Welcome back to another Gladiator Format Update. Today’s update will be a little strange, but we hope it will serve its intended purpose.
Banned List Update
Banned in Gladiator
Strip Mine
Legal in Gladiator
Field of the Dead
Effective - Monday, August 25
Discussion and Voting
The following is a breakdown of the cards that were discussed during this format update.
Strip Mine - BANNED
Strip Mine’s introduction to the Gladiator format caused immediate discussion, with many assuming that it would be a candidate for a ban. While targeted land destruction can be an important part of the game of Magic - and indeed, the Council believes that other versions of this effect would be a welcome addition to the format - adding Strip Mine would jump that effect all the way to one of its most poweful forms. Alongside this power, Strip Mine has a high potential of creating games of Magic that immediately end in an uninteresting fashion with little opportunity for strategic play. The Council believes that the negative play patterns created by Strip Mine largely outweigh any added gameplay it creates.
- Ellesandra - Yes
- Howdy - Yes
- JRandomHacker - Yes
- SeismicLawns - Yes
Field of the Dead - LEGAL
Field of the Dead was banned during a very different era of Gladiator because of its low cost of inclusion and difficulty of being answered. Since that point, Gladiator has changed significantly as a format - individually-powerful cards are now more common, and the overall speed and power of the format has increased. While previous re-evaluations of the banlist didn’t quite meet the bar to bring back Field of the Dead, we believe at this point that it can serve as a tool available to some decks as a specific strategic decision, rather than its previous state as a card that could be easily added to a deck without impact to the deck’s overall gameplan.
- Ellesandra - Yes
- Howdy - Yes
- JRandomHacker - Yes
- SeismicLawns - Yes
Looking Forward
This banlist update comes at a very unusual time. The Council conducted discussions about these cards as well as several others merely a few days before the announcement (and release!) of Arena Anthology 1 and 2. These discussions included re-evaluating the entire banlist alongside an overall look at the philosophy and design of the format. With AA1/2 making such significant changes, we have decided to restart those discussions under the new context, and plan on making a larger announcement with any potential changes alongside further clarification about our thoughts on the format. Without a specific timeline for that update, we have elected to go forward with the two changes we were most sure on to avoid leaving the format in limbo as discussions progress.
Thank you for your continued support and dedication to the Gladiator format.
See you in the Arena, Gladiator 💖