There has been a lot of talk about Commander bans recently. Unsurprisingly, this followed the unexpected and dramatic banning of Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Dockside Extortionist, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom. These bans have truly shaken the Commander world, and have led to the format’s ownership officially changing hands.
Despite these dramatic changes being too much for some players’ tastes, Bans haven’t stopped entirely. Not only do Wizards have constructed bans scheduled for December 16th, but the Duel Commander Committee isn’t slowing down either! Just one week on from the landmark Commander bans, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is being banned exclusively in Duel Commander.
Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student Banned in Duel Commander
Effective today, September 30th, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student has been banned in the Duel Commander format. Specifically, this card has only been banned as your Commander, so you can still run them in the 99. Notably, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is still entirely legal in Commander, as the two formats have separate ban lists.
In the recent announcement post, the Duel Commander Rules Committee explained that Tamiyo is simply too strong in the current metagame. Only costing one mana, while being remarkably easy to flip, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student offers tons of utility for next to no cost. This has made them the premier choice for control decks in the format.
More than just being one of the best control Commanders, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student even beats out other control archetypes. This has made them the go-to choice when building a control deck, which isn’t fun from a creativity point of view. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student also effectively necessitated decks need turn one removal, further limiting options.
Overall, this ban is a good thing for the Duel Commander format, and hopefully, people won’t argue too much about that. As fun as powerful cards are, when they start to seriously impede deckbuilding freedoms, that certainly limits enjoyment. Now that Tamiyo is gone, hopefully, we’ll see a little more variety in control decks and matchups.
The Right Way to Ban?
Compared to the main Commander format, Duel Commander has always been more proactive and liberal with bans. Problem cards like Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, and even Mana Vault have long been banned in the format. Even The One Ring has been banned in Duel Commander since July of 2023.
While frequent bans aren’t to everyone’s tastes, they’re certainly useful to keep a format balanced. When there are so many cards and interactions going on, it’s easy for cards and combos to be completely busted. Thankfully, Duel Commander has a fairly easy job fixing those problems since it’s competitively oriented.
Commander, on the other hand, has to balance being both a competitive format and a casual-focused fun one. These ideals are often at odds with one another, which put the Commander Rules Committee, and now Wizards, in a tough spot. Hopefully, new initiatives may help fix this problem, but there is an alternative solution.
Now that Commander is under Wizards’ control, the format could be splintered properly into Commander and cEDH. Should this happen cEDH could have a much stricter ban list to develop a complex and creative metagame. Whether or not this will happen, however, remains to be seen.
For now, Duel Commander is setting the gold standard when it comes to bans. Occurring frequently with open communication, it seems to be an incredibly well-managed format. It’s great news Duel Commander is now properly supported on Magic Online.
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