Apr 27, 2009
Banned List Update
There's been an update to the banned list. As of 01/04/2009 all the artifact lands are no longer banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen. To prevent Affinity from becoming the menace it was before the bannings in June last year, Cranial Plating has been banned. The organizers feel this should keep affinity in check, while allowing other decks (Esper, Neo Affinity) and/or interactions (Tinker Mage) to come forward. Disciple of the Vault has been added to the watchlist, as its interaction with sac outlets like Atog still raises questioning eyebrows.

Empty the Warrens has been removed from the watchlist. In the last six months, a healthy amount of storm decks have seen play, most of which chose to play the watched card. While the deck booked some solid results with at least one win and some high finishes, the peasant invite showed that a prepared field can easily deal with the card without clogging up sideboards. Two decks were played in a field of 16 players, neither of them made the top 8.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

A final change concerns Wizard's new Gatherer (click here to open), which brings a few relevant updates. Amongst others, Mana Crypt is now listed with rarity "Special", instead of "Common", meaning you're no longer allowed to play it in peasant.

Nov 14, 2009
Banned List Update
Yet again, there's been an update to the banned list. As of 14/11/2009 all the artifact lands are once again banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen. Despite all good intentions, Affinity has risen to the top again, and has been one of three tier 1 decks in the past half year. The lands were almost exclusively used in affinity, and using them in other strategies (such as Trinket Mage) hasn't been succesful. Instead of banning more pieces of the great artifact puzzle we decided that there is no love lost for the deck, and just rebanned the lands. We can merely learn from our mistakes, at least we tried.

Thopter Foundry has been a huge factor in the succes of the neo-Affinity decks, but without the lands we don't feel it is as dangerous anymore. Because the combo with Sword of the Meek (and Ashnod's Altar) still exist, we did decide to add it to the watchlist.

The second tier 1 deck has been Faeries. Basically there were two builds. One utilized Force of Will, a very powerful card to be sure. The other build abused Counterbalance. While the power level didn't differ much, the second build was considerably less fun to play against. In an attempt to revitalize the metagame and make it more fun we decided to ban Counterbalance.

The third tier 1 deck is Mono Black Control. The deck drifts in and out of competition, winning tournaments whenever aggro is the dominant archetype. In an attempt to make the deck more fair without neutering its core concept, we banned Skeletal Scrying. It is the only card in the metagame that consistently draws more than 3 cards, at instant speed, in a mono black deck. That gave MBC just a little bit too much reach, and we look forward to what uncommon MBC will play in its stead.

If you were thinking Demonic Tutor, think again. Another unfun deck, to play against at least, is the non-ineractive Grapeshot Combo deck. Demonic Consultation and Demonic Tutor were banned to make that deck less consistent in its draws, while at the same time making sure their storm count doesn't rack up as fast.

Two other popular combo decks, Dirty Kitty and ElfBall, were left untouched. They are a lot more interactive, and the past showed us that a wider range of decks can sideboard effectively against the two strategies. We are okay with combo decks, but they have to offer more interactivity and just a little bit less consistency to remain fun to play against.

Of course, banning the artifact lands has the side effect of other cards becoming much less impressive. As a result, Cranial Plating is unbanned as of 14/11/2009, and Disciple of the Vault has been removed from the watchlist.

We are eager to see if the bannings will have the desired results: a more varied metagame that is more fun to play than before. We do believe we made some steps in the right direction, neutering black-based Combo and MBC, and removing Affinity and Counterbalance from the metagame.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

May 25, 2010
Banned List Update 2
For the second time since I host this blog, there's been an update to the banned list. As of 14/05/2010 Berserk and Diamond Valley are no longer banned.

With Season 3 around the corner, we decided to take a good look at the banned list, particular those cards that were banned since the beginning. The unbanned cards are two of the cards that were on the list because of their price. We believe that that argument no longer holds, unless we also ban cards like Force of Will, Sinkhole, and a host of Portal 3 Kingdom cards. Unwilling to add those cards to the list, we asked ourselves what would happen if we took the expensive cards off the banned list instead.

In most cases, the cards are expensive for a reason. Cards like Library of Alexandria and Mana Drain are simply broken (or at least not costed appropriately), and would most likely have a negative impact on the peasant metagame. We are willing to give Berserk and Diamond Valley the benefit of the doubt however. Since Berserk is cheaper than Sinkhole and Force of Will, and Diamond Valley is not a 4-of, neither looks to be prohibitively expensive. We are confident that both cards will not be a requirement to enjoy, or indeed win, peasant tournaments either. More importantly however, powerwise they both seem to be on par with the best uncommons in the metagame.

Other than that, there are no changes to the banned list or the watchlist.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

Dec 31, 2010
Banned List Update
Only a minor adjustment to the watchlist, but worth noting anyway.

Because of the continued dominance of André's Dirty Kitty deck, we decided to put Empty the Warrens back on the watchlist. The card has been on and off the watchlist before, but before Zendikar the deck proved to be very beatable with some dedicated sideboard hate. Goblin Bushwhacker changed all that however, as the deck can now play the full set of Fecundities, and is far more lethal with 2/1 hasty goblins.

So far no one else has picked up the deck, and we think sideboards are not optimally equipped to beat the deck. If, however, more people start playing Dirty Kitty, and their overall performance takes on Affinity-era proportions (losses to only mirror matches and dedicated maindeck hate decks) despite proper sideboarding, we will have to take more drastic measures to ensure a healthy environment.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

Mar 7, 2011
Banned List Update 4
As of 07/03/2011 Empty the Warrens is banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen. At the same time, Counterbalance, Darksteel Citadel, and Demonic Tutor will be unbanned. Invigorate will be added to the watchlist.

So, the Banned List Update is back with a vengeance. Last year we had a quick update when we added Empty the Warrens to the watchlist. The deck has been dominating the last two tournaments as well, even though the January tournament was ultimately won by another deck, it has pocketed another win in February despite proper sideboarding and maindeck hate, this time in the hands of another player. We promised to take more drastic measures last year in case of this exact scenario, and we like to keep our promises. It's as simple as that really.

Invigorate is added to the watchlist. We heard poison was wrecking the metagame in Germany, so we took a good look at poison. We believe that, since the deck is creature based, a proper control deck like MBC should be able to handle it. We did notice however that Invigorate is basically a free Giant Growth on steroids. The card borders on unfair, and we think it's even better than Berserk in poison decks. Until we learn more though, we can't really tell if it is too unfair, and that's why we've decided to add it to the watchlist.

Once again, we took a good look at the current metagame and the banned list to see if other adjustments were possible. It's no fun after all if it just keeps getting larger. The result is the unbanning of the three cards mentioned above.

Counterbalance has been banned for over a year now, and in that time, no really succesful blue-based control deck has managed to evolve. Since such a deck is healthy for the metagame, to keep the combo decks in check, we decided to give it another chance to shine. We fully expect the card to show up in succesful decks again, causing a good deal of groans and annoyed faces, but we also belief that the archetype it is played in should play a role in peasant again.

Darksteel Citadel has always been banned and unbanned together with the other artifact lands. We believe it doesn't help affinity much on its own, but it might help out metalcraft. The new mechanic offers a few saucy commons that can beat real hard real fast but just don't have the support right now. We hope Darksteel Citadel can provide that support without favoring one of the colors, and without enabling the affinity deck of yore.

Last but not least, Demonic Tutor will be allowed in decks again. It was banned primarily for its role in Grapeshot Storm, but since the printing of Goblin Bushwhacker, Empty the Warrens has become the faster and more consistent deck of the two. In addition, new lifegain spells (Lone Missionary, Rest for the Weary) have been printed that can really put a dent into Grapeshot's effectiveness. All in all, Demonic Tutor might enable less obnoxious, slightly slower combo decks to replace the void left by the banning of Empty the Warrens.

As always, feel free to comment, and happy deckbuilding. We hope you'll enjoy the new metagame!

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

Jun 5, 2011
Banned List Update 5
As of 02/06/2011, Invigorate is banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen.

We realize this banning comes short after the March bannings, but we did put Invigorate on the watchlist then. After only two tournaments we have to conclude that Invigorate is simply too strong in infect decks. Yes, an infect deck is still beatable, but you have to have a one-mana answer, because they can kill you on turn two. Black has good options that fit in black deck's strategies, but other colors aren't as fortunate.

We believe that, rather than let the metagame warp itself around these super-aggressive infect builds, it's better to eliminate the worst offender in the deck. This will slow down infect decks by a turn or two and give other decks the room to be somewhat more inventive with their answers.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

Nov 3, 2011
Banned List Update 6
As of 07/11/2011, Cranial Plating and Thopter Foundry are banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen. At the same time Ancient Den, Great Furnace, Seat of the Synod, Tree of Tales, and Vault of Whispers will be pulled off the banned lists and are, once again, legal to play at our tournaments.

So, what happened while this little blog didn't get updated? We rebranded our Peasant tournaments to Budget, and have been playing Pauper events for the last few months as an experiment. Our conclusion was that it is not quite as varied as Peasant, and certainly doesn't offer the same amount of build-around-me cards as Peasant. Starting this month we will be running Peasant events again. Playing Pauper did offer a few insights though.

One of our players pointed out (a while ago) that the Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek combo, while seemingly beatable, kept other control decks in check. Playing Pauper reinforced that impression, as that format has a wider range of control decks than our Peasant metagame had, while still having a lot of agressive decks. There doesn't seem to be a playable control deck that can handle both the early onslaught of the various aggressive decks as well as the inevitability of that combo. Once we knew we wanted to kill the combo, the question remained which one of the pieces we had to ban.

This is where our second insight helped us, namely that Affinity isn't a problem in Pauper. The artifact lands have been banned not once, but twice in the, I mean our little history of Peasant. The last few years of Magic have really enriched the metagame with numerous good cards and archetypes, as well as answers to decks that previously seemed unbeatable. When first we unbanned the artifact lands because of this, eventually a gross list incorporating the Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek combo proved to be so much better than anything else that we could bring to the table, that we couldn't think of any solution other than banning the artifact lands again. Our first reaction was to ban Sword of the Meek, but than we asked ourselves, is there a deck that wants to play Thopter Foundry without the Sword? We figured that, without artifact land in the equation, there is no such deck. Then we asked ourselves, do we want to bring back artifact lands? After all, affinity is, as I said before, not a problem in Pauper, and certainly not more explosive than the various infect decks that prompted us to ban Invigorate.

Once we decided it was okay to bring back artifact land, we knew Thopter Foundry was the card to ban. Of course, that meant Cranial Plating also had to go. In the end I think we have a list that more closely resembles the Pauper banned list, adjusted for Peasant concerns. I hope you will enjoy the changes to the banned list and the certain changes to the metagame it entails. Have fun!

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

PS. In an effort to clean up the rules section, I stopped chronicling changes to the banned list. I hope you can appreciate it.

Jan 9, 2013
Banning Update 7: Don't Fret
First of all, we would like to state that we think the current metagame is healthy, perhaps even flourishing. Therefore this banning update will not remove a card from the pool, instead it will add one. As per 01-02-2013, Skeletal Scrying will be unbanned.

From the moment we assumed the role of Peasant Magic organisers in Groningen we have said we like the possibilities of the metagame as is, however, over the months we have entertained the idea of bringing back cards that do not seem so unbalanced in the current metagame. Long and plentiful discussion have led us to the conclusion that Skeletal Scrying was previously banned because of an archaic metagame. Back in those days, the card advantage brought by the Scrying was deemed too strong, which back then it was. In these days, however, the metagame has evolved and gained in power and finesse. Currently, Skeletal Scrying will not be too powerful anymore, or so we envision.

The unbanning of a card that is no longer a threat to the metagame results in a lean banlist and adds to the credibility and clarity of the format in general. We felt that Skeletal Scrying was the odd man out in the banlist and therefore needed to be removed from it.

Johan and Siebe