Crucias, Titan of the Waves Rebalanced in Alchemy, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker Banned

Wizards of the Coast announced today that it was rebalancing Crucias, Titan of the Waves and banning Fable of the Mirror-Breaker in Magic: The Gathering’s Alchemy format.

Black/Red decks featuring both cards “been one of the best-performing archetypes in Alchemy,” Wizards said. The addition of The One Ring has pushed the archetype over the top, the continued, forcing them to take action to bring it back into line.

According to Wizards, Crucias, Titan of the Waves “is losing 2 toughness to be more vulnerable to removal and in combat” and make it easier to remove much earlier in the game. This will allow players to interact with Crucias—long the bane of the format—with a wider variety of spells, like Cut Down and Play with Fire, instead of feeling forced to save their expensive removal spells.

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, on the other hand, has been dominant in many of the formats it is legal in and has already been banned in Standard. While Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty won’t rotate out of Standard this Fall (thanks to the new three-year rotation cycle) Alchemy will continue following the traditional two-year rotation cycle, meaning Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is scheduled to rotate out of the format in a few months. However, Wizards didn’t want to disrupt the “metagame with a rebalance that would only be in effect for a few months” so they are instead opting to ban the card outright.