Commentary on the EDH/Commander ban list

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1994-JUN
Banned: 2008-SEP
Commander is a format that focuses on legendary creatures that tie together decks thematically, and Karakas is a land that can both prevent a player from having consistent access to their commander AND allow its controller to consistently save their commander from removal. It does both of these things for a negligibly low activation cost.

No, it doesn't do both of those things for a negligibly low activation cost. It does either of those things for a negligibly low activation cost. Get it right. If you're tapping Karakas to deny someone else access to that player's commander, then you can't also tap Karakas to bounce your own commander. You could do it if you have some easy access to land-untapping effects, but then you're moving into elaborate combo territory and Karakas itself is hardly the issue.

Frankly, I think that the utility of bouncing one's own legendary creature is fine here. If Karakas couldn't interfere with the commanders of other players, then I think it would be a fine card in EDH. It would be powerful, but there is some opportunity cost to running a nonbasic land that otherwise just taps for a single white mana. And sure, EDH has plenty of other ways for you to bounce your own commander if that's the thing you want to be doing. I just think that the design space of tying that effect to a land is something worthwhile. Seems interesting and not too broken. Of course, such a card would be functionally worse than the versatile Karakas in other formats, but if we're focusing on EDH? Why not?

NItpicking aside, this is a fine explanation by the RC. Karakas is the sort of ban that makes sense in this format. So I'll give them kudos on this one. I've got to acknowledge their good explanations before going back to harsh criticism.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2016-AUG
Banned: 2017-APR
Leovold – as a commander – creates an environment of asymmetric resource denial in the early game. Its second ability protects itself and other resource denial pieces in play, and its first ability easily combines with several other cards to strip opponents’ hands, and keep them empty. This creates an environment where players don’t have agency, but doesn’t outright end the game.

I mean, I definitely get this one. I remember being totally unsurprised when Leovold was banned. I think it's reasonable to build a case that certain effects are OK in the maindeck in casual EDH, but just don't belong in the command zone. And if "banned as commander" is off the table, then that's going to mean some commanders are banned. Is the Leovold ban warranted? I don't have a firm stance on this either way, but I will note that I think Leovold is eminently more banworthy than Braids, Emrakul, Erayo, Golos, and Griselbrand, the other legendary creatures we've looked at in this thread so far. In short, Leovold isn't a ban I'm 100% enthusiastically on board with, but it's one I can easily accept.

The blurb here seems fine on its own, but I'm noticing a pattern of "doesn't outright end the game" in many of these blurbs, and I think that the RC should reconsider putting any weight on that. They ban some cards that can end the game suddenly (such as Coalition Victory) and other cards that can lock players down without ending the game (like Leovold here). That's all well and good until you start citing those as the reasons you're banning cards. Either ending the game or not ending the game are the only two options. So if you're justifying bans on cards that do end the game on the basis that they end the game and ones that don't end the game on the basis that they don't end the game, you've essentially said that you're banning cards for no reason. Not their intent, but that's the message.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1993-DEC
Banned: —
Library was for a long time considered the 10th piece of power in Vintage play. Like those, it was banned to avoid the perceived-barrier-to-entry, but was strong enough to be a candidate for banning even without the optics – especially in long games where the card draw yields inevitability over time. Combined with its colorless nature, allowing it to go into every deck, and the occasional difficulty for inexperienced players to realize that Library is the reason they’re losing, its place on the banned list is very secure.

Hey, I did a "Magic Memories" thread for this card! So, one of the points I keep thinking of whenever the Library topic comes up is that the majority of analytical discussion I've been seeing in Legacy and Vintage have been in favor of unbanning or unrestricting this card. It's not really at the top of anyone's list, but some very smart people who know those formats better than I do all seem to think that it's a safe unban/unrestriction these days. And I disagree with them on this point. Why? Well, if you asked them, you'd probably get a different answer. If you ask me, I think that people tend to underestimate just how flexible Library is, and how ridiculous it gets in cornercases where multiple copies actually do get to draw cards. Because that's the key: you can activate Library to draw a card if you have exactly seven cards in your hand, but the ability doesn't check again after that.

The general dismissal of the Tenth Power in competitive Magic now is that formats are so fast and Library is too slow. And other analysts may be correct about that. I'll note that format speed in Legacy and Vintage has not always been increasing. A shift due to new printings could cause the metagame to shift back into a slower mode. Library of Alexandria is actually often at its best in Vintage when it's run in fast decks that usually just make mana with it, but can fall back on it to outgrind control decks, especially in post-sideboard games. The opportunity cost essentialy only matters for decks that are really greedy about colorfixing. A format with unrestricted Library of Alexandria would likely see the card throwna round a lot, mostly not even drawing cards every game, but warping the format around the threat that it could produce tremendous card advantage. There wouldn't be a single, dominant deck built around Library of Alexandria. Instead, it would get splashed at various rates depending on colored mana needs, in most decks. And while I like the card, I think that a competitive environment without it, or one where it's restricted, is just a more interesting place.

I've rambled on without even mentioning EDH. But I want to make it clear that I respect the power of this card. I'm seemingly in the minority when it comes to this evaluation, so I hope it's understood that I'm not being flippant when I say that Library of Alexandria just might be the most eminently unbannable card on this entire list. Seriously. Yeah, there's fodder on the list that's weaker, but when it comes to cards that would actually see play and be fun to play, Library of Alexandria wouldn't take over the format and would see play in lots of decks. In a proxy-friendly environment, Library would probably be the second most popular EDH staple after Sol Ring. In a proxy-unfriendly environment, it would be rare, but not really a problem either. Sol Ring is more broken anyway.

I mentioned that I could undestand the "optics" thing for the Power 9. That doesn't really work for Library of Alexandria. Bazaar of Baghdad is legal in EDH, more powerful (in the deck that use it), and worth more money. A hypothetical EDH unban would almost certainly change that last one (Library hasn't climbed as much as other high-end Old School cards in part because it's not used in EDH). But that doesn't seem like a solid justification for a ban. Library is currently the fourth most expensive land card in Magic. It had the #1 spot before the explosion in popularity of EDH, and an unban would probably see it rise to the top again. But if we were to ban it on that basis, presumably we'd next ban Tabernacle for being the most expensive, then Bazaar and Workshop for the same reason. With those out of the way, Diamond Valley and Gaea's Cradle would be next on the chopping block. This would leave Underground Sea as the new most expensive land card in EDH. And if we just kept banning lands hard enough, we'd be left with only basics. No, I think if we're going to use "optics" then there needs to be some kind of obvious cutoff. That's either Power 9, Old School Reserved List, or just Reserved List. It shouldn't be "8 out of 9 of the Power 9, and also Library of Alexandria." Speaking of which, Timetwister is another card that's more expensive than Library, and also much scarier for actual EDH gameplay (yes, I run it in my own decks, but I'm a jerk).

This does leave the complaint that there's a potential "difficulty for inexperienced players to realize that Library is the reason they’re losing." To this, I have nothing nice to say at all. I'm sick of the insulting characterization of new players as idiots. The RC aren't the only ones guilty of this, but the are guilty of it, and shame on them.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1998-JUN
Banned: 2008-JUN
Limited resources is probably the easiest card on the ban list to justify. It does not scale with the number of players, so as early as turn two it effectively reads “Players can’t play any more lands” on a one mana enchantment.

Heh. Well, this one's easy. Yeah, they're totally right about Limited Resources. No argument from me on this one.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2020-APR
Banned: 2020-APR
Lutri is in a unique category of banned cards that interact poorly with the structure of the format. In general terms, companions encourage creative deckbuilding and reinforce the idea that self-imposed restrictions can be fun and novel. Lutri’s restriction is met by nearly all Commander decks, so it allows all decks with blue and red to have a 101st card in deck and 8th card in their hand.

It would be silly to let all decks with blue and red in them have access to an extra card from outside the game at no cost (so long as they're not build to use those cards you can use as many copies of in your deck as you want to, or I guess Seven Dwarves). So this should be a non-controversial entry on the ban list. And much like Limited Resources, there shouldn't really be anything for me to say. Sorry, but no.

I talked about this a bit with Hullbreacher, but Lutri might be a more telling example. The fact is that ever since WotC created Commander precons back in 2011, the company has had a vested interest in the format, despite initially setting it aside as "unofficial." Well, Commander has since become an official format, officially (I think). Players frustrated with the Commander Rules Committee have sometimes voiced the opinion that WotC should take over and manage the format themselves moving forward (as though WotC has a track record of good format management). They haven't done so, but the thing is, they have shown that they don't need to. The RC aren't just some random players. They're people who have ties to WotC. One of them is even a current WotC employee. So When changes in Commander seem to financially benefit WotC, it's worth keeping in mind that the Rules Committee as an independent entity no longer exists, if it ever really did. One obnoxious development was the temporary legalization of silver-bordered cards as a marketing gimmick to hype Unstable. I already mentioned the Hullbreacher ban. The RC have plausible deniablility on some of this stuff, but the Lutri case is pretty blatant if you look at the history.

Initially, EDH had no official stance on cards like Ring of Ma'Ruf and the Wish cycle. These cards are intended to be able to grab cards from your collection in casual play, with an exception for tournament formats specifically that they only have access to cards in your sideboard. Since EDH wasn't a tournament format and didn't use sideboards, the implication was that Ring of Ma'Ruf would function as intended. Although WotC keep printing cards that employ this mechanic, the culture around them has shifted a lot. When I was in junior high school, I remember bringing my entire collection, organized in rubber-banded stacks stored in two tupperware bins, to the after-school game club so that I could grab any of my cards with Ring of Ma'Ruf. It seems that fewer people play that way now. And I certainly couldn't easily transport my entire collection with me anymore. As casual gameplay evolved and EDH with it, The Rules Committee went from leaving these cards alone entirely to requiring that they be used with a 15- cards sideboard or "wishboard." Then the made the wishboard an optional rule and noted that these cards only functioned if the optional rule was agreed upon. Then they took the option out of the rules and simply stated that these cards do not function in EDH. So over time we went from "you can grab any card you want from your collection with the appropriate wish card" to "your wish cards can only access a 15-card sideboard" to "your wish cards only function if your playgroup is using the optional sideboard rule" to "your wish cards do nothing." And then along came the Companion mechanic.

If the RC were truly independent, and if they valued consistency at all, they would simply have stuck to their position that the rules of their format didn't allow for the Companion mechanic to function. These cards could still be commanders (since all of them are legendary creatures) or maindeck cards. Given the history of relegating "Wish" cards, this was the only reasonable stance. It wasn't hard to figure this new mechanic out. Notably, all organizers/regulators for other Highlander formats either didn't allow sideboarding and didn't allow the Companion mechanic to function at all (like the Wish cards) or already allowed sideboarding and simply let the Companion cards function as the regular Magic rules stated (the Companion takes up a sideboard slot). EDH was the one strange exception. They changed the rules to essentially allow a 1-card sideboard consisting only of a Companion. All they had to do was stick to their guns. But they didn't. And while I'm not privvy to what goes on behind the scenes, I strongly suspect that they couldn't. WotC were pushing this Companion thing and 2020 was supposed to be the year of Commander (yes, this was a thing). It wouldn't do for the new flagship format to undermine the new feature mechanic in the new set.

If Companions get some special rules change that makes their mechanic function in a format that normally wouldn't allow for it, then Lutri has to be banned unless "banned as Companion" is created as a category. But the Companion mechanic should not function in EDH unless the format allows for a sideboard. Fight me.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1993-AUG
Banned: —
The five coloured Moxen were originally banned for poor optics, rather than power level. While they’re fairly powerful, it’s their effect on perceived barrier-to-entry that really posed a problem because casual players watching Commander games in passing could reasonably assume that they needed hundreds (now thousands) of dollars in Power-9 mana as table stakes, just to join the format. The Moxen were iconic and expensive cards at the time they were banned, and removing them from the card pool was intended to combat the notion that Commander is a prohibitively expensive and inaccessible format.

That whole blurb only talks about the past. What about now?

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2004-FEB-06
Banned: 2005
Panoptic Mirror’s presence on the banned list serves to remind players that most things are fun in moderation. It was (and remains) banned because of the incidental, often accidental, uses which lead to repetitive, boring games. Beyond the obvious extra turns-combo, it’s a “trap” for casual deckbuilders because it seems like a fun value engine; however, too many different 4+ mana spells, when imprinted, will grind the game to a halt. Wraths, tutors, discard, even card draw can yield insurmountable advantage and lock up the game.

Panoptic Mirror's presence on the ban list serves to remind players that the RC are so inactive that they can't be bothered to reevaluate a decision from 19 years ago and compare gameplay back then to gameplay now. Back in 2004, Panoptic Mirror was a uniquely compact and flexible way to loop your spells. There was nothing else like it. The options we have now make Panoptic Mirror looks tame in comparison.

Out of all these new blurbs I've gone through so far, this one best exemplfies the gripe I've long had with the philosophy of the Commander RC. Take a look at this sentence. Beyond the obvious extra turns-combo, it’s a “trap” for casual deckbuilders because it seems like a fun value engine; however, too many different 4+ mana spells, when imprinted, will grind the game to a halt. In just a single sentence, the RC are sending the message that casual players are too dumb to understand that a card is powerful, all while misrepresenting how the card actually works.

For those who don't have much experience with Panoptic Mirror, I can assure you that it's pretty difficult to accidentally grind games to a halt with this card. And in case you missed it, the number of different 4+ mana spells imprinted on a Panoptic Mirror cannot matter. You get one spell copy per upkeep trigger, regardless of how many spells you imprinted on it. There's nothing important or even interesting about 4+ mana spells vs. cheaper spells in this context. And if it seems like I'm nitpicking too much, just keep in mind that this was the blurb they deliberately chose to put on their site. They didn't copy and paste this from an old discussion, at least not as far as I can tell. Someone on the RC took a look at Panoptic Mirror and typed up this lousy blurb.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2017-JAN
Banned: 2019-JUL
Paradox Engine can be played in any deck, and creates large amounts of mana at little-to-no deckbuilding cost. Its play patterns often involve long, drawn-out turns of tapping and untapping permanents, drawing cards, and generally monopolizing the chess clock of a game.

Some cards on this ban list have a reputation, whether or not it's true, of having been banned because RC members lost games to them and didn't like the way the cards played. Paradox Engine seems like a card that was probably a victim of circumstances. Does it often lead to drawn-out turns full of durdling? Yeah, kind of. Have I done this myself? Oh yes, indeed. Was it the most durdling I've ever done? Not by a long shot. It's not really possible to disentangle the tendencies of all the durdle-heavy cards and rank them according to durdliness or whatever. I think that I've had many games in which artifacts like Trading Post, Clock of Omens, Rings of Brighthearth, and Staff of Domination were just as egregious as Paradox Engine has ever been. And that's just to name a few. But if I had to pick a worst offender, I think the culprit would be Sensei's Divining Top. It doesn't often lead to turns quite as long as Paradox Engine does, especially not by itself. But it's hugely popular and can easily end up being more durdly than Paradox Engine.

This format doesn't use a chess clock. So nothing can monopolize the game's chess clock. Because it doesn't exist.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2010-JUL
Banned: 2012-SEP
In a format where 6-mana spells are par for the course, a card which tutors for any two non-basic lands and then demands an immediate answer to prevent its owner from further accelerating from mid- to end-game is problematic. Even if it’s removed immediately, the lands it gets are hard to interact with. The result is that it decides, but not ends, the game frequently, and, when it doesn’t, will often become the focal point for the rest of the game as players fight over it. We want Commander games to be decided by who casts the best big spells, and Prime Time easily tips those scales.

On the surface, this explanation seems reasonable. They're invoking the higher life totals and multiplayer pod setting to emphasize that this is a slower format, one often defined by big spells. Primeval Titan is a 6/6 trampler that ramps lands out both when entering the battlefield and on attacking, so it's a big bomb that pretty quickly makes casting even bigger bombs easier. In this sense, it's theoretically possible for a card that isn't a problem in Legacy or Modern to make a bigger splash in EDH. It's a judgment call whether any particular card passes some threshold and is simply too egregious.

In principle, I don't really take issue with this blurb. As for the card itself, yeah, I do think that Primeval Titan could be unbanned. It probably was too good for 2012. A lot has changed since then. Whenever I mention that I think Primeval Titan could be unbanned, the default response from EDH players is something like, "Oh, I wouldn't want to play against that? Would you want to play against that? It should stay banned." My retort is, "I don't particularly want to play against half of the overpowered post-F.I.R.E. crap in your deck with novel-length rules text on cards that interrupt each other with triggers stacked on triggers, bizarre feedback loops, making tokens, putting counters on those tokens, removing the counters to copy your own stuff, which somehow also copies my stuff, which you'll then use to stop me from being able to play stuff, all while playing more stuff that lets you do all of that all over again. But no one asked me about any of that."

This is really pretty simple. If Primeval Titan is banned now because it was banned back in 2012 and the ancient scrolls demand its continued banning, then fine. But if we're actually in the business of banning cards because they're powerful and "tip those scales" then I've got a laundry list of cards to ban before we ever even get to Primeval Titan.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2013-SEP
Banned: 2016-JAN
Prophet of Kruphix creates a gameplay pattern where the controller of the card can interact and meaningfully play during each other players’ turns. This inevitably leads to one player monopolizing play time without definitively ending the game.

The only major problem with this blurb is that it uses the word "inevitably." In rhetoric I've noticed that often people will throw around superlatives, then accuse me of pedantry when I point out that the term is factually incorrect. Don't want to have your misuse of words pointed out? Then stop purposely using words that you know are wrong. It's obvious to anyone with a functioning brain who has ever played Magic that the tendency of Prophet of Kruphix to cause one player to monopolize play time without definitively ending the game is not inevitable. No! Wrong! Bad RC! Shame!

Prophet of Kruphix wasn't the first card on this list for which players opined that it was banned because RC members lost games to it. One of the RC members, I think that it was Sheldon but I won't go trying to dig up the post from the dead forum, had been been lambasting this card for a while before it was eventually banned. I don't know how much stock to put in that, but I do find it interesting that a merely decent card was banned when so many equally strong cards were left untouched.

As far as this card's presence on this goes, there's not a lot to say other than that it's just not that egregious. I played against it a few times. It usually petered out because the player using it didn't have a draw engine, but there might have been a game or two in which it generated significant value. I could cite various cards that replicate one ability or the other, just not on the same card, but that wouldn't dissuade anyone who actually wants Prophet of Kruphix to stay banned. Reminds me of the Gitaxian Probe thing.

Don't get me wrong. It was a powerful card. It still would be a powerful card. Format's full of powerful cards. There's nothing about the gameplay of this one that pushes it over the top. If combined with a card draw engine and left unchecked for a couple of turn cycles, then it does tend to lead to an archenemy scenario. But that's not unique or special.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1998-JUN
Banned: 2008-FEB
Outside of countermagic, it’s nearly impossible to stop this card from doing its thing once it gets going because returning it to its owner’s hand is part of the cost of activating its ability. If your graveyard is sufficiently stocked, it’s entirely possible that once you draw Recurring Nightmare, it is the only spell you’ll want to play for the rest of the game.

Can we get a blurb from someone's who has actually played Magic before? This take is just not realistic. Recurring Nightmare can be stopped by enchantment removal, graveyard removal, instant-speed discard, bounce + discard, board wipes, creature theft, mass bounce, mana denial, ability-countering, targeted exile on potential sacrifice fodder, mass exile, Grafdigger's Cage, Humility, Torpor Orb, Yasharn, Oblivion Ring, and a bunch of stuff I haven't even bothered to think up here. Opponents are free to attack any of the resources you use with Recurring Nightmare. The only thing stopping someone from dealing with the card without resorting to instant-speed removal is that it could be in either your hand or on the battlefield. But you can't pick both! So unless all opponents in your pod have the same plan to answer Recurring Nightmare, and it's not instant speed, and you know what that plane is, this is a non-issue.

All that it takes know that the "nearly impossible to stop" claim is full of crap is to have a little bit of experience with how Magic is actually played in real life. I guess it also helps if you breathe through your nose. Am I bitter that I can't use this card in my own EDH decks. Well, I was once. Last year when I was using my "Sacrificial Baby" deck it occurred to me that even if I could run Recurring Nightmare, I probably wouldn't. There are too many other options now that are easier to work with. Recurring Nightmare should never have been banned, but it's one of the few cards on the list that, if it were legal, would be getting power-crept out of the format anyway.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1999-JUN
Banned: 2014-SEP
Rofellos is unique in its ability to consistently provide access to 6 mana on turn 3 as a commander, regardless of which cards are played in the rest of the deck. This card is banned for doing too much too fast, with minimal deckbuilding restrictions.

I wasn't expecting a good blurb for this one, but somehow they still managed to be disappointing. The Rofellos ban is laughably dated. At least for stuff like Griselbrand and Erayo, the RC have a kind of plausible justification that they'd be too oppressive as commanders. Not so for Rofellos. And no, there's nothing "unique" about being able to have six mana on turn 3. Plenty of decks can top that. It's not even interesting.

Inexplicably, I've had the same weird argument at least a couple of times with different people when it comes to this card. I cited Yisan, the Wanderer Bard as a mono-green commander that I think generally outclasses Rofellos. I had my interlocutor agree with me that if Rofellos were allowed as a commander, that the resulting deck would probably not be as powerful as a cEDH Yisan list, although in one case the player opined that Rofellos would probably outclass Selvala, Heart of the Wilds (but still not Yisan). And based on this, the argument put forth to me (after we'd both agreed that Yisan is more broken) was that Rofellos should stay banned. Why? Just because.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1993-DEC
Banned: 2011-SEP
Shahrazad seems like the kind of fun, wacky spell that Commander wants to promote in the format. Unfortunately, resolving it is something of a logistical nightmare in most circumstances and the spell ends up causing a lot of bad experiences as players seem to love copying and recurring it, turning the game into a slog.

I'm a bit saddened by this one, but also not surprised. There aren't really any major formats in which Shahrazad is legal, and I struggle to think of what might be its real niche in the game these days. Go back 20 years or so and the card was legal in pretty much any formats that allowed Arabian Nights cards. I've ranted about this before, but I don't believe that I've ever seen real evidence that Shahrazad was a problem in any of these formats. It was always just kind of taken for granted that, hypothetically, it could be. And while I'm sure that the statement "players seem to love copying and recurring it" is technically true of someone somewhere in the world, it certainly wasn't prolific, and I suspect that our "someone" was a troll anyway.

A point that the RC have been consistent on when explaining their ban list philosophy is that they're not out to ban cards just because someone could deliberately abuse those cards to do broken things because there are simply too many cards for which this is true. Seems pretty unlikely that anyone has ever accidentally copied and recurred Shahrazad, failing to realize that it would turn the game into a slog. Whatever, I'm not going to hold this one against the RC. The card was already banned in Vintage.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2004-FEB
Banned: 2012-JUN
There are many lands that players would love to see leaving the battlefield, but Sundering Titan doesn’t target those. Decks that blink or bounce Sundering Titan can utilize its effect repeatedly, leading to an environment where it’s nearly impossible for opponents to keep basic lands in play. Basic land destruction is a predictably unpopular mechanic, especially in an environment when you don’t know the people you’re playing against.

This blurb irritated me enough that I actually used the Wayback Machine to find Sheldon Menery's original statement from when the card was banned. Turns out that it didn't help. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have a too-vague, yet very firm recollection of discussion around Sundering Titan specifically regarding its effect on dual lands. The card was banned back in 2012, when the percentage of EDH decks using Revised dual lands was much higher than it is now. Also, the Ravnica Block shocklands were reasonably popular at the time, and those were a factor too. Sundering Titan is OK against basic lands, but far stronger against decks filled with dual lands. Because Sundering Titan is no longer really popular in any format, this aspect of the card might be somewhat forgotten. If you're playing a mono-green deck, for instance, then I can only hit one of your forests when Sundering Titan enters and another one when it leaves. Use that with Goblin Welder or whatever and you're picking off lands at a reasonable pace, but things get awkward quickly. You have to choose a land of each basic land type, so how well this works depends on the distribution of basic land types in your pod. Hobble one player and you're not stopping the other two. Distribute the land destruction equally and you're about to face a beatdown from all three opponents. If you're against too many of the same basic lands, you might have to choose your own lands. And if an opponent just isn't relying on basics at all, then you might have no recourse. But in a format where duals/shocks were so prolific, and where most decks were three colors anyway, you could usually spread the Sundering Titan picks across five different lands all controlled by your opponents and quickly cut them off access to some of their colors. This wasn't insurmountable, but it rankled a lot of players back then.

Now I'd thought for sure that there'd been some sort of discussion involving one or more RC members regarding this whole Sundering Titan conundrum with dual lands. None of this shows up in the new official blurb, and I was annoyed at the current RC for failing to properly account for the true reason that Sundering Titan was banned. However, when I went back and read Sheldon Menery's original post, all I got was this...

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.

That's just as vague as the new blurb! While I still believe that I'm right about the history here, I have no idea where to begin a search for what I'm talking about, and I'm not sufficiently motivated to dig through archives of these old forum posts. However, since I'm not putting in that work, I have to also admit the possibility that I'm just wrong about this. Perhaps discussions of Sundering Titan really were only focused on its role in doing vaguely bad things, and not specifically dealing with how it interacts with dual lands. I doubt it, but I don't know for sure. And that's infuriating. Frankly, I know I can't trust my own memory of this because EDH was not a format I followed closely back in 2012. But on this, I trust the RC even less, as I've caught the explanations misstating the historical reasons for bans multiple times already.

All that just to whine about a particular discrepency between my own understanding of this card and the one presented in the blurb. I know, I know. Sorry. But that's why this irritates me. Anyway, as far as the blurb itself goes, I think it makes a poor case for banning Sundering Titan. If I can deploy and recur an 8-drop creature of my choice multiple times, I should be able to do something really powerful. Sundering Titan as a land destruction engine is unreliable because the mode is the same every time: choose a land of each basic type, then destroy those lands. That could be up to five lands, but you're always constrained on which five those can be, so unless you're eschewing lands with basic types entirely in your own deck, you might have to hit your own lands. You might have an opponent who does the same, or you might only ever be hitting one land at a time belonging to the player at the table who is your biggest threat. So this is a powerful card, but it's highly situational. Even in an ideal metagame, one where your opponents are all using decks loaded with duals/shocks, the card is still very situational. I'd go so far as to say that if you're not utilizing the 7/10 body effectively or employing some sort of combo where Sundering Titan is a good fit (such as using cards that can give opponents' lands different basic types of your choice), it probably just wouldn't even be worth it to run Sundering Titan.

One more thing about the official blurb. I don't buy the whole appeal to the idea that basic lands are sacred. In this format, I have tons of other (sometimes better) ways to blow up basic lands. The only land destruction cards on the ban list are Balance (a broken card that does far more than get rid of lands), Limited Resources (an obvious issue for reasons we've already covered in this thread), and Sundering Titan. Don't lose sight of the fact that this means I can use Armageddon, Strip Mine, Impending Disaster, Death Cloud, Ice Storm, Cataclysm, Acid Rain, Land Equilibrium, etc. The only thing unique about Sundering Titan is that it's banned and those other cards are not.

I can't really speak to the "community distaste" from back in 2012. I strongly suspect that some perfectly legal cards in this format have seen far more community outcry than Sundering Titan did back then, and the issue, as with so many of these banned cards, was timing. Sundering Titan was the subject of complaints in an era when the RC were more actively motivated to curate the format and also when the community was smaller and a vocal minority could more easily prop up some non-issue. These days, the format is huge compared to back then, we have EDHrec showing us the actual popularity and use of cards, we have more event reporting and decentralized discussion, and the RC themselves are exceedingly aloof. If Sundering Titan were a new card being printed for the first time in 2024, it would generate less buzz than stuff like Farewell, Dockside Extortionist, and Void Winnower.

Easy unban.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2004-FEB
Banned: —
Casting Sway of the Stars has the effect of completely negating the game that was in progress before its resolution. Sway adds time to the game and takes away action – you might as well shuffle up and play a new game.

I hardly ever say anything about Sway of the Stars and wasn't even really interested in talking about it now. Out of curiosity, I went back and searched the CPA to see if I'd ever had any reaction to the card in the past. I found something I'd forgotten all about. In our old Tribal multiplayer games, MythosX used Sway of the Stars in Tribal Game 5 (thread title is Tribal Game 4, but that's not my fault). He had Day of the Dragons on the board, so this had the effect of leaving him with creatures, us with none, and handing him the game. Everyone involved seemed to think that it was a pretty cool combo at the time. Since then, while I've never used Sway of the Stars myself, I have pulled off similar tricks, but not in mono-blue. And that's probably the only real distinction with this card. It costs 10 mana and is super-situational. But "reset the game except I still have stuff" usually requires white or red.

Now, when it comes to Psarketos, I actually had remembered his deck built around Sway of the Stars. And up until I went back and found the use case in our Tribal Game 5, that was really the only interesting thing I could think of. Dan's article previously wouldn't come up in a forum search because it was posted on the now-defunct front page. Because it's a short piece, I'll just quote the whole thing right now.

Michael Flores, a respected legend in the Magic community, recently wrote an interesting article over at Gathering Magic about the "Immutable Rules of Mana Bases." While Oversoul and I have shown that his premise about competitive Magic decks is not true in an absolute sense, whether considered in relation to tournaments or individual matches within an environment, his article got me thinking about how to intersect the exploration of Magic theory with potential practical applications in a tournament context, particularly how one might shift the game theory decisions of an opponent from the rules of Magic to the metacontextual rules of Magic tournaments via deck design.
For example, creating a situation in which an opponent is forced to choose between conceding and moving on to the next game in a series, potentially betting on a post-sideboard configuration to win the match, or agree to an intentional draw for one point rather than taking further time and risk getting zero points for the match.

The following deck utilizes the unbounded mana and library draw engine from the Balefire deck outlined elsewhere to return all cards in the exile zone to their owners libraries with Riftsweeper, then cast Plagiarize targeting the opponent, then with Leyline of Anticipation on the battlefield cast Blinkmoth Urn, Elixir of Immortality, Leashling, Nuisance Engine, Possessed Portal, Rusted Slasher, Sundial of the Infinite, then Mirrorworks, then Sway of the Stars, all at instant speed in response to the previous spell without ceding priority, as early as the third turn. Sway of the Stars will shuffle all hands, permanents, and graveyards into owner libraries and then cause the initiating player to draw 14 cards, which Leashling will individually return to the top of the library using the unbounded amount of floating mana created at the start of this process once it has resolved from the stack and been recast 14 times. Mirrorworks is used to create token copies of Blinkmoth Urn, Nuisance Engine, Possessed Portal, and Sundial of the Infinite when they enter the battlefield. Rusted Slasher then sacrifices the other non-token artifacts on the battlefield except itself and Elixir of Immortality, then it sacrifices itself to its own ability and Elixir of Immortality shuffles itself and the graveyard comprising the above stream of cards into the library, leaving all decks complete in their libraries without cards in any other zone.

The game state is now all cards from all decks facedown in their respective libraries with four artifact tokens on the battlefield owned by the initiating player. After creating a Pest token with the Nuisance Engine token and then activating the Sundial of the Infinite token, the combo turn ends. The Possessed Portal token keeps the opponent from drawing a card during their draw phase, and the initiating player sacrifices the Pest token at the opponent end step. From that point on, during their first main phase, the initiating player adds four colorless mana to their mana pool from the Blinkmoth Urn token, then pays the activation cost for Nuisance Engine to create a Pest artifact token to sacrifice to the Possessed Portal token on the opponent end step, then pays the activation cost for the Sundial of the Infinite token ending their turn. All of which has the effect of causing nothing else to occur within the game indefinitely while all decks remain in their complete library state.

No win, no loss, no draw, only five artifact tokens ensuring that all libraries remain in their start of the game configuration indefinitely as equivalent to Comprehensive rule 103.1 - "At the start of a game, each player shuffles his or her deck so that the cards are in a random order. Each player may then shuffle or cut his or her opponents’ decks. The players’ decks become their libraries."

Pristine Stasis - Modern legal deck (60 cards)

Lands
16 Forest
4 Plains
4 Sunpetal Grove

Creatures
4 Devoted Druid
4 Genesis Hydra
1 Leashling
1 Riftsweeper
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
1 Rusted Slasher
1 Soul of the Harvest
1 Verdant Eidolon
4 Vizier of Remedies

Spells
1 Blinkmoth Urn
1 Cloudstone Curio
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Manamorphose
1 Mirrorworks
1 Nuisance Engine
1 Plagiarize
1 Possessed Portal
1 Sundial of the Infinite
1 Sway of the Stars
4 Tooth and Nail

Incidentally, another card that he has explored a lot has been Worldfire, a card that was formerly banned in EDH, then unbanned, and hasn't been a problem for the format at all. That's what I expect would happen with Sway of the Stars. It's ten mana and in order to really benefit from it, you have to have some sort of setup. It's an eminently unbannable card, but the RC have concocted a fantasy scenario in which a bunch of players would just randomly cast it for no reason, essentially "restarting" games that were otherwise going well. Frankly, if players want to troll their opponents, there are better tools for this than Sway of the Stars.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 2013-FEB
Banned: 2014-FEB
Sometimes considered an attempt to “fix” Primeval Titan, Sylvan Primordial ended up being just as bad and sometimes worse. It can only get Forests, but accelerates by 2-3 lands while knocking other players even further behind. Often flickered out to repeat the effect, the resulting “Mana Gap” is usually insurmountable, and Sylvan Primordial is yet another example of a card which looks fun for the builder but makes games repetitive.

Well, this is the first I've heard that Sylvan Primordial was "considered" a fixed Primeval Titan. The cycle of primordials was always just kind of their own thing. Also, they're powerful cards. They're seven-drops, so they'd better be strong if they're going to see any play at all. The white one isn't terrible, but I've seen a lot more of the other three.

Perhaps more than any other card on the ban list, Sylvan Primordial is one that I've seen RC members really dig in their heels about. It gets brought up as unbannable, and someone from the RC will insist that players don't understand how broken this card is or that players simply don't remember the bad old days before it was banned. There's not a lot I can say to take issue with either those cases or with this blurb. It is technically true: if you're up against an opponent who is flickering Sylvan Primordial, you're probably going to be facing a severe mana gap. The only real gripe I have with the blurb is the last line. Sylvan Primordial is yet another example of a card which looks fun for the builder but makes games repetitive. There's nothing special about Sylvan Primordial that leads to repetitive gameplay. It's just a strong ETB trigger stapled to a 6/8 body. Green is already good at destroying permanents and at ramping. A green deck can do those things without Sylvan Primordial. Incidentally, green is pretty bad at flickering creatures, so you've got to wrestle with that. But my point is that Sylvan Primordial can't tutor for itself, flicker itself, ramp itself out, cheat itself onto the battlefield, recur itself from the graveyard, etc. It's a big creature that's a strong payload for some vague green-based, creature-focused engine a deck might have. There are a dozen more options that are situationally better and situationally worse in this role.

The blurb itself isn't really guilty of it, but the decision by the RC to ban Sylvan Primordial in the first place and their continued insistence that the card is a problem for the format really makes them seem tone-deaf. The EDH community already know how good Sylvan Primordial is, and they've already found other cards that are even more powerful. They aren't some hapless neophytes hopelessly confused at the actions of a Rules Committee beyond their understanding. Most people who even know about this ban are well aware of it, cynical about it, and think of it as evidence that the RC are ineffectual. Too harsh? I've heard it from a lot of people. The one bit that a lot of folks might not be clued in on is the issue of timing, something I've noted in previous posts in this thread. Sylvan Primordial was banned in 2014, back when the RC were taking a more active role in format curation. So, of course, I'll assert that if this card were first being printed now, it wouldn't even be on their radar.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1993-AUG
Banned: 2008-DEC
Time Vault is a card that saw many changes to its rules text over the years in an attempt to remove the ability to easily take infinite turns with simple untap effects like Voltaic Key or Twiddle. Wizards finally reverted the card to its printed (and broken) text just prior to its banning in Commander.

Yeah, I have no problem with this one. Good job, RC.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1993-AUG
Banned: —
Time Walk was originally banned for poor optics, rather than power level. While it’s plenty powerful, it’s the effect on perceived barrier-to-entry that really posed a problem because casual players watching Commander games in passing could reasonably assume that they needed hundreds (now thousands) of dollars in Power-9 mana as table stakes, just to join the format. Time Walk was an iconic and expensive card at the time it was banned, and removing it from the card pool was intended to combat the notion that Commander is a prohibitively expensive and inaccessible format.

This is the same blurb from the other seven P9 cards that are banned in EDH. I already criticized the RC for the weird "optics" excuse on Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, and the five original Moxen. No need to rehash that. I guess the only real point of interest I can think of here is that the RC could, and I content should, have just cited this ban as a power-level consideration. Two mana for an extra turn is bonkers. Ancestral Recall gets the limelight as this universally flexible and undercosted card. Timetwister, once dismissed as weaker than the rest of the P9, has experienced a bit of a resurgence and is recognized for conditionally being even more busted than Ancestral Recall. If you can start looping Timetwister, you can often either go infinite or find a way to win the game anyway. No need for extra turns. And Ancestral Recall is almost always strong.

Time Walk might now be the most overlooked card in the P9. Because of course everyone knows that it's good, but so what? It's easy to forget just how crazy of a deal two mana for an extra turn really is. I know that I've seen it just sort of handwaved away by others, and I was inclined to do the same myself here. But no. Setting aside the cards that have inherently broken functionality because of the format structure and focusing only on banning cards for sheer overall brokenness, I'd say that Time Walk is one of the most egregious cards in existence. It's a bigger problem than Balance. It's a bigger problem than Fastbond. I'd even go as far as to say that it's a bigger problem than Time Vault. Perhaps the only card that would be more format-warping if unbanned would be Black Lotus.

Who needs optics?

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1999-FEB
Banned: 2009-MAR
Tinker’s ability to get high-cost artifacts into play in the very early game often results in games ending extremely quickly, or being locked down to the point where players cannot interact meaningfully. Because Tinker’s power is tied to the artifacts that are being cheated into play, its power increases over time as artifact designs become more powerful.

At first glance, this blurb seems OK. And perhaps I shouldn't be too critical. Ultimately, I totally agree that Tinker deserves to be banned. It just really strikes me with this one, perhaps after analyzing so many of their other blurbs, that the RC could really add "this card does too much for too little cost" or something to their vocabulary. Tinker has been banned across multiple formats, and the reason is pretty much the same every time. You can just say what they'd say for any other format. You don't need to wax philosophical about future printings and their interactions with the card. Tinker was broken back in 1999. You don't need to appeal to some hypothetical future artifacts to justify its ban.

And maybe this is pedantic, but I also see the "high-cost artifacts" thing as a bit of a red herring. Sure, sacrificing a Mana Crypt to fetch a Blightsteel Colossus or whatever is a kind of classic scenario at this point, but that maneuver wouldn't really even be a problem in EDH, and it's certainly not how I'd break Tinker. Here are some of the cards I've used to cheat artifacts on the the battlefield from my library. I've run these in real EDH decks. Might even be running some of them right now.


Now, none of these can fetch a Darksteel Colossus as cheaply and easily as Tinker, but that's not really what I use them for anyway. My guess is that for EDH purposes, the most popular "big" payload here would be Bolas's Citadel, which is only a six-drop. In my own decks, I'm more likely to go for Basalt Monolith or Mystic Forge. All of these artifact-fetching cards are perfectly legal. The thing that sets Tinker apart is how universally cheap and reliable it is. So when talking about it as banworthy, talk about that. These other options are more conditional than Tinker and often about twice as expensive as Tinker. It's OK to ban a card because it does something too cheaply. Time Walk is banned, but Time Warp is not. Just go with that. Don't complicate it.

 

[Oversoul]

First Printed: 1998-OCT
Banned: 2010-JUN
Tolarian Academy’s power is tied to the abundance and ease of access to cheap artifacts in the earliest stages of the game. This often creates two or more colored mana on turn one, and continues to scale throughout the game with no downside or additional ‘costs’ at untap.

That's a little understated. Tolarian Academy is one of those cards that is so over-the-top broken that I'm fine with it being banned.