It's been a few weeks since Magic the Gathering's Standard format was shaken up by Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and the annual set rotation, and it appears as though the first majorly problematic card of the new rotation has emerged.
Alrund's Epiphany is a sorcery that costs five generic and two blue, though it can be Foretold and played for four generic and two blue instead. It creates two 1/1 blue Bird creature tokens with flying, and also gives you an extra turn. It was a popular card in certain pre-rotation decks, most notably being part of Sultai Ultimatum decks where it could force your opponent to choose between a rock and a hard place when used along with Emergent Ultimatium.
Although it was a part of the old, pre-Midnight Hunt meta, Alrund's Epiphany wasn't a major problem until the introduction of Galvanic Iteration in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Combine that with the removal of useful ways of dealing with Alrund's Epiphany from older, rotated-out sets, and the result is a deck archetype that has completely swamped the Standard format.
Galvanic Iteration is an instant that costs one blue and one red that copies the next instant or sorcery you play. This means one Alrund's Epiphany and one Galvanic Iteration can equal two extra turns, which give you an opportunity to then draw into your next Alrund's Epiphany and repeat the process all over again. To make matters worse, Galvanic Iteration can be flashed back (played from your graveyard) for one generic, one blue and one red. With four Galvanic Iterations and four Alrund's Epiphanies, it is incredibly easy to monopolise the entire game and lock your opponent out of any action.
Though the early days of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Standard were pretty varied, Alrund's Epiphany has now completely warped the format. According to MTG Goldfish, which tracks decks for a variety of formats, 31.1 percent of current Standard decks are Izzet Control, and 99 percent of those decks run four copies of Alrund's Epiphany. The only thing to come even close to matching Izzet Control's impact on the format has been Mono-green Aggro at 23.9 percent, which uses Esika's Chariot to make lots of tokens.
Magic the Gathering experts, such as Star City Games' Brad Nelson, are calling for Alrund's Epiphany to be banned in Standard, arguing that it could "ruin Innistrad: Midnight Hunt standard".
Extra turns are a controversial and often disliked strategy in Magic, especially in Standard where potential answers to it are limited by the smaller card pool. Having one person dominate the vast majority of a game's runtime isn't considered a healthy playstyle, and it's one that Wizards of the Coast has tried to reduce in the past by banning cards like Nexus of Fate and Time Vault in various other formats.
If Alrund's Epiphany is banned, it would be the second card in the current standard rotation, joining Zendikar Rising's Omnath, Locus of Creation, which was outlawed from the format last October. Announcements for bans are generally made on Mondays, meaning there is still at least a week left of Alrund's grip on the format.