EDH/Commander Ban List Announcement Archive

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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

May 18, 2020 (minor announcement)
Sheldon wrote:
You may have noticed there's a small line missing from banned list page today. We've eliminated the line "Commander is played with Vintage-legal cards." While the idea has been a useful shortcut for years, it wasn't really a philosophical foundation, it was merely a convenience. We've long been proponents that Commander isn't alt-Vintage, so it makes sense given the two formats' divergence to decouple the wording.

The upshot is that between yesterday and today, nothing has changed for us. The exact same cards remain legal (specifically, Lurrus of the Dream-Den is not banned). We've clarified the legality language a bit, but none of the descriptions result in specific cards being banned or unbanned. We'll have our normally-scheduled update in the next cycle, currently slated for 22 June.

We normally reserve changes for the regular schedule; we felt as though the clarification here warranted providing an update out-of-cycle update.
Context: Wizards banned Lurrus of the Dream-Den in Vintage, so without this clarification it would have been banned by default in Vintage.

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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

June 7, 2020 (preview announcement - goes into effect at next update)
Toby Elliott wrote: As you may have heard on the CommandFest charity stream, we're changing how commanders go to the command zone, effective with the quarterly Commander announcement for Core Set 2021. The short version of it is:

If a commander has an ability which triggers on it dying or going to exile, it will trigger before heading to the command zone.

The long version (including how we got there and the technical details) is below.

First, new rules (specifically, a new state-based action):

If a commander is in a graveyard or in exile and that card was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone.

If a commander would be put into its owner's hand or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event.


Commander death triggers are a subject that came up over the years, but didn't get much traction. It's not that any of us objected, it's that none of us felt all that strongly about it. The current system worked fine and was elegant. We were happy with it and obvious possible changes had a lot of downsides. There were people out there who thought it was a good idea, and people out there who thought it was a bad idea, and no groundswell for change. You'll find us defending positions we feel strongly are correct (like hybrid mana color identity during deck construction), but we generally didn't engage much on Commander death triggers beyond pointing out that the rules to make it happen weren't nearly as simple as people thought they were. We just didn't have strong feelings either way.

The tipping point came last October when a CAG member was talking about their Elenda, the Dusk Rose deck and we had to break it to them that it didn't work the way they thought it did. Turns out a portion of the CAG didn't understand that commanders dying didn't trigger death triggers and were quite passionate about the subject. That was motivation to see if we could do something with them that wasn't a mess.

We came up with a lot of possibilities. Each had various levels of impact on the game. We had a list of a bunch of notable cards so that we could consider the implications of each approach, including Rest in Peace, It That Betrays, Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Grave Betrayal, even Skullbriar! If it had a weird interaction with a zone change, we probably talked about it.

In the end, we presented eight options to the CAG for discussion, all of which had different plusses and minuses:
  • Do nothing
  • Redefine the term "dies"
  • Inherent trigger on the commander
  • State trigger on a commander in a graveyard
  • State-based action (mandatory)
  • State-based action (optional)
  • Special action
  • A really crazy one where the Commander made a token copy of itself that went to the graveyard.
And then we talked a bunch. How much weirdness was acceptable? How much were we willing to change core Commander game play? Was not being able to leave your Commander in the graveyard acceptable for a very clean state trigger? For example, the special action (essentially "0: put your Commander into the Command Zone. Activate only in the graveyard, exile or library") meant it was usually correct to have your commander in the graveyard when it wasn't on the battlefield. Redefining "dies" to mean "is put into the graveyard or command zone from the battlefield" was super-clean, but meant that blinking a commander would trigger death triggers. Everything had tradeoffs.

After a lot of discussion, we proposed to Wizards the following state-based action:

If a commander is in a library, graveyard or exile, and doesn't have a choice counter on it, it's owner may put it into the command zone. If they do not, put a choice counter on it.

That worked intuitively with basically everything (shhhh, Skullbriar).

Rules Manager Eli Shiffrin (because he's smart and good with the rules) pointed out that we could steal a little technology from, of all things, Deathtouch, to avoid using a counter (yay, Skullbriar):

If a commander is in a graveyard, library or in exile and that card was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone.

We loved this, but there was one small problem. Could this apply in a hidden zone, especially with the existence of Chaos Warp? Chaos Warp targeting a Commander would put the commander into the library, shuffle it, then reveal the top card. Tracking the commander through all of that is stretching the Magic rules, and while I think we could have made it work, it was tricky both rules-wise and physically. In the end, we left the replacement effect in place for hidden zones (hand and library) and now use the state-based action for graveyard and exile. Commanders that go to hand rarely want to be moved, and commanders going to the library is a rare event; wanting to take further action before the State-based Action kicks in is rarer still. Those events working differently won't matter most of the time.

And that's how we ended up with the final rules above. Note that the Commander still has to go to the graveyard in order for a dies ability to trigger. If that is replaced by some other effect (such as Rest in Peace), it won't happen, just as it wouldn't happen on any other creature.

We'll obviously be keeping an eye on some of the more powerful commanders with death triggers – looking at you Kokusho and Child of Alara! – but think it will be OK and opens up a few more interesting options. And Elendra the Dusk Rose now works like the CAG and a bunch of other people think it does.

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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

June 29, 2020
Gavin Duggan wrote: It's been a busy few months in Commander, so let's start with the easy bit: there are no changes to the Banned list this quarter.

We know that, for many players, keeping up with rapid changes can be frustrating. A number of other things have changed since our last quarterly update, so we'll recap those events below and strive to stick with scheduled updates in the future. The world is in flux though and Magic is no exception; we'll continue to monitor the experiences of Commander players and adapt if necessary.

Two events which don't impact the format but we hope will be of benefit to the community are

1. The introduction of regularly streamed games by the RC (http://twitch.com/CommanderRC) where we chat with the audience and play games on camera. We play every Thursday evening (8pm EDT), with pickup games throughout the week as time permits. The primary focus is to increase visibility and two-way communication with the player base, talking about how and why we do the things we do. We also host special guests from Wizards of the Coast and the Commander community.
2. The creation of a Commander RC Patreon through which players can contribute funds towards both the costs of running the format, and a number of great 3rd-party content creators.

Both are part of our 2020 focus on building connections between the RC, the CAG, and you… the players who make Commander the great format it is!

Rules changes since April 1st, 2020:

Commanders now "die" like other creatures.
TL;DR – Commanders being put into the graveyard from the battlefield trigger "dies" abilities.

Previously, the "Commanders go the command zone when they die" was handled using a replacement effect — a piece of MTG technology which entirely replaces one event with another. A side effect of that rule was that cards like Grave Pact wouldn't trigger if someone's commander was destroyed. This was played incorrectly by many players, so we'd been looking for a way for commanders to behave "more normally" for many years. It turns out the templating for that rule was tricky… more-so than 99.9% of us realized. Fortunately, the RC's Toby Elliott and WotC's Eli Shiffrin are really good at clear, clean rules and working with Sheldon Menery (at the time with a foot in both worlds), they found a way to make "dies" triggers work correctly without any significant corner cases.

Technically speaking, the solution is a stated-based action (SBA), the things the game does to "clean up" each time someone would get priority, like exiling a token from the graveyard or destroying creatures which have lethal damage. The new SBA now says "if a commander is in a graveyard or exile, and was put there since the last time SBAs were checked, its owner may choose to put it in the Command zone."

This means a commander first goes to the graveyard, triggering abilities (of itself or other cards which say "Whenever X dies"), then goes to the command zone.

Some clarifications

1. The owner only gets to make this choice once… if your Commander is being exiled "temporarily" (e.g. by Oblivion Ring) you have to choose immediately if it is going to the CZ or staying in exile, in hopes of being brought back by whatever card put it there.
2. The replacement effect remains in effect for zones like the hand or library, so the commander will never arrive.

Commander no longer uses the Vintage banned list as a basis for our banned list.
TL;DR – Lurrus of the Dream-Den is still legal, nothing else changed.

The Companion mechanic has made waves in every format, and Commander was no exception. When they were first released, we removed Lutri because its lack of additional deck building restriction made it a "free card". As sad as it made us, we hoped that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, Companion was so impactful on Vintage that it resulted in the Wizards banning a card in that format for a combination of mechanical and power-level reasons, something which hasn't happened in more than a decade.

While it's a big deal for Vintage, Lurrus is just fine in Commander. In fact, it's probably one of the stronger handicaps in a format with an average mana cost near 4, so it doesn't make sense for it to be banned in the format. That raised the question of whether we should continue using the Vintage banned list as the basis for Commander, with other cards banned over-and-above.

Historically, The Vintage (nee Type I) banned list has been used as a shorthand for "Cards which aren't viable because of practical, physical-world considerations." With the addition of Lurrus this wasn't true anymore so we needed to make a philosophical decision. Where possible, we prefer to let people to play their cards in Commander, so we decided to sever Commander from its Vintage roots and instead explicitly call out:
  • All oversized cards
  • All cards which don't have black or white borders
  • All cards which mention the Ante Mechanic
  • All subgame and conspiracy cards
Shortly thereafter, Wizards removed some culturally offensive cards from constructed magic.
There are some cards which just shouldn't be played around, or by, friends — they can be unnecessarily, even if accidentally, hurtful. Wizards of the Coast took a look at the message some of its cards were sending, and decided Magic would be a better game if those cards just weren't around anymore.

Perhaps even more than tournament formats, Commander is about social connections so it only made sense for us to follow WotC's lead and remove those cards from our format.

The full list of excluded cards is:
As with other cards on the Banned List, we encourage players to avoid these cards, and any others which make your group unhappy.

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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

September 21, 2020
Sheldon Menery wrote: It has been a quiet quarter for Commander, and we are going to keep it that way. We don't have any changes to the Rules or Banned list this time around. We will continue to monitor the format, player experience, and so forth.

As always, we're interested in your feedback. You can pop around to the free RC Discord server and be pretty likely to run into an RC or CAG member in a chat (or four).

We are making one small change regarding our announcements. This is the last quarter in which our regular announcements will take place on the Monday after a new expansion's prerelease weekend. Starting in January 2021, quarterly Commander announcements will happen the Monday before a new expansion's prerelease weekend. The reasons are two-fold:
  1. Since new sets are legal in Commander as of the prerelease, it only makes sense that any announcement take place before then.
  2. This will get any possible bannings/unbannings and rules changes out of the way prior to the prerelease. Commander players can attend their prerelease (well…someday), acquire cards, and not be worried about rules changes the following Monday.
The Rules Committee, some of the Commander Advisory group, and a few "friends of the format" have been playing a format variant for the last 4 month. Dubbed the "EDH Boxing League," it has proven itself to be a very different, fun way to play Commander.

The short version is:
  1. Each player opens a booster box or a normal release expansion or Core set cards.
  2. Players build their Commander deck from this pool.
  3. Starting each subsequent week, each player can open 6 boosters of another set and add those cards to their pool. They can't select a set for which they have already opened boosters in that league.
  4. All Commander Rules are in effect (including banned cards).
There's a full write up of the rules here. There's also a dedicated channel for it on the Discord server.

If you'd like to see the format in action, join us on the RC Twitch channel (http://twitch.com/CommanderRC) on Thursdays at 8PM EDT and Sundays at 2PM EDT.

2020 has been a challenging year for everyone. Our hope is that Commander has provided some small sense of relief from the crazy over the last 6 months. See you again in January!

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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

January 25, 2021
Sheldon Menery wrote: CARDS

No changes.

RULES

Clarified Rule 11.

Parts of abilities which bring other card(s) you own from outside the game into the game (such as Living Wish; Spawnsire of Ulamog; Karn, the Great Creator) do not function in Commander.

We've had some questions about Karn, the Great Creator's -2 ability and whether the parts of it that don't refer to outside the game work. They do, so we added a couple of words to remove any ambiguity from the rule. The goal is to set the default space for outside the game to empty and let playgroups choose amongst themselves if they want to fill it with anything.

ADMINISTRATIVE

Expansion of the Commander Advisory Group.

The Commander Advisory Group continues to be the best idea we've ever had. The passionate and insightful advice we've gotten from them on a broad range of Commander-related topics has been invaluable. We'd like more of that.

To that end, we will be expanding the size of the CAG. For now, we're adding four people who represent some of the marvelous voices filling out the Commander chorus. Jim LaPage (@JimTSF) is well known for his community-building and keen Magic mind. Another sharp Magic brain, Rachel Weeks (@wachelreeks) is also co-host of The Commander Sphere podcast and graphic artist who has been a frequent guest on the Commander RC Twitch stream. DeQuan Watson (@powrdragn) is a long-time Magic community advocate and activist who hosts the Color of Magic podcast. US Army Major Greg Sablan (@gregorysablan), who we've been chatting with for more than a year now, represents the vast global military Commander community. You can everyone's full bios here. We're excited to have them on board and happy to have their help taking the format into the future.

There's still work to be done and room for a few more seats on the CAG. We're aware that we still have underrepresented demographics and locations. You can expect our efforts to search for, find, and amplify great voices around the world to continue, both for CAG consideration and to further foster the values of our great Commander community.

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Post by cryogen » 2 years ago

April 12, 2021
Toby Elliott wrote: No Changes.

Commander is in a pretty good place right now, considering waves hands at everything, and we don't feel the need to take any action.

We do have our eyes on some cards, but want to wait until we have more in-person play to get a sense for how they would impact the format. While webcams have been amazing for getting through the pandemic, the online environment isn't the same as traditional paper play. As it looks like things will start to reopen over the coming months, it makes sense to take a wait-and-see approach.

While there are no rules changes, we do want to highlight a couple of features that Strixhaven brings and how they interact with the Commander rules.

1) Any card that has a legendary creature on its front face can be your commander, but in the case of Modal Double-Face Cards, you can cast either side. Both sides are subject to the same Commander Tax; it looks at how many times you have cast the card, regardless of which side you chose to cast. Strixhaven introduces Legendary creatures with sorceries on the back side. For example, you may cast Search for Blex, but it'll cost two more mana if you cast Blex, Vexing Pest earlier in the game. Perhaps you shouldn't have lost him the first time!

2) Learn cards cannot retrieve Lesson cards when they are cast. We are not interested in introducing sideboards into Commander, and are not comfortable with defining outside the game as all cards you own (it was defined this way years ago and led to a lot of problems and arguments.) However, the alternate mode of discard and draw works fine, as the restriction is limited to the part of the card the looks for a Lesson. Playgroups that want to make Lessons work are encouraged to define a set of rules that works for them.

We'll be back for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. In the meantime, we'll continue to stream twice weekly on the RC Twitch channel (http://twitch.com/CommanderRC) on Thursdays at 8PM EDT and Sundays at 2PM EDT. Come hang out!

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Post by cryogen » 2 years ago

July 12, 2021
Sheldon Menery wrote: ADMINISTRATIVE

Appointments to the Commander Advisory Group (CAG): Kristen Gregory and Elizabeth Rice.

Welcoming Kristen and Ellie to the Commander Advisory Group

Kristen and Ellie are both deeply invested in Commander and possess excellent Magic minds. You may have seen them on recent episodes of the Commander Rules Committee (RC) Twitch stream and elsewhere, or checked out some of their other work, so you'll know how much they love the format. They bring the kinds of complementary and diverse voices which will make them outstanding additions to the CAG. You can check out their full bios here.

RULES

Slight modification to Rule 11 to clarify dungeon legality.

Dungeons

Dungeons are a little wonky from a rules perspective since they're more like emblems than other cards. Once they're ventured into, they even live in the command zone; they then leave the zone when they're completed. They have to be considered cards so that other rules can work, but they're not otherwise cards in the traditional sense. They can't go into your deck; their main function is as a specialized process marker. To that end, Rule 11 is now worded like this:

Parts of abilities which bring other traditional card(s) you own from outside the game into the game (such as Living Wish; Spawnsire of Ulamog; Karn, the Great Creator) do not function in Commander.

CARDS

Hullbreacher is BANNED.

Hullbreacher

Hullbreacher has been a problem card since its release. Its ostensible defensive use against extra card draw has been dwarfed by offensively combining it with mass-draw effects to easily strip players hands while accelerating the controller. That play pattern isn't something we want prevalent in casual play (see the Leovold ban), and we have seen a lot of evidence that it is too tempting even there, as it combines with wheels and other popular casual staples. The case against the card was overwhelming.

There remain a few similar cards that are still permitted, notably Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils. The additional hoops required (an additional color pip for Notion Thief, and sorcery speed for Narset) appear to be keeping them to the appropriate level of play, though we'll continue to keep an eye on them.

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Post by cryogen » 2 years ago

September 13, 2021
Sheldon Menery wrote: RULES

Rule 10 is removed. Rule 11 is renumbered to Rule 10.

CARDS

Worldfire is Unbanned

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is Banned

Rule 10, which stated that commanders were subject to the legend rule, was created in the days when the legend rule was less stable; the rule remained as an artifact of that time. It's not a Commander-specific rule, but simply existed as a clarification. Since it's redundant, we chose to eliminate it. This change is administrative only and will have no impact on how games are played. Rule 11 bumps up to Rule 10.

Worldfire was once banned due to the problematic interaction with floating mana and having access to your Commander. We want to foster a Commander environment where 8- and 9-mana spells are viable and likely to show up in a game, so we evaluate the expensive ones in that context. Unlike Coalition Victory and Biorhythm, which we continue to believe are problematic in that environment, the level of effort needed to make Worldfire effective is sufficient that we suspect it will not be as much of an issue. There are already cheaper ways to do similar things in the format. We believe the social contract and robust pregame discussions will keep Worldfire out of games in which it doesn't belong.

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim has been a much-discussed card that is both popular to play with and unpopular to play against. There are many problems with the card, but the greatest is that in the low-to-middle tiers where we focus the banlist, Golos is simply a better choice of leader for all but the most commander-centric decks. Its presence crushes the kind of diversity in commander choice which we want to promote. You can drop in Golos and a few 5-color lands into a random deck and get all the ramp and card advantage you would ever want from a commander, with no worries about your mana base. Golos' ability effectively reduces the commander tax to one and once you hit seven mana (with Golos assuring that you have WUBRG and helping you get there quickly), you don't need to do anything for the rest of the game except cast spells for free—something we always want to be careful about. We've talked to the folks in Studio X and they understand the problems created by generically-powerful five-color commanders that don't have WUBRG in their mana cost. We don't expect similar cards to come from them in the future, so a surgical strike now makes sense. We understand that many players love Golos, so we don't take this action lightly. In the end, the health of the format is our primary concern and we find Golos unhealthy. While Kenrith, the Returned King is a similarly flexible and popular commander for good stuff five color decks, we see it as a clear step down from Golos.

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