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Magic: The Gathering bans a slew of cards in Standard, including one of "the most fun" cards in the game

Mono-Red Aggro decks were all the rage at the 2025 Magic Pro Tour, and Magic: The Gathering hops to even the playing field with these new card bans

The art for Monstrous Rage, a Magic: The Gathering card — Image credit: Wizards of the Coast

News by Jules Chin Greene, Staff Writer

Published on Wed Jul 02 2025

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Just a few weeks ago, Ken Yukuhiro won big at the Magic Pro Tour at MagicCon Las Vegas thanks to his Mono-Red Aggro deck. The final matchup between Yukuhiro and Ian Robb prominently featured cards like Monstrous Rage, Cori-Steel Cutter, and Heartfire Hero - which led game designers at Magic: The Gathering to take notice of which cards are due for rotation out of the Standard format for gameplay.

The cards that are now banned from Magic: The Gathering's Standard format are as follows:

Cori-Steel Cutter
Abuelo's Awakening
Monstrous Rage
Heartfire Hero
Up the Beanstalk
Hopeless Nightmare
This Town Ain't Big Enough

In a video streamed on Magic: The Gathering's official Twitch channel, game designers noted that Cori-Steel Cutter was a "very clear and very obvious ban" because "it was powering this Izzet Prowess deck which really took the meta-game by storm." The Izzet Prowess deck had an "above 40%" play rate at the Pro Tour this year after dominating regional tournaments, so its time had come. For Magic's game designers, Cori-Steel Cutter had more of an influence than they would like to see within Standard.

Likewise, banning Monstrous Rage "was kind of a hard decision" because the card is "fundamentally the most fun" out of all of the banned cards. They banned it because it was making Red decks too strong and too powerful against creatures. (RIP to a legend.)

You can read up on MTG's reasoning for all of the banned Standard cards at the Magic: The Gathering site announcement here.

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Jules Chin Greene: Jules Chin Greene is a journalist and Jack Kirby enthusiast. He has written about comics, video games, movies, and television for sites such as Nerdist, AIPT, and Multiverse of Color.