Legacy Banned List Update: Survival of the Fittest BANNED, Time Spiral UNBANNED

The ban hammer came down on the strongest card in Legacy right now.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Effective January 1, 2011, the following changes occur in Legacy:

BANNED
Survival of the Fittest

Thorn in the side of Legacy players for months. Good riddance!

Basically, the reasons they banned Survival of the Fittest were that it was too resilient to removal and that all decks had to start carrying anti-Survival cards just to have a chance against the decks. If those decks didn't draw their answer to Survival, the game was as good as over.

They contemplated banning Vengevine, but R&D noted that other cards, like Necrotic Ooze, were comboing with Survival of the Fittest so a Vengevine ban would be useless.

The root of the problem was Survival of the Fittest, so now those roots are cut.



UNBANNED
Time Spiral

THIS...oughta be interesting...

Yep. Basically a "free" version of Time Reversal. Or I guess you could say it was an attempt at a free version of Timetwister but double the initial cost. Sounds fair, right? If you've gotta get to 6 lands to make this effectively free, you're trading off time for cost.

Yeah, but when it dominates tournaments, it's anything but fair.

While I don't have a history lesson for this card, I do know Mark Rosewater considered the "free spells" in Urza's Saga to be the absolute worst design decision in the history of the game. Combine it with a piece of the Power 9 and...yeah, it doesn't take long for things to go crazy.

But apparently R&D felt the environment had changed enough in Legacy since it was initially banned to be safe to unban it.

Will it be a powerhouse by itself? Or will another previously-ignored card bring Time Spiral to dominance once again? Find out, starting January 1st.



As for the other formats, no changes.


Enjoy planning your new Legacy decks!