Wizards made its latest Banned and Restricted Announcement earlier this week. Along with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer being banned in Legacy, Historic saw one ban (Memory Lapse) and Teferi, Time Raveler made a return but as a rebalanced card costing one more pip and with a more limited static ability. Standard saw the biggest ban as three cards fell under the axe.

Let’s talk about the least surprising one first: Alrund’s Epiphany. I certainly echo many when I say, “About time!” While I run into mono-White and mono-Black decks more often, they don’t bring about the same level of frustration as the Epiphany decks, especially when these are able to chain together a few consecutive turns. As the Wizards’ post states, the deck is “particularly popular and successful at the highest levels of competition and in tournament play.” I guess I’m not playing at a high enough level!

Final note on this one, I still feel that Ruin Crab is a more frustrating card.

The second card to be banned is Divide by Zero. This ban leaves me the most ambivalent. There is no question that this is a flexible card. From interacting with the board to spells on the stack, it was a card that was able to answer a lot of early or critical plays. It was definitely a frustrating card to play against with my Giants deck, a slower deck with many expensive spells. Combined with cards like Fading Hope, it gave Control decks a very deep level of cheap removal.

The third is the one that most affected me. Faceless Haven was a card that I loved from the moment I first played with it. Compared to alternatives like Cave of the Frost Dragon for my mono-White deck, it was a far more efficient card, cheaper and with less restrictions. And like other lands that turn into creatures, it was very effective against board wipes. While I may replace it initially with said Frost Dragon, I expect that I will likely try a few other options as well, including simply replacing it with a basic land to get around the ‘enters tapped’ condition later in the game.

In the end, I think this was a good ban from Wizard. It seems to have opened up the meta with more mono-green decks popping up. While I tinker with my mono-White deck, I have brought back my WB Clerics deck for Ranked. So far, it is doing well and may remain in heavier rotation for a while.