MAGIC: THE GATHERING Updates the Ban List and Rules for Companions

Magic: The Gathering recently announced their new banned and restricted cards for different formats as well as a rule change. All in all, only two cards were banned: Agent of Treachery and Fires of Invention were banned in Standard format and suspended in Historic format. These cards are pretty powerful, so I’m not terribly surprised. You can find the full ban list on the official site.

These cards aren’t the only change the game has in store. MTG has decided to edit the rules for Companions. The team was seeing companion decks have too high win rates, and they wanted to work on making sure things weren’t too repetitive. Therefore, they have updated the rules to the following:

Once per game, any time you could cast a sorcery (during your main phase when the stack is empty), you can pay 3 generic mana to put your companion from your sideboard into your hand. This is a special action, not an activated ability. It happens immediately and can't be responded to. It can't be countered or stopped by cards like Phyrexian Revoker.

All of these changes are no in effect for the physical game and will be in effect via MTG Arena on June 4. Magic Online has the ban list enforced now with the companion rules going into effect on June 3.