With the Pro Tour on its way back and Pioneer being the premier format for Regional Championships (see "'Magic's' Pro Tour"), WotC made a move to attempt to further balance the format with new bannings. They went ahead and banned both Winota, Joiner of Forces and Expressive Iteration in the Pioneer format. Winota, which had previously been a problem in the online Explorer format, was banned because it had a large share of the metagame and created frustrating scenarios where, if an opponent lacked instant-speed removal spells or countermagic, Winota could hit play and practically win a game on turn 4.
