MTG B&R Update

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

The greatly anticipated Banned and Restricted update notice was posted to the mothersite today and as many Magic: the Gathering players had suspected, Treasure Cruise took a hit with the ban-hammer.  Before we get into the nuts 'n' bolts of the list, you may be happy to learn that there were no changes to Standard format from WotC as well as Commander (as set by MTGCommander.net).  For a complete list of all banned and restricted cards for each format, click on over here.

Announcement Date: January 19, 2015
Effective Date: January 23, 2015
Magic Online Effective Date: January 28, 2015

Modern - banned:
• Dig Through Time
• Treasure Cruise
• Birthing Pod 
Modern - un-banned:
• Golgari Grave-Troll

Legacy - banned:
• Treasure Cruise
Legacy - - Un-banned:
• Worldgorger Dragon

Vintage - restricted:
• Treasure Cruise
Vintage - un-restricted:
• Gifts Ungiven

Treasure Cruise gets banned from Modern and Legacy with a restriction for Vintage.  Dig Through Time gets the same treatment for Modern.  Blue-Red Delver decklists will suffer the most for this but we do understand that the mecurial rise of UR Delver may have needed to be curtailed - we just thought that this move would have taken place a bit further down the line.

Many players may be taken off guard with the banning of Birthing Pod.  In our little corner of the world, Pod decklists ruled for quite long enough and we personally, we have no love lost here.  Gamers could always try Fauna Shaman as a replacement here but not without the risk of getting it immediately blown out with a Lightning Strike


Since we don't play Legacy or Vintage, you are on your own to develop a sense of how the metagame will adapt to these new changes.

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