The Commander card pool consists of all regulation-sized Magic cards publicly released by Wizards of the Coast other than those with silver borders, gold borders or acorn-shaped security stamps. Cards are legal to play with as of their sets’ prerelease.
The following is the official banned list for commander games. These cards are not legal without prior agreement from the other players in the game, and may steer your playgroup to avoid other, similar cards. For the underlying philosophy that drives the banlist, see Format Philosophy.
- All cards that refer to the ante mechanic (full list here)
- All cards that Wizards has removed from constructed formats (full list here)
- All cards with the Conspiracy card type (full list here)
- Ancestral Recall
- Balance
- Biorhythm
- Black Lotus
- Braids, Cabal Minion
- Channel
- Chaos Orb
- Coalition Victory
- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
- Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
- Falling Star
- Fastbond
- Flash
- Gifts Ungiven
- Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
- Griselbrand
- Hullbreacher
- Iona, Shield of Emeria
- Karakas
- Leovold, Emissary of Trest
- Library of Alexandria
- Limited Resources
- Lutri, the Spellchaser
- Mox Emerald
- Mox Jet
- Mox Pearl
- Mox Ruby
- Mox Sapphire
- Panoptic Mirror
- Paradox Engine
- Primeval Titan
- Prophet of Kruphix
- Recurring Nightmare
- Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
- Shahrazad
- Sway of the Stars
- Sundering Titan
- Sylvan Primordial
- Time Vault
- Time Walk
- Tinker
- Tolarian Academy
- Trade Secrets
- Upheaval
- Yawgmoth’s Bargain
The banned list is updated quarterly, with our announcements coming on the Monday before the prerelease.
There’s a channel for discussing the format philosophy over on the RC Discord server. We look forward to you joining us.