Hey all,

Ding dong, the Mind Sculptor is dead.  At least in Standard.

On July 1 Mind Sculptor will no longer be Standard legal.  This marks the first Mythic and first planeswalker being banned from a format.

Also getting pounded by the banhammer is Stoneforge Mystic. While Stoneforge Mystic is more deck reliant due to its use of equipment, the card is powerful enough to justify its banning.

You may have read theories, Twitter posts, and the official press release concerning the decision to ban these cards. What do I have to say about it? Check it out.


Jace, the Mind Sculptor should have been banned from the day it was printed.  Haven't Wizards of the Coast learned from their mistake when they had to ban Sensei's Divining Top in Extended?  While I recall the official reasoning for banning the Top was speed concerns, I believe that the decision was partly influenced by the sheer power of any color being able to manipulate the top three cards of their deck at instant speed.  When paired with the fetchlands available in the format, the Top provided ANY color with a powerful card digging engine (which by traditional Magic rules should be reserved to blue).  While Jace, the Mind Sculptor limits the ability to blue, that didn't stop people from acquiring the top effect.  People just ran blue in a majority of their decks.

Now let me use the right terminology -- Jace uses a Brainstorm effect, but Top is the closest card comparable to Brainstorm so it gets my point across.  This ability alone makes Jace way too powerful; adding three other abilities is just icing on the cake.  And trying to balance it by making it a +0 effect?  No big, you won't be Brainstorming every turn.

I'm a bit more surprised Stoneforge Mystic was banned due to its reliance on equipment, however, I agree with Aaron Forsythe's rationale in the press release.  Living weapons increases the options Mystic could tutor forto both equipment and "creatures".  While most of the living weapon cards are not very good on their own, the mythic artifact Batterskull provides both a solid recastable, self-sufficient threat as well as a suit to strengthen up any creatures currently on board.  Stoneforge Mystic has the power to fetch out this versatile weapon.

Tack on the ability to put equipment on field for 2 mana regardless of casting cost, at instant speed, and immune to traditional counterspells and Mystic becomes the ultimate support for any and all equipment.

I have a question for you now.  Do you think that Stoneforge Mystic would be banned if there weren't such good equipment in Standard's card pool?  That's right, no Sword of Body and Mind, no Sword of Feast and Famine, no Batterskull.  Would Stoneforge Mythic still fetch out the banhammer?  Drop a comment below or tweet me @shadowsketched.



Stay tuned for more new on Magic 2012 and Innistrad coming soon!

-Sketch
@shadowsketched