FEBRUARY 2019 RULES – BANNED/RESTRICTED UPDATE
Over the last three months, the metagame kept stabilizing for the first weeks, and it globally kept being very diversified. But then, a few changes polarized the results towards a growing trend that confirmed that some unbalanced archetypes started to perform too frequently and too regularly. Which leads us to the changes below.
Changes:
👉 Individual card changes:
- Prime Speaker Vannifar is now banned as as commander only.
- Baral, Chief of Compliance is now banned as as commander only.
👉 Don’t forget to check out our page for a recap of all the currently banned cards.
These changes apply on March 1, 2019. The next announcements will be published on May 27, 2019 (applying on May 31, 2019). Until then, we wish you all many good games! 🙂
Further individual explanations:
It is true that banning cards from the format too early can be disappointing for many players, but so does the opposite. Which sometimes requires action.Prime Speaker Vannifar proved to be a very high level card. It is even now played in Modern, a faster format than Duel Commander, that doesn’t use the command zone, doesn’t have eternal cards, doesn’t use the singleton construction rule, has 60 cards instead of 99, etc. Despite all those factors, the card is still played in that format, and so was it in Duel Commander, allowing overly fast combo wins that could even sometimes show a high resilience against spot removals, a lack of interaction that goes against the general philosophy of a healthy metagame.
Baral, Chief of Compliance has been around for two years now, and actually never ceased to be played. It constantly made good results, but has seen a slight decrease in play, until a few months ago, where it became a recurring top-performing deck again. Though the builds are often quite different from its echoing alter ego Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, that was banned in 2015 as a commander, too, it stayed for a while, but keeps pumping the “extra turns” archetypes, and High Tide-based decks.Regarding those archetypes, “extra turns” decks with Baral, Chief of Compliance as a commander seem more toxic to us than non-Baral, Chief of ComplianceHigh Tide-based decks.We also think banning a commander often solves problems more than banning a problematic card out of the other 99.
9 Responses so far
Nox_Ouphe
February 25th, 2019
Good thing I didn’t buy Vannifar.
Ijacek
February 26th, 2019
I strongly dissagree with Baral ban. Yes, it was strong. Yes, it had good results at tournaments. But it doesnt win tournaments much. Usualy top8-top4. Also it is universal blue commander which allow you to build many types of deck arround it. Not like most of tier1 commanders which end with one copypaste top performing deck list. As you could guess by now I am Baral player. And from my own experience I know, that its deck anyone can play against and have real chances to win or loose and its definately not banworthy OP. I hope you will change your mind before next ban announcements.
Blablabla
February 27th, 2019
So next all baral player are going to play teferi
Then ban teferi, Then there’re going to play sai
Then sai wil be ban and all other monoblue legendary creatures cause monoblue is cancer…
In fact you can play combo but only if you have 1k€ for few Land cards
I play baral caus I haven’t money to by expensive cards, and baral is fun, if you have problem with High tide so ban High tide not the full deck
luc
February 28th, 2019
If you are going to ban a blue commander for taking too much extra turn and relying heavily on high tide effects, you might as well ban pretty much all blue commanders. High tide is one of the only wincon in mono blue since Rakul is banned…
BannedOne
March 2nd, 2019
I think baral ban is too much, i dont think is Broken… Pretty sad for me 🙁
Was fun and lowcost commander, pls let us play Baral.
BaralDerevi
March 4th, 2019
if u unban baral again, you can check to unban derevi too …
Baral, Chief of Sadness
March 4th, 2019
The ban to Baral seems to be extremely short-sighted. As others have said, he was a good budget commander that anyone could both build and banning him only makes this format even more expensive than it already was.
Overbanning is a huge problem and one of the main reasons Duel players dislike the official EDH committee, please don’t follow their steps.
Velocipède Centripète
April 22nd, 2019
I do not see “overbanning” as an issue. Prior to this we went through many cycles of no changes, the sign of a healthy meta.
Vannifar is literally a birthing pod, but better because she can get creatures which untap her. She is good in Standard, good in Modern, super good in Commander.
Baral’s problem is that he makes a strong color super strong and lets you loop turns, or w/e. He does a little too much.
Format is fine now except for the Partner mechanic. Banning partner mechanic would make format letter-perfect.
Charles Bemins
May 15th, 2019
The partner mechanic has no business in a 1v1 environment, when will partners be banned?
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