Banlist (Current) (Card List)

Cards that should be banned that weren't in 2004:

Flash: Back in 2004, the rules were the creature never hits the battlefield if you fail to pay 2. Under current rules, the card combos with Academy Rector, Symbiotic Wurm, and Penumbra Wurm.

Imperial Seal: Both Demonic and Vampiric present the problem that literally every archetype is going to want access to them, but only combo decks are really going to be able to use them effectively. Suddenly all the games that are randomly lost to a storm player not being able to get Hellbent for Infernal Tutor vanish when all of them turn into Demonic. Imperial Seal is the same thing, only a little worse. If Ancestral Recall were a sorcery, it would still be busted.

Mystical Tutor: was banned mostly for its applications with Reanimator, but the fact that it splashed over to every other combo deck certainly factored into the decision on the card. The problem with Reanimator is that it was such a consistent deck that it often put people into a game state where they were never able to cast a spell and that isn't a deck that should be at the forefront of competitive decks.

Survival of the Fittest: "Survival of the Fittest decks were outperforming other decks by 2010. This caused the competitive format to become significantly less diverse. Survival is a card that gives the decks a lot of resilience to potential answer cards, while still enabling a toolbox to answer other decks. Some combination decks fail when they draw cards intended as answers to opponents' decks instead of cards that are part of their winning combination. However, with Survival of the Fittest on the battlefield, a drawn incorrect answer card can be replaced with the correct creature in the deck for one mana."

Time Vault: Gone through many errata changes, but currently goes infinite with Voltaic Key or any other untap effect