MAY 2024 RULES - BANNED/RESTRICTED UPDATE
Metagame is evolving following recent changes, and Duel Commander is as lively as ever. Due to recent game prints and structural changes by Wizards Of The Coast™, we still had to take the following decisions:
CHANGES:
🔘 GAME RULES CHANGES
No changes.
🔘INDIVIDUAL BANNED AND RESTRICTED CARD CHANGES
All cards that bring a sticker or an Attraction into the game are banned.
Eris, Roar of the Storm is now banned as a commander only.
🔘 EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES
No changes.
🔘 OTHER CHANGES
No changes.
👉 Don’t forget to check out our Comprehensive Rules page for detailed understanding of Duel Commander rules.
👉 Don’t forget to check out our Banned and Restricted page for a recap of all the currently banned/restricted cards.
You can still contact us on our Facebook Page page and our Discord server. The next announcement will be published on July 29, 2024.
Until then, we wish you all many good games! 😇
FURTHER INDIVIDUAL EXPLANATIONS
About stickers and Attractions
Attractions and stickers have been a heated subject since their printing in Unfinity set. Very few of these cards made it to the competitive scene, but those that did forced all players to bring more physical game material to the game, but also required them to take more room space in tournaments, without adding much strategic interest. Not only do those mostly create confusion with rules, excessive objects in a game, time loss and game actions, but also can they be an additional cognitive load, even when not being used. Even so their actual play is disconnected from the possibility of bringing additional game material.
Also, on May 13, Wizards Of The Coast™ published an announcement regarding all Magic The Gathering™ formats where they're legal (Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper. Block Constructed was dropped long ago.), effectively banning them all from all those formats. It remains a rule of thumb for people who know how things generally structurally work in Magic The Gathering™ to expect them as a reflex to be the same in Duel Commander, which often brings a justification for consistency between those games.
For these reasons, all previously and future legal cards that bring a sticker or an Attraction into the game are now banned in Duel Commander. Bringing such game material to games will now be discarded and ignored. Comprehensive rules have been updated accordingly.
For a complete list of all cards, please follow the link in the text above.
Even though it was just printed, Eris, Roar of the Storm quickly rose to be one of the most played decks in the format, succeeding in one of the fastest and most powerful breakthroughs ever. The casting cost of Eris, Roar of the Storm itself is quite easy to reduce and allows it to be cast very efficiently at much lower costs than its base cost, also greatly reducing the casting of the additional "commander tax" cost. More importantly, simple grave hate isn’t enough to prevent Eris, Roar of the Storm from being cast from a Command Zone for cheap: an opponent needs to use permanent graveyard hate in order to truly attack its typical game plan, while also in need of putting pressure on the deck at the same time. Once cast, the same game plan allows it to quickly overwhelm the battlefield, while keeping it quite easy to be cast again if handled by opponents.
For those reasons, Eris, Roar of the Storm is now banned as a commander only.