Even as 2024 draws to a close, Wizards of the Coast hasn’t been slowing down. We’ve had announcement after announcement for Pioneer Masters, Innistrad Remastered, and Aetherdrift, and now the year is almost over. Before Wizards shuts up shop for the holidays, however, there’s been one last major announcement. At long last, Wizards of the Coast has announced new bans for multiple MTG formats.
To say these MTG bans have been a long time coming would be an understatement, at this point. Following the date of these bans being set in October, many MTG players have been eagerly awaiting this long-overdue change. Wizards may have stopped Nadu from running riot with the last bans, but new problems have appeared since then. Thankfully, Wizards has addressed these emergent problems.
At long last, The One Ring, and a whole lot more, have been banned.
The One Ring Is Banned
From the moment that The One Ring was first printed in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, many MTG players have despised it. The card’s flavor may be fantastic, but its power level is anything but. Not only is the card a more-than-capable draw engine, but it also offers protection against everything.
As if this wasn’t good enough already, MTG players can effectively reset The One Ring by playing another copy. Since the Burden Counters are tied to the card, not the player, The One Ring is surprisingly easy to keep in check. This has allowed it to see a great deal of play everywhere across multiple formats.
In Modern specifically, The One Ring has been a consistently growing problem that’s only become more prevalent with time. At first, this card was mostly confined to midrange lists, while aggro decks flew under its four mana cost. Now, however, even decks like Boros and Mardu have jumped aboard the bandwagon.
Essentially, The One Ring is so good, that every Modern deck wants to play it. Now that they’re doing exactly that, every other strategy has to run this card too to keep up. Unsurprisingly, this made The One Ring the most popular card in Modern, appearing in over 60% of decks. Now, however, that number will drop to 0.
It’s safe to say that The One Ring being banned is going to have a major effect on the Modern metagame. Multiple strategies are likely going to fall off, or need complete reinvention to survive this change. Hopefully, the Modern meta that we’re left with after the dust settles will be better than what we’ve got now…
Six More Modern Changes
While everyone expected The One Ring to finally get banned, Wizards hasn’t held back with this announcement. In total, including The One Ring, seven cards have been banned, or unbanned in Modern. The full list of Modern changes is below.
- The One Ring is banned
- Amped Raptor is banned
- Jegantha, the Wellspring is banned
- Mox Opal is unbanned
- Green Sun’s Zenith is unbanned
- Faithless Looting is unbanned
- Splinter Twin is unbanned
Obviously, these bans are a massive deal for the Modern MTG format, and the Amped Raptor ban, in particular, is huge. Considering the strength of Energy decks, Amped Raptor, or something at least, absolutely needed to go alongside The One Ring. Without a change affecting Energy decks, they would have been poised to completely dominate the format.
Hopefully, the ban to Amped Raptor will be enough to keep Energy in check as the new Modern metagame develops. Speaking of the metagame, it should hopefully look more varied now that Jegantha, the Wellspring has been banned too. While Jegantha isn’t a huge menace, there’s often no reason not to play them, which makes deckbuilding rather dull.
Thankfully, Modern is hardly going to be dull thanks to four cards being unbanned out of nowhere. Mox Opal, Green Sun’s Zenith, and Faithless Looting all being unbanned should empower strategies new and old. Affinity, in particular, is going to get a big boost from Mox Opal being unbanned.
Last but not least, Splinter Twin has also finally been unbanned. This has long been requested by the MTG community, to the point that it’s become a bit of a meme. Sadly, I wouldn’t expect this card and classic combo to actually become a meta player in the Modern format.
Legacy Bans
As expected, Legacy has also seen a pair of highly requested bans in this major announcement. Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble have both been banned in Legacy, as of today. To put it lightly, both of these cards have been major problems in recent months, detrimentally dominating the metagame.
Psychic Frog, in particular, has been a meta-leading force in Legacy since its release, as it’s so ruthlessly efficient. Perfectly synergizing with reanimator strategies, Psychic Frog allows you to dump your hand into your graveyard with ease. As if this wasn’t good enough, Psychic Frog can also become a pretty scary threat, with Flying too, if it needs to.
There’s little question that Psychic Frog needed to be banned, however, it’s arguably not Legacy’s biggest problem. That honor, instead, goes to Vexing Bauble, which many pro players have been trying to get banned recently. This is quite ironic, as Vexing Bauble originally seemed poised to fix Legacy, and Modern, rather than break it.
Despite being intended to shut down free spells and combo decks, Vexing Bauble has been enabling these strategies in Legacy. By stopping needed counterspells like Force of Will, Vexing Bauble has allowed Mystic Forge, and other combo decks, to run rampant recently. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Vexing Bauble doesn’t even stop your own free spells, since you can easily sacrifice it.
Overall, these changes should breathe new life into the Legacy metagame while freeing up a lot of room for innovation. Decks like Reanimator, and even Mystic Forge, likely won’t go anywhere, but they should be a lot fairer.
Pioneer Bans
Last, but by no means least, Wizards of the Coast has announced that Jegantha, the Wellspring is now banned in Pioneer and Explorer. In their article all about the bans, Wizards stated that Jegantha had been “hurting the format’s diversity by reducing the pool of viable cards for many decks.” Ideally, this ban should stop decks from compromising so much, just to get a free extra card in.
While nowhere near the level of Lutri, the Spellchaser in Commander, Jegantha was essentially free for some Pioneer decks. This meant there was often no reason not to run it since you got a potentially useful extra card. While this isn’t necessarily terrible, problems emerge when you start forcing Jegantha in.
Should a deck like Rakdos Prowess almost fit Jegantha naturally, it makes sense to alter your list to fit them in. Not doing so could leave you worse off in the mirror, or “games where resources are tight” as Wizards explains. This makes Jegantha somewhat of a homogenizing force in Pioneer, which isn’t enjoyable.
By removing them from the format, Pioneer players should have a bit more freedom in their deck construction. This ban is also likely to somewhat hurt the Rakdos Prowess archetype which uses Jegantha the most.
More Changes Coming Soon
Ultimately, this ban announcement should make many MTG players happy, as it has addressed the obvious problem cards across multiple formats. Hopefully, now that these problems are being removed, new cards won’t rise to take their problematic meta-dominating place. Whether or not this will happen remains to be seen, so we’ll just have to watch tournament results over the coming weeks.
Thankfully, even if these new bans do cause problems, Wizards of the Coast has a plan to address them. As usual, Wizards has confirmed when the next MTG bans are scheduled to take place. MTG players can look forward to the next banned and restricted update, which will happen on March 31st.
Whether or not we’ll actually need new bans once the 31st of March rolls around currently remains to be seen.
