Idea For A Future Series

General
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So Magic Arena has occasional events where the event is the current standard format, but a bunch of cards are banned to mix things up.

I think the current card pool is healthy, but there are a few outlier cards that would be interesting to see what life would be like without them. How about a future series has a banned list just for that series to shake things up?

I’m thinking cards along the lines of Unprepared, Legendary Holster, Puppet, to name a few.

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We did this in Edinburgh for a local event, it was great fun. Each player got to nominate a few cards to ban ahead of the event. Helped shake things up, plus some people used their slots on things favoured in the local environment.

It led to fun new decks and was great for variety.

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Big fan of this - do you have a list over what got banned?

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I think it was this:

Sun in Yer Eyes
Point Blank
Coachwhip!
Calling the Cavalry
Legendary Holster
Decimator Array
It’s Not What You Know
Bounty Hunter
Morgan Regulators
Thunder Boy
Takin’ Ya With Me
Hexslingin’
Doomsday Supply

As noted above, in some cases this was driven by a view on how strong a card is. In many others it was simply to encourage variety - I think Sun in Yer Eyes is a great benchmark shootout action and that the Reloaded design team did a great job of putting it in the base set as a combination of classic’s Sun in Yer Eyes (inflicts bullet penalties) and Out of Ammo (makes a dude a draw) as sometimes those cards could be nearly a “dead card” depending on what your opponent’s posse was like. But we see it a lot, so good to mix things up. Bounty Hunter isn’t busted good, but gets seen a lot so again nice to mix things up. I play Point Blank a lot but think it is good for the game (rewards movement by having dudes unbooted, makes bullets and stud status matter), but enjoyed an environment without it.

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I believe ideas like this are great fun for single events. I also wanna add that in my experience with implementing limitations on strong cards, it will often leave people to thinking “hmm, what do I do now” and unintentionally just look for the next “power card” in line.

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