World Championship 31 — Izzet Lessons won it, then the hammer dropped

Seth Manfield won Magic World Championship 31 in December 2025. He did it with Izzet Lessons — the same deck that had been dominating Standard for months. He went 0–2 in draft, then 10–0 in Standard to make the Top 8, then 9–0 in games on Sunday. In the finals he beat Akira Shibata 3–0. Same deck on both sides of the table. That’s the kind of format dominance that gets people’s attention. So did the prize: $100,000, a Black Lotus trophy, and the promise that Manfield’s likeness will appear on a future Magic card. He’s now one of three players in history to win the World Championship twice, alongside Javier Dominguez and Shahar Shenhar.

Then the bans came.

On November 10, 2025, Wizards published the final banned and restricted announcement of the year. Standard got hit hard. Vivi Ornitier — banned. Proft's Eidetic Memory — banned. Screaming Nemesis — banned. Below, the three cards that left Standard.

The first two were the engine of the Izzet Cauldron deck that had put five or more copies into the Top 8 at every Standard Magic Spotlight event since rotation. Play Design didn’t mince words: the deck had “a strong fair game, efficient interaction, and a combo ceiling that other decks in the format can’t overtake,” with “no clear angle of counterplay.” So they removed Vivi (the Agatha’s Soul Cauldron combo piece) and Proft’s Eidetic Memory (the two-mana engine they compared to Up the Beanstalk, banned earlier in the year). Screaming Nemesis went too — not because it beat Izzet, but because Mono-Red was the only deck that could hang with it, and Wizards didn’t want red aggro to simply inherit the crown.

What it means for the market

We’re not here to call tops or bottoms. We’re here to report. The deck that won the biggest event of the year is no longer legal in Standard. The cards that spiked on the back of that deck are now format-illegal there. If you’re holding paper copies of Vivi, Proft’s Eidetic Memory, or Screaming Nemesis, your Standard demand just vanished; Commander and other formats still want some of these, but the narrative has changed. The same announcement hit Pioneer (Heartfire Hero banned), Legacy (Entomb and Nadu, Winged Wisdom banned), Pauper (High Tide banned), and Historic (Force of Negation, Frantic Search, Mystical Tutor, Entomb, and Dark Depths pre-banned). So it wasn’t just Standard. It was a broad sweep. Below you'll find price charts for the three Standard bans.

The takeaway

World Championship 31 was a great story — a comeback, a repeat champion, and a deck so good that the finals were a mirror match. But “so good” is exactly why that deck couldn’t survive. Wizards has said they’re moving to more frequent ban windows so they can react faster when one strategy takes over. So when you see a deck put five copies in every Top 8, don’t be shocked when a few key cards end up on the list. The Gazette will keep an eye on where those banned cards land in other formats. Until then — may your metagames be diverse and your combo pieces legal in at least one format you care about.