The latest Banned and Restricted update for Magic the Gathering has cast The One Ring card into the Fires of Mount Doom – or at least, banned it in the Modern format. The card was a powerhouse in multiple formats from the moment it was printed in the popular Tales of Middle Earth set.
Wizards of the Coast published an update to the MTG Banlist on Monday December 12, banning five cards in various formats, and unbanning four others. The MTG Modern format gets the biggest overhaul, with three bannings and four unbannings.
You can find the update announcement on the MTG website.
The One Ring ban is the biggest change for Modern. As a colorless artifact that provides powerful card draw and a turn of nigh-invulnerability, it’s the sort of MTG card that homogenises formats: every deck can run it at very little opportunity cost.
It’s also a miserable card to play into multiple copies of: while the One Ring drains ever more of its controllers life each turn it remains in play, if they drop a second copy, the Legend rule lets them banish the existing copy. That gives them another turn of invulnerability and resets the life drain counters.
Amped Raptor, one of the overtuned energy cards from the MTG set Modern Horizons Three, is also banned. It’s used in the Boros and Jeskai energy decks that overtook the meta earlier this year when MH3 was printed. Jegantha the Wellspring is also banned from Modern, Pioneer, and Explorer.
The unbannings are also illustrative. There’s Splinter Twin, a red Aura that was once part of a format-defining combo deck that could generate infinite copies of a creature; Green Sun’s Zenith, a cheap and versatile creature tutor; the classic card selection and graveyard-filling sorcery Faithless Looting; and Mox Opal, a super cheap (but conditional) mana rock.
All four were banned for being simply too good, at least when they were originally printed. But since Modern Horizons sets started to appear on the MTG release schedule and flood the format with broken cards, those old banning decisions have looked increasingly quaint.
If you prefer to build MTG Arena decks than paper ones, only the Jegantha banning affects you. Make sure you check out our guide to all the MTG Arena Codes that still work!
Source: Wargamer
