Holy crap, only since Stoneforge mystic and Jace The Mind Sculptor there were standard bans.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/ba ... ary-9-2016

I told you Copter was broken, it was stoneforge mystic all over again. Relfector mage is kinda of a weird ban, the card is busted but doesn't feel broken.
Do you think something will be done to Duels about them?

Unlikely, and now we have Fatal Push even less likely. I think Copter + Emmy were knee-jerk reactions to FNM attendance, and WU Flash looked like it would be uncontested once those decks took the hit too.

I think it made much more sense to hit Gideon, it's far more overpowered than reflector mage imo
But letting these 2 keep circulating here is kinda stupid when they banned them in standard, since the power level here is even lower.
I bet that copter decks will keep winning the non sideboard tournaments. They got even more suport now in the form of 3 great 3 mana or less vehicles

Reflector Mage makes since in a way; with Marvel gone and going up; the person who plays Mage first will usually have the advantage.

It sounds like Reflector Mage wasn't a problem but in their playtesting they realized UW was by far the most powerful so they had to knock it down a peg

I like that they keep circulating here, we get to play with br0ken cards! 3x Reflector Mage is fun. I don't think i run any decks that run both Relfector Mage and Copter tho

Their excuse is Rarity restrictions.

But its Gideon that makes those decks so hard to beat. You can have a pile of removal and sweepers for the creatures and seriously hurt them, but once they drop Gideon you need a very specific answer, or you are dead in 2 turns. And UW also lost copter, which was the best card in the deck by far.

Their data (from MTGO) indicated that UW was oppressive (which is questionable). I'm pretty sure very little testing, if any, was put into this.

I think it's quite a knee-jerk reaction for the most part. They went on and on about AER having good anti-copter cards to level things out and yet they're banning it before AER gets a chance to shine.
Not sure on RFmage, I didn't know it was much of a hating since CoCo left but with people mentioning it as part of their crazy combo decks then it's possibly a decent prediction ban.
Emrakul makes sense given what I know since it supposedly gets pooped out and wrecks the game on turn 4 thanks to Aetherworks Marvel, plus I'm sure most people get annoyed at its possible turnjacking effect more than Ulamog's regardless on if it's not likely to happen because she gets cheated out instead. Also she does prevent instants from working against her.

All in all it seems too soon to me and they're not even giving AER a chance to change the meta and they're somewhat nullifying the point of all the planned Copter hate in the set.

Lol, why on earth not?

cuz i'm dum

This seems a very bad excuse. They could give players Moxes and Black Lotus and say it's ok because of rarity restrictions but I don't think that would lead to a particularly fun experience.
Right now, about 50% of the games I play are about who has the copter on t2. Even with black getting a great answer, I don't see it changing too much going forward

Never said it was a good excuse. I'm just telling you that trying to get Copter removed from Duels because of Standard is a waste of time.

I mean part of their reasoning for copter in the ban article was that every deck ran a full set of 4, which duels can't do.

Aetherworks Marvel results in the spell getting cast, so even though you are cheating her out, the on-cast ability still triggers.

Oh yeah, you're right, I just assumed it was ETB like most other things.

Wedge brings up a sad point. If Mage was banned due to being "frustrating", then kiss control ever being great again goodbye. (inb4 BEAST chanting nonsense...)

The connection of "WotC thinks Mage is frustrating" -> "WotC will never make Control good again" is incredibly far-fetched (even more so when you realize that the only deck that actually played Mage wasn't a Control deck).

So was standard getting a ban again, let alone 3. Strange times.

Yeah I thought that was a stretch as well, along with the whole "dredge will never be a thing in modern again" thing, they banned one card in a deck that has got loads of buffs in the last few sets, it's been weakened a bit sure but it's not exactly like they killed it.