Banning cards in Magic: The Gathering is a dangerous and inherently negative thing.

For the extremely entrenched players, bans may feel like a welcome shakeup to a format that may seem stale or unsolvable, but the damage they do to the less entrenched crowds is very damaging. These players may not be playing MTG Arena every day or constantly keeping up on content, but they're a large part of Magic as a whole, as well as often the bracket that newer or beginner players fall in which is paramount to growing the game.

When one of these players shows up to their store or logs in online after a week or two of inactivity and sees that their deck is no longer legal, it's a really easy exit point to go play any other game instead. This shakes the confidence of players in the game, as well as in Wizards of the Coast's ability to maintain healthy formats. Why buy in to a game that is so volatile and mismanaged?

This isn't to say that bans aren't sometimes necessary and healthy for the game, but to note that they should be viewed as a last resort, to be used when having the cards legal is even more damaging to the game and a format than the act of banning a card would be.

Which brings us to Standard, a format that has struggled mightily in the last five years for a variety of reasons. While a lot of this has had to do the popularity (and profitability) of Commander and Modern and the pandemic hurting in-store play, a lot of it falls on design and development which has let outlier after outlier slip through to tip the scales of the format.

While the list of cards banned in Standard before 2017 is fairly short, since then the list of cards (only a partial list is seen above) is astounding. Part of this definitely has to do with online play pushing a huge number of games as well as the speed of information traveling, but a lot also falls on the design side of things. While many of the formats after these bans were better off for it, it's hard to convince someone to buy in to a format, especially in paper, when there is this much month to month upheaval.

There's also the issue that the majority of time players are crying for bans, it's a knee-jerk reaction to a metagame shift or new format that hasn't had time to develop. Something is always going to be "the best card/deck" in any format, the question is one of ubiquity - am I making a mistake by not playing this card/deck or are there other options or paths to beating it? This is self-perpetuating, because the more frequent bans are, the more players want to use them as a solution rather than trying to solve a format organically, which can spiral worse and worse.

Regardless, I think Standard is an extremely important on-ramp for newer players as well as should be the most accessible and affordable format in Magic, but honestly that's a topic for another article. Today I want to talk about current Standard and the potential bans coming up on Monday, but feel free to check out the above video for more of my thoughts on why Standard is so important, as well as some thoughts to revitalize it.

The Bans Are Coming!

Alongside the "Revitalizing Standard" announcement made by Wizards of the Coast, was also an announcement that changes would be made to Standard's ban list on this coming Monday, May 29th, immediately after the MTG Arena Championship.

The question that follows, of course, is "what should be banned?"

Today I'm going to talk about the cards that have the potential to be banned, as well as the cards I think should be banned to make for a healthy format moving forward.

To start, let's look at the currently most played card in Standard, curtesy of the data from the MTG Arena helper Untapped.gg:

With base-Rakdos decks like Rakdos Midrange, Rakdos Reanimator, Grixis Midrange, Grixis Reanimator, Rakdos Breach, and more formulating a large percentage of the metagame, it's no wonder that a large portion of this list is Black and Red, which also makes this list not quite "the best cards in the format."

Of course, many of these cards are going to be the nuts-and-bolts best removal and interactive spells in the format, as you usually see in all formats. Even in a post-Modern Horizons 2 world, with all the upheaval that set has caused to Modern as a format, Lightning Bolt is still the number one most played card in the format because it's the cheapest and most universal removal spell there is. I would hope nobody is advocating that Go for the Throat or Abrade be removed from the format.

An extra word here however on Cut Down and Bloodtithe Harvester. I've heard numerous times about people mentioning either of these cards as potential ban targets, but this is from people who are completely missing the point. Cut Down and especially Bloodtithe Harvester are support cards; these are the cards that you use to interact in the early game and bridge your way to the actual powerful cards. Cut Down is one of the better kill spells in the format, but what makes it feel so powerful in games is how it bridges the gap into Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Invoke Despair. Similarly, a large part of what makes Bloodtithe Harvester so good is good rate combined with the combo-removal potential alongside Reflections of Kiki-Jiki.

Unless you're looking at utility cards on par with Swords to Plowshares, Counterspell, or Wasteland, these types of cards shouldn't even be in the conversation.

That being said, let's go down the list here at the cards that are in the conversation.

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

It's easy to start with the elephant in the room.

While Reckoner Bankbuster seers more play because it is colorless, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is so far and away the best card in Standard it isn't even funny. Almost everyone missed on Fable at first (I know I did), but it's been very fun watching the progression of "hey this card is pretty good in Alchemy" to "hey this is a solid Standard card" to "hey maybe we can play this in Pioneer" to "I wonder if Fable is good enough for Cube" to "hey this card is actually pretty good in a number of Modern decks" to "okay Fable is good enough for Vintage and Legacy, this card is actually just the best card printed in the last few years."

In older formats you can overcome Fable with tempo and card quality, but in Standard it's just so hard to prevent Fable from being a super clean two for one that also smooths your draws so it feels more like a three for one. And that's also to say nothing of trying to play a removal-light synergy deck and not being able to beat Reflections of Kiki-Jiki going unopposed, especially on something like Bloodtithe Harvester killing one of your creatures every turn. On turn three you really just have no option; you must kill the Shaman token or you risk your opponent running away with the game, and then two turns later you must kill the Reflection of Kiki-Jiki unless you're already way ahead also. Three mana shouldn't buy you two must kill plays.

Final Verdict: Should Be Banned (Without A Doubt)

Reckoner Bankbuster

While Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is far and away the best card in Standard, Reckoner Bankbuster is far and away the most played by virtue of being colorless.

In a lot of ways, Reckoner Bankbuster does it all, making it a midrange powerhouse in a format dominated by midrange decks. It can draw cards, crash in for four on good curve out draws that don't need any help, and be a threat in and of itself later in the game as well. It sees play in all sorts of Rakdos-based Midrange decks, as well as in Mono-White Control, various Domain decks, Control decks, and pretty much any deck that's not hyper aggressive, which is a rarity in this format anyway.

Reckoner Bankbuster is the byproduct of the risk that Wizards of the Coast takes whenever they print a good cheap artifact - it's good enough that almost every deck that can play it will play it, and almost every deck can play it because it's colorless. It's an issue of ubiquity, and there's no card in the format that's more ubiquitous than Reckoner Bankbuster.

Final Verdict: Should Be Banned

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

I hate the design of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

While the idea of punishing your opponent's draws or rewarding yours is kinda interesting, it's completely obfuscated by the over-the-top rate of the ability on a four mana 4/5. If you don't have an answer to Sheoldred, you die fast and it's also difficult to race or kill your opponent before you die. And of course, every draw step closer to an answer brings you that much closer to death. However, if you do have an answer, you almost always trade up on mana making it a very bad exchange for the Sheoldred player.

This is very similar to one of the original highly-pushed creature mythics: Baneslayer Angel.

If you can kill it, it's very underwhelming (dies to Doom Blade, etc), but if you can't it is very difficult to win. This play pattern isn't very fun to begin with, as it is very swingy and one of the players is going to leave very unhappy, but it's more insidious than that.

If you're going to play serious Standard against Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, you need to be able to reliably remove it from that battlefield. This means trying to play a fun linear synergy deck that doesn't have much room for removal, or a Mono-Red (or god forbid Mono-Green) deck is almost a non-starter in the format. All this does is push out fun decks potentially based around set mechanics and themes and push everything toward good-card-midrange-soup, which is already a huge problem in the format.

That all being said, banning the far and away most expensive card in the format is a huge cost on top of the fact that banning cards is an undesirable outcome. At the end of the day, Sheoldred is just a creature and is neither ubiquitous (many decks that could play it don't, or just play a few copies) nor that difficult to answer at a good rate of exchange.

Sheoldred is frustrating, but it's not the end all of the format.

Final Verdict: Should Not Be Banned (Begrudgingly)

Invoke Despair

The idea of a card that costs being a potential ban candidate seems wildly suspect, but there's no doubt about Black's dominance as a color in this format, as well as the success of Invoke Despair in this and prior metagames.

There were four nearly identical copies of the Rakdos Midrange deck that Nathan Steuer used to win Pro Tour March of the Machine in the Top 8 a few weeks ago all playing four Invoke Despair, as the potential to copy it with Chandra, Hope's Beacon brought the card to even greater heights. Being able to deal with your opponent's multiple permanents at either parity or card advantage is an excellent thing to have access to in such a midrange dominated format, as well as just killing your opponent.

So why would you consider banning a card like Invoke Despair and not Sheoldred, the Apocalypse? While Sheoldred dies to a proper removal spell, Invoke Despair is much more difficult to interact with. Unless you have a Duress or well-timed counterspell, it's going to resolve and do its thing, which especially makes playing with big fun enchantments or planeswalkers a serious liability. Want to build a deck around All Will Be One? Well, I've got some bad news of what's coming when you tap out for it.

This is the issue that a card like Invoke Despair brings to the format - it makes it very difficult to play a number of different card types you may want to build around. However, a five mana, quad-Black sorcery should be powerful, and Invoke Despair is the kind of card you can have in mind when you build your deck to help nullify it. The removal of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Reckoner Bankbuster from the format does a lot to weaken midrange decks, which should limit the effectiveness of Invoke Despair.

It's certainly in the discussion, but I think if Invoke Despair is one of the most powerful cards in your format, your format is probably okay.

Final Verdict: Should Not Be Banned

Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Commander is great and all, but printing obvious Commander cards into Standard is not always going to do good things.

Atraxa is perhaps the ultimate endgame in Standard. Getting an absurd creature that plays offense and defense while keeping you alive but also drawing about six cards is just wild, but unlike in other formats where you probably need to cheat her into play somehow, just tapping seven lands and casting her is more than reasonable, and barring a counterspell or a removal spell combined with a lethal attack, a resolved Atraxa is going to completely warp the texture of a game. There's no doubt that seven-mana, four-color cards should be powerful, but neither casting or reanimating Atraxa in Standard is very difficult, making this endgame somewhat trivial.

The question of course is, does this make Atraxa bannable or just a big part of the format? There are a number of counts against Atraxa, with perhaps the biggest being a similar complaint to the previously banned Emrakul, The Promised End - Atraxa has the issue that once she resolves, so much of all the previously played turns of Magic cease to matter. Invalidating a bunch of turns of Magic is a very bad aspect for a Magic card to have, and this either results in the Atraxa player winning the game, or the other player playing either their own Atraxa or (some similarly large effect) and the game slogging on as each player now has a bunch of resources and life to work with. And that's to say nothing of what happens if Atraxa is one of the popular cards in the format, as when both players are chaining one Atraxa into the next, the game seemingly goes on indefinitely.

Is Atraxa unbeatable or far and away the best thing you can be doing in Standard right now? No. But is Atraxa one of the most warping and limiting cards in the format that invalidates larges swaths of gameplay, while also presenting a serious issue if it ends up being the best thing to do in the format? Yes.

I don't think Atraxa, Grand Unifier needs to be banned, but Standard would be a much better format if she was. Her power level is simply best left to Eternal formats.

Final Verdict: Should Be Banned

Wedding Announcement

While it has somewhat fallen out of favor of late, Wedding Announcement is sort of like the White Fable of the Mirror-Breaker - it's a cheap card that provides a ton of material, has major snowball potential, is hard to remove effectively, and is another midrange powerhouse.

One of the hardest questions when a card is banned is trying to get a good picture of what things will look like after the ban. With Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Reckoner Bankbuster out of the picture, is Wedding Announcement the next best thing? And if so, is that okay?

I think the answer is a clear yes. Unlike Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, you can answer Wedding Announcement on a one for one basis with something like Destroy Evil or other ways to remove enchantments, while not taking a major loss to do so like you would with Fable. While Mono-White Midrange would definitely be a big player if Fable is banned, Reckoner Bankbuster is a huge part of that deck as well.

This one is very close, but I'm erring on the side of non-banning whenever it's close because bans are so destructive.

Final Verdict: Should Not Be Banned

Raffine, Scheming Seer

The other big candidate for stepping up in Fable of the Mirror-Breaker's place is Raffine, Scheming Seer.

Raffine is currently the centerpiece of Esper Legends, a powerful deck that struggles against the base-Rakdos decks of the format, and has also been the key piece of various Esper Midrange decks before Esper Legends took the forefront. Esper decks have always had access to terrifying curve out draws, and the best of these always revolve around a 2-drop creature into Raffine on turn three. Like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Raffine has huge snow-ball potential, and also like Fable the card filtering that Raffine provides is massive. Raffine's ward ability, especially in conjunction with protection like Skrelv, Deflector Mite and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, can make these draws very hard to deal with, especially on the draw.

Of all the cards that stand to gain from the banning of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Reckoner Bankbuster, Raffine, Scheming Seer is the clear winner, and I could easily see Esper just being the new Rakdos going forward. While there are a few other options we can get to later, I think Esper must also be nipped along the way here to prevent an all-Esper Standard again (like Worlds 2022 was).

Final Verdict: Should Be Banned

Plaza of Heroes

There have been times where I've described Plaza of Heroes as secretly one of the best cards in Standard, and while it's not a major feature right now in this very Rakdos-heavy metagame, the card is an exceedingly important part of the format. So many of the format's main threats are legends, and a pain-free, untapped, utopia land that also has phenomenal utility late in the game is about as good as it gets.

Rakdos decks in general are extremely hostile to creature decks, but without that check on the format there's a significant chance that either Esper Legends or any other variety of multicolored legend deck could end up being the best thing to be doing in the format, and Plaza of Heroes will always be at the heart of it.

While this would be a pretty wild and surprising ban, this is a somewhat clever way to power down Raffine, Scheming Seer and friends without actually banning it. However, I think that banning Raffine proper is the much safer way to go about it.

Final Verdict: Should Not Be Banned

The Wandering Emperor

I'm mostly only addressing this one because it was on the fake ban announcement that was "leaked" early, because at no point would even considering banning The Wandering Emperor cross my mind.

The Wandering Emperor is a very powerful Magic card. She's perhaps one of the most well designed planeswalkers ever printed, as so much of her power is front loaded on the first instant speed cast, and what she leaves behind is solid but not backbreaking like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria or Jace, the Mind Sculptor would be. However, what makes her so interesting is that because so much of the power is on casting there's a decent amount of agency in both deck-building and play to work your way around her.

Yes, The Wandering Emperor does see play in a lot of other, more powerful formats. However, if The Wandering Emperor is the most powerful card in the format, that sounds like a pretty reasonable format to me.

Final Verdict: Should Not Be Banned

The Final Tally

This leaves us with my proposed Standard ban list of:

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Reckoner Bankbuster are the no doubters for me, but I think that banning both Atraxa, Grand Unifier as well as Raffine, Scheming Seer would do a lot for the variety level in the format as a whole. The big ramp decks still have the excellent Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness and Titan of Industry to ramp into, while there are still a ton of incredible legends to cast off of Plaza of Heroes and friends.

There may be a little concern that this ban list does not take Mono-White Control into account, one of the slower and more frustrating decks in the format that caused a ton of draws at the most recent Regional Championship, but Reckoner Bankbuster is actually a pretty big loss for that deck. It's also just a sorcery speed, one color midrange control deck that feels very solvable to me; Mono-White Control just doesn't have access to the wide array of tools across three colors that a deck like Grixis or Esper does, which is partly why Raffine, Scheming Seer is so concerning.

So, what do you think? We will find out this coming Monday what Wizards of the Coast is thinking, but when considering bans I urge you to remember that if you're reading this article, you are most likely a very deeply entrenched Magic player - Not every Magic player plays as much Magic as you do! And growing the game by making players feel confident in buying into a paper Standard deck and playing again at local game stores is very important for the long-term health of the game.

I'm very interested to see what the final verdict will be!