You may notice that the majority of the cards we are banning today are from sets that would have rotated this fall before our announced change to Standard rotation. This is intentional because, beyond the individual reasons outlined below, many of these cards feel like they have overstayed their welcome and players are ready for a format without the constraints that these cards bring to deck building and gameplay. Taking action on these cards now will allow a large number of cards and strategies that were previously suppressed to have their time in the sun, and give Standard players a fresh, enjoyable format before the release of Wilds of Eldraine this fall. We’ll be breaking the banned cards down by color below, starting with black.

Invoke Despair

Invoke Despair represented an experiment on our part to push “punisher” style cards into a more competitive space. It also represented our relatively recent move towards letting black have some way to deal with enchantments. In this case, the “knobs” on this card were tuned a bit too high, with it being burn, removal and card advantage in one package. This has resulted in it being the default 5 mana play in all black decks, despite lots of other powerful options existing in the format. In order to allow for greater diversity of late-game plays in black decks, Invoke Despair is banned.

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

Fable was one of the most-played cards in Standard at the recent Pro Tour March of the Machine, and has been highly played throughout its tenure in Standard (and beyond). Fable is another card where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and yet each part is also very strong. Fable is a card that generally requires more than one card to reasonably answer, and sometimes much more than even that. It is a card that can win the game by itself when you play multiple copies. It also creates very similar play patterns game after game, which contributes to player fatigue.

Raffine, Scheming Seer

One of our goals with these changes is to ensure that while we ban cards from some of the top decks, we are conscious not to leave outliers that we are already confident will take their place. Raffine is a key part of the Esper Legends deck, which although it has fallen out of favor recently, was previously very successful. Raffine has a similar effect to Fable, in that she is difficult to remove cleanly, and contributes to repetitive game states and “snowball” effects very early in the game. We are consciously choosing to depower these Legendary-based decks so that they do not simply replace the black-red decks in the metagame.

Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Atraxa is a newer card than most of the ones we are banning today, although her effects on the metagame have already been felt across multiple formats. Atraxa was intended to be the payoff for playing a dedicated ramp and reanimator strategies. As the format has shaken out, it has become clear that the risk involved in ramping into or reanimating Atraxa is a bit too low, and the reward too great. As additional tools for these strategies enter standard in future sets, as well as improved mana bases to hard cast Atraxa more easily, we expect that she will be the default top end for many decks, which will likely prove frustrating for players. For this reason, we are choosing to ban Atraxa now in order to allow for a more diverse range of ramp and reanimator payoffs.

Reckoner Bankbuster

Reckoner Bankbuster was one of the most-played cards across all archetypes at Pro Tour March of the Machine. The requirements for adding Bankbuster to your deck are very low, as it can even provide its own method of crewing. There are a number of other colorless cards which fit into a variety of decks that can provide card advantage at a slightly less efficient rate than Bankbuster and will provide a bit more diversity in terms of their rate of play.

Plaza of Heroes

Legendary creatures are a very popular part of Magic, and we wanted to enable a Legendary-matters archetype in Standard, where such a thing is not usually viable. Unfortunately in this case we overshot on the manabase. The additional abilities beyond mana-fixing on Plaza contribute to frustrating play patterns that have little counterplay. Since Legendary decks already get quite a lot of value out of the Kamigawa channel lands, we are choosing to bring down the power level of the manabase a bit here to compensate.

Wedding Announcement

Similarly to Fable, Wedding Announcement provides a large amount of material for a small mana investment and is difficult to interact with. We are concerned that after banning Fable, if we did not ban Wedding Announcement then it would effectively take Fable’s place in the metagame.

The Wandering Emperor

White’s removal suite in standard is very diverse at the moment, and The Wandering Emperor puts players in a “squeeze” between playing around her on one hand, and playing around sweeper effects on the other. There are other cards in white (and other colours) that provide that same squeeze while not also winning the game in one efficient package. In addition, the two white cards we are banning today are in anticipation that decks featuring these cards would quickly rise in popularity in the context of the other changes to the format. 

A note on Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Bloodtithe Harvester

Although Sheoldred is highly played in black decks at the moment and she is a very efficient threat at her mana cost, we are choosing not to take action on her at this time. We believe that the suite of changes we are making today, specifically those aimed at weakening the black-red based decks, will mean that Sheoldred is more easily answered in the absence of her supporting cast.

Bloodtithe Harvester is a very efficient two-drop which is ubiquitous in black-red based decks. Despite its high rate of play, we feel that the other changes we are making today will allow Harvester to continue to exist in the format and provide a quality two-drop for other fringe decks like vampire tribal which may not have had the chance to shine until now.

Final thoughts

We hope that the changes we have announced today will allow cards and strategies that have previously remained underexplored to rise up and take a more prominent place in the metagame, while still allowing for some versions of the existing decks to continue, albeit at a lower power level. We hope that this will provide an exciting new environment in which players can innovate and compete.