Wizards of the Coast banned four Magic cards in two different IRL competitive formats on January 25, 2022.
The following cards have been banned from play in the listed format below:
- Alrund’s Epiphany, Divide by Zero, and Faceless Haven are banned in the Standard format.
- Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is banned in the Legacy format.
Alrund’s Epiphany was banned for reasons similar to the reasons why Nexus of Fate was banned in so many formats (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’ Format Changes“), as it can chain together extra turns and is hard to interact with for a deck without countermagic. Divide by Zero and Faceless Haven were both banned to weaken decks in the Standard metagame without fundamentally changing their strategies.that were over-performing.
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer was banned in the Legacy format because he was a one-cost creature that created Treasure tokens, and was easy to protect with all of the free-cost counterspells available in the format. While still a fragile 2/1 creature, his Treasure-generating ability allowed games to snowball out of control quickly and made Izzet Delver a very consistent deck.
For more information on future releases of Magic products, check out ICv2’s 2022 calendar (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’ Release Calendar For 2022/2023“).
Source: ICv2
