With the unexpected leak of the Judgement spoiler well ahead of the planned leaks, the DCI pre-empitvely banned a number of Flashback cards in Odyssey Block Constructed and Standard to prevent the abuse of the new card Quiet Speculation. Among the casualties were Roar of the Wurm and Deep Analysis.

A response to this decision was posted when a player wrote in to Magicthegathering.com's Q&A section.

Q: "Why ban the good Flashback cards when you could just ban Quiet Speculation?"
-Ed, Madison, WI

A: From Jeff Donais, DCI Manager, "Some players may remember a deck commonly known as 'Trix' which was in the environment sometime ago. 'Trix' used Donate, a card that was never intended to see play, and Illusions of Grandeur to gain 20 life and reduce the opponent's life total by twenty. While our initial response was to ban Donate, we did not want to remove a "fun" card from the environment. If we had banned Donate, no one would be able to run their Price of Glory-Donate-Sacred Ground-Ghitu Fire deck. Instead, we were able to ban enough cards surrounding the deck, like Dark Ritual, to eliminate the black cards from the combination. While the combination is still a serious deck, it no longer has black in it.

"We saw that we would have the same problem with Quiet Speculation. How could you play multiple Volley of Boulders without the Quiet Speculation engine? Hence, the obvious solution was to simply ban the cards that unscrupulous players would search for, like Deep Analysis and Roar of the Wurm, yet keep Quiet Speculation in the environment.

It is likely that if any other cards come to be abused by Quiet Speculation, they will be banned in turn.

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With the unexpected leak of the Judgement spoiler well ahead of the planned leaks, the DCI pre-empitvely banned a number of Flashback cards in Odyssey Block Constructed and Standard to prevent the abuse of the new card Quiet Speculation. Among the casualties were Roar of the Wurm and Deep Analysis.

A response to this decision was posted when a player wrote in to Magicthegathering.com's Q&A section.

Q: "Why ban the good Flashback cards when you could just ban Quiet Speculation?"
-Ed, Madison, WI

A: From Jeff Donais, DCI Manager, "Some players may remember a deck commonly known as 'Trix' which was in the environment sometime ago. 'Trix' used Donate, a card that was never intended to see play, and Illusions of Grandeur to gain 20 life and reduce the opponent's life total by twenty. While our initial response was to ban Donate, we did not want to remove a "fun" card from the environment. If we had banned Donate, no one would be able to run their Price of Glory-Donate-Sacred Ground-Ghitu Fire deck. Instead, we were able to ban enough cards surrounding the deck, like Dark Ritual, to eliminate the black cards from the combination. While the combination is still a serious deck, it no longer has black in it.

"We saw that we would have the same problem with Quiet Speculation. How could you play multiple Volley of Boulders without the Quiet Speculation engine? Hence, the obvious solution was to simply ban the cards that unscrupulous players would search for, like Deep Analysis and Roar of the Wurm, yet keep Quiet Speculation in the environment.

It is likely that if any other cards come to be abused by Quiet Speculation, they will be banned in turn.

Discuss this article in the Magic: the Gathering Forums!