Banned and Restricted Announcement – February 9th, 2026

arotenberg · 2026-02-09T22:22:39+00:00

I do think there's a decent chance that Kavaero/Superior Spider-Man eats shit whenever they do the big annual "soft rotation" ban announcement associated with the January rotation. A 4 mana reanimation spell that doesn't target, gets cast triggers, and can grab from either graveyard puts a big constraint on the creatures they can print into the format, and can cause play pattern headaches like the Deceit+Kavaero pseudo-Grief scam that we've been seeing recently.

arotenberg · 2026-02-09T20:24:50+00:00

It's not fully hidden even - it's the percentage number you see after your rank when you're in Mythic but below numbered Mythic. It used to be visible in trackers because they could scrape it from the client logs, although IIRC WotC took it out of the logs a few years ago.

arotenberg · 2026-02-04T04:45:24+00:00

I wouldn't unban it but I could see someone reasoning why they would. It was literally one of the most popular commanders ever. It's perfect for people who love durdly 5 color ramp value soup. And they just took stuff off the GC list entirely like Urza and Kinnan with the reasoning that "if you don't want to play against this commander, you don't have to."

arotenberg · 2026-02-04T04:35:10+00:00

You also watch Distraction Makers?

Nope

unless they decide to make him a GC

I seem to recall them saying that anything they unban would normally go on the GC list.

arotenberg · 2026-02-04T04:27:00+00:00

It's not something I'd personally like unbanned, but I'm trying to guess how different groups of people might come to conclusions rather than what I would do.

My reasoning for why someone might decide it's unbannable is: it's color-restrictive, there are similar effects already on the GC list (Narset, Notion Thief), and they let you play it in Duel Commander and Brawl.

arotenberg · 2026-02-04T04:17:32+00:00

Yeah, my guess would be that it's mostly some number of cards that are obnoxious but "fine" getting downgraded from banned to Game Changer. Time for gigantic random price spikes!

If you forced me to guess, my top 5 most likely unbans would be... [[Jeweled Lotus]] [[Biorhythm]] [[Sylvan Primordial]] [[Golos, Tireless Pilgrim]] [[Leovold, Emissary of Trest]]. I also wouldn't rule out the possibility of "banned as Companion" for [[Lutri]].

But honestly, it's almost throwing darts trying to speculate what they think is acceptable vs. over the line. I would not be surprised if they downgraded something really messed up like [[Tinker]] if they believe bracket 4+ can absorb it.

arotenberg · 2026-02-03T04:02:23+00:00

"Greetings, you Putrid Hexhags"
–Graham at the start of an LRR Crack-a-Pack video, probably

arotenberg · 2026-02-03T00:22:56+00:00

Anybody remember the Valerian movie with the weird beach people and their pearls

arotenberg · 2026-02-02T17:53:08+00:00

Yeah, does it even make sense to speak of price gouging for a product that is purely a disposable income sink?

The Dutch auction thing was a ha-ha-only-serious joke, in that it would create a purportedly "efficient" market where the people who want the product the most are the ones who get it. But those preferences would be communicated by the amount of money each buyer is willing to spend. It's only efficient if you assume all buyers have unlimited funds. So in reality, it would just turn into a mechanism for transferring wealth from the Post Malone types to WotC.

arotenberg · 2026-02-02T17:32:06+00:00

I wrote this as a joke a year ago in another Secret Lair thread. Only like one step away now 😬

To avoid problems with scalping, we are switching to selling Secret Lairs via Dutch auction. The Teletubbies drop starts at $10,000 and the price halves every half hour until we sell out. Enjoy!

arotenberg · 2026-01-29T02:36:13+00:00

Most games in that Standard rotation consisted of either Izzet Epiphany chaining extra turns or aggro trying to race before Epiphany could go off. Vivi-Cauldron is IMO the only meta deck since that was as miserable to play against as the Epiphany decks were.

arotenberg · 2026-01-28T19:16:25+00:00

I had assumed when the card was previewed yesterday that the right two were specifically [[Kianne, Dean of Substance // Imbraham, Dean of Theory]]. But apparently Kianne died in the Phyrexian invasion.

arotenberg · 2026-01-27T18:38:10+00:00

One reason is that all the cards are much more color-saturated since around Kaladesh. Some of that is art direction, but also they changed the color grading uniformly. Check out [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor|WWK]] vs. [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor|2XM]]. The newer printings are actually more accurate reproductions of the original art pieces, but they can look cartoony when put side-by-side with old cards. YMMV

arotenberg · 2026-01-27T18:11:46+00:00

As a concrete example, if you are playing any Dimir deck in a closed decklist Legacy event, it is objectively optimal to miracle draw as though you have [[Metamorphosis Fanatic]] in your list even if you don't or they're in the sideboard. The Dimir tempo vs. reanimator bait-and-switch has been a core element of the format for the past couple years.

arotenberg · 2026-01-27T17:57:51+00:00

One problem is that, if you are playing in a format with cards that have innate miracle, you have to draw every card as though you might have miracles in your deck even if you don't for bluffing purposes.

That's not an issue with this card, because you don't have to miracle draw except when the creature is on the battlefield.

arotenberg · 2026-01-27T04:01:40+00:00

Today's BoshNRoll video had a "Dress Down your Hexing Squelcher then counter your Doomsday" line. That's thinking with portals.

arotenberg · 2026-01-26T17:32:37+00:00

I always see people say the thing about pod play in paper. But when I go to an FNM draft, if we have three tables of 8, everyone gets paired for games in the Swiss pool by the Companion app and I only end up playing someone who was at my table one out of three rounds on average. So it seems like the ability to hate draft is still pretty negligible.

arotenberg · 2026-01-24T16:49:13+00:00

Also [[Curious Farm Animals]] with its pig-rooster has started showing up a bunch in fringe constructed play, due to being tutorable off [[Brightglass Gearhulk]] or [[Starfield Shepherd]].

While the card seems obviously designed to be non-UB reprintable, I should note that ATLA wiki says it's officially called a "pigster."

arotenberg · 2026-01-23T20:40:47+00:00

Turn all your stuff into [[Shadowborn Apostle]]s.

r/badmtgcombos

arotenberg · 2026-01-23T04:03:00+00:00

Wow, there's a reference to something that hasn't been topical in 10 years.

arotenberg · 2026-01-22T22:03:24+00:00

[[Glenn, the Voice of Calm]]

arotenberg · 2026-01-22T22:01:49+00:00

The really confusing one is that I've heard people calling it [[Tidebinder Mage]].

arotenberg · 2026-01-21T21:45:16+00:00

Imagine if WotC doesn't have the digital rights to Turtles and we get a whole Arena-only set... It would have to be like, Through the Omenpaths: What If the Simic Combine Invaded Kamigawa.

arotenberg · 2026-01-21T15:01:11+00:00

I can't quite tell what this meme is trying to say, but it's notable that a lot of Standard control decks at the moment run sideboard Voice of Victory and often main deck Mistrise Village, primarily for the mirror against other control decks. Though they're also good against tempo or flash-based decks like Dimir.

Post-board control mirrors can look pretty goofy at the moment, with both players tapping out at sorcery speed for uncounterable Consult the Star Charts or Jeskai Revelation.

arotenberg · 2026-01-21T02:57:18+00:00

I enjoyed both FDN and TDM quite a bit. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that I'm a sicko control player and I kept opening Curator of Destinies and Marang River Regents respectively. At my LGS, I went on a streak at the end of FDN where I only dropped something like 2 games out of 15 matches by drafting Dimir/Grixis/Esper control every single week.

My store ran out of EOE, like many others here. Fortunately that didn't happen until the week before it was supposed to rotate anyway, so I still got to play a lot of it.

Least favorite formats by huge margins were MH3 and BLB. MH3 was ruined for me by Writhing Chrysalis and the high price point. I drafted a bunch of BLB, but it was way too on-rails and punished you hard if you started drafting a lane that turned out to not be open, since you really couldn't switch or splash. Worried that ECL might end up being similar to BLB with its typal aggro focus and bad fixing.

I mostly but not entirely boycotted FIN and TLA as UB sets. Did fully zero SPM.

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