I get asked a periodically why Commander doesn’t just have a second banlist for cards that can’t be your Commander. On the surface, it seems like an obvious thing. You just add another rule, put a bunch of Commanders on it, and call it a day. But it’s not as simple as that, and I don’t think it would actually have the effect that most people who are asking for it think it would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first thing to note is that more rules is not a thing to aspire to. That’s not due to a belief that people aren’t smart enough to handle them, but that there’s already a lot of rules, and each one introduces an additional burden. We spend a lot of time trying to keep the rules as simple as possible and prefer not to stray too far from normal Magic; the default stance is to have some friction in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secondly, the banlist, which is part of the rules, is incredibly small in proportion to the size of the cardpool. Shrinking the banlist is not a goal and there’s space to grow if necessary. There’s no shortage of cards to explore and more coming every few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With those two points in mind, consider all ~27K Magic cards on a scale from -10 to 10, where the number is that card’s overall positive\/negative impact on the Commander experience. If you plotted it all out, you’d have a bell curve with a very high peak; most cards are pretty neutral or mildly negative\/positive. Let’s say, hypothetically, that we ban every card with a rating of -8 or lower. That’s way out on the end of the bell curve, and that’s OK! Getting less-negative cards out of the format doesn’t have enough positive impact to justify lengthening the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we examine the cards that are banned because they are problematic in the Command Zone, they all – with one possible exception – fall on the negative side of the bell curve outside of it as well. They might hypothetically be only a -4 or -5 there, but they aren’t cards we’re eager to reintroduce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cards currently banned might not be banned if they couldn’t be your Commander, but that overlooks an important caveat: getting them off the main list and onto a second list doesn’t make the rules shorter and it doesn’t make the format better as a whole.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A banned-as-commander list will get created when there’s sufficient cards that are problematic in the Command Zone that we actively want in the format. I don’t have an exact number, but it’s probably a half-dozen or so. Could that happen? It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely. As I mentioned above, I think there’s currently one card that meets the criteria and that’s Golos. If we find ourselves in this situation a few more times in the coming years, it’ll become a topic of conversation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I get asked a periodically why Commander doesn’t just have a second banlist for cards that can’t be your Commander. On the surface, it seems like an obvious thing. You just add another rule, put a bunch of Commanders on it, and call it a day. But it’s not as simple as that, and I … Continue reading My Take on Why We Don’t Have Banned-As-Commander<\/span>