Wizards of the Coast (WotC) announced a surprise Banned & Restricted update today aimed at Alchemy and Historic, including a banning of Grinning Ignus in Alchemy.
More than 25 cards received rebalancing for Alchemy and Historic and will go live with the July 7 MTG Arena update.
Banned
Despite Alchemy existing as a format that can be tweaked with digital rebalancing, Grinning Ignus is being banned from the format because WotC can’t find a satisfying change to the card to keep it true to itself. The card still might end up rebalanced at some point, but for now, Grinning Ignus is banned in Alchemy due to its presence in the creature-combo deck that is laborious to play on MTG Arena.
Using Racketeer Boss to make Grinning Ignus create a Treasure when it enters the battlefield, a player can pick up and play it over and over again triggering cards like Prosperous Innkeeper, Voice of the Blessed, Trelasarra, Moon Dancer, and Birgi, God of Storytelling. Not only did the combos take a bunch of clicks, the execution took a long time, often using a player’s rope to pull off.
Rebalances
Next up, take a look at four highly played cards receiving nerfs to bring them back down a bit.
Winota, Joiner of Forces is coming off the banned list in Historic with a rebalance that only allows her to trigger once per turn. The card will remain banned in Explorer.
The rest of the rebalances are buffs to underplayed cards and archetypes. The Abzan +1/+1 counters archetype and the Izzet instants and sorceries matters archetype get a huge boost over many cards.
The changes will go live on July 7. Read the original article from WotC.