offered by Nature’s Rhythm allowed green decks to ramp on mana so quickly, Turn-3 and 4 wins were not a rarity. And Badgermole Cub was relevant in many decks, propping up Selesnya Offense, Mono-Green Landfall, and multiple Rhythm decks that could win with a Craterhoof Behemoth incredibly early in the game.
Standard was able to keep up with Badgermole Cub for some time, but in the past couple months the green decks started pulling away, with the Selesnya Offense deck putting up win-rate and play-rate numbers similar to Vivi Ornitier decks of the past. Green decks will need to find a new direction going forward.
Badgermole Cub is the clear choice for a card to ban from Selesnya Offense. Badgermole Cub has been an extremely powerful and format-defining card in Standard ever since it was released. We’ve discussed it at length in several previous banned and restricted announcements. It is a cheap threat that demands an immediate answer and lets its controller develop an insurmountable mana advantage. The pressure Badgermole Cub exerts on decks to be able to answer a two-mana creature forces them to value mana efficiency highly and compresses the format in unhealthy ways. Without Badgermole Cub, Standard will be more fun and have more breathing room.
Jadine Klomparens
Stormchaser’s Talent is another card that’s been living on borrowed time in Standard. At one mana, the powerful and redundant enchantment simply does too much for too little investment. If the Otters aren’t enough to overrun an opponent, Prowess and Lessons players can simply level up the class to recur card draw or removal and eventually churn out even more threats when maxed out. It’s power when combined with Boomerang Basics exacerbates the problematic nature of the flexible rare from Bloomburrow.
Stormchaser’s Talent has seen a long enough lifespan to cause problems in Standard across many set releases and multiple blue and red decks. It was a staple for Cori-Steel Cutter decks, Lessons, Prowess, and many other strategies like Temur Otters and Bant Bounce.
Speaking of one-mana blue cards, Gran-Gran is also retiring from Standard. A key piece to Izzet and Jeskai Lessons, Gran-Gran provides too much utility for one mana. Looting and discounting lessons is a lot when paired with a must-answer one-mana card, especially when the Lessons decks could punish opponents for keeping in removal when they didn’t play any other creatures.
Jadine Klomparens wrote in the Standard summary of the announcement that Play Design is looking to improve the diversity of the format and slow it down. This is a huge step in that direction along with the team’s aim at designing cards that move away from putting so much power in the cheapest cards.
Legacy And Vintage
Nothing was written on the banning of The Fantasticar in Legacy and restricting it in Vintage, but the card was clearly problematic from the jump. Tomorrow’s Weekly MTG stream at 1 PM ET will talk about the card in more detail.
Read the official announcement from WotC. The next scheduled banned and restricted announcement is set for October 12.
