Duel Commander: January 26th Banlist Review

In the last Monday of odd-numbered months (it's a mouthful, but it's true), we get a new banlist update for Duel Commander.

Before we discuss the last banlist update (which was a big one), I need to set some things straight. There are two different platforms for Duel Commander: "duelcommander.org", the official, main source of information for this format, and "mtgdc.info", the old platform. This last platform refers to a completely different format that isn't supported by the community (at least for now).

All the content we'll review below was published on the first platform, which is controlled by the official committee. Without further ado, let's see the main changes:

Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh is banned (as a commander).

Trazyn the Infinite is unbanned.

Necrotic Ooze is unbanned.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang is unbanned.

Bans - Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh

There's a lot we can say about Rograkh if we go by our own subjective tastes, but one thing is certain: this card is a mistake, plain and simple. Its greatest strength has always been the fact that it overrules additional costs:

It costs 0, so it increases Storm counters. This deck was also already performing above average lately. Recently, the committee banned Underworld Breach and Dark Ritual to nerf Rograhk + Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools and that still wasn't enough. The archetype found its footing again with Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper and is still executing its combo extremely fast. Now they've cut the evil at the root.

Unbans - Trazyn, Ooze and Tasigur

These two cards were banned because of the sins of another card: Old Stickfingers. This combo always played out the same:

The matter is that, after these cards were banned, this commander kept seeing play, this time looking for Hoarding Broodlord and lines with Saw in Half for the combo. Now that it is banned, we'll struggle a lot more to execute it. Gravehate pieces are much more common nowadays as well.

These two changes will most likely not be relevant in Duel Commander.

Now this one is worth mentioning. Tasigur has delve, and delve is a scary mechanic. Cheating mana is always dangerous, even more considering Tasigur can also play around the commander tax, in a way. We can see this commander competing among the tier-1 lists in the format.

The biggest competitor in the meta before was Spider-Man 2099, a deck that plays enough interaction to not lose to combo decks and enough pressure to not let combo decks set up a hand that can combo with protection. It might remain as strong as before, but this predator lost its most reliable prey.

Other high-level competitors will be difficult opponents, and that's why we imagine this will be the biggest loser after these changes.

Rograhk was a big competitor in the meta, and now it doesn't exist anymore. Turbo Storm lists are quite fast and beat decks that don't play blue really easily. These lists already existed before, but undoubtedly they're not very popular, particularly Slimefoot and Squee. Furthermore, Rakdos decks like Deadpool, Trading Card also struggled a lot.

Slower decks that also couldn't interact, like Azusa, Lost but Seeking, should also benefit a lot from the fact a consistent deck that played non-interactive victory lines is leaving the format.

Each possible meta winner will also create a new loser. If Azusa is truly a winner and does become more popular, the decks she preys on will struggle - Slimefoot itself among them! It's a difficult balancing act, and the truth is that, the more we talk about how the meta will evolve in this article, the more mistakes we'll make (even more considering we're still absorbing all the new Lorwyn cards, and will absorb a lot more sets soon!).

Tasigur deserves a few paragraphs. We'll suggest two decks with it that have very different goals, but we don't think either of them is a genuinely good version. They're just super dedicated first drafts.

"Tasigur 7" is (was?) a beloved archetype in cEDH, and a version for Duel Commander seems natural. You'll have a few ways to take advantage of Tasigur's expensive CMC...

And, once you can do that, you can get extremely powerful creatures.

We combined these cards with a few cantrips (which will help us cherry-pick our cards and avoid not drawing tutors or just drawing our big creatures), several removals, and counters. This way, we'll be able to survive as we set up our strategy. Here's the result:

There are a few other reasonable creatures we could add to this list, in particular Koma, Cosmos Serpent and/or Koma, World-Eater, our Serpent duo.

And there are also a few tutors we could use. We see reasons to both add more ways to combo and remove a few combo lines. This list is just a first draft of what Tasigur-7 could be in Duel Commander. Keep in mind, there are no positive mana rocks in this format, so creating infinite mana with Hullbreaker Horror will be extremely difficult (and probably not worth it - we honestly don't even know if it's possible; it would probably involve two 0-cost artifacts such as Welding Jar and Urza, Lord High Artificer).

But there is another option, one that is extremely more conservative - and, right now, at this first look, with a few nonbos.

Tasigur's delve encourages us to use cards that fill our graveyard:

And using this bunch of cards that puts cards in our graveyard encourages us to use our graveyard!

However, delve should remove cards from our graveyard, which will get a lot worse (exiling a fetchland from our graveyard? Sure. Losing delirium with a Demonic Counsel in hand? Never!).

We believe players will still struggle to find this balance for a while, but the fact is that there are some incredibly strong cards for this type of deck in this format. A midrange version of Tasigur seems viable for our meta:

The interaction between Cosmogoyf and Tainted Pact is super funny. Training Grounds is an excellent way to take advantage of our commander, and as good as (or even better than) Wilderness Reclamation.

This color combination is also home to a few combos, like Jace, Wielder of Mysteries plus Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact, as well as combo tutors like Bloom Tender and Freed from the Real. Lots of players will probably try to make these cards work simply because this deck can use powerful synergies but doesn't have to play bad cards.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!