Announcement Date: August 8, 2019
Effective Date: September 6, 2019
Standard format
No changes have been made to the banned card list for the Standard format.
Expanded format
Jessie & James (Hidden Fates, 58/68 and 68/68) is now banned in the Expanded format.
The list of banned cards for the Standard and Expanded formats can be found here.
Rule Changes
No new rule changes have been made.
Next Announcement Date: October 17, 2019
Details of Changes
No cards were banned from the Standard format. It will be an extremely rare occurrence for cards to be banned from the Standard format.
One card was banned from the Expanded format. The reasoning for this change is below:
Similarly to Delinquent, which was banned from the Expanded format earlier in the year, there are combos with Jessie & James that can discard a player's whole hand before they take their first turn—especially in conjunction with Weezing. When this kind of strategy is effective and can be executed successfully a high percentage of the time, it creates an unhealthy environment.
Tournament results and community feedback will continue to be analyzed to maintain a healthy play environment. In particular, the Expanded format will be aggressively monitored because there are so many cards and potential combinations available to use.