Next Banned and Restricted Announcement to Come on October 21

Every once in a while, Magic: The Gathering makes changes (or no changes) to its banned and restricted lists for its different formats. Just this week on October 7, the announcement was made to make no changes to any format and next announcement was due to be made on November 18. Just today however, Wizards of the Coast have announced that the next announcement date is now pushed forward to October 21.

This announcement may signal a change to the Standard format and its metagame. Currently, players are voicing their concern in the dominance of Bant Golos decks (and its variants) mostly due to the power of Field of the Dead and no decent ways to answer it without suffering from other matchups.

This also coincides with the decklist submissions for the upcoming Mythic Championship V next week, which are now due soon. This could mean that there is an abnormal amount of Field of the Dead decks being played at the next big tournament as many teams would have submitted their decklists for the tournament. Some important dates for upcoming events are below (though the effective date of the ban is not necessarily the same as the announcement date):

• October 18 – 20: Mythic Championship V
• October 26 – 27: Mythic Championship VII Qualifier Weekend

The last banning we saw was this year February, when we saw Nexus of Fate being banned from best-of-one matches in MTG Arena and the removal of Rampaging Ferocidon from the list in September just prior to its rotation. Banned cards are also refunded as Wildcards. Of course, there is a chance that there could be no changes to the Standard format, or it could be a different card other than Field of the Dead – but it is good to be vigilant before you go crafting other cards required for the deck.

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