Wizards takes over Commander management

Wizards of the Coast has released a statement detailing plans for the development of the Commander format in Magic: The Gathering. The announcement addresses the ongoing relationship with the Rules Committee (RC) and Commander Advisory Group (CAG), as well as introducing new initiatives to enhance the player experience - including the decision to take over management of the format.

The past week has been tumultuous for Commander fans, members of the Commander Rules Committee, and the Magic community as a whole. Along the way, we've seen players and fans share a diverse range of passionate opinions—far too many of which were harmful or malicious.

Below and over the next few days and weeks, we will be discussing quite a bit about Commander, starting with the most pressing: Over the past week, the conversation has escalated, culminating with unacceptable personal threats to the safety of members of the Commander Rules Committee. This is something we will not tolerate. No matter how you feel about something in Magic, it is never appropriate to threaten somebody. Everyone at Wizards of the Coast is united on this front—we will not hesitate to take action against individuals who threaten to harm community members or employees.

This week has also demonstrated the truly monumental task that faced the Commander Rules Committee. The Commander RC is made up of five talented, caring individuals, all with other jobs and lives which they must balance with managing the most popular format in Magic. It results in incredible amounts of work, time spent deliberating, and exposure to the public.

Nobody deserves to feel unsafe for supporting the game they love. Unfortunately, the task of managing Commander has far outgrown the scope and safety of being attached to any five people.

So today, in partnership with members of the existing Rules Committee, we are announcing that the Rules Committee is giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of Wizards of the Coast.

Commander has always been a community-focused format, and this move in management does not change that.

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. We've had some preliminary conversations already about what we would like to accomplish and have some ideas we will be rolling out together in the months to come.

Working with the community to craft this format is critical to all of us. We have opened a new Discord channel on the official Magic Discord (in the #Commander_News channel) and will also have a WeeklyMTG stream talking about this tomorrow, October 1, at 10 a.m. PT on Twitch.tv/Magic.

What's Next?

While this is still very early, we do want to share one of the things we've just started working on with the Rules Committee: a more objective approach to deck power level and additional guidance and shared language for players to find games that match the type of game they're trying to play.

It isn't anywhere near finished yet, but, as part of building this with the community, we're opening it up for feedback, thoughts, and your version of how this will look. Think of this like an open beta.

Here's the idea: There are four power brackets, and every Commander deck can be placed in one of those brackets by examining the cards and combinations in your deck and comparing them to lists we'll need community help to create. You can imagine bracket one is the baseline of an average preconstructed deck or below and bracket four is high power. For the lower tiers, we may lean on a mixture of cards and a description of how the deck functions, and the higher tiers are likely defined by more explicit lists of cards.

For example, you could imagine bracket one has cards that easily can go in any deck, like Swords to Plowshares, Grave Titan, and Cultivate, whereas bracket four would have cards like Vampiric Tutor, Armageddon, and Grim Monolith, cards that make games too much more consistent, lopsided, or fast than the average deck can engage with.

In this system, your deck would be defined by its highest-bracket card or cards. This makes it clear what cards go where and what kinds of cards you can expect people to be playing. For example, if Ancient Tomb is a bracket-four card, your deck would generally be considered a four. But if it's part of a Tomb-themed deck, the conversation may be "My deck is a four with Ancient Tomb but a two without it. Is that okay with everyone?"

Will this system guarantee perfectly matched games? No, and that might be fine at your table, but if it gets the conversation started from a shared understanding, that's already great for the table.

We would love to hear what you all think about this and which power brackets you would place certain cards in.

We will also be evaluating the current banned card list alongside both the Commander Rules Committee and the community. We will not ban additional cards as part of this evaluation. While discussion of the banned list started this, immediate changes to the list are not our priority.

For now, the safety and well-being of the Rules Committee is the priority. What has happened this past week is entirely unacceptable. By working together as a team, we can shoulder the responsibility of this format and everything that comes along with it.

On September 23, the Commander Rules Committee released a banned and restricted update removing Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Dockside Extortionist and Nadu, Winged Wisdom of the format. The repercussions surrounding these bans were mostly negative, even leading to debate about how important the Commander Advisory Group was to the committee.

The same week, CommandZone and Game Knights CEO and host Josh Lee Kwai announced his resignation from the Advisory Group.

Source: Wizards of the Coast