This scheduled banned and suspended announcement was originally planned for publication on May 2 with consideration to the possibility that Bravo, Star of the Show may have attained Living Legend status by that time if he were to win a certain number of premier events during April. After the weekend just past, Bravo is unable to reach the 1000 point threshold to become a Living Legend by May 2, so we are bringing this announcement forward to provide Pro Tour New Jersey competitors clarity as to what the format will be for this landmark event.
Please note, that although this announcement has been brought forward by a week, the effective date of these changes remains May 2, 2022, consistent with the original timeframe of when this scheduled banned and suspended announcement would take place.
Classic Constructed
The following changes are effective from May 2, 2022:
- Awakening is banned
- Autumn's Touch is suspended until Bravo, Star of the Show becomes Living Legend*
- Bloodsheath Skeleta is suspended until Viserai, Rune Blood becomes Living Legend*
- Seeds of Agony moves from banned to suspended until Chane, Bound by Shadow becomes Living Legend*
*Suspended cards may be unsuspended earlier than the specified time frame
Classic Constructed changes
The Everfest Classic Constructed competitive season has largely distilled down to Bravo, Star of the Show vs Prism for the accolades, with Viserai playing a cameo role.
The win percentage data that we have from over 250 events across ProQuest season 1, Battle Hardened, and Callings, show that Prism has a reasonable mix of favorable and unfavorable match ups, and has largely achieved the level of success she has due to Bravo's high representation and her seemingly unique ability to put him in his place. For this reason, we are making no changes that directly impact Prism's deck construction.
Viserai is in a strange place, where he has a relatively low tournament win % due his unfavorable match up vs Bravo, but he has proven potent at dispatching most other heroes in the format. The data we have leads us to believe there is a high risk that Viserai becomes the next overly dominant hero in the wake of Bravo being tamed. Even under the status quo, Viserai is acting as a gatekeeper to other aggressive decks, who struggle to race the power of Skeleta plus Sonata. For this reason we are suspending Bloodsheath Skeleta until Viserai attains Living Legend status, or earlier if there were reason to believe it would be positive for Classic Constructed for it to return while Viserai was still legal.
Awakening has fallen into a place where it single-handedly trades for the most explosive turns an opponent can unleash, for little cost. Awakening effectively trades the time and resources an opponent spends setting-up their high impact synergies, for a devastating retaliation in the form of effectively a 2 cost Pulverize, Crippling Crush, or Spinal Crush. We acknowledge that the Calling Indianapolis winning deck of Michael Hamilton played no Awakening at all, and we believe that is because Awakening is actually at its worst in the current meta-game where Bravo needs to optimize his deck composition towards the Prism match up. With the banned and suspended changes today, we are hoping to see a more diverse range of proactive decks become viable tournament choices. Awakening remaining in the format, in our view, would be contrary to that objective.
Autumn's Touch is being suspended as a measure to pull back the consistency and increase the deck construction opportunity cost of enabling Bravo's hero ability. Nearly all Bravo decks play the maximum nine copies of Autumn's Touch. While they can replace the red and yellow versions with alternatives such as Evergreen and/or Break Ground, the trade-off of losing a point defense value is meaningful. Typically, Bravo decks are maxing out on all the blue earth attacks that cost 3. While blue Autumn's Touch can be replaced by another earth card, it won't be an earth card that can be revealed to Bravo's hero ability and then used to attack with carrying the Bravo buffs.
We understand that Oldhim and Briar are moderately affected by the suspension of Autumn's Touch, but are comfortable that both can adjust accordingly for the period of time that Autumn's Touch is suspended.
As we move into the new Classic Constructed format with these changes in place, we expect to see Bravo, Star of the Show continue to be a strong deck, at a power level that allows a wider range of heroes to compete alongside him.
With the recent introduction of the suspended list, we are moving Seeds of Agony from banned to suspended, with a duration of Chane being present in Classic Constructed.
Blitz
The following heroes, along with their signature weapon, have attained Living Legend status and are therefore no longer legal for official play as of May 2, 2022:
- Viserai
- Nebula Blade
The following changes are effective from May 2, 2022:
- Awakening is banned
- Heartened Cross Strap is banned
- Seeds of Agony moves from banned to suspended until Chane becomes Living Legend*
- Snapback is suspended until the next scheduled announcement following the conclusion of Skirmish season 5**
- Sonata Arcanix is suspended until the next scheduled announcement following the conclusion of Skirmish season 5**
- Stir the Aetherwind is suspended until the next scheduled announcement following the conclusion of Skirmish season 5**
The following change is effective from June 24, 2022:
- Stubby Hammerers is banned
*Suspended cards may be unsuspended earlier than the specified time frame
**Skirmish s5 is scheduled to conclude August 22, 2022
Viserai Living Legend roll of honor
Congratulations to all the players who became the arknight and won events with Viserai across Skirmish, Battle Hardened, and Calling events. Each and everyone of you have contributed to Viserai ascending to become the first Living Legend!
Calling Winners
Yuanji Li
Battle Hardened Winners
Brodie Spurlock
Joshua Bausch
Limbo
Skirmish Winners
Adam Fiffles
Adrian lee
Aidan Arruza
Aiden Harrison
Albert Schütt
Alex Slotnick
Alexandre Lefebvre
Andrew Nimeh
Andrew Padlesky
Andrew Prejean
Andrzej Poniatowski
Archer Taylor
Artur Dziadosz
Brandon Chow
Brian Reed
Brodie Spurlock
Bryan Knecht
Caleb Van Patten
Calvin Holt
Carter Barton
Chad Bortz
Chad Turner
Chen Han Yang
Chris Kern
Chris Ray
Christian Hauck
Christopher Monroe
Christopher Shreve
Chuck Cruz
Ciro Gambone
Cooper Templeton
Cosmo Hah
Craig Pollack
CYK Lionel
Daniel Mulato
David Watt
Dawid Dominiak
Dennis Pham
Derrick Corriea
Donovan Lemay
Dylan Thompson
Eduardo Francis
Edward Kim
Eric Hyneman
Eric Shoopman
Fabian Bayha
Filipe Camacho
Frank Hung
Gao Zhi-Peng
George Karampinis
Glenn Van Roey
Greg Mansfield
Gregory Radek
Guy Duparcq
Henry Criollo
Hunter Finkbeiner
Hunter Hill
Ian Holland
Jack Palen
Jacob Milam
Jacob Nickel
James Armstrong
Jamie Faulkner
Jarel Chia
Jesse Harper
Jimmy Nguyen
Joe Whetter
Jonas Benzarti
Juha Saarnilampi
Julia Happel
Justin Mooney
Justin Teague
Justin Wong
Kenny Thai
Kevin Lerens
Kristian Čurla
Lee Kimball
Long Dao
Lorenzo Miele
Lucas Macorano
Łukasz Cichecki
Łukasz Szczepanowski
Luke Harris
Maciej Iskierka
Marc SION
Mark Alvin Mendoza
Matthew Dilks
Matthew Foulkes
Matthew McInnis
Matthew W
Matthias Hittel
Michael Antunez
Michael Passer
Michael Thomas
Michał "siUa" Matusiewicz
Michal Bedzak
Nathan Lapham
Nicholas Kent
Nick Bova
Nils Büchner
Oscar Ojeda Gomez
Patrick Nelson
Paul Fortin
Paul van Gijssel
Paweł Ropa
Peter Buddensiek
Philip van Donselaar
Plamen Marekov
Porter Jones
Randy Wood
Raymond Chow
Robert Ramsey
Ryan Hulin-Bobart
Ryan Mound
Ryan Nelson
Ryan Shope
Sebastian Bednarski
Sebastián Marchante
Sebastien Buxcey
Simon Linabury
Skye Selbiger
Spencer Freeman
Steve Hwang
Steve Thompson
Suitirat Palakawong
Thibaut Clausse
Tho Bui
Thorsten Drescher
Tigh Ward
Tom Ward
Tony Mapelli
Tucker Campbell
Tyler Thao
Viliam Kubik
Vincent Lim
Vincent Yuen
Wojciech Klimczyk
Wynton Bedford
Yassine Echafai Tripiana
Yu Watermelon
Zach Cash
Zachary Gardiner
Zachary Spofford
Note - There are currently 14 stores than ran Skirmish season 4 events who have not reported their top 8 heroes. If your name is not on Viserai's roll of honor and it should be, please email op@fabtcg.com with details of the Skirmish event you won with Viserai.
Blitz changes
For the same reasons as Classic Constructed, Awakening single-handedly flips games for too little cost. Match up win % data we have from over 500 Skirmish season 4 events shows that Oldhim's win % against the field was the best in the format (even better than Viserai), and we believe Oldhim will continue to be one of best decks in the format without Awakening.
One of our objectives for Blitz is to see less games ending within the first 3 turns. Some cards that are reasonable in Classic Constructed with 40 life heroes, are not so in Blitz where their damage output contributes to games ending too quickly.
Sonata Arcanix is a card that is causing games to end faster than we would like to see. Sonata played for 0 and dealing 1 arcane damage is typically reducing a heroes life total by 5% at the cost of no cards, and usually with the upside of turning on other Runeblade effects such as contributing towards half an Embodiment of Lightning token with Briar, adding +1 power to Chane's Riftbinds and enabling Bounding Demigon, and turning on arcane damage conditional effects like Meat and Greet. Sonata has a high impact on a game played with young heroes, for very little cost.... and that's not even considering the powerful combo of Sonata and Bloodsheath Skeleta that would continue to exist even with the absence of Viserai from the format. These factors considered, we are suspending Sonata Arcanix and will review the status of this card at the time of the first banned and suspended announcement following the conclusion of Skirmish season 5.
We know there has been quite a lot of discussion in the community that Bloodsheath Skeleta should be banned in Blitz. We are taking the position at this time to leave Skeleta in the format with respect to Sonata Arcanix being suspended and Viserai attaining Living Legend status.
Kano is able to end the game as early as turn 1. While his win % across the Skirmish season wasn't at a level we consider problematic, we believe that forcing Kano to approach the game in a more restrained way is conducive to a better overall player experience. We are moving to suspend two pieces from Kano's repertoire to dampen his explosiveness. We will monitor the impact this has on Kano's overall playability and review the longer term status of these cards upon the time of the first banned and suspended announcement following the conclusion of Skirmish season 5.
Heartened Cross Strap is a no-questions-asked start in play one-turn-kill (OTK) combo enabler. While this card has not had a glamorous existence to date, we are confident Heartened Cross Strap will become a common center piece of OTK decks if it remains legal in the Blitz format. In support of slowing the format down, Heartened Cross Strap is banned.
Stubby Hammerers is an innocuous card that hasn't done much to date, outside of being a strong card in Monarch limited. As we discover new and exciting design space overtime, sometimes it causes old cards to do things that weren't intended at the time of their original printing. Stubby Hammerers falls into this category as a result of a very exciting and flavorful piece of design execution featured in Uprising. If legal in the Uprising Blitz format, Stubby Hammerers is a start in play combo piece that enables an OTK deck to function at a level of consistency above what we think is good for the game. In support of our general goal of curbing the power level of decks away from killing an opponent within the first 3 turns, we are preemptively banning Stubby Hammerers.
Next Scheduled Banned and Suspended Announcement
The next scheduled banned and suspended announcement is June 24, 2022.