Next Magic: The Gathering Banned & Restricted Announcement Coming May 18th

Magic: The Gathering players have been notified of when to expect the next revision of the CCG’s Banned & Restricted list.

Making the announcement via social media earlier today, Wizards of the Coast says it’ll be revealing all the intended changes next week, May 18th, though declines to specify how many cards will be hit with the ban-hammer. That being said, however, fans who have invested even a brief amount of time into the game following the launch of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in Arena last month will likely already have an idea of which culprits are headed for the guillotine.

A number of Companions – creature spells that provide a powerful effect if certain prerequisite deck-building conditions are met – introduced with the aforementioned expansion have proven to be more prevalent than Wizards had perhaps expected. Tallies of recent competitive tournaments, for example, revealed that the overwhelming majority of entrants and winners used the build-around cards to devastating effect.

One week from today on 5/18 will be the next Banned & Restricted update, impacting the Vintage, Legacy, and Brawl formats. MTGO Leagues for those formats will end at that time and be restarted with the updates.

— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) May 12, 2020

For Standard, where the meta is restricted to allowing only the most recently released sets, Ikoria‘s dominance is expected, if not welcomed, though the situation couldn’t be more different for other formats. Vintage and Legacy, in particular, have been impacted considerably owing to their larger card pools, making absurdly powerful and unbalanced decks much more likely to emerge. A certain degree of this is to be expected, of course, though in cases such as these, Wizards has deemed it necessary to step in and make adjustments.

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths is available now for Magic: The Gathering Arena and May 15th for tabletop. The list will undoubtedly change following next week’s update, but you can head over here for a rundown of the Companion cards currently considered top-tier across all formats.