cEDH Should Not Have its Own Banlist
When you sit down to play cEDH, what do you expect? Hallmark cards, the likes of Ad Nauseam, Underworld Breach, and Rhystic Study? Maybe you're anticipating entire decks: Bluefarm, RogSi, or Nadu, Winged Wisdom? Maybe you're sitting down with the expectation to play Commander but without any Rule Zero debate; that is, anything goes, no constraints, with everyone chasing victory.
It's that last point that draws me to today's topic, format regulation. Competitive Commander has had a pretty messy history when it comes to structured regulation, with the last cEDH-targeted intervention being the removal of Flash from the format back in 2020. More recently, members of the Commander Rules Committee have been explicit in their desire not to cater the format to cEDH players, leading to a group of competitive players and tournament organizers to band together in the hopes of creating a cEDH-target banlist variant; you can read the announcement here. While I'm hopeful about this endeavor, I have serious concerns about the philosophy underlying its existence, the damage it may cause, and its capacity to be effectively implemented.
cEDH is Commander
At its core, the thing that defines a format is its banlist. Say what you will about the management of that banlist and the cards that are or are not on it, but this list forms the central architecture of a format. In Commander, this central architecture is complicated by the existence of Rule Zero; that is, the format's tailoring towards a casual audience. In order to illustrate this tension, let's first take a comparative look at Modern.
Modern is not a casual format. Tournament circuits aren't the result of an emergent phenomena, but rather a calling card for players to join in. However, this doesn't mean that casual Modern doesn't exist. People play kitchen table Modern all the time, eagerly bringing fringe lists and homebrews into the fray in the hopes that maybe they can stand up to Energy or PrimeTime or any of the format's myriad allstars. Crucially, these less-competitive lists are no less Modern than any of the format's allstars. Sure, they never make a tournament top-eight, but they are free to exist within the marketplace of Modern ideas.
This logic works in the opposite direction for Commander. Tournaments are not the format's calling card, but rather a phenomena emergent from the subculture that is cEDH. The rules are the same, but the expectations are different. The majority of Commander players show up with aspirations of doing something personal in the course of their game, as opposed to chasing tournament glory. This naturally gives rise to a decentralized system of home rules (Rule Zero) that moderate the format and fill in the blanks which the Rules Committee has purposefully left.
The implementation of home moderation, however, is far from universal: for some, it's as simple as playing at the power level of the pod. For others, it's explicit banlist augmentations. When it comes to this latter class of moderation, however, I'd argue that the augmentation rises to the level of format-creation, as no longer can anyone hop in a pod blindfolded and expect to be playing a legal deck. In the competitive-focused Modern format, strict observance is placed on the banlist in order to assure universality of play. In the casual-focused Commander format, this observance is much more hazy, which creates a significant barrier to play.
Competitive Commander sought to remove this barrier, with the trade-off being the sacrifice of personal exploration. Yes, fringe decks abound. Yes, homebrews can be viable. Strictly speaking, however, this is not the optimal way to equip yourself for a game of cEDH. In this way, cEDH is the strictest observance of Commander as a format: the spirit of a game is completely changed, but the rules are fervently upheld. Under this logic, the creation of a separate cEDH banlist doesn't moderate competitive Commander: it separates it into its own format.
The High-Power Pipeline
Assuming that a banlist is implemented, I see two primary issues with this separation beyond simply the pedantry of the format vs. subformat argument. The first is player onboarding.
Like many other players, my transition from casual to competitive Commander was a gradual one. I did not see RogSi players hashing out counterwars or BlueFarm players landing Mystic Remoras and think to myself "wow, that's what I want to be doing." Instead, I slowly accelerated my favourite deck, added some combos, and the pods I played in gradually became more and more powerful. In this way, I eliminated the trepidation that comes with joining a new format for the first time and acclimated to the learning curve which comes with playing in the competitive mindset. One day, I found myself playing cEDH without even knowing it, and I never looked back.
Separating cEDH from casual Commander via the implementation of its own banlist has the very serious risk of preventing player onboarding. While cEDH has a well-defined meta, that meta isn't so gatekept as to prevent outside players from hopping into a pod with a high-power casual list and having a good time. Creating a separate banlist, especially for a competitive format, means strict observance of a different set of rules, one which may inadvertently keep many high-power casual players stuck in kitchentable pods.
In the course of hashing out this argument prior, I've heard one common refrain: the majority of changes would be unbans, with only incredibly problematic cards being banned. To this I have to respond that any change, no matter size nor the direction (ban vs. unban), is going to have substantial ripple effects. To illustrate this, I want to talk about two cards: Fastbond and Rhystic Study. First, Rhystic Study.
Rhystic Study is the elephant in the room when it comes to potential bans. It's already absent from most of casual Commander and is resoundingly disliked by the majority of cEDH players due to its capacity to extend gametime and prioritize inaction, so why would I be opposed to banning such a universally scrutinized card? It's a linchpin for many weaker decks, exactly the kind of homebrew high-power lists which players bring to their first cEDH games. Rhystic Study is a grandfathered-in staple of Blue that casual players would expect to find in the most powerful decks, and it is this expectation from which I believe its retention is warranted.
Now, I want to mention that my opinion on Rhystic Study isn't entirely positive: the card is problematic and easily game-warping, I'm aware of that. However, it is the pinnacle of the expectations of cEDH from an outside perspective: if you have only ever played high power and are cEDH-curious, then I'd be willing to wager that you'd be incredibly surprised to sit down to a game and the first thing you hear is that you have to take Rhystic Study - an unabashedly competitive card - out of your competitive deck. That's a jarring experience, one which most definitely cleaves the game you're about to play away from the realm of the Commander format and puts it squarely in its own box.
Moving to the unban perspective, it's here that we're again faced by another jarring experience except in the complete opposite direction. Now, cards you haven't played against aren't just legal: they're optimal. Fastbond has so far been discussed online as one of the first cards to be unbanned, and while I don't have an personal opposition to its inclusion in cEDH (I genuinely believe that green needs all the help it can get), I am opposed to the barrier which its inclusion would create. Instead of players being disjointed about which cards they need to leave at home, now players are disjointed in terms of what tools they can bring with them.
Cross Comparability
My second banlist implementation issue is primarily logistics-based, and that is the issue of tournament comparability.
Let me preface this by saying that I acknowledge all developments take time. I'm a gradualist at heart, so I can appreciate that an endeavor as complicated as regulating a format is going to be drawn out. cEDH didn't come to be overnight, it has been growing for years. Unfortunately, the gradualism of banlist adoption has real-time consequences, especially if it only partially succeeds.
In the course of creating a cEDH banlist, there will undoubtedly be a plethora of significant tournaments across the world which do not observe it. The current members of the newly minted cEDH Rules Committee include people with important roles in tournament organization, so the rollout of such a banlist shouldn't be incredibly disjointed, but it will nonetheless be limited and selective. So, in the meantime, I need to ask: will the tournaments not adopting it, those tournaments which follow the Commander banlist with strict obedience, be any less valid? Similarly, what of those tournaments which do follow the new banlist? It doesn't make much sense to compare the finals pod of a tournament with Rhystic Study banned in it against that of one in which it is legal; they are, by definition, different formats.
This brings me to my point on partial success.
I do not believe that cEDH is at a point right now where, if a significant portion of the playerbase decided to play with an alternate banlist, both populations would continue to grow at a healthy pace. Rather, I believe it would set both sides back. While this is in large part due to my earlier concerns about new-player onboarding, this is also simply because it would further segment the playerbase and force uncomfortable decisions.
I like playing Rhystic Study, and I play a deck that is inarguably better with it in it than without it. However, I know that if Rhystic Study is banned then I would probably have a better matchup in the broader meta as a whole, since opposing decks wield the weapon that is Rhystic Study much better than mine does. So, instead of simply following along with one banlist based off of how I feel, I'm instead incentivized to follow the banlist in which my banlist-compliant deck has a more competitive shot.
For each player, given that the cEDH pool as a whole is competitively oriented, they are now faced with this question. Are the proposed changes in my favour, or against? If against, obey the official banlist. If in favour, then follow the cEDH banlist.
This question falls away if the banlist either completely succeeds or completely fails, but not if it lands somewhere in between, a place which I believe it is destined to lie for a significant portion of its early days.
Wrap Up
cEDH needs attention. We need discussion and experimentation. However, just like with any experiment, we also need to be incredibly cautious and attentive to risk. When I think of cEDH, I think of high power constrained by a metagame. By implementing a separate banlist, that vision dissipates, players become disjointed, and we're back to Rule Zero. Is this risk worth it? In my eyes, the format is safe enough and enjoyable enough that the answer is no.
