Wizards of the Coast has dropped the latest update to the ban list for Magic: The Gathering, and the axe has fallen on the most dominant strategy in Standard - Izzet Prowess. The overpowered 'Cori-steel Cutter' is banned, as is the format-warping combat trick 'Monstrous Rage'. Monstrous Rage's other home, Mono Red Aggro, has taken even more of a kicking, as the menacing mouse 'Heartfire Hero' is among five further cards to catch a ban in Standard.
Just last week, we reported on the desultory Pro Tour Final Fantasy tournament, in which 42% of the field played Izzet Prowess, and all the top eight players were running either Izzet Prowess or Mono Red Aggro decks. It's good fortune that the latest MTG banlist update was already scheduled for June 30, because waiting any longer would have been frankly miserable.
Mono Red and Izzet Prowess have benefitted from a slow accumulation of excellent low cost spells over several MTG sets: while Cori-steel Cutter is plain cracked, it's the sheer volume of high quality cards laser-focused on an aggro strategy that mean these decks are dominating standard.
So while the card pool they have to fall back on is not going to perform anywhere near as well, they're only one or two overcooked cards away from bouncing right back into the pack.
The other four bans for Standard are more interesting, if only because you might not have seen them quite as often when playing ranked on Arena. Jadine Klomparens explained the reasoning behind each ban in MTG's announcement article, and we've summarised here:
Abuelo's Awakening is a cheap and reliable reanimation effect which the Azorius Omniscience deck used to cheat Omniscience into play. This deck took 20% of the meta at the Final Fantasy Pro tour, and looks well placed to capitalize on Izzet Prowess' and Mono Red's decline.
Up the Beanstalk: this efficient card draw engine for slower decks just provides too much advantage - it's banned in Modern, and now it's banned in Standard.
Hopeless Nightmare: in self-bounce strategies Hopeless Nightmare is a very reliable way to keep your opponent's hand empty and drain their life. It's effective and un-fun to play against - a hopeless nightmare, if you will.
This Town Ain't Big Enough: with the ability to bounce any kind of nonland permanent that either player controls, this gives self-bounce decks incredible tempo, keeping their opponent's permanents off the field while returning their own bounce targets to hand. In Izzet Prowess, it forms an end-game combo with Stormchaser's Talent, locking the opponent out of the game and very slowly beating them to a pulp.
What do you think - are these changes enough to bring some life back into Standard? Did WotC wait too long to act on Izzet Prowess? What would you like to see banned (or unbanned)? Come and join the discussion in the Wargamer Discord community.
Check out Wargamer's guide to the official MTG banlist to stay up to date with everything that's changed - other formats have been affected, though nowhere near as much as Standard. Our guide to the MTG release schedule should also be of interest - who knows what busted new cards are coming in Edge of Eternities?