Amid today’s sea of bannings, Wizards of the Coast also decided to unban Lurrus of the Dream-Den in Magic: the Gathering’s Vintage format.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s news: bans in Modern, Pioneer, Legacy, and Historic, plus the change to the cascade mechanic.
Last May, Wizards banned Lurrus in Vintage a month after it was released as part of the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths expansion. At the time, Lurrus of the Dream-Den was trivially easy to play in Vintage since most decks already met its companion restriction of only permanents with converted mana costs two or less, giving those decks an automatic eighth card in hand at the cost of one sideboard slot. Wizards felt that “the power level benefit of using Lurrus as a companion was far too high relative to its deck-building cost” and decided to ban the card.
As a result, Lurrus became the first card to be banned (rather than restricted) in Vintage solely due to its power level.
However, since then, Wizards has been forced to change how the entire companion mechanic works. Rather than being able to cast their companion directly from exile, players must now pay three mana at sorcery speed to put their companion into their hand, where the card can be played as normal. Wizards believes the additional mana requirement will be enough to balance Lurrus of the Dream-Den in Vintage since mana efficiency “comes at a premium in the context of Vintage power level.”
“A key aspect of the spirit of Vintage is that we’d like as much of Magic’s card library to be available as possible,” Wizards said, and having Lurrus of the Dream-Den on the ban list ran counter to that spirit.
“So, we’re running the experiment of unbanning Lurrus of the Dream-Den,” they continued. “We’ll be keeping our eye on what this does to the metagame and are willing to revert the change if needed, but we believe that Lurrus should be given another chance to prove itself under the new companion rule.”
Vintage Lurrus Breach
| Creatures (1) 1 Snapcaster Mage Spells (32) 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Brainstorm 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Flusterstorm 1 Gitaxian Probe 1 Lightning Bolt 1 Mental Misstep 1 Ponder 4 Preordain 3 Pyroblast 1 Spell Pierce 1 Vampiric Tutor 2 Brain Freeze 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Hurkyl’s Recall 1 Merchant Scroll 1 Time Walk 1 Intuition 1 Mindbreak Trap 4 Force of Will 1 Gush 1 Dig Through Time 1 Treasure Cruise Artifacts (7) 1 Black Lotus 1 Lion’s Eye Diamond 1 Lotus Petal 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Nihil Spellbomb Enchantments (4) 1 Seal of Fire 3 Underworld Breach | Lands (16) 2 Flooded Strand 2 Misty Rainforest 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Polluted Delta 2 Scalding Tarn 2 Snow-Covered Island 2 Underground Sea 3 Volcanic Island Sideboard (15) 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den 2 Tormod’s Crypt 1 Flusterstorm 1 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Pyroblast 1 Seal of Fire 3 Hurkyl’s Recall 4 Sprite Dragon 1 Mindbreak Trap |