Wizards of the Coast has made its latest Magic: The Gathering ban and restricted announcement today, and if you're expecting them to just ban Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath across different formats, as they promised last week, your expectations are about to get twisted because the latest announcement is a big one!
The company has announced multiple cards they're banning across five different Magic formats, including Historic, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. In addition, Wizards also changed the Cascade rules.
"Throughout the past year, with pandemic conditions resulting in fewer high-level tabletop tournaments, we correspondingly slowed the pace of banned and restricted list changes in nonrotating formats," R&D developer Ian Duke said. "Recent community discussion has made it clear that many fans of those formats are interested in seeing shakeups to those metagames. Today's changes represent us taking a close look at each of Historic, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage and responding to both play data and community feedback."
Here's a list of cards they're banning:
Historic:
Omnath, Locus of Creation is banned (from suspended).
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is banned.
Pioneer:
Balustrade Spy is banned.
Teferi, Time Raveler is banned.
Undercity Informer is banned.
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is banned.
Wilderness Reclamation is banned.
Modern:
Field of the Dead is banned.
Mystic Sanctuary is banned.
Simian Spirit Guide is banned.
Tibalt's Trickery is banned.
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is banned.
Legacy:
Arcum's Astrolabe is banned.
Dreadhorde Arcanist is banned.
Oko, Thief of Crowns is banned.
Vintage:
Lurrus of the Dream-Den is unbanned.
Wow! This is the biggest ban announcement they've made in recent years!
Duke also explained why they are changing the Cascade rule:
"Modal double-faced cards were designed to allow both faces to be playable in all situations," Duke said. " For example, if an effect lets you cast spells from the graveyard, players expect to be able to cast either face. Feedback has shown us, however, that in situations where certain criteria are mentioned, being able to play or cast the back face when it doesn't meet those criteria is not intuitive. This confusion, plus being allowed to cast spells without paying their mana costs that you shouldn't be able to, makes cascade an issue."
"As a result, we're tweaking cascade such that the spell you cast off the triggered ability must also have lesser converted mana cost than the spell with cascade," Duke added.
Many players have been suggesting this rule change since the release of Kaldheim because of how Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor is dominating eternal formats because players can just Cascade to play the planeswalker side in early turns.
Here is the new Cascade rule:
702.84a. Cascade is a triggered ability that functions only while the spell with cascade is on the stack. "Cascade" means "When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card whose converted mana cost is less than this spell's converted mana cost. You may cast that spell without paying its mana cost if its converted mana cost is less than this spell's converted mana cost. Then put all cards exiled this way that weren't cast on the bottom of your library in a random order."
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What do you think about the cards they banned across these eternal formats, and the Cascade rule change? Let us know what you think in the comments section below, and don't forget to check out our new MTG website, MTGRocks.com.
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