Spring Cleaning! a banned and restricted update

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today’s the day! We have new Banned and Restricted updates for competitive Magic: the Gathering! There’s always quite a bit to talk about in this complex game of ours, but I always think the most exciting times are when there are changes to what’s allowed since that’s always sure to shake up a format or two.

To start, here are all of the changes:

Standard – no changes
Pioneer/Explorer – no changes
Modern – Underworld Breach Banned
Legacy – Sowing Mycospawn and Troll of Khazad-dum banned
Pauper – Basking Broodscale, Kuldotha Rebirth, and Deadly Dispute banned, Prophetic Prism and High Tide unbanned

I have a LOT of thoughts about this list. For every format.

Standard having zero changes is probably the biggest surprise of this entire list. In our Is Standard… Too Good? article, we talked about the various decks that exist and how the Standard format is a lot more powerful than we’re used to seeing as a whole. Fast-forward a couple of months to today, and this is more true than ever.

The various Monstrous Rage decks add up to roughly 28% of the Standard meta and the Hopeless Nightmare decks add up to 24% of the Standard meta. Over half of the format is dedicated to these hilariously powerful 1-mana cards, and everyone who isn’t playing one of these two cards is effectively playing catch-up for at least half of every tournament they play. This isn’t exactly the fun, interactive experience we want for the game’s marquee format. Considering that Standard is going to be 3/4 of competitive Magic: the Gathering in 2025 (the other season is Modern), I think “no changes” is a… choice.

Pioneer (slash Explorer) is the one format I expected to see no changes in. It’s not that Pioneer is in a healthy place; in fact, I think almost the exact opposite. Rakdos Midrange is about 22% of the Pioneer meta, and the various Red Aggro decks take up another 30% of the format.

I just legitimately think that Wizards of the Coast is abandoning Pioneer/Explorer, a lot like what happened with Legacy roughly ten years ago. My argument has been that this started back when it was announced that there was to be no pro-level Pioneer play in 2025, and seeing no changes to an extremely unhealthy format for two updates in a row (banning Jegantha, the Wellspring doesn’t count) only solidifies that in my mind.

Modern is the least-changed of the Eternal formats, and I think banning just Underworld Breach was a bit tame. Maybe unban Umezawa’s Jitte or something, give me a real shake-up! But it is true that Breach absolutely had to go. Sure, it was “only” 20% of the Modern meta, but if you’ve been playing Magic long enough to remember Azorius Caw-Blade in Standard, that was also a 20% meta deck. Same vibes.

With the Underworld Breach + Grinding Station combo decks out of Modern, there are still plenty of broken things one can do. Decks like Ruby Medallion Storm, Goblin Charbelcher, and the ever-present Primeval Titan have gone nowhere, and if you’re not an enjoyer of the Expensive Solitaire™ archetypes then congrats! Your deck not only wasn’t touched at all, but probably just got a little better since the format’s gonna be a little slower.

Legacy is another format that didn’t really shake things up so much as solve a couple of problems that really needed solving. Neither of these are cards that obviously need banning if you don’t play the format, so let’s also talk about the play patterns behind these two cards.

Sowing Mycospawn is single-handedly the reason a Control deck has not won a single Legacy Challenge event in Magic: the Gathering Online or any sizeable tabletop Legacy tournament I could see in 2025. When this is published, it will be April.

The reason for this is that Legacy gives players access to “sol lands” like Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Eldrazi Temple, and especially Eye of Ugin in quantities that just don’t exist in most other formats. All of these lands, when combined with Lotus Petal and Cavern of Souls, mean that Mycospawn doesn’t come down on Turn 4. It comes down on Turn 2 to get either another Sol land or a Wasteland. On Turn 3, it comes down kicked to both exile a Basic land and grab a Wasteland. Decks that are trying to resolve Narset, Parter of Veils just can’t exist when this is one of the most common play patterns in Legacy.

Troll of Khazad-dum is a little more nuanced. Over the last year, we’ve seen multiple cards banned in an effort to take the power of Dimir Reanimator decks down a notch, but it’s still the best deck in the format. Grief and Psychic Frog being banned solved the problem of the Dimir decks being able to perform as both a tempo deck and a combo deck, but the deck still had the most consistent engine in all of Legacy.

Players got away with cheating on land counts, playing as few as 14 in some lists, while simultaneously putting a large, hard-to-block Creature in the graveyard. This led to extremely streamlined lists that only had to play 4 Trolls, 1 copy of Archon of Cruelty, and 1 copy of Atraxa, Grand Unifier to go with Entomb and Reanimate/Animate Dead. In a format where every card choice truly matters, this was way too efficient.

Pauper is where I think the most interesting set of changes is, as it’s the only format to get both bans and unbans! Pauper has quietly been one of the most powerful formats in all of competitive Magic: the Gathering, even though you can’t use anything but Common cards. Cards like Dark Ritual and Brainstorm are not only legal, but not even close to being ban-worthy. Mechanics like Monarch and the Initiative are (somehow) legal to play with. Common doesn’t mean weak here.

Kuldotha Rebirth has been the most aggressive start in the Mono-Red Aggro decks for a long time now. Since there aren’t a ton of cards like Temporary Lockdown available to Pauper, this can lead to some games effectively being over before opponents can get started, and when you add in some of the most effective burn spells ever printed (Lightning Bolt and Fireblast are both Pauper-legal!) it’s easy to see why this has been the best deck in Pauper for years even after a Monastery Swiftspear ban.

Basking Broodscale combo decks were incredibly efficient, and opponents getting a Turn 3 is not a guaranteed thing. Sadistic Glee made Broodscale into a “Splinter Twin” situation, and with cards like Duress available to players to protect a combo this was a bit too much for a format that doesn’t have free interaction.

Deadly Dispute is a card that has been quietly problematic in Pauper for a few years now. The Grixis Affinity and Mono-Black decks have been using cards like Dispute to get both cards and mana out of either the Artifacts they already want to play or the Creatures they already want to sacrifice.

Normally cards like Dispute mean you have to deal with the opportunity cost of diluting your deck, but in both of these cases Dispute just adds to your natural gameplan. The card has been “reskinned” a few times (Fanatical Offering, for example) so it’s not like those decks are dying, but Dispute is the only one that gives you a Treasure token.

Pauper also saw some unbans! Deck builders rejoice!

Prophetic Prism is a card that I honestly don’t think should have been banned in the first place.