Stoneforge Mystic and JTMS are banned in Standard

[Dreamer]

Yeah, spells on legs combined with great multicolor manabases are kinda annoying. They devolve everything into a 3c+ midrange mess. A bit like (I think?) Shards-Zen Standard was. Same ol', same ol'. Even blue-white control was actually a green-black deck in disguise (Sweeps, Rampant Growths, a bit of card draw, tokens...). It was sad. The decks may have played differently, but you just can't get excited about Midrange.format. At least I can't.

The spells on legs stuff is nice, but I wish you had to have more focus. Right now, they're so good at beating down that you might as well play them in aggro. Wtf is that? I like the choice between beatdown critters, spells, and spells-on-legs with crap bodies that have more difficult costs (or sorcery speed restrictions) over their spell counterparts. That way you can have Storm, Zoo-style aggro and creature-based combo/midrange.

I kinda feel it might just come down to the manabase in addition to the creatures. In Pauper, there's quite a diversity of different approaches on the spell-beatdown spectrum, because the spells-on-legs are difficult to cast.

But outside of getting rid of fetches/duals, I do support unbanning noncreature-focused cards. Enlightened/Mystical sound like good ideas to me. Although Enlightened would just go into Bant Midrange to get Pod or something. And the black ones would get RecNightmare. *sigh* Still, could be worth a try.

/ramble