Some MTG players are so mad about the recent bans to the Commander format that they’ve launched two Change.org petitions about it, including one titled “Fire the Commander Rules Committee for Magic the Gathering”, which has 1,236 signatures at time of writing.
As we reported on Tuesday, the Commander Rules Committee (an independent volunteer group that manages the Commander banlist used at official competitive events) suddenly banned four cards this week, including expensive, rare staples Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, and Dockside Extortionist.
As a result, the cards’ market prices crashed, and large parts of the MTG Commander community reacted with outrage online, prompting the Commander RC to defend the decision in an FAQ announcement and deny selling their own cards pre-ban.
And a small portion of players have started petitions against the changes. The more successful of the two, started by Jason Sommerfelt and titled “Reverse/Change the Sept 23rd, 2024 Commander Ban List Update”, simply calls for the four cards in question (also including the infamous Nadu, Winged Wisdom) to be unbanned.
Sommerfelt’s petition – which, at press time, has 4,904 signatures – argues Commander was “originally designed by the players so they could play all of the cards they have spent their hard earned money on that were rotting away in a box”.
“Instead of banning throwing more cards on a ban list,” it adds, “we need to emphasize the Rule 0 discussion that can, and will, avoid most problems occurred at a table of Commander.” Rule zero refers to the idea that official rules or card limits can be modified by mutual agreement of all players at any particular game table, and is a common argument against official, format-wide bans.
But Weston Buswell’s petition goes further, demanding the Commander RC members be “fired”; calling the September 23 banlist changes “an atrocity” and accusing the committee members of being “completely oblivious and ignorant” in making the bans, especially because of their outsized impact on the higher-power cEDH sub-format.
Buswell argues the changes “serve only casual players” and highlights that “thousands of customers / players have lost thousands of dollars” buying these cards at prices driven by their competitive viability, only to see them now worth a tiny fraction of what they paid. At press time, 1,236 people have signed their agreement.
As a self-governing group of volunteers outside of Magic’s publisher Wizards of the Coast, it’s unclear how members of the RC could be fired – and the committee’s FAQ statement on Wednesday affirms they have “no desire or intent to roll back these changes”.
But it’s certain these bans have created the biggest controversy in the fast-growing Commander community for many months. It highlights the tensions involved in applying competitive-style bans and balancing moves to a game format that’s historically been loose, open-ended, and casual, using cards from dozens of older MTG sets that aren’t allowed in other formats.
We’ll continue reporting on the situation as it develops – bookmark our MTG news page and follow Wargamer on Google News to stay informed. In the meantime, you can check what’s coming up in our MTG release schedule – or make sure you’ve got all the digital freebies with our list of working MTG Arena codes.
Source: Wargamer
