How Magic’s most popular format imploded

Magic: The Gathering’s Commander format, the game’s most popular mode of play, experienced a profound shake-up this week when the Commander Rules Committee, an independent third party that serves as a governing body for the Commander format, banned four cards from sanctioned events. The move includes a ban on three particularly sought-after cards that saw frequent play across lots of decks, and the blowback from the community has been swift. Some are calling this the most ill-advised ban in Magic’s more than 30-year history. Here’s why.

The news arrived unexpectedly on Monday morning in a quarterly update on the Rule Committee’s website. Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom — cards that had previously been selling for around $100 each — were officially banned. That means local game stores and other public Commander events must prohibit these cards from appearing in players’ decks.

Of course, Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast and the Commander Rules Committee both ban cards pretty much all the time. Why have these bans hit particularly hard?

Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt

Two of the cards, Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt, were popular in the format because they provided additional mana for players to cast a variety of spells as early as turn one. In fact, Mana Crypt has proven so powerful over the years that it’s been banned in all but one format where it even could be legal, being Vintage where players can use just about any Magic card ever printed.

For many, the Jeweled Lotus ban stings even more, since this was a card that was printed specifically for Commander and literally can’t function in other formats. The card, named after Magic’s most iconic and expensive card, the Black Lotus, can similarly produce three mana of any one color. But Jeweled Lotus also includes the text “spend this mana only to cast your commander.” So while Jeweled Lotus remains legal in Vintage and Legacy, formats with similarly large card pools, it’s essentially a blank piece of cardboard there since they don’t incorporate commanders in their gameplay. 

Dockside Extortionist and Nadu

Dockside Extortionist was another card first printed for Commander, and it initially appeared in a preconstructed Commander deck created by Wizards of the Coast in 2019. Unlike the previous two cards, Dockside is a creature whose usefulness changes at various points of a game but is similarly powerful for being a resource engine that generates useful tokens.

When Dockside Extortionist comes into play, its controller creates a number of treasure tokens equal to the number of artifacts and enchantments opponents control. Treasure tokens are additional artifacts that can be tapped and sacrificed to make one mana of any color. In effect, a player running Dockside could wait until their opponents have a critical mass of relevant cards in play, cast the Dockside, and immediately generate a massive amount of mana in order to overwhelm the board, if not win on the spot. 

The last banned card, Nadu, Winged Wisdom, caps a tumultuous summer for the card, which was first printed in the Modern Horizons 3 expansion just last June. Nadu had previously been banned in the namesake Modern format for introducing an overpowered combo that took over the last Pro Tour, smaller local tournaments, and online play. A month after Nadu’s Modern ban, it sees the same fate in Commander for very similar reasons.

“Part of the problem is the way in which Nadu wins, where it takes a really long time to do non-deterministic sequences that can’t be shortcut and might eventually fizzle out,” the ban announcement explains. And fortunately, there’s likely much less heartbreak over the loss of Nadu compared to the other three cards. 

The community reacts

Following the news, players, game designers, Magic content creators, and — in an unusual move — even some of the game’s artists took to social media to share their frustrations with the announcement. As consumers, many were viscerally upset over the cost of these cards prior to the bans, as many players spent hundreds of dollars to enhance their decks with some of the now-banned cards, and were left feeling stuck holding the bag.

“Probably gameplay net-positive but brutal to ban three cards that probably represent some of the most expensive cards owned by a sizable minority of the player base, all of which have been either designed or leveraged by [Wizards] to monetize the format,” wrote Patrick Sullivan, a game designer and former Magic pro player, considered among the game’s most respected tournament commentators. 

The financial implications that Sullivan refers to here are staggering, especially for card vendors in Magic’s secondary market. Lotus and Mana Crypt were individually worth over $100 prior to the bans. Dockside often hovered around $80 on the popular card game marketplace, eBay-owned TCGplayer. Considering the cards’ popularity, globally, it’s estimated that some losses in the secondary marketplace have eclipsed six figures. Inventory that had previously been worth a substantial amount is, following the bans, worth far, far less.

“From a vendor [point of view], this is potentially the biggest shock to the secondary market in [Magic’s] history,” wrote Kyle Lopez, a reseller based in Louisville, KY. “Literally millions of dollars in value have evaporated in the span of an hour.”

Setting aside the cost of cards on the secondary market, especially since many players simply acquired these cards through the good luck of finding them in a booster pack, the announcement still may have damaged consumer confidence that was built on trust in the Rule Committee’s format management.

“It’s not about the prices, it’s about being a trusted (and consistent) steward of the format,” wrote Glenn Jones, a former Wizards staff member who now works as principal game designer on Marvel Snap. “All three cards have been ignored and enjoyed for years. The cards didn’t change, [Rules Committee’s] philosophy around them did. They should address that — not just blow people up and walk away.”

A more unprecedented reaction came from one of the creatives behind the art depicted on Jeweled Lotus.

“I am truly gutted that Jeweled Lotus was banned by the [Commander Rules Committee],” wrote Alayna Danner, the illustrator responsible for the look of the eponymous flower. “I have met literally thousands of players who LOVE this card and who truly treasure it in their EDH deck. It’s unfair to do it after 4 years & now it’s unplayable anywhere. #unbanlotus.”

Members of the Commander Advisory Group, a select group of players and content creators with deep knowledge of the format who provide feedback directly to the Rules Committee, were also surprised by the news. 

“Serious question, what’s the actual point of creating a Commander Advisory Group if they were blindsided by the ban announcements from the Rules Committee?” wrote Jimmy Wong, actor and co-host of the immensely popular YouTube channel, The Command Zone. “Is it just an honorary title with no actual input on stuff that actually matters like the biggest ban announcement in YEARS?”

Wong’s co-host and fellow Advisory Group member, Josh Lee Kwai, offered further insight into the level of communication between the group and the Rules Committee. 

“They sent out a survey form a little while back that asked generic questions like ‘Are there any cards you would advocate banning and why?’ ‘Are there any card (sic) you think should be unbanned and why?’ But nothing with specifics,” Kwai wrote. “No mention of the words ‘fast mana’ that I recall.”

On Wednesday, Kwai announced his resignation from the Commander Advisory Group, though his announcement did not mention these bans or their aftermath. 

The reaction to the bans was so loud and swift that the Rules Committee has continued to engage players online with additional context, and even offered clarity on which members supported or opposed the bans — likely to mitigate misplaced vitriol toward individual committee members following the announcement.

“Commander Rules Committee decisions are rarely unanimous. We don’t normally disclose who voted which way, but we are making an exception,” wrote Jim Lapage in an X post before making his account private. “Olivia pushed back against yesterday’s change. None of us are above criticism but if you hate the bans, she was your voice in the room.” 

Olivia being Olivia Gobert-Hicks, a committee member and host of the YouTube shows Elder Dragon Hijinks and Commander at Home. Following the ban announcement, Gobert-Hicks also made her X account private. 

In a follow-up X post reacting to the ban announcement’s aftermath, the Rules Committee shared an FAQ with additional clarity behind their decisions and internal processes. They addressed and vehemently denied any personal financial gain leveraged by their insider knowledge of the upcoming bans, shed more light on their communication philosophy and why certain bans come as surprise announcements, and reiterated their commitment to the bans in question. 

“We have no desire or intent to roll back these changes, and believe that doing so would make any financial concerns much worse,” the FAQ states. “We’re not going to paint ourselves into a corner and say that we’ll never ban expensive cards, but we can say categorically that we do not want to ban cards, that staples are part of commander (the card pool is incredibly large), and that we will try to keep the format stable going forward unless those cards are causing large problems.”

While it would be just as shocking for the committee to state they intend to unban the cards a few days after their initial announcement, unbans do occur, albeit rarely. In 2021, the committee unbanned Worldfire nine years after it was removed from the format. In 2019, Painter’s Servant was unbanned a decade after it was first removed. 

In total, there have been around 23 individual cards that were unbanned from Commander, compared to more than 100 cards that remain on the ban list today. Although previous ban announcements were not met with the same level of shock and outrage from players, Commander is also immeasurably more popular now than at any point in the format’s history. 

That popularity all but guarantees the format’s future success, despite occasional changes and announcements that lead to outsized reactions. If the Rule Committee’s own messaging can be taken at face value, this week’s events will contribute to that sustained popularity and prove to be a positive evolution for the Commander format.