Highlights
- Modern Horizons 3 introduces powerful cards, some banned ahead of time to prevent format disruption and maintain balance.
- The banned cards, including allied fetch lands and complete cycles, offer easy casting and format-warping effects.
- Disruptor Flute, banned in Brawl, imposes a significant mana tax and ability restriction, prompting Wizards to maintain a healthy meta.
Some Magic: The Gathering cards are just a little too good, particularly in more specialized formats. With Modern Horizons 3 releasing on Magic: The Gathering Arena, the first time a straight-to-Modern format is doing so, there are a lot more chances for something to accidentally spiral out of control.
Related
Magic: The Gathering: Every Type Of Foil Explained
Making these cards more popular, unique, and cool, here are all the different types of foiling you'll find in MTG.
In an attempt to head off some problematic situations coming on at the pass, the team in charge of the banned cards at Wizards of the Coast have stepped in and pre-banned several cards from the Historic format. All this leads to quite a few cards banned on Arena before they’ve even been played with.
What Is Historic?
If you're looking for a nonrotating format filled with powerful cards, exclusive sets, and one you can play on the go, then you're going to be excited that Historic exists.
Historic has been around for quite some time, having been introduced back in 2019 as a way for players to keep using their cards once they have rotated out of Standard. One of the key components of Historic is its use of digital-only cards and exclusive rebalanced cards to help keep things a little more interesting.
There are 33 main sets legal in Historic, with 16 digital-only releases to help flesh out the set and to introduce some unique cards that are not available in other games, not even Magic: The Gathering Online.
What Modern Horizons 3 Cards Are Banned?
Modern Horizons 3 introduces some incredibly powerful cards to Magic, some of which are just a little too good to let them run rampant. Many of the banned cards are there because they are essentially free to cast with little downsides and would likely result in a much faster format that would push out tons of decks that would otherwise keep the format healthy.
Let’s take a look at all the cards and then break down why.
- Bloodstained Mire
- Endurance
- Flare of Cultivation
- Flare of Denial
- Flare of Duplication
- Flare of Fortitude
- Flare of Malice
- Flooded Strand
- Fury
- Grief
- Harbinger of the Seas
- Polluted Delta
- Solitude
- Subtlety
- Windswept Heath
- Winter Moon
- Wooded Foothills
The allied fetch lands, Bloodstained Mire, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, Windswept Heath, and Wooded Foothills, are all banned due to one simple reason: having perfect land makes games a little too easy. The enemy fetch lands are all banned too, so it would make sense to give these lands the axe as well.
Two complete cycles get the ban hammer in Modern Horizons 3, the new Flare and the Incarnation cycle that was originally printed in Modern Horizons 2. The Flare cycle, which includes Flare of Cultivation, Flare of Denial, Flare of Duplication, Flare of Fortitude, and Flare of Malice. Each of these cards can be cast for free so long as you sacrifice a creature that matches the color of the spell, which is a little too easy to do in a format like Historic. Flare of Cultivation is one of the better cards from the cycle, but any one of them just a little too good to let them run rampant.
The other cycle, the Elemental Incarnation creatures from Modern Horizon 2, are format warping cards that have changed the face of Modern since their release back in 2021. The five creatures are: Endurance, Fury, Grief, Solitude, and Subtlety. These creatures can be cast for free with their evoke cost, just requiring you to exile a card that matches their color from your hand. Theoretically, the way these creatures are balanced is by the fact that you’re supposed to sacrifice them as soon as they come into play.
Turns out, there are quite a few ways to get around that little sacrifice clause, letting you get two activations of their enter the battlefield triggers, which is a bit too good to let run rampant.
The final two cards, Harbinger of the Seas and Winter Moon, are both cards that impact lands and can unfairly shut out your opponents very easily. Harbinger of the Seas turns all nonbasic lands into Islands, so say goodbye to all your mana fixing, while Winter Moon doesn’t let anyone untap their nonbasic lands. Wizards of the Coast has been fairly consistent in keeping cards that impact lands out of most constructed formats.
Can’t Forget About Brawl
There’s one more card immediately banned from Modern Horizons 3, but now we’re shifting formats to Brawl. This Commander-inspired format is also an Arena exclusive and is a little bit more susceptible to hate cards than regular Commander. The banned card in Brawl is:
- Disruptor Flute
Disruptor Flue is a two-mana artifact that lets you pick a card name when it comes into play. Whatever spell you pick costs three more mana to cast, which is a huge tax effect to be subjected to and is capable of setting your opponents back several turns. As if that isn’t enough, Disruptor Flute makes it so activated abilities of cards of the chosen name can’t be activated unless it is a mana ability.
Since it's colorless, every deck will want to play it. In order to keep a healthy meta and so every Brawl deck isn't running the same card, Wizards decided to ban Disruptor Flute ahead of time.
