Wizards of the Coast has banned Omnath, Locus of Creation, Lucky Clover, and Escape to the Wilds in Magic: the Gathering’s Standard format.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s other bannings in Historic and Brawl.
Omnath, Locus of Creation
“With last month’s Standard banned and restricted update, we highlighted that we’d continue to monitor the Standard metagame as well as Omnath, Locus of Creation decks and would make further changes if necessary,” Wizards said in the announcement. “Observing ladder play and tournament results over the following weeks, as well as the field of the Grand Finals over the weekend, we’ve concluded that additional changes are necessary.”
Despite banning Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath two weeks ago, the 2020 Season Grand Finals was dominated by Omnath decks, with over 70% of the field playing either Omnath Adventures or Omnath Ramp and the archetypes making up five of the decks in the Top 8.
“While we did see a marked decline in the win rate of [Omnath] Ramp after the banning of Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, particularly against red and green aggressive decks and Blue-Black Rogues, Omnath ramp decks continue to have a warping effect on the metagame,” Wizards continued. “Moreover, [Omnath] Adventures has become the deck with the highest overall win rate and has a favorable matchup against 9 out of 10 of the other top decks that don’t play Omnath.”
“To address the dominance of Omnath, Locus of Creation, it is banned in Standard,” they concluded.
Omnath isn’t the first card to dominate Standard after its release in recent history—see Oko, Thief of Crowns—but Wizards is typically very hesitant to ban brand new cards, instead preferring to give the format time to adapt. Wizards tried to avoid banning Omnath by banning Uro, instead, but the card’s ability to warp the format forced Wizard to take unusually quick action and just two weeks after Zendikar Rising’s official release on September 25, 2020, Wizards has banned the set’s marquee mythic.
Lucky Clover
Even without Omnath in the format, Wizards says that “ladder play data makes it clear that Adventure decks would remain as the strongest strategy. Therefore, we’re also choosing to ban Lucky Clover as a powerful and difficult-to-interact-with part of that deck’s engine.”
The power of Lucky Clover was on full display over the weekend at the Grand Finals, where 59.4% of the field played Omnath Adventures featuring both Omnath, Locus of Creation and Lucky Clover. Though Omanth helped enable the deck’s most broken starts, Lucky Clover was often the card that provided the most powerful effect by doubling or tripling—even quadrupling or quintupling—each adventure spell, allowing players to either come back from massive deficit with a single card and quickly close out the game.
“We expect that individual creatures with adventure and decks using Edgewall Innkeeper will continue to show up but that after this change,” Wizards said, and they believe that “a greater number of other decks can successfully compete with them” without Lucky Clover in the format.
Escape to the Wilds
While many expected Omnath and Clover to be on the chopping block, Wizards surprised the community by banning Escape to the Wilds “as a further step to ensure that ramp decks don’t continue to dominate the Standard metagame.”
“This card plays a unique and powerful role as a bridge between strong ramp enablers, like Lotus Cobra, and powerful payoffs, like Genesis Ultimatum and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon,” Wizards said. “Of nonland cards in the Grand Finals, Escape to the Wilds was played in the second greatest number of copies.” (Bonecrusher Giant was the most-played card.)
“As the card common to many ramp variants, [banning Escape to the Wilds] is the most straightforward way to weaken that strategy as a whole and ensure a shift away from recent Standard metagames,” Wizards concluded.
Omnath Adventures from the Grand Finals
Standard Omnath Adventures by Austin Bursavich (1st Place, 2020 Season Grand Finals)
| Creatures (26) 4 Beanstalk Giant 4 Bonecrusher Giant 4 Edgewall Innkeeper 4 Fae of Wishes 4 Omnath, Locus of Creation 2 Brazen Borrower 2 Giant Killer 2 Lotus Cobra Spells (4) 3 Escape to the Wilds 1 Shatterskull Smashing Artifacts (4) 4 Lucky Clover | Lands (26) 4 Branchloft Pathway 4 Ketria Triome 3 Fabled Passage 2 Cragcrown Pathway 2 Raugrin Triome 4 Forest 4 Island 2 Mountain 1 Plains Sideboard (15) 1 Fling 1 Soul-Guide Lantern 1 Once and Future 1 Fabled Passage 1 Return to Nature 1 Blazing Volley 1 Neutralize 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 1 Redcap Melee 1 Negate 1 Primal Might 1 Escape to the Wilds 2 Mystical Dispute 1 Storm’s Wrath |