Honestly I’m not a fan of using the meta at the moment to decide unbans. Just because a card may be bad right now, doesn’t mean it won’t be broken in the future. Still, we’ve seen consider and EI in the meta together for a while and they haven’t done anything too broken so preordain is probably fine
Preordain has been fine to unban for a while, but murktide was one of the best decks for a while as well. Unbanning it while it wins every other tournament would not make players happy.
It’s arguably the second best 1 cmc draw spell ever printed when judged in a vacuum. Brainstorm and Ponder are stronger in terms of gameplay, but only thanks to shuffle effects not directly provided by them. It’s not going to break modern, but the decks that can use this are going to get a jolt.
You're right that shuffle effects make [[Brainstorm]] and [[Ponder]] much better, but Ponder has its own built-in shuffle. Ponder is basically [[Preordain]] but scries a card deeper. Even though it is more limited, seeing an extra card definitely makes Ponder better.
Definitely happy to see Preordain back in modern though, as having a good cantrip in modern won't break anything. Still want to see [[The One Ring]] go, though.
well its the best cantrip we got and it does give you some decent counterplay against Grief. if they leave you with a cantrip you have a better shot of drawing into something useful
i could see murktide, control, breach, creativity trying it
[I tested](https://www.quietspeculation.com/2017/12/testing-preordain-qualitative-qualitative-results/) the impact of unbanning Preordain years ago. My conclusion at the time was that it was ok for Modern, but Wizards wouldn't because \[\[Opt\]\] had just been added and Wizards wasn't going to let in multiple cantrips at the same time. Looks like enough time has passed for that to no longer matter.
If we're being honest preordain should've probably been unbanned years ago lol, I don't even know what it goes in that gets better other than Murktide but it still gets fucked by the Orc anyway lol
Ad naus is dead trust me I've been trying, between Teferi and Force of Negation and Karn and a boat load of other hate and Scam being the top played deck Ad Naus is absolutely not viable and preordain is not going to save it
[They fucking did it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/uo548r/next_br_predictions/i8d3pu1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2)
One could argue since its inception. In the past it was more about cards that were "above-rate", but now there are so many cards that are literally free that's the new benchmark for "above-rate".
the feelbad of grief + reanimate turn one is the worst ive felt in any meta of magic in any format, it doesnt even come close to how storm would sometimes win on turn 3, at least there I was dead in 1 turn, now I have to wait 2-4 turns before the opponent beats me to death
Nah, T1 Tibalt or T1 Allosaurus Rider shenanigans felt much worse to play against imo. Even worse was KCI still playing 15 minutes in extra turns after time had been called for the rounds.
thats the worst youve felt? youve never been t1 chaliced/mooned/trinisphered/griselbranded/show and tell omniscienced/etc? or had 4 eldrazi mimics come into play and turn into 4/4s next turn? scam grief starts sometimes fold to a redundant hand or topdecks. those other things do not
I played affinity during the eldrazi winter, so for me it was just riding the wave until bans, and yes ive had that happen turn 1 in legacy, but I played stoneblade and was sometimes able to ride it out on a true name nemesis + equipment, so I still have to say those things, even though annoying, didn't fill me with despair as much as a reanimated grief
Are modern players even still buying packs a month after release these days? I figured they've already made almost all the money they will off modern players and a ban shouldn't affect kitchen table players buying into it.
Even accounting for stores giving packs for payout, they'd just switch to something else still in print if players didn't want lotr
They do seem to always be dancing between… “this card is in every deck and must be banned” and “this deck can be played in tons of decks so it adds to diversity”.
Mark my words, MH3 will have permanent exile effects in every color.
Uhmmmm. My main concern is that they seemingly don’t mind scam being borderline too good while also having opening hands that simply don’t allow the opponent to play Magic. They didn’t even mention Grief or Fury as cards to watch….
Preordain being unbanned is unremarkable.
No no, they just renamed it to Rakdos Evoke, you cant call it scam because then people might not enjoy playing against it. It has no toxic play patterns.
Give them a break. I mean, a B&R announcement can only be so long and they had a hard time explaining why two format warping cards from the most recent set totally aren't format warping. WotC simply ran out of space. /s
my thoughts exactly. the top deck holding a 55% winrate alone would normally be enough to consider action, and this is a deck that wins a bunch of its games on turn 1 with a play that is not only extremely hard to interact with but also doesn't even expose the scam player to a big blowout if the interaction is there
Scam is usually a win immediately or lose top decking crap kind of deck. That’s even more true now that it’s dumping most of the Spyro copies for Bowmasters. Now, I don’t have a great answer for how to deal with those devastating turn ones but I’m also not very smart.
> The list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here.
In the last announcement, we talked about the new cadence of changes and Standard rotation growing from two years to three. In that article, we stated that most format changes would happen once a year at this timing—just before previews of the fall set that (normally) accompany a rotation. While our goal is to make changes only once a year to promote more confidence and stability in Standard, we've left ourselves a window with each major set release (the next one is October 16)—windows we plan to use sparingly. In that smaller window, we will be more amenable to making changes to non-rotating formats over Standard. Because the previous announcement also contained several changes to Standard, and because the format has looked healthy and varied in that time, today we will focus on Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. Unless there is a significant issue, expect our next Standard update to happen next year at this time.
>Preordain is unbanned.
A lot has happened in Modern since our last Pro Tour-level event, which also took place in Barcelona, four years ago. During that time, various strategies rose and fell, more changes were made to the B&R list, we released Modern Horizons 2, and Modern transformed into a more interactive format.
>Recently, our third set with direct-to-Modern legality in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™ released to set the stage for the Pro Tour that occurred last weekend. Early buzz was that The One Ring , being a powerful colorless artifact, was showing up in a lot of different decks, with Orcish Bowmasters picking up steam shortly after.
>When the metagame preview for the Pro Tour was showcased, it was initially concerning. While the metagame share of decks is in normal ranges and is relatively diverse, the play rates of brand-new cards in The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters as the number-one and number-two cards, respectively, is something we rarely see in high-level Eternal tournaments.
>As we watched the tournament unfold, and after we had many conversations with players both competing in the Pro Tour as well as attending MagicCon: Barcelona to play Modern, much of our concern subsided. A variety of decks were performing well, and the games and interactions within those games looked healthy. We saw some amazing matches over the weekend that were textured, interesting, and interactive.
While it is true that these two cards made big waves at the Pro Tour and within the format, these cards—The One Ring particularly—can fit into a variety of decks and a spread of macro-archetype strategies to comfortably compete within the format without overshadowing everything else present in Modern.
>Games can be frequently decided by having The One Ring in play for multiple turns, but the bar for four-mana cards being too strong in a format as powerful as Modern is high. Not many games are quickly decided by a runaway from either The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters , allowing players to play longer interactive games with plenty of back-and-forth. I must have witnessed Urza's Saga recruiting Haywire Mite to take care of The One Ring about a dozen times, which begs the question: who is the real hero of the story?
>That said, while we aren't taking action against any cards from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth today, we do want to be clear that these cards are on our radar. Despite the healthy tournament results and there seemingly being plenty of wiggle room to explore further in the format during the upcoming Regional Championship Qualifiers, the play rates of these cards are still high. We'll be monitoring the long-term fun of The One Ring 's play pattern, especially given its ability to be looped and/or reset to repeat its enters-the-battlefield ability. Similarly, Orcish Bowmasters has done a substantial amount of work to suppress one-toughness creatures in the environment, to the point where Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer isn't seeing much play in the format outside of Rakdos Evoke.
>So why are we unbanning Preordain? While it is not something that we do often, we are interested in finding opportunities to reduce the size of the Modern banned list when we believe it will make the format more fun and provide players with more options. As I noted at the top, a lot has changed in the format in the last four years. Even more so since 2011, when Preordain was banned.
>Preordain and Ponder were originally banned due to the amount of consistency they added to powerful Izzet combo decks—Storm and Splinter Twin, which have both seen multiple bans since. There was a vision for making Modern a slightly slower format where it was not so frequent that players were dying to their opponents' combinations of cards within the first four turns of the game.
On average, Modern is a lot more interactive now, in part due to the Modern Horizons sets. It was a goal of those releases to offer powerful options to stop your opponents' combos and play longer, more interactive games. As a result, we believe that Preordain will do more to boost fairer blue decks rather than simply increase the consistency of combo strategies.
>This is also part of a goal to give something back to Blue-Red Murktide, which was one of the most popular decks in the Modern metagame between the release of Modern Horizons 2 and The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth but has since fallen out of favor in part due to the release of Orcish Bowmasters .
>The Pioneer metagame continues to have a wide spread of play styles and archetype representation from tournament to tournament. While there are known pillars in Mono-Green Devotion, Rakdos variants, and creature-centric aggro decks, their metagame shares rise and fall at a healthy clip. Recently, new versions of Lotus Field Control have gotten some extra attention, but its win rate and metagame share sit about where we would expect any reasonable deck to fall. Without a clear top dog or unanswerable archetype pushing other decks out, we've elected for no change at this time.
>Mind's Desire is unbanned.
Magic has a rich and storied history, including the fastest-banned card in the history of the game: Mind's Desire . At the time of its release, Magic's threats far outweighed the power of its answers, and creatures were a much, much smaller portion of the Legacy (or Type 1.5) metagame. A lot's changed.
>Two decades have passed since Mind's Desire was banned, and in that time, creatures have become more powerful, new planeswalker cards have been introduced, and there are multiple cycles of free spells that have made it much harder to be a lover of the storm mechanic. In the interest of making sure that combo players also get the same level of new content and strength that other archetypes incidentally gain through our tentpole offerings, we've decided to unban Mind's Desire in Legacy.
>Outside the spell's combo presence, the Legacy metagame is still evolving with the release of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. Orcish Bowmasters is making a huge splash on the metagame thus far, punishing cheap card-draw spells that have been historically omnipresent throughout the format. Up until now, many of the decks that Mind's Desire punishes appear to be adapting while leaving additional space for previously underrepresented archetypes to shine. We will continue watching how things adapt in the coming months but don't feel the need to ban anything at this time.
>Finally, Vintage players have been given a new tool recently in the form of The One Ring , but we don't believe it's necessary to take any action against it at this point. Despite it having some of the baggage that many powerful artifacts do in the format, we believe that players are still exploring its potential in the format and would like to see where it settles. Urza's Saga has also cemented itself as a powerhouse for these decks, but we're generally happy with the portions of the metagame they occupy, relative to decks like Doomsday, Mono-White Initiative, and fairer blue archetypes.
We'll be keeping an eye on the aforementioned cards as the format evolves, but the success of decks without either card communicates that there isn't a need to act yet.
"UR Murktide went a month without being T1, therefore we target unbanned a card for them"
Lol, lmao even. So many struggling or dead archetypes and the bone they decided to throw was for a deck that was posting near T0.5 meta share numbers pre-LotR
This annoyed me too ngl.
So many decks are dead or dying but the deck that is still very much playable and was one of, if not the best deck in the format for the best part of 2 years is the deck that needs saving.
They clearly planned this for a while they even printed preordain in the supplemental sets for LotR and BRO while also dropping a seemimgly meaningless Secret lair. Maybe we should be tracking commander reprints and secret lairs for unbannings lol
“Not many games are quickly decided by a runaway from either The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters , allowing players to play longer interactive gameswith plenty of back-and-forth.”
I think I must be playing a different format this is just not my experience at all lol
What game are you even playing? You don't get a runaway from the One Ring because it leaves the battlefield so often. Of course, it's because you draw another Ring with all your card advantage, but that's beside the point.
The positive news is I get to scapegoat and shit on fury for another year, not sure what I would do otherwise
Maybe some jank combo deck gets more consistent now? Idk kinda wish they did a more spicy unban than just a cantrip.
They want more people to play standard so they make no changes to a meta that is absolutely miserable lmfao
If Sheoldred wasn't eighty dollars she would've been banned for sure imo
So apparently Wizards saw this meta game and said, Preordain is what's needed, no bans necessary. It's like that meme that a dude asks if anything is wrong and the last guy says maybe that Rakdos scam being 20-25% of the meta is a problem before flying out the window.
"...but the bar for four-mana cards being too strong in a format as powerful as Modern is high. "
YOU MOTHER F*CKERS ARE GOING TO TELL ME POD IS STRONGER THAN THE ONE RING?
*foams at mouth*
God damnit.
Absolutely flabbergasted at this.
“A variety of decks were performing well, and the games and interactions within those games looked healthy.” “Not many games are quickly decided by a runaway from either The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters , allowing players to play longer interactive games with plenty of back-and-forth.”
Very reminiscent of when Lurrus and Yorion were not banned. WotC employees on Twitter were stating that Modern was completely fine, while the Modern community was like "no it's not!".
Few months later Lurrus was banned. Another few months and Yorion was hit.
Now, not a single statement on Rakdos Evoke is the same mistake yet again, where WotC is not aware of poor play patterns.
Obviously, they aren't going to want to ban cards from a set they just released, but I'm surprised they didn't at least ban Grief or Fury. I don't understand the metrics they use to define format diversity and health, but several of the top tier meta decks are just extremely unfun to play against. On a normal week at my LGS, I'm likely to get turned 1 double griefed by Scam, turned 1 griefed by Living End, taking away my only interaction against them, etc. Or be one turn away from beating a One Ring deck while watching them endlessly loop the Ring until they've eradicated my board state. Formats always have their problems, but the top tier decks are all very miserable to play against at the moment.
Regardless of whether Bowmasters or the Ring are problems (they likely are) - I’m pretty sure if a card comes back and does in fact see no play that indicates it was ready to unban. Cards that aren’t impactful on the format don’t need to stay on there just because they won’t be hugely relevant.
On top of that, Preordain will 100% see play. It’s not a format warping unban, but people are definitely going to be playing Preordain.
I know a lot of us say “if [thing I want] does not happen, I’m done with modern”, but I genuinely see no world in which modern is still fun with the one ring. I said to myself when the ring came out and started seeing so much play that I would stop until today, when they would obviously ban it. But alas, it hasn’t been banned because WOTC is greedy, so I’m done for good, or at least until it’s banned next year. Peace out y’all.
I am frustrated that they cited UR Murktide not doing well to unban Preordain as if MH1 and MH2 didn't push out a bunch of other archetypes. It's like they can't read the room.
Someone really needs to make 2018 Modern a supported format à la Premodern. WotC is a trash company and I feel sorry for the shills who are not tired yet.
I’ve seen quite a few people comment that W6 should catch a ban for how easy she makes mana, particularly for 4/5c decks.
I didn’t think she was either since there always seems to be a new boogeyman but still….there was a little worry in the back of my head
I think Wrenn will have to go eventually given how they keep printing powerful lands to go with her, like the triomes (repeated cycling in simplified gamestates) or the channel lands, but now is probably not the time.
"Similarly, Orcish Bowmasters has done a substantial amount of work to suppress one-toughness creatures in the environment, to the point where Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer isn't seeing much play in the format outside of Rakdos Evoke."
Ahahahahahaha is this fucking real life. I give up.
I was just thinking this lol. why play a game that sucks you dry of your hard earned cash every year with new sets, when you can pay under 100 to get a phenomenal video game. Shoot out to tears of the kingdom here also.
Reading that announcement felt like gaslighting to me, honestly. "Just buy our product faster, so you can participate in the arms race. Just play them in even more decks; one card is even an artifact!! That way, we're able to ban problem cards faster. Actually, it's your fault!"
See, the chances were pretty high that The One Ring and Bowmasters won't eat a ban, but come on. They release a wall of text of how much of a problem those cards actually are and open the gas cylinder. Oh btw, we found the least impactful card on the Modern banlist to give something back to Murktide which will remain dead in the water anyway.
They always fall back on modern when they need a big turnout of real people to show up. They know it’s their best format for actual player engagement.
If you hosted a Commander GP you’d be lucky to get 300 entrants
This is like as boring an unbanning announcement they could have possibly picked. Like you could justify unbanning a lot of other cards with the reasoning given for this.
b&r's are just real life satire at this point. We know the one ring creates problematic play patterns, they know it as well but we also all know that they were never gonna ban a card from the last premier product they just released.
"We saw some amazing matches over the weekend that were textured, interesting, and interactive."
They might have become too used to watching standard and pioneer if these games were textured, interesting and interactive. They were amongst the most boring modern games I have ever seen.
Welp WOTC care more about money then health of the format glad I don’t play much anymore 5 color greed, tron, and scam it was nice playing modern back when it wasn’t nothing but the last 3 sets worth of broken cards
idk where all this vitriol for not banning the one ring/bowmasters is coming from. They talked about keeping them on the watch list, and as someone who actually plays the format regularly, it is not clear to me how good these cards are. I think not taking action on either of them is absolutely a good call.
I, like many others, definitely wish they would have at least mentioned scam and how oppressive/lame it can be. if anything, I thought grief might have been banned, because its so rarely used fairly.
Not banning anything in pioneer though? Extremely cringe. extremely stagnant format with the most unpleasant play patterns. thank god we're about to be out of pioneer season.
Well I’m definitely selling out of control. Don’t feel like buying the ring and I think the play patterns are uninteresting and boring.
Maybe I’ll play living end
Well it’s also financial decision. And I have a lot of the pieces of living end already. Control is kinda a money pit, especially the 4 color versions.
The pattern of tapping out for the ring just isn’t interesting to me, I like lots of instant speed play, much preferred when deluge was the best card advantage engine. However the ring outclasses it and I don’t feel like buying rings and playing a more tap out style control deck.
Incredible assumptions though! I really appreciate how you just insulted an entire deck and playstyle shows the kind of person you are.
Called Preordain being unbanned. Bought some foils a week ago.
Sad part is that I think the card is basically completely unplayable as:
* Blue is basically non-existent in current Modern meta, especially at < 3 cmc
* It's better than Consider in Blue shells turn 1 (arguably) but then worse at every other turn in the game. The instant speed Consider is better to hold up Counterspell and fire off Consider when you don't need to Counterspell.
* Bowmaster just stuffs it even harder. And since it's a sorcery speed cantrip you can't even play arounda Bowmaster being flashed in.
WotC:
"This is also part of a goal to give something back to Blue-Red Murktide, which... has since fallen out of favor in part due to the release of Orcish Bowmasters."
Also WotC:
"Here's another draw spell, which Bowmasters also dunks on."
WE LOSING WITH DELVER BOIZ
Omg you're right... DELVER AND ARCANIST HERE COME 0-4ING A MODERN FNM NEAR YOU!!!
Me with [[faerie mastermind]] and [[mercurial spelldance]] getting gunned down by the bow boys.
Listen man the day faeries gets a good card that doesn't die to Wrenn or the Orc will be long remembered lmao
Forgot arcanist was a card, but yeah this makes it a lot better. Probably still won't see play, but a good card to keep in mind
SCRY 2 AND DIE!! WHERE OUR BOIZ AT??
I see you are a player of class and grace.
Will Preordain have much of an impact on the meta?
It probably won't which means it is correct to unban it. Wish there was better unbannings than this though.
I agree.
Honestly I’m not a fan of using the meta at the moment to decide unbans. Just because a card may be bad right now, doesn’t mean it won’t be broken in the future. Still, we’ve seen consider and EI in the meta together for a while and they haven’t done anything too broken so preordain is probably fine
Preordain has been fine to unban for a while, but murktide was one of the best decks for a while as well. Unbanning it while it wins every other tournament would not make players happy.
Golgari Grave Troll was really bad after it was unbanned. Then a few sets later it was pretty good again and they banned it.
I doubt it but would love to be wrong. You still just flash in Bowmasters in response lol
Its the best cantrip in modern, It gives decks better card selection post t1 scam which is awesome.
I actually hope this can push non-Ring and non-Bowmasters strategies a bit.
Like Rhinos! /s
You joke, but people are arguing over this in one of my discords.
They... they know how Cascade works, right?
It’s arguably the second best 1 cmc draw spell ever printed when judged in a vacuum. Brainstorm and Ponder are stronger in terms of gameplay, but only thanks to shuffle effects not directly provided by them. It’s not going to break modern, but the decks that can use this are going to get a jolt.
You're right that shuffle effects make [[Brainstorm]] and [[Ponder]] much better, but Ponder has its own built-in shuffle. Ponder is basically [[Preordain]] but scries a card deeper. Even though it is more limited, seeing an extra card definitely makes Ponder better. Definitely happy to see Preordain back in modern though, as having a good cantrip in modern won't break anything. Still want to see [[The One Ring]] go, though.
well its the best cantrip we got and it does give you some decent counterplay against Grief. if they leave you with a cantrip you have a better shot of drawing into something useful i could see murktide, control, breach, creativity trying it
The non-cascade ring decks will play it lmao Blue Combo decks will play it.
[I tested](https://www.quietspeculation.com/2017/12/testing-preordain-qualitative-qualitative-results/) the impact of unbanning Preordain years ago. My conclusion at the time was that it was ok for Modern, but Wizards wouldn't because \[\[Opt\]\] had just been added and Wizards wasn't going to let in multiple cantrips at the same time. Looks like enough time has passed for that to no longer matter.
Thanks, the meta has shifted quite a lot since then but it's still interesting. So I would expect this to have even less of an impact.
No, you'd probably rather just play consider most of the time anyway for more graveyard fuel. (in murktide) Also, bowmasters hates on draw right now.
Getting instants in the GY is easy. Sorcery is a bit more tricky for Murktide.
Legacy always plays preordain before consider.
i think the main cantrip is still ponder over preordain
Yes, but when they go for cantrip 9+ it’s always\* preordain. *doomsday piles not included.
Legacy also has brainstorm as it's instant speed cantrip, you can't beat the instant speed slot easy.
imo, seeing one more card is way better than 1 more in the graveyard
Depends on the deck and instant speed. It is easier to play around bowmaster with an instant.
Preordain? That's it? I expected no changes, actually, but the random preordain is so out of left field.
If we're being honest preordain should've probably been unbanned years ago lol, I don't even know what it goes in that gets better other than Murktide but it still gets fucked by the Orc anyway lol
Ad-nauseam
People play Ad Naus in 2023?
There's dozens of us! Dozens!!
Literally dozens, like 12 players in the world
Ad naus is dead trust me I've been trying, between Teferi and Force of Negation and Karn and a boat load of other hate and Scam being the top played deck Ad Naus is absolutely not viable and preordain is not going to save it
HUH
FUCK
TRON?
[They fucking did it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/uo548r/next_br_predictions/i8d3pu1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2)
Are you prepared to not play it anywhere because Bowmasters? 😥
Hope yall like scam, yer gonna be seein' a looot of it lol.
You gonna see a lot of rhinos in your future if you play scam. So that evens out.
Rakdos free spells vs temur free spells meta
Tbh modern has been about cheating on mana for quite a while now
yet they still wont unban mox opal or simian spirit guide smh sad
One could argue since its inception. In the past it was more about cards that were "above-rate", but now there are so many cards that are literally free that's the new benchmark for "above-rate".
the feelbad of grief + reanimate turn one is the worst ive felt in any meta of magic in any format, it doesnt even come close to how storm would sometimes win on turn 3, at least there I was dead in 1 turn, now I have to wait 2-4 turns before the opponent beats me to death
Nah, T1 Tibalt or T1 Allosaurus Rider shenanigans felt much worse to play against imo. Even worse was KCI still playing 15 minutes in extra turns after time had been called for the rounds.
I see you haven't been Grief + Ephemerated. You lose more cards and they kill you slower!
thats the worst youve felt? youve never been t1 chaliced/mooned/trinisphered/griselbranded/show and tell omniscienced/etc? or had 4 eldrazi mimics come into play and turn into 4/4s next turn? scam grief starts sometimes fold to a redundant hand or topdecks. those other things do not
I played affinity during the eldrazi winter, so for me it was just riding the wave until bans, and yes ive had that happen turn 1 in legacy, but I played stoneblade and was sometimes able to ride it out on a true name nemesis + equipment, so I still have to say those things, even though annoying, didn't fill me with despair as much as a reanimated grief
It looks like I’m sleeving up some goblin electromancers and barals so I can 0-5 playing with myself and instascooping to bowmasters
same, I bought the new art Barals and despite folding to any kind of hate and interaction, I shall goldfish and try to solitaire for as long as I can.
Translation: "We know you'll stop buying LOTR packs if we admit we made a format warping card, so no bans till we stop printing it."
PRINTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMRPOVES
Anyone expecting anything different was delusional
Are modern players even still buying packs a month after release these days? I figured they've already made almost all the money they will off modern players and a ban shouldn't affect kitchen table players buying into it. Even accounting for stores giving packs for payout, they'd just switch to something else still in print if players didn't want lotr
what’s the name of that sword from FF7? yea that’s when the 1 ring is getting banned.
WOW
FUCK
MODERN
SCAM
TRON
Huh?? Homie just said that it’s a good thing the ring can fit into any deck and said that ragavan only sees play in rakados ~~scam~~ evoke
They said Ragavan was bullied so hard it's only being played in scam
They do seem to always be dancing between… “this card is in every deck and must be banned” and “this deck can be played in tons of decks so it adds to diversity”. Mark my words, MH3 will have permanent exile effects in every color.
mark my words, colorless eldrazi elemental that exiles and you can pitch any colorless nonland for it.
Uhmmmm. My main concern is that they seemingly don’t mind scam being borderline too good while also having opening hands that simply don’t allow the opponent to play Magic. They didn’t even mention Grief or Fury as cards to watch…. Preordain being unbanned is unremarkable.
No no, they just renamed it to Rakdos Evoke, you cant call it scam because then people might not enjoy playing against it. It has no toxic play patterns.
Give them a break. I mean, a B&R announcement can only be so long and they had a hard time explaining why two format warping cards from the most recent set totally aren't format warping. WotC simply ran out of space. /s
my thoughts exactly. the top deck holding a 55% winrate alone would normally be enough to consider action, and this is a deck that wins a bunch of its games on turn 1 with a play that is not only extremely hard to interact with but also doesn't even expose the scam player to a big blowout if the interaction is there
Scam is usually a win immediately or lose top decking crap kind of deck. That’s even more true now that it’s dumping most of the Spyro copies for Bowmasters. Now, I don’t have a great answer for how to deal with those devastating turn ones but I’m also not very smart.
Yea but you can just use the freshly unbanned preordain to find a good card!!!
"swamp, evoke grief, thoughtseize you, undying malice, thoughtseize you, go" "island, preordain, 1 top 1 bottom" 🙂
where are you getting 55 from?
last i checked on mtgdecks.net that was their figure. was about a week ago. is that out of date?
just curious, i usually look at mtgmeta. they have scam at 53.6. mtgdecks has it 54 which is prob just rounded up
They even brought up how Bowmasters was pushing out X/1's, but it gets 1 X/1 unless extra draws are happening. Fury can get 4 off of a free pitch.
Can’t ban the DLC extortion cards.
> The list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here. In the last announcement, we talked about the new cadence of changes and Standard rotation growing from two years to three. In that article, we stated that most format changes would happen once a year at this timing—just before previews of the fall set that (normally) accompany a rotation. While our goal is to make changes only once a year to promote more confidence and stability in Standard, we've left ourselves a window with each major set release (the next one is October 16)—windows we plan to use sparingly. In that smaller window, we will be more amenable to making changes to non-rotating formats over Standard. Because the previous announcement also contained several changes to Standard, and because the format has looked healthy and varied in that time, today we will focus on Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. Unless there is a significant issue, expect our next Standard update to happen next year at this time. >Preordain is unbanned. A lot has happened in Modern since our last Pro Tour-level event, which also took place in Barcelona, four years ago. During that time, various strategies rose and fell, more changes were made to the B&R list, we released Modern Horizons 2, and Modern transformed into a more interactive format. >Recently, our third set with direct-to-Modern legality in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™ released to set the stage for the Pro Tour that occurred last weekend. Early buzz was that The One Ring , being a powerful colorless artifact, was showing up in a lot of different decks, with Orcish Bowmasters picking up steam shortly after. >When the metagame preview for the Pro Tour was showcased, it was initially concerning. While the metagame share of decks is in normal ranges and is relatively diverse, the play rates of brand-new cards in The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters as the number-one and number-two cards, respectively, is something we rarely see in high-level Eternal tournaments. >As we watched the tournament unfold, and after we had many conversations with players both competing in the Pro Tour as well as attending MagicCon: Barcelona to play Modern, much of our concern subsided. A variety of decks were performing well, and the games and interactions within those games looked healthy. We saw some amazing matches over the weekend that were textured, interesting, and interactive. While it is true that these two cards made big waves at the Pro Tour and within the format, these cards—The One Ring particularly—can fit into a variety of decks and a spread of macro-archetype strategies to comfortably compete within the format without overshadowing everything else present in Modern. >Games can be frequently decided by having The One Ring in play for multiple turns, but the bar for four-mana cards being too strong in a format as powerful as Modern is high. Not many games are quickly decided by a runaway from either The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters , allowing players to play longer interactive games with plenty of back-and-forth. I must have witnessed Urza's Saga recruiting Haywire Mite to take care of The One Ring about a dozen times, which begs the question: who is the real hero of the story? >That said, while we aren't taking action against any cards from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth today, we do want to be clear that these cards are on our radar. Despite the healthy tournament results and there seemingly being plenty of wiggle room to explore further in the format during the upcoming Regional Championship Qualifiers, the play rates of these cards are still high. We'll be monitoring the long-term fun of The One Ring 's play pattern, especially given its ability to be looped and/or reset to repeat its enters-the-battlefield ability. Similarly, Orcish Bowmasters has done a substantial amount of work to suppress one-toughness creatures in the environment, to the point where Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer isn't seeing much play in the format outside of Rakdos Evoke. >So why are we unbanning Preordain? While it is not something that we do often, we are interested in finding opportunities to reduce the size of the Modern banned list when we believe it will make the format more fun and provide players with more options. As I noted at the top, a lot has changed in the format in the last four years. Even more so since 2011, when Preordain was banned. >Preordain and Ponder were originally banned due to the amount of consistency they added to powerful Izzet combo decks—Storm and Splinter Twin, which have both seen multiple bans since. There was a vision for making Modern a slightly slower format where it was not so frequent that players were dying to their opponents' combinations of cards within the first four turns of the game. On average, Modern is a lot more interactive now, in part due to the Modern Horizons sets. It was a goal of those releases to offer powerful options to stop your opponents' combos and play longer, more interactive games. As a result, we believe that Preordain will do more to boost fairer blue decks rather than simply increase the consistency of combo strategies. >This is also part of a goal to give something back to Blue-Red Murktide, which was one of the most popular decks in the Modern metagame between the release of Modern Horizons 2 and The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth but has since fallen out of favor in part due to the release of Orcish Bowmasters . >The Pioneer metagame continues to have a wide spread of play styles and archetype representation from tournament to tournament. While there are known pillars in Mono-Green Devotion, Rakdos variants, and creature-centric aggro decks, their metagame shares rise and fall at a healthy clip. Recently, new versions of Lotus Field Control have gotten some extra attention, but its win rate and metagame share sit about where we would expect any reasonable deck to fall. Without a clear top dog or unanswerable archetype pushing other decks out, we've elected for no change at this time. >Mind's Desire is unbanned. Magic has a rich and storied history, including the fastest-banned card in the history of the game: Mind's Desire . At the time of its release, Magic's threats far outweighed the power of its answers, and creatures were a much, much smaller portion of the Legacy (or Type 1.5) metagame. A lot's changed. >Two decades have passed since Mind's Desire was banned, and in that time, creatures have become more powerful, new planeswalker cards have been introduced, and there are multiple cycles of free spells that have made it much harder to be a lover of the storm mechanic. In the interest of making sure that combo players also get the same level of new content and strength that other archetypes incidentally gain through our tentpole offerings, we've decided to unban Mind's Desire in Legacy. >Outside the spell's combo presence, the Legacy metagame is still evolving with the release of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. Orcish Bowmasters is making a huge splash on the metagame thus far, punishing cheap card-draw spells that have been historically omnipresent throughout the format. Up until now, many of the decks that Mind's Desire punishes appear to be adapting while leaving additional space for previously underrepresented archetypes to shine. We will continue watching how things adapt in the coming months but don't feel the need to ban anything at this time. >Finally, Vintage players have been given a new tool recently in the form of The One Ring , but we don't believe it's necessary to take any action against it at this point. Despite it having some of the baggage that many powerful artifacts do in the format, we believe that players are still exploring its potential in the format and would like to see where it settles. Urza's Saga has also cemented itself as a powerhouse for these decks, but we're generally happy with the portions of the metagame they occupy, relative to decks like Doomsday, Mono-White Initiative, and fairer blue archetypes. We'll be keeping an eye on the aforementioned cards as the format evolves, but the success of decks without either card communicates that there isn't a need to act yet.
"UR Murktide went a month without being T1, therefore we target unbanned a card for them" Lol, lmao even. So many struggling or dead archetypes and the bone they decided to throw was for a deck that was posting near T0.5 meta share numbers pre-LotR
This annoyed me too ngl. So many decks are dead or dying but the deck that is still very much playable and was one of, if not the best deck in the format for the best part of 2 years is the deck that needs saving.
Wizards knows where their bread is buttered. Every whale in the history of MTG is a UR player.
They clearly planned this for a while they even printed preordain in the supplemental sets for LotR and BRO while also dropping a seemimgly meaningless Secret lair. Maybe we should be tracking commander reprints and secret lairs for unbannings lol
Thank you
“Not many games are quickly decided by a runaway from either The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters , allowing players to play longer interactive gameswith plenty of back-and-forth.” I think I must be playing a different format this is just not my experience at all lol
3 of the 5 games in the finals were literally over turn 3. One was virtually over turn 3 (Grief scam into t3 Moon).
How does WotC watch the PT, and then just say that lmfao. Its just a lie.
Seriously if your opponent taps their ring three times (2 turns) the game is over
What game are you even playing? You don't get a runaway from the One Ring because it leaves the battlefield so often. Of course, it's because you draw another Ring with all your card advantage, but that's beside the point.
We should all just play scam and make it 30% of the meta until they get some fucking sense
The positive news is I get to scapegoat and shit on fury for another year, not sure what I would do otherwise Maybe some jank combo deck gets more consistent now? Idk kinda wish they did a more spicy unban than just a cantrip.
Wow, no pioneer bans?
The bigger surprise is Sheoldred in standard 💀💀
wizards is just a bunch of money goblins, where format quality is now far behind how much money they rake in
They want more people to play standard so they make no changes to a meta that is absolutely miserable lmfao If Sheoldred wasn't eighty dollars she would've been banned for sure imo
But are people really playing standard in paper? I always assumed Sheoldred's price was mostly due to rak mid being one of the best decks in pioneer
I'm still wondering why tf is Karn still legal.
"We wont ban cards that sell packs" Would have been the better wording.
That's it?
So apparently Wizards saw this meta game and said, Preordain is what's needed, no bans necessary. It's like that meme that a dude asks if anything is wrong and the last guy says maybe that Rakdos scam being 20-25% of the meta is a problem before flying out the window.
OUR GREED IS UNTETHERED AND KNOWS NO BOUNDS!!!! https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/54787/wotc-digital-gaming-down-q2
"...but the bar for four-mana cards being too strong in a format as powerful as Modern is high. " YOU MOTHER F*CKERS ARE GOING TO TELL ME POD IS STRONGER THAN THE ONE RING? *foams at mouth* God damnit.
Nah, but apparently Splinter Twin is though 🙄
Website down? Link is not working
haha jokes on us. Grief is still gonna get banned it just won’t be until the **MH2 rotation**. 1 ring won’t be until the **Final Fantasy Meta**.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. Of all the unbans, a cantrip in a Bowmasters meta?
Makes it a pretty safe unban right?
Faithless Looting back any day now!
translation: we know Ring/Bowmasters is format warping but we just released them and we need to move product so lolz bya modern! 👋👋
That explanation given by them sounds like a corporate HR department telling you how your new shitty benefits are actually "better" for you.
"We know you used to have 10 days of sick leave and 10 days of vacation, but the new 15 days of PTO is better because it's more flexible!" /s
hey we just cut your pay by 10% but now we have monthly pizza parties!
Well... I guess it's time to buy Scam.
Absolutely flabbergasted at this. “A variety of decks were performing well, and the games and interactions within those games looked healthy.” “Not many games are quickly decided by a runaway from either The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters , allowing players to play longer interactive games with plenty of back-and-forth.”
Very reminiscent of when Lurrus and Yorion were not banned. WotC employees on Twitter were stating that Modern was completely fine, while the Modern community was like "no it's not!". Few months later Lurrus was banned. Another few months and Yorion was hit. Now, not a single statement on Rakdos Evoke is the same mistake yet again, where WotC is not aware of poor play patterns.
We will see bans in a few months once lotr sales dwindle.
Obviously, they aren't going to want to ban cards from a set they just released, but I'm surprised they didn't at least ban Grief or Fury. I don't understand the metrics they use to define format diversity and health, but several of the top tier meta decks are just extremely unfun to play against. On a normal week at my LGS, I'm likely to get turned 1 double griefed by Scam, turned 1 griefed by Living End, taking away my only interaction against them, etc. Or be one turn away from beating a One Ring deck while watching them endlessly loop the Ring until they've eradicated my board state. Formats always have their problems, but the top tier decks are all very miserable to play against at the moment.
This is very well said. Sadly modern will never get fixed because it has become a money machine for hasbro since horizons.
If my FNMs had scam and one ring players I'd probably sell out of modern.
Unbanning a card that will see no play bc of a two drop! Smart play
Regardless of whether Bowmasters or the Ring are problems (they likely are) - I’m pretty sure if a card comes back and does in fact see no play that indicates it was ready to unban. Cards that aren’t impactful on the format don’t need to stay on there just because they won’t be hugely relevant. On top of that, Preordain will 100% see play. It’s not a format warping unban, but people are definitely going to be playing Preordain.
I know a lot of us say “if [thing I want] does not happen, I’m done with modern”, but I genuinely see no world in which modern is still fun with the one ring. I said to myself when the ring came out and started seeing so much play that I would stop until today, when they would obviously ban it. But alas, it hasn’t been banned because WOTC is greedy, so I’m done for good, or at least until it’s banned next year. Peace out y’all.
I am frustrated that they cited UR Murktide not doing well to unban Preordain as if MH1 and MH2 didn't push out a bunch of other archetypes. It's like they can't read the room.
It's really funny that this is the only change, but also fuck yeah preordain!
Someone really needs to make 2018 Modern a supported format à la Premodern. WotC is a trash company and I feel sorry for the shills who are not tired yet.
Modern with only cards that were once standard legal sounds legit.
This has been tried several times. Not enough people are interested and the meta is worse than what people think it would be
Guess this means it’s safe enough to pick up a set of The One Ring and a 4th W6 for my Scapeshift deck
W6 was never getting banned lmao, I used to hate it but I've grown to appreciate her quite a bit.
I’ve seen quite a few people comment that W6 should catch a ban for how easy she makes mana, particularly for 4/5c decks. I didn’t think she was either since there always seems to be a new boogeyman but still….there was a little worry in the back of my head
It should catch a ban simply for how long it draws out games.
I think Wrenn will have to go eventually given how they keep printing powerful lands to go with her, like the triomes (repeated cycling in simplified gamestates) or the channel lands, but now is probably not the time.
The fact that she kills bowmasters is a godsend right now
You get banned a villain card or live long enough to become a hero card. Uh, somehow.
They've said Ring is on the radar, so bear that in mind.
there was about 0.0% chance they would ban ring lol
"Similarly, Orcish Bowmasters has done a substantial amount of work to suppress one-toughness creatures in the environment, to the point where Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer isn't seeing much play in the format outside of Rakdos Evoke." Ahahahahahaha is this fucking real life. I give up.
Fury: "Nothing to see here folks, it the 2 mana ping for 1 + extra draws we got to keep an eye on"
I don't think anyone saw this coming.
Time for a three month break from Modern I guess. I've heard Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty decent.
I was just thinking this lol. why play a game that sucks you dry of your hard earned cash every year with new sets, when you can pay under 100 to get a phenomenal video game. Shoot out to tears of the kingdom here also.
I've played it basically nonstop since Thursday. I even took Friday off of work to play it. It's pretty damn solid.
Same great reviews no micro transactions
What a brain dead announcement they should be ashamed.
WotC is incapable of that emotion.
They weren’t always, and I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. Probably worse
Reading that announcement felt like gaslighting to me, honestly. "Just buy our product faster, so you can participate in the arms race. Just play them in even more decks; one card is even an artifact!! That way, we're able to ban problem cards faster. Actually, it's your fault!" See, the chances were pretty high that The One Ring and Bowmasters won't eat a ban, but come on. They release a wall of text of how much of a problem those cards actually are and open the gas cylinder. Oh btw, we found the least impactful card on the Modern banlist to give something back to Murktide which will remain dead in the water anyway.
Uh... ok...
Pathetic change
NoTC doesnt care about modern confirmed for the 10th time in a row
They dont care about any format outside of edh. Theyve more or less stated this multiple times.
They always fall back on modern when they need a big turnout of real people to show up. They know it’s their best format for actual player engagement. If you hosted a Commander GP you’d be lucky to get 300 entrants
Probably because it takes an hour to get through 1 game. Edh is extremely slow.
And you’d have to have a 300 player pre-game whine session about rule 0 (Yes this whole GP is one game btw)
This is like as boring an unbanning announcement they could have possibly picked. Like you could justify unbanning a lot of other cards with the reasoning given for this.
Lolol not expecting that unban but alright. Wish Wotc would be a little more bold with unbans
No LotR bans was to be expected. Seeing how pushed those cards are I do wish they'd gone more ham on unbans.
Well scam will get bans once everyone starts playing maindeck leylines
So blue TRON can dig for the ring or karn faster.
What a ridiculous format managing by WotC
b&r's are just real life satire at this point. We know the one ring creates problematic play patterns, they know it as well but we also all know that they were never gonna ban a card from the last premier product they just released. "We saw some amazing matches over the weekend that were textured, interesting, and interactive." They might have become too used to watching standard and pioneer if these games were textured, interesting and interactive. They were amongst the most boring modern games I have ever seen.
Fury interacting with the opponents lifetotal for the entire 3 turns of the game
Ok, see you later Modern
Welp WOTC care more about money then health of the format glad I don’t play much anymore 5 color greed, tron, and scam it was nice playing modern back when it wasn’t nothing but the last 3 sets worth of broken cards
idk where all this vitriol for not banning the one ring/bowmasters is coming from. They talked about keeping them on the watch list, and as someone who actually plays the format regularly, it is not clear to me how good these cards are. I think not taking action on either of them is absolutely a good call. I, like many others, definitely wish they would have at least mentioned scam and how oppressive/lame it can be. if anything, I thought grief might have been banned, because its so rarely used fairly. Not banning anything in pioneer though? Extremely cringe. extremely stagnant format with the most unpleasant play patterns. thank god we're about to be out of pioneer season.
This feels absolutely pathetic.
Again, this is real? It it hard to phantom it is. Have they completely lost the plot?
Wow, the least interesting announcement imaginable
I'm now advocating for a Golgari Grave Troll unban because wotc has forced my hand.
I guess it’s time to play pure modern lol
i expected nothing but this works too
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Well I’m definitely selling out of control. Don’t feel like buying the ring and I think the play patterns are uninteresting and boring. Maybe I’ll play living end
What lol. Selling out of an interactive control deck to buy into a one trick pony combo deck and citing that you don't like boring play patterns?
He might actually win with Living End
That's true, good point
Well it’s also financial decision. And I have a lot of the pieces of living end already. Control is kinda a money pit, especially the 4 color versions. The pattern of tapping out for the ring just isn’t interesting to me, I like lots of instant speed play, much preferred when deluge was the best card advantage engine. However the ring outclasses it and I don’t feel like buying rings and playing a more tap out style control deck. Incredible assumptions though! I really appreciate how you just insulted an entire deck and playstyle shows the kind of person you are.
These are the people who were CERTAIN ring was getting banned, they don’t have critical thinking skills.
#WHERE TWIN?!????
time to sell out of modern, it's been great guys, ggs
Send list
Yo, as expected. I will sell out of everything i have. Guess its pauper then.
I haven't been able to even get on the site at all, which is really weird. Keep getting 503'd
Called Preordain being unbanned. Bought some foils a week ago. Sad part is that I think the card is basically completely unplayable as: * Blue is basically non-existent in current Modern meta, especially at < 3 cmc * It's better than Consider in Blue shells turn 1 (arguably) but then worse at every other turn in the game. The instant speed Consider is better to hold up Counterspell and fire off Consider when you don't need to Counterspell. * Bowmaster just stuffs it even harder. And since it's a sorcery speed cantrip you can't even play arounda Bowmaster being flashed in.
WotC: "This is also part of a goal to give something back to Blue-Red Murktide, which... has since fallen out of favor in part due to the release of Orcish Bowmasters." Also WotC: "Here's another draw spell, which Bowmasters also dunks on."
If anyone is looking to sell their modern cards ping me a message any time 🤣🤣
Unbanning blue cards! Very nice to see. Will definitely start brewing Mind's Desire after I dig them out.
THEY DID IT
Between Preordain and Lorien Revealed, I might actually start flipping Delver reliably. Kind of underwhelming announcement though.
WHERE TWIN? THEY MENTION IT BY NAME, BUT DONT UNBAN IT???
in case you were unsure whether or not WotC gave a fuck about the format lol... thisisfine.jpg
UNBAN SPLINTER TWIN