WotC Announces They’ll Take Commander’s Reins From Rules Committee

Last updated on December 26, 2024

Marchesa, the Black Rose – Illustration by Matt Stewart

Wizards of the Coast has announced that they will take over management and oversight of the Commander format and banlist from the Commander Rules Committee following a series of controversial bans.

Jim Lapage, a member of the Commander Rules Committee, explained that it was the RC that reached out to Wizards for assistance and to initiate the transfer of responsibilities.

WotC stressed that Commander has and always will be a “community-focused format” and that while the Rules Committee will no longer directly manage the ban list, they “will continue to be involved, and the vision for a social format will not change.”

They also mentioned that there will be a rolling set of changes over then ext few months that they've discussed with the Rules Committee, including an official and objective scale to gauge a deck's power level.

A New Objective Deck Power Level Tool

Potential the most impactful part of this announcement by Wizards is an upcoming power level scale to help players accurately communicate and gauge the strength of their own deck.

It's not ready yet, but Wizards explained that it comes down to sorting a Commander deck into one of four “power brackets” that every deck can be placed into 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,” WotC said. “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.”

This system is a building upon one often made by the community, where your deck is defined by “its highest-bracketed card or cards,” WotC said. It codifies what is already done in the community, which adds weight and objectivity to what was otherwise an ad-hoc scale that anyone could have a different interpretation of.

Wrap Up

This is, by far, the largest and most important change that has ever happened to the Commander format. Official recognition and management brings more official tournaments, new tools and official guidance, as well as a more direct chain of command and responsibility for changes to the format.

What do you think of this change? Are you a fan? Are you worried about your proxy collection going down the drain? Let us know in the comments or in the official Draftsim Discord!