Interesting that they didn’t suspend it, like prior action. Maybe they’ve decided that banning is just cleaner then the suspend and re-evaluate philosophy.
We will continue to use both. Suspensions are for when we're not sure how the meta will react to removing the card, or when we feel like the problem is likely temporary (BTE was a good example of this). We'll go straight to a ban when we're confident that removing the card is the right call. Thassa's Oracle, Time Warp, and Uro are all cards that not only were a problem in their current shells, but we feel would likely continue to be problems for the format.
Early on in Historic we were more cautious as we learned how it would react to different actions, but as we've gathered more data we can be more confident about which cards need to go straight to banning. In the abstract we would prefer to ban than suspend, but we like suspension as a tool for cases where there's not a clear right answer or we think the landscape might change soon.
Wizards Jay
We will continue to use both. Suspensions are for when we're not sure how the meta will react to removing the card, or when we feel like the problem is likely temporary (BTE was a good example of this). We'll go straight to a ban when we're confident that removing the card is the right call. Thassa's Oracle, Time Warp, and Uro are all cards that not only were a problem in their current shells, but we feel would likely continue to be problems for the format.
Early on in Historic we were more cautious as we learned how it would react to different actions, but as we've gathered more data we can be more confident about which cards need to go straight to banning. In the abstract we would prefer to ban than suspend, but we like suspension as a tool for cases where there's not a clear right answer or we think the landscape might change soon.