One week after Wizards of the Coast banned three Magic: The Gathering cards in the new Pioneer format, the publisher is keeping its promise to do off-cycle ban and restricted announcements every Monday, and today, they announced that they're banning one more green card in the new nonrotating format: "Veil of Summer".
The Pioneer ban update is effecting on tabletop and Magic Online starting November 12.
"Observing the evolution of the Pioneer format after last week's bans, we're generally seeing positive changes to the metagame," Ian Duke said. "However, green-based aggro and ramp decks still remain overrepresented in the competitive metagame at the expense of midrange and control. Therefore, we are banning 'Veil of Summer' to better allow for natural metagame forces to provide counterpressure against these strategies. We expect this to increase incentive to play reactive strategies that will help keep the format in balance over the long term without fundamentally changing any of the diversity of decks currently available in Pioneer."
WotC reiterated their plan to monitor the evolution of Pioneer's metagame closely and make necessary changes as needed, with possible updates every Monday for the time being. The publisher said that they will eventually align Pioneer updates with their normal banned and restricted announcements, so right now, whether or not they will make changes to the new format, they will make an announcement every Monday.
The next scheduled Pioneer ban and restricted announcement will be on November 18.
What cards do you think they will ban in Pioneer next? Feel free to discuss in the comments section below.
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