The next Banned & Restricted announcement for Magic: The Gathering is scheduled for Monday, March 11. This will be the first B&R announcement since Wizards of the Coast (WotC) banned multiple cards in Pioneer and Modern on December 4.
Monday’s B&R announcement has been known since it was scheduled on the Weekly MTG stream in November, where members of the Play Design team set expectations for the December 4 update and expanded on the new cadence for banning and unbanning cards across all formats. Blake Rasmussen offered a reminder for Monday’s B&R announcement yesterday on Weekly MTG (starting at 1:15:10 in the video above), adding that Tuesday’s Weekly MTG stream will be a discussion on the update. This last part points to a possibility that this B&R announcement will take action and not be like October 16’s update that offered no changes and no explanation which led to the revamping of the handling of B&R announcements.
Speculation on the formats and particular cards to get hit has started flowing on social media after the reminder was made yesterday afternoon. Many players feel Standard is in a great spot and Pioneer showcased a diverse and healthy format at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor last month. Modern has the target on its back as three of the top decks all rely on abusing the cascade mechanic to cast powerful spells for very little mana. Combine that with the many free ways to protect these combos and you can see why players are concerned with the format. In addition to these issues, The One Ring, Orcish Bowmasters, and Grief continue to restrict what is viable in Modern.
Legacy and Vintage remain mostly unchanged since the December 4 B&R announcement, so bans seem unlikely. Of course, unbans could come to any of these formats other than Standard now that WotC has shown an initiative to unban cards more liberally.