Summary
Earlier this week,Magic: The Gathering’sCommander format wasshaken up dramatically due to a wave of bans, the first seen since 2021. These bans included the popular and powerful cards Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom, andtheir bans unsurprisingly sent their value plummeting.
Prior to their bans, these cards were worth a pretty penny, going for close to hundreds of pounds in some cases. For example, Jeweled Lotus was selling for roughly £90 before the bans, but it’s now going for around £20, a whopping 83 percent decrease in value. It meant that a lot of collections suddenly lost a lot of value overnight, and Magic: The Gathering fans were pretty peeved.
Shortly after the bans were announced, fans of the game began making all sorts of accusations on Twitter about the Commander Rules Committee, the body that decides on bans for the Commander format. One of the more serious claims is that members of the Commander RC have engaged in insider trading, selling off the cards that were about to be banned to avoid losing out on their value.
Magic: The Gathering’s Commander RC Denies Insider Trading After September Bans
There’s no real proof that the Commander RC has done this, and the group was very quick to address the accusations.In a new FAQ pagecreated to address this month’s bans (thanks Wargamer), the Commander RC has claimed that it has “a zero-tolerance policy for abusing knowledge of pending or potential changes” and that it had not sold any of the cards prior to the ban.
“No. There’s no way to prove it short of putting our collections in escrow, but the RC has a zero-tolerance policy for abusing knowledge of pending or potential changes. If a vendor has evidence of cards being sold before the announcement, we invite them to reach out to and publish it.”
After those comments, the Commander RC goes on to explain that it will not be reversing its decision to ban these cards, despite widespread criticism, as it believes “the format as a whole will be better” for them. However, it does apologize for how the bans were announced, admitting that they “could have been done much better.”
