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Banning Season I/2011 Announcement as of April 1st, 2011

Started by Vazdru, 03-04-2011, 01:01:41 PM

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Vazdru

Valid during April 15th, 2011 0:00 CET until October 14th, 2011 24:00 CET.

Changes to the present list, effective 4/15/2011:

Banned:

   * -

Unbanned:

   * Cephalid Illusionist
    * Memory Jar

Watchlist:

   * Memory Jar
    * Sensei's Divining Top

Unban-Watchlist:

   * Buried Alive


Single card Explanations:

Cephalid Illusionist

In the past, Cephalid Illusionist was a part of a combo called Cephalid Breakfast (or Dancing Ghoul), where a player could repeatedly target the Illusionist, usually with either a Shuko or Nomads En-Kor, effectively milling his library into his graveyard. When Dread Return was still unbanned, this enabled then more easily to move to the next phase: cast either a hasted thirty-something powered Terravore or Sutured Ghoul with Dragon Breath attached.
Nowadays we are talking about a three card combo when Cephalid Illusionist is involved, as the piloting player now needs to have the reanimate spell ready when Dread Return is not available. We recognize that Cephalid Illusionist has that certain surprise value when compared to Hermit Druid as the combo enabler, but since we haven't seen Hermit Druid making a similar dent yet as a two card combo, we are encouraged taking the step further by allowing Cephalid Illusionist back into the format.

With the format evolved over the years, the setup and protection of the combo should now also prove to be much harder.


Memory Jar

Memory Jar has been on the ban list from since the dawn of this format, and it hasn't been scrutinized much, until now. Compared to previously unbanned Timetwister and other playable and symmetrical draw 7 effects, Memory Jar forms an exception being a permanent.
We recognize potentially the most powerful play scenarios to be where Jar could be recursively abused by bringing it back from graveyard and then be activated again, emptying your hand of mana in between the process. While we don't expect Jar creating a dedicated combo deck, we expect it to find its way into some stax builds, but that alone does not warrant its ban as old reasonings used to.

Thus, we expect Memory Jar seeing play in one build or another, but impact would be presumed to be moderate and not game breaking. We want to confirm this by putting the Jar also on the watchlist.


Sensei's Divining Top

Sensei's Divining Top introduction to the watchlist may come as an surprise, because it's one of those few cards that have other disruptive qualities than mere power level that may go unseen. With many shuffle effects in the format, Sensei's Divining Top makes sometimes quite drawn out games. When 60 minutes round time was introduced, we hoped this would not be an issue anymore, but we haven't seen much progress here. As an indication, singleton also has this banned, so we are now also taking a closer look whether a ban verdict in our format would bring some value.


Buried Alive

We'd like to introduce Buried Alive to be subjected for peer review to determine its status in current meta. Originally, Buried Alive was banned in exchange of unban for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, based on recognition that Buried Alive with Reanimate as a mono colored combo can be used to win the game too easily with four mana. With other supportive cards gone, (Survival of the Fittest), we'd like to investigate this more, and while at it, also welcome the community to scrutinize whether Buried Alive could be used in current decks so that it's too strong. At the moment, we have numerous other powerful two card combos in the format, so we see this as a good time to research how Buried Alive compares to those.
Far below the earth
Where the demons hunt the souls of those that sleep
In the city of the Vazdru and the Drin
Where the black flame burns inside the palace fountain.