MTGNexus

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... nouncement

To summarize:

Standard:

Omnath, Locus of Creation is banned.

Lucky Clover is banned.

Escape to the Wilds is banned.

Historic:

Omnath, Locus of Creation is suspended.

Teferi, Time Raveler is banned.

Wilderness Reclamation is banned.

Burning-Tree Emissary is unsuspended.

Brawl:

Omnath, Locus of Creation is banned.

I should tell you but we're not out of the woods of omnath yet

The deck also works in pioneer and it's also smashing decks like a bug

I just hope all the defunct Omnath decks don't seep into EDH.

BeneTleilax wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I just hope all the defunct Omnath decks don't seep into EDH.

I built an Omnath EDH from basically what I had sitting around and even then it's absurd.

I think they made the right decision with this, even though it was probably a tough call banning a card from the newest set less than a month after release. With the banning of Into the Wilds and Lucky Clover from Throne of Eldraine, pretty sure that set is close to rivaling original Mirrodin as a set with some of the most cards banned in standard during its time

at this point I'm not surprised as bans, as lately they've seemed to become the norm rather than a VERY rare occurrence

not that I at all get involved in competitive play, but will this be the moment where they notice that the power level and the frequency they design ramp cards at is excessive? It's been blue-green paradise for a long time. I hope they find something else for the colour pair to do which isn't so broken. I liked Simic Ascendancy but it was in the same set as Wilderness Reclamation so there was like no impetus to explore the card at all.

Does this make Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt the best card in the set, now? That's really exciting, I love the card, I might start paying more attention to standard play if I get to see it played a bunch.

So why are Wizards of the Coast having to ban valuable cards whenever a new Standard set is released? Maybe it's because of the people that the company hires who don't have the necessary skill set nor the experience of ever playing MTG. If a Wizards of the Coast employee's entire job at Play Design (formerly Research & Development) is to make sure that cards are not overpowered and ban worthy by powering down cards as they design them then why aren't they focusing on that instead of engaging in other activities that aren't beneficial to MTG overall? What could they be more busy with that they don't have the time necessary to actually play test cards before their official set release?

What you have here is a textbook example of game designers who were highly unqualified for the job who were hired based on other qualities and that's what happens to a company on the pathway to failure. When MTG is faced with having to ban it's most popular card(s) every Standard set then people who've bought those card(s) that just got banned are going to leave the game unless they move to another format where the said cards in question aren't banned. The idea of playing popular cards in Standard is that you have the opportunity to play with those cards for at least two years before rotation. The old rotation system was way better since you had more time before cards got rotated out.

Omnath, Locus of Creation got banned 17 days in after the official release of Zendikar Rising so you had less than three weeks to play with that new card unless you were okay with playing in a different format where it was still legal assuming you got that card on day 1. Reprints aside there has been no good MTG products for over two years unless you play EDH / Commander. This is why it's too much of a risk for Local Game Stores to carry new Standard sets that don't sell because of popular cards getting banned by devaluing the EV (Expected Value) of the box. There's this false expectation that banning popular Standard cards will still hold their value in other formats and that's sort of true.

So it's not always a guarantee and that's something that Wizards of the Coast needs to realize. Did they forget that Standard is still the bread and butter of MTG as a whole? I get that EDH / Commander is the most popular format for casuals and cEDH for competitive grinders but that doesn't mean that Standard as a format is obsolete, otherwise why would anybody be playing on Arena right now? Paper Magic still matters for Standard it's just that they don't know how to make it as fun and exciting as EDH / Commander without trying to be EDH / Commander. Brawl was just a concept that didn't translate to Paper Magic as well as it did on Arena. Paper Magic wasn't at fault for that when that's just how things go sometimes.

Omnath will have to be banned in Pioneer as well. It's too strong for that format it warps everything around it and Uro. They really screwed the pooch here but what else is new.

Omnath decks are pretty bonkers in Commander/EDH as well. I just hope it doesn't get banned there as well, because to be honest, I have a hard time stopping at only three land drops in a turn with it, even though additional ones don't do anything for it. Lol.