How four expensive cards imploded Magic: The Gathering’s most popular format

Wizards of the Coast is fundamentally changing how Magic: The Gathering’s most popular format will operate. Earlier this week, the card game’s publisher announced that it will assume control of the Commander format after a week of controversial decisions punctuated by an outpouring of violent harassment. The decision ends the format’s 13-year run as a volunteer-led and community-driven entity wholly independent of Wizards of the Coast. 

Last week, the Commander Rules Committee, a volunteer panel of Magic: The Gathering experts, made the decision to ban four highly sought-after and powerful cards, prohibiting their inclusion in Commander decks. In response, some players began harassing committee members, which included sending death and rape threats. In addition to the rules committee, players also harassed members of the Commander advisory group, a subcommittee of Magic: The Gathering players and content creators who act as the bridge between the wider Commander community and the rules committee.

“It reminds me of the early days of Gamergate,” Shivam Bhatt, a member of the Commander advisory group, tells The Verge. 

After a week of harassment, on September 30th, Wizards of the Coast announced that the rules committee would no longer control the Commander format, writing, “The Rules Committee is giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of Wizards of the Coast.”

Commander started in the late ’90s as Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH, a fan-made game mode focused on casual play with groups of friends versus the competitive, one-on-one playstyle of other Magic formats. In the years after its creation, EDH’s rules were further refined by a small but growing community of Magic players led by Adam Staley and Sheldon Menery. In 2005, Menery introduced the format to Magic: The Gathering’s professional tournament manager, Scott Larabee, who, in turn, introduced the format to Wizards of the Coast. 

In 2011, EDH, now known as Commander, was officially recognized by Wizards of the Coast, and the company began producing card sets designed specifically for the format. However, unlike other Magic formats where Wizards of the Coast has the power to create or change rules and issue card bans, decisions regarding Commander would remain in the hands of its creators. Menery, along with several others, created a rules committee, where control of the format has remained for almost 20 years, prior to the events of last week.

Since its official recognition by Wizards in 2011, Commander has exploded in popularity. Wizards of the Coast, which also publishes Dungeons & Dragons, is a subsidiary of Hasbro. And while Magic and D&D remain popular, Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro have been struggling with both companies, beset by layoffs and a string of controversial missteps regarding their most popular products. Exploiting Commander’s popularity, then, represents a lucrative revenue stream for the company. 

“WotC started printing cards that were hyper efficient and more powerful than anything previous,” Bhatt said. “And this gave rise to a super competitive format of tournament focused Commander.”

At the heart of the issue is the tension between the spirit of Commander as a casual format and the commercial interests of both Wizards of the Coast and a subcommunity of players. As demand grows for these powerful cards, which are already pricier than regular cards since they come in more expensive booster sets, they become even more expensive on the secondary market. Players then shell out big bucks to either put them in their own decks or keep them in hopes of reselling them at even higher prices. To this subset of players, Magic cards aren’t so much a game to play with friends as they are an investment vehicle. It’s a smaller-scale version of when people were buying up boxes of Pokémon cards in bulk, hoping to score the prized Pikachu that could sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So while the demand for these powerful cards can help Wizards of the Coast increase its bottom line, according to Bhatt and the Commander rules committee, it’s also antithetical to the spirit of the format. “Commander is meant to be the opposite of tournament play,” Bhatt said.

The rules committee agreed, banning the four cards that had come to dominate decks in the Commander format. “The philosophy of Commander prioritizes creativity, and one of the ways we have historically reflected that in the rules and banlist is to encourage a slower pace of game,” the committee wrote in a blog post.

Other Magic formats, especially tournament play, are governed by a fluctuating metagame determined by the most powerful eligible cards. A player’s success is heavily skewed toward their ability to afford those high-performing, expensive cards, rather than their skill. Tournament play is also typically lightning-fast, with matches ending within three to five turns. This creates an environment where matches are quick and heavily one-sided.

Imagine if the average baseball game ended in the third inning, 20–0, because one team could afford to pay for Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. Now imagine that humanity has invented cloning technology and every rich baseball team has an Ohtani and a Judge on their roster. Every game would essentially be mirror matches of the same two players hitting dingers over the fence. This is what Standard play looks like — similar decks running the same handful of expensive cards — and what Commander as a format stood against. 

Bhatt said that the decision to ban these cards was not made lightly, with the committee recognizing that such a decision would have financial implications for some players. “But we have always held the idea that you cannot be handcuffed by finances,” Bhatt said. 

Card bans are not new in Magic, nor even in Commander, though they happen less frequently. But because these cards were so expensive and so highly sought-after, their banning became a lightning rod for players aggrieved that their decks were no longer legal to play or their investments were now useless.

“The community erupted,” Bhatt said. “First came the expected, ‘I hate bans’. But then content creators and finance guys and store owners started lighting more and more flames and the threats started to pour in.”

In the aftermath, the rules committee made the choice to cede its control of Commander to Wizards of the Coast. “These threats drove home that the [rules committee] cannot voluntarily run something as big as Commander any more,” Bhatt said, “at least without the protections of a corporation.”

Wizards issued a statement commenting on the events, condemning the harassment and offering a brief explanation of the company’s plans for the future of the format. 

“While ownership of the format may be changing, members of the Rules Committee and others in the community will continue to be involved, and the vision for a social format will not change,” Wizards wrote.

However, Wizards of the Coast taking over Commander doesn’t guarantee that either side will get what they want. There has been no announcement on whether Wizards will unban the controversial cards. And now that Wizards controls what cards can be banned, there’s nothing preventing it from continuing to print powerful, format-degrading cards in service of increased sales.

Reactions on social media have been mixed. Many players recognize that while the situation was handled poorly by the rules committee, the harassment they received behind it was worse. “As for whether it’s good or not? I don’t know,” Bhatt said. “I just know that good or not, it was necessary.”