Category - B&R Announcements

WOTC just released their highly anticipated Banned and Restricted announcement, affecting the Pioneer, Modern, Vintage, and Legacy formats. Come see who's getting the axe.

As of December 4, 2023, we're seeing some significant changes across multiple formats. Let's dive into the details and understand the rationale behind these decisions.

Standard Shakeup: Three Dominant Cards Banned! Find out which powerhouse cards have been axed from the format and how this changes the game.

Wizards just released a Banned and Restricted announcement today, affecting Legacy.

Wizards released a Banned and Restricted announcement with changes in Pioneer, Modern, and Pauper

Wizards released a Banned and Restricted announcement that related to Historic.

While many people expected Brainstorm to be banned in Historic, because it was included in most decklists in the Strixhaven Championship tournament, things turned out a little bit different...

This B&R announcement wasn't a real surprise. The Thassa's Oracle / Tainted Pact combo is really powerful and over-represented within the Historic meta. People were already shouting for Wizards to do something about this. Especially since on Arena it is such a nuisance to play against the combo. To resolve the combo as quickly as possible, it was actually faster than to just rope your opponent and wait for Arena to "handle" the rest of the turn.

As already spoiled in the Secret Lair's Smitten Superdrop announcement it is now official: the B&R announcement of February 15th 2021. The date was not officially known yet, but people quickly figured out when to expect it when they found the still hidden announcement from WotC. But not sure everyone expected this much of a format shake-up!

After the banning of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath most people predicted that Wizards has banned one of the cards that indeed appear in the Omnath decks, but would not stop Omnath from being dominant. Wizards said that whey would keep an eye on the metagame, and they announced this B&R Announcement. In the Grand Finals 2020 of last weekend we have seen Omnath being almost 72% of the metagame, making the card more dominant than Oko was. However, there are a few cards receiving bans that not everyone saw coming.