Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has released the Magic: The Gathering Banned & Restricted announcement for June.
While WotC opted for no bans in any format, they did note that Pioneer’s Abzan Amalia Combo was being watched closely, due to the deck’s tendency to create negative gameplay experiences by drawing games. Despite Amalia Combo’s recent surge in popularity and winrate, WotC states they don’t want to disrupt the on-going Pioneer Regional Championship Qualifier (RCQs) season, and are happy overall with the format, with the biggest positive being that “…almost every macro-archetype is viable in the format.” Pioneer will be the format for the upcoming round of Regional Championships starting in September, so we may see action taken against Amalia decks leading up to those events.
Over in Modern, many were clamoring for action to be taken against Nadu, Winged Wisdom immediately following the release of Modern Horizons 3. According to WotC, despite the early concerns, the format has risen to the challenge of addressing Nadu, and is now in a stable spot with several new decks forming around other cards from Modern Horizons 3, including Ruby Storm Mono-Black Necrodominance.
Grief, another polarizing card which has been the subject of many a ban discussion in recent months, was curiously not mentioned in either Modern or Legacy, where decks featuring the evoke-able Elemental are reaching concerning metagame percentages.
Lastly, MTG Arena’s Brawl format has been struggling to keep up with the influx of new Commanders from Modern Horizons 3, but being a digital-only format, the team in charge is able to make adjustments without implementing full-on bans.
WotC has also confirmed they will be going more in-depth on the state of various formats on tomorrow’s episode of Weekly MTG, which you can watch on the Magic Twitch channel.
For more information, read the original announcement from WotC.
