Yesterday WoTC did their latest ban announcement for Magic the Gathering. In the days leading up to the announcement the community was doing it’s best to predict what was going to happen.
When talking about Modern and Legacy, the two big formats in store, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer was on the hit list for Legacy, and Modern has a host of cards that people wanted to address, the chief of which was Lurrus of the Dream-Den!
When the announcement hit Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer going in Legacy was not a shock. Who knows, it might even bring the price of them down a bit…
What did take us by surprise was the Modern banning’s, or more accurately the lack of Modern banning’s!
Let’s talk about the Cat Nightmare in the room!
In my very humble opinion this card is a problem. Feel free to disagree with me but hear me out.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den in my view is format warping, effectively lots of decks are now having a 14-card sideboard with the Nightmare Cat taking up the companion slot. Even with the changes to companion Lurrus of the Dream-Den is prolific for being in decks, it’s now getting close to the point where CMC 3 or more permanents are automatically seen as not good enough for Modern simply because this card exists. I mean Lurrus of the Dream-Den is even in some versions of Burn!
Usually if a card had this sort of effect on deck diversity or play style it would be addressed but Lurrus of the Dream-Den appears to have avoided scrutiny as of yet…
Lurrus of the Dream-Den’s ability coupled with free spells such as Mishra’s Bauble (another card that we’re amazed is still in Modern) is a problem as they can be replayed on each of your turns as needed. The ability to replay permanents coupled with other strong cards such as Dragon’s Rage Channeler with abilities such as Delirium for me at least does not make a healthy format.
In a perfect world I’d like to see Lurrus of the Dream-Den (and to be honest the Companion Mechanic) gone from Modern, and if the accursed Cat Nightmare could take Mishra’s Bauble with them that’d be great!
Going back to the Ban Announcement I personally think not mentioning Modern at all was a mistake, it would have been good to hear thoughts on the state of the format and if WoTC think it’s in a good place. If they’d done nothing but said we’re looking at certain cards I think that would have helped.
The keen-eyed readers amongst you may have noticed I’ve not yet addressed the Standard Banning’s of the Historic Changes, so lets quickly touch on those now.
Standard – yep, the banning’s make sense, I admit Divide By Zero was a surprise (I had to look the card up, then realised it was just like Remand, we’ll not just like, but it was definitely making eyes at it!) but having read the reasoning for the 3 bans I can’t see any issues there at all.
Historic – I don’t play Arena, I’m only a paper player so these have no impact on me so I’m not going to comment.
So, to sum up, can we get rid of Lurrus of the Dream-Den yet?? Do you agree? Let us know in the comments!
