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What can we expect after The Meathook Massacre ban?
This has been the FIRST BANNING SINCE January in Standard
On Monday, October 10, Wizards announced the banning of the Meathook Massacre in Standard in order to give other colors room to grow and develop a healthier metagame.
We all know that it is hard to decide which black card is the most powerful, because each one brings different interactions to the field. The Meathook Massacre, with its boardwipe ability that continues to be relevant throughout the game, has been chosen for the ban.
Wizards of the Coast designer, Ian Duke, gives a couple of different reasons for the choice. It's not just that The Meathook Massacre is one of the most powerful black cards in Standard at the moment, it's also the fact that it effectively closes off a full range of archetypes: creature decks that rely on small creatures.
"It's had its time to shine in Standard for over a year"
"It's had its time to shine in Standard for over a year", and perhaps hitting it with the banhammer is the less painful move that can be done.
Wizards says that it hopes the next release, The Brothers' War, will provide more balance, by introducing "tools for other decks and color combinations", but that this should make Standard more diverse in the meantime.
This is currently the only card on the Standard banned list. They haven't banned any cards in Standard since January, when they removed: Alrund's Epiphany, Divide by Zero, and Faceless Haven.
What is the impact of the current metagame?
I don't think it will have much of an effect. The aggressive decks with small creatures that it supposedly "cancels out" according to Wizards aren't that popular, but the reason is that they lack power level, and banning The Meathook won't change that.
Although there is no quick answer like The Meathook Massacre was in the form of a boardwipe for early turns, there is no powerful enough or fast enough creature deck able to beat the current arsenal available: Cut Down, Infernal Grasp, The Wandering Emperor, March of the Otherworldly Journey, Liliana of the Veil, Sheoldred.... too many amazing threats to allow any creatures deck to shine. At the end we will see the same archetypes at the top tables, just without The Meathook Massacre.
Many other players like @mogged agree on it:
It's true that more decks will try to move up in the ranks, like Gruul aggro , Mono red , or Bant tokens/aggro , we'll see what happens and how it plays out. But as long as the dominant colors (Black and White) are still being played so much, it's very unlikely that we see these decks at the top tables as I mentioned before.
In the next article, we're going to look at the different recommended options for playing this weekend's QUALIFIER WEEKEND (October 15-16).
And next week, we'll break down the weekend's results and see if The Meathook Massacre had as much of an effect on Standard as Wizard thought.
If you liked this article maybe you will also find interesting on of the following ones The 10 Most Impactful Phyrexia: All will be one MTG Cards in Standard, 7 New Standard Decks Featuring The Lost Caverns of Ixalan by Mogged, 3 decks to keep an eye on after the banning of The Meathook Massacre, Two Deck Formats: Is Wizards Neglecting Constructed?
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Always competitive never friendly
My name is Rapsolo. I'm a content creator on Twitch, I organize tournaments and I play Standard most of the time on Mtg Arena and MTGO.
