WotC admits MTG Banned and Restricted scheduling disaster, promise changes coming

Wizards of the Coast finally addressed the timing of Magic: The Gathering Banned & Restricted announcements on Aug. 26, promising players improvements to the system moving forward.

The Aug. 26 MTG Banned and Restricted announcement applied big changes to formats like Modern and Pioneer, but for many competitive players, the bans came too late. The initial schedule was set up to coincide with MTG set releases, but ignored the organized play system that includes Regional Championships, Regional Championship Qualifiers, and even Pro Tour events. With the Modern format RCQ season kicking off at the beginning of August, bans on Nadu and Grief are late in the minds of competitive players. WotC acknowledged the scheduling mishap in the Aug. 26 B&R announcement, applying changes that will go into effect before the end of the year.

Starting with the upcoming December MTG Banned and Restricted announcement, bans will coincide with organized play seasons and tournaments.

“Moving forward, we will be aligning our B&R announcements to the RC and RCQ seasons,” said WotC. “This will allow us to make adjustments to our play environments to ensure the best experience possible for our competitive play pipeline.”

The next MTG Banned and Restricted announcement will drop on Dec. 16. No additional changes to the schedule are being applied to compensate for the Standard format.

“It is worth noting that we don’t plan on changing the current Standard B&R philosophy, meaning we still only want one window per year, barring an emergency, where we consider taking action in Standard,” WotC said in its post.

For many competitive players, the changes to the B&R schedule are a win. The scheduling adjustments will lead to fewer announcements, which many are fine with as long as overperforming cards warping MTG format metas are addressed promptly.