Last night, Wizards announced that they would be updating Magic’s Banned and Restricted list next Monday, May 18. The update will affect three formats: Vintage, Legacy, and Brawl.
While Banned and Restricted updates aren’t exclusively used to ban cards—Wizards unbanned the notorious Rampaging Ferocidon, for example—bans are the likely outcome of Monday’s update. There are two obvious candidates for bans, Lurrus of the Dream-Den in some eternal formats and Drannith Magistrate in Brawl, while Arcum’s Astrolabe could also be on the watch list.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den
In my opinion, Lurrus of the Dream-Den could be banned for its confusing hyphenation. The care was previewed as “Dream-Den,” while the card text on MTG Arena, MTGO, and Gatherer didn’t have a hyphen, leading to confusion and the inability to properly import deck lists.
But its main issue is that it 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 low, low cost of one sideboard slot. And in fact, over the course of two Legacy and two Vintage challenges in one weekend in April, 38 Legacy decks in the two Top 32s and 42 Vintage decks in the two Top 32s played Lurrus. That’s 80 out of 128 decks across four Top 32s—over 60%! No wonder Legacy and Vintage decks are suddenly maindecking Dead Weight and Seal of Fire.
Oh—and Lurrus makes Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, Lion’s Eye Diamond, and Underworld Breach better at virtually no cost. That’s not a list of cards that needs any help in their respective formats.
Drannith Magistrate
This one is an easy ban in Brawl. Drannith Magistrate makes it so your opponent can’t play their Commander, which runs counter to the whole point of a format like Brawl, and is the reason that Meddling Mage was banned in Historic Brawl earlier this year.
