July 2017 Watchlist Update

Valid during July 1st, 2017 0:00 CET until October 31st, 2017 24:00 CET.

Cards on the following list will be closely observed and are potential candidates for a banning on Oct 15th, 2017.

• Back to Basics
• Blood Moon
• Demonic Tutor
• Dig Through Time
• Fastbond
• Grindstone
• Mana Drain
• Mystical Tutor
• Oath of Druids
• Stoneforge Mystic
• Tainted Pact
• Tolarian Academy
• Treasure Cruise
• Yawgmoth’s Will

Cards from the following list are still banned but will be under testing for a potential unbanning on Oct. 15th, 2017.

• Birthing Pod new
• Entomb
• Imperial Seal
• Vampiric Tutor

Reasonings

Birthing Pod

Birthing Pod has been banned April 2012 and has never been added to watchlist afterwards.
Although the reasons for its ban are still be valid we guess it is time to rediscuss this card as the meta has changed much during the last 5 years.
The creature-centered deck become less successful while straight control-, combo- and aggro-decks become more powerful lately based on the results of bigger tournaments: http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=1274.0.
To assemble combo kills with birthing pod seems more difficult than it was in the past, phyrexian mana seems more expensive while RDW is one of the dominating decks recently.
To announce Birthing Pod to watchlist should encourage the community to test and maybe rejudge that card.

Fastbond

This card – as many other cards can be strong in the opening hand. And this is where it causes most of the problems, of course. As fast mana is always a thing that needs to be looked at while keeping the format in balance, this card doesn’t belong to “no restriction” fast mana cards like Moxen, neither to short term fast mana cards like Dark Ritual. Fastbond is somewhere in the middle.
Cards like Wheel of Fortune make it work even in lategame, but if these do not resolve or go wrong, Fastbond is a lot of times to no use and in fact a card disadvantage. As a topdeck (one of the best indicators of a banworthy cards), it rarely does something. This card has been unbanned already 2 years ago and since then spent a lot of time on the watchlist. And because no new card made it more dangerous in the meantime, we feel it is time to remove it from watchlist now.

Vampiric Tutor

Vampiric was added to the watch list as we wanted to open up the discussion about tutors as whole. While jury is still on the other cards, everyone seems to agree that Vampiric is the most powerful and dangerous of generic tutors. Thus we can narrow our focus to Demonic, Mystical, Imperial Seal and Tainted Pact.