On Monday, the Magic the Gathering Commander Rules Committee announced a surprise update to the banlist for the format. Four powerful cards have been banned, including three ‘fast mana’ pieces and the contentious legendary creature Nadu, Winged Wisdom. It’s likely that the prices of the most expensive cards are about to drop through the floor.
The four MTG cards that have been added to the MTG Commander banlist are:
- Dockside Extortionist, a red creature that costs two mana to play, and creates one treasure for each artifact your opponents control when it enters the battlefield.
- Mana Crypt, a free artifact that taps for two mana but has a 50/50 chance to deal three damage to you during your upkeep.
- Jeweled Lotus, a free artifact that can be tapped and sacrificed to create three mana of any color that can only be used to cast a commander.
- Nadu, Winged Wisdom, a recently printed blue green creature that Wizards’ has already acknowledged was a design mistake, and has already been banned in several other formats.
The three fast-mana cards are available in relatively low numbers and are extremely powerful in casual and competitive MTG Commander. At time of writing, they command high prices on the secondary market: depending on printing, their market valuations on MTG Goldfish start from $85 for Dockside Extortionist, $200 for Mana Crypt, and $95 for Jeweled Lotus.
We predict price crashes for all three cards, with Jeweled Lotus the worst affected. Mana Crypt is on the MTG banlist in every format except for Vintage, where players are restricted to a single copy, but it does see substantial play there. Dockside Extortionist is played almost exclusively in Commander, while Jeweled Lotus is all but unplayable outside Commander because of the restriction on how you can spend the mana it makes, (notwithstanding a niche Vintage combo that involves Doubling Cube).
While Commander is a casual format, competitive play is a big driver of card prices, and casual players tend to follow the example set by the competitive scene. These cards don’t even have the collector’s value of being historically significant or truly monumentally rare – they could even, conceivably show up on the MTG release schedule again for another printing.
Want to play in a format that compensates you when cards are banned? Build an MTG Arena deck! Our guide to the MTG Arena Codes that still work should get you started.
Source: Wargamer
