After all the hubbub of MagicCon: Las Vegas, it seems we’re settling in for a quiet week. Edge of Eternities story chapters are steadily being revealed, but spoilers are still a couple of weeks out. That said, there’s still big news on the horizon. Next week, Wizards of the Coast will release the latest much-anticipated banned and restricted announcement.
To say this announcement has been a long time coming would be an understatement. People have long had a problem with Monstrous Rage, and Cori-Steel Cutter only made things worse. Following the recent results of Pro Tour Final Fantasy, it’s clearer than ever that something needs to be done.
Thankfully, most MTG players are now expecting that major changes are on the horizon. For MTG Arena players, it now seems these changes will be happening even sooner than expected.
Closing the Gap
For the longest time, bans have taken slightly longer to implement on MTG Arena. Typically, Wizards of the Coast announces bans on a Monday, at around 8 am PST. As soon as this announcement happens, the bans and unbans in the announcement come into effect immediately. MTG Arena players, however, have always had to wait until Tuesday.
Curiously, this isn’t because of any major technical limitation that mandated an extra day’s work to get bans online. Instead, MTG Arena simply updates on Tuesdays, so that’s when the ban list update was pushed live. For the most part, MTG players haven’t minded this system; however, it’ll be changing next week.
Following the latest MTG Arena announcements post going live, WotC_Jay took to Reddit with an additional update. Thanks to steadily improving tech, the bans will now be implemented “at noon on the Monday of announcement (Pacific time).” This means there will only be four hours from the bans being announced and implemented on MTG Arena.
For anyone who’s sick and tired of the Mono Red Aggro and Izzet Prowess meta hell, this is good news. Once Monday rolls around, we won’t have to be subjected to it for an extra day, provided Wizards bans the right cards. That said, this change technically isn’t all positive, as it partially closes a valuable trick.
Previously, the delay between announcement and ban implementation allowed MTG Arena players to craft soon-to-be-banned cards. This might seem silly, however, these crafts were essentially free since wildcards are refunded for banned cards. At worst, this means you get a few new cards to play with in Historic and/or Timeless.
Technically, this trick will still be possible once Monday rolls around; however, MTG players will have to be quick about it.
A Much Needed Fix
If you ask us, this change to the MTG Arena Ban schedule is definitely a positive one. Banned MTG cards are banned for a reason, so the less time players have to deal with them, the better. On top of this, it just makes sense that bans would be implemented everywhere on the same day to minimize potential confusion.
Arguably, to cut out confusion, all the bans should be implemented everywhere at exactly 8 am Pacific Time. Doing this, however, would completely cut out the crafting loophole, which wouldn’t be ideal for many players. With this in mind, the system we’re getting on Monday seems like a nice best of both worlds compromise.
Thankfully, while this is the only fix we’ll be getting on Monday, Wizards is working on a major frustration. Currently, Jumbo Cactuar is basically unseable on MTG Arena thanks to the way that you assign damage. On Arena, you have to manually assign each point of damage. For Jumbo Cactuar, this means you have to click 10,000 times.
Not only is this system a fast track to repetitive strain injury, but it’s also basically impossible to use properly. Since MTG Arena has fairly strict turn timers, you’ll struggle to assign all 10,000 points of damage in the time you have. Potentially, this issue could cause a game loss; however, that is admittedly somewhat unlikely.
Mercifully, Wizards is well aware of this issue and is working on a fix. WotC_Jay confirmed this in another comment on Reddit. Sadly, there’s no timeline for when a solution to this problem will be implemented, but it’s nice to know it’s being worked on nonetheless.
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