Summary
Banned and Restricted announcements inMagic: The Gatheringcan be a rollercoaster of emotions. Sometimes, nothing happens, the meta is healthy, no one deck or card is dominating any formats, and sets have been balanced before their release.
And then, as such is the case with theAugust 26 Banned and Restricted announcement, there are waves of cards banned across multiple formats, with some cards desperately needing to be axed to keep the formats healthy. While there were some big shake-ups this time around, one of the larger bannings was of the mono-black powerhouse, Grief.
What Is Grief?
Grief is the black element of the cycle of Elemental Incarnations that came out of the Modern Horizons 2 set. When it comes into play, Grief forces an opponent to reveal their hand, letting you snag a nonland card from among them, andmaking your opponent discard that card.
While it normally costs four mana to cast, it comes with a built-in alternate casting cost, letting you exile a black card from your hand to cast it for free effectively.
Creature — Elemental Incarnation
Menace
When Grief enters, target opponent reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card.
Evoke—Exile a black card from your hand.
Evoke is a keyword originally from Lorwyn that provides an alternate casting cost for a creature. You have to pay a cost, in Grief’s case is exiling a black card from your hand, and in exchange, you get to skip by the mana commitment normally required for Grief. However, is you cast a spell this way, you have to sacrifice it as soon as it enters the battlefield.
What Was The Problem?
The problem comes from the fact that it is super easy to abuse this enter the battlefield ability. Grief was most commonly played in Mono-Black Necrodominance, Goryo’s Vengeance, Living End, Rakdos Midrange, and the deck that helped bring the Incarnations to popularity, the multiple variations of the Scam deck.
All you have to do is evoke Grief on your first turn, exiling a card you don’t really care about like Fell the Profane or Soul Spike, to get it for free. Then, depending on the deck of course, you’re able to either use a spell like Malakir Rebirth or Not Dead After All, to immediately return Grief to the battlefield. You can do this since the sacrifice trigger of the evoke ability hits the stack, giving you a chance to respond.
You sneak in a Not Dead After All, which gives a creature the ability to return to the battlefield if it would die this turn, also with a Wicked Role token slapped to it to give it an added bonus, and it’s like your Grief never died.
Once you move to Legacy, you get access to cards like Reanimate and Animate Dead, which let you just bring Grief back at any time you want throughout the game.
No matter the format you’re doing it in, Grief lets you rip two cards from your opponent’s hand and leave you with a 3/2 or a 4/3 with menace on your first turn. If you went first in the game, there’s very little your opponent can do to stop you, short of a Force of Will in their opening hand.
This problem was prevalent in both Modern and Legacy, creating a severe power imbalance within the first turn or two of the game.
So Why Was It Banned?
It just isn’t fun, also, it forces your opponent to start the game at a huge deficit compared to the amount of resources you had to spend.
Let’s compare Grief to other similar effects. Cards like Thoughsieze, Inquisition of Kozilek, and even Duress all have stipulations on them thathamper their discard effects. With the exception being Thoughtsize, which has you lose two life to pick a nonland card. Grief on the other hand, is an enter the battlefield trigger on a creature, which leads to the synergies with Not Dead After All effects.
So while a Thoughsieze is really good, you can realistically only do it once in a turn. Sure, you could flash it back with cards like Snapcaster Mage, but that takes a total of three mana and can’t be done until turn three. Grief you can get going on your first turn, putting your opponent to just five cards in their opening hand, and you start with a 3/2 creature with menace.
It’s just a little too good to keep in both Modern and Legacy. That’s not even taking into account if your opponent has to mulligan down a few cards to find a solid opening hand. If your opponent goes down to even six cards in their opening hand, you Grief them twice, and suddenly they are down to just four, keeping maybe two to three lands and whatever least valuable card they had in their hand.
All this led to Legacy and Modern formats that were being warped due to a very oppressive and impossibly unfun card that was exceptionally difficult to come back from.
