From time to time, at such a time, and place, as shall be appointed (online) certain members, “representative” of the Commander community at large shall meet, at such time and place as they have chosen, and, making certain representations regarding the game of commander, and, as they shall be appointed the “rules committee” shall determine the rules of Commander, and such cards as shall be allowed, bans thereof, and wherefore they do so we shall never know.
Which is to say a group of people meet and determine the rules of Commander and ban or unban cards. For the September quarterly update, the community has been rocked by news of four bannings:
None of these bans should be shocking; what’s shocking here is the rules committee actually acting to ban problematic cards for the format. Most of these cards primarily affect competitive commander, such as it is. At this point cEDH has almost split off into its own format, and there have been a couple of different attempts made to create a more balanced version of Commander to facilitate cEDH play. None of these have been very successful so far, but the Conquest format is still around, as are the various points-based versions like Canadian Highlander.
Attempts at creating a more balanced competitive Commander format primarily revolve around solving the massive disparities in card power in the format – a format with more than 25 thousand legal cards. How do you balance a format where Healing Salve and Tunnel are competing with Timetwister? The gap is ludicrous, and the volume of cards makes this an impossible task without taking significant measures – small tweaks just aren’t going to be enough.
One suggestion I’ve considered to “fix” the format is to rank cards, and thereby rank decks. This would allow players to match up according to deck ratings, potentially creating more balanced games. And this makes sense – many really imbalanced Commander games happen when someone “who wants to play monowhite with a lot of Angels” plays against someone “who wants to resolve Underworld Breach, repeatedly cast Lion’s Eye Diamond and Wheel of Fortune until they can cast Thassa’s Oracle.”
It’s not unlike the points-based systems or the restrictions leveled in the Pauper format, but like those this idea carries with it extra baggage (who determines ratings and how, and the amount of additional work necessary in deckbuilding that results), and so I don’t expect my idea to gain any traction. But I bring it up to illustrate that, on a 1-10 scale, Healing Salve is probably about a 1 (you’d generally be better off including another basic Plains than a Healing Salve) and Timetwister is about a 9.8.
Every one of the cards in this week’s ban announcement is near the top of that scale:
Nadu, Winged Wisdom was so obviously blatantly broken as soon as it was printed it was clear it was going to warp every format in which you could play it – it’s frankly baffling they printed it in the first pace. Well, not that shocking – higher power levels move packs, and Wizards is encouraged and incentivized to push the envelope and if that leads to warped formats, they can just ban cards with little consequence, as players will adjust by acquiring new cards for a now Nadu-less format. Nadu is also one of the very few cards legal to play as a Commander to eat a ban, Lutri, the Spellchaser is the other one in recent years, and he ate a ban before even coming into print due to the way his companion requirement is uh, trivial, for Commander decks to accomplish.
Jeweled Lotus is similarly a card so obviously busted that it should never have been printed. Is it even fun to bust out a massive commander turn 1 and turn the game completely asymmetrical? Maybe if you’re into that kind of thing, I guess. But going off on Turn 1 with Godo, Bandit Warlord or on turn 2 with Tergrid, God of Frightis not my idea of a fun game, and there are likewise unfun defensive Commander options.
Aren’t fun games the point?
Mana Crypt has been a problem for more than two decades now. Part of its “balance” is that you eat damage from it, on average 1.5 damage per turn. The problem is that when you start with 40 life it really needs to do 3 damage per turn to be as harmful to the player casting it. And even that would be less of a drawback than normal because players are less incentivized to attack other players early when everyone starts with 40 life, allowing life to be a much more readily used resource in Commander. And the early, free acceleration is always worth it.
Dockside Extortionist isn’t so bad, and it scales with the power level of the table, which is to say bad decks tend to run fewer mana rocks and are less likely to accumulate several, which makes Dockside less impactful. Dockside also sort of signaled a turn where red increasingly became more generally viable in Commander. In fact, many more competitive decks use Dockside loops as a win condition, and almost all include it as a basic ramp mechanism because it’s so swingy. This can also lead to some fairly unpleasant play patterns, putting people in the position of wanting to sacrifice Treasures in response to a Dockside cast that they’ve carefully assembled, possibly to win the game. I’m guessing it causes arguments, with player A, arguing that player B should sacrifice Treasures in response, so player C doesn’t get so many Treasures. Those arguments just generally aren’t fun.
All of these cards on a 1-10 power level scale are living at above 9, and they’re also prone to creating unfun play patterns or moments. They’re generically strong in any deck of the appropriate color identity, and two of them are artifacts, so they’re strong and playable in any deck. Nadu can simply be slotted into most Simic decks, or be the commander, and just lead to a huge resource disparity fairly quickly. As the rules committee notes, he’s also a non-deterministic combo, so you can end up just monopolizing play time. Which isn’t fun.
So these bans all make sense, and I’m glad they happened.
The only real question I have is: Why now?
There are plenty of other cards which need this same treatment, and while it’s nice to see the Rules Committee actually taking action instead of hiding behind a bizarre argument around keeping really powerful cards in the format because players happen to own and run them, it’s also well past time the committee started taking active steps to prune the format down to a more manageable power level.
Start with Sol Ring. I don’t care if it’s “identified with the format” – what does that even mean? It’s a super dumb card, it leads to uneven games, it goes into every deck, and thereby reduces the creativity of deckbuilding, and it has virtually no downside. Something like 99.99% of Commander decks run Sol Ring. In point of fact Commander is not a 100 card format, it’s a 99 card + Sol Ring format.
Cut it.
The best outcome would be for Thassa’s Oracle, Demonic Consultation, Tainted Pact, and Sol Ring to be the next 4 cards banned.
But I’m not holding my breath.
TheChirurgeon:Â Since these bans dropped we’ve noticed a series of articles launching this week, all outraged. Not at the impact of these bans on the game, mind you – they’re first and foremost concerned with the dramatic loss of value for these cards, written by and for speculators whose only involvement with the game is increasing the price of cards on the secondary market. Just so we’re on the same page: fuck those people. We do not care about the lost value of these cards – the value of those cards on the secondary market always was and remains intrinsically linked to the play value of these cards in the game. And in that sense, the secondary market only serves as a barrier between players and the game itself, raising the cost of playing at the same level as their peers.
These bans are good for the game, and if they’re bad for speculators well, that just makes them even better.
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