Later last week Wizards foretold a coming B&R announcement during the Secret Lair drop announcement when they revealed that Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath would be getting reprinted in the Kaldheim Secret Liar. Wizards took the morally acceptable route and let us know that they planned on banning the Titan in Historic, Pioneer, and Modern in an upcoming B&R Announcement prior to the set going on sale.
This footnote set the community on fire with speculation as to which cards would receive the ban hammer. Most of the attention was put on Modern which had multiple cards deserving a ban alongside Uro. However, Wizards is historically very slow with their bans so it was expected that Uro and maybe Field of the Dead or Mystic Sanctuary would get banned. Little would we know that Wizards intended on going full sicko mode on us and brought down the ban hammer to a small chunk of modern, and hit other formats. Historic
Historic was hit the least in this ban announcement but was actually the format that people wanted to see shaken up. Omnath was already suspended and moved to fully banned and Uro made Sultai too popular and was just miserable to play against. Uro became the most played creature across all formats, so even though the Sultai decks weren't taking over the format Uro needed to be erased from Magic in almost every format. Historic has other problems such as Claim the Firstborn and Mayhem Devil smothering creature decks and making people miserable. Muxus, Goblin Grandee might also be pushing Goblin decks over the top and many people expected some action taken there. Historic was more of a case of what didn't get banned but Wizards is showing their willingness for bans so maybe we will see more Historic changes sooner rather than later. Pioneer
Wizards explained their vision for Pioneer as being a place to play old Standard decks in a format less deep than something like Modern. Unfortunately, Pioneer lost tons of momentum after being warped by combo decks early on and being a primarily paper format in our current pandemic landscape. Nonetheless, Wizards took serious action by effectively wiping the Oops! All Spells deck off the face of the earth by banning Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer. This deck was very difficult to interact with and won by using either the Spy or Informer to mill your entire library in one shot, allowing you to win the game with Thassa's Oracle, or flooding the board with Narcomoeba, Prized Amalgam, Silversmote Ghoul, plus Creeping Chill burn damage. This deck was pretty cheesy in the way it won and was overall it did not fit the vision of Pioneer. Teferi, Time Raveler is one of the most annoying cards printed in recent memory. Interaction is one of the most exciting aspects of Magic and shutting it down with a static ability makes the game only fun if you control the Teferi. Although it wasn't doing anything broken in Pioneer, it was getting plenty of hate from the community. As you'll see throughout this announcement Wizards is not only pulling the trigger on broken garbage like Uro, but they are also eliminating hated cards that are simply just not fun to play against. It is worth mentioning that Niv to Light decks are becoming a problem in Pioneer and this ban does weaken that deck. Wilderness Reclamation and Uro always had a love affair in any format they found themselves together in and Wizards has decided to take them both out of the format. Wilderness Reclamation decks would definitely have been worse without Uro but Wizards was convinced that the deck would bounce back and still have a stranglehold on the meta regardless. Ideally, we could have tested a world without just Uro first but Wizards did decide to be proactive and ban both right away. Modern
Holy Crap! Modern is really where Wizards went full sicko mode and they took out anything with a degenerate pulse. All of these cards were being mentioned as potential ban candidates in recent weeks but Wizards has never before decided to just drop the hammer on literally everything. This sheer volume of bans is indicative of the direction Wizards is heading towards in the ban philosophy and we should expect more frequent bans instead of waiting years for any sort of progress.
Field of the Dead and Mystic Sanctuary aren't completely broken cards but they do give this midrange and control decks these win conditions for almost no deck building cost. Field of the Dead swarms the board with Zombie tokens and allows the deck to stabilize almost any board state. Primeval Titan decks ad fuel the fire here with Prime Time fetching out two copies in the late game. Mystic Sanctuary should never have been given a basic land type in a world with fetchlands. Blue decks have been able to consistently fetch this out and then loop it with Cryptic Command. Although these strategies weren't the most winning decks in the format, they were popular enough to ruin the fun of the format. Just like Teferi, Time Raveler in Pioneer, Mystic Sanctuary was just not a fun card and Wizards was willing to ban it to enhance our play experience.
Tibalt's Trickery lived a brief week of life in Modern but I am not sad to see it go. This vile piece of design trash started off with good intentions as a red counterspell. Countering a Wrath of God as a fast creature deck is huge and you don't really care if they peel some free value off the top of their deck if you are likely to win on the following turn. The fact that you can counter your own stuff means you can cascade into this off of Violence Outburst and slam an Emrakul on turn three. We even saw this abomination running in best of one standard with countering your Tormod's Crypt and getting an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon on turn two. I also think that it wouldn't make sense for Wizards to do such a wide sweep of the format and not take the opportunity to remove something so obviously problematic.
After years of ducking and dodging B&R announcements, Simian Spirit Guide is at last banned in Modern. I just want to take a moment to offer my sincerest condolences to Ad Nauseam and Blood Moon Prison players. Simian Spirit Guide has always been the force behind fast combo decks in Modern and gives them a way to fire off a turn early. This ban is a significant shot at the combo decks of the format and in my opinion, will be a significant change to the Modern format.
Uro Piles has suffocated the other control and midrange decks as Uro became the finisher in all of these decks. Blue midrange and control decks in general will have to change their win conditions, especially after losing Field of the Dead and Mystic Sanctuary. I am excited to see variety return to the midrange and control archetypes with maybe Jund and Rakdos taking their place back in the format. Azorius Control could make a return and perhaps we could see an Abzan midrange deck make an impact. By the end of its life in Modern Uro was the most played creature and proved to be too powerful for all formats from Standard to Modern. Goodbye and f**k off Uro, you will not be missed.
I do not play or follow Legacy or Vintage but we did see Arcum's Astrolabe, Dreadhorde Arcanist, and Oko, Thief of Crowns get banned in Legacy, and an unbanning of Lurrus, of the Dream-Den in Vintage. If you want more details on these then check out the official announcement here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/february-15-2021-banned-and-restricted-announcement
Overall this was a monumental B&R announcement and the most important one that I have ever witnessed. Wizards has never taken this much action across so many formats at once and I think this demonstrates their willingness to take action against problematic cards. They are also willing to take out cards that are unfun and damaging to the format's play experience. Bans like Teferi and Mystic Sanctuary are quite the fan service and that isn't something Wizards does too often. I am personally very excited for the direction of Modern with it pushing away from broken combos and more towards fair strategies, and that these fair archetypes have to find more fair ways of going over the top to win the game. Thanks so much for reading our thoughts on the B&R announcement. If you want to see more of our content then please browse the website. Thanks again for reading and joining the Fellowship!
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