MTG: WotC Bans Alrund’s Epiphany, Divide By Zero, And More
WotC brought out the big banhammer for their latest list of banned and restricted cards. Heavy hitters are on the chopping block.
Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast made a big announcement of new banned and restricted cards for 2022, and some powerhouse problems are gone. Midrange players can all breathe a little easier as Alrund’s Epiphany, Divide by Zero, and Faceless Haven have all been banned from Standard.
Joining them are other banned cards. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is banned from Legacy. Memory Lapse is banned from Historic. But Teferi, Time Raveler has been rebalanced and is unbanned now! For more details, here’s the announcement from WotC:
WotC Banned And Restricted Announcement
“We have a set of changes targeted at some of the top decks, including Blue-Red Epiphany and other blue control decks, Mono-White Aggro, and Mono-Green Aggro. Our goal is to create some churn among the current top decks, open up additional angles from which to attack the metagame, and leave room for more experimentation and innovation with the release of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty.
Alrund’s Epiphany is a card we highlighted in the October announcement as having potential for negative impact on metagame diversity. While blue decks with powerful late-game spells can sometimes do good work as natural predators of midrange decks, a deck that chains together extra turns can be particularly difficult to stop and frustrating to play against when it represents too large a portion of the metagame. The foretell ability of Alrund’s Epiphany makes it even harder interact with, as one of the traditional answers to big spells is hand disruption.
While not entirely dominant throughout the MTG Arena ladders (especially in Best-of-One), Alrund’s Epiphany decks have been particularly popular and successful at the highest levels of competition and in tournament play. To create space in the metagame for more mid-speed and slow archetypes, and to address the often-frustrating play pattern of chaining extra turns, Alrund’s Epiphany is banned in Standard.
Even without access to Alrund’s Epiphany, our data gives us concern that other blue control decks are poised to reduce metagame diversity by shutting out certain types of strategies. In particular, Divide by Zero gives those decks flexible, early interaction that is especially effective against slower, more powerful spells and permanents. The ability of Divide by Zero to cover a variety of angles of attack frequently gives these decks enough time to enact and protect a powerful endgame soft-lock state, often using Lier, Disciple of the Drowned or Hullbreaker Horror. Therefore, we’re choosing to ban Divide by Zero to make blue control decks less effective against other mid-speed and slow decks and force them to be more intentional about which threats they choose to prepare for.
The most winning decks on the MTG Arena ladder, and among the most popular, have been Mono-White Aggro and Mono-Green Aggro. While each owes part of its success to preying upon Blue-Red Epiphany decks, both decks also have high win rates against the field, especially against many of the less popular decks on the fringes. Faceless Haven represents a lot of the power of these monocolor aggro decks by virtue of being efficient on its own and by providing resilience against creature sweepers and targeted removal. To weaken these two aggressive archetypes without fundamentally changing their core game plan, Faceless Haven is banned.”
Teferi Rebalanced
That’s just Standard. But we’re also seeing the effects of Historic and Alchemy’s ability to rebalance cards. Teferi, Time Raveler is first on the list of the rebalanced cards. There are more in store. So if you’re a fan of Alchemy, get ready to see what the future of Magic looks like.
