Last updated June 16th, 2022
Within any set of cards, there are some that are more trouble than they’re worth. These are those.
- Bazaar of Baghdad
- Citanul Druid
- Damping Field
- Demonic Consultation
- Elvish Spirit Guide
- Gate to Phyrexia
- Haunting Wind
- Khabal Ghoul
- Library of Alexandria
- Martyrs of Korlis
- Mental Misstep
- Merchant Ship
- Mightstone
- Mishra’s Bauble
- Personal Tutor
- Power Artifact
- Powerleech
- Sandals of Abdullah
- Skullclamp
- Sol Ring
- Steelshaper’s Gift
- Su-Chi
- Tinker
- Transmute Artifact
- Urza’s Bauble
- Weakstone
- Worldly Tutor
BANLIST PHILOSOPHY
Firstly, we’d like all decks to be (theoretically) accessible to anyone who wishes to play Middle Class Magic. As such, all cards on the Reserved List – for which no more supply will ever enter the market – will not be part of the format. The following 16 cards are BANNED:
- Bazaar of Baghdad
- Citanul Druid
- Damping Field
- Gate to Phyrexia
- Haunting Wind
- Khabal Ghoul
- Library of Alexandria
- Martyrs of Korlis
- Merchant Ship
- Mightstone
- Power Artifact
- Powerleech
- Sandals of Abdullah
- Su-Chi
- Transmute Artifact
- Weakstone
We understand that this does not eliminate all expensive cards from the format (I’m looking at you, Portal Three Kingdoms), but it at least leaves the door open for eventual reprints.
THE ACTIVE BANLIST
The ideal vision for this format is a wide and diverse metagame with aggro, tempo, midrange, control, combo, prison, ramp, tribal, and synergy strategies all represented, perhaps with multiple versions each. So, secondly, for the sake of promoting healthy gameplay and deck diversity, there is a format banlist that will be actively updated. Once cards are added to the banlist, they will not be removed except under extraordinary circumstances. The following 11 cards are BANNED:
• Demonic Consultation
• Elvish Spirit Guide
• Mental Misstep
• Mishra’s Bauble
• Personal Tutor
• Skullclamp
• Sol Ring
• Steelshaper’s Gift
• Tinker
• Urza’s Bauble
• Worldly Tutor
• Demonic Consultation – Banned in Legacy and Restricted in Vintage, a one-mana instant-speed tutor to hand is simply too powerful, even without Thassa’s Oracle or similar cards in the format to produce an immediate win. It is hard to imagine a black deck that would not play it, and it would be a homogenizing force both in the metagame and within individual games.
• Elvish Spirit Guide – Free mana is already a controversial topic before we look at acceleration as a unique constraint in MCM. As a rule of thumb, it is more likely that free mana will fuel uninteractive combos or debilitating prisons than supporting “fair” strategies, and the format does not have anything like Force of Will to fight those lines.
• Mental Misstep – Free countermagic, especially the sort that can hit opposing copies, promotes terrible play patterns. Add to that the lack of color requirement, and this is a card that would likely see play everywhere with no actual gameplay benefit.
• Mishra’s Bauble & Urza’s Bauble – These cheerios are free cantrips in a format with a relative lack of cheap spell velocity; they are colorless and accessible to every deck; and they passively reward artifact-matters and delirium strategies with roughly no downside. There is a strong argument to playing them in almost any deck to simply “start with 52 cards” and extra info. This is not the kind of deckbuilding or gameplay that we would like to encourage.
• Personal Tutor, Steelshaper’s Gift, & Worldly Tutor –
One-mana tutors do not tend to promote interactive strategies, even if they represent card-disadvantage. There’s an argument to waiting and seeing how these play out, but these are also highly likely to bite the dust in a Masters set, so let’s just rip the BAND-AID® off now. (BAND-AID® is a registered trademark of Johnson & Johnson.)
• Skullclamp – Need we even start with this one? An endless stream of Village Rites easily eclipses every card advantage engine in the format and is available to any deck with creatures, regardless of color.
• Sol Ring – Although iconic and beloved, Sol Ring exacerbates existing problems with the play/draw dynamic while also increasing the luck factor of games significantly, as starting hands with Sol Ring are dramatically faster than starting hands without. Furthermore, it eclipses every ramp spell in the format and is available to any deck regardless of colors. I know 4x Sol Ring in a 60-card deck is a helluva drug, but MCM will not be your dealer.
• Tinker – Allowing Tinker in a format is just asking for trouble. Turn three Tinker on the play is bad enough, but turn two is very possible with Jeweled Amulet or Crystal Vein + any artifact. Tinker can find lock-pieces like the God-Pharaoh’s Statue, resilient threats like Sphinx of the Guildpact or Darksteel Sentinel, or numerous combo pieces like Crackdown Construct, Basalt Monolith, or Shuko… and that’s not considering what crazy things might be printed in the future! (EDIT: Hello, Su-Chi Cave Guard!) While Miscast and Mystical Dispute serve as punishers for an all-in turbo Tinker strategy, leaving blue with both the question AND the only maindeckable answers is likely to tilt the metagame in a way that is simply better avoided in the first place. Sorry artificers; you’ll just have to plan ahead instead of tinkering around.
THE WATCHLIST
The following cards have been identified as potentially problematic. Some or all of these cards may move to the banlist after additional data is gathered from the format.
• Animate Dead
• Ashnod’s Altar
• Basalt Monolith
• Blasting Station
• Buried Alive
• Cauldron Familiar
• Chain of Smog
• Colossus Hammer
• Crystal Vein
• Dance of the Dead
• Dismember
• Dragon’s Rage Channeler
• Dread Return
• Elves of Deep Shadow
• Expressive Iteration
• Goblin Lackey
• Goblin Recruiter
• Groundskeeper
• Krark-Clan Ironworks
• Life // Death
• Lim-Dul’s Vault
• Necromancy
• Night’s Whisper
• Prismatic Ending
• Spike Feeder
• Swords to Plowshares
• Veil of Summer
• Windfall
• Zenith Flare
Broadly, cards on the watchlist fall into seven categories:
I) Broadly usable fast mana (Crystal Vein, Elves of Deep Shadow)
II) Powerful hosers that function against “fair” decks (Veil of Summer)
III) Combo engines/payoffs (2cmc unconditional reanimation, free sac outlets, Basalt Monolith, Chain of Smog, Colossus Hammer, Windfall, Zenith Flare)
IV) Cheap tutors (Goblin Recruiter, Lim-Dul’s Vault, Steelshaper’s Gift)
V) Answers that are too broad or easy to play (Dismember, Prismatic Ending, Swords to Plowshares)
VI) First-turn plays that threaten to take over the game (Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Goblin Lackey)
VII) Other “fair” cards that easily outclass all alternatives at performing a basic game function (Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Expressive Iteration, Night’s Whisper, Windfall)
ONGOING DISCUSSIONS
There is currently a discussion of upshifts and their legality in MCM.
• Common cards upshifted to uncommon
• Uncommon cards upshifted to rare/mythic (accurate as of 12/08/2022)
The general consensus is that common upshifts would introduce too many pauper staples to MCM and would negatively impact the format’s identity.
The topic of rare upshifts has been more contentious. The disadvantage is that their inclusion could easily force an immediate expansion of the banlist by as many as 20 cards while yielding only roughly 10 interesting and playable additions to the format. The major advantage is that, going forward, uncommons will not leave the format unless they are deemed unhealthy specifically by the MCM Rules Tyran-, uh, er, Rules Committee. Yes, “Committee” is what I meant.
We are also keeping an eye on the inclusion of supplemental draft sets. Currently, we believe that supplemental draft sets (thus far: Conspiracy, Conspiracy 2, Battlebond, Modern Horizons, Jumpstart (2020), Commander Legends, Modern Horizons 2, Commander Legends: Baldur’s Gate, Unfinity, and Jumpstart 2022) will not cause enough problems to outweigh their drastically increasing the format’s available options and mechanics. However, this may change with any given set, which could prompt cutting off supplemental sets after a certain point or eliminating the group from the card pool entirely.
PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS
For historical purposes, there WAS a discussion about rarity DOWNSHIFTS, especially in Masters/Reprint sets. The original vision for the format excluded not just all rares/mythics, but also all commons. The rules were changed to allow “any card originally printed at uncommon in a draftable set that has not been printed at rare or mythic in draftable set (counting Jumpstart as draftable).” The following are the most notable cards affected by that rules revision at the time, which occurred just before Double Masters 2022. Bolded are cards downshifted only within Masters/Reprint sets.
- Ashnod’s Altar
- Burning-Tree Emissary
- Cauldron Familiar
- Counterspell
- Elves of Deep Shadow
- Goblin Matron
- Groundskeeper
- Kazuul’s Toll Collector
- Makeshift Munitions
- Mana Cylix
- Myr Retriever
- Nature’s Lore
- Night’s Whisper
- Street Wraith
- Thunderous Wrath
- Tormod’s Crypt
- Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant, and Urza’s Tower
This sentence links to the full list of “newly” legalized cards.