MTG News Jun 29-Jul 5: Candelabra Ban, Pro Tour Prison Deck, Earthcraft $300

MTG News: Candelabra Banned, Pro Tour Prison Deck, and Marvel Warps Limited Week of June 29 – July 5, 2026

Marvel Super Heroes spent the week breaking formats while the old guard made news of its own. Wizards banned a Reserved List card out of Legacy, Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven's defining deck refuses to let anyone play Magic, Earthcraft blew past $300 on a Squirrel combo, and The Hobbit got a release date. The community also said goodbye to one of its most beloved artists. Here is the week that mattered.

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The June 29 Banned & Restricted removed Candelabra of Tawnos from Legacy to curb a rising Colorless Tron deck, and banned Seeker of Skybreak in Pauper to break the Hawkeye's Bow combo before July's big events. Traditional Brawl lost a half-dozen blue cards, and Standard got no changes, resolving the B&R cliffhanger we covered in the Garfield Secret Lairs issue. Read more →

The most talked-about deck from Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven doesn't try to win, in Sam Black's words: it tries to prevent both players from playing. The prison shell stole the spotlight in Las Vegas while Jeskai Control lists running a full playset of Tablet of Discovery made top 32, and those decks now sit at the very top of the Standard metagame. Read more →

Greg Dyer, Tom Martell, and Sam Black took down Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes at SCG CON Las Vegas, the first Team Limited event with Pro Tour invites and real money on the line in seven years. The format pulled longtime grinders out of retirement for two days of Team Sealed, then a cut to Team Draft. Martell and Black locked their first PT invites since COVID, and Black sealed the win with a Simic deck full of combat tricks. Read more →

The 17Lands data is in, and it is ugly. Marvel Super Heroes Limited has 17 cards sitting above a 63% win rate; Secrets of Strixhaven had four. The Super Hero Civil War tops the format at 70.2%, with Captain Marvel, Earth's Protector right behind at 70.1% as an indestructible lifelink flier. Add severe color imbalance and you get a format that revolves almost entirely around who opened the better bomb. Read more →

Card Kingdom's first look laid out the full calendar for Universes Beyond: The Hobbit. Presale opens July 8, the set shows at MagicCon: Amsterdam July 17 to 19, prerelease runs August 7 to 13, Arena gets it August 11, and global tabletop release lands August 14. Collector Boosters will feature Dwarven-language variants, surge foils, and a rumored golden Smaug. We keep every date and every leak in one place in our full Hobbit release-date and spoiler guide. Read more →

Iconic Magic illustrator and art director Ron Spears died after complications from a brain tumor. He joined Magic in 1998 as Art Director for Urza's Saga and left behind more than 130 illustrations, including Akroma, Angel of Wrath and the timeless Dark Confidant. The community owes a lot of its favorite art to him. Read more →

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Marvel Super Heroes handed Commander, Standard, and even draft a fresh two-card kill. The Mighty Thor, Jane Foster blinks a creature on attack; pair her with Aurelia, the Warleader and the exile-and-return resets Aurelia's first-attack trigger for an extra combat every loop. Attack, blink, repeat, forever. Aurelia's Foundations printing keeps it Standard-legal too. Read more →

Marvel Super Heroes handed Commander 371 new legends, an overwhelming wall of options. One green brawler already leads the pack: Bruce Banner, The Incredible Hulk is the most-built commander from the set in its first week. Expect the metagame to keep churning as players sort through the rest. If that wall is where you stalled out, start with the four Marvel precons and what to add to each. Read more →

Halfway through a four-set year, Draftsim ranks the commanders that stuck. Ashling, the Limitless leads as the year's most popular commander on EDHREC, a five-color Elemental engine that evokes big bodies for cheap, with Killian, Decisive Mentor close behind on goad auras and card draw. If you are building one of them off a stock deck, the universal precon fix covers the cards that improve any list. Read more →

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Earthcraft, a Reserved List enchantment from Tempest, spiked hard once The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl gave it a new home. Four squirrels and a Forest let you loop her final ability for infinite tokens and mana. Near-mint copies sat around $150 on May 29, the combo pushed them past $300, and the card now appears in 850-plus Squirrel Girl decks on EDHREC. Read more →

Doctor Octopus, Master Planner from last year's Spider-Man set jumped 266% as Villain Typal decks pick it up as an auto-include. EDHREC counts Doc Ock in over 11,000 decks, and Marvel Super Heroes alone has driven more than 3,000 new lists. Old crossover cards keep paying off when new crossovers land. Read more →

Special edition collector booster boxes from The Lord of the Rings now sell for more than $10,000, the most expensive sealed MTG product in years, as attention turns to the upcoming Hobbit set. For a product released this decade, that figure is astonishing. Read more →

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A fan team spent more than two years assembling a full Universes Beyond set for A Song of Ice and Fire, all 357 cards, and dropped the complete files publicly on r/custommagic. Whatever you think of official UB pacing, this is the community showing it can go card-for-card with a real release. Read more →

Magic crept into the mainstream again: the Netflix film Voicemails For Isabella has a character trade away "an Alpha Edition Black Lotus," the most valuable thing he owns, to recover a set of voicemails. The vocab is a little off, but the sentiment tracks. A graded 10 Black Lotus sold for $3 million in 2024. Read more →

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That is the week: a Reserved List ban, a Pro Tour won by refusing to play, and a Limited format buckling under its own bombs. Hit reply and tell us whether pulling Candelabra was the right call, or forward this to the Legacy player who saw it coming. See you next Sunday.

The SparkMTG Team

Looking back, this run follows the spring stretch of scandal, three sets, and a denied union vote.

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