Over the past year, Duel Commander has continued growing as a format. Also known as French Commander, this one-versus-one competitive format saw its reach expanded after becoming a sanctioned format on Magic Online.
With more events being played than ever, the Duel Commander Committee has plenty of data to use. In hopes of further promoting diversity, one powerhouse with Partner has been banned, and three other cards have been experimentally unbanned.
Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh Banned as Commander
Roughly six months ago, both Dark Ritual and Underworld Breach earned bans in Duel Commander in the hopes of limiting the presence of combo shells. In particular, Partner shells featuring Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh and Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools were becoming a bit too powerful. While the Dark Ritual and Underworld Breach bans have felt like a net positive for the most part, combo enthusiasts have done a good job adapting.
Over time, many players began replacing Tevesh Szat with Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper as a way to have access to green. By adding cards like Squandered Resources and Tinder Wall into the mix, Storm decks have only gotten faster. These improvements have caused Rograkh’s metagame share to continue rising consistently, creating a worrying trend.
On top of the deck’s ability to win quickly, it’s surprisingly difficult to hate out. It isn’t as vulnerable to graveyard hate anymore, and the mix of discard spells like Duress make it easier to fight through counter magic. Plus, Rograkh’s presence makes the deck significantly more consistent and explosive by perfectly enabling Ritual effects like Culling the Weak and Infernal Plunge at little cost.
With all of these factors in mind, the Duel Commander Committee felt it was best to finally bite the bullet and ban Rograkh as a Commander. Storm decks could still have a place in the format, but players will have to work harder moving forward without having access to a free support piece every game.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang Unbanned as Commander
Over time, control decks have seen a noticeable decline due to the increased pace of Duel Commander. Those that have been able to succeed, like Atraxa, Grand Unifier decks, typically have incorporated combo finishes. An unban on Tasigur, the Golden Fang as a Commander is being tested as a potential home for a traditional style of Control strategy.
Tasigur’s body being as efficient as it is gives control players a better opportunity to interact on the same turn they cast the Commander. Thanks to this, Tasigur becomes a notable clock against combo decks, while shoring up early aggro attackers. Fighting over the Monarch and Initiative is extremely important, too, and its efficiency and beefiness helps a lot in this regard.
All of that said, thanks to the speed of Magic as a whole, taking advantage of Tasigur’s activated ability is a lot harder than it used to be. The Shaman is also vulnerable to graveyard hate, and its Delve ability conflicts with other elite control inclusions like Abhorrent Oculus. These tradeoffs make Tasigur an interesting but not overwhelming unban.
Trazyn the Infinite Unbanned
Tasigur wasn’t the only black legend to be unbanned, as Trazyn the Infinite is also coming out of the woodworks. This card was banned back in 2023 primarily to reduce the power of Old Stickfingers decks, whose continued success resulted in an Old Stickfingers ban over a year later.
The objective here was to get Trazyn into play while Walking Ballista and Phyrexian Devourer were both in the graveyard. From there, you could make Trazyn enormous thanks to Phyrexian Devourer’s ability, then remove a ton of +1/+1 counters via Walking Ballista’s ability to kill the opponent. This combo proved to be too strong at the time when combined with Old Stickfingers’ mass-Entomb effect.
With Old Stickfingers out of the equation, setting up this combo gets a bit harder. Graveyard hate and other cheap forms of interaction are more common now, too, which further hinders this type of strategy. When combined with the speed increase of the format, Trazyn the Infinite’s power level is more on par with the current format environment.
Necrotic Ooze Unbanned
The last card to be experimentally unbanned, Necrotic Ooze is yet another combo card that pairs perfectly with Phyrexian Devourer. Back when Necrotic Ooze was banned, players were using Triskelion as the final combo piece, as Walking Ballista wasn’t printed yet.
Even though Necrotic Ooze is less mana intensive than Trazyn, the fact that it isn’t legendary makes it less likely that you can pull off graveyard combos early in the game. It showcases the same vulnerabilities to graveyard hate that Trazyn does, too. With lots of ways to keep these combos in check, it’s unlikely that Necrotic Ooze will emerge as a broken Duel Commander all-star.
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