For those who don’t know, Commander is a casual format (different way to play the game) were you can only have a single copy of any card in your one hundred card playing deck, excluding basic lands. The only cards you can’t use this way are the 45 banned cards that the GODS only known as Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the distributors of the card game have deemed unusable. I want to talk about that list of 45 banned cards in the Commander format.
Ancestral Recall: This is a card that reads “draw three cards” for one blue mana, for those who don’t know, that rate of card draw is insanely strong, so powerful that it’s part of the list of the nine most powerful cards in the entirety of the game’s existence; most of the reason it was banned is because of the price of the card, which is now up to a four digit price tag, we’re talking thousands, which seemed too absurd for what should be a casual format. According to Wizards, “Ancestral Recall was originally banned for poor optics, rather than power level. While it’s plenty powerful, it’s the effect on perceived barrier-to-entry that really posed a problem because casual players watching Commander games in passing could reasonably assume that they needed hundreds (now thousands) of dollars in Power-9 mana as table stakes, just to join the format.” Although a fair concern, this doesn’t explain the other highly expensive cards still playable in the format, such as the card Mishra’s Workshop which has found itself at almost two thousand dollars. Also, if you try to use the argument that the card is too strong, remember that Wizards has officially endorsed cEDH which is just competitive Commander, so although a mostly casual format that doesn’t mean people who would love to use it in competitive Commander. In my humble opinion, this card should be UNBANNED, and if you somehow have the card and want to be able to use it in your casual or competitive deck, I believe you should be able to play it.
Balance: This is a card that reads “Each player chooses a number of lands he or she controls equal to the number of lands controlled by the player who controls the fewest, then sacrifices the rest. Players discard cards and sacrifice creatures the same way.” For one white and one mana of any color, as the name suggests, it seems like a simple way to balance out the game, right? Well, according to Wizards, “On its face, Balance looks like a very effective catch-up strategy that’s mechanically very white, but in practice it leads to slow, long games with a low density of meaningful decisions or memorable events. Players are often left with little-to-no resources and little-to-no cards in hand, feeling like they don’t have any agency in the game they’re playing.” Well this seems fair, it’s a great reason in a casual format right? Wrong. This is a “Stax” card. What does that mean, according to the definition provided: “Stax is a deck archetype in Commander that focuses on slowing the game to a crawl, denying opponents the ability to play their decks, and buying yourself enough time to eventually ‘break parity’ or dig to your own wincon.” If you banned a card for making the game run slower but then actively leave in a deck archetype that its express purpose is to slow down the game and deny opponents the ability to play the game is absurd. I think this card should be UNBANNED.
That’s it for now, I know I only talked about 2 out of the 45 but next week I’ll try to cover more of them, at minimum I’ll cover the next four: “Biorhythm,,” Black Lotus,” “Braids, Cabal Minion,” and “Channel. “But that’s enough complaining for now.
