APRIL 2016 RULES / BANLIST UPDATE
Duel Commander kept looking the same over the last months. That is: a barren confrontation between two main archetypes: blue decks, which are mostly based on “counterspell”-like cards and effects as a defensive barrier, and green decks, filled with “mana dorks” (cheap mana-producing creatures) and commander interactions in order to generate a resource gap between players.
We’ve let the format go that way for a long time, hoping for it to regulate naturally. Unfortunately, over the last months, that phenomenon intensified, crystallizing the format and revolving it around those two basic archetypes.
(stats based on the last months, according to major events results)
Such a freeze of the metagame could be linked to several factors. The quality of the most played cards that belong to those colors, the important redundancy of their core effects, or even the game format rules are often blamed. On the other side, we noted that the duality of the current format is significantly stressed by an element that we cherish within the format: the disparity of commander cards.
Indeed, those two archetypes dominate the format thanks to a bunch of overpowered commanders that threaten the diversity of the format.
The reasons behind this hegemony often cumulate:
The changes from today’s rules and bans updates aim at partially correcting this problem, so as to reverse the “immobilism trend” that our favourite format is now going through.
Changes:
Reminders:
The watchlist is made for dangerous cards that could end up being banned (this is a change from previous listing systems, see below).
Before this update, Cataclysm was on the watchlist.
Necrotic Ooze and Dig through time remain on the watchlist.
Regarding lists
We chose to unify the previously existing Orange and Red watchlists. The information they provided was complex and was all in all irrelevant. This double watchlist system didn’t bring a lot of positive things to us, although it never got annoying when we had to take decisions. A commander should still, except in some cases, end up on the watchlist before it gets eventually banned.
A note regarding colored mana and mana pools
Previously, the rule regarding the producing of colored mana was as follows: “If a player would add colored mana to his or her mana pool that is outside the color identity of his or her commander, that player adds colorless mana instead.”.
This rule is now removed, as stated in the (upcoming) Duel Commander comprehensive rules:
500.5. Colored mana in pools
While DC used to follow a different rule for colored mana into mana pools, no additional rule modifies the official Magic The Gathering rules when regarding colored mana. Please note this is not the case anymore since April 8th, 2016. All the texts that are printed on cards apply. If a player would add colored mana to his or her mana pool that is not in his or her commander’s color identity, the players effectively adds the mana to his or her mana pool, like in any other game, and may spend it like in any other game.
These changes apply on April 8, 2016. Of course, you can still contact us via our Facebook page. The next announcements will be published on July 18, 2016 (applying on July 22, 2016).
Until then, we wish you all many good games!
Further individual explanations:
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Tasigur, the Golden Fang makes all other control commanders look ridiculous, when compared to it, mostly thanks to its ridiculous casting cost ({B} + delve casting cost payment mechanic). Such a quality allows it to exhaust all possible answers from opponents, as well as to winning a “counterspell battle”, even though being the card that settles such battles. The rest of the decks can solely be made of “reaction” cards (spot/mass removals, for example), for Tasigur, the Golden Fang is an oppressive threat whatsoever. Last but not the least, this card interacts strongly with other cards like Life from the loam or Upheaval. For all those reasons, Tasigur, the Golden Fang is now banned as a commander only.
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard is a green commander that has a huge impact on the battlefield, that only costs three mana and that can therefore enter the battlefield on turn two very often, via a turn one/two accelerator. We are deeply persuaded that such commanders harm the format. Yisan, the Wanderer Bard is de facto a quick card advantage source that grows quickly, and that therefore produces fantastically responsive and explosive games. It is so dangerous for the format that its mere presence forces opponents to make very costly adaptations. Yisan, the Wanderer Bard is therefore banned as a commander only, so as to maintain more balance in the format.
Gaea’s Cradle
Gaea’s cradle allows players to develop their deck strategies roughly and suddenly. Being particularly hard to stop when playing active decklists, its presence in the metagame reinforces control decks, which end up being the only decks that are able to handle a wide number of opponent creatures. It also amplifies the existing cleavage between active, green-based decks and other non-explosive decks. For having a very negative impact on the format, Gaea’s cradle is now banned.
Narset, Enlightened Master
If Tasigur, the Golden Fang is clearly the best commander for a “draw-go” strategy, Narset, Enlightened Master is the best commander for a “tapped out” strategy. Having considered this major strategic alternative, that Narset/Tasigur duet also covers the whole spectrum of colors and outmatches all other legendary blue creatures. In order to maintain the format balance and its diversity, we chose to add Narset, Enlightened Master to the watchlist.
Marath, Will of the Wild
As a commander that takes some advantage from the commander casting tax, Marath, Will of the Wild is a commander that scales its power as the games go on. It is very hostile to all creature-based decks and therefore cleans up the format for blue control decks.
Since its metagame presence remains a leash to all agressive strategies, we are adding Marath, Will of the Wild to the watchlist.
Animar, Soul of Elements
Animar, Soul of Elements is a green commander with a very high impact, that only costs three mana and can therefore enter the battlefield on turn two for the same reasons we already mentionned regarding other cards alike. We have long waited before adding Animar, Soul of Elements to a watchlist, for decklists built around it remain very original and unique. Despite all that waiting time, the explosiveness of the deck and the lack of interactions with opponents (mostly due to its protection effects) forced us to add this card to the watchlist.
Jenara, Asura of War
Jenara, Asura of War is another green commander with a high impact on games, that costs three mana, and can also enter the battlefield on turn two for the same reasons we already mentionned regarding other cards alike. Jenara, Asura of War is another case of commander that is very well adapted to play a large amount of counterspell-like cards. It belongs therefore to the two categories we described up above: blue decks and green decks. We decided to add this card to the watchlist for those reasons.
Cataclysm
Cataclysm is a spectacular card that allows a player who is being strangled in an adapted situation to annihilate almost any opposing force. Yet, its impact depends a lot on the situation and alternates between a risky move (most of the time) and a determining move (rarely). Such a card is not truly unbalanced and accessing it is quite limited. White is the fourth most played color in Duel Commander. We think it would be a mistake from us to deprive this color of such an attractive card. Plus, it is already integrated in most of the decks that need it. For all those reasons, we removed Cataclysm from the watchlist.
The following two cards remain in the watchlist:
Dig Through Time
Dig through time remains watched, yet still legal, for all the reasons we described earlier when it was added to the watchlist.
Necrotic Ooze
Regarding Necrotic Ooze, we keep an eye on this card, which is the core of an extremely non-interactive combo. We chose to balance the format using commander cards rather than specific, individual, non-commander cards (which would require an overly high amount of banned cards).
34 Responses so far
Ylem
April 4th, 2016
Should i stop building my Animar edh and change it to a Maelstrom edh? Animar being in the watchlist really is such a bummer…
Kristian
April 4th, 2016
Tasigur banned as commander? Guess I’ll retire my BUG deck for good now. I’m not going back to Damia 🙁
Mudrcovy paměti 7/2016 | MUDRC
April 4th, 2016
[…] Na formátu Commander si při hře dvou hráčů nesmíte jako generála zvolit Tasigura nebo Yisana a do balíčku si nemůžete zařadit zemi Gaea’s Cradle. Na watchlist, tedy seznam karet, u kterých hrozí ban, byly přidány následující legendární bytosti: Marath, Animar, Narset a Jenara. Současně byl z watchlistu odstraněn Cataclysm. Zdůvodnění těchto úprav banlistu si můžete přečíst zde. […]
Ashton
April 4th, 2016
As an Animar player I dont find it overpowered, the fact that it cant withstand nor a mass removal nor a fast counter (5 mana for the second cast its borderline unplayable in this deck), two things for which the deck can’t develop a fast response (being that the deck can’t find spot for counters as it needs creatures to go on) means that it’s a high risk kind of deck. I urge you to consider instead banning some of the broken cards in Animar (earthcraft, cloudstone curio or Hardened Scales) making the deck less explosive, I’m all in for finding balance, but perhaps if you played the deck and explored it you would find it has a broad number of weak points, specially outisde of Blue and Green (Bolt like effects, creature sacrifice and Wrath of God like effects).
IGi
April 4th, 2016
Its a little silly,
with gaeas cradle the best card for all aggro decks is gone,
anyway, its really difficult for aggro decks in the meta,
and there are so many cards that are good against gaeas cradle, not only land destrction, also a simple wrath of good or damnation is enough to deal with the problems…..
I think the meta will change directly to a heavy control meta….
lets see
IGi
April 4th, 2016
Also aggro has just a meta with 25%
so why you ban Gaeas cradle ????
Control, no use gaeas Cradle 44 % (mtgtop8)
you will kill all the aggro decks, thx
Player
April 4th, 2016
The problem is life totals. Start with 20. 2/1s are supposed to be a 10 turn clock, not 15. All creatures are inherently worse on this format because attacking is bad. I’ve been playing this format since before Edric was banned. There hasn’t been a single aggro deck the whole time, this is why. Ban 30 life and you will get to unban generals.
The previous T1 is now all banned. The T2 is now T1 and the whole thing is on the watch list. Eventually all the good commanders will just be banned and people won’t play.
Kumano
April 4th, 2016
Hello,
dear rules commiitee, I always liked DC very much, in fact I’d say its my most favorite format of them all. But now, I think you just made the first step in wrong direction. You said the problem is UG colors being too strong, but if you ban the best green card and let the blue mages have it all, you are doing the excact opposite thing. There’s no real reason to play anything without blue right now. But the thing which scares me the most is your “watchlist”. Are you really going to ban every good commander/every green commander, which can be played with the help of a mana dork on second turn?! Should I sell all my cards and look for another format? If your policy is to ban everything, then I don’t really have another choice.
I get the Tasigur ban, “breaking” the mana cost increase is quite powerful, but I’d say the deck is still ok, I never felt like its too OP. The only card which realy breaks this rule is Upheaval, so why don’t you rather ban that? And banning Yisan is just ridiculous. That deck isn’t even that strong, it never won any big tournament in our metagame (Czech Republic). The deck is generally quite soft to removal and easily disruptive…
I get the Cradle ban as well, but I don’t think it’s a good choice. It was the best “green” card in the format, which makes green quite week. If you want to keep the colors balanced, then you should also ban some blue cards, otherwise blue decks will be everywhere in the next few months. But again, if you start to forcing color balance with bannings, you will be forced to ban more and more powerful cards, which will eventually discaourage more and more players from playing DC. Please don’t let the bans get out of control.
Raizen
April 5th, 2016
Same opinion as Kumano, if it is to ban the overpowered card, it isn’t just DTT that is hard to deal with, Treasure Cruise and Ancestral Vision are insane also. Vision because of the longer game the format supports and Treasure Cruise because of many many things.
I do have a blue deck, and I know how overpowered those cards are, when I successfully casts a TC for 1 mana, its basically over. Another thing is the explanation over Cataclysm, it doesn’t make any sense, I’ve never seen a true W deck use it, all decks that use it are some sort of control deck(almost always U), with a splash of white because of the commander, so… Narset, GAAIV and Geist. A cataclysm on turn 4 with their commander, followed by a Treasure Cruise on the next turn still staying with a mana up for counter, is insane!
I think this isn’t going to balance, it will be like 2013, 50+% control, and some aggro or combo trying to fight against, you should just have banned yisan or craddle, but I don’t get why both, also if Marath leads to the anti-aggro type of deck, why not ban Yisan and Tasigur, and leave only Marath and Narset on the watchlist? The comitte was doing so well trying to balance the archetypes, and not trying to balance color, color balance would be nice, but in eternal formats it is indeed hard to do and can go the other way around. What if they tried that in Legacy? It would surely break the format. Don’t break the DC, please, control is ok on tournaments, when we do have a weapon to fight against, I see very few now and they have so many…
Nate Fosness
April 5th, 2016
Tasigur land go is unstoppable. It warped the meta to where you either built Tasigur or a deck solely to beat Tasigur.
Gespacho
April 5th, 2016
For public record, here is the coverage from the last Dual Commander rules committee meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWnied-Z4s4
Justin Anderson
April 5th, 2016
Love the rules update and banlist. I know people feel like “their” strategy is being targeted but i feel it is a step in the right direction. Just because a deck “has answers” doesen’t mean it should avoid a ban. As soon as tas and yisan are “Dealt with” they come right back and dominate the format. this is the definition of format warping and justifies a ban.
djsteps
April 5th, 2016
Hello
the controversy had already been mentioned during your mulligan decision to change the format to avoid going out with elves too fast mana. your strategic error had been criticized by changing you mulligan instead of banning mana elves.
and today you persist in your error heady you want to banish all major who come too quickly. the concern is not the mana elves commanders . The goal is to slow the outputs not to shoot the format.
I find it unfortunate that the community is never accessed through survey.
cordially
djsteps
Kevin Clark
April 5th, 2016
My play group has been nearly exclusively playing duel commander format for over a year but since this ban announcement half our play group has quit. This is mainly because one or both of their decks have been banned and decks they were considering switching to as backups are on the watchlist, awaiting to be banned. We were literally playing in a weekly duel commander tournament at a local card shop when the news rolled in. My friends have invested a lot of money into their decks and some simply can’t afford the prospect of rebuilding and have jenara, animar, marath or narset get banned down the road, nor are they interested in playing a in volatile format. They are disgusted with the direction of the banlist essentially banning the best decks simply because they are the best, not because they unbeatable. The most recent banlist announcement has pushed half of the group into trading away their decks and building legacy and leaving the format entirely.
This ban announcement has me considering leaving the format as well. If this is the direction for future of duel commander bannings, banning the top deck regardless if it was beatable or not, I am not interested in participating in it any longer.
mc ewen
April 5th, 2016
c’est juste inadmissible si vous bannisse Marath Animar Jenara parce qu’il ont une occurrence vert dans ce cas pourquoi Ezuri, chef renégat n’est pas dans la watchlist. Je pense qu’il vaut mieux bannir certains elfe comme Prêtresse de Titania, Marraine des floraisons voir Oiseaux de paradis qui sont des carte vraiment tres forts en DC.
Alberello
April 6th, 2016
Tra poco assisteremo a tornei con solo mazzi control di questo passo…
Darth Sidious
April 6th, 2016
Dear Commitee,
why promote Caos in the metafield by putting all Post-Ban Tier 1 decks in the watchlist? While I agree with Yisan, Tasigur and Oloro, and while I do agree some bans are needed, there’ll be always Exceptional Generals among others, due to colors, abilities, etc…
It’s natural in all formats that most players go after the Tier 1 decks. Banning Generals will never change that, there will be always new Tier 1 Generals that somehow dictate the format and this will keep bans and frustrations all the way ’til we don’t have any Generals to play with.
Also, Gaea’s Craddle ban was really unnecessary. And I don’t play aggro most of my time.
Please, stop turning Duel Commander into the new Modern.
Thanks.
Derrumbe Pardo
April 6th, 2016
Like most of the comments here exposed my opinion is quite similar, i consider prudent the ban of Gaea’s cradle and I think in that way would limit some of the commanders who have been placed on the watchlist as Marath and Jenara without the need for banning them, unfortunately on this occasion I think that you have taken the easy route to abuse for BAN the commanders with the highest winning percentage shown in the MTGtop 8 instead of limiting some of the cards that give them advantage and without thinking about the players who have invested time and money, I hope you reconsider the sense in seeking to bring the metagame, because if you limit the aggressive decks induce to an unbalancing metagame of control, I hope you will consider the views expressed in comments, thank you.
Igniter
April 6th, 2016
finally you guys find out how cheap Narset is, I got an Asura deck but it’s totally fine for me if she got banned with Narset.
Nicolascolau
April 7th, 2016
i do agree with most of ppl here, there was no need for yisan and Gaea’s Craddle Ban, it was a strong deck? yes, but far away from be unbeatable it was a strong awnser against all the control decks.
here is a narset/sidisi player giving its 2 cents i hope we get yisan and Gaea’s Craddle back in a near future,
Jehuty33
April 7th, 2016
These bannings are all great !!! Tasigur hurt, as I love that guy and the deck style. Please ban Titania, City of Traitors and Karaddor .Titania scales upward as the game drags. She can get back more fetchlands each time and the death tax is always reduced by 1 since she brings a land back. Karador just plays a bunch of hate bears and if you remove them karador just brings them back with a huge deathtax reduction. I also say ban any card that produces mana and cost less than 2. It’s the only way to have more robust games and not eat up deck slots for aggro deck removal – or get blown out because you didn’t draw any removal
City of traitors lets decks like Grand Arbiter and Titania power out to fast. There are very few solid interactive games anymore. Just who can outrace who.
Nanaki404
April 7th, 2016
The chart might be misleading, you should probably put up a chart for the “ideal” representation of each color, like that : http://s17.postimg.org/c6l127r27/commander_colors.jpg
Assuming each 1, 2, 3, and 5 color combination is (ideally) exactly as represented as each other (just take 1 of each single color, 1 of each 2-color, …), the “G but not U” should be 27% instead of 29%. Not much a big deal now, right ?
Since “G but not U” contains not only mono-G, but also GW, GB, GR, GBW, GBR and GRW, this part of the chart should not be smaller than the “not G not U” part, which also contains 27% of color combinations.
The problem lies in the “G & U” decks, which should only be around 19% instead of 31%, and the ‘not G not U’ that are clearly under-represented.
But the “G not U” and “U not G” are almost normal right now
Oncle Fester
April 8th, 2016
Bonjour à vous,
comme beaucoup je suis un joueur d’EDH depuis longtemps maintenant. Vos diverses campagnes de ban dégoûtent la plupart des joueurs. Une partie en vient à se demander quelle est la légitimité de votre groupe, alors qu’avant le changement de mulligan la question ne se posait pas à cette ampleur.
Vous voulez, avec votre travail, légitimer et assainir le format. Ok. N’oubliez pas cependant qu’à l’origine l’EDH est un format casual qui ne vient pas de Wizard mais d’une communauté de joueurs, format qui s’est ensuite popularisé pour devenir en partie compétitif. Cependant, depuis quelques mois, les gens s’en détournent du fait de vos prises de décisions. En ce qui me concerne je regarde vos ban-list, et je les respecte dans les grandes lignes. Toutefois ma manière de jouer et d’apprécier le format ne doit pas être dictée par d’illustres inconnus qui n’offrent qu’une page internet pour asseoir leur légitimité comme comité. Si vous voulez que les joueurs vous prennent au sérieux, faites des efforts en ce sens. Vous voulez réformer l’EDH ? Faites donc, mais arrêtez de le vider de sa substance en prétendant vouloir l’optimiser.
Merci.
Zerosozha
April 9th, 2016
Given your reasonings for banning certain green commanders, I can only assume Omnath, Locus of Mana is next on the chopping block? That banning would cause me to drop this format real quick.
Also, LOTS of green hate here, even though you stated green AND blue decks are both causing problems. Where’s the Cyclonic Rift ban?
Vash
April 16th, 2016
Regarding Gaea’s Cradle, just an opinion, but it’s really only overpowered in Elfball decks, which are now highly restricted with the Yisan ban, and Simic decks, which are obviously OP right now. Restricting Simic and mono blue a bit more and reinstating Cradle after that would open up the door to fairly competitive aggro play. With control starting to dominate the format, aggro should be allowed to flourish a bit more.
Regarding Necrotic Ooze, please don’t ban this card. Ooze kill’s a combo that makes black legitimate as a 3rd color behind green and blue. If you’re going to ban anything involving the Ooze kill combo, I think it should be banning Sidisi, Undead Vizier as a commander, since her mono-black decks center around tutoring for buried alive and a reanimator, usually comboing off consistently on turns 4 or 5. I play a Meren deck centered around 3 different final combos including Ooze kill, but she can only get those off on turn 6-8 or so usually, giving opponents more time to answer, leaving it as a more balanced deck style. It’s not Ooze kill that’s unfair, it’s just the speed of Sidisi decks abusing the Ooze kill that’s borderline unfair, requiring specifically grave hate or counters to stop it.
The other decisions seem solid. Thanks guys.
Steedian Magfried
April 22nd, 2016
Well, nice decisions.
Animar, Jenara and Narset can go, i really don’t care, decks that can win only with the general are unfair in most cases, but Marath is ok and not too dominant in my opinion.
About the 20-25 life total situation, both Legacy and Modern show powerful and relevant aggro decks, and in singleton, Highlander format is more aggro based. I don’t get the point of transforming DC into a kind of singleton Legacy just to win easily while playing aggro (some players need to change their decks, not to ask people to change the rules in the way they want). Marath, Grenzo and even Zurgo can do a great job in aggro, and a reduction of life total can completly lead to many aggro generals ban.
Aggro can do stupid things too, i know it’s frustrating to see an opponent cast Sphinx’s Rev for 7 when he is at 2 life, but if you just want to win turn 3-4 with fair aggro burn, the formats i was talking about before are for you.
As both aggro and control player, i’m disapointed to see many players asking to ban cards they just don’t like. Treasure Cruise or Cyclonic Rift are far from overpowered, and are just singletons, the main problems are the op’s commanders, and the comity seems to be doing a great job to solve those problems.
Winterblast
June 9th, 2016
The banlist on the wizards page makes much more sense than this one, especially if you consider that in tournaments you will play 1 on 1 matches and – because it’s a torunament – the power Level won’t be casual anyway. A quick start with 30 or 40 life doesn’t mean you will automatically win, if the opponent’s deck has the same potential for speed and there’s no single creature in Magic which can not be removed in any way. It’s much more fun when the power level of this Format is kept high – after all you only have the chance to draw a specific card exactly ONCE in a very huge pile of cards.
Especially by having Humility on this banlist you would take away a card to counteract too powerful creatures/commanders and strategies which use their commander to make the same play in every game (which is pretty much predictable and boring). The great aspect of this Format is that you can not increase the chances of getting something specific on your starting Hand by putting in more of the the same. Thus you either have to rely on you always available commander to play a certain strategy (which can be cancelled easier) or you have to find your needed parts in the (rather huge) deck. A constant kill before turn 5 without having to use your commander is not realistic and if it includes your commander you can run into a simple counter or removal and it isn’t that fast anymore.
The wizards banlist already includes commanders which are a lock in itself or provide a massive mana advantage for low costs (always available from the command zone) so there’s no need to make this format even slower than it already is. The possibility for really fast kills is there, but not as high as in vintage and legacy and you have all the cards available (if you play with the wizards banlist) to counter fast kills or play fast yourself. Commander has the potential to be vintage-fast, but it’s not as reliable. For example Mishra’s Workshop is of course powerful, but as 1 in 100 cards you either have to be very lucky to give you a awesome start or tutor for it (making it not so fast anymore) and the opponent has the same chance of doing the same with for example strip mine and your fun start isn’t fun for long.
I’m not sure which rules were used for the local tournament last time but I hope they will stick to the original banlist on the wizards page. This one here really takes the fun out of the game.
Tolka
June 24th, 2016
La règle des 30 points de vie est blâmée à juste titre. Des gens s’évertuent à essayer de vous faire comprendre, depuis des années en vain, que l’ensemble des cartes de magic l’assemblée sont crées pour un format à 20 points de vie.
Vous reconnaissez, enfin, qu’il y a un soucis depuis le début et que malgré tous les efforts, ban, deban de votre part rien n’y fait et le format est toujours déséquilibré. Malgré cela, vous reproduisez une fois de plus la même erreur : ban les generaux du moment qui sont overpowered au priant très fort pour que wizard n’en édite pas d’autre pour prendre leur place. Ce qui est déjà mis à mal par l’existence de votre watchlist.
Votre banlist est vouée à s’agrandir sans fin et le format ne sera jamais équilibré tant que vous n’aurez pas essayé la seule chose que vous n’avez jamais osé toucher et qui selon moi est le centre du problème : les pv.
Rendez-vous à la prochain news de ban en espérant que votre graphique résumant le déséquilibre du format soit meilleur, mais j’en doute.
Griffin.
July 16th, 2016
These problems wouldn’t get out of hand if people would just simply build their own commander decks as opposed to looking up what’s best and mindlessly copying, spiking basically. I hear too much “my friends are quitting because they banned their commander and even their back up commander”. If they were both banned then Obviously you have friends that exclusively try to play the most broken commanders. Clearly they picked them for that reason, so they can’t complain when rules committee recognizes that your commander isn’t fair play enough! Rules committee banning commanders is dumb however. The best option would be take the commander’s favorite toys away. Ban upheaval in tasigur, ban sculpting steel in sharuum, ban boon weaver in karador, etc it’s easy. They’ve even done it before too. Force people to play their own strategies, this would improve the environment, reduce the spikiness, and would not lead to endless banning loops, diversity makes the meta unpredictable, unpredictability makes you have to water down your decks, watered down decks are harder to break. It’s the only way, and the best way. Commander is a particular format so it wouldn’t be abnormal for it to have particular rules.
Dr.Doctor
July 23rd, 2016
We are very appreciative of the effort that your council puts in to make duel commander a viable format.
With that in mind, I have to echo the sentiment of many others here. Firstly, the pie chart is mathematically misleading as explained above. Furthermore wizards has designed red around one overpowered effect (direct player damage) for 23 years, and we play in a format where you have extra life. So by wizards (imo) poor design of a color, it’s naturally going to be weaker. Blue has been designed to be too powerful for at least 16 years of magic development. Take those things into account and it’s obvious that there is going to be color disparity inherent to the format and is not a sign of an unhealthy format. Rather, it would be a sign of an unhealthy format if all colors were played equally, because they are not equal.
Secondly, I also agree with the many others who point out: you banned all tier 1 generals. Waited for the tier 2 to become popular, and now have all tier 2 on the watch-list. Most people will always play what they believe is the strongest. Creative/meta-game-conscious players will adapt. That is a meta-game and there is nothing wrong with it, unless those decks can’t be beaten. That is not the case for many of your bans.
In summary: it is inappropriate to ban something because it is popular or because of color disparity. Bannings should be reserved for problematic strategies with no/few answers.
Will you just continue to ban whatever is most popular? Then the bannings will be indefinite.
I an many others are attracted to the format because it allows for powerful cards and powerful decks. I hope that you try to minimize bans going into the future. They are getting to be less healthy than the threats they are supposed to prevent.
fifthelement
August 14th, 2016
ban ALL the commanders!
Unknown User
September 2nd, 2016
Let’s just ban all the playable cards in the format until nobody wants to play the game anymore. Brilliant! We’ll call it Elder Dragon Banhammer. All the A-holes can play that format and we’ll just play EDH the way it was meant to be played. Who made them the EDH God anyway? Wasn’t me. Isn’t the point of the format to use all the cards in MTG history? And you’ve now banned how many cards? Rules are made to be broken guys! Anarchy is the only way now.
yujipooji
September 14th, 2016
Ignore the hate! I agree with the color balancing efforts.
Spank
March 12th, 2017
“Who made them the EDH God anyway? Wasn’t me.”
Yes, you did, if you are CHOOSING to play THEIR format of Magic. You are free to play any of the numerous formats of magic where they aren’t your EDH God.
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