We note that Growth Spiral, Wilderness Reclamation, and Teferi, Time Raveler were already slated to rotate this fall with the release of Zendikar Rising. With Wilderness Reclamation leaving the environment, we feel it's also time for the Standard metagame to move on without Teferi, Time Raveler. While we'd considered banning Teferi, Time Raveler in past updates, one reason we didn't was evidence that it was helping hold Wilderness Reclamation decks in check. We've often heard the feedback that the repetitive play patterns and reduced capability for interaction that Teferi, Time Raveler can create feel oppressive and limiting. To weaken these sacrifice strategies, open up more metagame diversity, and create a more fun gameplay environment, Cauldron Familiar is banned.įinally, we'll also be removing Teferi, Time Raveler from the environment. Further, the number of triggers generated by these decks can be cumbersome for both players in digital play. In addition to having high overall win rates, these decks put considerable pressure on aggressive and midrange creature decks. In order to remove Reclamation decks from this most played spot and to reduce the metagame share of ramp decks in general, Wilderness Reclamation and Growth Spiral are banned.Īnother archetype that has maintained a high win rate over a long period of time is Black-Red (or Jund) Sacrifice, featuring the Cauldron Familiar and Witch's Oven combo. Within that category, Wilderness Reclamation decks have been considered the strongest archetype by much of the competitive community, making up 54% of the metagame at the Players Tour Finals and about 15% of the Mythic metagame on Arena. Ramp decks using Growth Spiral together made up 68% of the day 1 metagame at the Players Tour Finals and represent approximately 25–30% of the metagame at Mythic ranking on the Arena ladder. Therefore, we're making bans targeted at weakening decks that have been strong and popular at the highest levels of competitive play and at some cards and combos that have overstayed their welcome in the eyes of much of the Standard community. As the rate at which players can rack up games of Standard in digital is higher than in tabletop, we believe it's correct to enact metagame change at a faster rate as well. But in an era of social distancing, the proportion of Standard play occurring on digital platforms has increased substantially. Under our usual approach, we would have allowed Standard rotation to provide a natural and predictable shift in the metagame with the release of Zendikar Rising. However, at the skill level of our most competitive tournaments and the Mythic ranking on the Arena ladder, we do see a small number of decks with high win rates and play rates that have remained in that metagame position for quite some time. Outside of the very top levels of competitive play, including throughout most of the MTG Arena traditional Standard ladder, we're seeing a good distribution of deck diversity and win rates. This set of changes is a deviation from our usual banned-list philosophy for Standard, and as such, we consider it an experiment. After watching the environment progress for several weeks and reviewing the decklist entries for the Players Tour Finals, we've decided to make some changes to shake up the metagame. While we saw new decks emerging, ultimately the top decks were able to adapt and retain their metagame share. At that time, the environment had just seen the results of Players Tours 3 and 4, the companion rules change was recent, and Core Set 2021 had just entered the format. In the last banned and restricted list update, we chose not to make any changes to Standard. Historic and Brawl sections by Jay Parker Standard The list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here.
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