Highlights
- The Commander format allows thousands of cards, but some powerful cards are banned to avoid unfair gameplay and maintain game balance.
- A committee independent of Wizards of the Coast decides on the banned cards, taking into account social aspects, deck diversity and long-term format stability.
- Cards can be banned for reasons such as cultural insensitivity or promoting unpleasant gameplay. Bans occur every few months.
Commander is one of the few Magic: The Gathering formats that offers the ability to play every card from every set in the game’s 30+ year history. With literally thousands of cards to choose from, you’ll have all sorts of powerhouses and bombshells to choose from when building your next perfect deck.
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However, despite Commander’s huge catalog of cards, there is a collection of cards that you cannot play. These cards have been banned for a variety of reasons, mainly because they are exceptionally powerful or easy to abuse, or because they detract from the appeal of the game.
How are forbidden cards selected?
It’s a little different from traditional Magic formats
Banned Commander cards are decided and managed by the Commander Rules Committee. This group of successful Commander players monitors Commander games and individual cards to determine if they are inappropriate for the larger Commander format. However, they are independent of Wizards of the Coast, which can potentially cause tension between the two.
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Mark Rosewater discussed this on his blog, explaining that Wizards of the Coast does not control the banned list, nor is it limited by it, so when creating cards, Wizards designers may not consider whether a card might be banned in Commander, since there are other formats in which that card could be played.
Which Magic: The Gathering cards are banned in Commander?
There are quite a few
If you add up all the banned cards in Magic, there are 86 cards that have been banned from all decks for various reasons. The main reason these cards are banned is that they can cause games to either drag on incredibly long or become extremely unfun.
A number of cards are banned because they use rules that don’t apply to modern Magic, such as ante or conspiracy mechanics, while others are banned in all formats because they are culturally insensitive.
There are three pillars that determine whether or not a card should be banned. Does this card make the game less social, does the card hinder creative deck design by being so efficient that it crowds out other cards, and does the card fit into the long-term stability of the format?
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If the card does not meet the criteria, it will be considered for a ban. Bans only happen every few months, and the last time a ban was considered was in July 2024, when no cards were banned or unbanned at the time. However, there is always the possibility of cards on the verge of being banned being revisited in the near future, as the committee spends a lot of time considering the merits of each card.
Forbidden conspiracy cards
Conspiracy cards are special card types found only in Conspiracy sets. They can be used in other formats, but are in the command zone, making their use in a Commander game nearly impossible.
These cards are never included in your main deck and can generally only be drawn. They also have no casting cost. All of these provisions mean that all Conspiracy cards are banned in games altogether, with the exception of limited games of Conspiracy and Conspiracy: Take the Crown.
Forbidden Ante Cards
Ante is an old and optional game mode for Magic where players could compete in matches to gain permanent control of their opponent’s cards if they defeated them in a match. The intention was to introduce a gambling element to the game, but nobody likes to permanently lose their cards if they lose a game.
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Cards blocked due to offensiveness
In 2020, nine cards were banned in all formats and effectively removed from Magic because they contained racist or culturally offensive imagery or text, or other factors that ran counter to the spirit of the game.
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