Michiel Smit (996)

20-9-2012 12:11:00

Announcement Date: September 20, 2012
Effective Date: October 1, 2012

Standard, Extended, Legacy
No changes

Modern
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is Unbanned.

Vintage
Burning Wish is Unrestricted.

Changes to Magic Online-only formats are now announced monthly in the Magic Online Community Group blog.

For the complete list of all banned and restricted cards by format, click here.

Explanation of September 20, 2012, B&R Changes
Erik Lauer

Recent Modern tournaments have been diverse, with no deck dominating the metagame. Since Modern is a non-rotating format, banned cards never rotate out. The DCI is unbanning a card to see how that affects the format. We looked for cards that were on the initial banned list for Pro Tour Philadelphia. We wanted a card that would not easily slot into an existing top deck and also wanted to enable a deck with a different play pattern than the current top decks. After examining the options, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle was selected as the card to unban.

While Vintage tournaments have also been fairly diverse, there has been a paucity of combination decks. Burning Wish is a strong combination enabler. It was first printed in Judgment in May 2002 and restricted in January 2004. At the time, quick-kill combo decks were dominating. Since then, the DCI has unrestricted many Vintage cards, and the restricted list is smaller today than it was in 2000 or any time since then. Continuing in this long-term trend, Burning Wish is unrestricted.

We are moving!

Going forward, Banned and Restricted updates will by synchronized with set releases. For each set, starting with Gatecrash, the announcement will be the Monday after the Prerelease, and the effective date will be the same as the release date of the set.

There are several advantages to this. First, this means there is no longer a date you have to remember. Second, it is less disruptive to deck management. Most players find it is a good time to update their decks when a set releases. Finally, this answers odd questions as to whether a banning has taken place if the update date occurs in the middle of a tournament.

Bron: Wizards