banned list | Quiet Speculation

You Can’t Go Home: The Unban Problem

David Ernenwein — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 16:00:21 +0000

Being unable to play with your cards sucks. No one will dispute this. What is also unequivocally true is that cards need to be banned. Sometimes Wizards makes mistakes while making cards, and the likes of Oko, Thief of Crowns proceed to wreck their havoc. Other times new cards interact with old ones in unexpected […]

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Testing Hypergenesis: Quantitative Data

David Ernenwein — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 17:00:53 +0000

Having finished the appetizer, it's time for the main course: the data from my Hypergenesis test. This is the hard, quantitative data, and I've done statistics on them to determine the validity of the test. For the stats people out there, I do a multiple significance test, but will report the z-test here. There's never […]

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Testing Hypergenesis: Experimental Setup

David Ernenwein — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 17:00:29 +0000

It's been quite a while, but your eyes do not deceive: this is another full banlist test series! It's been almost two years since I did one of these. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but there are only so many viable test subjects in the first place, and I've done a few already. […]

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Late Summer Thaw: Arcum’s Astrolabe Banned

David Ernenwein — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 16:00:53 +0000

But for copyright concerns, I would have led off this article with the lyrics to "Another One Bites the Dust." I hope perfectly reasonable intellectual property law is happy with itself. There's been another B&R Announcement. This time something actually is banned in Modern. So that's nice. Even if it does moot a number of […]

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N’Oko: Parsing the January Bans

David Ernenwein — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 17:00:53 +0000

Well, everyone should have seen another ban coming. There was no way that Wizards wasn't going to let their last scheduled banned and restricted announcement go by without doing something about Oko, Thief of Crowns. However, I didn't expect it to go this far. Three cards banned would be a fairly substantial shift by itself, […]

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Bridge Collapse: Banning Reaction

David Ernenwein — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 16:00:24 +0000

I had planned to spend today's article discussing Hogaakvine: what it does, how it does it, how to play against it, and how I'd build decks given Hogaak's rise. However, that article was mooted this morning by Wizards. Instead, let's examine what's happened and where it leaves Modern. Also, once again, nothing got unbanned. This […]

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Ashes to Ashes: Should Wizards Address Phoenix?

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 16:00:18 +0000

Each tournament, Izzet Phoenix's impressive, sustained numbers start to look less like an outlier and more like a pattern. Patterns like these have a history of being addressed by Wizards via the banlist. So how does Izzet Phoenix stack up against past offenders? Do the deck's decriers have a case for caging the bird? Let's […]

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The Banlist in 2019: My Christmas Wishlist

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 17:00:55 +0000

When it comes to Modern, I'm always up for a surprise. I penned an article last week declaring the death of midrange as a Tier 1 strategy in an aggro-combo metagame. But it seems the meta has already corrected itself: last weekend's GP Portland Top 8 featured a finals between Grixis Death's Shadow and BG […]

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Just the Person: Should Splinter Twin Come Back?

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 16:00:00 +0000

Birthing Pod may have held the title for a good while, but Splinter Twin takes the cake as Modern's most controversial ban ever. Even today, players debate its place on the banlist ad nauseam, a discussion seemingly reinvigorated with each new deck and expansion; Twin's defense league has persisted to the extent of literally becoming […]

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If I Controlled the Banned List

David Ernenwein — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 17:00:29 +0000

Everybody fantasizes about what they would do if given the reigns of power. In fact, most discussion around banned and restricted announcements perennially involves players pontificating pointlessly about their banned wishlist. I'm not immune. So that's exactly what I'm going to do today. I do understand how weird this article is, coming from me. I'm […]

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Challenger Approaching: Unban Candidates

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 16:00:40 +0000

The October 17 banlist announcement came and went, and no changes were made to Modern. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to glean. Wizards dropped some juicy information this announcement, and today we'll deduce which cards the company has their eye on unbanning. Wizards's latest "No changes" gave us some valuable insight into how they're […]

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“No Changes” – Reactions to the Banlist Announcement

David Ernenwein — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 22:10:27 +0000

It is inevitable. Every time a new Banned and Restricted Announcement comes out, speculation runs rampant. Everyone has their pet cards to advocate for or against, everyone is utterly convinced they're right, and they take offense to disagreement. Every single time. It's really tiring. I've written about this problem before. I have no problem discussing possible […]

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Testing Preordain: Qualitative Results

David Ernenwein — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 16:00:37 +0000

Once again, it is time to start rolling out my results from the latest Banlist Test. As usual, I will start with the experimental setup and the unquantifiable results. I know that what most readers care about are the hard numbers, but I'm not done gathering the data yet. That will be coming sometime in […]

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Drawing Conclusions: Stoneforge Musings

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 16:30:32 +0000

I've had my mind on the Modern banned list a lot lately—in December, I optimistically wondered at the possibility of a Preordain unban; more recently, I wrote up some general thoughts on format health. In the conclusion of that article, I offered, "Blue and white do continue to struggle relative to the other three colors, making me think now’s […]

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