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Having aMagic: The Gatheringcard gets banned is a big deal, especially in a format like Commander, where every card Magic has ever printed is available for play. A recent string of bannings in Magic has culminated in four cards getting the axe in the Commander format, with the little enterprising Goblin Dockside Extortionist being banned from decks.
Dockside Extortionist is good; it’s pretty plain to see just from looking at the card. But why exactly was it banned? We took a look at one of the most influential Goblins in Magic and explored why it deserved to be cut from your Commander decks.
What Is Dockside Extortionist?
The mono-red Dockside Extortionist is a Goblin Pirate card originally printed in Commander 2019. This punishing little guy does quite a bit but is dependent on your opponent’s board state to reach its true potential.
Dockside Extortionist works bycreating Treasure tokens when it enters the battlefieldequal to the number of artifacts and enchantments all your opponents control.
What this means is when you have it enter the battlefield, you geta ton of Treasure tokenssince it adds up the total number of all artifacts and enchantments across all your opponents. you’re able to easily rack up five or more Treasure tokens even just by playing it on curve on your second turn.
So What Made Dockside Extortionist So Good?
The main problem with Dockside Extortionist, and with all the other cards banned in the wave, is that it cangenerate more mana than it costs to play exceptionally easily. If your opponents have three or more artifacts and enchantments out, you’re already pulling in a higher amount of mana than what you have put into casting it.
Even just at your second turn,you could be looking at five or more mana, more than enough to cast a few spells, a higher-cost commander, or some powerful mid-game bomb at the earliest point of the game.
There’s also the fact that you could use Dockside Extortionist strategically to force your opponents to get rid of their own Treasure tokens just by playing it.
Let’s say you play it into a board with a ton of Treasure tokens out already. Maybe your opponents played their own Docksides Extortionists and racked up a few Treasure tokens that way, or they created their own through some other means.
When you go to drop your own Dockside Extortionist you are eitherforcing your opponents to sacrifice their Treasure tokensearly in response, or they will be giving you a ton of Treasure tokens of your own.
Why Did Dockside Extortionist Have To Be Banned?
Dockside Extortionist starts toget a little out of control when you start combining it with ways to blink it or retrigger it, giving you more andmore Treasure tokens every timeit enters the battlefield.
One of the most straightforward ways of doing so is with Temur Sabertooth, an uncommon creature that lets you spend two mana to bounce another creature back into its owner’s hand. you may give Temur Sabertooth indestructible for the turn, but that’s irrelevant; the real power comes whenyou are generating more Treasure tokens than what it costs to trigger the abilityand then recast Dockside Extortionists.
So long as you are making at least five Treasure tokens, you have yourself infinite mana with just two cards. You also have infinite enter the battlefield triggers, an infinite storm count, and infinite leave the battlefield triggers all at the same time.
And that’s justone of these infinite combos with Dockside Extortionist, there are plenty more out there.
Having a card that makes so much mana so easily can be a hindrance to card design for future sets by throttling what blink spells and effects Magic can produce.
Dockside Extortionist has been on theRules Committee’s radar for quite some time, and it has been deciding games for the past five years with a fair amount of consistency. While a bit more swingy than other cards that were included in the ban, like Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt, it also has plenty of potential to be a bit of a dud if no one else is playing a large number of artifacts and enchantments.
Where Can You Still Play Dockside Extortionist?
Just because Dockside Extortionist is banned in Commander does not mean that you can’t play it anymore, but it does remove it from the most popular format. You can still play themoney-conscious Goblin Pirate in Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker.
It isunlikely that Dockside Extortionist will ever get unbannedin Commander given the nature of the card and shifts in Magic’s focus on how they want to keep Commander from being such an explosive format with incredibly fast early turns.
