Jadine Klomparens and Carmen Klomparens, of the Magic: The Gathering Play Design team, joined Blake Rasmussen on today’s Weekly MTG stream to discuss Monday’s banned and restricted announcement, going into detail on the decisions that were made and what is being done to catch potential mistakes before they happen.
The trio mostly discussed Standard, Legacy, and Vintage, but Rasmussen did relay an update on the Pioneer format from William Jensen, the Senior Director of Global Play Program at Wizards of the Coast. Fans of the format can look forward to a round of RCQs and an RC round in 2027. A schedule for next year isn’t out yet, and things could still change, but Rasmussen said more updates for next year should be coming soon.
As for the Standard bans, Jadine Klomparens reiterated much of what was in Monday’s article, but did address concerns about Tablet of Discovery and Jeskai Revelation. She said while it is possible for the Tablet control decks to be good and possibly very good following the bans, predicting what will happen to the format post-ban is incredibly difficult. It’s unclear what decks were being completely shut out of the format due to the pressures of Badgermole Cub and Stormchaser’s Talent, so the control decks might have to shift meaningfully to adapt to other archetypes. She also pointed out that control decks, in general, are usually more beatable when targeted, so action wasn’t necessary at this point.
Jadine also shared lessons she has learned during the shift to three-year Standard, noting that sometimes simple keywords and strategies like prowess get surprisingly stronger as the card pool expands. Having an abundance of prowess threats and enablers scales in a way that was hard to predict before, but now can be accounted for. In addition, she explained how one-mana cards are being watched now in development — specifically when they can scale as the game goes on like Stormchaser’s Talent. Jadine noted that one-mana cards really shouldn’t scale throughout the game as they shouldn’t be rivaling cards that cost four or five mana.
Carmen Klomparens offered viewers more insight on the banning of The Fantasticar in Legacy and restricting it in Vintage after the initial announcement article featured no other information other than the action being taken. For Vintage, it was simply a mistake.
“It is pretty clear we made a mistake. We missed the mark on power level here. Three-mana artifacts are things that are particularly fraught when it comes to Vintage when it comes to Mishra’s Workshop, and The Fantasticar lived up to the hype,” Carmen said. “We saw Raker Shops (built around Glaring Fleshraker) surge to the top of the metagame and its population in the meta and win rate went up. It’s just a no-brainer in terms of needing to restrict it and reduce the ability of people to build around the car itself. We do not want to see a single archetype shoot up to that win rate that quickly.”
When speaking about The Fantasticar’s impact on Legacy, Carmen rattled off more than a dozen archetypes that all were built around the new artifact and the incentives those decks were based on. So many of the decks were loads of fast mana or zero-mana plays, leading to condensed games and lack of counterplay. She said that when Play Design sees a single card have that broad of an impact across the format that it is going to catch the team’s attention. It wasn’t having a positive impact on Legacy and Play Design has been dedicated to attempting to make the games in the format last longer and involve more interaction.
Carmen also lifted the curtain on how the designers have added a step to their process with making cards for Commander preconstructed decks to limit the mistakes that are unleashed on eternal formats. Designers can flag cards early on that clearly aid established combo decks and tweak mana costs, especially when making a card harder to ramp out with Ancient Tomb. These extra steps should help avoid something like The Fantasticar from warping Vintage and Legacy overnight.
Read the official announcement from WotC.
