Magic: The Gathering has a long and complicated history with balancing cards, decks, formats, and more generally, how the game is played and what kind of impact this has. For example, Magic: The Gathering's Standard bans in June of this year were received positively by many fans because they addressed long-time concerns and issues regarding the format and where it was headed with its previous meta. However, these were not all positive reactions to the bans, as they also rendered some decks nearly unplayable. Alongside bans (and rarely unbans, too), Wizards of the Coast also does errata, but a recent case shows how the game may be balanced with its online counterpart in mind.

Magic: The Gathering set releases have historically been paper prints, but with games of all kinds moving to desktop and other screens, Magic: The Gathering Arena became a necessity more than a luxury. The online counterpart to the game is not without controversies, such as the fact that the Spider-Man set is not coming to Arena with its card gallery, but rather generic in-multiverse versions of them that are not available in paper. Recently, WotC announced some changes with the launch of Edge of Eternities, and one of them is an errata to a popular card called Rampaging Baloths, and the culprit is most likely MTG Arena.

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Magic: The Gathering's June 2025 Bans Make One OP Standard Deck Virtually Unplayable

Magic: The Gathering's official Banned and Restricted Announcement post for June 2025 bans several Standard cards, leaving one deck in shambles.

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Rampaging Baloths is part of the World Shaper Edge of Eternities Commander deck in MTG, which revolves around playing lands and getting landfall or lander procs, all while having various means of recursion from the graveyard. Rampaging Baloths is a 6-CMC 6/6 creature (4 generic, 2 Green) with trample and the landfall ability, which says that players may create a 4/4 beast creature token when playing a land. Or rather, it used to have the "may" clause.

How Magic: The Gathering is 'Nerfing' Rampaging Baloths

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The errata only changes that, removing the may clause from Rampaging Baloths, thus making players always create a 4/4 creature token when they play a land. This may seem like a nothingburger, but it's relevant for a few reasons:

  • It's actually a nerf, even if a very small one, that may go unnoticed in most games until players run into a scenario where having a creature enter play can be a disadvantage.
  • It probably happened to reduce the number of clicks on MTG Arena tied to the may clause of generating creature tokens with land drops, as one can potentially go infinite with Magic: The Gathering's landfall decks.
  • It reinforces the idea that cards can be changed or even created with MTG Arena in mind over the paper version of the game, where the may clause is a non-issue.
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The change to Rampaging Baloths is not a big issue per se, but it does bear some questions, and since it's technically a nerf, some concerns as well. This is not the first time that popular Magic: The Gathering cards have been changed, such as with Ajani's Pridemate, which lost its may clause with Wizards of the Coast stating that there would be virtually no scenarios where putting a +1/+1 counter on the creature is a problem. This is not entirely true, as there can be scenarios where having more power or toughness is a problem, and while these are mostly unlikely and much fewer than those where an extra +1/+1 counter is not an issue, they can happen.

As such, the change to Rampaging Baloths begs the question of whether it's worth changing cards to make the experience on MTG Arena smoother, when the may clause is not an issue in paper games. On top of that, missing the trigger of an ability without the may clause means getting a warning in official competitions, which can add insult to injury for those who bought MTG's Edge of Eternities Commander decks and found a slight difference in their Rampaging Baloths copy.

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magic the gathering
Magic: The Gathering
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Original Release Date
August 5, 1993
Designer
Richard Garfield
Player Count
2+
Age Recommendation
13+
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