Just in case the wording is a little confusing, you can exile up to one creature per player (to include yourself).

Thanks to our friends from Wizards of the Coast for this exciting free preview card!

Administrative

Slight modification in how RC and CAG will structure future quarterly meetings.

Rules

No Changes

Cards

No changes

It’s new year and Commander continues to grow in every context: more players, more games, more content, and more cards. All of those are good things, but each comes with challenges. Each applies pressure to the format and to play groups in various ways. We’ll have some articles coming out this season talking about how you can recognize stress fractures in your group.

There are several cards which are popular topics of concern on the internet (such as Tergrid, God of Fright, Dockside Extortionist, and Thassa’s Oracle), but none of them have reached problematic levels of play in our target demographic (games governed by a strong social contract). The RC feels that all of them can be handled via discussion among the players before a game, and that it’s not too difficult to draw a line between reasonable and unreasonable uses. For groups where no social contract exists this is more challenging, but building trust via communication continues to be the best tool players have to create enjoyable games.

We’ve added a couple of new entries to the FAQ page, clarifying what we think of as the difference between Rule Zero and the social contract of the format, as well as our suggestion for how to handle Commander events at local game stores.

Finally, the RC is making some small internal adjustments to the way we interact with CAG members to ensure everyone on the advisory group has clear channels to express their opinions and relay their observations.  The short version is that we’ll be meeting with them formally in smaller groups as we approach the quarterly announcements.  It’s nothing drastic, we’re just putting more time into gathering information from trusted sources.

As always, you’re welcome to come over the RC Discord server to chat with us about this update, which has its own thread.

Thanks for our friends at WotC, we can preview this cool little beater, who provides a card advantage engine and survives wraths in the meantime. Enjoy!

After a few sneak peeks a few weeks back, later this week we’ll see the first deep dive Kamigawa: Neon Destiny previews. While you’re waiting, you can review the State of the Format 2022 article.

The joint RC/CAG meeting is coming up on 30 January, so if there’s anything you want to bring up, now’s the time. We generally bring some closure to topics we’ve discussed over the previous quarter, but if there’s something you think deserves last-minute consideration, we’re listening. Head on over to the RC Discord server’s #format-philosophy channel and join the already-lively discussion.

Today’s Unfinity announcement included the introduction of the acorn watermark as the new method to distinguish what were previously silver-bordered cards.

We will be updating the rules for card legality to make the acorn symbol equivalent to silver-borders; they’re not allowed by default (but should be encouraged among playgroups!)

We considered allowing them – Commander is not a tournament format, so philosophically it aligns with Mark Rosewater’s points about un-cards – but while some of the classes of cards that get an acorn symbol would be fine (art-based abilities, for example) others are not (physical dexterity cards) and further trying to split would descend to specific card lists. Those might be viable as an optional addition, but not something we would look to make default.

Set looks like a ton of fun, though. Looking forward to it! As always, you’re welcome to join us on the RC Discord server to chat about it.

No changes

The back-to-back nature of the two Innistrad releases made for a very short announcement window and not one we want to take action in. We’re pretty happy with where things are and look forward to the influx of cards from Crimson Vow.

Our next announcement will be for the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty release, on February 7.