Wizards of the Coast has banned Lurrus of the Dream-Den in Magic: the Gathering’s Legacy and Vintage formats. Zirda, the Dawnwaker was also banned in Legacy, while Drannith Magistrate and Winota, Joiner of Forces were banned in Brawl.
All four cards are from Magic’s most recent set, Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, and were banned a month after the set released online on April 16. Its worldwide tabletop release was delayed to May 15—which was last Friday—due to the impacts of COVID-19, meaning that these cards were only available in physical Ikoria booster packs for three days before they were banned.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den
Lurrus of the Dream-Den is trivially easy to play in eternal formats. Most existing Vintage and Legacy decks already meet Lurrus’s companion restriction of only permanents with converted mana costs two or less, giving those decks an automatic eighth card in hand at the cost of one sideboard slot.
“Because of the nature of Vintage’s wide card pool and powerful restricted cards, the deck-building cost imposed by Lurrus is less restrictive relative to the payoff of having Lurrus as a companion,” Wizards said. Likewise, “the wide card pool of powerful, low-mana-cost permanents in Legacy makes the power level of using Lurrus of the Dream-Den as a companion not commensurate to the deck-building cost.”
This might not have been a format-warping problem if Lurrus was a 1/1 creature with no abilities. But Lurrus somehow managed to make Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Underworld Breach, and Delver of Secrets better at virtually no cost to your deck’s composition, all while being a reasonable 3/2 body with lifelink. That’s not a list of cards that needs any help in their respective formats.
In both Vintage and Legacy, Wizards says that decks using Lurrus of the Dream-Den as their companion achieved win rates above 55% and “represent an increasingly large portion of the metagame” with “no indication of a shift away from this trend.” In fact, since Ikoria released online on April 16, there have been thirteen Legacy Challenges on Magic Online, of which we have data for eleven. In those eleven events, the combined Top 32s featured 171 Lurrus decks out of a possible 352 decks—48.5% of all Legacy decks across eleven Top 32s played a deck with Lurrus of the Dream-Den as their companion.
“We recognize that it’s a rare occurrence to ban a card for balance reasons in Vintage rather than restricting it,” Wizards said. “[B]ut this is a unique case where restricting Lurrus wouldn’t affect its usage as a companion, which is the primary motivation for making this change.” Therefore, Lurrus is now banned in both Legacy and Vintage.
Legacy Lurrus Delver
| Creatures (10) 4 Delver of Secrets 2 Baleful Strix 4 Dreadhorde Arcanist Spells (27) 4 Brainstorm 2 Fatal Push 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Ponder 1 Preordain 4 Daze 2 Force of Negation 2 Kolaghan’s Command 4 Force of Will Artifacts (4) 4 Mishra’s Bauble | Lands (19) 1 Badlands 1 Karakas 4 Polluted Delta 4 Scalding Tarn 3 Underground Sea 3 Volcanic Island 3 Wasteland Sideboard (15) 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den 1 Engineered Explosives 2 Nihil Spellbomb 2 Pyroblast 1 Red Elemental Blast 2 Abrade 1 Baleful Strix 2 Bitterblossom 1 Goblin Cratermaker 2 Null Rod |
Vintage Lurrus Breach
| Creatures (1) 1 Snapcaster Mage Spells (32) 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Brainstorm 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Flusterstorm 1 Gitaxian Probe 1 Lightning Bolt 1 Mental Misstep 1 Ponder 4 Preordain 3 Pyroblast 1 Spell Pierce 1 Vampiric Tutor 2 Brain Freeze 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Hurkyl’s Recall 1 Merchant Scroll 1 Time Walk 1 Intuition 1 Mindbreak Trap 4 Force of Will 1 Gush 1 Dig Through Time 1 Treasure Cruise Artifacts (7) 1 Black Lotus 1 Lion’s Eye Diamond 1 Lotus Petal 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Nihil Spellbomb Enchantments (4) 1 Seal of Fire 3 Underworld Breach | Lands (16) 2 Flooded Strand 2 Misty Rainforest 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Polluted Delta 2 Scalding Tarn 2 Snow-Covered Island 2 Underground Sea 3 Volcanic Island Sideboard (15) 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den 2 Tormod’s Crypt 1 Flusterstorm 1 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Pyroblast 1 Seal of Fire 3 Hurkyl’s Recall 4 Sprite Dragon 1 Mindbreak Trap |
Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Many expected Lurrus to be banned today, but Zirda, the Dawnwaker wasn’t seen as a likely candidate to join Lurrus on the Banned and Restricted list.
While Lurrus decks were approaching half of the Legacy metagame and racking up wins at a rate above 55%, Zirda Bomberman decks were achieving “very high win rates” in a much quieter fashion. The archetype leverages Zirda’s ability to reduce the cost of activated abilities to generate infinite mana with cards like Grim Monolith to eventually play a giant (lethal) Walking Ballista or go off with Mystic Forge.
“While not yet widely played,” Wizards said, “Magic Online metagame data indicates that these decks would become problematic in both win rate and metagame share. Therefore, we’re taking the additional step of banning Zirda, the Dawnwaker in Legacy.”
Legacy Zirda Bomberman
| Creatures (3) 3 Walking Ballista Planeswalkers (8) 4 Karn, Scion of Urza 4 Karn, the Great Creator Artifacts (33) 3 Lion’s Eye Diamond 4 Lotus Petal 4 Mox Opal 4 Urza’s Bauble 2 Manifold Key 2 Voltaic Key 4 Grim Monolith 3 Basalt Monolith 4 Serum Powder 3 Mystic Forge | Lands (16) 4 Ancient Tomb 3 City of Traitors 4 Great Furnace 5 Mountain Sideboard (15) 1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker 1 Lion’s Eye Diamond 1 Tormod’s Crypt 1 Walking Ballista 3 Pyroblast 2 Red Elemental Blast 3 Abrade 1 Ensnaring Bridge 1 Mystic Forge 1 Mycosynth Lattice |
The Future of Companions
Every new mechanic in a Magic set presents a risk to warp competitive formats. But it is unusual that a new mechanic would have 20% of its cards banned within a month of its release; and in companion’s case, two of the ten companions have now been banned in at least one format. Wizards believes their most negative impact has been in Magic’s oldest formats, Legacy and Vintage, while the impacts on Magic’s most popular formats, Standard, Pioneer, or Modern, haven’t been problematic—at least so far.
“We are aware of some players’ concerns about the frequency at which they encounter decks using companions across several formats,” Wizards acknowledged. “While we’re not currently seeing problematic win rates in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern from decks using companions, we are looking at overall metagame share and potential for repetitive gameplay.”
“If we see signs of long-term health issues resulting from high metagame share of companion decks,” they continued, “we’re willing to take steps up to or including changing how the companion mechanic works. For now, metagames need more time to evolve before we can determine whether changes are necessary.”
Changing the way a mechanic works, so that it functions differently than how it is printed on a card, would be an extreme action on Wizards’ part. It would likely require significant evidence that the mechanic is warping Magic’s most popular formats and, even then, changing the mechanic would need to be seen as a better option than simply banning the ten cards with the mechanic.
There hasn’t been a situation quite like this is Magic’s history. There have been changes to how mechanics work in response to overall rules updates, like the changes to Wishes (e.g. Burning Wish) with the 2009 rules changes or the introduction of the Substance keyword with the 2005 update, and changes to how individual cards have worked (ahem, Time Vault) due to power level concerns. But Wizards has never changed an entire keyword mechanic from its newest set due to that mechanic’s unexpectedly high power level.