What Broke Standard?

Since Throne of Eldraine, Standard has been a mess outside of, well, the Theros Beyond Death format that was a mess of messes. 

THB Standard managing to be playable (early 2020) pic.twitter.com/PcJ4ZUfcWp

— Ari Lax (@armlx) May 17, 2020

This is despite an entire new department, Play Design, being spun up at Wizards of the Coast just before that point to test Standard and optimize the format due to the last batch of disasters. What the hell went wrong? Was it mistakes in testing? Was it the world drastically changing? How did we get into this mess so people can even think of ways to get out of it.

Don't Blame the Data

Five years ago, we had data as good as today if not better. Magic Online used to let third parties watch every replay of every match played, with four-round Daily Events happening multiple times a day for each format, similar in scope to the current five-round Preliminaries or SCGTour Online Challenges. There were also larger Premier events, two-player queues firing regularly, and all of this data turn-by-turn could be logged by a bot. You could pull up a grid and have a three- or four-digit sample size telling you who was ahead in every Modern matchups. If you had the raw data set you could even correlate who won more when specific cards were cast, or cast by specific turns, or when a sideboard card was involved. If you wanted Limited content, MTG Goldfish scraped the draft queues to see what cards had the highest win rates when cast!

Even if you didn't like raw numbers because you could move them with deck building decisions, you get every 4-0 or 3-1 deck from every one of those Daily events. Sounds similar to the data set we have these days?

Standard didn't break. Modern didn't break.

We didn't have anything close to this data set last year when Field of the Dead and Oko, Thief of Crowns broke everything.

When Temur Reclamation was crushing, I kept a close eye on the mtgmeta.io data set. It kept saying things were bad matchups when I knew how to win them, and the best players kept winning with Temur Reclamation against the field.

I'm not saying people don't look at the data and it doesn't influence decisions, but maybe it's not the data breaking Standard.

Don't Blame the Tech

I once had such bad lower back pain that I thought I had kidney stones so I had @Amb3rg3r rush me to the ER before it got worse. While being admitted I let out a ridiculously loud fart, all the pain suddenly went away, and I walked out.

Happy 10 year Twitter anniversary to me!

— Brad Nelson (@fffreakmtg) September 27, 2020

Twitter has existed for 10 years and it didn't break Standard. Discord is a well polished version of a 2005-era moderated forum, which honestly is one of the greater mediums in Internet history so I have no issues moving back to it. Things aren't that different from Standard's working days.

The one thing that may have changed is the monetization incentives of Twitch. It is likely someone else has a similar idea to you, and it's likely you can accelerate your ideas by watching their game play at double-speed. That's because when they have a good idea, they get viewers, and that pays real dollars (or as the Pro Tour documents for American venues loved to say, sometimes called “greenbacks”) and not just internet clout. Just kidding, I've seen some numbers for smaller streamers and it does pay in amounts that round to clout, but you know maybe you through enough clout farming you become a big timer and make medium or decent money some day.

But uhh, ask Cedric about The Stream Team one day, and that Pro Tour where he rolled up with Jund and played Geralf's Messenger instead of Deathrite Shaman. Streamer data is a starting point, but not the finish line. Twitch is also almost a decade old, even if it wasn't as populated by Magic content before Arena.

Tech changes might have an impact on metagame churn, but I don't think that tells the story at all.

Threat Design

This is really obvious, and there's no better place to point to this than Uro and Omnath.

What don't these cards do? They draw cards, provide life total buffers, provide mana, one of them even casts itself from the graveyard, and whatever they do they keep doing it. Oko, Thief of Crowns existed in a similar space of life gain, permanent value generation, threatening to blank threats, and just raw speed.

 

Back in the day you had to invest in a different threat for a different job. To use and expand on the classic Patrick Chapin role assignments, you had Baneslayer Angels that could rectify game states but died to removal, Mulldrifters that were raw card advantage at the cost of smaller immediate impact, Morphlings that were unkillable and closed the game at cost. Dark Confidants (or Ophidians or Thieving Magpies for the ancients) didn't provide defensive or offensive strength but threatened to accumulate value if given time unanswered. Depending on whether you expected more aggro, midrange, or control in the metagame the optimal choice changed.

Where is the choice these days? Uro just beats aggro, control, and midrange. So does Omnath. So did Oko.

When you don't have to make real choices, you get homogenization. You don't have to choose the scale your deck operates at, you have tools to cover everything.

That's a problem.

Answer Design

We learned the lesson in years past that removal that is too efficient, too broad make it so the cards in the format don't matter much outside of doing something and costing little enough to avoid trading poorly for the answers. My hot take is maybe we deserve Mana Leak and maybe Pioneer and Historic need it, but it certainly would have baggage. Again, the theme of decisions mattering or not mattering shows up.

Answers haven't been quite as bad as people think they were, Temur Reclamation was basically an all answers deck with some good mana and card advantage. But they got really bad after rotation. You can kill basically any creature pretty easily, but as we mentioned the good creatures don't die or cantrip and it's all horrible. Planeswalkers are pretty hard to kill, especially when they are the Theros Beyond Death or Thone of Eldraine ones printed under the War of the Spark era's absurd numbers. The only good way to kill things right now is Bonecrusher Giant, Mystical Dispute, Spikefield Hazard, as evidenced by all the four-color decks deciding none of the other answers are good enough to reliably play.

This might be temporary and answers could come back once were aren't forced to exclude black mana from our decks.

I think the biggest problem might have been what I alluded to with Temur Reclamation. We've entered a world where the best answers often are best utilized in a deck maximizing the best threats. There's an entire extra blog post about this, especially with how it related to Aether Gust being a problem and Mystical Dispute being great, but this all points back to the threats making mana and drawing cards and doing that over and over. If you keep getting cards and mana, the best thing to do is stop your opponent from doing the same thing so that your cards and mana kill them because they don't have cards and mana.

Answer design probably isn't a major issue, but it's a bit weak right now. Whatever, that happens in small Standard, cards like Carnage Tyrant have often dominated formats because there were only like two answers that existed for them before.

Closing the Ramp Gap

 

Growth Spiral was banned in Standard. Explore wasn't. Lotus Cobra when it was printed the first time was powerful, but not broken like this despite having Misty Rainforest in the format

The things you would Explore or Lotus Cobra into those days often cost six or seven, Primeval Titan or Avenger of Zendikar. These days, they cost four, Wilderness Reclamation or Omnath.

When you look at the answers, this is troublesome. A successful strategy against ramp used to be getting out under them and efficiently stopping their payoff. There isn't really an under them when their best hands deploy that threat after you have only had two turns to play. You can't leave up Disdainful Stroke on the draw after playing a one-drop and expect to win. That extra turn or two of setup gives you time to produce enough things to really punish them even if you only buy a single turn against their threat, thing of how the various Pioneer and Modern Spirits decks hit a specific point where they deal much larger amounts of damage because they set up Lords.

The raw number of cards between four and six also matters. When you need six lands to produce a Primeval Titan, that's six actual cards you need at specific points. The old ramp decks often stumbled, and stumbled more in the games where they drew interaction. Think of how Modern Valakut Titan decks operated before they got squeezed out of the metagame, or the Scapeshift quote I've said for years “Scapeshift is a one-card combo that takes eight or nine cards to win the game”.

Ok, Explore into Jace, the Mind Sculptor was pretty dumb. But Jace was uniquely vulnerable to small-ball creature setups and Bloodbraid Elf, so it kinda worked out. Bloodbraid Elf off Explore was also kinda dumb, but that card played pretty bad with Explore left in your deck and often was better a turn later when the cascade hit something reactive against their later must answer play. Not quite the same as Wilderness Reclamation which is just good and hard to answer whenever it hits.

Like, have you read Grave Titan? Aggro decks could race that card despite what it does.

Yet again the problem lies with the threats, but it's not just the text boxes but the costs.

London Mulligan.... and Open Decklists

I had some lightly tested, lightlyspeculative concerns about the London Mulligan a year and a half ago after testing for the namesake Mythic Championship in London itdebuted at. It's been bad in those ways, but somehow it may be worse in a different way that is definitely a big part of ruining Standard.

There just isn't a reason to play a linear strategy, because even pre-sideboarding your opponent can significantly adjust to preempt your plans.

Before the combination of open decklists and the London Mulligan, midrange decks had a huge issue playing against the field. You would have some Doom Blades in your deck and some Duresses, and you would start each game down a Schroedinger's Cat of a draw when you drew Doom Blades against control and when you drew your Duresses against aggro. When your opponent played their first turn, you would learn how bad your decision was or wasn't.

These days, you can peek in the box. If the cat is dead and you have Duress against aggro, you can trade it in for a new box. Unlike before, if you draw a Duress in that next hand it doesn't have to stay there and you can keep the six cards that do matter. You play way more games with a piece or two of interaction, and then I'll just point back to the part about the current threats making cards and mana and using that to stop your opponents from doing that.

I would guess the win rate of Sultai Midrange in late-Core Set 2021 Standard was multiple percentage points lower on high ladder than in events with open decklists. I won a ton of games with four lands, Uro, and Extinction Event or whatever because I knew my opponent was attempting to play creatures and those six cards would do the trick. And if they were playing control I would just keep the Hydroid Krasis instead or keep the first seven with a bunch of Thought Erasure.

The only time we have really seen aggressive decks crack through in the last while is when they exploit a static metagame with threats that completely dodge the expected removal. Think of how Mono-Black Aggro and a Winota deck leaning on Orzhov color threats smashed through the Players' Tour Finals full of Aether Gusts and light on ways to kill Rotting Regisaur or a lot of small dorks with more toughness than power.

Again some of this is the threats making the smaller starting hand sizes not matter as much, but open decklists plus the London mulligan drastically reduces the viable angles of attack and forces people down the road of mirror matches.

I think you can maybe justify one without the other, but together it's a non-starter. I don't think you can move away from open deck lists if Twitch streaming of events is going to be something you want, but maybe with MDFC spell-lands balancing mana screw and mana flood, we can change the other one.

The Arena Economy

This might be a bit of yet another full post, but one of the bigger issues with the Arena economy is that it pushes players to not try things.

True story: Imagine you are me in early 2019. You see a Reddit post about Grixis Dragons at #53 on ladder or whatever. You want to try it, so you spend four rare wild cards on Dragon's Hoard. It is trash, you learn your lesson, and you go to build your next deck.

You can't spend rare wild cards on Tithe Taker because you spent them on Dragon's Hoards, also because you aren't literally a dragon with a hoard of gold wild cards. You can't ever really use those Dragon's Hoard again because you don't plan on playing some casual nonsense. You can't get those Dragon's Hoard, probably a desireable casual card, to someone who wants them in exchange for goods, services or Tithe Takers.

Aside: It is also kinda depressing to realize the most exciting card you can open from a booster on Arena isn't any specific card, but a blank artless wild card of the right rarity. If you want any assurance of the future of paper Maigc, the concept of a chase rare that people crack packs for is dead on Arena and they keep printing those cards anyways.

The story has two happy endings: I realized my Venerated Loxodon deck was better if I put commons that cost one-mana in it instead of rares that cost two-mana, and I just played the best deck more from there on out. I'm no tangrams, but I certainly have had my fair share of success on the SCGTour Online forcing people to beat my Uros instead of not doing it and I owe it partly to Dragon's Hoard being a garbage competitive card.

And that's me, who has seen time and time again at the highest levels of the game that you learn from trying things and has been rewarded for doing so.

Imagine someone just trying to get into the game now. They get beaten by Four-Color Omnath. They feel sad they lose to it. They build it, they learn to Four-Color Omnath people, and the cycle continues. Or they don't and they stop playing.

I also literally have no idea how to get into a match on Arena in an enviroment where Four-Color Omnath isn't a likely deck my opponent is playing. You can't post “No LD No Counters” and find and opponent. You probably can't even wait for a Brawl opponent, probably not even Historic (also good joke entering Historic if you care about wild cards at the recent rate of releases), and is there another format. Maybe there's like a No Omnath Direct Challenge Discord I don't know about.

The end result is the experience of bashing your head into Four-Color Omnath and quitting or playing it being the simplest options on a lot of levels becomes universal. When Kaladesh Standard got bad I just played Modern for a year.

I don't think that things would be all sunshine and daisies if Arena didn't push Standard this way. Oko and Field of the Dead were paper issues back when we could do things like travel to the basement of the Valley Forge Casino and Resort. But if you want to look at things that changed the tone of the discussion, this is a big one.

I don't think a complete overhaul of the Arena economy is without major other considerations, a good idea, or even doable, but breaking the ways it promotes Standard Tier 0 mono-cultures is necessary to the continuing health of the game.

It isn't just one thing that broke Standard. Just like it wasn't just one card that needed to be banned. A lot of systems broke down the line. Some of them easy to fix, some a bit hard, and some you probably just have to live with. It's possible to build a functional format from the disaster we play in right now, but it will take a few steps. Bans of Uro, Omnath, Lucky Clover, Embercleave, Scute Swarm, whatever are just scraping the surface a temporary patch.

What Should Have Been Banned In The History of Standard?

The nonsense that was the series of bans starting with Throne of Eldraine was a big part of what demotivated me from continued blogging, but it’s also what finally brought me back.

There's an image going around describing the current state of bannings that isn't quite fair.

Lumping the Kaladesh mistakes with the current ones is a bit dicey. There were massive overhauls after Kaladesh. Play Design was created to prevent another Kaladesh incident, and they fucking failed horribly, but it wasn't the same era of design that made Aetherworks Marvel and Fires of Invention.

Bans were just different for a ton of that time. You only had windows at set releases or specific calendar dates every few months, so your shots had to be sure. 

Standard was different. Did you know prior to 2020 people were actually allowed to play tournaments in other formats and they liked it? Imagine, a game client with more than three years of sets and a dartboard of added stuff. Maybe a bad format for one set had two major events and everyone played Modern instead. There were also just less events, so six weekends of development often meant multiple months of real time as opposed to four weeks after set release.

The Magic economy was different. I'll save my Arena rants for later, but cards costing different dollar amounts but also being sellable resources means people choose decks differently.

I started playing sanctioned, competitive Standard in 2002 and have done so the entire 18 years since. Between that start point of Onslaught and the beginning of this latest shit show with Throne of Eldraine, how many cards would have been banned under today's paradigm?

If you haven't been playing Standard for two decades, you might want Gatherer or Scryfall open for this one.

Reference Decklist: Daniel Zink, 2003 World Champion

Mirari's Wake was a bit of a Standard curiosity for about a year when it was printed in Judgment. It was clearly powerful, but tapping out for a five drop was punished by Psychatog with Force Spike and Counterspell or by Blue-Green Madness with Circular Logic. The kill mechanisms were also clunky and filled with subpar cards, largely centering around Cunning Wish loops with Mirari (you could Wish for exiled cards then) or Burning Wish for Firecat Blitz.

It's possible the problem started at Scourge, when you could just play Decree of Justice for a clean win with your mana and anthem or Cunning Wish could get Hunting Pack. But the dam definitely was broken when 8th Edition traded out the previous counterspells for Mana Leak, which Wake could easily cast. 5 of the 6 undefeated decks in Standard at Worlds were Bant Wake, half the Top 8 was, and it only lost mirrors there.

There are obviously huge parallels to the recent Wilderness Reclamation situation here. Moment's Peace was the Growth Spiral, with two free turns being about a land and a cantrip. It also represented a way to untap freely after Wake if you just had a sixth land to Peace off of, and with the old Wish rules chaining many copies was a given.

I think Moment's Peace would merely be an unfun card without a great home after a Wake ban, but I could be wrong and it may have remained a problem in some weird Mind's Desire deck or something. But Wake had to go at the end.

Probability of a Ban: 100%. Exalted Angel was even the good creature backup plan that Temur Rec had.

Notable No Ban Formats: Post Ban Mirrodin-Kamigawa, Kamigawa-Ravnica

There's a big possibility we were all dumb when Mirrodin was released and Atog Affinity was unbeatable, but after another year the right stuff got cleaned up. Disciple of the Vault was probably excessive, whatever, it and Cauldron Familiar can share that.

Urza's Tower, Plow Under, Chrome Mox, Umezawa's Jitte all were legal after the ban. You couldn't play two colors because the only duals were uncommons lands from Kamigawa that didn't untap if you used them. The format wasn't healthy.

But all the mono-color decks were miserably balanced. There were multiple blue and green decks. And 9th Edition brought Enduring Ideal with Form of the Dragon, which was the cool kind of broken.

Then in Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard rolled around, and there were multiple high tier decks based around playing eight Boomerangs and targeting their land on Turn 2. And Remand was in a million decks, and Umezawa’s Jitte mirrors were an entire pillar of the metagame and there was a combo deck that in retrospect was way better than it got credit for and…. it was totally fine.

I'm going to cite Theros Beyond Death Standard. That format was not good game play as evidenced by how many cards from it are now banned for sucking to play against. But it was playable because the sucky things were rotating in relative power and kinda dynamic. On the flip side of the same, you have 2018 Modern, where there were a million kinda broken things to do that you could be really selective about and do what you wanted. Mirrodin-Kamigawa Standard was on the bad side of that, and Kamigawa-Ravnica was on the great side.

Reference Decklist: Katsuhiro Mori, 2006 Japanese National Champion

I described Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard as a fine format. There was then a two-ish month period when Coldsnap came out where you could play Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top in Standard. It wasn't fine.

(Also, I assure you even if that player was suspended from the DCI a while after the event I cited the deck was actually good)

Probability of a Ban: 100%. This was more egregious than about a quarter of the bans that did actually happen.

Reference Decklist: Makahito Mihara, 2006 World Champion

Back in my day, we maindecked Shadow of Doubt to beat Dragonstorm and liked it.

I don’t think Dragonstorm was unbeatable, and the Mystical Teachings decks I'm referencing definitely beat it, but calling it OK to exist is probably stretching it. I’m unsure which of these cards would belong on the banned list, but it sure should have been some of them. That would have cost us the awesomeness that was Perilous Research - Hatching Plans Storm, but that's the fine line between "pretty cool and fine Storm deck" and "kinda just bullshit Storm deck" for you.

Probability of a Ban: 80%. Dragonstorm was beatable even if the play patterns were not great.

Reference Decklist: PVDDR, PT Hollywood Top 8

Pro Tour Hollywood had implications that Faeries wasn’t broken with just Paulo making Top 8, but it was really good and really oppressive to play against. 

Elves and eventually Mono-Red did have solid matchups against it, but I don't know if solid was good enough. I think at best it would end up in a spot like Pioneer Inverter, where it was the best overall deck, but beatable, but also made mid-level players feel horrible. Just like tracking their graveyard size and playing 5D future library size Chess isn't what people play Magic for, starting at UUUB open and trying to route through Spellstutter Sprite, Cryptic Command, Mistbind Clique, Scion of Oona, and later Agony Warp just broke people. 

The two clear issues were Bitterblossom enabling all the Faeries stuff too well and Cryptic Command being what let that deck really dominate many other strategies, with Thoughtseize being kinda reasonable for the power level of the format, and I would put it around a coin flip that one or both of those cards would have been banned today 

Probability of a Ban: 60%. There were decks I would consider good versus Faeries that existed in the format, and the format in general was really high power, so maybe it balances out.

Reference Decklists: Makahito Mihara, PT Hollywood Top 8 ; Gabe Nassif, PT Kyoto Champion

If Faeries went, I think there might be a cascade effect on these cards. Cryptic Command was a big part of both Reveillark and Five-Color Control, but it's possible they would have still dominated without being punished by a more tempo-oriented blue deck. Reveillark was especially well known for being 80% versus the field and 20% versus Faeries, which is part of why it did so well at the previously mentioned PT Hollywood in an era where Faeries could be the best deck but only 20% of the metagame.

Unlike these cards, Spectral Procession proved reasonably assailable over the format. Even if it would be the best card in the format, that's not inherently bad that White Weenie is good and the best card is a non-disruptive three power three-drop creature.

Probability of a Ban: 50%.... If the Bitterblossom ban occurred so net 30%. This is definitely guessing at second order effects.

Reference Decklist: Simon Goertzen, PT San Diego Champion

I don’t fault Wizards for letting some of the late format stuff ride in the past. You could run events in other formats for another couple months because you didn’t tie your entire enterprise to a single program that doesn’t have legacy content and probably isn’t even programmed to support a large chunk of it.

But wow did they miss with Bloodbraid Elf. 

If we played a Worldwake Standard Pro Tour under the same metrics as Mythic Championship Oko, it would be in a similar ballpark of dominance. 

Jund was the lone dominant deck in Standard from October to April. When Rise of the Eldrazi dropped, people made claims a bunch of decks beat Jund. The only one that really competed was Jace, the Mind Sculptor plus Spreading Seas, every other deck that "beat Jund" only beat Jund players with bad lists who didn't understand how to be aggressive or how to sideboard with cascade.

Bloodbraid Elf was so stupid, Primeval Titan plus Valakut being legal in Standard with Explore and Rampant Growth was the GOOD GUY because it beat up on Jund.

"But Ari, LSV 16-0, Mike Flores, Naya Lightsaber" you are wrong your Naya deck is trash. Jund won the PT. Worlds was only 6 rounds of Standard, that Naya deck went 4-2 there, Jund was half the 6-0 or 5-1 decks, and we were still too stupid to play more than 24 mana sources in our three-color deck that only lost if it didn't cast spells. Even the Naya Vengevine decks of the Rise of the Eldrazi era died to Jund players who declared attacks with Putrid Leech instead of trying to block unkillable stuff.

Probability of a Ban: 100%. Bloodbraid Elf in Standard was a taste of 2020 Standard ten years ago.

Notable No Ban: Post-Caw Blade Standard

This format sucked, but everything equally sucked. Splinter Twin and Valakut both existed, but they weren't over powering somehow. If Dimir Control can win US Nationals through that mess, I see no reason the format would default to bannings.

Reference Decklists: Matt Costa, Grand Prix Baltimore Champion ; Brian Kibler, Pro Tour Dark Ascension Champion

These fall under the simply boring category. 

Dark Ascension Standard was not good, and it was these two cards battling into each other that made it that way. There were two decks, each had like eight threats that mattered and 52 blanks when they faced off, but those 52 blanks beat the other 50% of the meta so it was still just them battling.

Maybe you could get away with just Snapcaster Mage. The Primeval Titan end game was getting Inkmoth Nexus and Kessig Wolf Run, and without Snapcaster plus Celestial Purge or Divine Offering pushing down Zombies or Red or Tempered Steel I think other decks could compete and make a fair metagame. This is basically what Primeval Titan did in the Jund era with Valakut: beat up on midrange, pushed aggro and control.

(Gee, overly broad and efficient color-hosing removal is an issue? Who would have Gust'd it?)

Probability of a Ban: 50%? They probably knew Cavern of Souls was coming down the line, so maybe you just wait it out.

Reference Decklist: Me, winning a PTQ

When Magic 2013 dropped Thragtusk and Elvish Visionary with the clock winding down on Birthing Pod in Standard, the card finally broke. Even without an infinite combo, the mix of mana dorks (Birds), untap effects (Deceiver Exarch), and powerful chain ends (Thragtusk, Acidic Slime, Elesh Norn) you could build a Pod deck that had all the answers and the raw power. I won a PTQ where the Finals was kicked off by me destroying two lands a turn from Turn 4 to Turn 6.

This was a Kethis scenario. We got to the end of the format, and suddenly all the pieces came together. Maybe more opposing Gut Shots would stop it, but I'm doubtful.

Probability of a Ban: 80%. Pod is a pretty inherently broken card, it just needs to turn the deck building and card pool corner.

Notable No Bans: Innistrad-Return to Ravnica Standard

Even when every deck was Thragtusk, this was still a good format. And that eventually got cracked open in a ton of ways well before a new set got added. Maybe the end with Magic 2014 Jund was a bit too good with Scavenging Ooze against the Abzan Aristocrats decks, but the format had more than enough flex to fight back if there was more time and iterations to develop against it.

I don't know if this format, the previous Ravnica-Kamigawa, Ravnica-Time Spiral, Khans of Tarkir, or the recent Ravnica Allegiance Standard right before everything failed horribly is the best of all time, but the only other format that is even in contention in my mind is the one right at the start here: pre-8th Edition Onslaught-Odyssey.

There probably should be a whole extra post about how good untapped mana and heavy multicolor themes makes for inherently good Standard formats.

Reference Decklists: Ivan Floch, PT Magic 2015 Champion ; Huey Jensen, PT Magic 2015 Top 8

We were all just too cowardly to play Theros-era Esper Control. There was all this talk about the round timer, but if we were playing with online clocks I think it would have been dominant against the field (that consisted of two and a half other decks). If it was gone, I don't think Mono-Black Devotion at full power would be something you could let survive. 

The format had bad mana and 3 decks anyways, so it may have been unfixable from the start in a way where banning anything caused a cascade to an even worse format.

Probability of a Ban: 50%. Like I said, it might just make things worse.

Reference Decklist: Reid Duke, GP Oakland Champion

Rally the Ancestors was way too good. It had all the staying power of the other midrange decks with Nantuko Husk powered fast kills versus ramp decka and a combo to break mirrors. And this was even before they printed Reflector Mage. I think the deck would have been easily banned if Standard was on year long rotations, but they hoped Kalitas was good enough and just let it ride until it got booted out.

The real question is whether the remaining Four-Color Pile format was acceptable or if the Pioneer maneuver of banning fetches was required. I think it would be totally fine if 4 fetchlands cost 4 rare wildcards and not 1 Benjamin Franklin, which would make it the only time the Arena economy was an upside. The same applies to Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. People generally enjoyed these grindy mirrors if they could afford to buy the cards and play them.

Probability of a Ban: 100%. Unlike Dragonstorm this deck didn’t actually lose to things attacking it.

Reference Decklist: BBD, 2016 World Champion

R&D members have said Collected Company would have been banned with another window between Eldritch Moon and the shortened rotation. The case is made for me.

Probability of a Ban: 100%. They literally said it.

Reference Decklist: Marcio Carvalho, PT Dominaria Top 8

Something needed to go from Rakdos Chainwhirler, I just have no clue what. My best guess is the cheaper cards like Scrapheap Scrounger or Goblin Chainwhirler, because there were too many redundant Chandra, Hazoret, Glorybringer-style cards to ban them all. At top level events it was showing the 40% metagame share, 50% Top 8 results that put it in a dominance tier just below Temur Reclamation, but it was miserably oppressive to the playable cards in the format.

Would that ban in turn make The Scarab God or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria too good? Probably not The Scarab God since that was beatable in Rivals of Ixalan Standard. Maybe Teferi, but that's fairly speculative.

Probability of a Ban: Maybe 50% on each of these individually, but over 80% of at least one of them going.

Reference Decklist: The basic Mountain you used as a proxy for your foil-only card

Yea just fuck everything about this card.

Probability of a Ban: Seriously, fuck it.

Reference Decklist: Stanislav Cifka's Kethis Combo

There's a chance Core Set 2020 should have kicked off the current era of bans, but there weren't iterated events to show it. While I promoted Mono-Red Aggro, that was largely because no one had the respect to play four Cerulean Drake. I didn't play enough Golos or Dinosaurs against Kethis to know if it was actually dominant or merely very good, but it has a lot of the hallmarks of something that was a real issue.

Probability of a Ban: 60%. The format was really high power and might be able to absorb Kethis if it started pulling on stuff too hard, but it wasn’t the most fun way to lose games.