If you haven't already seen it, the new banned and restricted list has been announced. You can read all about it here: B&R Update. This is huge news friends: several cards were banned, some were unbanned, and multiple formats were affected. Let's walk through the changes and I will give you my take on each card.
Modern
This is about as predictable as the sunrise, but I still think it is worth talking about. Treasure Cruise was abusive and had created a stranglehold. It singlehandedly forced about a dozen decks completely out of the format. Tight aggro-control lists require specific, high-synergy cards to coalesce into a solid game plan. These decks often need some cheap card draw or cantrips to glue the deck together. Without Treasure Cruise, Delver really isn't going to be a deck. This opens up lots of space in the format for decks that were more easily disrupted by Delver's cheap counterspells.
Although the debate was not unanimous. no one should be surprised to see Dig get buried along with Cruise. Delver decks would easily just switch the cards. They would be worse, but still strong. The trouble is that a slightly weaker Delver deck couldn't beat things like Scapeshift or Twin, who still get to freely abuse Dig. Banning Dig Through Time will make it so that Twin, UWR, Tron, and Scapeshift are back to their pre-Khans status in terms of power level and metagame share.
This caught many by surprise, myself included. I thought that Pod would be banned a year ago, but it wasn't. Since then, I just assumed that Wizards was endorsing, or at least accepting, Pod as the dominant deck in the format. The argument had been brought up that Cruise and Dig HAD to go, but then we were just left with the same format that existed pre-Khans (plus Siege Rhino). Many people thought that this would not lead to an interesting Pro Tour format, thus the banning of Birthing Pod.
Those who paid attention to the announcement of PT Fate Reforged will probably remember that it was slated to be a Standard constructed portion. This was later changed, as announced by Aaron Forsythe himself. This seemed a little fishy at the time, but I didn't think anything of it until now. The reason for the change is clear and it shows that Wizards has been leaning towards banning Pod for a long time now.
There is no Dredge deck in Modern and there won't be one even with this being legal. Troll was pre-preemptively banned when Modern was announced as a new constructed format. The thinking was that they wanted to differentiate this new format from old extended and restricting the power of non-interactive combo decks like Dredge and Dark Depths was a clear first step. I like the unbanning of Grave-Troll because I am not sure it should really be on the list in the first place.
As it stands Grave-Troll really can't have an impact on the format by itself. Dredge could be a problem with the right cards, but Dread Return is the key card in the archetype. Bridge From Below and Narcomoeba are cute, but there are a dozen or more high quality sweepers to solve that problem. E.g. Slagstorm, Drown in Sorrow, Wrath of God. This would only ever be a problem if you could Dread Return a Flamekin Zealot.
Legacy
Banned: Treasure Cruise
Again, no surprise here. The card is simply too powerful in concert with a critical mass of cheap threats, disruption, and burn. Importantly though, Dig Through Time has not been tested as rigorously in Legacy and could play a role in certain decks like Miracles, given an opportunity. An opportunity which the card will get it seems.
This isn't as clear cut to me. This card was crazy and abusive and let to degenerate games with degenerate decks. In the announcement article on the mothership, this change was explained by the fact that any reanimator decks would simply rather reanimate Griselbrand than Worldgorger anyway. I am not so sure that it true though. Griselbrand almost always draws enough cards to find a combo finish, which is tough to beat, but that only speaks to the idea of banning that card.
In my opinion, the choice to bring back Dragon shouldn't be based only on the fact that Griselbrand is more appealing. Why would you unban a card that can instantly create a two-card infinite mana combo as early as turn one? Is that what we want to happen in Legacy? Force of will and Daze help keep unfair decks in check, but I don't want Wizards putting me in the position of choosing between only two decks: broken or Blue.
Vintage
Restricted: Treasure Cruise
I like this decision. Vintage is the broken format where no one cares what you are doing as long as it is awesome. Treasure Cruise was a little too strong, but things never really get banned in Vintage, which I like.
As you know I am a huge fan of Pauper and compete regularly on MTGO. I was expecting to see Treasure Cruise banned in Pauper, but it wasn't. I think that the format is diverse and healthy, but many people complain that Delver was already the best deck before Treasure Cruise and now there is no stopping it.
That is dramatic, but I am surprised about this no-call. It could be that Wizards doesn't really care if the format is imbalanced right now because there is no premier level events in Pauper. That would be unfortunate, but I expect it to be at least a little true.
Okay. Well that is cool andall, but I am not sure it matters too much. Don't get me wrong, Gifts is a totally broken card and it leads to many truly miserable games. It often means that you just can't lose when you cast it. We all know what the card is capable of.
My thinking here is that there are cheaper ways to win in Vintage, so why pay more? Most decks weren't even taking advantage of their ability to play the first copy of Gifts, so that tells me they probably didn't want the second, third, or fourth.
That's all for today Zoners. As promised next week I will have the Fate Reforged Pauper Cube update article. See you then.
-GG
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