Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Commander Rules Committee announced that they decided to add four cards to the format's banlist last Monday. I was genuinely surprised, as not two months ago I penned a column in which I explored how I would be using Nadu, Winged Wisdom, in the 99 of a few decks. I am on record as saying that I didn't see any reason for Nadu to get banned and didn't expect a ban to come down.

I still don't think Nadu deserved the ban hammer, but Nadu, Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, and Mana Crypt were all thrown under the bus for the good of the format.

The initial reaction from folks online was predictable. Voices of reason were few and far between, and a lot of players were counting up their losses and bemoaning how little the members of the Rules Committee really cared about cEDH. The loonier among them gave in to baseless speculation about how those crafty villains probably offloaded all of their high dollar cards. Speculation about cEDH splitting off from EDH started up yet again, but that chatter has always been in the background to some extent.

I couldn't help but wonder how many of my decks would have to be adjusted to make up for the cards I'd be taking out.

Doing the Math

Some will have it worse than me, and some won't be affected by this ban at all, but I couldn't help myself. I had to know how much value I was taking out of my decks. Out of over 30 decks in my EDH collection, there were 13 decks at varying power levels that I was going to have to tweak.

It might seem like a given that all of the mana-producing cards that get removed from a deck have to be replaced by other mana-producing cards. There's some sense to that, but EDH is also supposed to be fun, and it's a lot more fun to replace a mana rock with something that will impact my games in a different way, even if it's just some odd creature or spell that I haven't played much in the past. In cEDH you'll be more concerned with optimization and making sure that the deck remains as competitive as possible, but that's not where my mind is usually at.

In my case I happened to have ordered a few copies of Strix Serenade and Obscuring Haze that hadn't made their way into decks yet, along with some promo copies of Beast Within. I didn't expect to be cascading a change through multiple decks this time around, but it's still fun to breathe a little new life into old decks that haven't seen a lot of change recently.

Out of 13 EDH decks I was going to need to pull 20 cards and find replacements that I could live with, and maybe even enjoy seeing in games. Mana Crypt is always useful, but it's nowhere near as fun as a well-timed Fog or a hundred other things you can do to make a game more interesting for everyone.

I checked mtgstocks.com for card prices the weekend before the ban was announced and the math turned out worse than I had feared. My two full art copies of Nadu, Winged Wisdom were worth about three bucks each. Five copies of Jeweled Lotus at around $95 each totaled $475. Six copies of Dockside Extortionist at $85 each totaled $510. Six regular Mana Crypts at $200 each totaled $1,200 and a full art Mana Crypt added another $250. I have no idea how low those cards will end up going, but if I could have sold them all for between $1,200 and $1,500 I bet I'll end up losing well over half that much in value before all is said and done.

For some perspective, I have friends with a wide range of reactions to the ban. One was upset on principle and because he was looking forward to someday buying a Mana Crypt for one of his decks. He didn't have much "skin in the game" but was still pretty worked up over it. Another estimated that he might have lost as much as 4k in value, as he had a number of masterpiece Mana Crypts and had over the years done a lot of speculating with that card - at times owning as much as a hundred of them. He was much less worked up, though it's possible he just showed it less and was every bit as annoyed.

For me, the reality is that I built my decks to play them, and I had no plans to sell any of those cards. Most of the people complaining about how much they lost because of the ban also had no actual plans to sell their cards anytime soon.

Many of us aren't experiencing a real loss, just the feeling of a loss.

The cards in our decks and our binders aren't dollar bills. They are just collectible playing cards and their value is very much out of our control. A year from now, they could all be worth nothing. If your next month's rent was riding on your ability to sell a Magic card at a certain value, I'm sorry, but you caught a really rough break.

I firmly believe the RC is doing its best to make the format better and sometimes that means banning cards. You don't have to agree with their decisions, but playing EDH by the format's rules comes with the baggage of having someone else making these decisions. This is the price of admission, and it's happened plenty of times to other formats. This just happens to be the biggest, most impactful banlist announcement in the history of Commander. It came out of the blue, and for some it was a hard pill to swallow.

There's still plenty of fun to be had in EDH.

Making Adjustments

One of the most interesting things about picking up a new card is figuring out what to take out, and how it will affect my other decks. I've seen a single card change affect three or four decks. A card goes in a deck, a card comes out but gets put into another deck, and so on. It's a big reason why I'm not a fan of proxying cards. Some of the fun of deckbuilding is making those hard choices.

I only had Nadu, Winged Wisdom in two decks - Elrond, Master of Healing and Otrimi, the Ever-Playful.

This was probably my easiest set of changes. Elrond wants good targets for +1/+1 counters and was already running Herd Baloth, so I replaced Nadu with Scurry Oak, which creates 1/1 Squirrel tokens whenever a +1/+1 counter is put on it. I'm another inch closer to loading Elrond up with combo pieces like Ivy Lane Denizen, but it's been a fun deck without running combo so I'll try to resist that temptation for a while longer. It's probably lower powered as a result. That's OK.

Otrimi was an even easier decision. I have a set of Duskmourn: House of Horror precons that I'm going to need to sleeve up. I only really built Otrimi to see how it would play with Nadu, so I won't lose any sleep over taking it apart to make room for a new member of the family. I never managed to get Nadu out and mutate anything on top of it, but the deck only saw a few games.

Pulling Otrimi apart freed up a Beast Whisperer and a Deadly Rollick, though at the time I wasn't sure where they'd end up.

I had a single Jeweled Lotus in two decks, Multani, Maro-Sorcerer and Maelstrom Wanderer.

Replacing Jeweled Lotus in Multani, Maro-Sorcerer was pretty easy. I love Fog effects, and I was able to throw an Obscuring Haze into the list. A common way to deal with a huge Multani is player removal. If I've obviously got lethal commander damage on someone and they don't have a way to get rid of Multani, they might just remove me. A fog can give me that extra turn to survive and close out the game on my next turn. I was a little shocked to see that the list isn't running nearly enough lands, but that's a problem for another day.

Maelstrom Wanderer never got to see its Jeweled Lotus hit the table, as the card never came up between when it was added and when the card got banned. When I went to review the list I was surprised to see that it didn't have a copy of Beast Whisperer, so the one from Otrimi slotted into Maelstrom Wanderer quite nicely. The deck has a lot of creatures. Card draw is important.

I had a single Dockside Extortionist in each of two decks, Muxus, Goblin Grandee, and Wulfgar of Icewind Dale. I had one more deck with a single card to pull. Muldrotha, the Gravetide had a Mana Crypt that I'd need to replace.

Muxus, Goblin Grandee was losing a Goblin in Dockside, and I was briefly tempted to replace it with Chaos Warp. While that is one of the best red removal spells in the format, my Muxus deck really leans into playing as many Goblins as possible. I ended up replacing Dockside with Gut, True Soul Zealot. Sacrificing a Goblin to make a 4/1 black Skeleton creature token with menace might reduce the pump Muxus gets when he attacks, but chances are good I'll be gaining power on board with that 4/1 Skeleton. It's a more interesting change that just throwing in Chaos Warp, though it may objectively be a worse choice, as removal is almost as important in Magic as card draw.

Wulfgar of Icewind Dale is a deck that cares an awful lot about cards with attack triggers. Dockside Extortionist never really fit in, except that the deck is very mana hungry. When it came to replacing that Goblin I knew right away what I wanted to put into the list. Rolling Hamsphere!

Yes, you read that correctly. I'm replacing one of the best mana producers in the format with a seven mana Vehicle that gets +1/+1 for each Hamster I control, and will create three 1/1 red Hamster tokens when it attacks. With Wulfgar that attack trigger will happen twice, and each of those triggers deals damage too! I'll make three 1/1 Hamsters, deal 3 to any target, make another 3 Hamsters, and then deal 6 to any target. Seven mana is a lot, but if I ever pull this off it'll be worth it.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide had a Mana Crypt that needed to be replaced. It's a deck chock full of combos but which really just wants to self-mill and then use Splendid Reclamation to put a ton of lands onto the battlefield. Once that happens I usually have the mana to push for a win. I was going to slot Deadly Rollick into the list, but Muldrotha is a six-mana commander, so he isn't on the field as often I'd like. I decided to run a new card in Insidious Fungus, a one mana green Fungus that can be sacrificed to destroy target artifact or enchantment, or to draw a card and put a land into play tapped. Muldrotha lets me play permanents out of my graveyard, so this versatile new creature seemed like a good fit.

I had three decks that were going to need both Dockside Extortionist and Mana Crypt replaced. Lathliss, Dragon Queen, Grumgully, the Generous, and Vadrik, Astral Archmage are three of my very favorite decks, so I had gone out of my way to give them all both of those powerful cards.

Lathliss leans very heavily into Dragons and is also very mana hungry, so losing Dockside and Mana Crypt was going to hurt, but I also could remember plenty of Lathliss games where neither one ever showed up. It was an easy choice to toss in a couple of Dragons and accept that the deck will just be slower. Cavern-Hoard Dragon and Scourge of the Throne are both solid additions to the list, though an increased mana curve is absolutely going to make the deck harder to play outside of mid-powered EDH. I've been playing more of that lately anyways so it's not a big deal.

Grumgully is a very reliable Persist combo deck with a wincon involving looping a creature onto the battlefield. Neither Dockside nor Mana Crypt had much of anything to do with the core combo, but I wasn't able to find any additional combo pieces that I wasn't already running. I ended up adding in Poison Dart Frog because it's adorable, and Obscuring Haze, because it's a fog and it's free if I have control of my commander. I also swapped out Gamble for Worldly Tutor, as I'm often wanting to find a creature that can fill in for one of the parts of the combo and I hate discarding cards.

My single favorite deck in the past few years has been my Vadrik Dragonstorm deck. It uses Vadrik's cost saving ability to build up to a big storm turn that culminates in a casting of Dragonstorm that often ends up killing the table without even going to combat. I ended up throwing in Strix Serenade to pair up with my Swan Song, and Runchanter's Pike, which will let me save more on my instant and sorcery spells by making Vadrik bigger.

I had three decks that ran both Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt, in Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, Meria, Scholar of Antiquity, and Codie, Vociferous Codex. The first two are "Cheerios" decks, built around as many zero and one mana artifacts as possible. Codie was my lone true cEDH deck, and also had a Dockside Extortionist in the 99.

Jhoira and Meria were definitely hit the hardest, as they both really want as many zero mana artifacts in the list as possible. Both decks are good enough at digging into the library that usually one if not both of those artifacts would show up in a given game.

Jhoira saw Merchant's Dockhand and The Reality Chip added to the mix. Both should be solid additions, but I won't pretend either card is anything but a downgrade. Fortunately, my Jhoira list was much more on the casual side than what you can find in fringe cEDH circles. Its dream scenario is to kill the table by hitting Blightsteel Colossus with Chandra's Ignition. That's not exactly a competitive game plan in today's EDH.

Meria is another deck that is edging towards high powered play, but doesn't quite make the leap into cEDH. When I was digging for a pair of cards to add, I couldn't help but be drawn to a pair of Otters from Bloomburrow. Coruscation Mage and Harnesser of Storms both seemed like good fits. They would make me happy when I drew them and would work with what the deck is doing.

I decided to keep both Jhoira and Meria together, but when I turned my attention to Codie, Vociferous Codex, I had no idea what to throw into the list that wouldn't get laughed at when played in a cEDH meta. I'm not really that into playing cEDH and after doing a little googling I ended up deciding to scrap the deck entirely. That does not mean Codie is unplayable in cEDH post-ban. I just don't play my Codie list enough and wanted to free up some good cards for other decks.

I wanted to walk through the changes I made to my decks to try to illustrate how a ban announcement like this can breathe fresh air into decks that haven't been changed much in a while. My best cards were generally in my favorite decks, so it was a little frustrating to have to make these changes, but it was also fun. I hope I'll be happy to see some of these new cards. Drawing into Mana Crypt was never a sad moment, but it also wasn't all that interesting. Mana is mana, but I bet I'll have a grin on my face every time I topdeck one of those Otters.

Final Thoughts

As I looked back over this column, searching for typos and parts that could be reworked or phrased a little better, I was struck by a few words that jumped out at me.

Interesting.

Fun.

Happy.

EDH should be a hobby where we are enjoying ourselves, having fun, and ending up happier for the time we spent in our games. That doesn't always happen, but in the wake of this ban announcement we each had a choice of how we would react.

Some of us raged against a decision we had no control over, and were incensed that a small group of people could wield so much power over our game and the value of our card collections.

Some were more circumspect, and were happy they didn't have to make those kinds of decisions. It was easier just to roll with it than to throw a temper tantrum online or at our LGS.

Some players were delighted, having faced a few too many Docksides, Nadus, Mana Crypts and Jeweled Lotuses in what they had expected to be lower powered games against more budget friendly decks.

This ban was a reminder that there are millions of people who play Commander and we all reacted in different ways.

The cold, hard truth is that the 0.01% of the most unhinged, immature, and obnoxious of any group made up of millions is going to be a significant number. In the wake of the ban announcement, this noxious underbelly of our community made a spectacle of itself and I've read that there were even instances of death threats and harassment aimed at members of the Commander Rules Committee and Commander Advisory Committee.

If you are one of those players who got so worked up that you engaged in this sort of angry, confrontative, and in some cases possibly illegal (e.g. doxxing, death threats) behavior, please just leave. Go play something else. We don't need you, and we honestly don't want you.

For everyone else - I hope you are coping with your losses, whether they are real or just perceived, and that you keep things in perspective. There is still fun to be had playing EDH, even without some of your favorite degenerate cards. See if you can make your now-nerfed deck playable again. See if you can be happy building and playing something else. Show your worth and prove that you can adjust to a new playing field, whether or not you agreed with the cards that were banned.

I now have thirteen old decks that I'm excited to play again now that they have had some of their "teeth" pulled out. They'll be slower, but they'll still be powerful. I may not see the new cards for a few games, but it'll be fun to take these decks out to see how they perform. Also, I might have too many decks, as I have no idea how long it will take me to get each of them into a game.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!