Making the Case For & Against Every Gamechanger - Part 2!

Callahan Jones • March 14, 2025

Opinion
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
 by Jason Rainville

Welcome back to Making the Case For and Against Every Game Changer - Part 2! This was split up into two parts for two reasons: for one, I quickly realized how difficult of an exercise this is, meaning it took up more time than I first imagined; I also managed to write quite a lot of words, and breaking it up into two parts makes it somewhat more digestible. Thank you for the feedback on the first installment, I'll address some of it at the end! For now, let's get into the rest of my thoughts!

Red

Red is shockingly short on this list... or perhaps not that shocking at all. It's always been one of the objectively weaker colors in Commander, especially since it already had what would be an obvious addition to the list in Dockside Extortionist

banned. Let's take a look at our lowly two inclusions.

Jeska's Will

For: Jeska's Will

is one of the most powerful ritual effects available in the game, especially after the banning of Dockside Extortionist
. Often, opponents will have five or more cards in hand, sometimes, MANY more, netting you a load of mana in return for a three-mana investment. At the same time, if you control your commander, it gives you the ability to "draw" three cards as well, at least temporarily, which is a great rate for three mana, especially if you're also getting the mana. Getting a ton of resources and mana at the same time will turn any game on its head, making this the definition of a game changer.

Against: Alright... Jeska's Will

just feels like they needed something to put on the Game Changer list for red. Making mana and drawing cards are powerful effects, but there's nothing that truly special or standout about this card to me. It's at its best when your opponents are already doing well, and if your opponents are out of cards, it's bad. Most of the other cards on this list are unequivocally good or drastically advance your own gameplay; Jeska's Will
 has so many hoops to jump through to reach a Peak Power scenario that its inclusion truly does confuse me.

Underworld Breach

For: Underworld Breach

is the most powerful combo piece available in Commander legality at this time. It's better than Thassa's Oracle
, and I'm not joking. Combined with Brain Freeze
 and Lion's Eye Diamond
, or anything close, such as Lotus Petal
 or Gamble
 or Demonic Tutor
 or really anything, it wins the game concisely and easily. Cards like Intuition
 and Sevinne's Reclamation
, which are missing from the Game Changer list, also make tutoring up its combos trivially easy. The only point of contention: getting Underworld Breach
 to resolve and having a bit of a graveyard to start, neither of which are usually real concerns. If there's a card on the list that, for pure power reasons, could be on the Banned List, Underworld Breach
 is a very easy place to look.

Against: Underworld Breach

, while powerful, is only as powerful as the cards around it. It is good because it lets you cast your other cards from your graveyard. It can be very good - yes - if your deck happens to purposefully include Brain Freeze
 and Lion's Eye Diamond
, incredibly good cards that signal your intentions. If you avoid these cards, Underworld Breach
 quickly becomes what it once could have been: a cool, value card that helps red get cards back from the graveyard at a relatively high cost. Is a card that, absent several other extremely powerful pieces, doesn't actually impact the game more than a Reanimate
 or an Eternal Witness
 a Game Changer? I'm not really sure.

Green

Survival of the Fittest

For: If you're interested in abusing every creature known to man, Survival of the Fittest

is the perfect call for you. It is yet another strong tutor on this list, but it commits the ultimate sin: being repeatable as many times as you have green mana and a creature in hand you don't need. In a creature-focused deck, that's often trivial, but at least it makes it a bit of a poor late-game topdeck. Survival of the Fittest
 is at its strongest when combined with cards that generate value off of discards or caring about the graveyard, something that green doesn't do well alone but handles fine when combined with others, especially black or perhaps red. These tutors will continue to get the big thumbs down from me, I don't need 'em in my games!

Against: Despite being a repeatable tutor, Survival of the Fittest

is perhaps one of the weakest. It does require mana every time and also needs you to have a creature to discard. The  second part is the important bit: continually keeping creatures in hand to dispose of to Survival is a cost that adds up quickly, especially if you've already burned through your most expendable creatures earlier in the game. This kind of card also usually lends itself more to a toolbox-like approach for deckbuilding, letting you get the perfect creature for a scenario, but that pales in comparison in utility and power to other tutors and also other cards on the Game Changer list. There's a reason that Worldly Tutor
 isn't a Game Changer, and Survival ain't that much better at the end of the day. Realistically, the thing I keep coming back to is that while, yes, this is a tutor, Natural Order
 is right there. A list with Survival and without the basically-always-game-winning Natural Order
 feels not quite right to me.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger

For: Vorinclex is one of very few creatures that makes a game of Commander miserable in no time. If not immediately removed, it forces its controller to a near insurmountable advantage, doubling the mana they receive from lands while halving the mana you can get from yours. It's yet another huge mana card that wins the game without really winning the game, stretching it out for an inevitable few turns as you build out a board that will certainly win while your opponents' gameplans wither on the vine. Not fun, quite game changing.

Against: Did I blink and it became 2014? I can't remember the last time I saw a Vorinclex cast, though my lived experience is by no means all experience. I was there when Vorinclex was the format's number one boogieman though and those days are quite past us. It's the most affordable it's ever been, and people seem to have realized that there are simply better things to be doing with your time. I've also said it before in this and I'll say it again: paying eight mana on an effect should have a huge effect on the game... and that's okay.

Multicolor

On Legendary Creatures Being on the Game Changers List: I love it so, so much. It's like a soft return to banned-as-Commander, labeling some potential commanders as only playable in specific power levels. This is a great application of the technology of the Game Changer list in general, subtly restricting people's options at the most important and easily accessible part of someone's decklist, the Command Zone. There have been other Legendary Creatures on the list before this section, but it has felt most appropriate to talk about it before we go through the gold cards, which... are all just legendary creatures that are usually played as commanders.

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

For: My spells are cheaper, your spells are more expensive. Perhaps the most egregious mix possible of frustrating game actions you could dream up. Living in the command zone makes this effect even more frustrating, as it's always available to your opponents, and if you remove it he'll be back before you know it. GAA4 is one of the all-timer least favorite, most salty Commanders in history and that could just make him a Game Changer all on its own.

Against: Of all of the options available for legendary creatures to butt out of the game, this one at least seems on the lower power end of things. It does tick the "quite annoying" checkbox, as I said above; it's lived highly in the EDHrec salt scores for generations. And yet... I'm not sure that a commander being taxing to opponents' spells is enough to get it on the Game Changer list to me. He's annoying, a bit frustrating... but a little under-impactful.

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow

For: Yuriko is one of the admittedly greatest Commander design mistakes of all time, thanks to her ability to mitigate the Commander tax, coming back again and again to harry opponents. Add on her potential to quickly lower the life total of opponents and also draw cards, and Yuriko is the very definition of a Commander who gets out of hand quickly.

Against: While it is hard to make a case against Yuriko on the Game Changer list, I can TRY! The main thing I have to say is that the best Yuriko decks rely on other extremely powerful cards to be at their best, and that a deck of all Ninjas with Yuriko seems like it would at least be fun and fair. If we can rely on the rest of the Game Changers list to keep the best cards out of Yuriko, then it seems as if she could be a fair Ninjas-matters Commander with a weird design mistake bundled in along the way while being restricted to only two colors at that.

Winota, Joiner of Forces

For: Banned in Pioneer for being too obnoxious, Winota, Joiner of Forces

overwhelms every table that she hits. Needing to build around Humans (the most popular Magic creature type of all time) and non-Humans (every other creature in history) is not a restriction of any meaningful form, and the creatures she cheats into play are even made indestructible for some reason. Winona is the very definition of an overdesigned card, doing a truly obnoxious amount for only four mana. Her controller doesn't even have to untap with her to start getting value; she gets it as soon as you can get her to the combat step. Before you know it, you're overrun in massive wave after wave of creature value.

Against: *static* Hello? Is this thing on? She's a creature. Just remove her and then she costs six and then she costs eight. Facetious, I know. This kind of creature is pretty powerful, yes, but is also the kind of deckbuilding that quickly slots itself into a four type of power level already. You can build a high power Winota deck, even if she's your only Game Changer, with little to no issue, by the power of the card alone. Her inclusion on the Game Changer list doesn't seem that impactful; I argue she should be left to the Bracket vibes system to decide.

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

For: Insane mana production. An A + B combo with Basalt Monolith

to make infinite colorless mana. A strong outlet for sane insane mana production that gets even stronger with the likes of Seedborn Muse
 (a card I would put on this list). He costs only two mana and after dying is well worth paying four or even six mana for. The commander I and many others would like to see the least across from them at the table. The very definition of a game warping (and changing) commander, yes, but even in the 99 of a deck he pops up and causes chaos. I would struggle to come up with any reason why he WOULDN'T be on the list that isn't "dies to Lightning Bolt" but if that was ever a valid argument, we'd never ban a creature again.

Against: Nothing. This is my one cheat on this one.

Colorless

The Fast Mana (Chrome Mox
, Grim Monolith
, Mana Vault
, Mox Diamond
)

I've gone ahead and bundled all of the "fast mana" artifacts into one large group, because while not all exactly the same, they have many of the same upsides and downsides from one another.

For: Fast mana has one purpose and one purpose only: easily cheating the system that is at the very core of Magic itself. While every card here, Chrome Mox

, Grim Monolith
, Mana Vault
, and Mox Diamond
, has a major downside of one variety or another, they still will greatly impact the gameplan of whoever cast them, shooting them forward miles ahead of the rest of the table. The inclusion of these cards, and maximizing them, is the type of deck building that belongs in Tier 4 or above, making these perfect inclusions on the list.

Against: Who cares, dude. Sol Ring

is still literally something that we've convinced ourselves is fine just because it has been around for a while; so have these pieces! The only thing keeping these from having the same status is the fact that they've been expensive: their downsides make their power level negligible, and they each carry sneakily high levels of deckbuilding cost to be worth it, especially Chrome Mox
 and Mox Diamond
. This isn't Mana Crypt
 we're talking about here, which had a joke of a downside, but a batch of cards that cost other cards to be effective and one-time ritual-like effects. These make them less powerful than other options we already have available to us... LIKE Sol Ring
. What're we doin' here.

Lion's Eye Diamond

For: Lion's Eye Diamond

avoided the Fast Mana distinction because, while also a very powerful mana rock of sorts, it is more of a weirdo combo piece than anything. I've played a LOT of highly powered games of Commander, and people are only cracking this rock in two situations: pure desperation to deploy their commander for the 10th time or because they have an Underworld Breach
 in play. LED is a Game Winning Combo Piece that purely exists to easily make trivial amounts of mana. Game Changer.

Against: LED is actually the most confusing conclusion of the whole list. It's outrageously, hilariously expensive, the second most expensive Game Changer by quick napkin math. This naturally keeps it out of games, though I can quite literally see this being a path to it being on the banned list. It's only application is in a three-card combo together with another Game Changer, and I'm not sure Underworld Breach

, Brain Freeze
, and LED combo belongs in Bracket 3 anyways. This is where the Game Changer list as objective rules to follow, as some are so desperate to apply, falls apart a bit, but that's a conversation for another day.

The One Ring

For: At long last, The One Ring

is banned in Modern. It may be on its way to banning in Commander, too! Protection for a turn cycle is shockingly relevant, being part of the reason that cards such as Teferi's Protection
 have gained widespread popularity, but the real good part here is the card draw. Life loss has never been a good deterrent for powerful effects in EDH (see: banned Mana Crypt
, again) and The One Ring
 lets people trade their life for truly explosive card draw - one, two, three, four cards a turn, just like that. Add in copious untapping effects or any other forms of building around it, and it's egregious in no time. Colorless mana is a dime a dozen, anyone can play this, and it instantly changes the game it hits the table and continues over the next several turns. Have I mentioned that it's indestructible yet?

Against: The One Ring

is powerful, yes, but it does actually have real downside: its life loss adds up quickly vs. any aggressive deck. If we were attacking each other more, chipping away at life totals, The One Ring
 would feel more dangerous. However, that usually isn't the case in Commander games, which is fine. There isn't much of an argument to be made here, I'm afraid.

Trinisphere

For: Trinisphere

makes games miserable, slowing them to a complete crawl. A good environment for nice and fun games this does not create, and it's not even an interesting type of Stax effect, either. Every spell suddenly costing a minimum of three mana makes the game unplayable, and if the controlling player can't even leverage it by turning it off (via tapping), it will create the world's longest game. A weird insurance where it isn't even "the game's over but not technically" over, Trinisphere
 incentives the worst people to create a non-fun game for no reason.

Against: Trinisphere

creates player removal. Let the hatred flow through you. You want the Trinisphere
 player to stop playing Magic. You don't need the Game Changer list to tell you that. It's simple.

Lands:

Big Mana Lands (Serra's Sanctum
, Gaea's Cradle
, Ancient Tomb
)

Another category of cards that I'm lumping together here: all three are lands that punch well above their weight in mana making production, though Ancient Tomb

seems more innocuous than the other two.

For: Cheating on mana remains one of the most game breaking things you can do in Commander, and these lands incentivize building around them in one way or another. They reward your entire design aiming towards maximizing your value from these lands, from decisions as small as making Talismans better in Ancient Tomb

decks to bumping your creature count and running specific untap effects you never would otherwise with Gaea's Cradle
. Very definition of the type of stuff one would want to see on the game changer list.

Against: Giving players incentive to build around powerful effects is not necessarily bad; Cradle and Sanctum are two of the most iconic lands in EDH history for good reason. They reward smart deckbuilding and also incidentally incentivize lower-color Commander decks as well, as using large gluts of single-color mana is difficult to do in three-plus color-identity decks.

Glacial Chasm

For: Players actively removing themselves from a game is pretty boring. Glacial Chasm

, while having a high life cost over time, removes you from combat for turns in a row, while also preventing any other kind of damage. This aligns well with some of the other stated goals of the bracket system in the realms where we're worried about game changers, Glacial Chasm
 stops our main win condition since combos are off the table - just killing.

Against: Glacial Chasm

is a land that makes people not be able to attack you and prevents damage done to you. It also puts you down one land when it enters the battlefield. It costs 12 life over three turns and 20 over four turns. It doesn't tap for any mana. Mildly frustrating in certain situations for sure - especially if one does go all in on abusing it, but if my opponents put this into play, I'm celebrating.

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

For: The only thing more annoying than not being able to attack your opponent or having to pay an extra mana for all of your spells is to have to pay an extra mana for every creature you want to keep around... on every one of your upkeeps. Rancid, rancid gameplay patterns that should be kept far, far away from the average EDH game.

Against: I raise an argument I used several times in Part 1 - in practicality, the Game Changer list has a very limited number of slots on it, as players need to be able to easily view and remember it while deckbuilding and even while playing. There is nothing that I feel more strongly than this: placing an extremely niche, non-mana-producing land that costs, on the lower end of things, two thousand dollars is the definition of a waste of a slot. Hopefully it's making a slow transition to the ban list, because that's where this ancient design mistake belongs. If it won't be there, take it off the list and we can side eye anyone who chooses to play it anyways.

Thank you for reading both this and part 1! I do think by the end I realized that I, at least in part, have a flawed premise. Some of these cards simply don't have a good reason to not be on the list, and this was a bit restrictive to play with. Furthermore, as many of you raised in the comments on my first piece, not only does this obviousness detract from the rest of the thoughts. As Stephen Bahl pointed out, I'm only able to make an attempt at a paper thin argument for many and realistically only had strong thoughts about 15 or so. I also, too often, I think, approached the Game Changer list as something of a ban list (this is, really, how it exists in my head) when in reality it is a list of cards that have a large effect on a game or on a larger deck in general, and largely only for consideration within a specific range of the bracket system, which itself is in beta and only applies to a specific subsection of EDH play.

Regardless, it was a fascinating, challenging, and stretching exercise (all 6,800 words of it) for me to partake in and I truly hope you enjoyed thinking - and exploring the deficiencies of my premise - along with me!

 

Callahan Jones

Callahan Jones

Callahan Jones is a long time Commander player who mostly dabbles in cEDH these days. Formally a member of the Playing with Power cEDH content team, now you can find him talking about Magic and Gamecubes on Twitter.