Ponder is Unrestricted.

March 11, 2024, Banned and Restricted Announcement

Ponder is unrestricted.

Ponder has been restricted in Vintage since 2008! It's not necessarily true that we want to reintroduce every card that has been restricted for over a decade, but evidence suggests Ponder is ready to come back into the four-of club.

While not much has changed in Vintage since our last announcement, we believe that spell-based combo decks in Vintage could use a little boost. The top of the metagame features decks like Lurrus Saga, Initiative, and Mishra's Workshop shells. Even if many of the Lurrus decks contain blue, they generally feature zero copies of Ponder.

While this shouldn't cause a huge shift, it should give a few percentage points back to decks looking to find specific cards to enact their strategy more consistently.