We’ve just witnessed the first Modern Pro Tour in four years concluding last Sunday, and it still can very possibly be only the second most impactful thing that has happened or will happen, to Modern in the span of not even two weeks. The first annual B&R announcement will go live tomorrow, and in roughly 24 hours, the landscape of Modern might change forever. Or stay the same for all we know, but that’s not that interesting, is it now? We’ve decided to ask some of our creators about their take on what should happen with the format, and now we’re bringing you the result of those musings. Enjoy!

ArchaeusDota

What should be banned in Modern?

I think that generally the format is fine and the decks are relatively balanced. The cards worth discussing are:

1. The One Ring: while I don’t think the power level of the card is bannable, the fact that it is colourless and can seemingly be slotted into almost any deck makes it a contender for a banning. The protection timewalk can be a boring/frustrating play pattern for many decks and drawing into another copy to essentially stop the lifeloss from getting out of hand is pretty miserable to play against. It’s also pretty broken in Tron and allows them to play the game easily without assembling Tron, which shouldn’t be allowed.
2. Orcish Bowmasters: Not even close to being bannable, it’s a pretty meh card that interacts in a cool way to counteract the ring and act as a dynamic black card to answer Ragavan. 
3. Grief/Fury: Fury is fine, Grief + undying is pretty miserable to play against though and leads to non-games which is not what magic is about. Wouldn’t be surprised at a Grief ban but also it’s not that big of a deal. 

What should be unbanned in Modern?

My answer is probably nothing. Lots of cards that have been banned recently deserve their bannings in my opinion and I don’t see a reason to revoke such decisions with the current meta.

Extra: opinion on possible Pioneer changes

The Pioneer meta is extremely stale and has been the same 4-5 tier 1 decks for years now with everything else being mid. I’d personally like a Nykthos ban but I haven’t thought long enough about how the format would need to be balanced around Green becoming unplayable. Likely would need to ban a Rakdos card as well – maybe Bloodtithe or something to slow down their aggro plan.

Jędrek

What should be banned in Modern?

Let me start this discussion by saying that nothing NEEDS to be banned in Modern right now. The power level of the format is fairly well-balanced, without any one deck, or subset of similar decks, dominating the field. For those of you who are familiar with my content and stance on Magic as a whole, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that my biggest gripe with Magic’s gameplay for a long time has been the disparity between going first and second, and any card that exacerbates it in a drastic fashion is a decent candidate for being banned in my opinion. I’m talking particularly about Ragavan and Wrenn and Six – both of those cards will win a fair amount of games on their own on the play while often being significantly less impactful in the same situation on the draw. I don’t think that’s a huge problem in terms of balance or anything, and it’s definitely somewhat of a luxury ban that we can think about while there are no “real” issues with the format, but I’d like to see those two go. On top of that I share some of Dota’s sentiments regarding Grief – getting double Thoughtseized is a fairly miserable experience, and while people have been “getting Junded” by discard into a monster for years at this point, this is a much more extreme and compact version of that. With that being said, it’s also not that big of a deal, and if Scam remains the part of Modern after tomorrow’s announcement, that’s also fine by me.

What should be unbanned in Modern?

I’ve shared my opinion on Modern’s ban list as a whole last week on Twitter, which you can find here. If you wish to dive deeper into the conversation with me on that platform then by all means do so, but for the sake of staying on topic, I’m gonna only discuss the first four tiers here (excluding Ponder tier since it’s a different discussion, which leaves us with three tiers after all I guess). Before I go into particular cards though, it’s imperative that I share my philosophy about unbanning cards: I believe that any card on the ban list should “prove” its value in case of the unban rather than whether it should stay banned. That’s why there are some cards that I’d keep on the banlist even though they probably wouldn’t break Modern, but they also wouldn’t contribute to the betterment of the format in a meaningful way, at least in my opinion.

Preordain – Bowmasters made drawing cards a pretty big liability, so at this point I’m not too concerned about some twenty cantrip deck dominating the format, and it’s a nice bit of extra consistency for blue decks.

Glimpse of Nature – Probably the easiest unban. Elves have been a fan favourite basically forever, and many people would love to give Glimpse a try, and there’s very little chance it’d be broken.

Arcum’s Astrolabe – maybe the most controversial take here, but I think that with Triomes already making five colour somewhat easy to play, and with Leyline Binding incentivising Domain rather than other type of fixing, and finally with how poorly Triomes and Astrolabe plays together, I don’t think it’d change the ease of playing four or five colours, but rather support what it was “supposed” to enhance (artifact decks and possibly “snow matters” things like Ice-Fang Coatl and Dead of Winter).

Artifact lands – four nonblue ones are fairly easy unbans imo, and while Seat of Synod might prove a bit too good with Emry (and to a much lesser extent Thoughtcast and Thought Monitor), I’m willing to take that chance.

Mox Opal – definitely the riskiest unban on the list, and definitely not something you can free in tandem with artifact lands, but I think with all those broken cards that were played alongside Mox gone (Oko, Mystic Sanctuary and to a lesser extent KCI), I’d like to give it a second chance, seeing how beloved it was by many.

Birthing Pod – similarly to Mox, Pod had some extremely devoted followers that would love nothing more than to spin it again, and while it’s undoubtedly somewhat risky to let it roam free once more, I’d like to at least take it for a test drive, see how it fares in the 2023 Modern, and re-ban it if necessary (a so called “Golgari Grave-Troll manoeuvre” that WotC  should employ much more often if you ask me).

Laplasjan

This is a hot topic whenever the day of the next B&R is approaching. Why is that so? Well everybody has an opinion, from kitchen table players hating a certain card or archetype, to pro players diving deep into the format before a tournament. It seems very hard to discuss most of the Ban/Unban ideas. Unban ideas usually are just fantasies about old, dead archetypes being playable again and there is not enough or even no data at all to support or reject certain thesis. Because how many playtest matches would you have to play to claim with certainty that any given card from the ban list is not broken in Modern? Or to say the contrary that it still is broken? You would have to test old decks and archetypes against new ones but also build new decks with those cards. And you would never build the best version of the deck. The question about Bans and Unbans is more like asking for an opinion than a chance for a discussion based on facts.

My approach is the following – if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. And that was true for Modern before LotR. Metagame after Modern Horizons 2 was stable, say 5-10 top decks for couple of years. Was it boring? For some, possibly. Was Modern dominated by powerful MH2 cards? Partially, yes. Was the metagame supporting various, diverse archetypes? Also yes. It is still difficult to define the metagame after the LotR release. Many players tested for Pro Tour, some waited to see its results. Some people brought the most popular, most powerful decks while others tried to counter them with less obvious strategies. Online tournaments were not so popular for a week or two. Most successful deck before PT, RB Scam, had only a single copy in top8 but won the whole tournament. Highest win rates were scored by less popular decks: Hammer and Merfolks (much to Sodek’s and mine dismay – Jędrek). And the PT itself included 6 rounds of draft making the whole picture even harder to analyse.

My opinion is that we have to wait. For both bans and unbans. Wait because Wizards want to sell the product, they want people to play with The One Ring for some time. Because more tournaments need to be dominated by The One Ring like PT was. And I think that The One Ring will be banned, but not right now. This card is obviously broken, providing almost an extra turn thanks to protection, giving a huge card advantage boost, being colourless so any deck can play it (and any deck eventually will). And being legendary so if you are about to die you just play another copy. 

Speaking about unbans, I haven’t played a single game of Magic with currently Banned cards recently. I know there might be some cards not powerful enough to be kept on the ban list. But to support such a thesis, a huge number of test games should be played. Anything else is just a discussion about taste and preferences. The risk is too high, the gain is too small, the testing is too exhausting. 

Long story short – nothing banned, nothing unbanned. Play with The One Ring now, it doesn’t have much time left. 

Sodek

What should be banned in Modern?

In my opinion, the whole B&R discussion in the Modern community is quite chaotic because players look at the format from different perspectives. Some think of the format we have nowadays, others about what it used to be in the past. Modern has dramatically changed since the dawn of the MH era and it’s impossible to take it back – Wizards decided to move in this direction and we can’t do anything about it. We, Modern players, should finally forget about the old assumptions that were created many years ago. The ‘turn four rule’ won’t come back, so as old staples. But as long as the gameplay is interesting (and I think it is) and there’s a plethora of decks to choose from, the format shouldn’t be nerfed – Wizards would have to ban too many cards and the effect is not guaranteed. The only complaint I have at the moment is the lack of representation of all of the traditionally known styles of play due to the high power level of answers. Solitaire combo is dead, and so are creature-based decks (with the exception of Merfolks, but they play free interaction themselves). I have no idea if Combo as an archetype can be salvaged by unbans, but I doubt it. Aggro decks struggle to beat Fury, so I can see it being banned to increase the format’s diversity. There’s a huge risk though – decks like Scam, and to a lesser extent Rhinos and 4c Omnath rely on it and without it, they could disappear and no one knows if the metagame would balance itself again. That’s why I would keep it as is for now.

What should be unbanned in Modern?

The Modern ban list is a strange creation. It’s a mix of completely broken cards, design mistakes, effects that are not suited for tournament play, etc. There’s also a group of cards that got on the list many years ago, when Modern was a very different format, and for some reason, they didn’t become legal even when the environment became much more powerful than what banned cards are capable of doing. Personally, I’m a fan of short banlists – if something doesn’t break the format, it should be allowed to play, even if the ‘gain’ for Modern wouldn’t be great – let players toy with the cards they want to. That’s why I would love to see a lot of cards unbanned, but I also know that the impact of each unban would be very different. Some cards would never see Modern play anyway (Blazing Shoal, Bridge from Below, Punishing Fire, Hypergenesis, Tibalt’s Trickery), but they also won’t make the format a better place, so it would come down to if we want to have as short banlist as possible or not – my answer is yes, but Wizards may have a different opinion about it.

There’s also a group of cards that would maybe impact Modern’s fringe strategies to the point that could be near tier 2 at best. Glimpse of Nature could help creature-oriented decks like Elves or Affinity to get an identity they lack now. Seething Song would maybe reanimate Storm as a solitaire combo (I doubt it though), Umazawa’s Jitte would have the same impact as Kaldra Compleat – it would maybe see play in Stoneforge decks but that’s it. Golgari Grave-Troll could help Dredge being a solid graveyard archetype again, but I don’t expect them to touch it ever again. Splinter Twin is a fan favourite unban and I can see it being freed from the ban list prison – it’s a fragile two-card combo that feels like it’s a turn too slow for current standards. All of those aforementioned cards are easy unbans for me.

There are also cards that were enabling broken strategies in the past, but they would look perfectly fine nowadays and could see play in Tier 1 or Tier 2 strategies. Old Faithless Looting decks like Hollow One or Dredge would still have a hard time beating currently established decks, not to mention the new, post-MH2 wave of graveyard hate. I would love to see it unbanned, but I can bet it won’t happen because Wizards are cowards. Preordain is in a similar position – it could be solid in blue decks like Murktide, or Breach and it doesn’t have the problems Ponder has (time issues), but Wizards won’t risk it. Green Sun’s Zenith and Birthing Pod look like good candidates for unbans, since what they offer doesn’t look overpowered compared to the rest of the field, but the ceiling is high and there’s a risk that someone would break it – for example, GSZ in Amulet or Pod with a new toolbox to work with. I can see them being unbanned, but there’s definitely a good amount of risk involved with them. The last group of cards I want to mention are artifact lands. They can be considered as design mistakes and I would be fine with them being on the banlist forever, but I also don’t see a shell or interaction that would make them too good. There’s no Mox Opal or KCI to abuse them, turn one Emry can be scary, but it’s just an easy to kill creature, there are also multiple ways to punish the opponent for relying too heavily on arifacts – Karn, the Great Creator is a nice example. 

yriel

What should be banned in Modern?

Nothing. I think we should finally accept the power creep that’s been happening in Modern for years at this point. A lot of ban calls feel like a hope to revive the Modern of old, but that won’t ever happen.

What should be unbanned in Modern?

My list of cards to unban is definitely not short, but it can be sorted into a bunch of groups.

First of all, I disagree with a large number of bans in the past few years. Many of those cards were banned for being at the top of the metagame for months or even longer, which is not a crime if you ask me – there’ll always be something on the top. Sure, a lot of them invalidate some strategies by themselves, but that’s somewhat true for basically every card, and I believe that everybody should be allowed to play with the cards they want to.

I’m pretty sure that unbanning everything on the list could be correct, but I would also require months of dedicated testing by the community as a whole to find an equilibrium with all those powerful cards getting released.

Let’s start with cards that would revive archetypes that are long dead:

• Artifact lands: Affinity
• Golgari Grave-Troll: Dredge
• Faithless Looting: graveyard strategies as a whole
• Bridge from Below: see above

• Splinter Twin: quite obvious
• Blazing Shoal: Infect, possibly other similar creature combo
• Hypergenesis: likely worse Glimpse of Tomorrow
• Glimpse of Nature: creature combo
• Birthing Pod: creature decks, both combo and fair
• Seething Song: spell-based combo

Then we have cards that are, in my opinion, on par or even below the current power level of Modern:

• Punishing Fire: Fury and W6 are much more prohibitive for creature decks
• Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath: unbanning so many linear cards would make such a powerful fair card fine
• Arctum’s Astrolabe: see above
• Field of the Dead: significant part of the format would be able to ignore it
• Gitaxian Probe: it was banned because of Infect
• Lurrus of the Dream-Den: a fine, even if powerful, card
• Yorion, Sky Nomad: see above
• Umezawa’s Jitte: similarly to Companions, it’s powerful but fine in current Modern
• Mycosynth Lattice: Tron should have an “I win” button that can be found with Karn TGC
• Mystic Sanctuary: Control decks should be allowed to soft-lock people with Cryptic Command