Combo Winter

Combo Winter refers to the (Northern Hemisphere) winter at the end of 1998, following the release of Urza's Saga in October of that year. Urza's Saga included several powerful cards that enabled combo decks with extremely fast clocks, capable of winning as early as turn one. The power and prevalence of those combo decks led many players to quit playing Magic, which in turn led to several bans and changes within R&D to prevent similar developmental mistakes. The Standard metagame during Combo Winter has been described as "the worst Standard that ever happened".

Tolarian Academy was one of the first cards banned in the Combo Winter of 1998. It has never been unbanned.

Impact

Three cards from Urza's Saga were banned in December, but combo decks continued to dominate. Because the new "broken" cards were legal in all Constructed formats, players could not engage in sanctioned play without facing combo decks, and large numbers of players stopped playing the game entirely. Additional bans for two more Urza's Saga cards, as well as several others, were announced on March 1, 1999, with the ban to become effective on April 1. The announcement led to optimism that the metagame would improve.

However, following Grand Prix Vienna in mid-March, a combo deck using the newly released Memory Jar (Urza's Legacy) became apparent. Some players instituted house rules banning that card. To stem the flow of players leaving the game, and to prevent the Memory Jar combo deck from undermining the impact of the upcoming official bans, Memory Jar was promptly added to the April 1 ban list. As of 2026, it remains the only card to have ever been "emergency banned", and is still banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage.

The design errors, and the severity of player backlash, were so great that the entire R&D team was summoned to an executive's office and yelled at. Mark Rosewater was told that he would be fired if a similar error were to occur in the future. Following that meeting, R&D began hiring players who had played in the Pro Tour, because those players had demonstrated proficiency in evaluating power level. Randy Buehler, Brian Schneider, Henry Stern, Worth Wollpert, and Elaine Chase were hired as a result of that push.

Additionally, Wizards activated a redemption program in May 1999, offering to accept copies of most of the cards banned in Standard by mail, in exchange for returning the sender one fresh booster packs per copy, matching the sets those cards were from.

Bans within one year of Urza's Saga's release

	Standard	Extended	Legacy	Vintage	Urza's block Constructed
December 1998	Tolarian Academy Windfall	Tolarian Academy Windfall	Stroke of Genius Tolarian Academy Windfall	Stroke of Genius Tolarian Academy Windfall
March 1999	Dream Halls Earthcraft Fluctuator Lotus Petal Recurring Nightmare Time Spiral Memory Jar	Memory Jar	Time Spiral Memory Jar	Time Spiral Memory Jar	Time Spiral Windfall Memory Jar
June 1999	Mind Over Matter	Time Spiral			Gaea's Cradle Serra's Sanctum Tolarian Academy Voltaic Key
August 1999		Yawgmoth's Bargain
September 1999		Dream Halls Earthcraft Lotus Petal Mind Over Matter Yawgmoth's Will	Crop Rotation Doomsday Dream Halls Enlightened Tutor Frantic Search Grim Monolith Hurkyl's Recall Lotus Petal Mana Crypt Mana Vault Mind Over Matter Mox Diamond Mystical Tutor Tinker Vampiric Tutor Voltaic Key Yawgmoth's Bargain Yawgmoth's Will	Crop Rotation Doomsday Dream Halls Enlightened Tutor Frantic Search Grim Monolith Hurkyl's Recall Lotus Petal Mana Crypt Mana Vault Mind Over Matter Mox Diamond Mystical Tutor Tinker Vampiric Tutor Voltaic Key Yawgmoth's Bargain Yawgmoth's Will

Later "Combo Winter"s

The metagame after the release of Mirrodin is now sometimes referred to as the second Combo Winter. First, the Extended format of Pro Tour New Orleans was overrun by fast-paced combo decks using many of the new cards, which was handled by banning a total of six cards the following December. However, when Darksteel, the second expansion of the Mirrodin block, was released, the popular Affinity archetype succeeded in overpowering most decks in Standard, particularly with the use of Skullclamp and Arcbound Ravager. Although Skullclamp was banned from all formats except for Vintage in June 2004, the metagame remained Affinity-oriented, yet no more bannings took place until March 2005, in which 8 cards (Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault and all 6 artifact lands) were banned from Standard, amounting to a total of 9 cards banned in Standard in less than a year.