Modern
Since the release of Modern Horizons, graveyard decks using Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis have had an enormous impact on the Modern metagame. After early signs of the metagame being unable to self-correct, such as players adopting large amounts of main-deck graveyard hate and the Hogaak deck still boasting high win rates, we restricted Bridge from Below to weaken the deck.
Banned, not restricted.
Since then, the results of Mythic Championship IV in Barcelona, several Grands Prix, and other tournaments have shown that Hogaak continues to have a high win rate and oppressive effect on the metagame. In looking at the evolution of the archetype over time and the variety of successful ways to build the deck, it's clear that the card Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is the crux of the problem. Therefore, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is banned.
Everyone I know who is into Modern was pretty confident that Hogaak was going to be banned, so this is probably the least surprising part of the announcement. I mentioned in a brief discussion at my LGS that I kind of feel bad for WotC on this one. I mean, Hogaak as a card design was a silly mistake, and that's on them. But from what I could tell, their explanation for banning Bridge from Below seemed cogent. I bought their reasoning for why they targeted that card specifically. And then data clearly showed that their targeted ban did not have the desired effect. It seemed like it could have worked, but it did not work. And hey, sometimes that's how things are going to happen. Couldn't fault them for trying.
Coming out of this period of an unhealthy Modern metagame, we want to avoid taking a half step that once again leaves the metagame in a place where it can't self-correct. Over the past year, graveyard-based strategies have been occupying a large portion of the Modern metagame, to the point where deck-building diversity is being suppressed. This is reflected in the rise of heavy-handed main deck anti-graveyard cards like Surgical Extraction, Leyline of the Void, and Rest in Peace. We'd like to shift gameplay a little bit away from the graveyard and back toward the hand and battlefield.
This is exactly the sort of reasoning I have a history of quibbling over in these B&R announcements. A certain deck was demonstrating dominance, was a problem for a format. So they announce that they're banning that card in that format. But then, in the same announcement, they consider the possibility that with the problematic card gone, the overall metagame will shift in some direction that they also don't want, so they had better go ahead and ban a card that wasn't demonstrably the problem. Official statements from WotC have no track record of making accurate predictions for how formats will evolve. Quite the opposite: they've failed in their predictions when they've been so bold as to make them. I wish someone with some clout would sit the decision-makers down and explain to them that they need to stop pretending to have fortune-telling powers. In some instances, there may be information that suggests banning two cards is necessary, perhaps to deal with a demonstrable duopoly in tournament results. And those exceptions are one thing. But it's another thing entirely to see the card that's a problem, ban it, and then to go, "While we're at it, we believe that in the future, this other card that isn't the problem might become the problem. So we'll ban that too."
And I remain highly critical of the philosophy that WotC impose on Modern. They outright state that they are banning cards not to curb dominance or other problems, but because they'd "like to shift gameplay a little bit." This kind of aggressive curation, not of what might win too much or might inhibit others from winning, but of
style, is simply too invasive. The only saving grace is that it's mainly been confined to Modern. But I worry that the overall philosophy has infected the regulation of Legacy too. The banning of Gitaxian Probe sure seemed like a sign of that.
The key card enabling the majority of these graveyard-focused decks is Faithless Looting. By our data gathered from Magic Online and tabletop tournament results, over the past year the winningest Modern deck at any given point in time has usually been a Faithless Looting deck. Examples include Hollow One, Izzet Phoenix, and Dredge and Bridgevine variants (both pre- and post-Hogaak's release). As new card designs are released that deal with the graveyard, discarding cards, and casting cheap spells, the power of Faithless Looting's efficient hand and graveyard manipulation continues to scale upward. Regardless of Hogaak's recent impact, Faithless Looting would be a likely eventual addition to the banned list in the near future. In order to ensure the metagame doesn't again revert to a Faithless Looting graveyard deck being dominant, we believe now is the correct time to make this change. For this same reason, we're choosing not to unban Bridge from Below at this time.
Somewhat amusingly, Spidey recently reminded me of my submitted-but-unpublished frontpage Comboist Manifesto article "The Graveyard." That article was written back in October of last year, but it's looking especially relevant now. Anyway, Faithless Looting seems like a pretty innocuous card to me, but then, so do some other cards that are banned in Modern. It's not my format and I shouldn't dwell too much on this stuff.
Knowing that these changes will already shake up the metagame, we consider this a good time to review cards currently on the banned list. Just as was our philosophy in unbanning Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf last year, we recognize that over time the power level of Modern increases naturally as the card pool grows. Cards that were added to the banned list on pure power level may now be more appropriate in context of a more powerful metagame. We believe the Modern metagame and power level are in a place where Stoneforge Mystic is now an appropriate inclusion in the card pool.
This unbanning surprised some people, which I find a bit puzzling. Stoneforge Mystic was among the safest of unbans they could find for Modern, and WotC does tend toward these "prisoner exchange" updates, banning stuff that they want to get rid of, but unbanning some irrelevant throwback simultaneously, even though the unbanned card could have been unbanned way earlier.
Ignoring my earlier statement about how I don't play Modern and shouldn't focus on this stuff, the Stoneforge Mystic ban was laughably unnecessary from the beginning. For those who don't remember, Modern borrowed somewhat from the framework of Extended formats in its inception. Stoneforge Mystic was excluded from Modern when the format was created, and this was due to the Extended format dominance of the "Caw Blade" decks. These were reactive control decks powered by Jace, the Mind Sculptor, with Squadron Hawk as a value engine to synergize with Jace. They could quickly and decisively eliminate opponents, even opponents who managed to contest the control provided by Jace, through the combination of Stoneforge Mystic + Umezawa's Jitte. The archetype was so infamous that that WotC felt compelled to curtail it when they created Modern. Banning a card to keep that deck from running rampant in the new format was a reasonable precaution to take. But here's what's so absurd: they banned Jace, the Mind Sculpltor
and Stoneforge Mystic
and Umezawa's Jitte.
Now, the format evolved into a position where a blue four-drop planeswalker control card with a chaff playset of little birdies to help it draw cards wouldn't be a powerhouse anymore anyway. But even before that, it was trivially obvious that Stoneforge Mystic was no threat without the cards that propped it up in Extended. No Jace, no Jitte? No threat. Stoneforge Mystic in Modern would have been a decent equipment toolbox card for aggro-control decks, probably fetching Batterskull or Sword of Fire and Ice. The equipment that let it take over games so easily was Umezawa's Jitte, and that card was already banned.
The danger in reintroducing Stoneforge Mystic, and the reason it's remained on the banned list up until this point, is that it's at its strongest against straightforward decks that play to the battlefield. While we think it's unlikely, there is a scenario where Stoneforge Mystic could come to suppress this type of gameplay, in which case we would re-examine its legality (similar to Golgari Grave-Troll's history in Modern). Instead, our hope is that as gameplay becomes less graveyard focused, Stoneforge Mystic serves as an enticing draw for decks to refocus toward the battlefield, creature combat, and card advantage.
That whole paragraph is a bunch of hedging. The card is tame so long as you can't use it to fetch Umezawa's Jitte.
