The March of the Machine is upon us. Magic: The Gathering's upcoming expansion has started early access on Magic: The Gathering Arena, with players able to test drive the new cards. However, there's one returning card from Modern Horizons 2 that players won't be able to use in Arena's Historic format.
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer has been reprinted in March of the Machine as one of the many Multiverse Legends. But prior to March of the Machine's early access period. Wizards of the Coast announced that Ragavan was being pre-emptively banned from Historic. Ragavan will remain legal in March of the Machine's limited formats like draft and sealed, but he's not legal in Standard and he's banned in Historic.
A controversial card ever since he was first printed in Modern Horizons 2, Ragavan has already been banned in Legacy where cards like Daze and Force of Will make him an almost impossible threat. "Because of the high power level and efficiency of Legacy's card pool," wrote Wizards of the Coast at the time, "early mana and card advantage can take over a game even more so than in other formats."
Even though Daze and Force of Will don't exist in Historic, it seems likely that Wizards still has similar concerns for Arena's Historic format with the return of Ragavan.
However, fans have noted that Historic offers Magic a unique opportunity to rebalance cards after they've been printed--it's one of the selling points of MTG Arena, after all, that cards can be tweaked rather than banned. Arena game director Jay Parker addressed this controversy on the Magic Arena subreddit.
"I was a big fan of New Historic, and I keep pushing for more of that. But we all know that Ragavan would have torn the format up and needed to be banned," Parker explained. "And I think that whole process would have created more net frowns than smiles."
Earlier in the same thread, Parker also addressed the controversy as to why Ragavan is considered a Multiverse Legend after being available for less than two years.
"Ragavan's a really interesting case there and has caused a decent amount of internal debate on where the ‘iconic’ line should be. On the one side are people saying ‘A card less than two years old can't be iconic, and it's more fun to build a version people can play with.’ On the other side are people saying, ‘But Monkey!’" He said.
"Both sides raise good points and, at least for now, we're staying away from rebalancing it."
Might we get another Ragavan-like card? Modern Horizons 3 appears to be on the table, judging by recent comments made by head Magic designer Mark Rosewater. He said that both Modern Horizons "were pretty successful," so it's just a matter of time until a third one arrives.