August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement

Brass Man

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/august-28-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-08-28

[[Thorn of Amethyst]] is restricted
[[Monastery Mentor]] is restricted
[[Yawgmoth's Bargain]] is unrestricted

cutlex

Gonna be an interesting ride leading up to champs.

Just feel Thorn is a worse target than Sphere - no reason to affect Eldrazi that hard...

Dice_Box

It is sad that Smokestack is no longer I card I can play in Vintage, but I feel like Workshop as a card will be fine. I am not surprised and not really unhappy. I think I will play Affinity for a while.

themonadnomad

I know this is not the most popular deck online, but in paper Eldrazi plays an important role as an easy entry point to the format. Is Eldrazi still really viable with Thorn restricted?

@cutlex said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

Gonna be an interesting ride leading up to champs.

Agreed, especially with the next announcement being the Monday prior, going into effect the day-of for Vintage and the day before for Legacy.

garbageaggro

White eldrazi was already going down, but yes, this definitely makes it worse, where sphere getting restricted might have made it the default shops deck. Interesting.

I am most intrigued by Bargain coming off, are there enough good targets now for show and tell to consistently put a Griseldad or Bargain into play? Is that even good?

joshuabrooks

Wow, this is like the most articulate DCI response ever. Full explanations for their decisions. Careful discussion of alternative options. Wow! I'm going to have to give a hand clap here. This is a DCI I can get behind! From their explanation, it seems like they really thought this through from multiple perspectives.

Found it interesting regarding shops that they were okay with the explosive mana, powerful threats, but chose to focus on the "artifacts that disrupt opponent's ability cast spells..."

My only request for future B/R is that they create a "watch list." They appear to want to preserve Mishra Workshop in Vintage, for now but it would be nice to see if they consider it a strong candidate for restriction. They didn't mention MW's unbalancing effect.

I'm happy with the results, and they make sense. Wizards will continue to print strong and stronger artifacts (and the fact that those artifacts still fail to penetrate other formats, means they will likely get stronger). Workshop isn't out of the woods by any stretch. I just hope it goes in the more complex direction, instead of faster aggro direction, that seems doubtful though.

While I'm sure people might not agree with the decision, I applaud their handling of it! Great job DCI.

@joshuabrooks A watchlist is the worst thing we can have in a banlist. Duel Commander tried this for a while and it's terrible. It makes the cards in it non-tradable and has no benefits at all - if the card in the watchlist IS banned, then there's no reason to not have banned it before; if it ISN'T banned, then there's no reason to have put it there and create fear. Really, a watchlist is a bad idea.

rbartlet

@hierarchnoble this feels weird with the vintage trial on the Thursday...

@joshuabrooks said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

My only request for future B/R is that they create a "watch list." They appear to want to preserve Mishra Workshop in Vintage, for now but it would be nice to see if they consider it a strong candidate for restriction. They didn't mention MW's unbalancing effect.

They did. It's -R Windfall.

13NoVa

People are missing this:

"Starting with this set, all planeswalkers past, present, and future will have the supertype legendary. They will also be subject to the "legend rule." The "planeswalker uniqueness rule" is going away. What does this mean? In short, everything that's true about legendary creatures will now be true about legendary planeswalkers

Under the new rules, if a player controls more than one legendary planeswalker with the same name, that player chooses one and puts the other into their owner's graveyard. This means that if you control Jace, Unraveler of Secrets and cast Jace, Cunning Castaway, both Jaces can exist under your control.

thecravenone

Next B&R Announcement: October 17, 2017

There is a possibility that EW will be a new, untested format.

nedleeds

Should have been Sphere and Misstep. Thorn is there fairer of the 2 spheres if you weren't going to can Shop.

Still just Missteps vs. Spheres. Still can't resolve a Noble Hierarch or DRS without packing my own Derpsteps. Misstep is still ~3.5 copies in 60% of the format. So awful.

Bargain is fine I guess but if you have 6 mana you deserve to do great things.

@nedleeds I feel they're right though. There's a big chance restricting Spheres wouldn't affect shops at all.

nedleeds

@thecravenone said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

Next B&R Announcement: October 17, 2017

There is a possibility that EW will be a new, untested format.

Can't wait to see attendance. Maybe we can nosedive for the second consecutive year. Is Ixalan legal for champs? Maybe that will change something.

nedleeds

@fsecco said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

@nedleeds I feel they're right though. There's a big chance restricting Spheres wouldn't affect shops at all.

Sphere is the better card, especially if they had restricted Chimpstep. It would mean Thorn go is garbage against DRS and Noble. But the decks playing DRS have to water their deck down with that cancerous piece of phyrexian shit and lose their edge on shops.

@nedleeds said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

Is Ixalan legal for champs?

Yes. It releases September 29th.

garbageaggro

@nedleeds It also makes ingot chewer not a good answer, which would have been a premier answer if Sphere were restricted instead. I honestly don't know which one is the better choice between them. It seems like a really interesting question.

JonHammack

@nedleeds funny you say that now since most of your campaign specifically called out misstep and thorn (by name) instead of sphere