Summary

Effective Date: Immediately, January 10th, 2025
Next B&R: February 10th, 2025

Summary: Icebound Slam added to Category 1.

The Watchlist only contains cards that were either previously legal in the Standard format or are currently legal for Standard.

See the entire list of banned cards here.

Watchlist

Category 3

This category will contain all cards that are banned and restricted, proving to be too powerful or too impactful and limiting tournament deck diversity and meta health. Currently, Sword of Avarice, Reckless Conversion, Crystal of Empowerment, Corhazi Outlook, and Erupting Rhapsody are banned.

Category 2

This category contains cards that we consider very problematic and are heavily watched for potential future legality changes and category shifts. This category currently has two cards.

Category 1

This category consists of cards that we don’t consider problematic in the current environment, but are unhealthy for future balance and game design space. This category currently has five cards with the addition of Icebound Slam.

Icebound Slam has proven to be a central card in many strategies and is being utilized more than we anticipated. The intended design of this card was to support the identity of water guardian, however it is clear that the resources gained and pressure applied without much restriction paves the way for use cases on a larger scale than anticipated. As such, we are putting this card on the Watchlist and plan to monitor this card and its presence in the meta.

That's all for this B&R update! The next update will be on February 10th, 2025!