As part of a massive Banned and Restricted announcement, Wizards of the Coast banned Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, Field of the Dead, Mystic Sanctuary, Simian Spirit Guide, and Tibalt’s Trickery in Magic: the Gathering’s Modern format.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s other news: bans in Historic, Pioneer, and Legacy, plus the unbanning in Vintage and the change to the cascade mechanic.
Uro, Field of the Dead, and Mystic Sanctuary
Uro was also banned in Pioneer and Historic today after having been banned in Standard last year. “As in [those formats], Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath has become a dominant fixture across many of the top Modern decks and operates at a power level that makes it difficult for other midrange and control strategies to compete with,” Wizards said. “To open space in the metagame for a greater variety of midrange strategies and other slower decks to coexist, we’re choosing to ban Uro in Modern as well.”
Additionally, Wizards decided to ban two of Uro’s main accomplices in Modern, Field of the Dead and Mystic Sanctuary, which were “frequently used by ramp and control strategies that we feel are decreasing diversity of gameplay patterns,” they said. “Both lands create repetitive and noninteractive game states in the late game for relatively low deck-building cost. To promote more back and forth gameplay and interaction over win conditions, we’re choosing to remove them.”
Modern Uro Omnath
| Creatures (6) 4 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath 2 Omnath, Locus of Creation Planeswalkers (8) 3 Wrenn and Six 3 Teferi, Time Raveler 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria Spells (18) 2 Lightning Bolt 4 Path to Exile 1 Growth Spiral 4 Mana Leak 3 Force of Negation 3 Cryptic Command 1 Hour of Promise | Lands (28) 1 Breeding Pool 1 Field of Ruin 2 Field of the Dead 4 Flooded Strand 1 Forest 1 Hallowed Fountain 1 Island 1 Ketria Triome 4 Misty Rainforest 2 Mystic Sanctuary 1 Plains 1 Raugrin Triome 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Snow-Covered Island 1 Steam Vents 1 Stomping Ground 1 Temple Garden Sideboard (15) 2 Engineered Explosives 2 Lightning Bolt 2 Spell Pierce 2 Veil of Summer 3 Aether Gust 3 Celestial Purge 1 Mystical Dispute |
Simian Spirit Guide and Tibalt’s Trickery
The other two cards banned in Modern were Simian Spirit Guide and Tibalt’s Trickery, both of which enabled some of Modern’s most broken combos.
“Simian Spirit Guide is a card we’ve had our eye on for some time as an enabler that speeds up fast combo decks,” Wizards said. “As the Modern card pool has grown, so too has the capability for decks to assemble early game-winning combinations from hand… To slow down that category of combo decks as a whole and give opponents more time to set up interactive plays in the early game, Simian Spirit Guide is banned.”
One of the archetypes that used Simian Spirit Guide to speed up its degenerate combo was built around Tibalt’s Trickery, which was released last month as a part of the Kaldheim expansion set. In their most basic form, these decks would use cards like Violent Outburst to cascade into the only legal cascade target in their deck, Tibalt’s Trickery, which would then counter the Violent Outburst and allow the player to cast the only other non-land, non-Violent Outburst card in their deck—Emrakul, the Aeons Torn—for free.
“[W]hile there’s been much discussion about new Tibalt’s Trickery decks in several formats, we see Modern as the format where those decks are uniquely problematic” due to the card’s interaction with the cascade mechanic, Wizards said. They acknowledge that “the overall win rate of the deck hasn’t shown to be problematic,” but that they “believe it contributes to non-games that make Modern less fun to play.”
Therefore, “[a]s the goal of this update is to shake up the metagame into a more fun spot, we’re concerned that a continued metagame presence of Tibalt’s Trickery decks would work against that goal,” thus requiring its removal from the format.
Modern Tibalt's Trickery
| Creatures (4) 4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn Spells (5) 1 Tibalt’s Trickery 4 Violent Outburst | Lands (51) 2 Blast Zone 4 Breeding Pool 4 Castle Garenbrig 3 Cavern of Souls 2 Field of the Dead 2 Flooded Strand 1 Forest 4 Gemstone Caverns 1 Island 1 Ketria Triome 1 Khalni Garden 4 Misty Rainforest 3 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Polluted Delta 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Snow-Covered Forest 4 Steam Vents 2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle 1 Vesuva 4 Wooded Foothills 1 Zagoth Triome Sideboard (15) 4 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove 3 Explore 4 Primeval Titan 4 Summoner’s Pact |