Banned and Restricted Announcement – May 18, 2026

I don't understand the reasoning on Lotus Field, and the complete lack of discussion about Stormchaser's Talent. The later was one I really wanted to see hit, regardless of UR's position in the meta. It just creates really unfun play patterns that I'm super tired of seeing.

Lotus Field getting removed because of worries about Amulet Titan after the Phlage ban seems kind of premature too.

To continue to improve the experience for all players, we are releasing our next iteration of Brawl matchmaking on Tuesday, May 19. This will be an experimental and major change to how Brawl matchmaking works so that it prioritizes finding opponents within similarly matched commander tiers disregarding the skill level of the opponent. We expect this change will increase the number of matches of similarly powered commanders while maintaining reasonable matchmaking times. With stricter commander-based matchmaking, we aim to pair players with similar expectations against each other and allow more space for experimentation. This is an intentional change to make unranked Brawl less competitively focused.

Interesting tidbit about Brawl, I always liked it for an easier buy-in via singleton and the ability to play Commanders I didn't want to commit to in paper, but there was a very wide range of power levels.

Wow, I was expecting no changes so quite a list!

Gotta read through all of their reasoning before I comment further, but looks like it'll be a shakeup for a few formats

Edit: I forgot Cori-Steel Cutter was even legal in Pioneer so not surprised it got hit. Not crying over Phlage, was always busted and maybe this will give us more interesting Boros/x decks. Lotus Field is ???, I don't think I know enough about Amulet Titan to weigh in on this ban. Will be interesting to see if the Violent Outburst unban brings back Rhinos as a deck, I can see Living End becoming much more meta now at least. Jitte is really interesting, I don't know what decks want it but it seems like it could bring some new strategies to the front. And Pauper seems good, unsure if Bonder's Ornament will do nothing or need to be rebanned, but it's worth seeing how it shakes out.