In case you haven’t heard, for the first time in a long time, we have some banned cards in Standard. As of January 20th, Emrakul, the Promised End, Reflector Mage, and Smuggler’s Copter are all banned in Standard. What does this mean? It means that you’re not allowed to run any copies of those three cards in your Standard deck (main deck or sideboard). But just because they’re banned in Standard doesn’t mean they’re not legal in other formats (unless they’re also banned in those formats). For instance, if you’re in a Modern tournament, you can still play Emrakul, the Promised End, even though it’s banned in Standard. And bannings don’t affect the limited format. If you managed to draft/open a Smuggler’s Copter, you can still play it in your draft or sealed deck.

And the other big announcement is that instead of having a banned/restricted list announcement every three months (with the release of each set), there’s another announcement that will happen five weeks after the Pro Tour happens. Why this change? This gives them an extra chance to ban a card if it turns out that it’s breaking the format. For an example of this, look at Modern last winter right after Oath of the Gatewatch was released. The format was dominated by numerous Eldrazi decks, until they were able to ban Eye of Ugin in April. But if you were playing Modern during that time period, you were either playing Eldrazi or trying to find a deck to defeat it. If they had been able to ban it a few weeks after the Pro Tour (after it became obvious how dominating the deck was), it would have made for a much more enjoyable environment. Note that this additional banning period doesn’t mean they’ll be banning more cards – it just gives them a way to ban a card that’s disrupting the environment. While I can only speculate, I would not expect this to mean we’ll have constant Standard bannings.

Today’s Tournament Tip written by Nathan Long