Looking for the MTG Commander banlist? With such a vast format, knowing which cards you aren’t allowed to use can be tricky. In this guide you’ll find a list of every card that’s forbidden in Commander, complete with the date it was added to the EDH banlist.
For more bans in other formats, see our full MTG banlist guide. We can also give you more details about upcoming MTG sets, and the best MTG Arena decks to play after each new release.
Latest Commander banlist update
On September 23, 2024, the Commander rules committee banned four cards: Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom. These cards are the first new entries on the Commander banlist since 2021.
Several of these cards are particularly valuable, and Nadu in particular has been a controversial part of Commander since its release in 2023. After escaping an emergency ban and the designers admitting Nadu wasn’t playtested properly, the bird has finally been brought to the chopping block.
The newest additions to the Commander banlist received mixed reactions from the community, but those enraged by the decisions were certainly loudest. After the bans caused the cards’ prices to crash, some MTG fans petitioned for the committee behind the bans to be fired, and others unfortunately resorted to threatening the volunteers responsible.
All this controversy led Wizards of the Coast to take over the Commander format, replacing the Commander Rules Committee as the adjudicator of the banlist.
A new update is expected in late April 2025, where Wizards has hinted that some cards may be getting unbanned.
MTG Commander banlist
Conspiracy cards
25 cards with the Conspiracy type are banned in Commander, and all other MTG formats. The full list of Conspiracy cards banned in Commander is:
- Adriana’s Valor
- Advantageous Proclamation
- Assemble the Rank and Vile
- Backup Plan
- Brago’s Favor
- Double Stroke
- Echoing Boon
- Emissary’s Ploy
- Hired Heist
- Hold the Perimeter
- Hymn of the Wilds
- Immediate Action
- Incendiary Dissent
- Iterative Analysis
- Muzzio’s Preparations
- Natural Unity
- Power Play
- Secret Summoning
- Secrets of Paradise
- Sentinel Dispatch
- Sovereign’s Realm
- Summoner’s Bond
- Unexpected Potential
- Weight Advantage
- Worldknit
Ante cards
Nine cards that reference ‘playing for ante’ are banned in Commander, and all other formats, because they don’t work within the rules. Playing for keeps in a four-player game is probably a bad bet anyhow. The banned MTG ante cards are:
- Amulet of Quoz
- Bronze Tablet
- Contract from Below
- Darkpact
- Demonic Attorney
- Jewelled Bird
- Rebirth
- Tempest Efreet
- Timmerian Fiends
Offensive cards
The Commander banlist includes cards that are racially or culturally insensitive. These cards have been banned in all formats, and their images were even removed from Wizards of the Coast’s database in 2020. The seven cards currently included in this ban are:
- Invoke Prejudice
- Cleanse
- Stone-Throwing Devils
- Pradesh Gypsies
- Jihad
- Imprison
- Crusade
Game Changers list
On February 11, Wizards of the Coast announced a new list of cards – the ‘game changers’. These are cards that dramatically warp a game when (or shortly after) played.
Though certainly not banned – or even at risk of banning – Wizards has made it clear that future banned cards are likely to come from this list. Similarly, any cards that get unbanned are likely to
The new tier-list system Wizards is creating is based in large part on how many game changers you have in your deck. Three or less and you can qualify for bracket 3 ‘upgraded’. Any more, and you push your deck into bracket 4 ‘optimized’ territory.
- Drannith Magistrate
- Thassa’s Oracle
- Urza, Lord High Artificer
- Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
- Opposition Agent
- Tergrid, God of Fright
- Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
- Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
- Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow
- Winota, Joiner of Forces
- Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
- Enlightened Tutor
- Cyclonic Rift
- Force of Will
- Fierce Guardianship
- Mystical Tutor
- Vampiric Tutor
- Ad Nauseam
- Serra’s Sanctum
- Gaea’s Cradle
- Ancient Tomb
- Glacial Chasm
- The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
- Smothering Tithe
- Trouble in Pairs
- Rhystic Study
- Underworld Breach
- Survival of the Fittest
- Expropriate
- Demonic Tutor
- Imperial Seal
- Jeska’s Will
- Bolas’s Citadel
- The One Ring
- Trinisphere
- Chrome Mox
- Grim Monolith
- Lion’s Eye Diamond
- Mox Diamond
- Mana Vault
Commander has the potential to be a very high-powered format. You only have to glance at our cEDH Tier List or guide to the strongest MTG Commanders to see that. For more on Magic: The Gathering, here’s the latest on the MTG release schedule, plus the MTG Arena codes that still work.
Source: Wargamer
