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Reasons for our banning decisions in Banning Season III-2008

Started by Sturmgott, 25-10-2008, 10:19:20 AM

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Sturmgott

Banned: Time Vault

Time Vault had to go because of the Oracle Wording Change that WotC imposed on TV (<-lol) on Sept. 26, 2008. According to this functional change any untap effect gives you an extra turn in combination with TV. As we have an extremely cheap, permanent means of untapping TV every turn in the form of Voltaic Key, it was plain obvious that one of the two couldn't survive, since it is effectively the cheapest 2-card-victory combo since Flash/Hulk.
We decided not to ban the key, but the TV for the key is a versatile utility card and by itself by no means broken. TV would surely only see play to break it and go infinite turns - pure single player magic is the goal of that.

Unbanned: Mind over Matter

Ever since we banned Tolarian Academy this has been an overlooked candidate for unbanning. We correct that and allow MoM from October 15th on.

Unbanned: Library of Alexandria

We've been eyeing on the Library for quite some time, but never actually had the time to test it thoroughly. Several aspects led us to unban it nonetheless:
- It requires skill to use;
- it requires you to keep your hand on 6-7 cards at all times which means you've either got to have it in your opening hand or play control to be able to profit;
- apart from MoM, we see no potential for combo abuse.
Since most control decks already have multiple options to generate significant card advantage, we assume that the Library will be a strong card in these decks, but neither an autowin nor an autoinclude in every other deck. As such, please understand the unban as test-wise. We'll all see how much impact it will have on the format at the end of November on HL GP 6.