It’s happening! Vivi Ornitier is about to get banned from Magic: The Gathering Standard format.
Well, at least that’s what a recent blog post by senior game designer Carmen Klomparens on the Magic: The Gathering official site suggests. In it, Klomparens explains that Wizards of the Coast is moving up the announcement of the next batch of banned cards from Nov. 24 to Nov. 10.
Although she doesn’t explicitly confirm Vivi Ornitier from the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set is part of this list, it’s strongly suggested that the overpowered black mage is one of the cards that will be out of the Standard format sooner. “We believe that we will likely take action in November,” Klomparens wrote. “Vivi Ornitier is warping the Standard format and likely needs to go.”
On the other hand, Agatha’s Soul Cauldron might be safe for now, so other iterations of the Izzet Cauldron deck will still be an option.
Klomparens explains that the change of dates is not motivated by the impact of Vivi Cauldron, but because “we got our banned and restricted announcement timing windows wrong during this part of the year.” The situation, however, doesn’t change how the rotation of cards in the Standard format works.
Klomparens makes a good point in her blog post that other decks have space even though Vivi Cauldron is so strong, like the Mono-Green Stompy. Even so, the way Vivi Ornitier works feels unfair. I’m a Magic: The Gathering player who’s against the Universe Beyond sets, and as I’ve already said, I love Vivi. The unbalanced scenario this card has created for competitive players — let’s not even start talking about casual players who are massacred in Commander nights by the black mage — made its existence a general problem.
As the owner of two copies of Vivi Ornitier, I’m not worried about the potential money I’ll be losing when the price of this card starts to fall. As a Final Fantasy fan, my Vivi cards will always be a treasure of mine. However, as someone who’s been working on building a Standard deck, I know the pressure and concern the inevitable threat of facing a Vivi Cauldron in my local store puts on me. We can’t think that, because Vivi is out, the Standard format is free from any other game-breaking card like it. As Klomparens puts it, “Vivi Ornitier is a clear outlier, but the format hasn’t reached an equilibrium point yet.”
