Wizards of the Coast has formed a new Commander Panel for Magic: The Gathering, the company announced.
This a group of players, fans, designers, and community members will provide feedback on the Commander format to WotC in order to craft a more stable environment. The formation of this group comes after the community-led Commander Rules Committee dissolved itself (see “Committee Fires Itself“). The dissolution of the previous committee happened after some recent bannings of popular EDH cards were not well received by fans of the format and caused the RC to receive significant backlash on social media (see “Backlash“). Once the RC had dissolved, WotC took the Commander format’s future in-house.
The new committee, who will advise Magic Principle Designer Gavin Verhey, contains the following members from the Magic: The Gathering community: Attack on Cardboard, Bandit, Ben Wheeler, Charlotte Sable, DeQuan Watson, Deco, Greg Sablan, Ittetu, Josh Lee Kwai, Kristen Gregory, Lua Stardust, Olivia Gobert-Hicks, Rachel Weeks, Rebell Lily, Scott Larabee, Tim Willoughby, and Toby Elliott. Of these 17 members, Olivia Gobert-Hicks, Toby Elliott, and Scott Larabee were all RC committee members. Charlotte Sable, DeQuan Watson, Rebell Lily, Tim Willoughby, Greg Sablan, and Rachel Weeks were all on the previous Advisory Group. Josh Lee Kwai, who had resigned from the Advisory Group in response to the banning incident, has returned to be on the WotC Panel (see “Community Leader Resigns“).
One of the first tasks on the new Commander Panel’s plate is to revisit the deck power bracketing concept that WotC introduced in their announcement that they were taking Commander in-house. This loose concept essentially created four power levels for EDH decks based on the cards that were included in them. Few details were given on this concept initially, and it needs further fleshing out before it can be implemented in the format.
Source: ICV2
