On Monday, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Reckoner Bankbuster and Invoke Despair met their end – at least when it comes to Standard – with a round of bannings.
Seth Manfield gave us a preview of the bannings here:
On Monday, LSV covered them well in his reaction piece here:
Today, I’ll go a step further by discussing the best cards and decks that remained untouched, plus where the format might go from here. In addition to my own thoughts, I’ll do my best to address some of the more common points and concerns that I’ve seen raised in public discussion.
Prior to the bannings, the Rakdos core of cards was dominant in Standard. While multiple archetypes existed with this shell, the bottom line is that 11 of the top 16 decks from Pro Tour March of the Machine were Rakdos.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker was a no-brainer. If anything was going to be banned, it was this.
As a cheap artifact, Reckoner Bankbuster was ubiquitous. However, Bankbuster occupied a strange space where it was good against control and midrange, but weak against aggressive decks. You loved to have Bankbuster against permission decks (more on this to come), but it could be a liability when you fell behind on the board – particularly if you drew multiples.
Aggro decks need some help in Standard, and banning Bankbuster could have the unintended side effect of actually making things harder on aggro. I don’t think many people were surprised by the banning of Bankbuster, but I didn’t consider it a slam dunk quite like Fable was.
I think banning Fable and to a lesser extent Bankbuster is correct. However, I do believe this was premeditated banning, and getting rid of Invoke Despair is unnecessary.
— Seth Manfield (@SethManfield) May 29, 2023
Invoke Despair was the most unexpected of the three. For one thing, I think this card is actually pretty interesting when it comes to both gameplay and deckbuilding. For another, five mana is pretty expensive, and there’s a lot of competition for that spot on the mana curve.
I think the banning of Invoke Despair was to guarantee a refresh for the format. Some people might’ve considered it a failure if cards were banned and some kind of R/B/x deck still shook out as one of the top archetypes. It seems to me that the goal was to overkill the Rakdos deck, force people to try out new archetypes, and also make room for some of the cool five-drops from Phyrexia: All Will Be One and March of the Machine to see play.
After removing two of the best cards from decks that play Invoke, in combination with the printing of Surge of Salvation, it feels kind of like killing off BR decks completely is the goal. – Seth Manfield
