1+ Hour of Banned Commander Cards To Fall Asleep to

Commander is a mostly casual format designed for slower games where more expensive cards can Shine the format still has a balance to help regulate it though how and why they ban cards is very different so this bit of the series will be a bit different and rather than talking about if a card could be unbanned we'll be discussing the pros and cons of potential bands and unband first we're going to go over some of the cards that simply don't translate well to the format very well and starting off we have Trade Secrets this is a sorcery the Mana cost of 2 and two blue it has the effect where Target player draws two cards then you draw up to four cards then your opponent can choose to repeat this process as many times as they want this card was banned in April of 2013 now why is Trade Secrets banned well the main issue is that it has really bad play patterns in a multiplayer game normally repeating the card dra off of Secrets won't be too great as it would always give your opponent more cards than you did if you just said yes until you drew your entire deck your opponent would have just as many cards as you did so you wouldn't really be getting anywhere even worse since they built their deck Trade Secrets it's more likely they'll have something more broken to do with all the cards you just gave them than you do however in commander deck building and card advantage in general just work differently while you're going down cards to one of your opponents you're going up cards against both of the two other players on the table this alone makes taking the deal a lot more attractive however the option of drawing your entire deck is also a lot more feasible in Commander most decks are built to go over the top or have something very very powerful they can do if they find the right cards so if your opponent decides to draw their entire deck alongside the trait player they'll both be in a position to win the game what this means is that for your opponent that's targeted by secrets you can essentially go from having a 25% chance to win to a 50% chance to win right then and there because no matter what happens either you or the person who cast Secrets will almost certainly win this means that in Commander Secrets leads to a lot of games where two players draw their whole deck and have a game between each other and simply leave the other two players in the dust and this isn't even get into the political aspects it's very easy to negotiate a situation where the two players could draw off of Secrets agree to help each other or not kill each other for a turn or to focus on one of the other two players who are a bigger threat at the moment or any number of other things these political deals are common in Commander but Trade Secrets is simply too big of a bargaining chip Trade Secrets made the game about it and only it far too much and was to disruptor to the game it was played in so the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning Trade Secrets the only real Pro in my eyes is that having fewer cards banned is generally considered good as it makes things like remembering the ban list easier and allows for more cre deck building this of course applies to every card and isn't really enough of a reason to unban a card in my eyes the card still has all the same issues the game hasn't really changed since Trade Secrets was banned and in fact it's probably gotten even worse decks have been trending up in power level as the form has progressed with more and more players playing things like Fast mana and infinite Combos and if you're not the player who was targeted by Trade Secrets then there's not much you can really do to counterplay trade secrets is a great example of the kind of card that needs to be banned not because it's too good but because the type of game it creates Gates is very unhealthy next up we have profit of Kix this is a two three human wizard with a manac Costa 3 one green and one blue it is the abilities where you untap all creatures and lands you control during each other players's untap steps and you can cast creature spells as though they had flash this means you can play them at any time you could cast an instant this card was banned in January of 2016 now why was profit of cruix banned profet allows you to play on your opponent's turn something that gets exponentially better the more players are in the game the ability to UNT all your lands and creatures as well as cast creatures on each other's turns basically lets you take a turn on your opponent's turns the only real downsides are that you can't cast source for spell speeds besides creatures you don't get to draw a card and you can't attack or activate planes Walkers even with these restrictions you can still do quite a lot this leads to a very strange issue that we don't see on many cards essentially it leads to one player hogging all the time in the game there's a sort of unspoken design rule in magic in most of the games that each player is supposed to be able to play the game for around the same amount of time of course there's variance here Decks that play your opponents turn more will hog up a bit more time and Decks that love to tap out will take up less time however there is a Breaking Point and profit of crew fix goes over that line getting to take a mini turn on each other players turn lops side of that balance entirely this is made even worse by the colors profit is in blue green are famous for generating absurd board States and Commander by combining Green's Mana ramp and great creatures with Blue's card draw profit lets you take this to 11 casting even more creatures and drawing even more cards possibly the worst thing about profit is that since it untaps all your lands right away it gives you the Mana needed to cast counter spells back there's not even a single second where your Shields are down and your opponents have gotten to untap they need to have an instant speed answer to cruix to be able to play around your countermagic all this together led to profit taking over games far too much so the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning profit one big argument for unbanning profit is that cards like seedborne Muse basically have half the effect of profit by combining this with vulkan ory which gives all your cards flash you can basically build your own profit however the difficulty in actually being able to do this means that the comparison is pretty mute seedborn Muse alone doesn't create the slowdown in the games that profit does and needing the second card makes the card very difficult to actually put this together so it doesn't cause the issues that profit does the other big argument in favor of unbanning the card is that the format has gotten a lot stronger since the cards ban games tend to go a lot faster so some people might argue that the format's in position that can handle the card better however this doesn't seem that likely while the format has gotten faster the card is most problematic at lower power level tables and those tend to be a lot slower and have worse answers overall so profit would more likely than not cause all the same problems it used to if it were unbanned just at fewer tables next up we have Lut tree the spellchaser this is a 3-2 legendary Elemental otter with a Mana cost of one and two hybrid blue red Mana it has companion each non-land card in your starting deck has a different name this means that if you meet the card's companion requirement you can start with it outside the game during your turn you can pay three generic Mana to put lutri into your hand from outside the game and you can only have one companion it has Flash and the ability where whenever it enters the battlefield you copy Target instant or sorcery spell you control and you can choose new targets for the copy this card was banned before its release on April 2nd of 2020 why as it was revealed for the next set now why was luch Tre banned so quickly well the card was basically free for any blue red deck to run since Commander is a Singleton format every deck automatically meets L's companion requirement however to run a card in Commander it has to be within your Commander's color identities so lutri was basically a free card that every blue red deck could run even worse there were some really powerful things you could do with a card every blue red deck is going to have tons of powerful instance and sorceries for you to copy one great example is just about any extra turn spell most of these cost about five mana and get need to take two extra turns for eight Mana can often give you the extra push you need to win the game the issue is just that lutri gives this kind of advantage to deck playing a specific color the the thing about companions is that there is not really any disadvantage to running them outside of the deck building restrictions and when you have a card like lutri who has no real deck building cost the card becomes all upsides it would result in certain decks just having a massive upside for no reason so they decided to ban the card what are the arguments for unbanning lutri this may seem very silly but lutri is very cute there are a lot of people who just really like the card and want to play either as a commander or in the 99 which isn't problematic at the slightest but is currently not allowed it would be nice for those people for lucher to be unbanned you could introduce a band as companion but the RC got rid of the band as Commander list a while back and lutri would be the only card ever to be added to this list so it's a very weird solution to try and Implement if it could be constrained to the main deck or the commander lutri would be fine so while this rule would be strange it's also the best way to allow the card to be legal and there's no real world where the card is legal while also being allowed to be a companion next we have Caracus this is a legendary land with no land types it has the ability where you can tap it to add one white mana and you can also tap it to bounce Target legendary creature this card was banned in September of 2008 now why was kakas ban this one is pretty intuitive Commander is a format balanced around each player having access to a legendary creature at all time making a land that can simply tap to remove one of those creatures is extremely disruptive the card is disruptive to any game of Commander it gets played in and that's not even getting into any of the ways to make the card better such as untapping it to machine gun remove all your opponent's Commanders or bouncing your own legendaries with it to give you more value the card was a pretty obvious band in a format built around legendary creatures as the card's value increases by way way too much what are the arguments for unbanning Caracus the main argument in favor of unband the card is that there are other cards that do very similar things that aren't banned the big one is drth magistrate a card that prevents players from casting spells from anywhere other than their hand this also prevents players from casting spells from the command Zone shutting down commanders entirely the main difference is that magistrate is a lot easier to remove move every color gets some way to deal with creatures while only some colors get answers to lands there are few ways to answer colorless lands but they're far more rare than creature removal it's far far more reasonable to expect people to have creature removal than removal for LS the other cards that prevent players from playing their Commander this way are either far more narrow or way easier to deal with or more often than not both so it makes sense that Caracus is the only card of this type that is currently banned next up we have limited resources this is an enchantment with the Mana Costa one white it is abilities where when it enters the battlefield each player chooses five lands they control and sacrifice the rest and players can't play lands if there are 10 more lands in the battlefield the card was banned in June of 2008 now why was limited resources banned the card can make it really hard for players to play the game mostly due to the second line of taxs on the card forcing players to sack down to give lands really isn't much of an issue as cards like cataclysm do far worse the issue is how easily can prevent players from playing any additional lands at all you see the card was designed around a two-player game where both players have five lands would add up to a total of 10 so if you blew up one of their lands after playing limited resources you could just play another one however in a four player game there would be 20 lands in the battlefield this means you can just blow up all of One players lands and they wouldn't be able to play anymore since there would still be around 20 lands in the battlefield this led to a lot of really bad games where one or two players were just locked out of the game and the other two or three players just played without them due to creating all these lopsided games the car was banned what are the arguments in favor of unbanning limited resources there are a few and truthfully I think Commander could benefit from this kind of a fact for one players often play tons of ramp spells in the form of artifact ramp that can let them play Under resources even if your opponent blows up all your lands if you have a few signant and Mana rocks and play you can still at least play the game additionally if you can just answer resources before they get rid of all your lands you can stop yourself from being locked however the biggest reason why people want the card banned is that there aren't many good ways to punish land Bas ramps in the format artifact ramp is often far more susceptible to removal whereas lands are usually safe this is Led green decks to be generally considered the best in the format since players don't really have a good way to counter all their ramp and having a surplus of Mana is a really good way to win a game of Commander however while all of this is true and resources could fill an important niche in the format it's still probably a bit too disruptive to unban while you can get around it with artifact ramp I did say this is generally a lot easier to deal with than someone's land a single vand blast going encountered leaves you completely unable to play the game at all and the fact that you can answer a card doesn't necessarily mean that it's practical the player probably already got all their value off of playing the card the first time and they only spend one man on the card using a naturalized effect to answer it leaves you in a really unenviable spot as much as I want this effect backed ultimately it just makes far more sense to try to get wizards to retrain the effect into a less disruptive card rather than unbanning this version of the effect and finally we have sundine Titan this is a 710 Golem artifact creature with the Mana con ofate it is the ability where whenever it enters or leaves the battlefield you select a land of each basic land type and Destroy them this card was banned in June of 2012 why was sundine Titan to ban Titan was really good at destroying all of your opponent's lands but leaving yours alone usually Titan is a bit of a slow and clunky card it will usually cost you a few lands of your own too however in a four-player game it's more likely that you can only choose your opponent's lands to blow up this makes getting a ton of Titan triggers a lot more attractive the thing that makes Titan crazy is that it triggers when it enters and leaves the battlefield so the card like conjur closet you can get two Titan triggers a turn then you blow up a total of 10 ls each flicker effect gives you two triggers then you do a ton in damage to your opponent's Mana bases with just Titan and a few extra cards the worst things about all of this is that suing Titan is colorless so it can be played in every deck combining all these things leads to a card being banned what are the arguments for unbanning sundering Titan there are other similar game-winning land destraction effects available combining heroic intervention with Armageddon is basically just an I win the game button blowing up all of your opponent's lands and leaving yours alone the ability to get rid of all of your opponent's lands with a combo isn't anything new so a Titan being banned for that reason seems a bit strange to tell the truth it seems like it's banned more for its Fair case but the fair case isn't all that impressive so the card being banned while not even be in the best land destruction lock in the format is a little weird being colorless may make people play the card more often but it's not really a staple it's a card that very few specific decks would like to run and not many others still the card is really strong and frustrating so leaving it Bann is fine it could lead to a lot of the same issues as limited resources where it only locks one player of the game sort of by accident which is probably the biggest reason why the card stays in the ban list starting us off we have Coalition Victory this is a sorcer the Mana cost of three and one Mana of each color for a total of eight Mana it has the effect where if you control a land of each basic land type and a creature of each color you win the game this card was banned in March of 2007 why was Coalition Victory banned the card was much much better at stealing games Commander than in just about every other format the thing that makes it so much easier to accomplish this is the fact that you have a commander the thing is Victory doesn't ask you to have one creature for each color it only checks to see for each color if one of your creatures is that color so basically if you have one creature that's all five colors that's all you need for the Victory to go off on the creature front as far as getting a land of Vil land type that's really not very hard either the best Mana bases are built around the fetch lands which work by searching lands from your deck based on their land types combining this with the shock lands and the triumphs which each have two or three basic land types respectively and it's very easy to get all five land types in play this leads to Coalition Victory basically saying eight Mana win the game the issue with this is that in the eyes of the rules committee this leads to very uninterested in anti-climatic games now this isn't something that would come up in most formats but the Casual nature of commander makes us so this is more of a legitimate concern Coalition Victory kind of just comes out of nowhere if you're playing a five-color deck no one's really going to Blink twice at your commander being on the battlefield and because people aren't really going to even notice if you have all five land types or not the end result is that coalision Victory being live completely flies into the radar since the card was kind of just unfun and led to disappointing games it was banned what are the arguments for unbanning Coalition Victory the main argument is that there are other cards that basically say with the game at this Mana cost cards like expropriate and Insurrection are usually just as game-winning due to the amount of value or damage they give you and while this is true there are a few notable differences namely that those cards need more cards to be on board in order to close out a game Coalition Victory doesn't require anywhere near as much setup as getting your commander out is very easy and the landan thing will usually be accomplished by accident still this difference is pretty small I could go either way on the card being banned while it isn't actually that bad it is still really annoying I could see keeping it banned just to make the format a bit more fun next up we have biorhythm this is a sourcer the Mana Costa 6 and two green it has the effect where each player's life total becomes equal to the number of creatures they control this card was banned in April of 2005 so why was biorhythm banned it basically does what Coalition Victory does but way worse for the same amount of Mana biorhythm will bring every player in the game to just a few life if you then clear your opponent's board B Rhythm will literally just kill them by setting their life to zero if you use a card like cyclonic rith on your opponent's endep or a card like the great Aurora to reset the board and draw to your biorhythm your opponent's boards will be cleared of creatures as long as you have at least one creature when you cast biorhythm you'll live while each of your opponents will die what makes bio rhythm so much worse is that it's not restricted to only seeing plain five color decks bio rhythm can be shoved into any green deck it'll function as a powerful I win the game button in basically every creature-based deck another thing thing that makes it very annoying is how punishing it is for creature light decks lots of decks are built around using very few creatures and playing a more controlling game plan usually ending in some sort of combo while actual control decks are rare in the format tons of decks like cast dissident Mage are often more focused on playing lots of powerful instance and sorceries than filling the board with creatures so they're likely to only have a tiny bit of life after a bio rhythm resolves the worst part of this is that your opponent doesn't even need to be doing anything for bio rhythm to basically just kill them as they' never have enough creatures to realistically live through the card due to how good it was at cheesing winds bio rhythm was banned what are the arguments for unbanning B Rhythm very similarly to Coalition Victory people argue that other cards win the game for the same amount of Mana a card that gets brought up a lot in these conversations is Shaman of Forgotten ways which lets you pay nine and two green for B rhythm's effect if you have creatures with total power of eight or greater the argument is usually that Shaman doesn't see any play so surely bile Rhythm has to be fine right this is a really bad comparison though for multiple reasons namely Shaman has to sit on the field for a full turn to be able to activate giving your opponent ample time to respond the thing that makes B Rhythm difficult to deal with is that it just comes out of nowhere similar to the other iWin the game buttons we've talked about all in all B Rhythm could probably be mostly okay to come back it's not too much worse than the other big expensive sorceries that players have access to the main issue is that it's just one of the only cards in the category that can by itself actually kill a player this is a unique function that puts B rhythm in a category distinct from these other cards but that's not that big of a deal it's certainly a car that could come off the band list and be fine though it would be pretty annoying next up we have panoptic mirror this is an artifact with the Mana Costa 5 it is the abilities where you can pay a and tap it to Exile an instant or sorcery card from your hand at the beginning of your upkeep you can cast a copy of a card exiled with a mirror without paying its Mana cost this card was also banned in April of 2005 why was panoptic mirror banned panoptic mirror can easily win you the game if you imprint the right card onto it namely what you're looking for is an extra turn spell since this will give you another upkeep you'll get an extra turn on that extra turn and then another one and then another one and so on and so on basically forever once you're taking all the turns in the game you've basically won your opponent won't be able to do anything and even if they do have Mana for interactions if they don't stop you the right way you'll be able to wait until you've drawn the protection spells you need and have played enough lands that you'll be able to play around all their interactions anyway since this card was able to win the game so easily the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning pen optic mirror I'll be honest I don't see why this one is still banned as there are better and more efficient combos that can be slotted into tons of decks combos like th's Oracle and demonic constellation let you win the game on the spot for just three mana and are one of the most powerful and consistently used combos all the way up in cedh so why aren't one of those two cards banned well because they aren't played at casual tables that often the worry with the the previous random I win the game cards is that they'd see too much play at lower power level tables where they don't belong so while these cards are far less powerful they may be more problematic in a casual setting so the real question is would panoptic mirror see too much play at weaker tables I really don't think so there are tons of similar two card combos that winning the game that aren't banned that are about as useful as the pieces for the mirr combo individually for example one of the most common combos for black decks is sanguin Bond and exquisite blood these are each five man enchantments that make it so that gaining life makes your opponent lose that much life and when your opponent loses life you gain that much life respectively these cards are great for any black deck that cares about gaining life and see tons of play together and separately throughout the format though if you're playing Exquisite blood most people toss in a sanguin bond effect for the heck of it anyway so I really don't see any way in which panoptic mirror is more problematic than these other combo cards it really seems like a fangless ban overall next up we have reoccurring nightmare mare this is an enchantment with a Mana cost of two and one black it is the ability where you sacrifice a creature and return recurring nightmare to its owner's hand to return Target creature card from graveyard to the battlefield and also you can only activate this card as a sorcery this card was banned in February of 2008 why was reoccurring nightmare banned nightmare was mostly banned due to how it works with priority you see how things work in Magic is that the active player the player whose turn it is gets to act first and then each opponent in turn order gets to act each time a player getss priority so what happens is a player cast nightmare that player gets a chance to act then each of their opponents do if no one does anything nightmare will just resolve and go into play now the messed up part is what happens next since it's your turn you get to act first and you can immediately activate nightmare to reanimate something the important thing here is that the returning nightmare to your hand thing is technically a cost so what happens is as soon as the card resolves you can bounce nightmare to your hand before your opponents have a chance to do anything this means that even if your opponent has something like naturalized to answer your nightmare if you do the smart thing of always going right to activate your nightmare they'll never be able to pop it the ability to get a repeatable reanimate that your opponent can't pop was extremely powerful so the card was banned now what are the arguments for unbanning reoccurring nightmare I'll be honest I really think the card should come back I really don't think the card is problematic in any way sure you can't interact with nightmare with naturalize effects but why exactly would you think that's how you'd want to answer the card you answer the nightmare the same way you answer other reanimation spells with graveyard hate cards like tormund's Crypt graph Digger's cage and silid gravestone are all colorless cards that answer graveyard interaction not only stopping nightmare but stopping all of the much more powerful reanimation spells in the format reanimate exume animate dead and persist are all better reanimation spells than nightmare are nightmare would still be the fifth best reanimation spell in the format if it were unbanned now some people would argue that getting to use it repeatedly makes it better but this usually won't actually matter if what you're trying to do is win the game you should be saving your reanimation spells for cards like protein Hulk or razaketh the foulblooded cards that let you win the game 90% of the time is when you get them in play the ability to Loop creatures in hand and out of your graveyard isn't really necessary for your animation spells to do so the fact that reoccur nightmare encourages this is actually why it's perfect for the format nightmare encourages playing a very grindy value based game which is what Commander is all about the fact that it is repeatable is what makes it such a great fit for the format while you can use it for getting out those powerful creatures the fact that it shines the most in more value-based strategies will push people away from using it for combos which leans more into what the format was designed for rein Curry nightmare would add far far more to the format than it would take away and it would be an amazing unban next up we have gifts ungiven this is an instent with the Mana Costa 3 and one blue it is the effect where you search a library for up to four cards with different names Target opponent chooses two of them you put those cards into your graveyard and the rest into your hand then Shuffle gifs ungiven was banned in June of 2009 why was gifs ungiven banned gifs is so good at finding combo piles that if you cast it you'll usually be able to win the game on the next turn the line differs a ton based on exactly what deck you're playing Storm decks Decks that are built on casting lots of spells on one turn before killing the table with an Aether Flex Reservoir will usually find piles with some numbers of rituals draw spells and most importantly past in Flames this is a sorcery that gives all instance and sorceries in your graveyard flashback where the flashback cost is equal to their Mana cost this lets you cast it from your graveyard but you have to Exile it afterwards most importantly it has a flashback cost itself so no matter where your opponent puts it you'll be able to flashback your entire graveyard next turn this is what makes gifts so powerful it basically lets you tutor for two cards if you really want to you could just grab two cards you want and then two regrowth effects with different names so you can just grab the cards of your graveyard right away and considering how we've already talked about a number of two-c card combos in this video it's obvious how easy it is to win the game after it gifts what pushes it over the edge is the fact that it's an instant this means that you can cast it at the end of your opponent's turn right before your turn to set up your combo and then untap and try to win the game thanks to just how strong this card was that lendy combo off and win the card was banned now what are the arguments for unbanning gifts ungiven one of the biggest sticking points in the discussion around the card is the fact that intuition exists and is completely legal this is an incident with the Mana cost of two and one blue with the effect where you search a library for three cards reveal them then your opponent chooses one of those cards you put that chosen card into your hand and the other is into your graveyard intuition is a very old card and a reserv less card at that meaning Wizards has promised to never reprint the card combining this with the fact that it's basically a better gifts univen has caused a bit of a commotion in the community the issue is that it seems very pay to win you can still play this very powerful effect but only if you Shield out the very high amount of money for the older and harder to get into it you can't replace it with a cheaper option as you normally would in this case since the cheaper version of the effect gifts ungiven is banned this means that the player who's willing to pay more money is the only one who gets access to this effect which doesn't make anyone happy now this doesn't necessarily mean that gifts should be unbanned you could make a very strong argument that intuition should catch a ban alongside gifts you could even make the argument that intuition should be banned and gift should come off the ban list since intuition is the more powerful card on top of all this it's debatable about how good gifts ungiven even is sure it's a powerful combo enabler but most of the combos it can set up do cost quite a bit of Mana it's not that much better than the other tutors in the format demonic tutor is totally legal in the format and just lets you grab a card for half the Mana with no questions ask if giz was unbanned cedh would almost certainly pass it up in favor the cheaper and more efficient tutors that are already available to them the best response to this is in my mind that gifs doesn't really do much besides let you set up big combos demonic tutor can be used to find specific answers like for example finding the graveyard hit you really need to stop a reanimator deck sometimes you won't be able to win off of a DT so it makes sense to just stop your opponent from winning since gifts find so many cards it only ever really makes sense to go find your two card combo since you can always find both pieces the best solution in my mind is just to hit both gifts and intuition but just about every position here does at least have a leg to stand on starting us off we have a pair of cards in Leo VA and misser trest and whole breacher these cards were both banned for mostly the same reason starting with leovold this is a 33 legendary elf advisor creature with the Mana cost of one black one green and one blue it has the abilities where your opponents can't draw more than one card each turn and whenever you or permit you control becomes a target of an ability and opponent controls you draw a card this card was banned in April of 2017 whole breacher is a 3-2 merul pirate with a Mana cost of two and one blue it has flash meaning you can cast at any time you can cast an instant and it has the ability where whenever an opponent would draw card except for the first card they draw during each of their draw steps instead you create a treasure token this is an artifact token with an ability where you can tap it and sacrifice and add one Mana of any color this card was banned in July of 2021 now why were these cards banned these cards were both banned because of how they interact with wheel effects wheel is the name the community has given to cards like Wheel of Fortune that force all players to discard their hand and draw a new one of course you may notice that with cards like leovold and H breach route this won't be possible as they both stop your opponent from drawing cards leol at least allows them to draw one card while H breacher will entirely stop them from drawing anything and since these will effects will either Force youron to discard their hand or Shuffle their hand back to the deck they'll end up with either one card or no cards in hand while you'll be getting away with drawing an entirely new hand and since most Wheels hit the entire table this usually wins you the game however if this was where the issue ended these cards wouldn't have been banned in cedh there are better ways to close a game or at the very least other wi conditions that are as good as this in fact there are still other cards that have a very similar effect that are still legal in the format such as notion Thief which allows you to draw a card inside of your opponent whenever you would draw a card outside of their draw step and naret part of veils which just has the same text as Leal at the same Mana value both Leal and H breacher have something that make them better than these other cards leol being a legendary creature is capable of being your commander which makes all these combos far scarier and more consistent even without these combos leovold is already a good enough Commander having the ability to just win the game with whenever you want on top of all the rest of the value was just too much to deal with Hull breacher has flash making him far far more difficult to play around you can just cast him at the end step before your turn after each other player has tapped out and then perform the combo pulling it off on turn four without giving your opponent a chance to respond faster than any other version of this effect can go off without having to pass your opponent and giving them a chance to play their cards out so these cards may be the worst versions of these sorts of draw locking effects but is the combo even bannable after all like we said there are better combos available in the format there are a couple of things that push this specific combo into the realm of being problematic one the combo is miserable to play against and two all the cards in the combo are things you'd want to play anyway so they were seen playing tons of decks that other combos weren't speaking to the first issue most combos that win the game actually do end the game while refilling to seven and put in all your opponents to zero cards does basically end the game it doesn't actually end the game your opponents will still have to sit there and basically do nothing for several turns as you slowly find an actual win condition this is pretty miserable but not necessarily enough to ban the card on its own the thing that makes it so banworthy is the second issue how playable all the cards in the combo are cards like Wheel of Fortune are incredibly useful cards that see tons of play in the format in a wide variety of decks and these anti- draw effects are really strong even outside of the combos the result was a ton of people who didn't normally Play instant win combos still playing both these cards anyway leading to this combo to see way more play at weaker tables this caused a big issue at lower levels of play and since a cedh is combo was running around at mid-level tables the cards were banned what are the arguments for unbanning leovold and H breacher the only real argument that people bring up is that cards like naret are still legal but that's usually in the context of wanting naret band as well these types of cards are extremely hated people hate any card that makes us that you can't play and these cards were really strong most of the community recognized the problem with combining these cards with wheels but didn't have an issue with either half of their combos individually this leads to a complic a situation where people have lots of different opinions on exactly how these cards should be handled on the band list however most people are pretty happy to see these gone just because of how frustrating they are to play against all this is say this is one of the less controversial bands in the format the main reason some would want them unbanned is that from a more competitive perspective there are bigger issues it's not actually the most powerful com in the format and fun is a subjective term after all of course this is commander and the format is more focused on making to find casual environment rather than a tournament setting and the majority of people seem to agree that this type of gameplay isn't fun so the cards are probably going to stay on the band list next up we have Iona a shield of am Maria this is a 7 s legendary Angel creature with the Mana Costa 6 and three white it has flying meaning it can't be blocked except by other creatures with flying or reach and it has the abilities where as Iona enters the battlefield you choose a color and the ability where your opponents can't cast spells of the chosen color this card was banned in July of 2019 now why was Iona Shield of amiria banned Iona was banned due to how it can shut out players from playing the game while there are a lot of cards that can do this Iona is a bit unique in the specific way it does this the main thing is the card restricts actions based on color which means that if an opponent is on a monocolor deck and you call that deck's color they can only cast colorless spells for the rest of the game the ability to just completely shut off another player is really annoying to play against or in this case not play against while the card costing N9 Mana is really high there are tons of ways to cheat creatures into play quickly cards like ran animate are completely legal in the format and other forms of Mana cheating like Bassa Citadel and tooth and nail are pretty common in the format too getting Iona out isn't nearly as difficult as it may look Iona is the kind of card that the rules committee really doesn't like running around as it requires you to build your deck in very specific ways to get around the card for all those reasons Iona was banned what are the arguments for unbanning Iona now this is one of the most contentious cards currently on the band list there are a few layers to this first off the card is seen as a sign post band basically more of a symbolic move than a car that was banned to actually change anything you see while Iona does have a strong block effect it's not even close to the strongest or most disruptive effect of this kind of the format cards like stasis and winter orb have far far more impact on the games they're played in and on the format as a whole both of these cards stop players from untapping their permanence including their lands meaning that no player can cast spells because they don't have any Mana cards like Armageddon can destroy all the lands in play also preventing anyone from playing anything so why would they B and Iona rather than these other more impactful cards honestly I have no idea what they were thinking Iona is a very disruptive card and it's just not worse in any meaningful way than any the other cards it seems like the only reason they would have banned this card is actually because of how weak it is you see Stacks effects are really really important for Commander at high powered tables without these sorts of effects the game usually just evolves into all-in combo decks the only color that can compete with combos without these sords of stacks effects is blue thanks to its counter magic and every other color has to rely on these lock pieces to slow the game down if they're not trying to combo off so if the RC had banned a card like winter orb that could have rised actually messing up cedh whereas Iona as a much weaker card wouldn't change anything but Banning Iona does send a message at least theoretically that playing lock pieces is something RC doesn't want you to do and honestly this whole thing feels really silly this is a very inconsistent B and even in terms of big expensive creatures with lock effects cards like void wi noer are just as disruptive and perfectly legal Iona should probably just come off the list at this point as her being banned isn't really doing anything next up we have AIO sari ascendant this is a one- one legendary moonfolk monk creature with a Mana Costa one and one blue it has flying and the ability to wear whenever the fourth spell of a turn is cast you flip it this means rotating at 180° into io's Essence a legendary enchantment with the ability where you counter the first spell each opponent cast each turn this card was banned in September of 2011 as your commander meaning it could still be played in your 99 but was moved to the normal ban list when this list was abolished in 2014 why is Ario banned well because the flip version of the effect is basically impossible to play against it's just way too easy to flip and orio can be your commander first off casting four spells on a turn just isn't hard if you're actively trying to do this if you play a bunch of cards like a taxi and probe that CA zero or one mana and cycle you can pretty easily get up to four spell cast on turn three and still have plenty of room for wi condition in your deck once AIO flips you should probably just just scoop if you don't have a good way to answer it right away having to give the first spell you cast each turn makes it basically impossible to win but even worse makes it basically impossible to stop AAL players from winning if you want to develop your own board you have to give up both an entire card and all the Mana you spent on that spell meaning you're basically going to be doing nothing most turns and losing a ton of cards even if you have a removal spell for Ori right there the or player is playing blue and probably has counter magic to protect their Commander however it also makes interacting with that player on any player's turn basically impossible if you have a removal spell or a counter spell you can basically never actually play them you'll have to develop another entire card in front of them to get them to resolve and even if another player cast something I sees each opponent individually so if the or player is going for their combo and about to win and even if each opponent has an answer if one player doesn't have an answer and another castable spell they can't actually do anything and this is true for all three of that player's opponents basically AR makes doing anything impossible for most most of the players at a table but un like cards like winter orb it's a valid Commander this means you will still have access to it every game and be able to build your deck around it making sure you make the most out of the card there's no Commander that's quite as disruptive as a Rio at its peak even leovold isn't quite this bad it's no wonder the RC decided to hit this card what are the arguments for unbanning the the main argument would be probably the card isn't as good as it used to be and while that is somewhat true the card hasn't fallen off enough to be fair I feel like people are underestimating how easy cast four spells in a turn actually is especially since it counts spells being cast by all players not just the orial player you could also try to argue that the card mostly sees play at higher power level tables so would be less disruptive the thing is even at high-powered non cedh tables this card is really hard to play against and people will play it there the card may even still be an issue in cedh though that's not exactly my wheelhouse a is just too good of a card to have in your command Zone the best solution is probably bringing back the band as command Commander list but that's another discussion the bottom line is that I cannot be allowed to be in the command Zone next up we have upheaval this is a sorcery the Mana Costa four and two blue it is the effect to return all permanence to their owner's hands this card was banned in April of 2005 why was upheaval banned the card is basically a super Armageddon completely sending all players back to square one but being much much more powerful it doesn't just get rid of all the lands making it so the player can't cast spells until they replay their lands it also gets rid of all other permanence on the board so players won't have any threats left on the board but possibly more importantly it also gets rid of all Mana rocks and Mana dorks this means that unlike the mass land destruction spells there's not really a way to still have some action after a player cast upheaval the only real way to get around upheaval is with a card like T fery's protection which is such a specific answer that you can't really rely on it to answer this card on top of that upheaval is also just a really good card because you get to choose when upheaval happens you could make make sure to put yourself in a good position to catapult ahead the rest of the table typically what you would do is wait until you have around eight or nine Mana then cast a people without play land for turn you would float all of your extra mana and after the appeal resolves you play land for turn and redeploy all your Mana rocks this would put you way far ahead on Mana as you were the only player who could redeploy after upheaval with their extra Mana this all makes upheaval quite possibly the most practical and Powerful massine destruction in the game and for that reason the card was banned now what are the arguments for unbanning upheaval the main argument is that other Mass Land destruction and trolley cards are currently off the band list such as Armageddon and worldfire however there are a few notable differences between upheaval and those cards the main difference is that it's far far easier to make upheaval good than any of those other cards which may lead to it seeming more play than any other similar card upheaval answering the board makes it a lot more attractive in a lot of board States than typical Mass Land destruction spells Armageddon will often leave you in a losing position if you cast it so you have to make sure you're ahead on board enough to close out a game whenever you cast it or that you found a way to protect your lands from its effects upheaval only ask that you have enough extra Mana to redeploy some of your threats which is way more manageable in comparison to worldfire it's a lot easier to redeploy your threats after an upheaval since you'll still have a hand this means you don't have to build around the car to anywhere near the same degree roadfire requires pretty specific cards to combo off whereas upheaval works with any spells this means that a PE would be more likely to see far more play than worldfire does basically the card is meaningfully better than other similar effects so it's likely to see more play and cause more problems than those other cards though that's still a debatable topic and finally we have sway of the starts this is a sorcerer the Mana cost of eight and two blue it is the effect where each player shuffles their hand graveyard and all permanence they control back into their deck then draw seven cards also each player's life total then becomes seven this card was banned in April of 2005 why was sway of the Stars banned the card was banned for being really annoying to play against playing and simple the card doesn't have too many broken applications that other cards don't do better rather a card that resets literally everyone's zones and sets each player to seven life made it so that nothing that happened in the game up to that point were sway resolved actually mattered all that really matters at that point is whoever draws a good enough hand to close the game before anyone else considering that there's not much tragedy in playing the card and how fun it is the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning sway of the Stars one big argument is that World fire was unbanned and has mostly been fine World fire was banned for mostly the same reason as sway the starts so if it's okay sway is also probably okay now to be honest sway being on or off the band list is mostly a matter of personal preference World fire does have some more straightforward combo implications due to setting people's life totals to one making it better at ending games whereas sway mostly only prolongs games however it's not that there's no combos to sway the Stars even if they're more difficult to pull off the card does have some legitimate applications so the card being banned could be a sore spot for some players not to mention there are card cards like thieves auction that similarly make the entire game up to the point they're played not matter despite not actually being good ultimately the card's banding feels extremely arbitrary which may leave a lot of people to advocate for the card coming off the band list first up we have Grizzle Brand This is a 7 s legendary demon creature with the Mana Costa four and four black it has flying and LifeLink meaning it can only be blocked by other creatures with flying and if dealing damage also causes you to gain that much life it also has the ability where you can pay Seven life to draw seven cards this card was banned in June of 2012 why was Grizzle brand band Grizzle brand is one of the most powerful creatures ever printed and one that would only be even stronger in Commander pain seven life to draw seven cards is just so much card advantage that you can easily run away with the game even worse this is usually enough for you to draw into some kind of combo to close out the game right there this is true in most 60 card formats but in Commander this is even easier to do as you can draw twice as many cards with your inflated life total going to less than 10 life will make you pretty easy to kill but if you can safely win the game before then then it won't be much of an issue this issue is only worsened by the fact that Grizzle brand is a legendary creature meaning it can both be your commander and it's very easy to cheat out without even paying the eight Mana for it just in Black you can use powerful reanimator effects to get Grizz BR out without paying the eight Mana you also have cards like in Tomb and buried alive to send cards directly from your library to the graveyard then you get Grizzle brand out as soon as the first turn of the game with the help of some fast Mana you can do this with a lot of creatures but Grizzle br's draw Power makes it by far are the best Target for this kind of strategy this isn't even to mention the other means of cheating creatures out such as with Elvish Piper style effects and the like grizle brand is really one of the few creatures that's really just too powerful for the format whether it be in the commander zone or in the 99 the card really does need to stay banned what are the arguments for unbanning Grizzle brand the main argument would be that cards of similar power are legal in the format and not banned anywhere some cards that do very similar things would be razaketh the foulblooded which lets you pay two life and sacrifice a creature to search your library for for any card and put it into your hand this is about as powerful as Grizzle Brand's ability and it's perfectly legal so why is Grizz brand the only card Bann well razic cath takes just a bit more setup to be able to use the difference between paying life and pay life on top of sacrifice the creature is enough that razic Cath is slightly harder to make use of now they are close enough in power that you could make an argument in favor of letting Grizzle brand come back but he would steal enough games that it probably wouldn't be a good idea there were also cards like necro potent available in the format which does almost the exact same thing as Grizzle brand though there are a few important differences the biggest one is that necro potence gives you the cards at the end of the turn instead of right away which means you have to wait a turn to combo off there's also the issue of Grizzle brand being available in the command Zone which isn't the biggest deal but does make it a bit easier to access than necro potten is to be perfectly honest if Grizzle brand is banned necro should maybe just get hit too since they're a bit too close and power level to each other but there are edges that Grizzle brand has over necro all in all Grizzle brand is just a a little bit too much and the best card for pay life to draw cards in the format but you could argue that other cards also need to be hit or that it could come off next up we have emrol the eons torn this is a 1515 legendary eldrazi creature with the Mana Costa 15 it has the abilities where it can't be countered it has flying protection from colored spells meaning it can't be targeted or dealt damage by colored spells Annihilator six meaning that whenever it attacks the defending player sacrifices six permanence and when you cast emerol you take an extra turn after this one and whenever emerol is put into the graveyard from anywhere you shuffle your graveyard into your library this card was banned in December of 2010 now why was emu banned emerle was just too strong overall having far too much of an impact in any game where it's cast taking an extra turn when you cast it in addition to having multiple forms of protections means that you'll usually get to attack with Emer cold if you cast it this means you'll get to attack for 15 damage and get rid of 16 permanence from one of your opponent's boards which is often enough for the player's game to basically be over similar to Grizzle brand you don't actually need to cast emerle to get it out meaning you can get this massive a threat to play Far earlier than turn 15 you can't reanimate emerle quite as easily due to a shing effect but all your other creature effects will still work the thing about emerol is that it instantly made the entire game about answering this threat You couldn't possibly ignore a resolved emerol as it will far too quickly eat up your board State and answer the game it wasn't any one thing that the card did that made it too good but rather that just did everything you could want due to how game warping emerol was the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning emerol this is a case where the overall rise in the power level of the game is worth mentioning far fewer games of Commander are being won off the back of a fair mid-range strategy slowly amassing a giant board and running over everyone more and more people are running combos or semi combos to try and win the game without actually going to combat and the combat Decks that do exist are getting faster and faster casting a 15 Mana spela in the game is at this point really reasonable cards like coma Cosmos serpent take over the game for only seven mana and while the card isn't as impactful as emerle is for half the Mana it's pretty reasonable the format has caught up to Emer in terms of power level to the point where its place on the band list feels like a relic of a bygone era more than anything next up we have braids cabal minion this is a 2 two legendary human minion with a Mana cost of two and two black it has the ability wear at the beginning of each player's upkeep that player sacrifices an artifact a creature or a land this card was banned in June of 2009 why was braids banned this card is really frustrating to play against mostly due to how it slowly eats away everyone's resources every turn each players going to lose a permanent and while they can continue casting spells to try and develop their boards a few bad draws will often be enough to make you start needing to sacrifice lands once you're sacrificing lands you'll eventually be buried in an avalanche of sacrifice triggers as you slowly end up without any game actions this is only made worse if the braids players playing cards like pox or small pox that Force players to sacrifice lands and creatures and discard cards now braids is symmetrical as are most of the cards they be playing alongside it so the braids player will also have to deal with all of this this as well and while there are ways to make this a winning strategy whether or not it was good wasn't really why it was banned it was more banned because a strategy was considered uncas or in other words just unfun there's nothing Commander players get more upset about than someone stopping them from completing their strategy and deny your opponent's plays is all braids does due to this the rules committee saw braids as promatic card and she was banned from the format what are the arguments for unbanning braids since the card isn't banned for power level reasons at all the card's Banning is far more contentious than other cards there are certainly a number of people who like playing these kinds of decks and find these resource sty strategies fun who would love to see the card come back and it's hard to really have too much of a discussion about if the card should be banned or not since to do that you have to get into a larger discussion about game design what is fun what kind of experience should magic and command as a format be geared toward and how should the ban list play into that there are very long and interesting conversations the community has had time and time again but they're a little beyond the scope of the series the main takeaway is that the braids Banning is very subjective and not something you can make very substantial Arguments for without laying out a lot more about how you think about the game the second major thing that needs to be talked about with braides ban is the old banned as Commander rule this worked about how it sounded there were certain cards that were allowed in the 99 but were only banned as your commander the rule was removed because the rules committee thought it would be too confusing for new players to be straight to the point this isn't very convincing there are lots of things in Commander that are far more confusing than a second band list that would only be a few cards along things like color identity rules would probably take a lot more work for a new player to learn so getting rid of this very useful band list for that reason seems silly braids would make far more sense on the band as Commander list since in the 99 it can simply be answered once and forgotten about it being able to come back over and over again is a big part of making the resource Deni strategy of the card work next up we have goo's tireless Pilgrim this is a 35 legendary Scout artifact creature with the Mana Costa 5 it is abilities where when it enters a battlefield you search your library for a land card and put into the battlefield then Shuffle it also has the ability where you can pay two a white blue black red and green to Exile the top three cards of your library for the rest of the turn you can play those cards and you can play them without paying their Mana cost this card was banned in September of 2021 why was golos banned this card was just the best commander for a generic deck in the format for several reasons one the card had a completely generic Mana cost with the ability to Tor lands out of the deck this makes golos both a great source of Mana fixing and Mana ramp this means that even if you don't have the best Mana base arounds golos could always fix your Mana for you making his second ability extremely easy to activate the activated ability is extremely powerful and on most turns if you have the seven Mana available which you probably will since golos just ramped you using the activate abilities will be the best use of your turn golos would make it so that one player just repeatedly cast giant powerful spells for no Mana investment on each of their turns and if you did remove golos it didn't do much golos finding you a land drop allowed it to pay for most of its Commander attacks as it would only cost two more Mana each time it could even pay for the entire taxs if you found lands that ta for two Mana which are more common than you might think worst of all you didn't even need to be playing a five-color deck for gas be worth playing if you were on a two or three-color deck you could just play a few cards like Mana Confluence to tutor out with golos and only spend the Mana to activate his ability this made him extremely generic to the point where golos was threatened the commander diversity of the format golos was basically a runaway value train that was very difficult to stop and for that reason the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning golos the Banning of golos had as many people boning it as celebrating it a lot of people just didn't find golos particularly egregious as a commander as the card isn't really even that much of a Powerhouse cards like urza Lord High artificer are much more powerful commanders that can do a lot more work in a game and while golas can get you a lot of value that's not the most unique thing in the world the card just wasn't the most powerful thing to be doing in the format so hden it over more egregious cards that took over more games more often didn't make much sense additionally there are other five color commanders that don't require all five colors of man at a cast such as kenrith the returned King now golos is a little worse than kenrith is thanks to his ability to free cast spells and find land from your deck but they are close in how good they are at taking over games this is a bit of a strange situation since the ban is very much targeted towards lower to Middle power tables where golos would often run away with games unfortunately with this even more so than a lot of other bands we have to defer to arbitrarily in my own experience golos has been a thorn in the side of the format that forces players to raise the power level of their decks to just win faster than it can or to hate the goals play out of the game to have a chance but personal experience isn't the strongest argument this really gets to an issue a lot of players have with Commander ban list in general which is that Commander is such a large diverse format that banning a card has massive Ripple effects over tons of play groups where the card may or may not have been a problem Goos is generally accepted to be an overtuned card and a design mistake but if it deserves a banner not is far too subjective to make any objective statements on finally we have raell L of War Emissary this is a 21 legendary El Druid with a Mana cost of two green it is the ability where you can tap and add one green Mana for each Forest you control this card was banned in March of 2007 why was rafos banned this card was really good at ramping you and Commander since you could just consistently cast it on turn two of every game rafos would basically double your Mana all on his own as in a Rafal deck you would always play only forest for your Lance with twice as much Mana you'll be able to run away with a game in no time made even better by all of Greenland's ramping letting you put even more Force into play Man doubling is an effect that you usually only get for five man at the cheapest getting it on turn three is far too powerful or at least it would be if it weren't for how easy it is to kill rellos this is usually enough to keep the elf in check but in Commander he becomes far more potent being able to recast rellos anytime he's removed makes them a lot harder to deal with this is true of most commanders but with one that comes down so early and can run away with a game to this degree it becomes a much bigger issue this would make monog green decks just a little too good so the card was banned to keep them in check for this reason RAF was banned what are the arguments for unbanning rellos this is another Commander that was originally banned as commander and one that most players would like to return to that status in the 99 the card is a lot more manageable though a tad on the stronger side still in a format with soul ring legal a oneoff powerful ramp spell isn't really even worth writing home about the other main argument for unbanning rellos outside of just bringing back the old band as a commander rule is that the card was banned a long long time ago and the format has gotten a lot faster rellos doesn't by himself let you win the game he only lets you cast powerful spells early which while good is something that a lot of decks are probably ready to deal with now while this is true raell is probably a bit too much it really does require an early removal spell as unless the raella player has a really weak hand they'll probably rock it really far ahead of the rest of the table possibly winning the game before anyone else can find an answer while it's not as good as it used to be having ralis in the command Zone would probably still be too much especially at lower power level tables first off off we have Paradox engine this is a legendary artifact with a manac Costa 5 it is the ability where whenever you cast a spell you untap all non-land permanence you control this card was banned in July of 2019 why was Paradox engine banned there are two big issues with this card the first is the combination of how powerful it is and the effect it has on the games when it hits the field what would usually happen is a player would tap a lot of Mana rocks to cast engine and then fall it with another spell this would untap all those Mana rocks letting you cast yet another spell and so on and so on so as long as you had spells to continue casting there are ways to make this even more consistent such as using cards like isocon scepter this is an artifact that allows you to Exile an instant or sorcery that cost two or less when it enters the battlefield and you can pay two and tap it to cast a copy of the exiled card without paying its Mana cost with the Paradox engine out every time you activate scepter you'll get to untap it in all your other permanence as scepter does technically cast the copied spell if you put a card like a lightning bolt under receptor you can just burn all your opponents to death with this combo waiting on the spot and while this is very powerful the real issue here is honestly just how easy it is to make the engine way too good as long as you have a few non-land permits you can tap for Mana you can usually just storm off and put together some kind of combo or just get so ahead on board that it's impossible for your opponents to ever come back the cherry on top of all of this is just how long Paradox engine turns take to complete players with an engine on the field will often take turns that are three or four times as long as any other player at the table it's very similar to the issue with profit of cruix which just made one player take over the entire game and plays way more than everyone else this is where the second main issue that was alluded to earlier comes in the card is colorless meaning it can be played in literally any deck this led to Paradox engine being played all over the place in basically any deck that wanted to go off and extend their board State the combination of how heavily played the card was and how many bad games it led to result in the card being banned from the format what are the arguments for unbanning Paradox engine the argument that engine slows down the game is a bit hard to pin down and quantify leading a lot of people to argue that cards shouldn't be banned for this reason in fact there are still lots of Combos and strategies you can employ in the format that have a very similar effect what made Paradox banworthy in the eyes of the rules committee is likely how white spread the card's usages basically every deck could play engine and it would make the deck better which meant that it was leading to these kinds of games a lot more often than other cards sure cards like two-lane teller of tales can have a similar effect on games but this is one specific Commander rather than a format staple that as much as all four players in a pod could be playing another argument is a less popular one but still worth bringing up the card was very strong in cedh and the Banning hurt that side of the format in some people's eyes the rules committee has said that they don't consider cedh when Banning cards at least for the most part the Paradox engine baning had an overall positive effect of the format but there were certainly several pain points so it's understandable why some people want the card back next up we have Primal Titan this is a 66 giant with the Mana Costa four and two green it has trample meaning it can deal excess combo damage to defending player or planes Walker whenever enters the battlefield or attacks you can search a library for up to two land cards put them into the battlefield and then sh Shuffle this card was banned in September of 2012 and while we're here we should also talk about a very similar card in silven primordial this is a 68 Avatar with the Mana Costa 5 and two green it has reach allowed to block flying creatures and has the ability where when it enters the battlefield for each opponent you destroy Target non-creature permanent and opponent controls then for each permanent destroy this way you search your library for a forest card and put to the battlefield tapped then Shuffle why we primeval Titan and silven primordial ban these cards were mostly banned due to how they warped the game around them the enter the battlefield Triggers on these cards are so powerful that the best thing to do when they hit the battlefield was to clone them steal them blink them do basically anything with them the cards put you so far ahead in terms of Mana with their triggers that you would after a few uses of the cards be able to cast multiple expensive powerful spells in a single turn this is even more important Commander than it is in other formats thanks to how the higher life totals in multiple opponents affect the format we've mentioned this at several points but Commander as a format requires far more explosive plays in cards to bring a game to a close getting extra Mana is an effect that's really powerful and these cards are so efficient in terms of Mana production that it ended up being better to do things with them instead of just doing about anything else thanks to the effect that's had on games the cards were banned what are the arguments for unbanning Primal Titan and silven primordial this is a case where the power of the format really matters we have more powerful Mana ramp now than we've ever had and threats removal combos basically everything has crept up on them the Mana offer of these cards is a lot less game-winning than it used to be additionally there are other cards that are probably just more powerful and do the same thing but much worse the best example would be doite extortionist a two drop that makes you a treasure for each artifact and or enchantment your opponent controls when it enters the battlefield these are tokens that you can tap and sacrifice for one man of any color extortionist will usually make far more than two Treasures when it comes in often upwards of five or more treasures and this Mana is usually enough to repel you into a winning position copying and flickering extortionist is usually just better than Titan or primordial so it's strange that these cards are banned while it's completely legal so those are all the cards that are only banded Commander though there are some cards that are banded other formats that we've talked about already so since we've already covered these cards so many times we're going to go over all the rest of the B cards in a sort of lightning round spending just a little bit less time talking about them first off we have the infamous members of the power nine eight of which are banded Commander the moxen MOX Pearl MOX Sapphire MOX jet MOX Ruby and MOX Emerald are all zero Mana artifacts you can tap to add one man of their respective color these were all banned in April of 2005 now why were the Mox and Bann there are two major issues the first of which is pretty interesting you see the moxin were partly banned just because of how expensive they are the rules committee isn't part of Wizards of the Coast and are therefore not legally bound to pretend that the secondary Market doesn't exist this means they can openly make decisions based on things such as availability of cards and cards like the moxin which can individually each go for upwards of $2,000 are on the reserved list meaning Wizards can't reprint them without legal trouble this obviously means that the moxin are very scarce and hard to get a hold of and the RC didn't want Commander to seem like a luxury format that only the extremely wealthy people could afford to play and since the moxin would have been kind of broken in the format they went ahead and banned them this does lead to the next question why are the moxen too broken we've talked about this before but moxen are essentially lands that don't take up a land drop playing a MOX instead of a land means that you're a turn ahead in terms of man production for the rest of the game leading to having a pretty huge upside over your opponents people already talk about banning soul ring and Mana cryp thanks to them basically doing the same thing so putting more cards with that kind of impact in the game into the format would be a really bad idea as far as Arguments for unbanning the moxin go no one really wants them unban the price on top of having an almost entirely negative impact on the format means that there's not much of a reason to let them back into the format next up we have black lotus a zero Mana artifact with ability or you can tap and sacrifice it at three Mana of any one color this was banned at the same time as the moxin in April 2005 as were the rest of the power dine with the sole exception of time twister why was Black Lotus banned the card was banned for basically all the same reasons as the moxin except even more so Black Lotus is the second most expensive Magic card in existence making the availability issue even worse it also makes way too much Mana far too quickly while it doesn't make consistent Mana the burst of Mana it gives you allows you to put combos together extremely early or ramp into even more powerful ramp spells early or doing any number of extremely broken things Black Lotus would lead to far more non- games on top of giving a very small subset of players a huge advantage and similar to the and no one really wants the card unban next up we have time Lo this is a sorcer the manac Costa 101 blue it is the effect where you take an extra turn after this one now why was Time Walk banned Beyond a lack of availability Time Walk causes two major issues the first is the effect of the color pie the color pie is one of the most important things in Magic and one of the selling points of the game from a design standpoint however the appeal of the game goes away if one color is obviously way better than all the others and from a competitive standpoint it leads to a stagnant format with very low deck diversity Time Walk is just a very unfair card doing far too much for far too little Mana it's hard to explain why Time Walk is so good but the best way to think about it is realizing just how low the floor is Time Walk is at worst a free Explorer it draws you a card and lets you play an additional land just like explore does for the same amount of Mana however it also untaps your other lands afterwards let you do even more on that turn at worse time lock is a better version of an already very playable card in the best case scenario the card can literally win you the game as an extra turn is one of the best effects in all of magic all of this is to say that time walk is one of the most broken cards Wizards has ever printed while this is a big issue to competitive format in a casual format like Commander it causes a different kind of problem Time Walk is powerful enough that it makes playing blue noticeably better than playing the other colors and while this effect is dampened by being a 99 card Singleton format it's still noticeable the effect is mostly psychological why would you choose to play any non-blue deck when playing a blue deck gives you access to cards that are clearly just far better than any other color Commander already has issues with color balance that Wizards is trying to hammer out having cards like time loock that are still noticeably stronger than any other card only make the discrepancies even more noticeable all in all time loock will just have a very negative impact of the format next up we have ancestral recall this is an inci with the Mana Costa one blue it is the effect for Target player draws three cards why was ancestral recalled banned recalls ban is basically identical to why tyok is banned if a combination of being very expensive and being way too strong making blue far too strong of a color now in Commander specifically recall is noticeably weaker than Time Walk is as taking an extra turn scales better in the multiplayer format than drawing extra cards does still this doesn't change the facts of the matter recall is still a very unfair card by far the best card draw effect in the game it would feel very unfair for blue to get access to this kind of card where every other color has to actually pay a reasonable cost to draw their cards that seals all of the Power n that are abandon the format the next section of cards I like to quickly go over are the dexterity cards falling star and Chaos orb falling star is a sorcery with the Mana cost of 2 in1 red with the effect where you flip it onto the plain field area from a height of at least 1 foot it deals three damage to each creature it lands on and you tap all those creatures however if it doesn't flip over at least once during the flip it has no effect chaos orb is an artifact with the Mana Costa 2o it has the effect where you can pay one it tap it to flip it onto the table from a height of at least 1 foot you destroy all non-token permanences touching when it lands then destroy chaos orb but you can only do this if it's flipped all the way over at least once as well these were also both banned in April 2005 along with the power nine cards so why are these cards banned they're banned for the exact same reason they're banned in every other format they don't belong in Magic dexterity just isn't a skill that magic designers want to test as it feels really far outside the bounds of how the game normally works not to mention there are tons of issues caused with these cards I go beyond this first off there's no question of when you're allowed to move your cards around in a format with these cards there aren't many rules about where you're allowed to place your cards in the mat or when you're allowed to move them in the magic rule book outside of a few things meant only to keep communication between players smooth and effective this means that in a format with these kinds of cards available the most optimal way to play this is with all of your cards a full cards length away from each other that way any dexterity card will only ever land on one of your permanence this is extremely annoying especially in Commander where boards get so much larger than they normally do all of these attributes together make it so the dexterity card cards don't really have a place in the format now as far as unbanning these cards go this is a bit interesting mainly because if there ever was a magic format where the Dex City cards were legal it would be in Commander as a casual format a lot of the worst parts of logistical issues with the cards don't come up for example there aren't really many tournaments for Commander and taking up too much space in tournament settings are one of the big reasons why the card needs to be banned so the cards do have less issues in the commander format however the way that the cards clash with what many players want out of a game of magic while it could theoretically work most players would probably prefer if the cards just stayed banned starting us off we have tarian Academy this is a legendary land with the ability where you can tap it to add one blue for each artifact you control this card was banned all the way back in June of 2010 so why was this card banned Academy was really good at making a lot of Mana fast an attribute that's gotten a ton of cards banned Academy is a part of a cycle of lands with very similar abilities alongside gaas cradle and Sarah sanctum cradle Taps for one green for each creature you control whereas sanctum Taps for white equal to the number of enchantments control both of these cards have already shown themselves to be very powerful in Commander basically if you're playing a deck built around either creatures or enchantments you should be playing the card as they just offer way too much Mana for way too little cost Academy takes this up to 11 for one there are plenty of powerful zero Mana artifacts that can be used to power up your Academy making it far easier to get an academy tapping for unfair amounts making this even worse is the fact that artifact based decks tend to be very strong anyway one of the most broken commanders in the format is urza Lord High artificer due to his ability to tap your artifacts for Mana giving these decks access to Academy would just let them close games even faster and easier the card can also kind of just be played in any Blue Deck as most decks in the format are already playing a good number of artifacts anyway most decks are already playing a soul ring in a Mana Crypt or at least would be if Crypt weren't quite pricey on top of that tons of other decks will be ried on signets to ramp them the point is that there just isn't much deck building cost to making Academy work due to how over whelmingly powerful the card is and how easy it is to use the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning tarian Academy there aren't really many people who want the card back the card is banned basically everywhere because it's just far too good and too easy to break the only angle where Bandon it really makes sense is just from wanting a shorter ban list but Academy is a very reasonable ban the card would be bad for both casual and competitive players so there's not really a reason to bring it back next up we have yak's bargain this is an enchantment with a Mana Costa 4 and two black it is abilities where you skip your draw step and you pay one life to draw a card this card was banned in May of 2006 why was yaga's bargain Bann well it doesn't take long to see the comparison to Grizzle brand another card on the commander band list the ability to draw as many cards as you want just by pain life is always powerful but it's even better in Commander where a player's life totals are inflated drawing 20 or so cards is usually enough to just win the game either through some sort of combo or just having too many threats and answers for your opponent to keep up with of course this applies equally both to Grizzle brand and bargain when compared to Grizzle brand bargain has a few notable upsides and downsides Grizzle brand doesn't lock your draws and can be cheated to play more easily thanks to various reanimate effects however bargain costs less Mana up front which makes it castable in a lot of situations where other similar cards simply aren't however the main reason the card was banned was just because of how powerful the draw itself is one of the arguments were unbanning yagot bargain there's one very strange Point surrounding bargain ban and its name is Necro poent this card has basically the same effect as bargain except it puts the card into your hand at the end of the turn and only costs three black Mana not a full six Mana in just about every conceivable way necropotence is just better than bargain the only Edge bargain has is drawing the cards right away which just doesn't matter when the cards come down so much later even worse at high levels of play necro potence has an even greater Edge because it's tutorable off of Zur the enchanter who is a legendary creature and therefore a valid Commander with all of this in mind there aren't really any good reasons for bargain to remain ban while necro potence is completely legal You could argue that necr should be banned alongside bargain but it's kind of arguable overall it just doesn't make sense to noap poent to be off the list while bargain is on it next up we have Tinker this is a sourc with the Mana cost of two and one blue as an additional cost to cast Tinker you have to sacrifice an artifact it is the effect where you search a library for an artifact put into the battlefield and then Shuffle this card was banned in March of 2009 why was Tinker banned being able to tutor an artifact directly into play is very powerful and Tinker doesn't ask for anywhere near a high enough cost to make the effect Fair we've already gone over how common artifacts are the format thanks to artifact Mana it should maybe go without saying but there are tons of very powerful artifacts to find off of Tinker some of the highlights would be cards like Basta Citadel which lets you cast spells from the top of your library for no Mana by paid life or even cards like portal to forexia which forces each opponent to sacrifice three creatures when it enters the battlefield and reanimates a creature each turn so you have a car that can find Game ending threats and put them into play for very little mana and has a very small deck building cost in order to make work namely playing some of the best cards in the format this isn't even getting into the versatility of the card and how it can be used to respond to a ton of different situations for all of these reasons combined the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning Tinker this is another card that's hard to find a good reason to unban the card is banned in Legacy and restricting vintage for good reason it makes artifact decks extremely powerful and can steal games out of nowhere very easily there's not really any world I can see where the card would be unbanned and be okay next up is time Vault this is an artifact with a Mana costum 2 it is the abilities where it enters a battlefield tapped time Vault doesn't untap during your untapped step and if it would begin a turn while time vault is tapped you can instead skip that turn and untap time Vault finally you can tap the Vault to take an extra turn this card was banned in December of 2008 why was time Vault banned there are two reasons for this the first is that the card is just broken all you have to do is play any card that can untap time Vault once a turn and you can take infinite turns effectively winning the game on the spot there are so many cards that can do this to the point where you can be rest assured if you ever draw your time Vault you'll be able to go infinite this alone might be enough to ban the card but there's also an accessibility issue this is a reserved list card and one that was only printed twice once in unlimited and again in a collector's edition and the collector's edition print isn't even turnament legal vaults will set you back several hundred and that's something that would only get worse with time unbanning this card would require players to either proxy or cough up far too much money on a single card to compete while Commander isn't a very competitive format people do want games to be a bit fair and this kind of lopsided card would hurt games a lot for all of these reasons the card was banned what are the arguments for unbanning time Vault this is another very uncontroversial ban not only is the combo broken it's also not fun to play against watching your opponent take infinite turns until they find an actual way to win is just very boring the combination of being far too strong and the fact that almost no one owns copies of the card means that no one is pushing for the card to come off the band list next up we have Library of Alexandria this is a land with the abilities where you can tap it for one callest mana and you can tap it to draw a card but only if you have exactly seven cards in hand this card was banned in April of 2005 why was this card Bann the accessibility issue is even worse here this card has only ever had one Printing and runs for around the price of a used car and no that's not an exaggeration outside of being too difficult to get a hold of the card is also very good you you lose basically nothing but in the right circumstances can push you extremely far ahead drawing an extra card every turn is a great effect in the Restriction of needing seven cards in hand isn't the hardest thing in the world to get to work the thing is even if it doesn't go your way it doesn't really matter even if you never draw a card off of Library you haven't lost anything by playing it it doesn't hurt you at all so the only cost is opportunity cost considering the card cost you nothing to play at least within the terms of the game and can just went entire games on its own the card was banned what are the Arguments for unbanning Library of Alexandria this is a bit of a weird case as the biggest issue nowadays really is just the accessibility the power level of the card isn't all that high it's a lot harder to keep yourself at having cards in hand and keep drawing than it used to be and even more difficult in multiplayer formats if the card were more accessible it would be contentious but it might not ever get banned the main problem is only the fact that to reasonably play it you have to bust out the old Sharpie on Basic Land trick next is fastbound this is an enchantment with the Mana Costa one grain it is the abilities where you can play any number of lands on each of your turns but whenever you play a land if it wasn't the first land you played that turn fastbound deals one damage to you this card was banned in June of 2009 why was fastbound banned while this isn't a reserv less card it's a bit easier to get a hold of than some of the last entries this card is mostly banned for power level reasons as it's very easy to combo off with fastbound the easiest way to do this is to use some way to sacrifice lands with a card that lets you play lands from your graveyard basically basically this just lets you cycle a lands in and out of your graveyard as many times as you have a life for or even infinitely as long as you have a way to gain life along the way once you do this you can use your infinite Mana to win the game or maybe win through infinite landfall triggers of course this is another card where you don't have to go infinite with a card to be worth it sometimes just playing out all the lands in your hand on turn one is enough to put you in a winning position fastbound is one of those cards that never does anything fair it only really leads to one player either winning right away or it's just a DE card due to just how easy it is to win because of the card it was banned what are the arguments for unbanning fastbound this is a card that's just too good for the format green really doesn't need any more busted land ramp cards giving the color this on top of everything else that's going for it would make the color far too strong in casual and while cedh isn't the biggest consideration there's a good chance it would be far too good there too next up we have flash this is an incident with the Mana cost of one in one blue it is the effect where you put a creature card from me Hanah to the battlefield then you sacrifice it unless you pay it Mana cost minus two generic Mana this card was banned in April of 2020 why was Flash banned flash was banned due to how it interacted with one card in particular protein Hulk Hulk is a 66 for five and two green with the ability wear when it dies you search your library for any number of creature cards with total Mana value six or less put them into the battlefield and then Shuffle though it might as well just say when this dies you win because that's how it plays out in practice the combo lines have changed a lot over time but suffice to say that there's always always been a way to win the game when Hulk dies Flash and Hulk together then allow you to win the game at instant speed for two Mana which is as good as it sounds this wasn't an issue in casual play but in cedh it was basically destroying the format flash Hulk was one of the only things worth doing in the format and the mirror was pretty miserable if one player attempted to go off any other players holding the combo could go off in response most games were essentially a Mexican standoff with two or more players holding a proverbial gun to each other's throats there was some contention on if the rules Community should ban cards for the cedh community but since no one was really playing flash they decided it was fine to ban one of the arguments for unbanning Flash this one has an interesting story because prot and Hulk was banned in the format for years however right as it was reprinted Masters 25 the card was released back in the format as it was thought that it should probably be fine of course it turned out to be doing the exact same thing it always did it really makes one wonder why they ever unbanned Hulk in the first place flash had been around for years without doing anything but then they unban the one card it had ever seen play with and it had to be banned Hulk really seems to be the problem card in the interaction here next up we have Channel this is a sords with the Mana cost of two green it is the effect where until the end of the turn anytime you can activate a mana ability you may pay one life if you do you add one colorless Mana this card was banned in June of 2010 why was Channel banned this is basically the opposite version of yagas bargain giving you Mana for Life instead of giving you cards for life this does basically the same thing which is let you win the game right then and there it's a little bit more difficult to make work and often you hold back on your channel till later in the game instead of slamming it as soon as you can still it allows you to do things like infinitely recast ancestral statue with an Aether Flex reservoir on the board to eventually gain infinite life and then laser down each of your opponents one by one while this might be problematic at high levels of play it's possibly worse at casual tables where it can be used to cast a ton of cards like ugin the spear dragon and Co like Butcher of the truth on turn two while this won't always let you win the game it usually will the ease with which channel can end games out of nowhere led to the card being banned what are the arguments for unbanning channel well there's not much clamoring for the card to come back well it might not be as good as other combos already available in cedh it probably would be problematic in casual play and that's what the commander bandless is supposed to be designed for anyway there just doesn't seem to be a good outcome that would come from unbanning Channel next up we have balance this is a source of the Mana costum one in one white it is the effect where each player chooses a number of lands they control equal to the number of lands controlled by the player who controls the fewest then sacrifices the rest the players discard cards and sacrifice creatures the same way this card was banned in April of 2005 why was balance banned balance is very good at leaving your opponent with no meaningful game actions if you spend the first two turns of the game playing out artifacts empty in your hand and not playing creatures then casting balance will often force your opponent to discard their entire hands and sacrifice all their creatures and if you find a way to get rid of most of your lands you can basically make it an Armageddon too getting all of this for two Mana can put you really far ahead especially if you've been playing powerful artifacts beforehand this is particularly bad at more casual tables where players will be less prepared to play against these kinds of effects Stacks effects are very common in CDH whereas they are heavily discouraged in casual games as a result players in casual games don't play the kind of cheap interaction card draw needed to stand a chance against these kinds of cards due to how disruptive the card can be the games it was banned what are the arguments for unbanning balance there's not much the card would probably be fine in CDH but that's not what the ban list is for for casual play the card is a worst version of basically every effect people hate in the game balance is probably the poster child for cards that stops you from playing so it's not a surprise that it's banned in the format for the final card in the series we have the infamous shahazad this is a source with the Mana cona 2 white it is the effect where players play a magic sub game using their libraries as their deck and each player who doesn't win the subgame loses half their life round it up this card was banned in December of 2005 why was shahazad banned I feel like this one is pretty self-explanatory I just want you to imagine this you're nearing the end of a nearly 2-hour long game of Commander with your friends players have come close to winning several times only to be barely stopped at the last second suddenly a player cash shahazad what kind of play experience you think that's going to have frustrating is putting it far too lightly shahazad favorably does nothing but waste everyone's Time games that would normally only be a couple hours long and already ridiculous amount of time for any card game to take it's something that people says needs to be fixed in the format and extends it to a quite possibly twice that length it's not like Shazad even has much of an impact on the game it's played in as players losing half their life is bad but not necessarily game- ending from a practical perspective it's even worse Commander board States tend to get pretty big you'll need two full-size kitchen tables to resolve shra zad's Effect one to hold the first game and one to hold the sub game honestly if someone cast this card into game I was playing I might just scoop right there what are the arguments for unbanning shahazad well it's not technically broken it's not the most powerful effect out there and you might try to argue that if there are cards that waste people's times like thieves auction in the format why not let shahazad in however the Practical concerns alone are enough for the card to be banned it has a much worse effect on games it's played in than other cards that tend to be frustrating to have resolved shahazad might not be the most powerful card in Magic but it's still the most disruptive to play all right and that's the series a quick thanks to everyone for watching and as always if you have any thoughts or ideas for future videos like this one we'd love to hear about them down the comments below

Channel: TheManaLogs

Views: 217,258

Keywords: magic, mtg, magic the gathering, tcg, card game, asmr

Id: N2yDB5UNIzQ

Length: 82min 28sec (4948 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2023