(This is part two of a two-part series where I go over all 47 cards currently on the Modern ban list, reexamining them from the perspective of the current Modern format. Please read part one here before proceeding! )

Danger Level: Very High

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

What a place to start.

Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is a fundamentally broken Magic card. While it doesn't exactly fall cleanly on the "combo kills on turn three" or "ubiquitous staple too good not to play on rate" scale, putting double digits worth of power into play on turn two with alarming regularity is not something that is sustainable for a reasonable format. The fact that Hogaak also has evasion and you can't just chump block it while you try to find an answer makes it even more egregious.

Sure, we could live in a world where people are maindecking graveyard hate and boarding up in four copies of Tormod's Crypt and Leyline of the Void or whatever and it would mostly keep Hogaak in check - after all it didn't win the one Pro Tour it was legal - however, that is not what anyone would call a healthy format.

Danger Level: Medium

Fun Factor: Medium

Verdict: Unban

Hypergenesis is a scary one.

Sure, the prospect of dropping a pair of Archon of Cruelty and a Sundering Titan down on turn three is a daunting one, but while the highs are high, the lows are very low. We already have two popular and successful cascade-based decks in the format in Rhinos and Living End, and Rhinos is the more popular of the two because it is the most consistent and interactive, as well as being more resilient to hate cards.

Hypergenesis on the other hand will be a hot mess.

This level of inconsistency, as well as the bevy of powerful interaction and powerful sideboard cards that are already being played to deal with the other cascade decks (not to mention the powerful cards your opponent gets to put in as well), has Hypergenesis feeling like it would just be the third best cascade deck - a glass cannon that will go wild sometimes but ultimately be too inconsistent to be reliable.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Maybe For The Person Playing It, Very Low For Everyone Else

Verdict: Stay Banned

Krark-Clan Ironworks operates in a somewhat odd space.

The card is clearly broken, the lynchpin of a non-deterministic but very powerful combo deck that often takes long and convoluted turns as well as exploits some oddities in the rules, as well as winning on the early turns of the game. However, despite this the deck never had a huge share of the metagame, despite putting up constantly good finishes. The reason being?

It was just too difficult for your average player to play well.

The setup and combo itself were already complicated, but the skill floor for a player to not only be able to play the deck well, but also play well against opponents who were putting up strong resistance, was far higher than the average player could hope to obtain. This created a particularly difficult dynamic, allowing high level players access to a broken deck that your average player couldn't hope to keep up with.

This combination is a deadly one, and when paired with the potential for super long and complicated combo turns that slow down tournaments, Krark-Clan Ironworks should remain safely on the ban list.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

It is astounding to think that Wizards of the Coast could add 3 mana to a card's cost and that card would still be good enough to get banned, but here we are.

Make no mistake, pre-companion nerf Lurrus of the Dream-Den was the best Magic: The Gathering card of all time. Yes, better than Black Lotus, better than Ancestral Recall, and so on. It is one of the few cards to be banned, not restricted, for power level reasons in Vintage, and even after the companion rules change has been slowly banned one by one from every competitive format.

Personally, I would prefer that rather than just banning them one at a time, format by format, they would just remove the companion rule from competitive Magic play and unban the various banned companions, but just short of that Lurrus of the Dream-Den shouldn't be legal in any format. The opportunity cost is far too low, which soft bans permanents that cost more than two, which is an awful thing for a card to do.

Good riddance.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Dreadful

Verdict: Stay Banned

From one all-time design mistake to another.

Every time Mental Misstep has been legal in a format, you get to play a very silly minigame when you draw your opening hand. If you want to resolve your 1-drop, or counter theirs, both players simply count the number of Mental Missteps in their hand, and whoever has more gets to win the fight. That's it.

It's a miserable experience, and one worthy of being on every banlist and forgotten forever.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Also High

Verdict: Stay Banned

Mox Opal is a card that dodged the ban hammer for a very long time.

Fast mana is almost always a red flag for potential card bans, and the arguably worse Chrome Mox has always been banned in Modern. However, because Mox Opal was a synergy card rather than a raw rate card, and the decks that it powered up were considered fun, it dodged the bullet for a long time.

However, now that is on the ban list, it is very hard to imagine it coming off. Since Mox Opal was banned, we've seen the introduction of Urza's Saga as well as new artifact lands to the format, and if the goal is to unban the original artifact lands that's just another issue with Mox Opal.

In the right deck, Mox Opal is better than Mox Sapphire, and that's just too much weight for a card to hold in the Modern format.

Danger Level: Medium

Fun Factor: Very Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

If you're not super familiar with Modern, this one might just jump off the page. What in the world could this six-mana artifact that hardly does anything could possibly have done to deserve a ban? Well, nothing actually. It was never put into any main decks and was never more than a one-of. So, what then is the issue?

Karn, the Great Creator.

Karn, the Great Creator is a great candidate for ban discussion across multiple formats, but is still legal everywhere besides being a dominating force in Pioneer and Historic, as well as a major player in Modern. Mycosynth Lattice turns Karn from a very powerful toolbox and combo enabler into a one-sided Armageddon.

I'd much rather just be rid of Karn in all the aforementioned formats, as the card is obnoxious and only getting worse with each new artifact printed, but as long as Karn is legal, Mycosynth Lattice should not be.

Danger Level: Medium

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

And now we come to a trifecta of Throne of Eldraine cards that exemplify the disastrous F.I.R.E. design policy that led to one of the uglier periods of Magic design history.

Mystic Sanctuary looks so innocent, and realistically it is. A common land with some steep requirements that will often be a tapland is a pretty big ask for a format as high powered as Modern. However, like so many cards before it, Mystic Sanctuary is a card that goes off the charts once you add fetchlands into the mix. Now all of the sudden your perfect mana fixing land can also produce and loop spells, creating unrelentingly repetitive gameplay that make the game feel like a chore.

This is closer to a "quality of life" ban than a power level ban; not to say that Mystic Sanctuary isn't very good, but it's more about the miserable and repetitive experience it creates rather than anything else.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Hope You Like Elk

Verdict: Stay Banned

It's amazing what a "+" rather than a "-" can do.

Oko, Thief of Crowns is the best planeswalker ever printed and it's not particularly close. It's unfortunate because it's actually a pretty fun design, just awfully developed. If the second ability came at a cost (say -1 loyalty) rather than a benefit and required a choice to use your resources or not, the card would be great.

That being said, Oko shouldn't be allowed in any serious Magic format.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Low to Medium

Verdict: Stay Banned

Many of these recent F.I.R.E. designs on the ban list are cut from the ubiquity cloth, and Once Upon a Time is a prime offender. The idea is clever, but the power level on the card is just far too high to ignore in deck-building, and it offers a free level of consistency that makes the opening turns of games feel too similar.

And that's to say nothing of how the card plays in decks that actually care about finding the "right" lands. Tron, Amulet Titan, and more all would greatly benefit from the free Ancient Stirrings effect.

Danger Level: Medium

Fun Factor: Medium

Verdict: Unban

We just saw Preordain unbanned, freeing one of the two "too powerful" Blue one-mana cantrips from the ban list, with Ponder still remaining.

In the hierarchy of Blue cantrips, Ponder is only second to the format-defining Brainstorm, while Preordain likely rests in third place. These cards are often the backbone of decks in Legacy, and were banned to stop the consistency of combo decks finding their combos too quickly, as well as fair decks being able to find exactly what they need in every single game.

There's an issue of ubiquity at stake here, as if there are too many good cantrips, you're just shrinking the number of playable cards in a format, but in this new modern populated with many cascade spells that stop you from playing cantrips, as well as the desire to want to fetch a tapped tri-land on turn one, it would be interesting to see Ponder turned loose as well.

Danger Level: Low

Fun Factor: Very Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

Punishing Fire is an interesting one, obviously only an issue in concert with Grove of the Burnwillows.

On the one hand, it's actually quite awful against large portions of the format. Two mana for a repeatable shock looks silly when your opponent is making seven mana on turn three or beating you down with 4/4s. to shock over and over again just doesn't scale super well with the size and quality of threats in Modern day Magic.

However, when Punishing Fire is going to be good, it's going to be unbeatable.

Between Orcish Bowmasters, Fury, Wrenn and Six, and more, it is an awful time to be a small creature in Modern. There's a soft ban on 1 toughness creatures, barring the absolute best ones like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, as you're just asking to get blown out over and over by the best cards in the format.

The only thing that unbanning Punishing Fire does is make this problem even worse by expanding this to include 2 toughness creatures as well!

Danger Level: Medium to High

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

Fast mana has been a consistent non-starter on this list and Rite of Flame will not be bucking that trend.

Storm hasn't been a factor in Modern in a long time, but the ability for Rite of Flame to get the party started as early as turn one or turn two is a very scary prospect, and that's also not accounting for something like just casting Blood Moon on turn one.

Fast mana shouldn't come this cheap.

Danger Level: Low

Fun Factor: Maybe For The Person Playing It, Very Low For Everyone Else

Verdict: Stay Banned

Second Sunrise is very similar to Krark-Clan Ironworks.

It is at the heart of a very complicated and non-deterministic combo deck, which looks to take an absurd amount of game actions while potentially abusing some corner case scenarios in the rules. It can win on the early turns, but isn't as abusable as some of the other cards on the ban list. However, like Krark-Clan Ironworks, the high level of complication often keeps the play rate of decks like Second Sunrise low because the skill floor is so high.

Despite all of this, this is another "quality of life" ban. Second Sunrise combo turns can take upwards of 10-20 minutes all in the same turn, which can slow tournament progress to a halt. Modern is a better format without having to deal with this.

Danger Level: Low

Fun Factor: Medium

Verdict: Unban

Unlike Rite of Flame, Simian Spirit Guide, or the Moxen, Seething Song doesn't come online until turn three without help.

Given the current texture of Modern and the overall weakness of the Storm deck as a whole, this feels like a very safe unban.

Danger Level: Low to Medium

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

Another "quality of life" ban, there may be no card in Magic's historic responsible for more draws than Sensei's Divining Top. The repetitive action of activating Sensei's Divining Top over and over again across many turns of a long game of Magic just eats up clock time, making the tournament experience worse as a whole.

It is also important to note how potent the card is alongside Counterbalance, providing a soft lock that can be both powerful and frustrating to play against, further elongating a non-deterministic game state that heavily favors one player but doesn't illicit a concession.

Sensei's Divining Top can stay right where it is.

Danger Level: Medium to High

Fun Factor: Medium

Verdict: Stay Banned

If we've heard it once we've heard it a thousand times, early game fast mana is bad.

Simian Spirit Guide speeds up combo and all-in decks and casts Blood Moon on turn one or turn two. None of these are good things for a healthy format.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: High

Verdict: Stay Banned

Skullclamp is a very interesting one.

On the one hand, Magic has become a game increasingly about the board state rather than cards in hand, so sacrificing your board state to draw cards isn't nearly what it used to be. We see this often in Cube drafts, one of the few places where Skullclamp is legal, where the card tends to underperform. This is also a format that is fairly hostile to 1 toughness creatures in general, which are the bread and butter of any Skullclamp deck.

That being said, Skullclamp is still a fundamentally broken card. It is both game-warping as well as capable of enabling combos, making it a bit too scary to want to mess with.

Danger Level: Low to Medium

Fun Factor: Medium

Verdict: Unban

For a long time, Modern was unable to handle a well-built Splinter Twin deck, combining the best fair cards in the format with a combo finish when needed for a deck that could pretty much do everything.

This was a long time ago.

Modern is now a format inundated with powerful interaction, from Force of Negation to Solitude and more, Snapcaster Mage is no longer one of the best cards in the format, and putting a four mana do nothing enchantment and a Horned Turtle into your fair deck comes with significant risk.

This could backfire, but I don't think Splinter Twin would be a major player in the current Modern format.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

Amulet Titan, on the other hand, just made Top 8 at Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings.

While it is still somewhat on the fringe of the format, the deck has a longtime pedigree and is clearly still a solid contender. Summer Bloom was the card that threw Amulet Titan over the edge, highly increasing the probability of turn two or three kills. Amulet Titan can still kill on turn three with its best draws, so adding Summer Bloom back into the mix is a no-no.

Danger Level: Low to Medium

Fun Factor: Do You Like Slot Machines?

Verdict: Stay Banned

Another "quality of life" ban, Tibalt's Trickery has never been a Modern powerhouse like some other cards on this list.

However, what Tibalt's Trickery does do is turn your Modern game into a slot machine. You can use cascade cards to cascade into Tibalt's Trickery every time, filling your deck with cards like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, and some amount of the time you will cast Emrakul on turn three and win. Otherwise, you will hit one of your setup cards and blank.

This isn't a fun thing to exist in the format.

Danger Level: Medium to High

Fun Factor: High

Verdict: Unban

Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are invariably linked, both being the two banned delve cards released in the same set. Last week Dig Through Time came in as an, albeit risky, unban.

While dangerous, Treasure Cruise is a more inherently fair card than Dig Through Time. The fear with Dig Through Time is that it will make setting up two card combos too easy, which is a dangerous thing, while Treasure Cruise only provides volume at a cheap cost. There's a ton of value engines in Modern right now that didn't exist the last time that Treasure Cruise was legal, meaning it has a lot more to go up against. Furthermore, there's a serious question of if Treasure Cruise is even a better card than Murktide Reagent, as the two cards both are battling for the same resource.

Unbanning just Treasure Cruise might be a bit too risky, but in the context of a scorched-earth purging of much of the entire ban list it makes a lot more sense.

Danger Level: Low

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Unban

Umezawa's Jitte still being on the ban list is embarrassing.

Creatures in Magic are twice the size they used to be, and spending four mana to try and get involved in creature combat just to start to accrue some bonuses over time is not a winning path to victory in Modern. Umezawa's Jitte is specifically very good in creature mirrors or against small creature decks, decks that are currently decimated by the likes of Orcish Bowmasters, Fury, Wrenn and Six, and more.

The decks that would want to play Umezawa's Jitte don't really exist, nor do the decks it would be good against, and the only chance it would have to see any play at all is as part of an overcrowded Stoneforge Mystic package.

Danger Level: High

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

F.I.R.E. design strikes again!

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is one of the most complete win conditions ever printed. The ability to ramp, draw cards, and gain life, all while blanking removal and providing a never threat and source of card advantage is overwhelmingly powerful, especially when the floor is so low.

The only count against Uro is how difficult the mana cost is, which is no issue at all in a format with fetchlands and tri-lands. If Uro is legal, everything will rotate back to it.

Danger Level: Medium

Fun Factor: Low

Verdict: Stay Banned

While not even close on power level, much of what was said about Lurrus of the Dream-Den can be said here. The companion mechanic is one of the biggest design mistakes that Wizards of the Coast has ever made, and Yorion, Sky Nomad is the Robin to Lurrus's Batman.

Like Uro and many of the F.I.R.E. designs, Yorion pushes everything in the direct of grindy midrange mush, where rate is all that matters and games last forever. That's to say nothing of how well it plays in the already well-established Four-Color Money Pile/Elementals decks.

Again, the preference here would be to remove the companion mechanic from tournament Magic entirely, but short of that Yorion can stay on the banlist.

Final Answer?

Whew, that was a lot of cards!

To summarize, here are the cards I think are safe unbans:

Here are the cards I think should be unbanned but are borderline and dangerous:

Here are the cards I think should stay banned but am open to discussion on:

And here are the cards I think should stay banned at all costs:

Sixteen cards are a lot of potential unbans, especially considering that part of the rationale for each is that the format would have the others available as well. Doing this sort of mass unbanning would be a big upending to the format, challenging in the sense that it would put a lot of strain on players as well as make it difficult to determine the problem if something goes sideways because there are so many variables.

What's the best way to do this? I'm not sure, but I do think the Modern ban list is currently oversaturated and out of date. If you're going to soft-rotate Modern every few years with a new Modern Horizons set, you might as well let the actual Modern cards that are reasonable out to play too!