MODERN B+R: BANS AND UNBANS!!!
RIP PHLAGE AND LOTUS FIELD
VIOLENT OUTBURST AND JITTE ARE FREE!!!
Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury is banned. Lotus Field is banned. Violent Outburst is unbanned. Umezawa's Jitte is unbanned.
By and large, Modern has looked fun for a while now, with a handful of decks finding success at the top of the metagame, each taking turns at the top of standings at a clip we generally like to see.
So why ban something?
Over the last couple of years, Boros Energy has been a deck that's seen consistent success, floating around the top three most-played decks in the format. In online play, we've seen Boros Energy steadily climb in metagame share, with fewer and fewer decks able to compete with it. For a time, we saw a few different versions of Boros Energy that mixed in new colors and tech, but lists have largely solidified around versions like the above list. We believe this is in part to the rate of the combo between Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury and Arena of Glory.
These two cards together hang over games and threaten a bunch of face damage or to distribute two of Phlage's Titan triggers from the graveyard. The rate of this pair has led to the deck playing progressively more copies of Arena of Glory over time, which then makes it harder to include more cards of colors that aren't red. Our decision to remove a card from this pair (in lieu of attacking another part of the deck) is because this consolidation of variation hasn't been localized entirely in Energy variants. We've also observed that most aggro and midrange decks in the format either adopt the combo or almost disappear from the metagame.
We think the aspirational synergies that Arena of Glory offers with cards like Scion of Draco and Quantum Riddler are things that lead us to preserve it over the Elder Giant. This led us to the belief that we needed to act and that Phlage was the card to see to the door.
Phlage isn't the only card being added to the Modern banned list, however.
Amulet Titan has seen a good bit of success in the last eighteen months or so, with most of that success being concentrated in tabletop play. The version of the deck widely considered to be the strongest is one that uses a combination of Lotus Field, Aftermath Analyst, and Shifting Woodland. Once it's established said loop, it can put all the lands in its deck onto the battlefield, in its owner's hand, or leave them in the graveyard if need be. This provides infinite mana and infinite channeling of Boseiju, Who Endures and Otawara, Soaring City. The path to get there can frequently involve extremely complicated and, more importantly, non-deterministic lines of play that are a nightmare for tournament logistics.
Even looking past the details of tournament logistics, Lotus Field adds very meaningful power to the Amulet Titan deck. It allows the deck to begin executing its combo from fewer resources than it otherwise would be able to, as it's the only land in Modern that can tap for three mana without needing several other cards to be involved. This ends up mattering in patterns of play involving Scapeshift and an Amulet of Vigor.
We perceive removing Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury as a meaningful hit to a few of the strongest decks in the format. We were already concerned with the power level of Amulet Titan coming out of the previous round of Regional Championships and believe Modern will be more fun to play without this version of Amulet Titan existing. We take bans against historically iconic archetypes very seriously and don't want to outright kill the deck. This move is meant to de-power the deck in a direction that addresses some other pain points we had identified in the past.
Both moves above are for the sake of modulating power in the name of making the format more fun. Cutting in the other direction, we also have some unbanned cards to talk about:
Violent Outburst was initially banned in a very different version of Modern, just a hair over two years ago. At the time, it was in a pre-Modern Horizons 3 world. Underworld Breach; Grief; The One Ring; and Jegantha, the Wellspring were still legal, and we hadn't seen the shake-up that came with unbanning Mox Opal, Green Sun's Zenith, and Faithless Looting. There have also been some extremely potent hate cards for Cascade decks printed in the time since, including Consign to Memory and Vexing Bauble. We believe the gap between the previous version of Temur Rhinos that existed in early 2024 is closer to an appropriate power level for today's Modern. Lorwyn Eclipsed giving Living End a shot in the arm has largely also seemed to be positively received by the community, which has us interested in showing the archetype a bit of love.
We want Modern to be a place where people can fall in love with archetypes, master them, and find success. Unbanning Violent Outburst is certainly risky given the recency of its ban, but we believe there are very clear upsides to these sorts of decks existing in Modern and are happy to take a calculated risk here.
After about fifteen years, we can finally tick the "Number of Days Umezawa's Jitte Has Been Legal in Modern" counter up to one. When Modern first became a sanctioned format, it had about 20 cards on its banned list, including Jitte. Magic has changed a lot since 2011. We've also seen players happy to play with the card in formats like Legacy and Cube. We hope that this unban will inspire people to try out more combat-oriented decks or breathe new life into Stoneforge Mystic decks that have been on the fringes of Modern for a few years now.
We've generally been hesitant to unban the card in Modern because it has some play patterns that are … unsavory, to say the least. That said, community sentiment on the card has generally slanted positively. We also like the incentives of the card even if the rewards aren't our favorite.
Ultimately, Modern is a strong format that can absorb a lot, both in terms of power level and tolerance for novel play patterns. We hope these unbans inspire players and make people happy to experiment in Modern.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/banned-and-restricted-may-18-2026