May 25, 2010

Banned List Update 2

For the second time since I host this blog, there's been an update to the banned list. As of 14/05/2010 Berserk and Diamond Valley are no longer banned.

With Season 3 around the corner, we decided to take a good look at the banned list, particular those cards that were banned since the beginning. The unbanned cards are two of the cards that were on the list because of their price. We believe that that argument no longer holds, unless we also ban cards like Force of Will, Sinkhole, and a host of Portal 3 Kingdom cards. Unwilling to add those cards to the list, we asked ourselves what would happen if we took the expensive cards off the banned list instead.

In most cases, the cards are expensive for a reason. Cards like Library of Alexandria and Mana Drain are simply broken (or at least not costed appropriately), and would most likely have a negative impact on the peasant metagame. We are willing to give Berserk and Diamond Valley the benefit of the doubt however. Since Berserk is cheaper than Sinkhole and Force of Will, and Diamond Valley is not a 4-of, neither looks to be prohibitively expensive. We are confident that both cards will not be a requirement to enjoy, or indeed win, peasant tournaments either. More importantly however, powerwise they both seem to be on par with the best uncommons in the metagame.

Other than that, there are no changes to the banned list or the watchlist.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.