Announcement 15/08/2026
Ban List E17

Gro’Pez remains, alongside the French Cup, one of the main annual events for the Peasant community.

This edition brought together 28 players for the Main Event and 28 players for the Aquitaine Open Qualifier, with four additional Side Events held throughout the weekend.

The Main Event was won by Madness Burn, followed by Elves, Bogles and Esper Glitters. The Open Qualifier, meanwhile, saw Zombies take the top spot, ahead of UB Terror and The Rock.

Beyond the winners, the weekend primarily showcased a wide variety of strategies: U Delver, Esper Glitters, Wee Bee, Red Assault, The Rock, several different variants of Affinity, MGA, Tron, Jeskai Control, and Kuldotha all found their place at the tables.

Kuldotha was particularly well represented, with four players in each of the two main events, but failed to take the top spot in either. Its pilots finished 7th, 12th, 19th, and 25th in the Main Event, and 7th, 9th, 12th, and 23rd in the Open Qualifier.

These results are, of course, among the elements we have taken into account in our deliberations, but they also illustrate the limitations of relying solely on the results of a single tournament. Kuldotha did not dominate Gro’Pez, and our decision is therefore not based on the idea that the deck would systematically win the events it enters.

Our concerns are more focused on its overall functioning and the pressure it puts on the metagame.

The case of Kuldotha requires a more detailed explanation.

The deck has existed for several years, but has gradually benefited from a number of additions that have significantly improved its consistency and depth: better low-cost creatures, better permanents to sacrifice, more card advantage, and new ways to convert its resources into damage very quickly.

The issue we identify today is not simply its ability to occasionally achieve a turn-three kill. The possibility for an aggressive deck to have very fast kills does not, in itself, seem sufficient to justify intervention.

What concerns us more is the accumulation of several strengths within the same deck:

• the ability to achieve turn-three kills;

• very strong pressure from the first few turns;

• a high degree of consistency in being able to kill around turn four;

• the ability to deal the final points of damage from a distance; and

• the ability to rebuild quickly after the board has been stabilized (for example, after a wrath effect).

Facing Kuldotha therefore often requires dealing with several problems simultaneously: preserving your life total, keeping its board in check, and retaining enough resources to prevent the deck from immediately rebuilding after an initial answer.

It is this combination, rather than its raw results at any particular event, that leads us to intervene today.

We obviously considered targeting only a single card before looking at the consequences for Kuldotha.

The problem is that the deck now has a particularly high density of effective cards, as well as several alternatives that allow individual elements to be replaced without necessarily changing the deck’s overall functioning very much.

Our goal is not to make Kuldotha disappear from the format.

However, we do want to reduce the pressure it currently exerts and make the answers provided by the opponent matter more over the course of a game.

The two cards we have targeted by bans address two different characteristics of the deck: Reckless Bushwhacker affects the explosiveness and consistency of its fastest starts, while Painter’s Studio // Defaced Gallery affects its ability to maintain pressure and rebuild after the opponent’s first stabilization.

It is this complementary nature that motivates the choice to issue two bans.

Furthermore, a single ban would simply have shifted the deck’s uncommon slots toward the remaining option, resulting in only a partial impact on the deck.

Kuldotha Rebirth was also considered as a potential ban. However, the card has relatively little impact in the early turns when it is not paired with a pump effect or haste. Since Rally at the Hornburg offers similar mechanics, we believe that banning Kuldotha Rebirth would not have had a sufficient impact.

Among the solutions considered to address the Kuldotha archetype, we considered unbanning Krark-Clan Shaman. We believe this would not solve the current issue and could instead create a rock-paper-scissors situation in which playing Krark-Clan Shaman would become necessary to compete with Kuldotha.

The new banlist will already introduce two bans and two unbans, and we expect the environment to change over the upcoming months. We want to observe how Kuldotha and other aggro decks adapt to these changes, and perhaps see other archetypes emerge that had previously been disadvantaged.

We believe that the presence of Krark-Clan Shaman, whether its impact were positive or negative, would significantly affect the metagame, particularly when it comes to aggro decks. In order to finally allow an environment no longer dominated by Kuldotha to develop, Krark-Clan Shaman remains banned.

These four changes should inevitably reshape part of the current landscape.

Weakening Kuldotha could create more room for strategies that are currently held back by its speed and pressure. Conversely, the return of Feywild Caretaker and Force of Will could allow new strategies to emerge, or bring back builds that are currently less prominent.

It would nevertheless be difficult to predict exactly how these changes will affect the metagame.

As always, we prefer to let players experiment and see what actually emerges from the upcoming events before drawing any conclusions.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who continues to organize Peasant tournaments, regardless of their size.

Gro’Pez is obviously one of the highlights of the year, but the format’s continued vitality relies just as much on the regular events held throughout the year, both online and in person. We are thinking in particular of communities that manage to keep regular events going, such as the one in Groningen, as well as everyone who organizes local events and helps keep Peasant alive.

The next major event on the calendar will now be the French Cup, which will also be the first major opportunity to observe the format under this new banlist.

Until then, we hope these changes will encourage players to try new things, bring some old decks back, build new ones, and continue exploring the format.

And regardless of the results, above all, we hope everyone continues to enjoy playing and contributing to the Peasant community, both online and around the tables.