Wizards of the Coast have updated its Magic ban list. The tabletop publisher has continued to update Magic: The Gathering's many different formats, taking into account potentially unbalanced cards in competitive play. With the release of Dominaria United and the community eagerly awaiting the release of The Brothers' War, such changes were to be expected.
The new cards on the Magic ban list
According to an post on the official website, two cards are being added to the Magic ban list. The post itself goes into detail about the reasoning behind these changes, citing elements like current viable deck strategies as well as the current meta of the game. The first card to be banned is The Meathook Massacre. This is a Black spell that first debuted in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Now, it is banned from the game's Standard format. The post elaborates that the spell is extremely powerful, especially since a lot of competitive decks favor Black, and is a strong counter to decks that revolve around swarms of creatures. Given that it's an X-cost Legendary Enchantment that can instantly destroy 1/1 or 2/2 creatures, all while healing you and hurting your opponent, this ban holds some merit.
The second card on the Magic ban list is Yorion, Sky Nomad from Ikoria: Lair of Monsters. This card will be banned from Modern format. Yorion, Sky Nomad is notable for being popular with Four-Color Omnath decks. The card is also notorious since its companion rules, a unique deckbuilding restriction unique to the Ikoria set, allows the player to have the card available outside of play if their library contains at least 20 more cards than the minimum. While larger play decks aren't inherently bad, Yorion's ability to exile and then bring back nonland permanents have lead to some predictable and powerful combos within certain deck builds.
This updated Magic ban list is in effect today for physical games and Magic Online. It will go into effect for Magic: Arena October 13.
