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[Wulfric]

Damn, SaffronOlive (better known as Seth) is going in on WotC right now.

Wizards Can't Ban Away Standard's Problems (But They'll Probably Try)

On the bans:

In theory, bannings are a last resort that can fix a format in which one card or deck is simply too good. We've seen this work in the past. When Affinity absolutely dominated Mirrodin Standard and caused players to quit the game, the solution was to ban the key cards from the deck. When Caw Blade was 75% of the Standard format, the problem could easily be solved by banning Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. In these cases, bad formats became good because the dominant (and unfun) deck was banned from the format. However, the problem is different this time around.

As we saw with the last round of bannings (which, in hindsight, likely made the format less diverse, as strange as that sounds), bannings aren't some magical elixir that suddenly makes a bad (or at least, lacking in diversity) Standard into a good (or diverse) Standard. The problems with our current Standard are pretty much impossible to ban away. Rather than being "Oops, we made Jace, the Mind Sculptor too strong" or "maybe we shouldn't have printed artifact lands," there isn't one card or deck that is dominating our current Standard format. In fact, the list of cards that could be banned sounds downright silly, prominently featuring not just one but two uncommons in Winding Constrictor and Felidar Guardian, along with things like Scrapheap Scrounger.

On power level and IP popularity:

The issues go further than just reducing the power level and number of answers available in Standard. In the past year or two, Wizards has made it clear that it sees Magic not so much as a game but as a brand that it can use to sell merchandise, art books, and maybe even movies someday. The issue is that the push to being a brand rather than a game has had a hugely negative impact on the game itself. We see story cards and mechanics being pushed to absurd power levels. After all, no one will want to buy an Emrakul, the Promised End bobble head if Emrakul, the Promised End isn't good.

Instead of the primary focus being to make the game as good as possible, the goal is to draw as many new players as possible, or sell as much branded merchandise as possible, or "grow the brand." Now, it's not that any of these goals are bad in and of themselves, and this certainly isn't a "Wizards shouldn't make money" thing. Wizards should make money. Full stop. For better or worse, that is what a corporation is supposed to do. That is how capitalism works. The problem I have is that Wizards' competitive advantage is owning the greatest game on Earth, and when it comes right down to it, the way Wizards makes the most money is by keeping the game as healthy and fun as possible for as long as possible.

 

[charlequin]

Damn, SaffronOlive (better known as Seth) is going in on WotC right now.

I mean he's not particularly wrong about anything.

I will say that I think the no-answers problem in Standard is the consequence of worrying about acquisition, but I don't think it actually does anything beneficial for that purpose. Newbs don't like getting their guy Doom Bladed, sure, but historically the actual problems that have driven people away (outside of the most prominent ones, which fall into the social and financial categories) have to do with unfun environments and specific types of repetitive, frustrating gameplay. Similarly, I don't think the problem with overpowered face cards is really that pushing storyline cards is innately bad; it's that there are specific limits on how you can push cards, and going past those while underpowering answers creates fundamental problems with formats.

(Also, do I think it's a bit weird to call out Chris Cocks when they specifically swapped WotC from having a Hasbro stuffed suit who came out of the packaged goods industry as its CEO to having a long-time gaming person.)

 

[Santiako]

I wonder if standard being shit is rooted in no longer having Core Sets be always in standard, and with them the deep bench of staples and answers that were always available.

 

[kirblar]

No one knows SaffronOlive as Seth lol. If you say Seth, we assume Seth Manfield. That's why he's SaffronOlive!

And he's dead on about the face card stuff. Seeing a card make up 3/4s of the T8 is not going to sell your game to cosplaying commander players but goddamn do they think it's going to for some reason.

 

[Santiako]

No one knows SaffronOlive as Seth lol. If you say Seth, we assume Seth Manfield. That's why he's SaffronOlive!

It's a joke. He starts all his videos introducing himself as Seth, prooobably better known as SaffronOlive.

 

[charlequin]

I wonder if standard being shit is rooted in no longer having Core Sets be always in standard, and with them the deep bench of staples and answers that were always available.

There kind of isn't anything that got printed in these when they were happening that isn't and can't be printed in regular expansions now. Like, the answers problem is a bad philosophical choice, not an accident.

And he's dead on about the face card stuff. Seeing a card make up 3/4s of the T8 is not going to sell your game to cosplaying commander players but goddamn do they think it's going to for some reason.

I mean, they're looking at stuff like League or Overwatch and (correctly) identifying how much having characters as points of emotional intersection with the brand is useful in keeping people engaged and passively marketing. The problem isn't really with the idea of promoting characters and storylines, it's very specifically in trying to guarantee that top story cards are also at the very top of competitive value. If anything they should be targeting mid-range playability on most of these and then focusing on ways to get them into people's hands more easily (promo giveaways, etc.)

 

[kirblar]

I mean, they're looking at stuff like League or Overwatch and (correctly) identifying how much having characters as points of emotional intersection with the brand is useful in keeping people engaged and passively marketing. The problem isn't really with the idea of promoting characters and storylines, it's very specifically in trying to guarantee that top story cards are also at the very top of competitive value. If anything they should be targeting mid-range playability on most of these and then focusing on ways to get them into people's hands more easily (promo giveaways, etc.)

Case in point, f'n Hanzo Shimada

 

[Infinite Stars]

Again, I think 90% of the issue with Standard is that R&D likes to, like every magic player, have pet decks. Remember how they tried to make Ulrich be great for Werewolf Tribal,a deck that has not (and will never) be an actual deck? There's something by I think Stoddard saying that being in R&D causes your"edge" to dull, but I don't know how you can fix the issue of testing. Much like Games have Bug testers told "Try and break this",FFL really needs a week or two where they get a group of outsiders, give them a prototype of the set, and say "Alright, try and break this as hard as you can". I guarantee you that outsiders would have caught CopyCat, Emrakul+Marvel, Copter being damn near stupid, etc.

I know that this is a pipe dream, but it feels like by trying to break standard they'd avoid a lot of the current pitfalls.

Case in point, f'n Hanzo Shimada

Hanzo is the third worst character in the game, and it's a damn shame that the other two are also Asian. D.Va's Pretty good though.

Spoiler

Screw Mei, for being played by idiots, and screw Genji for being a weeb's wet dream come to life. Hanzo's just as bad though, especially when people choose him on Attack and it's just like WHY, we don't need a sniper, I'm working overtime to save everyone's bacon as Lucio but no, sure, stay a Sniper.

All joking aside, at least Overwatch's cast has personality baked into the characters that isn't just "FIRE Lol" and "I'm shirtless cuz I'm worth it".

 

[kirblar]

Both of those characters regularly see pro play tho (in Genji's case, he's one of the highest picked characters in the game!)

 

[Angry Grimace]

The problem is that they took out the parts of Magic that stop shitty decks from being shitty and somehow got confused that this resulted in shitty decks.

 

[Ashodin]

we need good burn dammit

 

[HK-47]

The meta game wasnt those three. It was the new version of the Marvel deck shitting on everyone and then those three decks. Fuck, UW Flash was almost entirely pushed out if I remember.

Also I'd like them to do something that would promote midranged strats in burn.

 

[traveler]

Chandra is prettry great. (Both of them) There just isn't the supporting set of cards around it. If we had Grim Lavamancer in standard again and some 1R Incinerate variant, I could see it being good again in a different meta.

What time is the ban announcement? Assuming they'll hit Cat and maybe Gideon or Heart, but not both of them. Nothing in Modern seems ban needy at the moment from a play environment perspective, (SSG, Bauble, Mox Opal, etc. are philophically sound ban targets, I feel, but aren't creating a toxic environment) Also assuming they don't particularly pay too much attention to Legacy, so if they weren't willing to ban Top last time, I don't see them touching it this time.

 

[HK-47]

Chandra is prettry great. (Both of them) There just isn't the supporting set of cards around it. If we had Grim Lavamancer in standard again and some 1R Incinerate variant, I could see it being good again in a different meta.

What time is the ban announcement? Assuming they'll hit Cat and maybe Gideon or Heart, but not both of them. Nothing in Modern seems ban needy at the moment from a play environment perspective, (SSG, Bauble, Mox Opal, etc. are philophically sound ban targets, I feel, but aren't creating a toxic environment) Also assuming they don't particularly pay too much attention to Legacy, so if they weren't willing to ban Top last time, I don't see them touching it this time.

Just making a couple of good walkers doesnt really help though. They need supporting cards.

 

[Big Icarus]

I'm hoping Gideon isn't banned, if only because I want to trade off my play set into some Modern staples at the end of this week

I'm probably not touching Standard until Atlazan comes out, and I'm sitting on a pile of Standard cards I'm going to be trying to unload when Modern Masters hits this week. Hopefully I can flip my Gideon's, and Avacyns into a set of Snapcasters or fetches.

 

[red13th]

I really liked Saffron Olive's article, I agree with him.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I mean, they're looking at stuff like League or Overwatch and (correctly) identifying how much having characters as points of emotional intersection with the brand is useful in keeping people engaged and passively marketing. The problem isn't really with the idea of promoting characters and storylines, it's very specifically in trying to guarantee that top story cards are also at the very top of competitive value. If anything they should be targeting mid-range playability on most of these and then focusing on ways to get them into people's hands more easily (promo giveaways, etc.)

In the world of Overwatch, there is incredible diversity. And not just in terms of skin color or nationality or sexuality. They all play different. They all feel different. Not just in their presentation, but the feeling you get when you play as those heroes. It comes through in their kits and their voice lines and their highlight intros and victory poses. Like when you hold up your shield and Reinhardt yells "GET BEHIND ME," or Torbjorn loses his turret and cries "MY BABY," or Symmetra starts clucking at her teammates in the spawn room to make sure that "everyone performs their function," or whatever it is.

Magic is handicapped here on so many levels:

1) The face characters are Planeswalkers, which means they're Mythic, which means most players won't get to interact with them at the level you can in other games. You can try to solve this by printing the characters on lower rarity spells - and in fact you're forced to do this if you want them to be face characters - but you only get so many cards in each set, and every burn spell that has Chandra on it is one less chance to show the characters unique to that plane.

2) You have to constantly print new cards, which mean you have to constantly mechanically reinvent your face characters. In other games, maybe your favorite character gets better or worse as the meta evolves, but it is the exception rather than the norm for your favorite character to play differently over time. What happens if I love Nissa as a character, but what her latest Planeswalker card does is mechanically uninteresting to me?

3) Magic is boxed into five colors, with decades of established expectations about what those colors mean. You can combine those colors to create an amazing pallet and get some very rich characterization, but the flip side is that the mono-colored characters come off as very one-note. Magic's best characters are gold, yet they've chosen (for the sake of simplicity I suppose) to make their face characters all mono-colored. This goes back to my point about diversity.

4) Where Magic is at its best is when it's creating new and unique worlds to play in. They're great at creating new characters within those worlds - think of the Khans from Tarkir or even the Gods from Theros. This is their strength. The Gatewatch experiment is making them sacrifice what they've historically been good at.

None of these are bad things though - Magic has been greatly successful at doing the things it does well. I just think the game of Magic cannot support a story-based approach designed to create an emotional attachment to character on a large scale without fundamentally changing what Magic is.

 

[traveler]

Gideon has come down a lot since his original peak and the card will still retain value past a potential banning thanks to modern/legacy playability. He definitely takes a hit from a banning, but I don't think it's going to be that terrible. He's not smug copter.

It's a pretty weird spot now. I feel like Gideon should have eaten the ban in reflector mage's spot, as it's been arguably the best card in standard for a year or so now. Heart of Kiran and Mardu's prized spot at the metagame table, courtesy of copy cat, has amplified his value lately, but he's played a part in multiple best of format decks including GW tokens and UW flash. Had Gideon eaten the ban and cat been banned preemptively, which would have been my approach alongside smug and emmy, I don't know where we'd be at today but I think it'd be better. Now, they can ban him, but it really seems lttp. I can see Heart of Kiran and Mardu's dominance giving them the needed justification/excuse now, but I dunno how they didn't see Gideon + Heart being oppressively strong, especially against sorcery speed removal, all along.

Edit: I guess I can see it from the perspective of them wanting to give the copy cat combo a chance to see how bad it was. You can't leave reflector mage in that environment, and they didn't want to steal two cards away from Mardu Vehicles or UW Flash.

 

[HK-47]

Gideon has come down a lot since his original peak and the card will still retain value past a potential banning thanks to modern/legacy playability. He definitely takes a hit from a banning, but I don't think it's going to be that terrible. He's not smug copter.

It's a pretty weird spot now. I feel like Gideon should have eaten the ban in reflector mage's spot, as it's been arguably the best card in standard for a year or so now. Heart of Kiran and Mardu's prized spot at the metagame table, courtesy of copy cat, has amplified his value lately, but he's played a part in multiple best of format decks including GW tokens and UW flash. Had Gideon eaten the ban and cat been banned preemptively, which would have been my approach alongside smug and emmy, I don't know where we'd be at today but I think it'd be better. Now, they can ban him, but it really seems lttp. I can see Heart of Kiran and Mardu's dominance giving them the needed justification/excuse now, but I dunno how they didn't see Gideon + Heart being oppressively strong, especially against sorcery speed removal, all along.

Edit: I guess I can see it from the perspective of them wanting to give the copy cat combo a chance to see how bad it was. You can't leave reflector mage in that environment, and they didn't want to steal two cards away from Mardu Vehicles or UW Flash.

They took two cards from U/W Flash though. Thus why it completely died.

 

[HK-47]

In the world of Overwatch, there is incredible diversity. And not just in terms of skin color or nationality or sexuality. They all play different. They all feel different. Not just in their presentation, but the feeling you get when you play as those heroes. It comes through in their kits and their voice lines and their highlight intros and victory poses. Like when you hold up your shield and Reinhardt yells "GET BEHIND ME," or Torbjorn loses his turret and cries "MY BABY," or Symmetra starts clucking at her teammates in the spawn room to make sure that "everyone performs their function," or whatever it is.

Magic is handicapped here on so many levels:

1) The face characters are Planeswalkers, which means they're Mythic, which means most players won't get to interact with them at the level you can in other games. You can try to solve this by printing the characters on lower rarity spells - and in fact you're forced to do this if you want them to be face characters - but you only get so many cards in each set, and every burn spell that has Chandra on it is one less chance to show the characters unique to that plane.

2) You have to constantly print new cards, which mean you have to constantly mechanically reinvent your face characters. In other games, maybe your favorite character gets better or worse as the meta evolves, but it is the exception rather than the norm for your favorite character to play differently over time. What happens if I love Nissa as a character, but what her latest Planeswalker card does is mechanically uninteresting to me?

3) Magic is boxed into five colors, with decades of established expectations about what those colors mean. You can combine those colors to create an amazing pallet and get some very rich characterization, but the flip side is that the mono-colored characters come off as very one-note. Magic's best characters are gold, yet they've chosen (for the sake of simplicity I suppose) to make their face characters all mono-colored. This goes back to my point about diversity.

4) Where Magic is at its best is when it's creating new and unique worlds to play in. They're great at creating new characters within those worlds - think of the Khans from Tarkir or even the Gods from Theros. This is their strength. The Gatewatch experiment is making them sacrifice what they've historically been good at.

None of these are bad things though - Magic has been greatly successful at doing the things it does well. I just think the game of Magic cannot support a story-based approach designed to create an emotional attachment to character on a large scale without fundamentally changing what Magic is.

Yes, using colors as alignment/personality indicators is super problematic in creating interesting characters. And making your face characters mono color is extra problematic.

 

[traveler]

Oh yeah, I forgot it ran smuggler's copter.

 

[red13th]

Oh yeah, I forgot it ran smuggler's copter.

what didn't, though? such a messed up card.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

what didn't, though? such a messed up card.

Heck when I tried copy cat prerelease I ran Smug Copter in it.

 

[HK-47]

what didn't, though? such a messed up card.

U/W needed Copter more than most decks. They needed the looting.

 

[bigkrev]

No changes because they are intrigued by Temur Tower
http://magic.wizards.com/en/article...banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-03-13
Lolllolol

 

[traveler]

So if they do the unthinkable and unban Jace, do I snag Disrupting Shoal while I'm at it?

 

[bigkrev]

Announcement Date: March 13, 2017

No changes to any format.

The list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here.

Next B&R Announcement: April 24, 2017

R&D met earlier this month to review several formats—notably Standard and Vintage—and discuss competitive play balance. While several issues were raised and discussed, it was concluded that the best move for all formats was to leave things as they are while continuing to monitor and gather data over the coming weeks and months.

For Standard, there has emerged a Big Three—Mardu Vehicles, Black-Green Constrictor, and various Felidar Guardian/Saheeli Rai decks. While having three top-tier decks isn't unusual, we were concerned that they could be so strong as to crowd out all other decks. In particular, we looked closely at the effect Felidar Guardian has on a format when it can be used in a game-ending combo. However, at Grand Prix Utrecht we began to see some movement in the format—particularly the rise of Temur Dynavolt Tower as a potential addition to that upper echelon. With that kind of movement in the format, we thought it best to gather more data—including more Grand Prix and the inclusion of Amonkhet at the Pro Tour—while watching the format continue to shift before making any changes.

In Modern, we've just come off two very exciting Grand Prix in Vancouver and Brisbane that saw Death's Shadow rise to the top, but a variety of decks put up strong results. While Modern certainly has its share of powerful cards, the format is in a spot right now that players seem to greatly enjoy.

For Vintage, data is often difficult to gather because the sample size is so small. However, we have a large data set coming with the European Eternal Weekend Vintage Championship at the beginning of April. We'll be watching that tournament closely. For now, we are watching the results, and continuing to listen to feedback from the community.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Tower had 1 good gp were a bunch of pros played it, it since has not put up results of note
It's a fun deck that has game against the top decks but if you're on the draw t4 gideon is pretty much lights out.

Also the top 3 might actually just be a top 2.

 

[Firemind]

legacy meanwhile

 

[HK-47]

Well if standard viewership and attendance continues to decline, we know who to blame for being cowards. Couldnt even pull the trigger on cat. B/G is barely hanging in there.

 

[Rafy]

I can see where they are coming from. They can't just nuke one deck, They'd have to nuke all three. I suspect that they have answers to the top two decks in amonkhet.

Honestly, I would have made the same choice

 

[HK-47]

I can see where they are coming from. They can't just nuke one deck, They'd have to nuke all three. I suspect that they have answers to the top two decks in amonkhet.

Honestly, I would have made the same choice

Sure they can, if its the deck warping the entire metagame even when it wasnt doing well.

 

[Rafy]

Sure they can, if its the deck warping the entire metagame even when it wasnt doing well.

Yeah, but then GB/Jund Constrictor takes the place of the mardu and Saheeli decks

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Yeah, but then GB/Jund Constrictor takes the place of the mardu and Saheeli decks

they are so much easier to target.

 

[OnPoint]

Me checking the ban list update

 

[HK-47]

Yeah, but then GB/Jund Constrictor takes the place of the mardu and Saheeli decks

Does it though? Saheeli is probably the deck surpressing the most other decks in the format because of how it makes playing anything a death sentence.

 

[bigkrev]

It's clear they locked this decision a week or 2 ago, cause they reference GP Uterech (2 weeks ago) as the point they realized they needed more data (and not taking the data of the last 2 weeks into account, lol)

Pretty sure all the pros have decided Temur Tower is terrible in the 2 weeks since?

 

[Infinite Stars]

Hahahaha

But of course. Why should Wizards actually pay fucking attention to their fucking GPs?

Like, I'm sorry, but how could they sit down after the last few weeks of Standard, as well as Stoddard admitting to "Oh we fucked up in missing Saheeli+Felidar" and go "Yeah, no changes makes sense.

Even if they had locked two weeks ago, I can't imagine anyone at Wizards being happy to have this released after yesterday. It reeks of Tone-Deafness.

Also, they continue to act like Blue/White aren't stuck in the shitter Modernwise, because "Everyone's enjoying it".

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

maro trying to argue today that urza was green smdh

Forgot I had this quoted lol. Urza being green seems really silly to me.

In the world of Overwatch, there is incredible diversity. And not just in terms of skin color or nationality or sexuality. They all play different. They all feel different. Not just in their presentation, but the feeling you get when you play as those heroes. It comes through in their kits and their voice lines and their highlight intros and victory poses. Like when you hold up your shield and Reinhardt yells "GET BEHIND ME," or Torbjorn loses his turret and cries "MY BABY," or Symmetra starts clucking at her teammates in the spawn room to make sure that "everyone performs their function," or whatever it is.

Magic is handicapped here on so many levels:

1) The face characters are Planeswalkers, which means they're Mythic, which means most players won't get to interact with them at the level you can in other games. You can try to solve this by printing the characters on lower rarity spells - and in fact you're forced to do this if you want them to be face characters - but you only get so many cards in each set, and every burn spell that has Chandra on it is one less chance to show the characters unique to that plane.

2) You have to constantly print new cards, which mean you have to constantly mechanically reinvent your face characters. In other games, maybe your favorite character gets better or worse as the meta evolves, but it is the exception rather than the norm for your favorite character to play differently over time. What happens if I love Nissa as a character, but what her latest Planeswalker card does is mechanically uninteresting to me?

3) Magic is boxed into five colors, with decades of established expectations about what those colors mean. You can combine those colors to create an amazing pallet and get some very rich characterization, but the flip side is that the mono-colored characters come off as very one-note. Magic's best characters are gold, yet they've chosen (for the sake of simplicity I suppose) to make their face characters all mono-colored. This goes back to my point about diversity.

4) Where Magic is at its best is when it's creating new and unique worlds to play in. They're great at creating new characters within those worlds - think of the Khans from Tarkir or even the Gods from Theros. This is their strength. The Gatewatch experiment is making them sacrifice what they've historically been good at.

None of these are bad things though - Magic has been greatly successful at doing the things it does well. I just think the game of Magic cannot support a story-based approach designed to create an emotional attachment to character on a large scale without fundamentally changing what Magic is.

This is a great post.

Spoiler

And not just because I agree with it 100%.

 

[Son1x]

I was thinking of returning to standard but with no bans, I'll just play modern for now.

 

[HK-47]

Hahahaha

But of course. Why should Wizards actually pay fucking attention to their fucking GPs?

Like, I'm sorry, but how could they sit down after the last few weeks of Standard, as well as Stoddard admitting to "Oh we fucked up in missing Saheeli+Felidar" and go "Yeah, no changes makes sense.

Even if they had locked two weeks ago, I can't imagine anyone at Wizards being happy to have this released after yesterday. It reeks of Tone-Deafness.

Also, they continue to act like Blue/White aren't stuck in the shitter Modernwise, because "Everyone's enjoying it".

Its only you who complains about white.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Burying their heads in the sand because someone played Dynavolt Tower at a GP in the Netherlands 2 weeks ago is not a good look.

 

[HK-47]

Burying their heads in the sand because someone played Dynavolt Tower at a GP in the Netherlands 2 weeks ago is not a good look.

Its really just that they would rather ride it out than shake player confidence with consecutive bans.

 

[red13th]

Did they really mention Temur Tower as a rising deck? WHAT.

 

[bigkrev]

Did they really mention Temur Tower as a rising deck? WHAT.

When they made the decision 2 weeks ago, you could at least make an -argument- that this was true?

 

[Angry Grimace]

Its really just that they would rather ride it out than shake player confidence with consecutive bans.

Oh, I agree with that. It's just that the justification given sounds so dumb in context.

 

[Jhriad]

This head to mean they think they've printed answers in Amonkhet, right? Assuming they're thinking it's better to wait six weeks than further erode confidence with bans.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Well.
I guess I won't be playing Standard anytime soon after all.

 

[bigkrev]

Andrew Cuneo on the lack of bans...

http://www.pantheonmagic.com/no-changes-to-the-banned-list/

The updates to the Standard banned list are here, and there are no changes. This is a bit of surprise because this Standard format has pretty much been solved and there is a real lack of diversity. The WotC announcement claims there is a ”Big Three" set of top decks, but that isn't really true. Black-Green is clearly not a top tier deck. The two viable decks are Mardu Vehicles and Copycat.

Does this mean that changes were needed? Not necessarily. This standard format is already starting to wind down. There aren't many major events left before the release of Amonkhet on April 28. The banned list will receive another update on April 24. The developers at WotC already know what cards will be in that set. Maybe there will be some new answers to the Copycat combo. Maybe there will be bannings at that point to knock the Mardu Vehicles deck down a notch.

There's two potential bannings that I think make sense. The most obvious is Felidar Guardian. While the combo hasn't proven to be truly oppressive, it does power one of the top decks and it's existence hugely warps the other decks that show up in the format. While it was interesting to have around for one season, there's no way it can stay legal for the full two years that the Standard rotation schedule would dictate. Eventually it will need to go, and the release of Amonkhet is probably the right moment.

The other card that deserves strong consideration is Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. The point of this banning would be to weaken the Mardu Vehicles deck. An aggressive start followed by a Gideon is just too hard to come back from. It's also one of the driving forces behind the die roll being so important in Standard. If you don't have a strong board presence when Gideon comes down, it is just too hard to kill. It's possible there may be new and better answers to Planeswalkers in Amonkhet in which case it may not need to be banned. At this point we'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Angry Grimace]

This head to mean they think they've printed answers in Amonkhet, right? Assuming they're thinking it's better to wait six weeks than further erode confidence with bans.

In the words of the late, great Switch from the Matrix: "it doesn't mean anything." It just means nothing interesting was likely to happen between now and Amonkhet (a period that will largely be filled with Modern Masters and spoilers).

If Amonkhet shows up with Thoughtseize and Hero's Downfall, then I'll provide a mea culpa.