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Historic is one of the exclusive formats found inMagic: The Gathering Arena, and includes every card ever released on Magic Arena, including digital-only cards, digital remastered sets, and any traditional Standard release. It is considered a living format, meaning that cards within it could be altered however Wizards of the Coast sees fit.
As with everyMagic: The Gatheringformat, Historic has its own banlist to keep the format in check and healthy. Historic is an eternal format, meaning no cards rotate from it. As such, Historic’s banlist is fairly large since there’s been plenty of powerful cards released in Magic Arena (largely thanks to bonus sheets).
Field of the Dead
Harbinger of the Seas
Show and Tell
Winter Moon
Wooded Foothills
Currently, there are57 cards banned in Historic. Themost commonly banned type of card are ones that can be cast for free.Historic tends to avoid making those cards legal in the format, with all of them having been pre-banned.
Why Are Cards Banned In Historic?
There can be a handful of reasons why a card is banned in Historic.If a cardcan be cast for freeby an alternate cost, they are nearly always banned. This effect is simply not one the Arena developers want in the format, with the Flare cycle from Modern Horizons 3 and the envoke Elementals from Modern Horizons 2 all being pre-banned in the format.
The only spells that can be cast for free that are legal in Historic are Mindbreak Trap and Archive Trap, and both cards require your opponents to have done a specific action in order to do so.
Low-mana combo piecesare also consistently banned. Cards like Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, and Channel were all pre-banned because of how easy it is to win the game the turn you cast them (as the Timeless format has shown). While combo decks are fine in Historic,uninteractive combo decks that win with just two cards by turn three are not.
Historic is a very fast format, butone-mana staples are often on the chopping block. Brainstorm, Lightning Bolt, Land Tax, and Swords to Plowshares are all amazing cards that require little investment. Giving decks these tools would make them too powerful, and are kept out of the format.
Nerfs Vs Bans
Historic is unique inthat it doesn’t always ban powerful cards, and instead nerfs themto make their power level more in line with the rest of Historic. This is often done by eitheraltering its stat lines, changing its mana value, or making its abilities weaker. Historic began rebalancing cards after the introduction of the Alchemy format. Previously, cards were only banned.
If a card has been rebalanced, it will have the Magic Arena logo in the top left corner of the card right before its name.
There are a handful ofpreviously banned cards that were nerfed and made legal in the format again. Some examples include Teferi, Time Raveler, Omnath, Locus of Creation, and Fires of Invention. Although, many nerfed cards proved to betoo weak to make major splashes in the Historic metagame.
While card bans have become rarer since the introduction of rebalances, they still occur.If a rebalance would alter a card’s identity too much, a ban would take place instead. For example, Brainstorm could be nerfed and brought back into Historic, but Brainstorm is such an iconic card that the developers wouldn’t want to alter it.
Newer cards tend to be rebalanced, as they haven’t been around a long time like Memory Lapse or Time Walk have to carve out an identity.If a card is rebalanced, its rebalanced version is all you may play in Historic, regardless of whether the card was nerfed or buffed. The only place to play the original copy is in the Timeless format.
