Just a little over one month after the Magic: The Gathering Marvel Super Heroes set released, Magic’s Play Design Team is officially banning and restricting one of its most powerful cards from two tournament formats.
The Fantasticar Is Banned and Restricted
Magic: The Gathering’s Marvel Super Heroes set arrived in early June and quickly became another major hit for Wizards of the Coast. The Universes Beyond IP crossover brought plenty of Marvel fans to the Magic: The Gathering scene and helped expand the popularity of the decades old collectible card game.
Now that the Marvel Super Heroes cards have been around long enough for a new metagame to shake out and for some major tournaments to take place, it has become clear that one card has become too dominant in the Legacy and Vintage formats. To help solve the metagame issue, Magic is updating the Banned list to remove the Fantasticar from Legacy play and to restrict it from Vintage play.
Here is the fully update banned list, as of August 11, 2026:
Standard
Badgermole Cub is banned.
Stormchaser’s Talent is banned.
Gran-Gran is banned.
Pioneer
No changes
Modern
No changes
Legacy
The Fantasticar is banned.
Vintage
The Fantasticar is restricted.
Pauper
No changes
Alchemy
No changes
Historic
No changes
Timeless
No changes
Brawl
No changes
Competitive Brawl
No changes
For those who aren’t familiar with the decks that have been using The Fantasticar, they essentially take advantage of fast mana cards and the multiple 0-mana spells available in the Vintage and Legacy formats to very quickly generate four 4/4 colorless Constructs in one turn.
The combo is a lot of fun for players who can pull it off, but it has become so dominate that it is ruining a bit of the competitive spirit of Legacy and Vintage tournaments at the moment. Hopefully these updates in the Banned list will help rebalance things and shake up the metagame.
Updates to the Banned list are not uncommon for Magic: The Gathering, so it isn’t too surprising to see the team responding so quickly to adjust the rules in response to the popularity of The Fanatasticar strategy.
Be sure to check back in the near future for more news and updates on Magic: The Gathering.
Magic: The Gathering is available now at local game shops and digitally through Magic Arena.
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