Wizards of the Coast has bumped up their next Magic: The Gathering banned and restricted announcement date from November 24, 2025 to November 10, 2025.
After somehow making the “Red Problem” worse in Standard (see “Red Problem Somehow Gets Worse?“) with the last round of bannings (see “Seven Cards Get Banned“), WotC designers have stepped up the time table on trying to right the Standard ship before the World Championships, which will occur in Bellevue, WA on December 5-7, 2025. The November 10, 2025 date for the next B&R announcement was agreed upon by designers as the new date to take another crack at fixing Standard because it falls after the Standard RCQ season, which would allow players who prepped for those events already to keep their decks but also give World Championships players enough time to rework decks after the ban.
WotC designer Carmen Klomparens also stated in the announcement that “Vivi Ornitier is warping the Standard format and likely needs to go,” a sentiment that has been echoed repeatedly since the last Spotlight event. It was also noted that Red Deck Wins is the current metagame answer to Blue-Red Cauldron decks, beating them more than 60% of the time on MTG Arena. These two decks battling for supremacy is more or less how the current competitive Standard format evolved into a format dominated by red decks (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’ Sees Red“). Hopefully, whatever WotC designers have in mind for changes to the format slows down both Vivi and Red Deck Wins in order to give other decks a chance to surface as competitive decks in the format.
Check out ICv2’s 2025 Magic: The Gathering product calendar for more information on future releases (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’ 2025 Release Calendar“).
Source: ICv2
