Too popular, too powerful, and that’s why two new cards have been banned in Magic: The Gathering. For those that play the popular card game, the team over at Wizards of the Coast released a new banned and restricted announcement at the beginning of October. In their memo they stated that there would be no changes to the current game’s format, though many players immediately disagreed with the initial assessment which has lead to WotC revealing that they are going to make a few changes after all. 

Which Two Cards Were Banned from Magic: The Gathering? 

The two cards banned specifically apply to the Pauper and Standard formats and includes the Field of the Dead card for the Standard format with the Arcum Astrolabe for Pauper. The ban officially kicks off today, though they will be honored for Magic: The Gathering Arena on October 24th and again on October 25th. 

Wizards added in their updated memo to players, “Finally, we’re aware of afew other community concerns regarding the Standard environment, including that early acceleration into planeswalkers can be frustrating and that the color green is strong across a variety of Standard archetypes. We’ll continue to monitor the health of the environment, but feel it’s important to allow the metagame to adjust to the absence of Field of the Dead before further evaluation. As a philosophy, we prefer that players’ deck-building and metagaming choices drive the evolution of the environment whenever possible, rather than B&R intervention.” 

As for Arcum, they added “Due to the metagame share and win rate of Arcum’s Astrolabe decks across the board, Arcum’s Astrolabe is banned in Pauper. Underneath this top layer of Arcum’s Astrolabe decks, we’ve seen healthy diversity within the Pauper metagame, and we’re looking forward to continued support for the format as it evolves.” 

You can check out their full memo to the Magic: The Gathering community regarding the new bans right here on their official website.