I think everyone can agree that Blazing Shoal needed to go, considering it allowed as early as turn 2 kills with Inkmoth Nexus, Blighted Agent, and Glistener Elf. This combo forced aggro and control decks to respond with a turn 1 instant speed creature removal spell that could keep them alive, and if they didn't have one, on to Game 2.
I was surprised by Green Sun's Zenith and Cloudpost. I figured with enough land destruction, 12-Post could be kept in check. However, not every color has access to land destruction and more importantly, basic land destruction. The 12-Post decks (with Cloudpost, Vesuva, and Glimmerpost) ran a very unstable mana base and it was more important to destroy their basic colored lands, rather than actually attack the locus lands. So unfortunately, a simple Tectonic Edge or Ghost Quarter could not keep the deck in check. As for Green Sun's Zenith, the synergy with Dryad Arbor gives the deck a lot of momentum in the early game and a complete tool box with creatures in the late game. I'm more than certain that was what the card was intended to do, but never was really supposed to play with Dryad Arbor outside of Legacy.
The bans I were happy about, were with Preordain, Ponder, and Rite of Flame. The two card draw spells are the enablers for all the combo decks, which ran 4 copies of each. I had a problem with Preordain when it was in Standard and saw just as much play as Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. As for Ponder, a card restricted in Vintage, plays an extremely powerful role alongside fetch lands and enables an unfair amount of consistency that gave the combo decks a huge edge in the Pro Tour. As for Rite of Flame, the boost for 1 red mana makes the card very strong and speeds up Through the Breach, Empty the Warrens, Goblin Charbelcher and other red-based control strategies by several turns. Having access to rite of flame could allow you to combo off on turn 1-3, which is exactly what WotC is trying to avoid with the Modern Format. For these 3 enabler cards, WotC didn't want to ban the combos outright, rather slow down their performance so aggro and control decks stand a fighting chance against them.
What should you expect after the bannings? Unfortunately, these bannings mean Tarmogoyf will get better (and more expensive) and Zoo will have a stronger presence in the metagame. As for innovation, hopefully you didn't forget about Black. Remember Dark Confidant, Thoughtseize, Damnation, Death Cloud, and Kokusho, the Evening Star? I hope so!
Legacy was also hit pretty hard with this bannings with the announcement of Mental Misstep. I'm excited about this change because it allows non blue decks to shine, considering Blue has been the most dominant color for the past few months in the Star City Games Legacy Open Top 8s. WotC sort of explains why the banned Misstep in the article, but weren't very specific. They printed the card to give non blue decks a weapon against combo decks, ex: High Tide. However, the card made blue decks better. Even though all the blue decks still paid 2 life to cast the card, Misstep became a huge tempo booster for the control and combo decks when on the draw, it could fight Brainstorm in the mirror match, and Blue players could pitch Mental Misstep to Force of Will when Misstep becomes more irrelevant mid-late game. WotC has to take risks, so formats can grow and they misjudged how the card would be used, not so much its power level.
How does any of this affect Casual magic? Well, it really doesn't. It does give us some insight into why some card are banned, such as Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn in Commander/EDH. I think that these bannings can help us define what cards are good in a casual format and what cards are too good. I think this could also help define what cards are overly powerful for house rules across all kitchen table Magic environments. Until next time Magic players.
-David J.
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