This Format Ain’t Big Enough

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today (June 30th) we just had one of the biggest Standard ban list updates of all time! A lot of us saw this coming after Pro Tour Final Fantasy, but for anyone who hasn’t paid attention to high-level Magic: the Gathering lately:

Yeah, that’s a Top 8 with nothing but 8 hyper-aggressive Red decks at a Pro Tour.

Standard players have been complaining about how stagnant the format has been lately, with “nothing but Red decks and decks that try to beat Red decks”. I complained about this being a possibility back in our Is Standard… Too Good? article, since Standard is chock-full of very powerful one-mana cards right now. But it’s gotten much more out-of-hand than predicted!

Now, other decks certainly do exist within Standard; Dimir Midrange, Azorius Omniscience, Azorius Control, 4-Color Domain, and various flavors of Black self-bounce decks can win matches, but now we see just how true the above statement really was. Clearly something needed to change!

To that end, here’s what has been banned in Standard:

• Cori-Steel Cutter
• Monstrous Rage
• Heartfire Hero
• Abuelo’s Awakening
• Up the Beanstalk
• Hopeless Nightmare
• This Town Ain’t Big Enough

Cori-Steel Cutter is one of the most powerful cards released in 2025, if not the single most powerful. This includes other hits such as Final Fantasy’s Vivi Ornitier, Aetherdrift’s Ketramose, the New Dawn, and even Vintage-playable Stock Up! Monastery Mentor is a card that’s been restricted in Vintage, and Standard players are supposed to deal with the same card but Red, cheaper, and not even a Creature? Yeah, OK.

Monstrous Rage was quietly the best “combat trick” that’s ever seen competitive play outside of an Infect deck. Instant cards are already huge when you want to trigger Cori-Steel Cutter’s Flurry ability, but allowing your Red deck to access Trample this easily ends games a lot more often than you’d think. Add in the fact that Bloomburrow’s Mouse creatures enjoy having a “Heroic” theme, and this is one of the best cards in both Standard and Pioneer.

Heartfire Hero is the main villain (I’m not sorry) in the Mono-Red Mice deck that’s taken over both Standard and Pioneer. It gets bigger when targeted by Manifold Mouse, Rockface Village, and Monstrous Rage, it comes down as early as Turn 1, and it gives you a ton of built-in resilience due to its “Deathrattle” trigger.

Abuelo’s Awakening enables the one degenerate combo deck of the format, Azorius Omniscience, to exist. A Turn 4 Omniscience is easily more powerful than anything that the top end of anything else in the format allows, ending games on the same Turn 4 as the various Red decks.

Up the Beanstalk is already banned in Modern and is the best Control deck enabler in Legacy for good reason. This card enables any of the “this costs 5 but secretly costs much less” things like Leyline Binding and Overlord of the Hauntwoods, turning cards you’d already play together into the format’s best late-game value engine.

Hopeless Nightmare might seriously be the single most annoying card available to Standard. No one really likes having their hand discarded or having their life drained, and this card gets played alongside cards like Nurturing Pixie and Sunpearl Kirin to make sure you never have to deal with this only happening once or twice in a game. It also happens to play nicely with the final card we’re gonna talk about in this update:

This Town Ain’t Big Enough (This Town) is one of those cards that doesn’t feel like it should be as good as it is. After all, we’ve had “bounce my thing, bounce your thing” cards for 1U before. This card in particular has two things going for it that haven’t been seen in these cards before: the ability to pay 5 to bounce two of your opponent’s cards instead of having to bounce one of yours, and combo potential with Stormchaser’s Talent as soon as a copy of This Town is in your graveyard. You play the Talent, get an Otter token, level it up getting back This Town, and now This Town can target both your Talent and an opposing card. Replay the Talent, and now you have a loop established. As many times as you can pay for it, you can keep opposing permanents off the table and net an Otter token and some Prowess triggers along the way. Boo, hiss. Get it gone.

That’s a ton of changes made! I’m glad to see they made every format playable again!

Oh.

Yeah, this is real. No changes made to ANY other format!

Pioneer is currently struggling with the same problem Standard is; the Mono-Red Mice deck is simply too efficient. It’s currently taking up about 25% of the Pioneer meta, and with no changes to the ban list there’s no reason for that to change anytime soon.

Modern isn’t in love with Aggro at the moment, with Boros Energy taking up a little over 15% of the meta and Izzet Prowess taking up about 5% of the meta. Modern is by far the most tame of the officially-supported formats right now, but this doesn’t mean players wouldn’t appreciate a change or two before problems arise.

Legacy… to put it kindly, is abysmal. Dimir Reanimator is about 20% of the metagame even after receiving multiple bans (Grief, Psychic Frog, and Troll of Khazad-dum), but Dimir Reanimator is somehow not the most egregious villain. That dishonor goes to the Oops! All Spells! deck, and even though that deck only takes up 5% or so of the meta don’t get it twisted. Oops can very reliably win on Turn 1, with mulligans and through opposing cards. People just choose to not play it a bunch online.

Vintage and Pauper are honestly fine. I have nothing bad to say about either format, even if Pauper does have more Burn than a Blue player like me typically appreciates.

So what’s the overall verdict? We buying decks for the summer or what?

I think that, if you’re a person who likes to brew decks or who really wants to explore what the Final Fantasy set has to offer, now is your time! With both a massive shakeup and set rotation coming in about a month, Standard players are going to have an absolute ball brewing decks, trying cards that might not have been “allowed” before, and playing games to see what the new best decks will be.

Even though no changes were made to Modern, I think the remainder of the Modern Regional Championship Qualifiers will be a good time for players as well, since that format is the only one that doesn’t feel broken at the moment. So if that’s you, enjoy the rest of your Modern season and I’ll see you on the next one!