Magic: The Gathering Arena Hits Winota And Tibalt's Trickery In The First Explorer Bannings
Although it only launched a couple of weeks ago, Magic: The Gathering Arena's new Explorer format is about to receive its first-ever card bans. The wildly popular format is having one of its top decks nerfed into oblivion, while also taking out one of the current Standard's most problematic cards at the same time.
Both Winota, Joiner of Forces, and Tibalt's Trickery are now no longer legal in Explorer, putting an end to the numerous Naya Winota and Tibalt's Trickery decks that have been dominating these early days of the format.
RELATED: Magic The Gathering Arena: Everything You Need To Know About The Explorer Format
As outlined on the official Magic blog, Winota, Joiner of Forces has been a big part of Explorer's parent format, Pioneer. Decks often revolve around getting as many cheap non-Human creatures out as possible, before attacking with WInota out and plopping enough powerful humans into play to end the game in a single, decisive combat phase.
The problem with WInota is that all the answers to her found in Pioneer aren't in Explorer. Wizards has been keen to point out that this ban isn't permanent, and Winota will be back once Explorer has gained more of Pioneer's card pool and has ways to deal with it. Specifically, the ban is in place until the launch of this September's Dominaria United, which gives Explorer time to grow some more over the summer.
The second ban is a card that caused huge problems in a number of formats after it debuted in 2021's Kaldheim: Tibalt's Trickery. While it was meant to be a red counterspell with an element of chaos, it turned into a quick and dirty way of cheating out permanents way earlier than intended. For example, casting a zero-cost spell and then countering it with a Tibalt's
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