Changes Effective March 11th, 2019:
Mana Crypt increase from 2 points to 3 points
Personal Tutor decreased from 1 point to 0 points (REMOVED)
Below are the justifications for the following changes:
Mana Crypt – Increased from 2 -> 3
Watchlist post:
Spoiler Alert: Mana Crypt is busted.
Mana Crypt will be increase to 3 points within the following weeks, and this should come as no surprise to anyone who has played the format in the past year. Mana Crypt based midrange and aggro decks have been sitting on the highlander throne for a bit longer than the council is comfortable with, and we believe that increasing Mana Crypt is a great start. The inclusion of Crypt of the watchlist is just a formality at this point.
Voting 5-0 (Unanimous):
Adam Thorne: Yes
Benjamin Wheeler: Yes
Jeremy White: Yes
Nathan Hogman: Yes
Robin Sorensen: Yes
Those absolute mad lads, they’ve actually gone and done it. This change was a long time coming, as evidenced in the absolute domination of Mana Crypt decks in the format. Mana Crypt at 2 lead to archetypes looking to adopt a fast mana spread also having the options of additional technology, and over the years we’ve tried to make selecting points spreads a matter of choice and deckbuilding preference. We as a council feel that an increase for Mana Crypt will not remove it from the format, but will instead press players to making a decision when approaching deck construction.
Personal Tutor – Decreased from 1 -> 0 (REMOVED)
Watchlist post:
Personal Tutor has been in the discussion for removal for years, and with the ever increasing speed of the format, we feel as though Personal Tutor might prove a bit too slow and narrow to be worthy of a point.
Voting 5-0 (Unanimous):
Adam Thorne: Yes
Benjamin Wheeler: Yes
Jeremy White: Yes
Nathan Hogman: Yes
Robin Sorensen: Yes
Another huge shock to the system, Personal Tutor was near universally agreed upon as unplayable at 1 point. While this belief was even held within the council, having spent the last several years slowly chipping away at combo relics of metagames past, Personal Tutor just found itself at the bottom of the list for cards we were comfortable releasing into the wild. Personal Tutor is slow and Personal Tutor is narrow. However, Personal Tutor is also a tutor, and a cheap tutor at that. While the council does not believe this removal will cause any major issues down the line, we will be keeping our eyes on the already powerful archetypes open to slotting Personal Tutor into their 100.