Speculating on the Commander Banlist

Betting on the Commander Banlist

Whenever I’m checking out a store's selection of singles or flipping through someone’s trade binder, there are a few specific types of cards I’m always on the lookout for.

Cards I need for Commander decks? Gotta have those, of course.

Old-school foils? Sign me up.

Obscure Reserved List? Why not?

Even more copies of pet cards for my personal collection? Hell yes, always.

But there’s one more category of cards that many dismiss purely on their legality in the most popular format, and that is cards on the Commander banlist. Some might think it's dicey to pick up cards that can't be used in play, but the right ones can be solid long- or, hopefully, short-term holds. By merely being on the ban list, these cards have a spotlight on them that others naturally don’t, and as we’ve seen countless times in the past, once something is unbanned, there’s a good chance it will jump in price; there will suddenly be demand for these previously niche cards. And even if just for the short term, the hype will catch people's interest like it always does.

This itself shouldn't be surprising, but I feel as Commander players we have mostly accepted that certain things can't be changed, and that goes for many of the long-time inhabitants of this list. We just accept that Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary will stay banned because it has been for over a decade. But as the game and format evolve in unprecedented ways over time, it’s imperative to keep an open mind and re-evaluate whether some of these cards deserve to be taken off this list, either now or in the future.

Before I continue though, I need to be clear - some cards will never leave this list as long as it exists. We don't want to be picking up cards we know will never move, but we do want piles of the other stuff to throw into a shoebox until one day the Rules Committee decides that “yeah, maybe we should give this a chance again.” To better assess what’s considered a reasonable banlist pickup, we need to evaluate why they were banned in the first place, and whether or not those reasons will hold ground, say, five or ten years from now.

Ante, Conspiracy, Manual Dexterity, and “Controversial” Cards

I’ll make this section quick - these aren’t going anywhere. They're all simply too problematic and there's little to no reason in even giving these a shred of consideration. They either go against the core of Commander as a format, or in some instances, of Magic as a game itself, in such an egregious way that unbanning any of these will do way more harm than good.

$99.79$119.99

$2.97$2.29

On the RC’s own website they're even lumped together with not even a description as to why they're banned on a card-by-card basis (the exceptions being Chaos Orb and Falling Star). So while picking up some revised Contract from Below for $7 or so might be tempting, just know if the price ever goes higher it won’t be due to organic demand, at least from Commander or basically any constructed format.

Cost-Prohibitive Cards

While also being banned for their pure game-warping power, the five Moxen, Black Lotus, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, and Library of Alexandria are also banned for simply being too damn expensive. Using the RC’s own wording, these “really posed a problem because casual players watching Commander games in passing could reasonably assume that they needed hundreds (now thousands) of dollars in Power-9 mana as table stakes, just to join the format.”

$7,832.75$4,599.99

$5,100.00$6,599.99

While this reasoning seems sound, and very well may be a good basis to justify banning a card in what is ultimately a casual format, there are simply too many contradictory cards present that go against this argument that are still legal. If the above cards are banned because of their price, then why is The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale not banned? Hell, why is Timetwister, the final piece of the Power-9, not banned as well, considering the cheapest copy on tcgplayer at the time of this writing is a heavily played one at $4,200, and it can theoretically feel at home in every deck that runs blue? The argument goes the same for Gaea's Cradle, whose presence will always improve 99.9% of green decks it goes into, and Mana Crypt, which simply upgrades every deck it is slotted in - the former goes for absolutely no cheaper than $600 for a beat-up copy, and the latter, despite a slew of reprints, sits around $200.

Whether or not these cost-prohibitive cards see an unban is meaningless ultimately, as they’re already so expensive that this would not affect the prices in any way. I also highly doubt in 2024 that people are casually picking Power-9 in trade binders and setting-and-forgetting them like we can do for some of the other cards about to be mentioned.

Resource Denial/Unfun Cards

When picking up banned cards to spec on, we mostly want to focus on stuff determined to be too powerful that might not be so by today’s standards. But within these “too powerful” cards is a subcategory of picks that likely will stay on the list more permanently than others due to how unfun they can make the game for many players - something the core of the format wants to avoid. These might get removed at some point, but it won’t be for a long, long time, and will likely happen when Magic has evolved to a point that is unrecognizable by today’s standards. They either provide asymmetric resource denial or more-or-less restart the game for limited mana or effort. Basically, you may want to give these cards a consideration if you can find them for dirt cheap and are in it for the long haul, but in general these would be considered pretty safe to avoid: Upheaval, Shahrazad, Sundering Titan, Limited Resources, Hullbreacher, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Balance.

$1.80$2.29

$1.74$1.79

The one that fits these same qualifications that might have the highest chance of an unban though, is Sway of the Stars. Sitting at $1, this is an easy pickup if you need to fill in trade value, as even though it’s been banned since the format began, it costs ten mana to cast, and can only be done at sorcery speed. The RC’s reasoning for banning this card is it “adds time to the game and takes away action – you might as well shuffle up and play a new game” - yet the same can be said for MLD cards like Armageddon or Ravages of War (which only cost four mana) or other cards that mess around with all permanents like Scrambleverse, or even the one-sided and ever-prevalent Cyclonic Rift. As long as this is the core reason why Sway of the Stars is on this list, then I think it has the possibility to hit the battlefield again one day. Plus, in my mind at least, if you’re casting a ten mana sorcery it almost better be doing something potentially game-ending like this.

Sway of the Stars

CardKingdom $0.79

TCGPlayer $0.99

Banned As Commander

There are three cards in this category that initially existed as “banned-as-commander,” meaning they could be included in the ninety-nine, but not in the command zone, but when that rule was given the boot in 2014, these were simply moved to being banned in every capacity. These cards are as follows: Braids, Cabal Minion, Erayo, Soratami Ascendant, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary.

While Braids and Erayo could easily slide into the previous section’s qualifications of resource denial/unfun gameplay, Rofellos doesn’t do anything of the type, and if there were one card from this category I would bet on making some kind of comeback in the future, it’s him. He was banned for “doing too much too fast, with minimal deckbuilding restrictions” if you have him as the commander, but I would say this is unfair. Running a deck with Rofellos at the helm restricts you to a single color and doesn’t provide any sort of gameplay value outside of basic ramp, which can be accomplished through various other means if desired. The RC says that consistently providing six mana on turn three is too strong, but you know what else gives you six mana on turn three? A Sol Ring and a Rampant Growth. Or a Sol Ring and a Cultivate. Or Mana Crypt and basically any ramp spell. The point being it’s not beyond unreasonable to have six mana on turn three in this format now, and while being able to consistently provide this may sound scary, the lack of any other kind of engine or moving parts on the card itself is already enough to deter many deck builders away from even considering him. At a three-year low of around $25, this one is worth keeping an eye out for.

$27.78$27.99

$1.58$2.29

I say, let Rofellos run free. Or at the very least, just return him to banned-as-commander, a deck-building restriction that I firmly believe could work just fine in today’s Commander climate. I get that this restriction was removed and the ban lists combined to avoid confusion back in 2014, but nowadays I honestly feel like this reasoning doesn’t hold up, and to a further extent, somewhat undermines the intelligence of Commander players as a whole. There are constantly a slew of new cards, mechanics, and token types, and with the Companion mechanic we even have cards that are legal that no longer say what they accurately even do - we’re supposed to keep track of that, but can’t keep track of three cards in a separate banlist? We deserve some more credit than that, to be frank.

There are also two cards that are currently banned because they are too strong as commander, but were not around for the banned-as-commander restriction, and those are Leovold, Emissary of Trest, and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. Leovold falls into the same category of unfun as Erayo and Braids, but in my mind Golos is as unjustly banned as Rofellos for similar reasons in regard to ramp, with the main distinction being that Golos does have an engine on him. But similar to how removing banned-as-commander doesn’t give the players enough credit, banning cards like Golos (who could quite comfortably live fine on a newer banned-as-commander list) for the RC’s stated reasons ultimately underestimates the creativity of the Commander player base as a whole. 

Yes, Golos is “simply a better choice of leader for all but the most commander-centric decks,” but just because we can run Golos as a more efficient commander, doesn’t mean we will. Unlike other competitive formats, Commander players aren’t always going for 100% efficiency - in some cases we are, but often we want to just do silly things, have fun interactions, or just play some unique cards on-theme, and running someone as efficient as Golos might go against the type of gameplay we want our decks to foster. Again, the format has evolved to such a point where I think some more confidence should be given to the players in these regards. Generally, we’re pretty good at self-policing and giving our decks variety in their competitiveness, and assuming everyone will have a Golos deck if he’s unbanned is a bit unrealistic. With all this in mind, picking up some copies of him for less than $2 on the hope that he might one day return is not, to me, unreasonable. 

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim

CardKingdom $2.29

TCGPlayer $1.58

Other

As the format develops and power creep affects the delicate balance of the game, I do believe there will eventually come a time where, barring the few categories I mentioned that “aren’t going anywhere,” everything will be considered legal. Being a social game, it will ultimately come up to the players to determine what decks or cards they would like to both play themselves, and play against, like we do now with our “Rule 0” discussions, just with a slightly larger card pool. The cards in this final category, however, have the highest chance of getting unbanned the soonest, at least in my mind. I’ll quickly outline a few I’m always on the lookout for, though everything not mentioned up to this point on the banlist has some chance of being unbanned in the near, or distant future.

Coalition Victory - This has to be the card currently on the list most likely to be unbanned the soonest. Put simply, there are already a plethora of “you win the game” cards that require just as much, if not less, setup than this spell to trigger, and have engines on them (looking at you Revel in Riches and Mechanized Production), whereas Coalition Victory, until you meet its strict requirements, is just a big fat do-nothing spell. An unbanning will undoubtedly cause this to jump in price, and for just $1, why not pick some up?

$2.59$2.79

$0.38$0.49

Flash - Let’s be real here, this was banned in 2020 because it was too format-warping specifically in cEDH. Often paired with Protean Hulk, this can be a game-ending spell. The argument for its banning can absolutely be sound, but since the RC says they tend to cater the banlist for low/mid power playstyles, there’s a strong chance this could be seriously re-evaluated one day soon. There is no reason why this shouldn’t be allowed when things like Thassa's Oracle, another two mana blue spell, dominate cEDH. For these reasons, it’s a good pickup for less than $1. 

Lutri, the Spellchaser - Much like Golos, Lutri is another case of just because we can, doesn’t mean we will. While Lutri can fit as a companion in any deck running blue and red, many decks don’t necessarily need to copy spells. This one might take a little longer, but I do believe one day it will be unbanned, making it a prime pickup for less than a quarter in lower-value trades.

Coalition Victory	CardKingdom $1.29	TCGPlayer $1.12
Flash	CardKingdom $2.79	TCGPlayer $2.59
Lutri, the Spellchaser	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.38

In Conclusion

While I’ve stated some of my issues with the Commander banlist above, it’s important to remember these cards are banned in the first place to try to facilitate a more fun experience for all players, which I admire and respect. Commander can be a delicate format, and while it would be intriguing on both a gameplay and financial side to see how things would go with mass unbannings, I don’t believe this will happen any time soon. But as mentioned before, if you’re in the game for the long haul, grabbing some of these might not be the worst idea. And hopefully when and if these cards do make it off the list one day, you’ll have your own little stockpile of cards to play around with.

Further Reading:

Is Now the Time to Buy Jeweled Lotus?

Waifus, Stickers, and a Faerie - Safe Bets

Three Barometers for the Magic: the Gathering Market