Banned and Restricted Announcement

Oct 02, 2024 Bryan Gottlieb

Living Legend

The following changes to Living Legend are effective from Friday, October 4, 2024:

  • Kraken's Aethervein is banned.

Living Legend is intended to be the place where you can live out your wildest power fantasies, find the craziest combinations, and draw cards to your heart’s content… but even Living Legend has a line. Kraken’s Aethervein crosses that line.

In general, our stance is that every powerful interaction is supposed to have at least a small window to shine in Living Legend. If you figure out something absurdly powerful before everyone else catches on, you get rewarded with a smooth road to victory. As a deckbuilder, discoveries such as these are the ones I still revel in years later, sneaking it into conversation whenever I can that I was able to get a card banned.

While we considered a pre-emptive ban of Kraken’s Aethervein, we decided to offer that opportunity for discovery to Living Legend players with the release of Rosetta. In retrospect, this was a mistake. The power level of Kraken’s Aethervein was too obviously on display, the options for counterplay were too limited, and the gameplay was simply not interesting enough.

We apologize to our players. We also apologize to the host of this past weekend’s Pro Quest+, our friends at MinMaxGames. They have been vocal supporters of the Living Legend format and will have the opportunity to show off the format’s true greatness at Calling: Chicago, December 13-15.

Before that date, we will play the World Team Cup and a Battle Hardened in Osaka, as well as a Battle Hardened in Columbus, at which Living Legend must renew its commitment to providing exciting and diverse play experiences like those that were on display in tournaments around the world in Skirmish Season 9. For this reason, we have decided to deviate from our typical ban cadence and conclude the brief but memorable reign of Kraken’s Aethervein ahead of schedule.

Next Scheduled Banned and Restricted Announcement

The next Banned and Restricted Announcement will be on Monday, November 11, 2024 (United States time).