Wizards of the Coast Bans Hogaak and Faithless Looting in MTG Modern

From now on, the Rampaging Ferocidon card isn’t banned in Standard matches, which means all players, casual and pros alike will be able to use this card in Standard matches again. This is great for those players who love dinosaur decks or just red color players in general.

Rampaging Ferocidon is a three mana costing creature card that requires at least one red color mana to summon. It has three/three stats, which are solid for that mana cost as well as menace. What’s crazy about this little dinosaur is its two main abilities.

The first is that players can’t gain life while this card is on the field. In addition, whenever another creature enters the battlefield, Rampaging Ferocidon deals one damage to that creature’s controller. It is an insanely useful card that was banned in Standard previously due to the mono-red aggro and other decks being so powerful.

Since then that has changed significantly with the release of Magic Core Set 2020. Other decks like Scapeshift and Orzhov Vampires take the lead as the popular decks right now in the metagame. Both of those decks are all about getting smaller creatures all over the board.

And in addition, Vampires can gain life quickly, making both of those decks a little too overpowered. To strengthen the mono-red aggro and other decks like dinosaur ones, Rampaging Ferocidon is now back in the Standard metagame. After all, it counters creature-heavy decks with penalizing abilities.

Though the return of this card is welcome, it is likely only until the release of Throne of Eldraine this fall.That expansion is set to change up the metagame entirely and will possibly see the removal of this card (and even its expansion potentially) from the metagame.

In addition, though the card is going to be rejoining MTG Arena on September 4, it will be in a limited way. Players will be able to use it in best of three Standard matches in the game but not in best of one matches. This is because aggressive red color decks are already performing well in the best of one.

Though Standard only has one card change at this time, Modern has quite a few, and they are mostly negative. The biggest of these changes is the banning of Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. This legendary creature card has been a massive part of the Modern metagame scene for some time now.

It is a black and green hybrid color creature card that requires seven mana to summon, two of which must be either black or green. The catch is that it can be summoned from the graveyard so even removing it from the field doesn’t mean that it will be gone for good from the match.

In addition, it already has the insane stats of eight/eight, making it a force to be reckoned with. That’s still all before including the fact that it can also have trample, convoke, and delve all at once. Since the release of Modern Horizons, graveyard-focused decks including Hogaak have been insanely popular and strong.

This was a problem previously that Wizards of the Coast attempted to remedy by banning Bridge from Below to weaken these types of decks. The already strong Hogaak card became better when this enchantment card allowed you to create a ton of two/two black zombie creature tokens.

For better or for worse, Bridge from Below is staying banned and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis will be joining it in the ban graveyard for Modern matches. Since the results of Mythic Championship IV in Barcelona, several other Grand Prix events and other tournaments have shown that Hogaak is still a massive advantage for these decks.

After investigating what it is that is causing the overwhelming popularity and strength of the graveyard decks, it’s clear that Hogaak is at the crux of the problem. The card banned from Modern matches. But the end of the reign of graveyard decks doesn’t end there at all.

The other card banned from Modern matches is Faithless Looting. According to Wizards of the Coast in their MTG ban announcement, the card that is enabling so many of the graveyard decks that are winning a ton, is Faithless Looting. The best winning deck for the past year has been mostly just Faithless Looting decks.

Faithless Looting is a spell card that costs one red color mana to use, making it extremely easy to play and an essential part of graveyard decks. What this spell card does is allow you to draw two cards and then choose to discard two cards in exchange.

But that’s not all, though. You can flash back this card from the graveyard for two red color mana and then exile it for good. You can easily start to see the usefulness of this card with stuff like Hogaak where it’s all about bringing back the card from the graveyard. So, discarding a card like Hogaak isn’t a bad thing at all, making these decks too powerful.

Wizards of the Coast made it clear in their MTG ban announcement that before Hogaak, Faithless Looting was already a problem and now it’s only worse. Both of these cards are now banned. Bridge from Below will remain in the banned graveyard pile.

On the contrary, the increasingly strong metagame means that the company believes that one particularly strong card can return from the dead. That one lone card that is being unbanned starting soon is Stoneforge Mystic. It is the hope of the company that this card brings the focus more back to the field and less on the graveyard, though.

Stoneforge Mystic is a white creature card that costs two mana to summon, one of which must be white. It has the stats of one/two and a couple of powerful abilities. For starters, when Stoneforge Mystic enters the field, you can search your deck for an equipment card and put it in your hand.

Stoneforge Mystic allows you to play an equipment card from your hand onto the battlefield for only one white mana and a tap. This allows the player to use a card that might not be from their deck or one that would normally cost a lot more mana right at the beginning of the game. It will remain to be seen how this card’s unbanning will affect the metagame.

Though Vintage is in one of its strongest places ever, there are issues with some particular cards and decks that allow for one or two turn effective wins. This results in less interactive game play and changes are being made to make sure this stops. In addition, more changes could be on the way in the future.

The first is restricting Karn, the Great Creator. This legendary planeswalker card costs four mana to summon. Its first ability is making sure that none of the activated abilities of your opponent’s artifacts can be activated. Then it’s plus one loyalty ability is to create an artifact a creature until your next turn with stats based on its converted mana cost.

The other ability costs two loyalty to use. What it does is allow the player to choose an artifact card you own from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it in your hand. In addition, Mystic Forge is restricted, too.

Mystic Forge is an artifact that costs four mana to summon. It allows you to look at the top card of your deck at any time. You may then cast the top card of your deck if it’s an artifact card or a colorless nonland card. You can then tap and pay one life to exile the top card of your deck as well.

Wizards of the Coast has also considered restricting Sphere of Resistance but is taking these smaller steps first and then choosing where to go from here. The change to the London Mulligan format has made some decks more powerful, so there is now a restriction on Golgari Grave-Troll.

This green creature card costs four mana to summon, one of which must be green. It has dredge six, and when it enters the battlefield, you can put a plus one/plus one counter on it for every creature card in your graveyard, which turns its zero/zero stats into potentially high numbers.

In addition, you can remove one of these plus one/plus one counters to regenerate this card. Mental Misstep is the final restricted card. This instant card has a strange cost that can be either one blue mana or two life; either way, it will work. It allows you to counter the target spell with a converted mana cost of one.

But not all of the changes from the MTG ban announcement for Vintage are bad. There is one card that fans have been requesting to have four copies of in their deck and now they can. Fastbond is now unrestricted, and players can have up to four copies of this particular card in their deck at one time.

This enchantment card costs one green mana to use, and it allows you to play any number of lands you want on each of your turns, which is already impressive on its own. In addition, though, to combat this powerful move, every time you play a land card besides your first that turn, this card will deal one damage to you.

Wizards of the Coast wants to hear your feedback about these card changes, so be sure to let them know how you feel about the changes in the MTG ban announcement through social media channels or the forums. These aren’t the only changes on this way this year as the company already announced the next wave of changes are coming on October 7, 2019 just after the launch of Throne of Eldraine.