Locations
Hello all! I hope that you are having an awesome day today! Today, I have a fun article for you. I created a variant of Commander called Commander '95 (C95) which only allows cards printed up through the end of 1995 (Alpha - Homelands, Promo) and has the same banned list as Commander, up until now... The format is deep and has a lot of great things going for it. You are encouraged to use cheap reprints for the older cards and if you want to use proxies I won't complain.
Today, what I want to do is face my assumption for the Banned List. I have always assumed that the banned cards that were printed up through 1995 banned in Commander needed to be in C95. But today, I want to go over that assumption and take a deep dive into the mutual and see if there are any cards we can pull off the banned list of C95.
You can find the banned list for Commander here.
Ready? Let's get started!
The Power Nine (Minus Timetwister)
 |
 |
 |
These are the easiest cards on today's list to talk about. The five Moxes, Black Lotus, Time Walk and Ancestral Recall dominate formats they are legal in, even if they are restricted. They should be banned all day long. No question!
Balance is one of the most powerful sorceries ever printed. Each player has to discard down to the fewest, likely the aggro player, sacrifice lands to be equal with the mana screwed player, and most or all creatures equal to the control player. It's a nasty card that doesn't really feel like an actual, proper, balance. Guess what? I have no inclination to unban this powerhouse and very unfair feeling card.
Channel is a powerhouse in a 40-life format where you can convert life into colorless mana. It combo'ed in the early day with X spells like Fireball and Disintegrate and extra mana from a Black Lotus for a first-turn kill. Here's how it works, drop Lotus and a land that taps for red mana. Sac Lotus. Channel, spend 19 life. Fireball, use the mana to kill on the first turn. Even though the Lotus is banned, the X spells are still running around, and Channel is way too good to run in C95.
 |
 |
These cards are included together by myself as they both have a similar card flipping mechanic. Both are on the banned side of life, and I recently argued extensively for their unbanning with some errata. You can find that argument here.
The key part of that argument is that you could errata them like we did in Five-Color to allow them, since the major reason for their banning is that it really takes time once one is announced to rearrange everyone's battlefield so that these won't damage that much. So, an errata that reads, "When this card is placed on stack, players may not rearrange their battlefield until this card resolves or leaves play" is good. They can still place new cards far away if a Chaos Orb is out. But folks are locked out of rearranging them. These were great in Five-Color with that erratum and played fine. They are not banned for power reasons, but for time-related ones. Falling Star won't get much play, but folks with Chaos Orbs, might like that there is a format where it's welcome, and again adding in two more cards into this format would help. These are fun cards, and fun cards shouldn't be banned, they should be accommodated. So...what am I doing?
Is Fastbond unbannable in Commander '95? It lets you turn dropping lands from your hand to the battlefield for a single damage each. That's pretty good. If you drop Fastbond on the first turn, you can drop the two or three other lands in your hand and get a big boost on mana and turns over other players. However, Fastbond isn't as good in C95 because card drawing is so poor. You don't have Phyrexian Arena, Harmonize, Fact or Fiction, Stroke of Genius, and massive other card drawing. Blue just has Braingeyser, Brainstorm and Portent. Black has better card draw with Greed and Necropotence. Red has Wheel of Fortune. That's it for common card drawing, so you are unlikely to drop lands after the first turn, and if you draw it later it's a dead draw, whereas a Sol Ring on turn six is still pretty good. Is this lower power level still bannable? Probably!
This uncommon land from Legends is iconic. It can tap for a White mana with no enters-the-battlefield-tapped cost, and it can tap to bounce a target legendary creature to your hand. It cannot bounce non-creatures. It's banned in Commander because of its negative interaction with Commanders that are legendary. You can bounce, and re-bounce, and re-bounce them anew. It's less powerful in C95 since legendary dorks are less rife, but it's just as problematic, so it's not on my shortlist to unban.
This uncommon land (there were no rares in the first two expansion sets as well as The Dark and Fallen Empires, just different rarities of uncommon) has been labeled the Power Ten alongside the Power Nine from a set before. This land can tap to draw you a card, so long as you have just seven in your grip. I've discussed before how little true raw card drawing is legal in this format, and an unbanned Library would be more powerful here in C95 than normal, so it's not getting unbanned.
This fun sorcery forces everyone to play a subgame of Magic and you'll use your libraries as your deck for the subgame. And then the losers of the subgame will lose half of their life in the regular game. Want an epic night of Commander? Play Shahrazad! If you don't want to play, everyone can concede and just get back to the real game. I recently argued for this unbanning as well. The problem with this card, and why it's banned, even in Vintage which bans nothing, is that it takes too much time at the tournament table. It's not banned for its power level. Well, Commander and Commander '95 aren't played at tournaments and are an epic place to play. Should there be a format that welcomes Shahrazad? I think so! Is it going to be Commander '95?
Time Vault is the card that inspired this article. I started to think about the cards that would break it. There just isn't that sort of set up. Time Vault, as designed, is a fair card. It doesn't untap. It arrives to the battlefield tapped. You can skip a turn to untap it. Then you can tap on a later turn to take another turn. That's fair. But the issue is that cards that untap an artifact are Time Walks when you control a Time Vault. Outside of C95, the format is rife with untap effects and has some in Commander form and recursive loops that could never be legal in normal Commander.
Here are the cards that you could play that will untap an artifact you control:
And that's it. Infuse and Twiddle suck. If you watered your deck down for them and pull off a Time Walk combo for a single, unrepeatable Time Walk, good job. Elder Druid is the only card we need to talk about: 4 mana, 2/2, needs 4 mana to tap and then untap or tap an artifact, creature, or land. That's an engine that could give someone infinite turns and win the game. Is that enough to keep Time Vault banned?
Any Green deck with Time Vault would run it. There are already two-card combos in the game that are not banned - Basalt Monolith and Power Artifact for infinite colorless mana is one good example that comes to mind. One is an artifact (answered by Red's Shatters, Blue's Steal Artifact, White's Disenchants, Black's Gate to Phyrexia, and Green's Crumble) the other is a 2/2 Green creature (answered by Red's Lightning Bolts, Green's Desert Twister, White's Swords to Plowshares, Black's Terrors, and Blue's Psionic Blast) something I would be comfortable allowing? Power Artifact as an enchantment is much harder to answer, there are only two sweepers in Green, Desert Twister, Disenchant and Arenson's Aura that can destroy an enchantment.
Hmmm... I can really see unbanning this card in C95. But there is Elder Druid. Without it, this would be a non-starter, but with it? Every color has multiple instant answers to the combo that destroy artifacts (Crumble, Shatter, Disenchant) or the creature (Dark Banishing, Incinerate, Psionic Blast), plus the vulnerability to Blue's counters. And Red has both! Also remember that the Elder Druid has to tap to use its ability, so you have a full round to answer it. I can see a space in this format for a fair Time Vault. What am I going to do?
Summary
All right!
Here are the cards that I feel we could safely unban in this format with Errata:
If I unbanned them all we would add four cards to the format! So... here's the key question... what am I going to do?
Okay, here's my decision...
These four cards, in my opinion, unbannable. Time Vault has little issue except with one card in one color that untaps it repeatably, the setup of which takes a full turn to use and requires two easily answered permanent types that every color has multiple answers to. And the other three are fun cards that make for fun nights and shouldn't be banned for that.
And there we are! I hope you enjoyed my tour around all things banned in the format! What did you think? Are you excited to try out the four new cards? I hope so!
