MysticKetchup

They weren't taking any chances. Still glad though, right now it feels like it's better to overcorrect than to not go far enough

Though I don't think we've had this massive of a list in a long time, maybe this finally wakes them up to tone the power of the format down

Oh I didn't even see the Historic changes at first, Counterspell feels like a good addition to the format

I loved running her in Esper Hero. Definitely a kill on sight. Even in Commander she can run away with a game if left around with extra tokens

The issue with Beans is that it becomes a must-play in pretty much every midrange/late game deck because of how much advantage it creates. And with it being so easy to trigger with the Overlords it's only really being held back by Aggro being insanely overpowered right now

For reference, here are all Legendary vehicles that would be available as commanders.

The best is probably Esika's Chariot but maybe there's something else that could be interesting

Wow, that's surprising to hear. Dragonstorm was absolutely hopping at the LGS near me. Was Bloomburrow big or do you just not see a lot of Magic traffic recently?

Neat, I've been considering building her with a bunch of Monarch and similar cards makes people want to attack me

Yeah, the new look is nice but I can't imagine it's as functional as Scryfall

Afaik, CardKingdom eventually relented and the union is still in place there. They settled a wage disagreement in Oct 2024 so I assume it's still in place absent of any more recent updates

So checking rulings for Inkshield with other cards like Kambal, Profiteering Mayor, it looks like all the tokens from Inkshield enter at the same time. If they're created as a group you'd only get one Food token regardless of how many Inklings you created

Yeah while MTG Arena makes some things a lot easier to acquire (Sheoldred costs the same as any other mythic) unfortunately it makes jank decks way more expensive to play where it's not worth the wildcards that could be spent on meta staples

Some notable exclusions:

On Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, and Mana Crypt

We would be plugging our ears if we did not acknowledge the elephants in the room when it comes to this series of unbans: the September bans of Dockside, Lotus, and Mana Crypt. Many players out there probably immediately scrolled down this long article as quickly as they could to discover the fates of these cards.

We did talk about these cards and are not unbanning them at this time.

Opinions from the Commander Format Panel varied. Some believe Commander is more fun without them, others would like more time to see how the Commander Bracket system is adopted before doing anything here, and others felt it's too soon to do anything with these cards. There were a few people who were open to doing something with Jeweled Lotus now, but that was not the majority opinion. The overwhelming majority of the panel did not want to do anything with any of these cards at this time.

I will be transparent and say that I believe if any of these are ever to return, the most likely one is Jeweled Lotus due to its one-shot nature, iconic feel, and ability to help support high-mana value commanders. I want to be clear, this is not me saying that will ever happen, but that was the one among the panel with the most traction.

I know many of you love these cards. Many of you are also glad you no longer have to play against these cards. There's always that kind of push and pull with powerful and potentially ban-worthy cards in Commander. I appreciate there are many people in both camps, and that no matter what happens with these cards, somebody will feel like they didn't get the result they wanted. However, we wanted to talk about the cards here honestly and what was said internally for transparency.

These cards will be something I'm sure we'll talk about next year. But for this year, the book is closed on these three cards.

Behind the scenes of early Magic was really a handful of people flying by the seat of their pants. They really were completely unprepared for Magic's overwhelming success.

Mark also talks about this on his Drive to Work podcast if you want more, it's pretty fun to hear his old stories of how they had to learn through experience for basically everything