Underworld Breach is banned in Modern. The Magic: The Gathering enchantment card, which enables you to pull spells out of your graveyard, was a potent combo deck enabler. But it flew too close to the sun, forming an unbeatable loop in concert with the newly legal Mox Opal and the mill card Grinding Station that took over the meta.
This despicable deck enabled its wielder to repeatedly mill themselves out then win the game with either a Thassa’s Oracle or the Storm card Grapeshot. The strategy is damn hard to disrupt, to the point that official tournaments were seeing 40+ percent of the field running the exact same archetype.
The MTG banlist update, which sees Underworld Breach banned immediately, effective from March 31, spells out the problem in more detail. It points out that the Temur ‘Grinding Breach’ deck could win the game on turn one, and “is notoriously resistant to graveyard and artifact hate by virtue of its ability to diversify its threats, which made it uniquely difficult to overcome in sideboarding.”
Wizards of the Coast expects to see this MTG format shift significantly now that players aren’t having to spend half their sideboard defending against this deck. We’re expecting Boros Energy to supplant Underworld Breach as the format’s biggest boogeyman, but Wizards’ article hints it’s watching this archetype in particular to see if further bans are needed.
This ban was heavily anticipated. One content creator, Tolarian Community College, even announced it a week early, reasoning that it was guaranteed to happen, and he was on vacation on the date itself.
One prediction that didn’t come true for those speculating on it was the unbanning of Deathrite Shaman. We could’ve (and did’ve) told you that that wasn’t going to happen.
Other banlist changes concern the formats Legacy and Pauper. Legacy has seen Troll of Khazad-dûm banned to hurt its best deck Dimir Reanimator and Sowing Mycospawn banned to nerf Eldrazi decks. Pauper, meanwhile, has seen not just new cards added to the banlist but several struck off.
The banned cards are: Basking Broodscale, which forms a combo with Sadistic Glee and makes an infinitely large creature; Deadly Dispute, which is just too efficient value drawing cards and making treasure at the same time; and Kuldotha Rebirth, an efficient token maker.
Meanwhile the unbans, which designer Gavin Verhey writes are experimental, trial unbans, are High Tide and Prophetic Prism. High Tide is unbanned to try and make spell-based combo decks more viable, while Prophetic Prism is there to make Tron and Affinity better, but not too much better. Verhey outright states that if either archetype gets out of line, this artifact card will be sent straight back to the Shadow Realm.
For more great Magic: The Gathering reads, check out our guides to the MTG release schedule and the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
