The ever-growing popularity of EDH means that there are simply too few Generals available for everyone. We still support local groups playing with the League Play Rule.
Note that while some groups play with the rule that the General is "Superlegendary" meaning immune to the Legend Rule , this is not the official position of the Rules Committee. Generals are still subject to the normal Legend rule. We feel as though the ability to simply replay your General more than balances out the ability of another player to at least temporarily get rid of it via Clone and friends. As far as the mulligan rule goes, we want players to be able to play the game and lessen the chance of mana screw without enabling degenerate combos.
To that end, we've chosen to adopt the "Partial Paris" sometimes called the "Brittany" mulligan. In the Partial Paris mulligan, you may set aside any number of cards from your initial seven and then draw that many minus one.
Like the normal Magic mulligan, you may repeat this process, drawing one fewer card each time. Once you have a hand you're happy with, you shuffle back in the set-aside cards. We feel as though this will give players the maximum opportunity to start with a playable opening hand. The Rules Committee is dedicated to keeping the format vibrant, alive, and responsive to the needs of its player base. On behalf of the RC, Sheldon. Apologies for the delay.
Sheldon is temporarily away, having way too good a time. Rofellos, Channel, and Tolarian Academy have all demonstrated they can do this with quite a bit of ease. Unbanning Rofellos as a General was a year-long experiment that didn't pan out.
We had hoped it would lead to a spate of fun-and-full-of-fat decks, but that wasn't the case. First- or second-turn Channel into Emrakul or similar things are simply negatively format-warping. Tolarian Academy, while not quite as explosive as the Rofellos and Channel, fuels easy early-game super-production of mana. We've had our eyes on Staff of Domination for a long, long time, and were hoping that someone would find uses for it that didn't include the term 'degenerate.
Strangely enough, it's the first and cheapest activation that has proved the most troublesome. The watchword of the Rule's Committee's vision of the format is 'interactive.
Early, reliable, hyper-production of mana often leads to a single player playing by himself and others watching, and that's not what we want for EDH. Some of the peak attention has abated, but the format is still being played a great deal with more than 40 EDH side events at both American and Japanese nationals, online games firing regularly, leagues cropping up all over the place, and reports of EDH being played at every major prerelease.
The social-first, dialogue-guided philosophy has gained a lot of traction around the world. Emrakul in particular has elicited concerns, but is usually dealt with promptly using an omnipresent board sweeper. Both tournaments and social games are seeing a variety of Generals and deck styles, so we see no need to make changes to the banned list at this point. It's a card that makes the game devolve into a war over a single card whenever it hits the table.
Add to that the fact that its combination of abilities made is seriously unfun to play against. We had already had our eye on it, and when the community spoke, we listened. The Commander's color identity restricts what cards may appear in the deck. It means that you can have these creatures as Commanders, and you can generate mana of their color identity so if you're playing Memnarch, you can generate blue mana, or if you're playing Thelon, you can generate black and green.
The RC spends quite some time considering the needs of the format itself and the voices of the format's player base, making an effort to strike the balance that while keep the format strong and healthy for a long, long time. There are cards RC members like and dislike more than others, but our personal likes and dislikes are not primary reasons for bannings.
We struggle to maintain a balance for the overall health of the format. One of the concerns we discussed is Commander's current growth and its additional attraction of newer players, especially when the new materials are released in June.
We considered if we needed to ban additional cards in order to provide less of a social barrier-to-entry to those new players. In the end, we came to the conclusion that while a few of the less social cards might provide suboptimal experiences for some of those new players, they also might not, and some of those cards provide a positive experience for veterans and Johnnies as premium win conditions. Attempting to over-engineer the way players have fun in the format by banning a few cards that we consider anti-social would lead to a cascade of bannings "If you ban X, you have to ban Y" , creating a large, unmanageable, and undesirable Banned List, which we believe is extremely unhealthy.
All in all, the format seems quite healthy. We'll continue to work with playgroups, individuals and the wider Commander community in an effort to keep it that way. It is no longer a particularly strong example of unwelcome, format-warping, combo-play style, but simply another infinite-combo piece.
Those applications are narrow enough that it should not cause problems for social players, and the type of player who wants to play this kind of infinite combo isn't going to play a more fun deck because Worldgorger Dragon is available. Thus, since it's a goal to keep the list as short as possible and focused on more fun-oriented games, we believe it can come off the list. We'd also like to take the chance to thank the folks on the various forums for their continued input and commentary to and support for the Rules Committee.
The broader community has many voices, and we do our best to hear them all. September 19, Genomancer wrote: We've got something for everyone today, including one relatively straight-forward change and two updates which may be more surprising. Shahrazad Starting with the least contentious issue: Shahrazad. It provided a potent tool for aggressive decks such as white-weenie, but most importantly it highlighted the fact that the Commander games and rules can differ significantly from "tournament stable" formats.
Unfortunately, Shahrazad was instead used almost exclusively to troll other players by forking it, recurring it, and otherwise drawing out the game in byzantine ways. While there are lots of cards which can be used to do the same thing, Shahrazad was only allowed because of a special exemption to the rules.
Since one of our aims is to keep the rules lean, and this extra rule was a net negative for most groups, it has been removed. We don't think many tears will be spread for its loss but, as always, if your group doesn't mind the occasional subgame, feel free to keep playing it! Erayo, Soratami Ascendant Listing Erayo as the third example of a legendary creature unwelcome in the commander role is likely to raise more questions. Some people will argue that other legends are more deserving of hate, but we feel that Erayo is a flagship example of a general whose sole purpose is to decrease interactivity.
We don't think she's ever used to make games more interesting: the deck and Erayo decks are pretty much identical plays the same every game, requires fairly narrow answers to disrupt, and when it wins does so very early in the game.
Worse, it's not always obvious to newer players that the game is over when Erayo flips, and they suffer through many turns of waiting to "actually die". Strategies like this, which win in confounding and non-obvious ways, often cause poor play experiences because they exacerbate the difference between players' understanding of the game. Is Erayo the most powerful early game mono-blue commander?
It doesn't really matter.. There is a small but vocal segment of the commander player base who say that all fast mana like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt should be banned to balance the format Our aim is not to make commander an unbreakable tournament format LED was originally banned as an example of a two-card infinite mana combo with Auriok Salvagers , but like Worldgorger Dragon its presence on the list is increasingly incongruous.
There are many two-card combos which actually kill multiple players in a single turn, and most players new to the format don't see LED and think "Ah, inifinite mana combos are kind scummy.
It enables commanders late in the game, and expensive commanders in particular because they tend to be played later when hands are smaller.
One possible source of problems with LED is its synergy with various tutors, which may be a good or bad thing. As with any change to the list, we'll keep a weather eye out and if it turns out to be a signficant force for degeneracy or repetitive games, we have no problems admitting we're wrong and sending it back into exile. Honestly, we don't think taking it off the list will have much impact other than makes the list one card shorter. While there may be a few cards that we see causing folks some heartburn, we don't currently find any of them format-warping and worthy of getting bounced.
Our view at the moment involves taking in the big picture to make sure that we're capturing the spirit of EDH. We're attracting more and more players to the format, with no near turn end in sight to that growth. The RC will continue to very carefully keep an eye on both how players approach the format as well as the cards they're playing with. At this time we feel that it needs no changes.
While there are always a few cards that are still worth keeping our eyes on just in case they start tipping over the edge, we feel that there is nothing that's currently warping the format in an unhealthy direction.
As we do all the time, we revisited cards just to make sure they still deserve their place on the banned list. After some long discussions, we agreed that removing anything would be detrimental to the format's current health.
The most intensive work we're doing regards some reworking of the rules and philosophy section. We're not really changing anything so much as more deeply and clearly articulating the set of cascading philosophies of the format and our goals for it.
You'll see the results of that work shortly. The top level message is that there is an Official Version of Commander, and that the official version can live in harmony with local and house rules. The vision of a shared positive group experience and methods for achieving it will play strongly in what we have to say. We're aware that there are no fans of any format so dedicated to it and passionate about it than ours.
We continue to thank an ever-growing community of players for their input and support in keeping this the most fun format in the game.
We knew all along it was pretty busted. While we had a glimmer of hope that the batch-of-7 card draw would help mitigate the obvious problem of a player being able to draw so many cards immediately like Yawgmoth's Bargain, unlike Necropotence , it simply didn't.
Griselbrand's Lifelink ability, allowing you more resources to draw cards with, coupled with being a creature and therefore easier to get into play not to mention repeatedly for far less than his mana cost, led to quite degenerate game states. Sundering Titan has long been a card on the edge. The decision to get rid of it came from the combination of two points. One, it simply created undesirable game states.
It was too easily both intentionally abused and unintentionally game-warping, especially since its ability triggers on both entering and leaving the battlefield. Two, there has been a fair amount of community distaste for the card, and we agreed that the card overwhelmingly creates a negative experience for players. Listening to the ever-growing and ever more-involved community is important to us.
There's an M13 card—Worldfire—that's been generating some talk. We're going to keep a close eye on the card after its release to look at its impact and potential impact on the format, but there's no reason to panic and pre-ban it.
Banning cards is about what they do, not about what they might do, so like we did with Griselbrand, and despite what we see as a likely outcome, we'd like to see some evidence of it first. As a side note, remember that there is ongoing Kokusho testing, so no decision will be made on it until the September update, at the earliest. Though the card itself isn't overpowered, it does have unfortunate interactions with the format, namely that the Commander is available to be cast even after the spell has resolved, and our philosophy is to avoid cards like that.
Since, outside of this one quirk, there aren't a lot of interesting applications to the card, we don't anticipate it'll be missed much. Primeval Titan One of the concerns that we've had recently is the overrepresentation of heavy ramp strategies, to the point where it makes up a large proportion of the aggregate decks out there.
While we think ramp should be good - this is battlecruiser Magic, after all - it's probably a little too prevalent and needs reining in a bit. With that in mind, we're banning the most egregious offender, Primeval Titan. This decision won't be universally popular. Primeval Titan is dripping with awesomeness, and we ourselves are big fans of the card.
But its ubiquity and effect on games couldn't be ignored and sad though we are to see it go, we think it will make for a more interesting and diverse format. Kokusho It's appropriate that Kokusho comes off at the same time as Prime Time goes on, as Kokusho was originally banned along the same lines. His presence had a similar warping effect on the format in the early days, with too many decks reusing the Dragon over and over even if it didn't start in their deck!
However, in the intervening time, graveyard hate has become stronger and the overall level of creature power has risen to the point where we're comfortable - moreso after some testing - that it won't have the same impact.
He remains banned as a Commander because the mechanics of being a Commander allow him to circumvent the best method of dealing with him - the aforementioned graveyard hate. Getting him into exile as a creature is the end of it. As a Commander, it's license to start again. As always, there is spirited debate on a number of topics both among the community and within the rules committee, but none are problems that challenge the enjoyability or growth of EDH.
EXTORT With the release of Gatecrash, we'd like to clarify our stance on Extort by confirming that, as always, reminder text has no effect on color identity. Extort adds no colored mana symbols to a card outside of its reminder text, and therefore is legal for play in Commander decks of any color or colors as long as the card it appears on is otherwise legal, of course. There will be no updates to the rules in the foreseeable future that affect how Extort works in Commander.
Both of these changes are decisions that have been building momentum for a while rather than urgent issues. When Staff of Domination was banned, it was one of the most widespread and iconic combo cards in the format. Banning it sent a clear message that turn four wins weren't the gameplay we wanted to see. These days there are plenty of scarier combo cards out there, and Staff of Domination has a valid role as a cool utility card.
Neither of these would be enough their own, but together they provide solid reasons to unban the do-anything stick. Please enjoy Staff of Domination responsibly. Trade Secrets is much like Limited Resources in that has some issues in a multiplayer environment. It isn't a problem when one player draws four cards and another draws eight. Trade Secrets is a problem when both players decide to draw 80 cards and effectively turn a four-player game into a two-player game.
It just doesn't add enough to the format to justify the games that it single-handedly ruins. We're looking forward to seeing what interesting developments, new deck types, and strategic interactions the M14 rules will bring.
Commander is in a good place right now. Sure, there are some potentially unfun cards out there, but most of them either telegraph their unfun-ness, or have too much potential for awesome in the right hands to be kept down. A few months of playing with the new Legend rule suggests that it hasn't made anything more problematic.
As for the current list, as a thought exercise all the RC members named a card they felt was closest to being removable from the banlist. No card got named twice.
We are making a small change to the format. For a long time, the "Optional" section has confused people. Are they official optional rules? Do they apply on a per-player or per-playgroup basis? The downside is that you skip your draw phase, but it's forgivable considering you should already have anything you need. Want five more cards? They're yours. Go for it, especially when using black's lifelink tools to supplement your health. Here's another of the craziest effects you'll see outside the Un cards.
Falling Star requires you to physically drop it into play from a foot or higher up, and it must completely flip over at least once to have any effect. Any creature it touches upon landing takes three damage and becomes tapped. Normally, this effect isn't too overpowered, but by banning it, players don't have to worry about punishment for grouping creatures together a common way to save space with tokens.
It also prevents players from physically tearing Star into multiple pieces to increase its range. Sounds silly, but this actually became an issue with "Chaos Orb"—more on that soon. Worldfire is red's version of Sway of the Stars, edging players even closer to death. It sets everyone's life to one while exiling all permanents, cards in hand, and cards in the graveyard. This puts everyone in a dangerous spot, but it's still a great escape route; better to have everyone on the brink of death than just you.
With the right setup like "Oblivion Ring" used on "Barren Glory" , you can also turn it into an insta-win. Yet again, we see that Wizards of the Coast recognizes the hazards of life-controlling effects in commander. Biorhythm sets everyone's health to the amount of creatures they control. So, use a field wipe on opponents, and you can force an immediate loss no matter their current life. Heck, even if your own field was also wiped, you can still wriggle out of a loss by forcing a tie.
And while eight mana seems like a lot, green's numerous ramps help attain it. Speaking of which.. For a single turn, Channel lets you pay one life whenever you activate a mana ability to add a colorless mana to your pool. Activating a mana ability means doing something that creates mana, like tapping lands or certain creatures and artifacts.
Since EDH provides a boosted health reservoir, you've got plenty of life to spare, letting you easily afford high-cost spells or pump those with variable X costs long before opponents are prepared.
Fastbond only needs one mana and lets you play any number of lands during your turn! That means you can have all lands in hand out on your very first move, possible before opponents have done anything! And with cards that access lands on top of your deck like "Oracle of Mul Daya" , you can rapidly work through your entire library.
The only downside is that each land beyond your first costs one life, but again, that's a minuscule penalty in EDH. For similarly-cheap yet legal extra-land enchantments, try green's "Exploration" or "Burgeoning".
But more than that, whenever he enters the field or attacks, you can place any two lands from your deck onto the field tapped! Not only can this repeatedly trigger, it's one of few searches that lets you choose any terrain not just basic lands too powerful a bundle in a format that adores tutors. While he specifically needs two green mana, Rofellos's price shouldn't be a problem since he belongs in mono-green builds.
He taps for one green per forest you control—often attaining three or more resources with each exhaust. That's a frightening amount of mana that scales as the game progresses. For each opponent, he lets you destroy one of their non-creature permanents upon entry, and for each card removed this way, you can place a forest from your deck onto the field tapped. This time, you're limited to basic forests, but it's still a fierce smorgasbord of effects, blending a beatstick with a widespread removal and ramp.
Primordial is often manageable in 1v1, but his efficiency in multiplayer earned him the ban. Many insta-win effects wait until your next upkeep after meeting a condition, giving foes a final turn to stop your victory. But not this rainbow-needing sorcery; Coalition Victory grants an immediate win if you control a basic land of each type and at least one creature from all five colors. Thing is, cards can count for multiple colors—a single rainbow monster fulfills all your creature needs, and many lands like "Savannah" and "Volcanic Island" contain two basic types.
In other words, by the time you can afford it, you've often already met Coalition's requirements, making it too cheap to allow. Yet what really earns his ban are his powerful effects, simultaneously restricting opponents to one draw per turn and letting you draw whenever an opponent targets you or one of your permanents with a spell or effect.
Either one of these traits might have been okay, but together they form a fierce combo, letting you rapidly amass cards while your opponents can't draw extras. You could also exploit their restriction with spells that replenish each player's hand like "Timetwister" , which now only grant your rivals a single card.
Despite Leovold's ban, you can still legally restrict opposing draws with the blue planeswalker "Narset, Parter of Veils".
Green and blue are both strong EDH colors, and they carry one of the would-be strongest supports. With this constant refresh, you can attack while still maintaining blockers and easily afford instants and activated abilities. Or, use your extra supply for soldiers; Prophet gives your creatures flash, letting you play them at any time.
With just a few too many abilities, Prophet's ban still rubs some players the wrong way, but doesn't leave you completely empty-handed; you can still employ similar five-cost untappers like "Seedborn Muse" and "Murkfiend Liege". Probably the most famous Magic card of all time, Black Lotus is another Power Nine member, offering an insane ramp. It costs zero mana, and you can tap-sacrifice it to gain three mana of any color. Added to your land-per-turn, this lets you afford four-cost spells on your first move, a ridiculous advantage.
Honestly, even if it were legal, not many players could afford Lotus anyway, but I'm glad I don't have to be Bill Gates to win Magic games. Like Falling Star, Chaos Orb tests your dexterity, letting you spend one mana to drop it into play from one foot up.
Again, it needs to flip over at least once, and now destroys any card it touches upon landing! That's an all-around improvement on Star, requiring less mana, no specific color, and eliminating all kinds of permanents. This is also the card that was once allowed to be torn up in a sanctioned game, dramatically increasing its radius. Plus, the official rules state any sleeve on Orb counts, further increasing its reach.
He was good while he lasted. Formerly legal, Emrakul is somewhat balanced by his enormous fee; he's easily one of the most mana-demanding Magic cards. But again, there's just too many ways to cheat him into play, presenting foes with a spell they're often not equipped to beat.
Emrakul can't be countered, and if he's legally cast, you score an extra turn. Remember, in EDH, card advantage is key. And that's exactly what Library helps you maintain; it can either tap for a colorless mana, or to have you draw a card. You can only use the draw if your hand has exactly seven cards, but it's still an excellent replenisher, especially since it enters untapped and ready to use. CMC: 0 Yep, all five of the standard Mox artifacts are banned.
Like basic lands, they're free and tap for a colored mana. But since they aren't actually lands, you can cast one the same turn you play a land, essentially giving an extra mana. That speed goes a long way, letting you set your field before opponents can counter. But his effect makes all cards and spells fielded or not a color of your choice in addition to their usual hues.
This has so many potential combos, the possibilities are almost endless. As a quick sample, you can entirely shut down a deck with "Iona, Shield of Emeria", make enemies a color you have protection from, and much, much more. Mirror needs a healthy dose of five mana. Once fielded, you can tap it and spend X mana a value of your choice to exile an instant or sorcery with CMC X from your hand. Then, during your upkeep, you can cast a copy of the imprinted spell for free.
In the extended games of commander, this quickly adds up to a whopping amount of free spells, and if you exile one of the several extra-turn cards like "Temporal Mastery" , you've basically won; giving you unlimited back-to-back turns.
Engine requires a hefty investment of five mana, but once out, it untaps all your non-lands whenever you cast a spell! That's just an insane effect that can easily go infinite, especially with mana-tappers and effects that play spells from your deck.
Engine won't trigger off itself since its untap effect isn't active until it hits the field , but its arrival can very easily mean game over. In the right builds, Titan will ravage opposing lands without harming your own.
Remember, many multi-color decks have lands that count for multiple types, meaning you'll often be able to eliminate five lands at once. To ensure you won't accidentally raze your own, simply use cards without the standard land types, like gates. That's a brutal removal, especially since it reactivates when Titan leaves the field, And remember this triggers from any exit not just death , so adversaries can't dodge it with exile or bounce effects..
As of this writing, Time Vault's official rating in the Magic database is a near-perfect 4. For just two mana, Vault enters tapped, and it doesn't auto-refresh during your untap step. You can skip a turn to untap Vault, letting you later tap it to take an extra turn. But forget that; just untap Vault with other means like blue's "Dramatic Reversal" to gain an extra turn without forfeiting one.
Rinse and repeat for easy wins in casual matches. In addition to today's list, any spells with the "conspiracy" card type are banned, as are those that reference "playing for ante" which require players to wager cards. We'll also later tackle the alternative "duel commander" ban list, which forbids a few extra spells that prove troublesome in 1v1 games.
But for now, as we await future updates to commander's ban list, vote for your favorite EDH color and I'll see you at our next MTG countdown! Answer: Nope, although I believe it's banned in the alternate "duel commander" ban list.
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