Commander has always beenMagic: The Gathering’smost community-driven format. Its rules and banlist were managed by a combination of the Rules Committee and the Commander Advisory Group, both of which were independent from Wizard of the Coast.
To have a third party be in control of Magic’s most popular format was wild, no other game had something as big as this run entirely over the publisher’s head. But that’s all over now. Death threats won out, and now Wizards runs Commander. The RC and the CAG are no more, and Magic is going to be worse off. But hey, at least your cardboard’s value is spiking again, right?
It all started last week, when theCommander Rules Committee announced four bans– the first to hit the format since 2021. Nadu, Winged Wisdom was a given, but people were shocked to see the hammer finally come down on Dockside Extortionist after years of discussion, and, even more out of the blue, Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus.
The Worst People Wouldn’t Shut Up
These were some of the top-played cards in the format, and their value was in the triple digits. Having a Mana Crypt was a sign you’d made it in Commander, but within minutes their value had plunged. People lost thousands on their collections, and vendors were throwing up their leftovers for any price they could get for them.
Personally, the bans didn’t affect me, and I can see the desire to slow Commander back down to the 10-12 turn format it used to be and not the two-or-three turn format it sometimes is today. I disagree with how suddenly this happened, and think there should’ve been a formal announcement Lotus and Crypt were on notice, but none of that really matters anymore, does it?
Instead of behaving like rational adults over a card game, some true pieces of garbage decided the only way to respond to this was the large-scale harassment of the Rules Authority and the Advisory Group, the latter of which didn’t even know about the bans until the same time everyone else did.
Death threats over not being able to play cards you could easily just talk to your playgroup about allowing anyway is nonsense. Be a bit peeved if your collection’s value cratered overnight, sure, but to wish harm and death on people just trying to make the game better for people is ludicrous. And now the result is Wizards is here to take over Commander, so great job on that. We’re all losers now.
For some bizarre reason, RC member Olivia Gobert-Hicks got more abuse than others, despite being against the bans in the first place. It sure is strange how the only woman on the RC got a rougher time and certainly doesn’t point at other motivations beyond the price of a Jeweled Lotus dropping.
Yesterday, it was announced that theRC has handed the keys to Commander back over to Wizards of the Coast. Not only will the banlist and rules be run in-house, but also community projects like the ongoing (and probably futile) attempts to make tiers for people to ‘better’ describe their decks. The RC will now take more of an advisory role, while the CAG is, as far as we know, all but dissolved.
Get Ready For More Nadus
I don’t think this is the apocalyptic end-of-Commander scenario some are declaring it to be. The RC hadn’t banned anything in Commander for three years before last week, so even inaction on that front will mostly be maintaining the status quo. And while the RC and the CAG have used their influence well and made a positive impact on the game, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with an unelected group of players having so much say over the game.
But this will be a loss for Commander, and Magic in general. There’s no way it can’t be. Wizards has managed its other formats to varying degrees of success, but Commander is a different beast entirely. Cards like The One Ring are now automatic four-of inclusions in Modern, and Wizards has no plans to ban it. It took a whole competitive season for Nadu to go, despite it utterly trouncing every other deck.
Wizards has the job of producing cards people want to buy, while also balancing the formats people want to play, and it doesn’t always get that right. It doesn’t like banning new cards, or big pack-sellers. What happens whenMarvel has an Infinity Stonethat is better fast mana than Mana Crypt, or Scarlet Witch has more degenerate combo potential than Nadu?
I wonder what Wizards would have done back in 2020 if it was managing Commander during Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. Lutri the Spellchaser was infamously banned in Commander within minutes of being revealed, because it gave every red/blue deck a free 101st card. Would Wizards have made that decision, or would it have wanted its new and totally not-problematic companion mechanic to shine?
More than that though, this is a loss for the spirit of Commander. Commander is Magic’s most-played format, and to have that be run outside of Wizards of the Coast was a marvel in its own right. No other game puts faith in its community this much, and the RC proved over and over that it served as a check to Wizards.
Members of both the RC and the CAG regularly challenged Wizards. Whether it’s calling out WotC for designing cards for Commander and frequently getting it wrong, or the late Sheldon Menery discussing how he went as far asto try and stop Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines being printed, they always at least attempted to keep Wizards from making what they thought were its more stupid decisions.
The worst thing Wizards could do is unban Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, or Dockside Extortionist. That would just show people that harassment works.
Now we’re in an era where Wizards can just do what it likes. I don’t think this is going to be an apocalyptic mask-off heel turn of Wizards announcing the Command Tax is now sacrificing two children rather than paying two mana. But it is going to make Commander a little bit worse than it could’ve been. All those little design mistakes, slightly too-pushed cards, and slow bans are going to build up and up and up and make the game worse for it.
We already live in a world where things keep getting just a little bit worse all the time. Game prices go up, bottle tops are now awkwardly tied to the bottle, the gaps on Toblerone bars keep getting bigger. The fact we could have prevented this, but absolute chudholes decided to throw tantrums because their picture of a goblin dropped to a third of its price instead, shows we likely deserve everything that’s coming.
Magic: The Gathering
Created by Richard Garfield in 1993, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) has become one of the biggest tabletop collectible card games in the world. Taking on the role of a Planeswalker, players build decks of cards and do battle with other players. In excess of 100 additional sets have added new cards to the library, while the brand has expanded into video games, comics, and more.
