the forerunners in the ban discussion/options/likely to be banned/however you wanna put it are probably Ragavan, Saga and Lurrus. I'd probably still prefer no ban tbh, but if a ban is really needed, I'd accept the bare minimum and ban Lurrus and just Lurrus. Then it gets rid of the homogenized deckbuilding of a lot of midrange type decks and almost encourages them to build differently because they don't have this ultra grindy card that restricts deck building choices to under 2 cmc. I would understand a monkey ban but I still hate seeing expensive cards being banned. I'm still not sure if it's power level warrants a ban, despite it being really good. I don't think Saga should get a ban as I appreciate the way it plays out
Arena is the newer online client. You can play standard and historic on Arena. Standard works the same as it did when you would have played, rotates in the fall with 2 years worth of cards in its full form. Historic is Arena's "eternal"/non rotating format. Basically the way it works, due to Arena being a pretty new client and not having much of a card pool, it consists of the standard sets that have existed since it was released, as well as a few "Jumpstart" sets, a few anthologies and a few remastered versions of old sets. The anthologies are where they handpicked a small set of cards each time and put them in arena, I believe there are 5? now. Jumpstart sets are larger and are sets you can draft. I believe the only remastered sets right now are Kaladesh remastered and Amonkhet remastered, where they condensed those blocks into 1 set.
MTGO is mainly played for modern right now, which is 8th edition forward. Pioneer is another non rotating format, Return to Ravnica forward. Pioneer is a relatively new format, introduced not long before the pandemic. It was pretty dead for a while due to the pandemic and the way WotC handled the ban lists but it's picking up again. There are also rental services you can use but modern decks post MH2 are pretty expensive.
For paper, commander/edh is a pretty popular format that is mostly casual but can be fun depending if you can find a group that matches the power level you wanna play at. Depending on current covid restrictions in your area, many places are back to running fnm, which can pretty much be of any format now. There are also products that can help you get started with however you choose to play
I was actually having a bit of banlist discussion with friends a few days ago and Jitte was a card that came up and we talked about a lot. My issue with it is that often games just become about it. It's either answer it right away or the benefit it gives even after only hitting once is just so good. It triggers off dealing combat damage, not just to players but to anything. Which is absurd.
I feel you could probably argue pod or twin for hours and still not change your mind just because of how entrenched either side is on their points of view. I feel both are probably fine. Twin does make weird lines of play, but I feel the format is faster now than it was 5-6 years ago. Yeah we've gotten better etb creatures but I feel pod probably is just fine and there are decks that can grind as well as it, especially Lurrus piles.
I don't think any cantrips should be unbanned, eve as a blue player. They're probably just too good, same as any of the storm rituals.
I'm still not 100% convinced anything needs to be banned. Ragavan is really good but not broken. Same with Saga and anything else from MH2. I'd entertain the idea of increasing the cost to move companions to hand or maybe banning the use of companions in some from but still allowing them to be used in the deck.
I feel that forum use in general has slowed down and moved to discord servers a lot, at least from what I've noticed. A lot of mtg discords I use are still relatively active.
The pandemic stopping in store play for so long didn't exactly help either
MTGO is mainly played for modern right now, which is 8th edition forward. Pioneer is another non rotating format, Return to Ravnica forward. Pioneer is a relatively new format, introduced not long before the pandemic. It was pretty dead for a while due to the pandemic and the way WotC handled the ban lists but it's picking up again. There are also rental services you can use but modern decks post MH2 are pretty expensive.
For paper, commander/edh is a pretty popular format that is mostly casual but can be fun depending if you can find a group that matches the power level you wanna play at. Depending on current covid restrictions in your area, many places are back to running fnm, which can pretty much be of any format now. There are also products that can help you get started with however you choose to play
I feel you could probably argue pod or twin for hours and still not change your mind just because of how entrenched either side is on their points of view. I feel both are probably fine. Twin does make weird lines of play, but I feel the format is faster now than it was 5-6 years ago. Yeah we've gotten better etb creatures but I feel pod probably is just fine and there are decks that can grind as well as it, especially Lurrus piles.
I don't think any cantrips should be unbanned, eve as a blue player. They're probably just too good, same as any of the storm rituals.
I'm still not 100% convinced anything needs to be banned. Ragavan is really good but not broken. Same with Saga and anything else from MH2. I'd entertain the idea of increasing the cost to move companions to hand or maybe banning the use of companions in some from but still allowing them to be used in the deck.
The pandemic stopping in store play for so long didn't exactly help either
I’ll be locking it