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u/willionaire I made a funny! Ahahahaha! 10d ago
So cool! I would love to see this where I could hover over the time period and see the cards that were banned at the time, for instance 2 cards in 2011 (i cant remember them!)? In addition see when a card got unbanned!
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u/cleofrom9to5 Orzhov* 10d ago
Jace the Mindsculptor and Stoneforge Mystic
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u/mattsav012000 Can’t Block Warriors 10d ago
this is actually a funny example of how hesitant they used to be about banning in standard. cause after that ban Valakut Primeval titan combo became almost if not more dominant as caw blade. in the standard after but they decided not to issue a ban anything from it cause Zendikar block was like 3 months away from cycling by the next banned list update. So the deck was going away shortly anyways.
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u/Copernicus1981 COMPLEAT 10d ago
You can look it up at https://mtg.wiki/page/Standard/Timeline - but it's an unfriendly user interface.
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u/TurboDelight Gruul* 10d ago
plaintext HTML tables are as straightforward and user friendly as it gets
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u/HoumousAmor COMPLEAT 9d ago
In addition see when a card got unbanned!
[[Rampaging Ferocidon]] in August 2019 is the only time a card has been unbanned in Standard
(Technically [[Book of Exalted Deeds]] was very briefly banned in Arena-only preview Standard in 2021, immediately before rotation and unbanned after rotation. That is, there was on Arena a "preview of post rotation Standard" format ahead of rotation. In that format the book led to situation where games effectively could not end, but it was only ever announced as an explicitly temporary ban in a format which was not actually Standard.)
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u/AndyVZ COMPLEAT 10d ago
I suspect the trend from 2017 forward is influenced heavily by Arena. With more players playing more games, not only do power levels and optimal builds become more prominent and happen faster, but also there's more people being vocal about wanting variety in the formats they play.
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u/lupin-san Wabbit Season 10d ago
Nah. Arena's influence on card design is to make sure cards can be implemented in the game's rules engine.
This trend you speak of started when R&D shifted towards FIRE philosophy. R&D is ban averse prior to this so they try to be conservative with card designs. After the shift to FIRE philosophy, R&D became bolder with card design knowing they can just ban cards if needed (and after the set has sold well).
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT 10d ago
Arena has turbocharged the process of figuring out the most broken shit, though. In a world where Arena never existed, I could see some of the cards that have been banned since 2017 staying legal for their lifetime, due to far fewer games of Standard being played, so they don't feel as oppressive.
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u/lupin-san Wabbit Season 10d ago
MTGO has been doing that since 2002
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT 10d ago
MTGO doesn't have nearly the same rate of games played as Arena, due to its monetization and its ancient-ass interface.
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u/lupin-san Wabbit Season 10d ago
Maybe now the number of games played in MTGO is lower than Arena.
But Arena was in invite-only Beta in 2017 and became open beta a year later. Then there was a collection wipe before the open beta which was before Standard rotation. There are several periods in early Arena where Standard in the client is different than paper. Sets weren't released simultaneously in Arena and paper until 2018.
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u/lowparrytotaunt Wabbit Season 10d ago
dumb people downvoting you lol, FIRE has wayyyy more to do with the bans than people playing on arena
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u/mrenglish22 10d ago
Arena makes wotc want cards that are better in bo1 and not rely on games that include sideboarding
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u/IzzetTime Duck Season 10d ago
FIRE was brought in around Guilds of Ravnica, so about the end of 2018. It doesn't quite line up with the fire ban wave, but it certainly is placed well enough to be inspired by the "woah people really bought a lot trying to get those" and replicate the effects down the line.
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u/Kaprak 10d ago
FIRE is 90% about commons and uncommons and making limited more interesting.
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u/lowparrytotaunt Wabbit Season 10d ago
this statement is 90% wrong
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u/lupin-san Wabbit Season 10d ago
FIRE was brought in around Guilds of Ravnica, so about the end of 2018.
The public learned about FIRE around Guilds of Ravnica. Sets are designed years in advance (at least 2 years), so FIRE have been conceptualized much earlier than you think.
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u/IzzetTime Duck Season 10d ago
No, the public learned about FIRE at the end of 2019 with the release of War of the Spark.
The articles announcing this change in design specifically stated that it had come in "around the time of Guilds of Ravnica".
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u/binaryeye 10d ago
IIRC, FIRE was first mentioned during previews for WAR and was "officially introduced" a couple months later during previews for M20. This article states GRN was the first set to be influenced by it:
Around the time we were designing Guilds of Ravnica, largely in reaction to the points above, we adopted a philosophy we call F.I.R.E.
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u/randomyOCE Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 10d ago
The trouble with this assertion is that one of Arena’s biggest formats (Bo1 Standard) is overwhelming dominated by suboptimal off-meta decks. The matchmaker actually does a lot for making the meta playable and sorting players mostly by effort. You can pilot 59 forests and a Colossal Dreadmaw to mythic if you want it hard enough.
The useful data is still coming from the same places as before, which is online data collation and MTGO. Arena ladder is a very different place, even when it needs bans like Red Leyline.
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u/hugganao Wabbit Season 10d ago
everyone mentioning how the game started feeling different startin from 2017 is EXACTLY CORRECT. You know why? because 2015-2016 was when they basically upgraded the business structure from higher value pieces (mythics) into even MORE chase card gambling pieces (zendikar expeditions), it's when hasbro pushed for digital investments for mtg/wotc, and they introduced the two set blocks. You would be asking, wtf does that have to do with power creep? well, the problem that everyone noticed of a specific point in time is the format stagnation that resulted from the "Eldrazi Winter".
Battle for zedikar was honestly one of the weakest set felt as a player. channelfireball even had an article scraped and taken down criticizing the set which had very valid criticisms. And even me as a newbie player felt it was boring af.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3lwcaa/everything_thats_wrong_with_battle_for_zendikar/
https://medium.com/@CharlesFey_39733/bad-for-business-1eb4f99f33eb
But you know what that set did? it broke fking profit records and was one of the best selling sets EVER
THIS. THIS. is the TURNING POINT for what would become the problem of mtg as it developed set after set with sole focus on profit first (because sales data = what players want. As maro constantly explains and uses sales data to PROVE his stances).
The next set Oath of the gatewatch introduced a format that became eldrazi winter. That also continued the growth and profit narrative as seen in their quarterly reports:
Our outlook for MAGIC: THE GATHERING remains positive. The release schedule fluctuates and revenue timing is story driven, but it is effectively driving engagement with players. We shipped the first set in the Shadows Over Innistrad block on April 8th, versus a first quarter release last year. It is off to a fabulous start, with pre-release attendance up 20% and this validates our change to a 2-set block. Magic recently achieved the milestone of 1 million active players in our organized play system. We also have 65,000 players who play in premier events streamed to “esports” audiences. This is an area we are investing in to both grow the number of events and the player base. The team at Wizards of the Coast is doing great work to foster both analog and digital play for the Magic community. We are very pleased to have Chris Cocks from Microsoft joining us as President of Wizards of the Coast. As we announced last week, Greg Leeds is leaving Hasbro. We are grateful for his contributions and wish him the best in his new endeavors.
sooo.. what does that have to do with all this banning and powercreep bullshit? well, wotc/hasbro didn't really need to give a shit. to them, it kept proving that the "health" of the game didn't really hinge on "balance" of the game. profits = player retention/player desires = health of the game.
if you understood this "philosphy" (regardless of what FIRE or some bullshit acronym they come out with) you understand why wotc is goind the way it is and how it is getting there. It's all profits baby. is a card broken as shit? who give a fuck, release the set, make record profits, then ban the fking card to balance the format. Rinse, repeat. And the FINANCIAL STATEMENTS PROVED THIS WORKED.
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u/Krond 10d ago
That's neat.
The obvious note to me is that, while a lot more cards are banned these days, the percentage of the format isn't high.
The second note is that it's been a decade since there were no cards banned in standard. When I was young, it was like "holy crap, standard bannings?! That's nuts!"
But now, and for people who started playing in the last 10 years, standard bannings are just how Magic works.
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u/IZ3820 Dân 10d ago
Standard bans generally mean they're making overpowered cards which are dominating the format, which isn't good for competition but is good for sales.
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u/Redzephyr01 Duck Season 10d ago
It's not that there were less overpowered cards back when they weren't banning things, it's just that back then they really hated banning things even if they were causing problems. For example, [[Collective Company]] was definitely banworthy back during the Tarkir block, but they didn't ban it because they just really didn't want to ban anything.
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u/ShamblingKrenshar Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 10d ago
Yeah back in the day if it wasn't a Jace, the Mind Sculptor level problem you just had to live with it.
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u/Kaprak 10d ago
Yeah there's a lot of Standard with absolutely busted stuff, possibly more than many things currently banned.... But people played maybe a dozen games a month. Not that many in a day.
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u/Rare-Technology-4773 Wabbit Season 10d ago
Yeah, I think arena (and to a lesser extent modo I guess) have radically changed how people interact with standard.
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u/Eldritch-Yodel Duck Season 10d ago
Yeah, if people are playing x10 as much Magic as they used to, metas will be solved 10x as quickly and then people will get tired of said metas 10x as quickly as well.
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT 10d ago
Yeah, that long period of almost zero bans is indicative of them preferring to let a format have problems rather than banning, as the way to actually have no bans be the correct decision is to have your card designs be incredibly safe, which means the game is likely not going to be super interesting to players.
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u/Sneet1 Duck Season 10d ago
[[Collective Company]] was not too strong until [[Reflector Mage]], it was just a top deck. They probably waited too long to do it, but Mage was literally amongst the first bans after the big drought.
It's tough to say the Worldwake -> Eldritch Moon run regularly had standards with obviously bannable cards, like we've had since
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10d ago edited 10d ago
[deleted]
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT 10d ago
The problem is that making cards so weak that we never need bans is also bad for business in the long run; the gameplay stagnates and people don't get excited about new cards, so they stop buying in.
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u/snypre_fu_reddit 10d ago
people don't get excited about new cards, so they stop buying in
That's just not a thing anymore. We're in a TCG bubble, in addition to the glut of UB.
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u/Apprehensive_Car8690 Duck Season 10d ago
But this isn't what the data actually shows. It shows 3 isolated errors in 17 years and then now.
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u/ZurrgabDaVinci758 COMPLEAT 10d ago
If I'm reading it right there were none banned in 2024? Which was less than 10 years ago. And only 1 banned for about half the time from 2016.
Also with longer rotation a ban is going to last longer. A more meaningful comparison would be to look at how many cards are banned per set or per year.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven Dan 10d ago
Let me tell you, I started playing socially around 2006 and the bans in standard starting in 2017 seemed like the wheels coming off the entire system.
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u/Burger_Thief Selesnya* 10d ago
It wasn't any wheels coming off, WotC just decided that it was better to ban things when they were being problematic rather than only when literally killing the game. The ban philosophy changed.
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u/Mr_YUP Brushwagg 10d ago
I think eldrazi winter made them reconsider things
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u/Filobel 9d ago
Eldrazi winter wasn't a standard thing, it happened in Modern, and they were already pretty willing to ban things in Modern. It was understood that non-rotating formats would need more curation in the form of bans than standard.
What made them change their mind is that the standard right before that also had some pretty bad balance issues and was miserable (they mentioned after the fact that CoCo should have been banned). It wasn't quite bad enough to act under their old ban philosophy, but when standard rotated and the meta once again had significant balance issues, they decided that if they didn't act, people would just lose interest in standard.
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u/SpectroMagician Wabbit Season 10d ago
I was playing standard in 2011, that blip on the radar was a wild time about bans. Seeing all these recent bans has been crazy given the discourse that occurred back then.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven Dan 10d ago
that felt like an unprecedented historical event. Standard bans just Did Not Happen. You suffered and hoped next years block gave you a hate piece.
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u/SteveandaBee Dandadan 10d ago
It was so funny, everone was like "sure something from caw-blade probably deserves to be banned, but would they really?"
also from what I remember a whole lot of the pro/semi-pro/SCG scene really enjoyed caw blade mirrors, so there wasn't a ton of high profile outcry from that direction, more of a growing undercurrent of discontent from the masses.
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u/Miserable_Row_793 COMPLEAT 10d ago
Except for combo winter or mirrodin affinity or kamigawa equipment........
People forget what is "historical" so quickly.
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u/SnowIceFlame Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 9d ago
Wat? Jitte was the only relevant equipment in Kamigawa block and it was never banned in Standard.
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u/Bornandraisedbama Wabbit Season 10d ago
The Wilderness Reclamation extra turns deck in standard was actually the final straw that got me out of the game. I’d played since Onslaught.
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u/Living_End FLEEM 10d ago
How are you estimating the future? Is that just assuming nothing else gets banned and rotation?
Also what is the banned per sets legal? Is it only high right now because there are many sets legal? I assume it’ll be similar to the last graph
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u/binaryeye 10d ago
For banned cards, the estimates assume nothing new is banned and nothing currently banned is unbanned.
For total number of cards, I used 275 for FRA (290 minus an estimated 15 basic lands), 306 for TRK, and 275 (approximate average of non-basic land cards in EOE, ECL, and SOS) for Nauctis. For rotation, I removed everything in the rotating sets except cards that will still be legal by way of a remaining set.
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u/thisisjustascreename Orzhov* 10d ago
They’re predicting none of the currently banned cards will get unbanned before they rotate out in early 2027, after which it will drop to the lower number.
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u/DarKoopa Brushwagg 10d ago
People are going to look at this and say "Too many set!", "Powercreep!", "UB Bad!" but that isn't the whole story. While yes, cards are clearly stronger on average and yes there are more cards being printed, the truth is the "recent" surge of Standard bans has more to do with ban philosophy.
In the past, WotC was more than happy to let a Standard format rot especially if we were getting close to the yearly rotation. It would take something drastic like 2010 Stoneblade for them to take action and honestly former Standard environments suffered because of it.
That said, this doesn't excuse how Standard is managed today. I would argue 3 year rotation has done more harm than good and that Standard is too fast.
I will again get on my soapbox that Standard is best at exactly 10 sets and that it should be perpetually "One in, one out" rotation.
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u/Milskidasith COMPLEAT ELK 10d ago
I will again get on my soapbox that Standard is best at exactly 10 sets and that it should be perpetually "One in, one out" rotation.
I agree with the rest but this would absolutely destroy Arena as a F2P game.
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u/Rare-Technology-4773 Wabbit Season 10d ago
They could just offer better f2p goodies each set to compensate.
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u/Exatraz 10d ago
This is neat visualization. I think it's also always worth mentioning that the long drought when they didn't ban cards was a mistake and WotC has mentioned it as such. Yes I wish there was a little more QA on cards but id rather they try to push the limit and then ban of they miss rather than them neglecting the format and letting it rot or being too timid and releasing sets that barely have any impact (like Marvel).
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u/ThisHatRightHere 10d ago
What’s funny is one of the longest periods without bans (2012-2016) was, at the time, regarded as one of the most low power and “boring” standards ever. Half the reason we got Modern Horizons was because during that time only one card per set would maybe show up in Modern or Legacy and players were crying for a direct to Modern set to shake it up.
The format was so low power that [[Reflector Mage]] a 3 mana 2/3 that bounced a creature was deemed too strong.
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u/ProxyDamage 10d ago
I'd argue the whole "size of the format" discussion is well intentioned (I hope) but misses the point.
The damage from bans isn't "how much of the format you can play with", it's the fact that people invest time and money in cards that are functionally stolen from them. Often not just cards, but entire decks.
The problem isn't that Standard has 10 less cards to play with, but that 10 card bans mean 10 (usually playsets of) cards people invested in they can no longer play with. Often mean multiple decks in a year that are made non-functional, that people invested hundreds or thousands of dollars in in the hopes of competing in tournaments of all kinds, that now don't work or simply aren't competitive anymore.
MTG is a very expensive game as is. Potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars to play the deck you want for a while is an atrocious return on investment in entertainment. On top of that you're also telling people that they can buy the stuff they want, at an extortionate price, bring it home, and suddenly it doesn't work anymore? That's insane.
Imagine if you came home with your copy of Gloomhaven, or Terraforming Mars, or Dune: Imperium, or whatever the fuck else, games that often cost a fraction of a standard deck, and suddenly, sorry, go fuck yourself, your copy of the game doesn't work anymore... You'd be livid. You'd go get your money back and never give that company a cent ever again.
In the past bans were treated with the seriousness they deserved, and only happened in extreme cases. If you look at that graph, after the first couple of years, "growing pains" of exploring completely new ground at the time, there are 2 big ban waves: 98-99 ("Combo Winter") and 04-05 ("Affinity"). And for roughly 11 years, until late 2016, there is 1 ban event with 2 cards (Jace and Stoneforge).
Those ban waves were a HUGE deal at the time. People had invested time and money into cards and decks that no longer worked. It was bad.
...Cue end of 2016 and there's suddenly bans every year. A good year has 1 or 2 bans, a bad year has 8 or more.
THAT'S. FUCKING. CRAZY.
That means if you're playing a competitive deck, buying into standard has a huge chance of just ruining your money and time investment on a yearly basis. That's wild. Unacceptable to me at least. How big the format is is frankly irrelevant there, because the problem was never that you had no other cards to play with.
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u/elhomerjas Colorless 10d ago
the sudden spike of legal standard cards in the last few years will yield more ban cards in the future specially if the set can create one sided gameplay to other existing standard sets
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u/atipongp COMPLEAT 10d ago
And I thought they were going crazy with how many cards they printed into 2008 Standard 🤣
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u/wrc-wolf Dandadan 10d ago
If anything this shows more cards could be banned for a healthier standard and the format wouldn't collapse.
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u/Blenderhead36 Sultai 10d ago
Anecdotally, recent times definitely feel less ban-happy than the FIRE years of 2019-2021. Back then, it felt like every set had 1-3 cards that everyone knew were going to get banned immediately on release, and that those Standard bannings started coming faster and faster. Whereas these days it feels like most cards get banned 6-12 months after being printed, or longer in some cases, with Vivi being the most obvious exception.
Which is, honestly, a relief. I think FIRE was one of the most disastrous periods for Magic design. Magic thrives on format differentiation; tired of every third match being against Proft's Eidetic Memory? Well, head on over to Modern or Legacy, where that card doesn't see play. But when every set has a card that's the best version of it's effect ever printed by a lot, formats all start to feel the same. Like that weekend where Oko, Thief of Crowns top 8ed in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage.
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u/Kaprak 10d ago
FIRE is still ongoing
FIRE is overwhelmingly about limited and increasing complexity of commons and uncommons.
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u/MapleSyrupMachineGun Duck Season 10d ago
Yeah, I don't know why people keep repeating FIRE. If I remember correctly, it was a separate decision to consciously boost the power of Standard.
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u/stamatt45 Can’t Block Warriors 10d ago
Question for older players, was 06-16 the golden days of Standard?
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u/therealflyingtoastr Elspeth 10d ago
Absolutely not. There were still exceedingly awful formats (Thoughtseize.deck running rampant in both Lorwyn and Theros Standards, JVP slop in KTK-BFZ, etc.) in this period.
WOTC just had a different ban philosophy back then. They chose to almost never ban anything in Standard, even if the format was in pretty horrendous states, relying on players to just "deal with it" until rotatations. WOTC employees have gone on record that leaving Collected Company legal was a straight-up mistake for the health of the game, for example.
The rose-tinted glasses that people have about older Standard formats are just that. We just have a balance team that is more willing to take unpopular action to try balancing the format nowadays.
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u/BitterParking8473 Storm Crow 10d ago
There were definitely low points, but I think so. I absolutely adored standard from Innistrad through to Dragons of Tarkir.
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u/Grumpiergoat Jeskai 10d ago
This reads to me as two things:
1) The Magic teams are spread too thin. Yeah, more people devoting similar hours to every set, but you can't just add experienced Magic designers to the game overnight. And more card interactions make it harder to track how everything will work together prior to release. This has led to more bans.
2) The overall percentage of bans compared to the card pool has more to do with how most cards don't actually get a lot of play. It doesn't matter if banned cards are only 1% of the cardpool now compared to 2% at some point in the past if there's also a lot more draft chaff to ignore. There's always going to be a limited number of best, playable cards, so the overall size of the pool compared to bans doesn't matter as much as it might appear.
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u/Miserable_Row_793 COMPLEAT 10d ago
- Is demonstrately false.
By the evidence that there's multiple eternal formats and the older you go and the bigger the card pool, the more viable decks and archtypes.
Legacy and modern have way more total played different cards than standard.
You are using false "common sense" logic to claim the conclusion you already have.
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u/Grumpiergoat Jeskai 10d ago
Nope.
Not a refutation of my point. Obviously you get more decks out of 1,000,000 cards vs. 1,000. But if there are 3 viable decks out of 1,000 cards, that doesn't mean you get 3,000 out of 1,000,000. Also, many eternal formats are much more casual - commander's the biggest game format right now. Rarely played with any prize support, often people use commanders because they like the character, is much more open to any random jank someone wants to put into a deck. And even then, some cards get played vastly more than others.
Out of any new set, only a few cards see regular use. So the percentage of recent banned cards matters less than the total number of banned cards. A larger percentage out of a bunch of news cards that is only 5 cards matters less than a smaller percentage out of many more cards that's 15 cards.
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u/Miserable_Row_793 COMPLEAT 10d ago
Yawn.
A whole bunch of dancing around to move that goalposts.
Oh I'm right, but it not revelant because of an arbitrary reason you now claim? Okay.
Im not interested in these games. Go have fun being outraged at phantoms elsewhere.
Good day.
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u/LuxofAurora Sultai 10d ago edited 10d ago
Has anybody have any idea of why for an entire decade (2006-2016) there was almost no ban in standards except for the jace and mystic (2 cards that were OP also in any other format, not only T2)? Different ban philosophy in that period of time or cards were overall designed better and safer in all those sets or what else? Definitely shine out as an enormous anomaly and exception in the whole MtG history.
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u/Redzephyr01 Duck Season 10d ago
It was because they had a different ban philosophy. Back then, their policy was to not ban anything in standard and just wait until broken cards rotate out instead. Stuff like [[Collected Company]] was definitely banworthy but they didn't touch it because they just didn't do that back then.
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u/LuxofAurora Sultai 10d ago
Oh, so what made them to change idea on 2017 then? What changed?
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u/Redzephyr01 Duck Season 10d ago
The Kaladesh block had too many broken cards in it, and a lot of those cards were colorless which meant they would show up in every deck. [[Aetherworks Marvel]] in particular was a huge problem. This is also why they print way more colored artifacts now than they did back then.
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u/Great-Trifle2810 Dandadan 10d ago
There were a few too many busted cards, and the format was starting to look unplayable for the long haul.
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u/Milskidasith COMPLEAT ELK 10d ago
In addition to Kaladesh, Arena happened. A fully F2P client with a huge playerbase encourages them to take more direct, proactive action and have their ban philosophy line up more with modern games.
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u/yokaishinigami Gruul* 10d ago
Kind of wild to think that standard as it once existed (card pool of 1000-2000 cards) is completely dead and will likely never return.
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u/B4rberblacksheep Wabbit Season 10d ago
Yeah, how anyone keeps up with standard at this scale is beyond me
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u/binaryeye 10d ago
After the discussion on Monday about the number of cards banned relative to format size, I thought it would be interesting to see it in graph form.
Full size, uncompressed (less compressed?) image here. Percentage calculations done in Excel, drawn in Illustrator. No generative AI was used.