These are cards that have necessitated bannings and restrictions in other formats over the years. We discussed taking action against one or more of the one-mana cantrips, Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm. We determined that if we wanted to break up that combination, Gush would be the card to look at as the more fundamental issue. Foil, while frustrating in combination with Gush, is generally the less powerful and problematic card of the two. Despite this potential 'splash damage' on other archetypes, Augur of Bolas was still on the table for discussion. Augur of Bolas helps shore up the weaknesses of blue tempo strategies against aggro but also appears in a variety of other control and combo decks. One approach was to ban one or more of the recent additions introduced by Masters sets- Augur of Bolas and Foil in particular. After determining we needed to take action to correct blue's dominance in the metagame, we considered several approaches. In the past, we'd seen aggressive decks keeping blue tempo strategies in check to some degree, but with the recent additions of Augur of Bolas and the Foil/ Gush combination, blue decks have continued to pull ahead of the pack.īlue has long owed its strengths in Pauper to efficient cantrips like Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm, and free spells like Gush, Daze, and Gitaxian Probe. Over the past several months, we've observed a rise in both play rate and win rate of blue-based decks in Pauper, with Blue-Black Delver sustaining a +55% win rate on Magic Online.

The list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here. Gush, Gitaxian Probe, and Daze are banned.

New yugioh ban list 2019