Evolution of Magic: Banned and Restricted - Affinity Edition

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Last time, we saw the disaster that was Combo Winter and we ended at the beginning of the millennium with the Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero banning. Today, we enter a much calmer era, especially for Standard and Block. One might even think Wizards of the Coast learned how to balance their sets through much rigorous development and testing! Let's look at how long that lasted!

Fixing Extended (2001)

Starting with 2001, Block and Standard started getting a lot more stable. However, Extended still required some tweaking. 

The last banning/restriction we saw in the previous article was Necropotence getting the axe in Legacy/Vintage. Somehow, they figured one of — if not the best — card drawing engines was still fine in Extended. They thought the banning of Dark Ritual would be enough to kill Trix. It wasn't and Necropotence got banned in Extended a few months later. Same happened with demonic consultation which was a little too strong of a tutor despite its drawback. 

In addition, Tradewind Survival (which would later become a force in Legacy) and other survival of the fittest decks were starting to be pretty dominant in Extended. Survival of the fittest had always been on the strong side. But as more and more powerful utility creatures got printed, having easy an access to a creature toolbox was getting too strong. The combo with Squee, Goblin Nabob drove survival of the fittest over the top and forced the ban.

The last card to get banned in March 2001 was Replenish. Early replenish  decks used Opalescence for the kill, but were mainly fueled by Yawgmoth's Bargain. When Yawgmoth's Bargain got banned, the traditional Replenish deck died, but it came back to fuel a new combo deck: Pande-burst. Pande-burst was a deck built around a two card combo: Pandemonium and Saproling Burst.

With Pandemonium in play, you remove a counter from Saproling Burst to make a 6/6 (dealing 6), then a 5/5 (now up to 11), then a 4/4 (that makes 15), then a 3/3 (18), then a 2/2 (20) and then a 1/1, just in case! The deck worked because you played Fact or Fiction, Intuition and Frantic Search to dig for Replenish while filling your graveyard with your two combo pieces. Since those draw spells just happen to be blue, you're likely to have counter backup to protect your replenish when you combo out.

While on the subject of Fact or Fiction, the card that coined the famous EOTFOFYL (end of turn fact or fiction, you lose) was making too many people lose in Vintage and Legacy. It got restricted/banned in December of 2001.

Calm Seas (2002)

2002 is the only year in the history of Magic where there were absolutely no changes. Odyssey was just that awesome.

In March 2003, they even decided to do some unbanning in Vintage/Legacy. There wasn't too much attacking going on in Vintage anymore, so Berserk seemed fair and hopefully would bring back some aggro to the meta. Recall should have been unbanned years prior, but better late than never. Hurkyl's recall combos were just way too clunky compared to the alternatives (especially with mana vault, mana crypt and grim monolith restricted) and unbanning it gave it an opportunity to be used for its intended purpose: as an answer to artifact heavy decks.

On the other hand, in a format with so much graveyard recursion, Entomb was considered too dangerous for Vintage. Wizards is especially careful with anything resembling a tutor in Vintage, because 4 of a tutor allows you to play 5 of a restricted card, defeating the purpose of the restricted list. So it got banned and restricted in Legacy and Vintage. Meanwhile, the combo potential and its ability to create insane amount of mana (especially with lands that tap for more than one) caused earthcraft to join Entomb on the B&R list.

In a reddit post, I talked about how GAT (Gro-a-tog) dominated Vintage for a while because of how powerful Gush was. In June, Wizards had enough and ban/restricted gush in Vintage and Legacy. They also banned/restricted Mind's Desire because... well, have you read the card? Because obviously no one in development did!

In September, Wizards goes back to Extended. First, with all the amazing goblins released in Onslaught, Goblin Lackey was causing Extended to be way too fast. Another thing that made Extended really fast was turn 1 swamp, Entomb, lotus petal, reanimate, swing for 6 with Akroma, Angel of Wrath. After getting restricted/banned from Legacy and Vintage, Entomb got banned in Extended as well. The third problem was how Frantic Search kept fueling a bunch of combo decks while costing nothing (or even making mana).

That wasn't quite enough to slow down Extended. Even with Goblin Lackey gone, goblin recruiter kept goblins problematic, so it got banned in December. Another problem was fast mana in the form of grim monolith and ancient tomb. Hermit druid and oath of druids were two combo pieces that allowed for incredibly early wins and finally, the release of Mirrodin caused Tinker to go from powerful to broken (with 7 decks in the Top 8 of Pro Tour New Orleans playing 4 copies of tinker).  

Meanwhile, in Vintage people finally started breaking Lion's eye diamond. Burning wish was also starting to be a problem, especially in the deck Burning Long (a version of the typical Vintage storm deck that played red for burning wish, often called the fastest deck in Vintage at the time). A lot of the best restricted cards were sorceries (Yawgmoth’s Will especially), so by playing them in the sideboard, you got to play 4 copies of them. Like many tutors before it, burning wish got the axe in Vintage/Legacy.

The First Waves (June 2003)

Here's a little quiz. What is the first card from Mirrodin Block to get banned?

Arcbound Ravager ? No... Ravager got to ruin Magic for a while before it got banned.

Skullclamp ? You're getting closer, but something got banned even faster than skullclamp.

Skullclamp did get ban pretty fast though. With the release of Fifth Dawn in June 2003, skullclamp was gone from Standard and Block. Urza's Saga had an excuse for broken cards: Magic was still young and Wizards hadn't realized the importance of development and playtesting. What was Wizards's excuse for skullclamp? This was a case of a last minute change gone wrong. The card started as a 3cc equipment that cost 2 to equip. It had the "Whenever equipped creature dies, draw two cards," but that's it. That card was bad. Really bad. Like last pick in draft bad. Ok, they needed to do something about it. Same cost, but now it gives +1/+2 and you sac the creature to draw 2 (instead of a trigger). Better, but the new ability didn't sit too well with the designers flavor-wise. They kept the power/toughness boost, but brought back the trigger. The card sat as is in the file, with no one playing it. 

Then a meeting happened. "Ok guys, equipment is a brand new thing in Mirrodin, we want players to love it, we want players to play it, make them better!" And so they made Skullclamp better — WAY better — one month before the set was schedule to go to print. 

Worse than that though is that when they do last minute changes like that and expect a card to have an impact on constructed, they send a memo to playtesters urging them to test the new version of the card. No such memo was sent for skull clamp. Devs were so biased by the previous, unplayable versions of Skullclamp that they didn't see the monster they had created.

In my opinion, Skullclamp's banning is an unusual one. This banning is one of the rare bannings where the resulting meta is, in my opinion, worse than the pre-banning meta. Yes, Skullclamp was played in almost every deck. The top three decks at the time, Elf and Nail, Affinity and Goblins all made incredible use of skullclamp. That said, Skullclamp made tons of decks playable. At the time, I was playing Affinity. When I got bored of it, I also had a White Weenie deck with the equipments-matter creatures from Mirrodin Block. skull Clamp was especially fun with Leonin Shikari!

The post banning meta was Affinity and anti-Affinity. If it wasn't for Astral Slide, I would have stopped playing Standard (and I did as soon as it rotated).

Skullclamp also started causing trouble in Extended, so it got banned in September. In addition, with all the artifacts released in mirrodin, Metalworker was starting to become an issue in Extended, so it got banned as well.

Interlude: Revival of Legacy (September 2004)

You may have noticed that whenever I said that something was too strong in Vintage, it got banned in Legacy as well. This is because for the longest time, Legacy's banned list said: "Everything restricted in Vintage is banned in Legacy." That's it. This might have made sense early on, but as more and more cards were added to the restricted list, Legacy and Vintage started growing further and further apart. Take a look at current Vintage lists (or at the Burning Long list above), they often are 30%+ restricted cards! So the two metas were completely different, yet they somehow shared the same banned list? This forced Wizards to play favorites. Were they going to mess up the whole Vintage metagame by restricting mishra's workshop just because it was causing trouble in Legacy? No.

Vintage was Wizards's favorite. Vintage drove the shared list and Legacy was suffering.

In September 2004, Wizards listened to the pleas of the rare remaining Legacy players and split the two lists. I won't list the changes, as it's basically a whole new banned list, but you can find it here.

This was the breath of fresh air that Legacy needed. After this announcement, Legacy saw a surge of new players join the format. It may seem strange now, but before this announcement, Vintage was probably played more (thanks to proxy tournaments) than Legacy. All you Legacy fans should thank the gods for the September 2004 announcement.

The Affinity Ban (March 2005)

It took a while. Wizards was delusional. Before Mirrodin, there had been no bannings in Standard since the Urza fiasco and no bannings in Block since Lin Sivvi. Wizards had tightened up their development and invested in playtesting. A small mistake like Skullclamp here and there, sure, that was possible, but the whole Affinity deck? Surely it would self correct. Surely they could help it correct itself by printing a few solutions.

When Onslaught rotated out, a bad meta turned worse. Wizards figured that since Mirrodin was so powerful, they had to weaken Kamigawa to curb the power creep. This was a valid strategy in the long run, but the immediate impact was that nothing in Kamigawa could come close to compete with Affinity. With Slide, Goblins and other strong Onslaught decks rotating out, Affinity was left as the sole ruler and players were leaving Standard to a point where Wizards was having flashbacks from Urza's Saga. They simply couldn't wait for Kataki, War's Wage anymore. In March 2005, Wizards finally bit the bullet, admitted their mistake and banned Arcbound Ravager, disciple of the vault and the artifact lands in Standard. 

In Vintage, a different artifact was causing issues: Trinisphere. Trinisphere was simply unfair in Workshop decks. In a format so dependent on moxen and other cheap artifact mana, a turn 1 Mishra's Workshop into Trinisphere was almost an auto win against a big chunk of the meta (especially since the shop deck had the opportunity to drop its own jewelry first before the trinisphere). 

New Old Arrivals and Old New Departures (October 2005)

In October 2005, Portal sets became legal in Vintage and Legacy. This caused several cards to spike instantly as they went from useless to both powerful *and* extremely rare. This also meant that from now on, all black bordered and white bordered cards would be legal, which gave Wizards a way to print cards for Vintage and Legacy without impacting Standard (in products such as Commander, Planechase, etc.)

To prepare for these new arrivals, they adjusted the Vintage and the Legacy lists to take into account the Portal cards. Vampiric tutor was banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage, so imperial seal received the same fate. Similarly, Mystical Tutor was restricted in Vintage, so Personal Tutor got restricted as well.

Mind over matter got a second chance in Vintage and was unrestricted (and has been behaving so far)

Another important thing that happened in October 2005 was the Extended rotation. At the time, Extended rotated every 3 years. 3 whole blocks rotating out of the format was bound to have a pretty severe impact on the format. In preparation for this new format, Wizards decided to do a preemptive strike against Affinity by banning Disciple of the Vault. They also wanted to give control decks a chance against aggro decks and banned Aether Vial.

Retcon (March 2006)

In March 2006, Wizards went back in time and banned Arcbound Ravager, the artifact lands, Aether Vial and Disciple of the Vault in Mirrodin Block. That's almost two years after Mirrodin Block was a thing. Mirrodin wasn't even Standard legal anymore! So why would they do that?

Well, at the time, they wanted to try a format called Block party, where you could build a deck from any Block you want. Not wanting Affinity to completely dominate the format, they went back and banned it from Mirrodin Block. This may remind you of the Legacy vs Vintage issue where one format's B&R list is dependent on another's, but in this case it wasn't so bad because few people play Block formats after they rotate. 

And with that last of the Affinity banning ends my post for today. Hope you enjoyed!

-Filobel