Dragon's Maze is just around the corner, and that means we're due for an update to the Banned and Restricted lists. In this update, the DCI has announced some changes to the Modern and Vintage formats. Here are the changes from the Official Announcement:

Announcement Date: April 22, 2013

Effective Date: May 3, 2013

Magic Online Effective Date: May 13, 2013

Modern

Second Sunrise is banned.

Vintage

Regrowth is unrestricted.

Standard, Extended, Legacy

No changes

The Modern bannings are reasonably straightforward. People have been calling for the Second Sunrise combo decks to be banned since Stanislav Cifka won Pro Tour Return to Ravnica with Eggs. The deck is very consistent and resilient, and has the ability to combo off as early as turn two and three. R&D has repeatedly stated that they want Modern to be a turn four format. This banning may not kill the Eggs combo deck, but it definitely makes it less consistent and slows the deck down by about a turn.

It's a little tougher to suss out how Regrowth will affect Vintage. The card has seen fringe play as a way to rebuy Ancestral Recall and other powerful singletons, but has been largely irrelevant in competitive Vintage. Will new decks rise up that use Regrowth and Accumulated Knowledge in an Intuition shell? Or maybe Regrowth and Snapcaster Mage let you take enough turns with Time Walk that you can tempo your opponents out? Only time will tell how 4x Regrowth may affect a format defined by Mishra's Workshop, Time Vault, and Bazaar of Baghdad.

In addition to these competitive formats, the Commander Banned list was also updated with two interesting changes.

Vintage

Trade Secrets is banned.

Staff of Domination is unbanned.

Trade Secrets was banned for similar reasons to Limited Resources. The card is not especially symmetrical in multiplayer, and has the potential to put the two players involved very far ahead of the rest of the table. That would be fine if the card added significant depth to the format, but it's really just another of Blue's very efficient draw spells.

Staff of Domination is a card that many have been clamoring to thsee unbanned for quite some time. When the format first started, this was the marquis combo card. People played Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary as their Commander and used Staff as a one-card combo. Others used Magus of the Coffers to go infinite in mono-Black. Still others were using Metalworker to combo off in their Karn, Silver Golem decks. At the time, that was a big deal. At this point, there are so many other two-card combos in the format that Staff is getting a second chance. Maybe it'll get right back to it's combo shenanigans, Staff is also a very powerful utility card, so hopefully we'll see some mono-White and mono-Red decks will start using it for that purpose as well.