Wake up babe, new Banned and Restricted List just dropped!

Alongside every set release we get a new B&R list, and while these updates typically don’t see any new cards added to Category 3 (the banned section), with the release of Distorted Reflections Lost and Thought is getting the hammer. Personally, I thought there was about a 50/50 chance it would get banned on this list, so I wouldn’t have been surprised with either outcome. Although I’m incredibly happy to see this card finally go. Let’s talk about it!

The Changes:

Lost in Thought - Banned

Polaris, Twinkling Cauldron - Errata

Tidestone Bovine - Category 1

Gaia’s Blessing - Off the List

Lost in Thought

First off, this card 100% needed to be banned for the health of the competitive environment. Decks abusing Lost in Thought for such incredible card advantage have been a mainstay in the metagame since its release over a year ago, so why did it take until now for the card to be banned? Let's start with taking a look at WotS’ reasoning:

“Lost in Thought has been a powerhouse card in almost every water strategy. These strategies have not been challenged as much as we'd hoped with the available cardpool. With the increased meta share of powerful graveyard strategies, and with the advent of DTR and its further support for graveyard focused decks, we are banning Lost in Thought, effective on July 25th. We hope that this ban will push the meta to be more diverse and healthy, by disabling water decks from generating undue card advantage. We will continue to evaluate the health of graveyard interaction broadly.”

On the previous June 10th Banlist, Lost in Thought was moved to Category 2:

“Lost In Thought was a card we had hoped would be better checked with the additional graveyard interaction in Abyssal Heaven. This card has proven to be powerful even against those cards, and allows strategies that maximize its potential to win any game through raw card advantage. While we do still notice a strong presence of this card, we will continue to look at how the meta develops before determining the future of the card on the watchlist.”

Originally added to the B&R in the Feb 10th update that saw major changes leading up to HVN release (Icebound Slam Ban & Baby Gray Slime Ban): 

“Lost In Thought has served as a key card for the water element archetype to be able to compete with advanced element decks. We will continue to monitor Lost in Thought's potency at generating value through the new wave of cards that interact with the graveyard being released in Abyssal Heaven. “

Putting these 3 updates together, we can see the very clear progression of the developer’s hope that the release of Censer of Restful Peace and Brackish Lutist, and the banning of Icebound Slam, would be sufficient to curtail the dominance of Water strategies, namely Water Mill decks. This is a really good approach to format design; Water Mill was an oppressively strong archetype during the Mortal Ambition season, so to provide balance they banned the main problem card and printed direct hate-cards to counteract the strategy. WotS recognized that the archetype could still be dominant because of Lost in Thought, so they put it on the Watchlist to let the community know they were keeping an eye on it.

Fast forward to June 10th, Water Pile hasn’t been incredibly meta relevant, but Fractals certainly has been, and lo and behold it makes incredible use of Lost in Thought to generate incredible card advantage over the course of the game. Taking a similar approach to banning Icebound Slam, WotS banned Dissonant Fractal, a key card in setting up the targeted mills and enabling Lost in Thought more easily while also providing incredible consistency to the powerhouse combo deck. They moved Lost in Thought up to Category 2, recognizing that Fractals might still be dominant and also that Genbu's metashare was rising, especially on the back of Jofacha's NA Nationals win. Fast forward a few weeks to the World Championship, and on Day 0 Genbu made up 43% of the Gauntlet meta. 43%!! Then in the World Championships themselves, Lost in Thought made up 50% of the decks, 25% each to Fractals and Genbu. TCG and Maindeck piloted Fractals to an absolutely incredible performance in the World Championships, earning 5 of the top 8 slots; while part of this is that Fractals is still just a really good deck, the raw card advantage that Lost in Thought provides is what enables Fractals to continuously make efficient trades without losing any resources. Even without Dissonant Fractal setting up Fractal of Rain mills, it's still quite common to resolve Lost in Thought for X = 3-4 many times throughout a tournament. 

Given these results, it's pretty clear that there is only 1 good option left to curtail the dominance of these water mill strategies, and that's to ban Lost in Thought. This is especially relevant looking at the card pool from Distorted Reflections; WotS also acknolwedged it in their statement, Distorted Reflections is adding even more graveyard based synergies.

And so after a year of meta dominance, the incredibly efficient water staple has finally been hit with the ban hammer. Looking forward, it's honestly kinda difficult to imagine how the lack of Lost in Thought will affect the format. But if you're new to GA and curious about how it affected GA's history, check back next week for The History of Water Pile where I break down the evolution of Water Self-Mill (commonly known as Water Pile), from Tonoris-Nico in Mercurial Heart all the way to Genbu a year later.

Polaris, Twinkling Cauldron

I certainly wasn’t expecting this change, and I’m really curious to see how Astra Arisanna will adapt over the coming months. Increasing the cost to 1 is a major nerf; since the deck already operated on relatively low influence, taking a -1 early to set up your Polaris counters is a huge set back. Wind Astra’s (which uses Spirit of Serene Wind, so you’re already lower on influence) previous best opener was to play Beseech the Winds T1 to level to Arisanna level 1, then grab Polaris. T2 get Ingredient Pouch, and then T3 you’re level 2 and starting to recoup your influence with Arisanna’s lvl 2 effect while generating plenty of Age counters. That line would put you on 5 influence T2, which would then be 4 influence T3 (drawing back to 5 w/ Ari 2). However, now that Polaris takes another card from you, this sequence becomes much, much worse, and effectively forces Wind Astra to take a 2nd off turn during its level up sequence. I’m curious to see how the deck adapts, and it’s certainly possible that Astra Ari will need to transition to Fire, which while generally a much worse deck due to not having Beseech, Fertile Ground, and 3 Visits; at least it has the influence generation to play the game.

One silver lining to this change though is that since Polaris is no longer a 0 cost item, it can no longer be destroyed by cards like Unbroken Mustang and Reduce to Ash, which is absolutely relevant in a number of matchups. Along this train of thought, the timing of this adjustment is curious as we just got Excalibur, Reflected Edge. While duplicating Polaris would've been undoubtedly incredible powerful, it's hard to say if it would've been problematic or simply just win more. The key thing to keep in mind is what matchups would it have actually improved, and did those matchups need to be improved. The interaction is something that Chess Club was keeping in mind and we had in the queue to test, though thankfully we hadn't gotten to it yet.

Tidestone Bovine

This change is interesting, and parallels Lost in Thought going to category 1 when Icebound Slam was banned. Bovine is an incredibly essential card for Water Pile decks by providing a neutral source of self-mill while also being an ally to interact with the board and a float itself if it gets milled. While I don’t foresee this card needing a ban anytime soon given the banning of Lost in Thought, I think it’s good that WotS is keeping the archetype on their radar as it has been continuously meta relevant, and at times oppressive, for the past year, and that is reflected in their statement:

“Tidestone Bovine is added to Category 1. Bovine has been a staple of many water strategies due to its consistency to fuel the graveyard and inflate the pool of floating memory far more efficiently than other sources. We recognize that this is not typically the power level we seek to design in allies that are repeat enablers. As such, we will continue to monitor this card in the upcoming meta. We hope that the ban of Lost in Thought is sufficient to hit the absurdly high card advantage potential of these strategies, but will reevaluate Tidestone Bovine and other water cards as we continue into the DTR meta.”

Gaia’s Blessing

This card is completely fine to come off the watchlist. Slimes has proven to no longer be an oppressive presence in the metagame (thankfully), so taking this off the watchlist to keep it clean and concise is perfect. 

Conclusion

I'm quite happy with this list; WotS addressed the problem in Lost in Thought and indicated that they are still keeping an eye on water pile by putting Tidestone Bovine to Cat 1. Bye bye, Lost in Thought.