Banning problem cards helps build healthy metagames. For this, Modern is no exception. Today David examines a different approach: unbanning.

Being unable to play with your cards sucks. No one will dispute this. What is also unequivocally true is that cards need to be banned. Sometimes Wizards makes mistakes while making cards, and the likes of Oko, Thief of Crowns proceed to wreck their havoc. Other times new cards interact with old ones in unexpected […]

Discussing the Modern banlist has always been a favorite pastime of the format’s aficionados. In times like these (and I don’t mean COVID-19, but that other c-word), player attention is turned towards what needs to be banned; pundits have suggested all the companions eat the bullet, or that Wizards implement sweeping errata. But personally, I’ve […]

Birthing Pod may have held the title for a good while, but Splinter Twin takes the cake as Modern’s most controversial ban ever. Even today, players debate its place on the banlist ad nauseam, a discussion seemingly reinvigorated with each new deck and expansion; Twin’s defense league has persisted to the extent of literally becoming […]

As the metagame continues to settle after the unbans of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf, an interesting dichotomy has arisen: some players claim that the presence of these powerful four-drops has made the format faster and less interactive, while another sector espouses the opposite belief. I took it upon myself to find out […]

Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor have been unbanned in Modern for a week now. Contrary to what we’ve heard since the announcement, the format is just fine, and perhaps even better: it’s fresher, to be sure, with new decks popping up abusing Modern’s newcomers and benefiting from the metagame warp. One development I […]

This is the big one. It’s time to answer the question I’ve been dancing around all month: Is Bloodbraid Elf safe for Modern? Ought Wizards to rescind its banishment, to the delight of many? Or should Elf remain locked away, to the delight of many others? There have been a number of narratives running through this […]

It begins, gentle seekers of glory. Today is a day of great opportunity and gangrenous rot. The pallid sun meekly illuminates the great ravenous hordes as they linger, eager and anxious, waiting for their moment, when they shall be unleashed upon the world to slack their unending hunger for inadequately-proportioned sugary confections. For those whose […]

The October 17 banlist announcement came and went, and no changes were made to Modern. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to glean. Wizards dropped some juicy information this announcement, and today we’ll deduce which cards the company has their eye on unbanning. Wizards’s latest “No changes” gave us some valuable insight into how they’re […]

I’ve had my mind on the Modern banned list a lot lately—in December, I optimistically wondered at the possibility of a Preordain unban; more recently, I wrote up some general thoughts on format health. In the conclusion of that article, I offered, “Blue and white do continue to struggle relative to the other three colors, making me think now’s […]

Since the Golgari Grave-Troll banning, the Modern banlist hasn’t been updated. But the format has changed dramatically, welcoming Fatal Push into its upper crust and appropriating Death’s Shadow for a Probeless era. Of course, the format’s recent stability hasn’t stopped detractors from clamoring for bans or unbans. Today, we’ll explore what makes a format healthy, and why the notion of metagame health […]

April 24th came and went, and besides some misguided grumbling about Death’s Shadow, most Modern players were content. Without one deck consistently surpassing 10% of the metagame, a “no changes” banlist announcement was easy to predict. But Wizards went the extra mile with this particular announcement, including a blurb about Modern despite choosing not to shake it up. […]

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The holiday season? Nope. Oath of the Gatewatch spoiler hype and rage? Try again, but you’re getting warmer on the “hype” and “rage” business. With 2015 wrapping up and January 2016 right around the corner, ’tis the season of endless debate, discussion, and delirium about arguably the […]