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The much heralded Banned and Restricted announcement has come and gone. While there is some immediate relief for Vintage and Legacy players from Lurrus, if you are a Standard player looking to avoid getting paired against a Companion deck anytime soon you are not going to be happy.
There was an interesting nugget buried in the last paragraph of the “Other Formats” section of the announcement in which Ian Duke said, “If we see signs of long-term health issues resulting from high metagame share of companion decks, we’re willing to take steps up to or including changing how the companion mechanic works.”
So what does that mean exactly?
Brian “BDM” Marshall had one easy suggestion on Twitter while Hall of Famer Zvi Mowshowitz prefers the nuclear option.
If you are playing with a companion you must put one card from your opening hand on the bottom of your deck. pic.twitter.com/wGaEMjSmvr
— Brian David-Marshall (@Top8Games) May 18, 2020
The two of them put on their snazziest R&D/Organized Play hats and triaged the different options which ranged from forced mulligans to killing access to sideboard during games to some kind of Bark in the Park alternative Standard format.
Zvi also talked about his Mono Green Stompy deck — Senior Stompy as BDM call it — and whether or not it could be a real deck in the metagame moving forward. Here are links to his deck and to a similar but more mid-range build that did well in the past weekend’s Redbull Untapped event.
https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/zvimowshowitz-05182020-the-return-of-senor-stompy
https://mtgazone.com/deck/mono-green-stompy-by-rint-red-bull-untapped-international-qualifier-1/
If you have any questions, feedback, or even an idea for a show topic you can find the hosts on Twitter at:
Brian David-Marshall – @Top8Games
Zvi Mowshowitz – @TheZvi
Michael Flores – @fivewithflores