Following the monumental Commander bans in September of 2024, control over the format shifted to Wizards of the Coast. One of Wizards’ promises to the community upon receiving control over the community format was to reassess the ban list. A lot of cards on the list have been there for a decade and Magic is not the same game it was so long ago. The Game Changers list is how Wizards of the Coast will address these changes.
What is the MTG Game Changers List?
Created as part of the new beta Commander Bracket system, the MTG Game Changers list is a list of cards that are restricted at certain Commander power levels. The list also acts as an official watchlist for the format. This means that cards on the list have a chance of being banned from the Commander format in the future.
Similarly, any cards that are unbanned from Commander will also go on the Game Changers list. This can serve as a testing ground for the card. If they are too problematic, they might get banned again. If they aren’t, they might be removed from the list after spending some time there.
This should help prevent blindsides to the Commander ban list that can catch players unaware. Many of the cards on this list are worth a decent amount of money, and banning some of these cards has the potential to strip all the value from them.
Shown in the image above, the initial MTG Game Changers List put out by Wizards of the Coast on February 11, 2025 is represented by all the cards in white. On April 22, 2025, a major update brought a multitude of extra cards to the Game Changers List, represented by the cards in Orange. Two specific cards, Trouble in Pairs and Trinisphere, were removed from the original Game Changers List, and thus don’t show up above.
According to the initial Weekly MTG broadcast, we knew any tweaks to the list would be coming in April of this year. According to Gavin Verhey, players could expect a series of unbanned cards to appear on the Game Changers list for a trial run at that time. Any ban adjustments to the Commander banlist would be made during the same announcement.
Five cards in total were ultimately unbanned in April’s banned and restricted announcement. These unbans included Gifts Ungiven, Sway of the Stars, Braids, Cabal Minion, Coalition Victory, and Panoptic Mirror. More details surrounding these decisions can be found here.
Magic: The Gathering Game Changers Contents
The following cards are included on the MTG Game Changers List. A detailed list of reasons for each initial inclusion can be found in Wizards of the Coast’s official article, and a detailed list of reasons for each addition can be found in Wizards of the Coast’s official update article:
MTG Game Changers Bracket Legality
Past being a watchlist for the Commander format, the MTG Game Changers list also functions as a way to help categorize the power level of your Commander decks. Do you have multiple cards on this list in your deck? If so, there’s a good chance that your deck is higher up in the tier system.
For Tier 1 and Tier 2, the entire MTG Game Changers list is banned. These two tiers are primarily composed of preconstructed decks as the strongest options. These cards do appear occasionally in precons but generally go far beyond what an average MTG Commander precon is capable of.
In Tier 3, you are allowed to use three MTG Game Changers cards. This is where most Commander decks will fall, and an extra small deck-building challenge helps keep these decks from getting too close to the Tier 4 range.
Tier 4 and up decks have no restrictions from the Game Changers list.
MTG Game Changers Next Update
According to April’s article, Wizards does not want to make major additions to the Game Changers List frequently. Nonetheless, Verhey did mention that small changes are to be expected, and that the next future update will likely occur sometime after MagicCon: Las Vegas around June 20-22.
Verhey also noted that there will be no more Commander bans or unbans this calendar year. Wizards intends to reimplement the quarterly check-ins that the former Commander Rules Committee did, but you shouldn’t expect any bans or unbans during the next check-in.
Until then, Wizards of the Coast is intent on receiving player feedback for how the Game Changers list, and how the overall Commander Bracket system feels. Are there cards that you feel should or shouldn’t be on here? It’s a question that a lot of players are asking, and it’s a conversation that Wizards of The Coast wants to hear.
