Riftbound Bans Huge Cards In Response To Lopsided Meta At Recent Major Tournament

Riven, Broken Blade Is Hit With Riftbound Ban Alongside Nine Other Cards There are no major surprises among the banned cards, and most fan concerns have been addressed by Riot. Published Nov 13, 2026, 12:00 PM EST Niall (pronounced Ny-ul) is a UK-based writer who has been writing about Magic: The Gathering throughout his entire career, with everything from new set breakdowns and individual deck guides to offering his opinions on the state of formats and the general direction of the iconic TCG. Niall also has a rich history covering triple-A releases, sports games, and PC hardware. We knew the news was coming, but it's still nice to see that the Riftbound bans that were just revealed have addressed many fan concerns with the game, especially following a hugely lopsided meta at the Riftbound European Regional Championship in Stuttgart last weekend. Riftbound game director Dave Guskin has revealed the 10 cards on the receiving end of the ban hammer, which are split between eight normal cards and two battlefields. The bans are the result of "a transition from all of our sets designed before the launch of the game to an age of Riftbound where our design, playtesting, and metagame are informed by all of you [the players]," according to Guskin, so let's take a look at the cards that are no longer legal in Standard and 2v2 Constructed play. 10 Riftbound Cards See Bans For The Long-Term Health Of The Game As we've already alluded to, these bans were expected after an announcement earlier this week by Dave Guskin, but they don't take effect until Monday, November 23, 2026. This means that any events taking place between now and the effective ban date can still include the listed cards. The cards included in the ban list are: Riven, Broken Blade Zhonya's Hourglass Stellacorn Herder Nocturne, Horrifying Rhasa the Sunderer Brynhir Thundersong Dazzling Aurora Baited Hook Emperor's Dais (battlefield) Star Spring (battlefield) Riven, Broken Blade was only just released as part of the Radiance set, meaning it's an almost instant ban for the overpowered legend. It was an absolute requirement, though, because the card accounted for almost half of the field in the recent European Regional Qualifier, and while it may not have won the event, it dominated every stage, even accounting for half of the deck in the top eight. Among these banned cards are cards that are powerful right now and others, like Baited Hook, that don't actively see a ton of competitive play but could have become imbalanced thanks to the other cards included in this ban list. This shows that the Riftbound team is thinking about more than just removing cards that are powerful right now, and they want to enter 2027 with a clean slate where the meta is much fairer, even if some legends are played more than others. Market Reacts To Riven Ban With no officially supported competitive Eternal formats in place yet within Riftbound, this ban effectively makes Riven, Broken Blade a worthless card, and the secondary market is already reacting to the news. The alternative art variant of this card has gone from €16 a month ago to €6 as of yesterday, with the ban predicted. Since the ban was confirmed, listings of the alternative art variants of the card have already started to drop even further, with most listed for just €3. Over on TCGplayer, for the same version of the card, the value has gone from $30 during release week to just $4.80 today, again with listings dropping under $4 at the time of writing. New Ban Windows To Be Introduced Next Year Moving forward, to offer stability and predictability to bans in Riftbound, there will be a ban window, and any card bans will be announced on the Friday two weeks before each Continental event and the Friday two weeks after. This allows the Riftbound team to control the narrative around bans because players won't make overwhelming calls for decisions to be made on a whim, and instead they know that these announcements will be restricted to specific windows.