Wizards of the Coast refuse highly-requested early ban for MTG Nadu card

Nadu, Winged Wisdom has been causing players problems and dominating the Magic: The Gathering competitive scene. Now, Wizards has announced that Nadu will not be on the receiving end of an emergency ban. 

Modern Horizons 3 proved a worthy successor to past Horizons sets, thanks to the wave of extremely powerful cards it introduced to Magic: The Gathering’s formats. 

From hyper-powerful one-drops that have exploded in price following the set’s release, to dozens of powerful new Eldrazi cards that have put the archetype firmly back on the map. 

Still, there’s one powerful card that has come to define Modern Horizons 3 more than any other, Nadu, Winged Wisdom. 

This Simic card isn’t a tremendous threat in combat but allows almost unparalleled card draw with ease, especially when paired with Equipment with 0-cost Equip abilities.

Nadu allows players to filter through their whole deck with very little difficulty, either searching for win-cons like Thassa’s Oracle or amassing the perfect hand to close out the rest of the game. 

WotC

While the initial buzz around Nadu was strong, its power proved to be no joke almost as soon as Modern Horizons 3 was released, with very few effective counters available for the highly consistent deck. 

Nadu, Winged Wisdom has proven to be a terror in the Commander format, but the real issue with that card is in Modern, Standard, and other competitive MTG formats. 

Nadu is not only an exceptionally strong pick in casual Magic and tournament settings, but often the only correct choice in the competitive environment.  

Tournaments like Pro Tour Modern Horizons have seen a startling majority of final brackets dominated by this card, with some cases having more than half of the top 8 finalists using some form of Nadu deck. 

Despite Nadu’s potential to render Magic’s current formats stale, Wizards of the Coast have confirmed that there will be no emergency bans deployed to deal with the card. 

As already confirmed by Wizards of the Coast, Magic’s next official Banned and Restricted announcement will be coming on August 26 – and they’ve declared that the date for the next Banned and Restricted announcement will not be changed, and there will be no off-cycle bans issued. 

Sticking to pre-announced dates grants Magic players a degree of stability and confidence that what they have built won’t be snatched out from under them with no warning. 

However, players still have – at a minimum – an additional month of Nadu’s domination to deal with due to the lack of off-cycle bans.  

Hopefully, once Bloomburrow debuts, MTG players will have a host of powerful new deck options to choose from, supplanting a format so heavily weighted towards one card. 

Given the card’s absolute dominance and extremely consistent performance, it’s only a matter of time until Nadu, Winged Wisdom is hit with a ban. But, for now, it looks as though August is the earliest that this problem card will be dealt with.