This should shake things up
For the past several years, it’s not uncommon to see a Magic: The Gathering meta where a single card archetype is defining the vast majority of competitive decks. We saw it with Oko, then we saw it with Uro. Now we’re seeing it again with Omnath: and friends!
These past few weeks, the meta has been absolutely dominated by Omnath, Locus of Creation. While they banned Uro (which further enabled Omnath) and was “monitoring the situation” after that, the community knew it wasn’t going to be enough to stop Omnath’s dominance. Sure enough, Omnath decks absolutely blew out the most recent competitive runs, leading to today’s standard ban. Omnath is even suspended in historic and brawl play as well.
But it’s not just Omnath that’s getting the ban hammer: Escape to the Wilds and Lucky Clover are hit too. Both products of the extremely wonky Eldraine cycle, they contributed to the power level of adventure and ramp decks, where players would be able to work their way up to late-game board states in the blink of an eye. As it turns out, that doesn’t make for a fun game of Magic!
Wizards says that “Four-Color 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.” While Escape to the Wilds is commonly used with Omnath, both cards got the boot because Wizards saw a world in which they also dominated the meta. Lotus Cobra and Genesis Ultimatum (two other targets that players thought might be hit) were spared: for now.
It’s utterly wild that so many brand new cards have been banned in recent years, but that’s the current climate of Magic. It’s a brave new world out there! Enjoy your mono-red and Dimir Rogues decks until the meta sorts itself out (hilariously, my first post-ban game was my mono-red deck versus Dimir Rogues; after I had written that out already).
Banned and Restricted Announcement [Wizards of the Coast]
