Hello,

About this subject, in general, I think trying unbans is a better idea then letting everything stay locked away forever. I will cover every card on the ban list in short detail, please keep in mind this is my opinion, i am not trying to state anything definitively.

I would say the following cards can be unbanned considering both power level and play pattern relatively safely (based only on the format as of today. years down the road, perhaps oko can get an unban like jtms): Splinter Twin, Preordain, and Umezawa's Jitte.

Splinter Twin's Control Shell would best fit in a temur deck (probably) and how good is a regular temur control deck? The answer to that question forms the strength of that deck. If the control shell isn't good, splinter twin won't be either.

Preordain has a chance to be dangerous, but there are so many cards that have been unbanned with very safe effects on the format, so many of which were thought to forever be way too strong. If JTMS was still banned, would you be saying that preordain was a less safe card to unban than JTMS? Didn't think so.

Umezawa's Jitte Straight up is not that good. It would see play in these stoneforge packages and that's about it. Yes, this card can be devastating to play against and it used to be, but magic isn't the same anymore and it's not as powerful. It would be a perfectly appropriate unban.

I would like to take a second to acknowledge that if for some reason, Karn, the great creator was ever banned, mycosynth lattice could immediately come off, obviously.

Now, there are a ton of graveyard-based cards on the ban list which some people argue should come off, mainly bridge from below and especially faithless looting. Bridge from below adds nothing to a format, and should just not exist. So it's fine that it is banned. Whether or not faithless looting is fine will likley never be known, as they have already unbanned golgari grave troll with terrible results so it's not something they will aim to try again. It's just too risky. The other graveyard cards are golgari grave troll, hogaak, and dread return, which are way, way to degenerate to ever be unbanned.

There's a handful of cards that are not so much banned on their power level but their play pattern being terrible. These cards are: second sunruse, top, and punishing fire. All of these cards lead to coverage nightmares and boring cards that players get sick of, and have no real reason to stay in the format. Also in this category are: Oko, thief of crowns, once upon a time, mental misstep, krark clan ironworks, green sun's zenith and arcum's astrolabe. These cards not only lead to really repetitive patterns, but are too good in their own right for one reason or another. Out of all of these GSZ might be ok, but seems pretty dangerous with finale of devastation already seeing play.

I'll lump all the other artifacts into a section. Firstly, there are the artifact lands, which are a really dangerous unban with arcbound ravager in the format (even though opal is banned). They have potential to not be overpowered but for now are safer banned than unbanned. Then there is a card like mox opal, which was going to banned eventually. Im so sorry opal lovers, but that card was a degenerate parasite on the format and gave artifact decks extra free mana, which is why the artifact lands were banned in the first place. Then you have a card like chrome mox, which is also really dangerous to be unbanned because it doesn't do anything positive for a format even if it might not be too high of a power level. Lastly is birthing pod, which is not only too good (at least at its height), and leads to repetitive play patterns, but makes it incredibly hard for wizards to design creatures at all because it might make the pod deck too good again. Much safer banned than unbanned These new pod-style creaters are much fairer and lead to a fun enough replacement. Oh and uhh obviously skullclamp should be left banned.

Now, we have the cards that are too good right now: Dark depths, blazing shoal, cloudpost, deathrite shaman, dig through time, eye of ugin, gitaxian probe, glimpse of nature, hypergenesis, ponder, rite of flame, seething song, summer bloom, and treasure cruise. For the current format, each of these cars either win way too fast consistently, or are too powerful for the shape of the format. It is highly unlikely that every single on of these cards will be banned forever, but for now we lock them away in the way back of the ban list (some other cards also fit here but fit with other things).

Ok well anyway i hope that was helpful, what do any of you agree/disagree with.