2 May 2026

Rhea Adams and Winry Owen

The following cards are banned in Golden Age effective immediately:

• Art of War
• Awakening
• Berserk
• Bloodsheath Skeleta
• Bravo, Star of the Show
• Cash In
• Chane, Bound by Shadow
• Count Your Blessings
• Done of Brutality
• Heavy Industry Power Plant
• Kraken’s Aethervein
• Open the Flood Gates
• Orihon of Mystic Tenets
• Remembrance
• Stubby Hammerers
• Tome of Divinity
• Tome of Firebrand
• Tome of Fyendal
• Zephyr Needle

Our initial ban philosophy is informed by three pillars:

1. ban the problem card, not the supporting cards. 
2. ban cards that create non-games. 
3. ban without consideration for the secondary market.

Several of the cards on this list will not come as a surprise for tenured players. Art of War, Cash In, Orihon of Mystic Tenets, Tome of Divinity, Tome of Firebrand, and Tome of Fyendal offer strict card advantage for too little of a cost, creating unfair offensive overlaps.

The second category of banned cards includes cards that unreasonably reward the player for executing their normal gameplan, creating lopsided and often uninteractive games. This includes Awakening, Berserk, Bloodsheath Skeleta, Heavy Industry Power Plant, Kraken’s Aethervein, Open the Flood Gates, and Stubby Hammerers.

The third category is defensive tools. Count Your Blessings unfairly punishes any beatdown deck that stumbles to apply pressure at any point in the game, and results in unfun play patterns that often lead to draws. Drone of Brutality breaks core game tenets via its infinite recursion, and also creates end game states that can result in deterministic draws. Remembrance is similarly banned because of its ability to recur key threats without a reasonable opportunity cost. In slow metagames, winning is often decided by which player has more Remembrance in their sideboard.

Zephyr Needle’s drawback to balance being over-rate has been overly mitigated by The Hunted’s numerous dagger front pumps, making Flick Knives Ira a menace that simultaneously has excellent damage output, evasive damage, and efficiently scalable hand sizes in the face of disruption that makes the deck difficult to interact with. Banning Needles helps reign in the deck, while simultaneously shaving off some damage from Zen’s more oppressive combo turns, who is poised to be a boogeyman of the format. We believe that there is a world where Zephyr Needle could return to the format, but are waiting to see the metagame stabilize before further consideration.

Finally, Chane and Starvo. While many players enjoy these heroes, their rules text is too powerful for what we consider reasonable games of Flesh and Blood. The Living Legend format suffered controversy due to a large portion of its banlist being devoted to taming these two heroes’ meta dominance, sacrificing fringe heroes’ viability on the altar of Chane and Starvo’s sins when their talents or classes overlapped. Since the Living Legend format exists and can be sanctioned for official play, we’re more comfortable taking this position of outright banning them in a for-fun format.

The following cards are watch listed in Golden Age:

• Blast to Oblivion
• Bonds of Agony
• Bonds of Ancestry
• Cerebellum Processor
• Channel Lightning Valley
• Crown of Seeds
• Electromagnetic Somersault
• Mask of the Pouncing Lynx
• Mind Warp
• System Reset
• Tome of Aetherwind
• Traverse the Universe

Many cards toe the line of being too powerful or inappropriate for Golden Age as a format. However, we wish to make efforts to leave cards legal unless they prove too powerful. We are closely monitoring powerful Lightning cards like Channel Lightning Valley, Electromagnetic Somersault, and Blast to Oblivion that may create unacceptable play patterns in historically strong heroes like Briar and Oscilio, especially in the future context of Omens of the Third Age. At present, we do not feel these cards are overly unreasonable, but that may change as more of the upcoming set is revealed. An honorary lightning card by virtue of being Oscilio’s premiere Volzar payoff, Mind Warp is similarly being watched.

Bonds of Agony’s potency as a disruptive card has skyrocketed since the printing of Take Up the Mantle. We do not believe that Mantle is eligible for a ban, as outside of exactly Bonds, it is a reasonably fair card. However, we are aware that Mantle into Bonds is potentially too strong, especially in the hands of Arakni, Slipped Through the Cracks. We currently believe that counteractive disruptive decks like Nuu and Oldhim are enough of a check against Slippy to stop Bonds from being overly problematic, but this sentiment may change as the format metagame clarifies. 

Heavy Industry Power Plant, Cerebellum Processor, and System Reset together represent a Dash I/O combo that can draw large portions of, if not the entire, deck in a single combo turn. Currently, Power Plant is banned while leaving the other two pieces legal, as they still enable large turns to overcome fatigue opponents. It is possible that any combination of these pieces rotate in and out of the Ban List over time to tune Dash I/O’s meta presence.

Zen, Tamer of Purpose is currently positioned as a top-tier aggro deck, even with the banning of Art of War and Stubby Hammerers. While we would like to leave overlap cards like Bonds of Ancestry, Mask of the Pouncing Lynx, and/or Traverse the Universe legal, they may be banned as the metagame evolves over time and with more granular testing.

As many powerful aggressive cards remain legal in the format, we want to ensure that defensive decks have adequate tools to keep stride. Crown of Seeds is one of the most powerful repeatable effects printed in Flesh and Blood. However, Starvo is not legal to abuse the card’s filtering effect. At present, we do not believe Crown is problematic enough to warrant a ban.

Kano is a controversial hero that many people would enjoy seeing outright banned. We believe that he has a place in the format as a check against hard fatigue decks that cannot adequately pressure him enough to beat the ability to pitch stack combo turns. Tome of Aetherwind is an important tool in this strategy, but is unto itself a powerful card advantage tool that we are wary of including in the format. Tome itself or other Kano tools such as Kindle may be used as tuning knobs as needed. If the number of bans needed to keep Kano in check become excessive and begin eating into cards that impact other wizards’ playability, we reserve the right to outright ban Kano.

Next Scheduled Banned and Watchlisted Announcement

Golden Age is still a new format with ongoing testing. The next Banned and Watchlisted Announcement will be published on Friday, 5 June 2026, to coincide with the release of Omens of the Third Age. After that, regularly scheduled Banned and Watchlisted announcements will commence four weeks after each major product release, beginning with Friday, 3 July 2026.

Last updated 2 May 2026