Yesterday, a long-awaited MTG ban window finally came and went. Modern players finally got the ban that they needed, Pauper got a much-needed shakeup, and, while Legacy didn’t necessarily need any changes to happen, some cards were removed from the format that promoted less-than-fun play patterns.
In many ways, the March 31st ban announcement was exactly what it needed to be. There was, of course, one exception. A follow-up ban announcement wasn’t announced. Wizards of the Coast will no longer make bans outside of these specified windows. While the intention is to increase player confidence in building constructed decks, it has the nasty side effect of routinely causing competitive formats to go stale.
Fortunately, a follow-up announcement has revealed the next ban window, which includes a bizarre catch.
No Modern Bans on June 30
The next MTG ban announcement was revealed the day after the initial ban announcement. During Weekly MTG on Twitch, the next MTG ban window was announced to be June 30. This was the biggest question that players had after the ban announcement made yesterday, so it’s good to get a prompt answer.
Notably, this ban announcement occurs during a Regional Championship Qualifier season. To ensure that this was left undisturbed, it was announced that the next ban window will not include changes to the format of the Qualifier season: Modern.
This is extremely risky. Underworld Breach just left the Modern format, and there’s a non-zero chance that Breach was just a bit more powerful than another undiscovered power outligher. On day one of the Modern unbans, there are multiple other decks using the same package that Grinding Breach did, but with different win conditions. They are still winning the game between turns 2-4. Kethis Combo and Jeskai Ascendancy combo are just two examples.
If one of these takes over the Modern format again, it will take even longer to ban the problematic cards than usual. A lack of timely Modern bans already caused two stale formats thanks to Nadu, Winged Wisdom and Underworld Breach. Mox Opal might cause a third one. Instead of taking until the end of June to see bans, we could be stuck with this combo deck for an entire summer.
Big Standard Event
While the shocking statement above was the biggest takeaway from this Weekly MTG event, Gavin Verhey, Blake Rasmussen and Carmen Klomparens also mentioned that the next ban announcement is a big one for the Standard format. In an effort to make it more transparent when players’ decks may be affected by bans, Wizards of the Coast has been very transparent about when bans will impact the Standard format, in particular. We have been told to expect some changes to the Standard format on June 30 to better prepare the format for rotation in August.
No bans were made for Standard this time around, but that will unlikely be the case for June 30. Three power outliers were discussed for the Standard format during the ban talk. These are generally referred to as Mice aggro decks, Up the Beanstalk decks, and self-bounce decks. While these decks all keep themselves in check, one of them may pull ahead in a major way after rotation.
Outside of these specific Standard-focused bans, the threshold for taking action against Standard in other off-season ban announcements is very high. Notably, Carmen stated that, in order for them to take action in Standard, they’re looking to stop decks occupying about half the format. Omnath, Locus of Creation back in Zendikar Rising Standard, Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and Oko, Thief of Crowns are all problematic examples of cards that may get banned off-season. These decks single-handedly dominated the Standard format regardless of how they were prepped against.
A Long Winter Ahead
If another broken MTG deck appears in the Modern format, players are going to have to bear with it for the next six(ish) months. That is an obscene amount of time for a broken deck that could arrive as early as this weekend. Hopefully, Underworld Breach’s ban doesn’t give rise to another combo deck with the 8-mox shell. Unfortunately, it does look as though something of this nature might appear.
Many players understand the need for ban windows. While these undeniably promote a sense of security for buying new decks, there is a potential middleground where players can still rest assured that their decks won’t get banned out of the blue, but bad formats won’t take months to change: make ban windows smaller.
Instead of a three-month wait, even reducing ban windows to two months could really help delete problematic power outliers or unfun play patterns from MTG formats before they become ruined for a period of time.
Should a Modern deck become a problem for the next six months, hopefully, a change to the ban windows will be considered so that this doesn’t happen again.