Banned and Restricted Update: Standard and Modern no changes, Legacy Top is banned, Vintage Gitaxian Probe and Gush are restricted

Amonkhet Tournament Rules Updates

It looks like there are some changes to tournament shortcuts, but at least for me the MTR page they link to still has the old version of the document

Still waiting on the CR updates..

I've seen arguments that having a control deck (Miracles) as the strongest deck in the format has been the main thing keeping degenerate combo decks in check

Was Top restricted before this in Legacy?

@JonTheMon Vintage is the only format with a 'restricted' legality, all the other ones just have 'banned'

Since the idea with Vintage is 'you can play all the cards' the only ones that are totally banned are ones with the Conspiracy type, that reference 'ante', physical dexterity cards (Chaos Orb and Falling Star) and Shahrazad. Everything else that is problematic only gets restricted.

Other formats don't have the 'you can play all the cards' philosophy so if a card is problematic in that format it gets banned completely.

In other words, Vintage is the only format that doesn't ban cards for game balance reasons

@diego Thanks, I can never remember which has restricted.

It looks like the updated MTR is working now. From the section on shortcuts

> If the active player passes priority during their first main phase, the non-active player is assumed to be acting in beginning of combat unless they are affecting how or whether a beginning of combat ability triggers. However, if the non-active player takes no action, the active player has priority at the beginning of combat. Beginning of combat triggered abilities (even ones that target) may be announced after any non-active player action has resolved

There is a similar change for leaving the 2nd main phase

What I'm gathering here is that priority order is effectively reversed when entering the Beginning of Combat step

What's odd is that NAP gets priority before triggers, but it's still technically in Beginning of Combat

Actually, the thing with the triggers make sense. If the NAP acts first in Beginning of Combat, then triggers are announced and resolved, that's functionally equivalent to NAP acting in response to those triggers

But the NAP is acting before the triggers are on the stack. So the targets could be different.

@JonTheMon I think the idea is that the triggers are on the stack, they just haven't been announced yet.

I think his point is that AP can choose trigger targets based on what NAP does or doesn't do when the triggers are supposedly already on the stack

@murgatroid99 That is slightly problematic, but the NAP can just make the AP put all their triggers on the stack properly and then act.

@diego Exactly. I think that balanced it enough

Obviously the trigger has to target something that was already on the field in beginning of combat, right?

I don't think there are any such triggers that are actually relevant

Actually, I take that back. Yasova Dragonclaw has one

I think the best ruling is that those triggered abilities can only have targets that were legal at the beginning of the step

That's the only ruling that makes sense according to the comp rules

It does make players remember some extra information in certain cases, but those situations should be very rare

Honestly, I would prefer if they would remove all of this shortcut stuff surrounding the main phase, and instead allow players to fend for themselves. I know it's tricky and will absolutely make some people feel bad when it happens to them, but I think that's a fair trade-off for having the rules be less complicated.

But I don't hate it either. I finally like the way they did it except for the caveat I just mentioned that has an obvious ruling that you mentioned.

I think it's really a question of what you want to optimize for. One thing WoTC seems to have decided is that players should not be required to understand the minutiae of priority rules to play the game, and all of the shortcut rules are basically designed to allow for that.

Commander/EDH Banlist Updates: Leovold banned, Protean Hulk unbanned