Summary
Magic: The Gatheringhas announced that the Modern Horizons 3 card Cranial Ram has been outright banned in Pauper a whole week before the set is due to hit store shelves.
The release ofMagic: The Gathering’s Modern Horizons 3 setis right around the corner, officially hitting store shelves on June 14, so you’d have assumed that all the tinkering was done with until launch. That doesn’t appear to be the case though, as it has been announced by Magic designer and Pauper Format Panel member Gavin Verhey that a card called Cranial Ram that will be included in Modern Horizons 3 has been banned in Pauper before release.
Verhey announced the banvia his personal Twitter account, and went into further detail ina blog post on the official Wizards of the Coast website. In the post, Verhey tries to ease worries by explaining that this is “a very rare and special exception” of a card being banned before release (with Lutri The Spellchaser being banned in Commander before the release of Ikoria in 2020 being another recent example) and fans shouldn’t expect the pre-ban of Cranial Ram to affect the handling of the format in the future.
Why Has Cranial Ram Been Banned In Pauper?
One of the chief concerns surrounding Cranial Ram is how similar it is to other cards that had to be banned in Pauper in the past. Verhey mentions that both Cranial Plating and All That Glitters (which was included in last month’s ban announcement) have been banned in the past due to their ability to hit hard and play patterns that “aren’t very enjoyable.”
Therefore, it makes sense for Cranial Ram, a card that functions almost identically to those two, to be banned before launch, though Verhey is aware of how unpopular pre-bans can be.
While Verhey admits it’s usually better to see how a card performs in a certain format before banning it, upcoming tournaments shortly after the release of Modern Horizons 3 make that a little tricky. Magic Online Creator Showdown uses the brand-new Pauper format and takes place a single day after Modern Horizons 3 launches, meaning the tournament would likely be full of blue, black, and red Grixis Affinity decks with Cranial Ram (and therefore not a great showcase) if the card wasn’t pre-banned.
Is it enjoyable for everybody to have to warp their deck around fighting Cranial Ram? No.
With more Pauper tournaments shortly after that, it made sense to ban Cranial Ram before release instead of having several tournaments dominated by the card, only for it to be inevitably banned a week or two later.
Either way, at least Cranial Ram can still be used in other formats, like Modern, Vintage, Legacy, Commander, and so on, so just don’t go diving into Pauper if you want to get your Ram on.
