5.21.03 

Important Rules Announcement

Well, with the summer events breathing down our necks the PEZ Council has gotten together and put forward a list of Banned, Restricted, and Uncommon cards. Let’s take a moment and look at the list:

Banned:

Ali From Cairo
Bazaar of Baghdad
Berserk
Candelabra of Tawnos
Diamond Valley
Juzam Djinn
Library of Alexandria
Mana Drain
Mishra’s Workshop

 Restricted:

None

Uncommon:

Strip Mine

If you will notice, the Banned list is all the most expensive cards available to the set. From the beginning, PEZ was criticized for allowing players access to these super expensive cards. While it proved difficult to settle on a bright line price cap it was clear that a number of cards simply weren’t part of the format based on their price - $300 decks just don’t seem right for PEZ.

In addition, there were a few cards on the banned list that caused other concerns. Library of Alexandria was the clear front-runner here as one of the top decks from Gen Con ran 4 copies last year. The power of the Library was simply amazing, taking the Libraries out of the deck made it Tier 2 at best rather than Tier 1. Berserk was also seen at Gen Con last year and, while not good enough for a top finish, was a very strong card in the field. Still, for this initial list, price was the greatest factor and these limited bannings will help to keep the format pure.

Little impact will be felt from the banned list since few of these cards had been played and very few Magic players have the means to add them to their PEZ decks. The change of Strip Mine from a Common to an Uncommon, however, will be major. While dealing with this card we looked at a number of options and even some thinking way outside the box. In the end, we decided to make it an Uncommon. This will still allow players to include up to 4 in the deck but will make them compete with other Uncommons for the limited number of slots. Strip Mine was fast becoming an automatic addition to every deck and this will really make players think about adding it. The best part, I have found, is that there really are builds where Strip Mine in the Uncommon slot is worth it – it will be interesting to see if deck builders this summer will shy away from it or accept Strip Mine in its new role.

What about all the other cards that are a problem? Well, we did look at a lot of other stuff and there are some pretty strong feelings on the council. There are certainly some cards that we have all agreed to watch very closely but instead of issuing a watch list we offer the following: we will be watching everything. As a whole, we felt that there have been too few high profile tournaments for us to make blanket decisions. We will be carefully examining how things play out at Origins and at Gen Con and will issue an updated list after these events.

Well, there you have it straight from the horse’s mouth! I will try to get my act together and post another article soon since I skipped last week and I promise the next article will have some decks. See you all soon and thanks for the e-mails!

Jason Chapman – chaps_man@hotmail.com