After adding several expensive MTG cards to the Commander banlist, causing their market values to tank, the Commander Rules Committee states that none of its members sold their copies before announcing the ban, and it “has a zero-tolerance policy for abusing knowledge of pending or potential changes”. The statement is part of an FAQ document published on Wednesday, explaining the RC’s “stance and approach” to making the bans.
The RC unexpectedly added four MTG cards to the Commander banlist on Monday, including the particularly rare and expensive Dockside Extortionist, Mana Crypt, and Jeweled Lotus. The cards have very limited utility outside of Commander, and card marketplace TCG Player shows their prices have already collapsed.
Irate players have vented their frustrations online, with some suggesting that the Rules Committee could have used their knowledge of the ban to sell their copies of the cards before prices tanked. The RC’s FAQ states “there’s no way to prove” that its members haven’t sold cards “short of putting our collections in escrow”, but says “if a vendor has evidence of cards being sold before the announcement we invite them to reach out to [us] and publish it”.
The RC further adds “we have no desire or intent to roll back these changes” to the banlist, adding that “doing so would make any financial concerns much worse”.
Explaining why it didn’t give advance notice of the bans, the RC states “our goal with keeping it secret, especially in the case of expensive cards, was to avoid any possibility for advance trading based on leaks”.
It also explains “we used to have a watch list” which would notify fans to potential bans, but this proved to be problematic. The watch list “caused noticeable grief” when potential bans didn’t actually occur, “slowed down our ability to react when we saw a problem”, and “shifted the losses to the less enfranchised players”.
The RC says it “will be discussing the concept of ‘warming up’ community awareness before bans like this in future”. However, while this would lessen the shock for players who are in the loop, the RC says “casual players will more likely get taken advantage of, so it’s not clear it would be a strict improvement”.
It’s worth reflecting on the role of Wizards of the Coast, which – through new card designs and its choice of reprints in MTG sets and other products on the MTG release schedule – has a role in how high card prices can escalate.
If you want to play in a format that’s never heard of a secondary market, check out these MTG Arena codes to grab some free digital boosters and (digitally) sleeve up an MTG Arena deck!
Source: Wargamer
