MTG Bans Violet Outburst In Modern, Unrestricts Ponder In Vintage

thegamer.com:

Magic: the Gathering has announced its latest bans and restrictions, affecting two cards across two formats. For the most part, there will be no changes, but there are tweaks being made to the Modern and Vintage formats.

First up, Violent Outburst had been banned in Modern. It joins two other cards banned in Modern last December, Fury and Up the Beanstalk, which will also remain banned for the time being. However, also announced in today's changes, we have Ponder being unrestricted in Vintage for the first time since 2008, with MTG saying that the card is "ready to come back".

While the ban and restriction changes only affect two formats, the blog post announcing them goes over how MTG views the meta in other formats too. With this in mind, MTG believes that Standard, Pioneer, and Explorer are doing well right now. Alongside Legacy and Pauper, it will leave them alone until at least the next ban announcement, set for May 13.

As for the banning of Violent Outburst, the blog post goes into more detail on why this decision was made: "Removing Violent Outburst from the format will necessitate cascade players to adopt Ardent Plea or Demonic Dread and force them to play on their own turn more often, weakening both cascade strategies and reducing them to an acceptable level of metagame share, much like the Fury ban did to Rakdos Midrange."

Moving over to Ponder, it seems that MTG is influenced by the fact that it's been restricted for so long, although it also admits that this won't be the case for every restricted card. "It's not necessarily true that we want to reintroduce every card that has been restricted for over a decade, but evidence suggests Ponder is ready to come back into the four-of club," the blog post reads.

"While not much has changed in Vintage since our last announcement, we believe that spell-based combo decks in Vintage could use a little boost," it continues. "The top of the metagame features decks like Lurrus Saga, Initiative, and Mishra's