At the start of Thursday’s Weekly MTG stream, Blake Rasmussen and Steve Sunu said there wouldn’t be any news this week, but about an hour into their play through of Shandalar, the world got a confirmation on part of the upcoming Banned and Restricted update.
As Rasmussen answered questions from the chat, he confirmed that the update “will change the companion mechanic.”
There has been plenty of speculation on what exactly will happen to the companion mechanic, whether it will be banned altogether, limited to certain formats, or if it would undergo a new rule change. Rasmussen’s comment makes it clear that it will be a mechanical change and not a blanket banning.
Following the above statement about companion, Rasmussen went into detail on why they announce an upcoming change to the Banned and Restricted List instead of making the changes suddenly. He said that while they make the tweet as soon as the meeting on whether to take action or not is over, the team needs time to write and edit the article, translate the article into many languages, and then give the digital teams enough time to implement the changes.
Rasmussen said the team is aware of the impact an announcement has on formats, with regards to making it a lame duck format, but think that this option is better than surprising people one morning with sweeping changes.