Nexus of Fate Banned in Best-of-1 Standard in Magic Arena

Wizards of the Coast

Today, Wizards of the Coast have banned Nexus of Fate from Magic: The Gathering Arena's Best-of-1 Standard matches.

Wizards went on to explain how Nexus of Fate is disrupting normal play on Magic Arena, comparing it to the tabletop experience: "The same cannot be said for digital environments where you must explicitly identify each game choice every time you wish to make it. There's no calling over the games rules engine to explain the situation so you can skip ahead, or to issue a ruling on whether the actions taken could be considered stalling or slow play (at least not yet!). Part of the challenge with these kinds of loops is that even if we manage to win the digital arms race to force a game concede when game states remain unchanged, they could still be disruptive to what we consider normal play. Using Nexus of Fate as an example, win conditions sometimes take a half hour or more to finish, with the majority or all of that time being non-interactive. This said, there are also cases where Nexus sees play and resolves games in a non-disruptive fashion, which is why banning it has been debated for so long."

In addition to the ban announcement, Wizards also explained that players who had Nexus of Fate as part of their in-game collection on Magic Arena prior to the announcement will receive an equal number of mythic rare Wildcards to their collection as part of the February 14 update. The refunded mythic rare wildcards will automatically be added to player collections, and there will no in-game notification for this refund. Core Set 2019 in-game store bundles that originally included Nexus of Fate have been updated with Omniscience instead.

Those who are currently in a Constructed event using a deck with Nexus of Fate will still be able to continue finishing the event but the deck will be flagged as invalid. Traditional best-of-3 Standard formats will still allow players to use Nexus of Fate.

Our MTG Facebook page made a poll recently asking fans what if Nexus of Fate should be banned in Standard, and here are the results:

You can watch me pilot Nexus of Fate in the Bant Fog video below.

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The next Magic: The Gathering ban & restricted announcement will be made on March 11.

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