In August 2011, Modern became a sanctioned tabletop format, forever changing the landscape of competitive Magic. Everything from Eighth Edition onward was legal, save for the 21 cards on the initial banned list that were deemed too powerful for the still-emerging format. Over time, many of those initial 21 cards have been reintroduced, the first being Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, which was unbanned in September of the following year. Most recently this past May, Umezawa's Jitte joined the format for the first time.

Ponder
Punishing FireRite of Flame

A month after Modern's inception, and following its Pro Tour debut in Philadelphia, six more cards joined the banned list. That December, another two were removed from the format. Since those volatile early months, the Modern banned list has undergone over twenty transformations in its fifteen years.

Sometimes these bans cut problematic decks from the metagame, like the 2016 Eye of Ugin ban that came in the wake of Battle for Zendikar and a slew of smaller, low-costed Eldrazi that warped the format and created Eldrazi Winter. Other times, these announcements dial in the power level of long-established decks, cutting cards to temper a dominant deck without removing it from the metagame completely. This makes it different from the Standard landscape.

"In Standard, if there's a ban, it's generally because something's really broken and completely dominant, so it's often a much larger metagame shift," said Matt Nass, who personally fell victim to the banning of Krark-Clan Ironworks in January 2019. "Whereas with this one, Amulet was a little too good and the loops were a little too annoying—although ironically the loops might be even more annoying now—so we took a little bit out of that. And Boros lost Phlage, but it might have made the deck better. These are much smaller changes and much smaller moves in general."

"The way Modern exists, or has existed since the Underworld Breach ban, has been as a very wide format with a lot of different decks," said two-time Pro Tour Top 8 player Rui Zhang, who has often pioneered innovative deck designs for Team Sanctum of All. "Standard tends to be dominated by a few decks. Even when Standard is relatively diverse, like it is right now, there are only five or six serious decks. In Modern, if you play a fourteen-round tournament, you can expect to play against at least ten different decks. The effects of a ban in Modern are smaller, because it will probably impact fewer decks. At least, this banned and restricted announcement felt that way."

"Usually when cards get banned in Standard, you kind of see them coming because they're super dominant," said Michael Plummer, the winner of the most recent Modern Pro Tour. "When decks get banned in Standard, there is a big vacuum in what is going to be played. But in Modern, it's not like all the powerful decks that play these cards will just go away. I think Modern can be stable even when cards are banned."

Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury
Lotus Field
Umezawa's Jitte [2vS7GidShCAsq61sctN9h5]
Violent Outburst

This past May, a banned and restricted announcement culled Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury and Lotus Field from the format while introducing Umezawa's Jitte and reintroducing Violent Outburst, which had both been banned just two years prior.

In the weeks following the announcement, players were left to anticipate the impact, adjust as they saw fit, and evaluate how the actual fallout compared to what they'd foreseen.

"Phlage is confusing because it seems like a nerf to Boros at first glance. But Phlage was really, really good in the mirror match and not that good in a lot of other matchups," said Nass. "In a way, it was a tax that you had to play Phlage because of the mirrors, and now you're able to play faster. You can race combo decks more, and it may actually have made [Boros] better."

Zhang echoed that sentiment, noting the difference between the Phlage ban's expected impact on Boros and the way it has actually played out.

"Phlage being banned obviously made a huge impact. But I expected Boros Energy to drop off significantly," they said. "Phlage was also a valuable tool for a lot of control decks, I think, though this wasn't as obvious to the wider world. I expected the Lotus Field ban to be only a minor nerf to Amulet, but it would have some impact, just not a huge amount. Jitte I didn't think would have much impact at all, and I expected Violent Outburst to have a very large impact. I expected Living End to be very strong, but how I feel now is that this hasn't really played out how I expected it to. I don't think Violent Outburst ended up being that good, and Boros Energy has still been very strong despite the Phlage ban."

With a Modern Pro Tour on the horizon, players have had to adjust or, in some cases, stay the course following May's shakeup of the format.

"I wouldn't say the announcement had a huge impact," Zhang said. "In various decks I had been exploring, I wish I had access to Phlage as a tool. I wasn't particularly interested in playing Amulet or Boros because I feel that they have some inherent weaknesses, and the cascade decks didn't end up being as strong as I thought they would be. So, I don't think a lot has changed other than how every deck is supposed to approach the Boros Energy matchup. I feel like Phlage was at its best against the type of deck that Boros Energy is anyhow, and Boros Energy still remains the best deck of its type. Prowess is better now because its main issue with Boros was Phlage, but otherwise I'm not sure a whole lot has opened up."

Plummer, on the other hand, sees the announcement as an opportunity for other decks to shine.

"I spent the month before the announcement learning how to play Amulet Titan, so I was a little disappointed in the sense that it felt like a lot of time had gone to waste," said Plummer. "But at the same time, it was too strong of a deck for Modern, so I was kind of happy it wasn't going to be pretty omnipresent at the Pro Tour. May's announcement opened up a ton of decks. I've been spending most of my time trying to play every deck and get a good sense for how to play with it or against it. Before, I thought there were far fewer viable decks."

Nass still sees the effects of the bans as too nebulous to count on.

"I was planning on really respecting Amulet because I didn't really respect Amulet at the last Modern Pro Tour," said Nass, who finished Pro Tour Edge of Eternities in 98th place. "It seemed like it was the best choice, and it's a tough deck because you do have to invest some time to learn it. It's a big commitment, and if you think you're like five percent sure to play it, it might not be worth it. It seemed like people thought Amulet would go back to how it was before. Now, we should actually do everything in our power to make Aftermath Analyst work, even if it's a lot worse without the Lotus Field. Based on this, maybe the odds have gone down enough. Because even if it's still good, it's not as good. So, I've been on the fence about how to handle Amulet, and I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet.

"I was hoping that Boros would be less popular because a lot of the decks I like are creature combo decks that are pretty bad against Boros, but it doesn't seem like that is going to be as big of a side effect of the bans as I hoped. I thought Jitte would have basically no impact, and it seems like it has had basically no impact. I wasn't sure about Violent Outburst. So far, it's seemed to have little impact, but Rhinos was good before and Living End is at least decent. Since the last time Violent Outburst was legal, there's now all the evoke Elementals that are a really good fit for those decks, so I thought they might be good."

Players preparing for the Pro Tour can also look to how past banned list updates have reshaped both the format and how players have responded to those changes.

Krark-Clan Ironworks

Nass, for example, saw his Grand Prix-winning deck with Krark-Clan Ironworks come to an end when the deck's central card was banned.

"Up until then, it had mostly been just me doing well with Krark-Clan Ironworks (KCI). After the Grand Prix Oakland Top 8 where there were, like, four KCI decks, that's when it actually got banned," he said. "It did take other people also doing well with the deck for it to get banned, but that was definitely pretty wild and pretty cool. I don't know that many people in the world who are responsible for an individual card getting banned."

The One Ring
Mox Opal

Changes to the Modern banned list can also supercharge decks, giving them a new life in a new metagame. When The One Ring was banned in December 2024, Mox Opal came off the banned list and Plummer saw the deck he'd been playing, which had included The One Ring, actually improve.

"I was playing the Breach deck with The One Ring a ton," said Plummer. "I played it for months and did really well with it. Then it was clear they were going to ban The One Ring, but they also unbanned Mox Opal. I was like, 'Oh, my deck just got noticeably better even though they banned the best card in it.' I think that was when I started trying to make everyone I knew play the deck, and it was obviously the best deck to play."

So far, though, Plummer hasn't had a comparable breakthrough in the current Modern environment.

"I feel like Modern has a pretty wide range of decks. I haven't been able to find a breakout, busted deck that no one else has, so I assume it's going to be close to what the metagame has been."

His sentiment was echoed by other players. Zhang remarked that "a lot of previous ban announcements in Modern felt like they appeared at times where the format seemed fundamentally warped by one deck. I don't think that was true for this one, even though Boros had a relatively high metagame share. It wasn't so strong that it was clearly better than every other deck."

In just a few days, Modern will return to the Pro Tour stage and players will discover in real time how their assessment of these changes and the Modern metagame fare against the field. Perhaps Amulet and Boros will remain powerful contenders, or perhaps something yet undiscovered is waiting in the wings.