Magic: The Gathering October 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement

Art by Chris Rahn/ Image credit: Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast has made its Magic banned & restricted announcement today, and unsurprisingly, no changes have been made for all formats.

"The competitive balances of all the major formats are in healthy places at this point, so we are making no changes," Ian Duke explains.

The announcement pointed out that Wizards considered unbanning cards in Modern but they would rather wait for the results of the upcoming Modern Pro Tour, Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan before evaluating any potential changes for the format. They'll make another banned & restricted announcement on January 15, but Duke says that it's unlikely that they'll make any changes to Modern in January, explaining that they're "sensitive to the timing of that announcement relative to the Pro Tour, and only would make a change if it were very clearly needed."

As for Standard, the announcement points out the "diverse, healthy metagame" in Magic Online. The Magic World Championships only had three major archtypes, but because of the event's unique nature, the results are not considered an influential factor. You can hear the Magic World Championship competitor Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa explain it well in this video:

I think the issue is not this time is not the diversity of the Standard's metagame but the lack of new archtypes after the release of Magic's latest set Ixalan. It seems the meta is just composed of decks that already existed before Ixalan's launch with just a few cards added. Of course, there are some "new" Standard decks that are considered competitive like Abzan Tokens or Esper Tokens but the most popular decks are still Ramunap Red, Temur Energy, Blue/Black Control, and Mardu Vehicles. Sure, Standard is currently "healthy" and "diverse" but it's far from innovative. Where are the competitive dinosaur and pirate decks?

Do you think Wizards should have banned or unbanned cards in this latest announcement? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Read more: Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Ixalan Goodies Revealed