Magic: The Gathering’s next Banned & Restricted announcement is just over a week away, and all eyes are on Standard.
After the most recent announcement back in March, many players were left stunned when Wizards of the Coast (WotC) opted to leave Standard alone despite having what many felt were clear-cut offenders at the time. Now, as we approach the next scheduled B&R on June 30, almost all the cards that felt ban-worthy back in March seem trivial compared to the problems plaguing the format now.
In this article, we’ll take a look at several of the top candidates for bans in Standard, starting with a few honorable mentions that many felt were overlooked back in March.
Honorable Mentions
This Town Ain’t Big Enough
Prior to the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, This Town Ain’t Big Enough was everywhere. Esper Pixies, Simic Beans, Temur Otters, Dimir Bounce, even Domain had employed the powerful uncommon. This ubiquity not only catapulted the Outlaws of Thunder Junction sleeper into the Standard spotlight, but into the ban conversation as well.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm had a massive impact on Standard, especially given the size of the format at its time of release. As we’re seeing currently with Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY, the bar is set extremely high for new cards trying to make the cut in decks that have been tuned extensively over many, many months, let alone create and/or propel archetypes to the forefront of a long-established metagame. But Tarkir: Dragonstorm managed to do both of those things, and by proxy, many cards, including This Town Ain’t Big Enough, were reduced to humble roleplayers rather than ban contenders.
Hopeless Nightmare
As someone who has been on both the casting and receiving end of this card, I can attest to the fact that Hopeless Nightmare is undoubtedly polarizing, and despite being a pillar of Magic’s gameplay, hand disruption is often lumped in with the likes of land destruction as a “feels bad” element of the game.
Instead of abiding by Magic’s back-and-forth gameplay formula, these types of effects attack the opponent’s resources with the goal of restricting their options. Fewer resources mean fewer decisions to make, creating more linear and often one-sided games that can feel terrible when you’re on the receiving end. If you’ve ever been Thoughtseized on a mulligan to five, you know exactly what I mean.
Although the attitude toward resource denial differs vastly between casual and competitive spaces, situations do arise where these effects become problematic even in environments where winning is the top priority, the most recent example being Grief in both Legacy and Modern.
While Hopeless Nightmare and Grief may seem worlds apart, their patterns of play do share similarities. As standalone cards, their effects are theoretically fair – trading one of your cards for one of your opponent’s – but when coupled with other cards that allow for cheap recursion, the one-for-one tradeoff quickly turns into an advantage for the caster. Obviously, no one is arguing that Hopeless Nightmare and Nurturing Pixie are on-par with Grief plus Feign Death, but on a fundamental level, both are cheap, two-card “combos” that take two cards from the opponent while also putting a body on the battlefield.
Getting back to the main point, the likelihood of Hopeless Nightmare catching a ban at this point is extremely low. As I’ve already mentioned above, Tarkir: Dragonstorm drastically warped the Standard landscape, and the metagame has since become far more resilient, possibly even hostile, for traditional Pixie builds.
Orzhov Pixie is the only Hopeless Nightmare deck that has kept pace with the format’s top dogs. Its results are more a testament to the deck’s ability to start with four copies of Temporary Lockdown than anything to do with Hopeless Nightmare.
With the Pixie archetype already on the decline, Temporary Lockdown rotating August 1, and Wilds of Eldraine nearing retirement, it would take some drastic bans coupled with metagame shifts to elevate Hopeless Nightmare back into the ban discussion.
Manifold Mouse
Unlike the two cards mentioned above, I do think there is a non-zero chance that Manifold Mouse is still a contender for a ban, just not this time around. The “Mouse package,” made up of Heartfire Hero, Emberheart Challenger, and Manifold Mouse, has become an auto-include in red-based aggressive decks in both Standard and Pioneer, and many players are of the opinion that the synergy between the three cards contributes way too much, and even more so with cards like Monstrous Rage in the equation (more on that later).
Following the next Banned & Restricted announcement, we’ll have both Standard rotation and the release of Edge of Eternities before the next B&R, and while a lot can happen between now and then, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this pesky two-drop added back into the ban conversation later this year.
With those cards out of the way, let’s take a look at the five cards that I think have the highest chance to catch a ban at the end of this month.
Most Likely To Be Banned
Cori-Steel Cutter
Cori-Steel Cutter is undoubtedly the most talked about card in the current ban discussion, so its inclusion here is unlikely to surprise anyone, but the case for banning Cutter is more complicated than one might expect.
Following the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm back in April, Cori-Steel Cutter exploded onto the scene in multiple formats. In Standard and Modern, the Prowess archetype was revitalized practically overnight, and the ensuing rat-race to assemble the best 56 supporting cards was a sight to behold.
Although Pioneer was excluded from this year’s Regional Championship and Premier Play rotation, it continues to thrive digitally, and the format’s grizzled veteran, Izzet Phoenix, also adopted Cutter and swiftly reclaimed its spot among the top decks.
Two months later, Cori-Steel Cutter has settled comfortably into Pioneer and Modern, where players have adapted thanks to the options offered by deeper card pools, but Standard continues to struggle to adjust, even with Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY injecting of hundreds of new cards into the format.
The trouble with Cori-Steel Cutter in Standard is there are very few efficient answers once the card is on the table. One-for-one removal with cards like Abrade can sometimes catch an unequipped Cutter in the early turns, but experienced players will know what matchups to expect this kind of interaction from and play around it by setting up turns where they can cast Cutter and an additional spell so they still create the 1/1 Monk token even if the Equipment is removed.
Standard’s best defense against the Cutter decks, Temporary Lockdown, removes both the tokens and the Equipment, but even Lockdown isn’t completely foolproof, as cards like Into the Flood Maw can bounce it in response to its enters trigger, or just unlock what’s under the enchantment on the opponent’s end step. Worse yet, Temporary Lockdown leaves Standard with rotation in August, leaving Ultima as the only complete, albeit expensive, answer.
All of that being said, however, I would not be surprised to see Cutter dodge a ban this time around. While undoubtedly powerful, the card is still just a few months old and is only seeing play in two metagame decks at the moment. We also don’t know what’s coming with the release of Edge of Eternities, which leads me to believe WotC may hold off banning the powerful Equipment in lieu of targeting its equally powerful deckmates, such as…
Monstrous Rage
While Cori-Steel Cutter may be the talk of the town, Monstrous Rage is the card most likely to be banned for several reasons.
First off, Monstrous Rage has been legal since the release of Wilds of Eldraine in September 2023, which, under the old two-year system, means it would have been up for rotation this fall. With the extension to Standard’s set lifecycle however, cards like Monstrous Rage have effectively been given the green light to claim even more metagame real estate if left unchecked. Rage has had plenty of time in the sun, and it makes more sense to remove it first before addressing a card like Cori-Steel Cutter that was printed just a few months ago.
Monstrous Range simply does too much for a one-mana instant in Standard. If red were falling behind other colors in overall card quality, there’d be less of an issue, but sets from the last year have produced some of the strongest red cards in recent memory, with Monstrous Rage the cherry on top.
Standard has traditionally thrived on the rock-paper-scissors agreement among aggressive, midrange, and control/combo decks, but cards like Monstrous Rage have contributed heavily to the recent warping of that balance. Creature-based midrange decks have all but gone extinct, as Rage cuts off the ability to block effectively, and the few that have endured have been priced into playing specific colors to have access to the few tools that combat the onslaught to any success.
I don’t believe Monstrous Rage is deserving of a ban because it’s an “unfair” or “broken” card, but because it is amplifying the already powerful, established archetypes to a point where they are gatekeeping any real innovation in the format.
WotC has stated that a larger Standard would require them to take a more proactive approach to bans, and I can’t think of a better time for them to put this into practice than now, starting with Rage.
Stock Up
At the risk of sounding hypocritical, having just detailed why Cori-Steel Cutter is unlikely to be banned because of its age in the format, I do think there is a case to be made for banning Stock Up.
Now, I realize the format’s more traditional control decks are already hanging on by a thread, but the problem with Stock Up is that it’s not exclusively a control card. At just three mana, Stock Up is easily playable in any deck with access to blue, including Azorius Omniscience, Esper Pixies, and the uncontained wildfire that is Izzet Prowess. Prior to the recent metagame shift, even Domain was seen employing the powerful uncommon.
We’ve established that Cori-Steel Cutter is unlikely to get the hammer this time around and that Monstrous Rage is the most likely to be removed, but only taking Rage does next to nothing to slow Izzet Prowess. Removing Monstrous Rage and Stock Up however, allows Prowess to exist but without the ability to consistently grind out games.
Yes, removing Stock Up would hurt the format’s control decks, but alternatives exist and it would be a small price to pay for curbing Prowess’s dominance. It’s also worth mentioning that Azorius Omniscience, the format’s only real “combo” deck, is becoming more and more common in the ban conversation (more on that later), and removing Stock Up would allow the deck to exist but with less consistency.
In summary, I don’t think Stock Up will be banned, but if Monstrous Rage goes instead of Cutter, I’d like to see Stock Up go along with it.
Up the Beanstalk
Unsurprisingly, Up the Beanstalk is still in the ban discussion.
We know the card is good. It’s banned in Modern and strong enough for play in Legacy, so why does it persist in Standard?
I don’t know if ‘ol Beans has dirt on someone or if it’s because it’s one of the few playable green cards in the format, but against the odds, the two-mana enchantment has endured despite being in the ban conversation time and time again.
While undoubtedly powerful, the truth is very few decks can afford to play green in Standard right now, and any time a Beans deck manages to establish a foothold, the metagame seems to shift drastically and pushes it just out of reach of the ban hammer.
Call it dumb luck, but it’s likely Up the Beanstalk will survive until rotation in 2027. With the only real Beans deck – Domain – already dropping in metagame share and losing both Zur, Eternal Schemer and Leyline Binding in August, Beans is effectively restricted to whatever deck is able to play Overlords post-rotation.
I’m not going to claim Up the Beanstalk is immune to a ban, but it almost seems fruitless at this point in its Standard lifecycle.
Omniscience
Last, and probably least, we have Omniscience.
When putting this list together, I almost felt bad including Omniscience, but things have changed tremendously since its first bout in Standard, and the expensive enchantment is no longer reserved for meme decks with Door to Nothingness and Worldfire.
Standard’s only real combo deck, Azorius Omniscience is a serious contender that continues to evolve with each new set while also putting up impressive numbers despite not boasting an overwhelming share of the metagame.
A testament to its recent success, whispers of Omniscience in the ban discussion have grown into a dull roar, but I’m not convinced that the deck’s namesake card is what should be drawing ire.
As I mentioned earlier, Azorius Omniscience is (currently) the only combo deck among Standard’s top decks, and while it can feel pretty one sided to play against, that’s honestly just combo matchups by nature. Coupled with a lower (albeit rising) metagame percentage, I don’t think it’s at a point where key pieces like Omniscience or Abuelo’s Awakening deserve to be banned.
That being said, it’s likely that this round of bans plus rotation will lead to a steady uptick in the Azorius Omniscience metagame share, but even then I don’t foresee WotC killing off an entire archetype when a card like Stock Up could just as easily be sacrificed.
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