Wizards of the Coast announced that the Commander Rules Committee will hand over management of the Magic: The Gathering Commander/EDH format to the company’s game design team.
The rough week for the RC came to somewhat of an endpoint on September 30, 2024. It all started on Wednesday September 23, 2024, when the committee banned three valuable cards from the format (see “Backlash from ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Fans“). This kicked off an absolute firestorm on social media, where passionate Commander players waged a relentless war against the decision, which led to the creation of an online petition requesting the committee’s removal from management of the format (see “Fire Commander Rules Committee“). This backlash also led a prominent Commander Advisory Group leader to resign (see “Leader Resigns“), and according to WotC’s announcement, threats were levied against the RC on social media from fans.
The threats against the RC didn’t sit well with WotC, as they shouldn’t, because threatening violence over the management of a TCG format is completely unacceptable behavior that never should happen. So, WotC decided to enter the fray and released the following statement to attempt to rectify the situation:
“Nobody deserves to feel unsafe for supporting the game they love. Unfortunately, the task of managing Commander has far outgrown the scope and safety of being attached to any five people. So today, in partnership with members of the existing Rules Committee, we are announcing that the Rules Committee is giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of Wizards of the Coast.”
The RC and their community will still be involved in the social vision of the format, but their reign over the ban/unban list is now apparently over. Also, WotC mentioned a few changes they are going to make to the format, in order to match power levels of decks better. They introduced the idea of a four-tier power ranking system for Commander decks that can potentially even the playing field for pods. The highest tier in the system would match decks with overtly powerful cards in the against each other, and the it would scale down from that point.
WotC stated that they have also opened a new, official Commander Discord channel, and will further discuss the format on the Twitch channel on October 1, 2024 at 10 am PT.
Source: ICV2
