Say Goodbye to Drannith Magistrate in cEDH
Drannith Magistrate has long been the premier stax effect in cEDH.
Naturally parity-breaking with no build-around requirement, this controlling board presence is hard to deal with on the stack (it's a creature, after all), readily deployable (two mana isn't a terribly significant investment, especially if only one of which is colored), and deals with the format's namesake cards (among others): commanders. Despite all these upsides, I'm here to tell you, against all the former stax-playing longing in my heart, that Drannith Magistrate needs to go.
Stop Worrying About Commanders
With Jeweled Lotus gone, the role of commanders in cEDH has shifted substantially. Long gone are the days of impactful four-mana value plays coming out of the command zone. Instead, commanders primarily occupy one of three slots: color-fixing (Silas Renn, Seeker Adept), outlets (Thrasios, Triton Hero), and immediate value (Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh).
These three roles already existed before Jeweled Lotus was banned, but they were not as all-consuming as they are now. Instead, powerful build-around commanders that players were eager to consistently cast, game after game, supported the fourth pillar of cEDH's decklists.
With Jeweled Lotus gone, the important commanders are either those which aren't cast, don't need to be cast, or can be cast near-immediately. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is certainly a deck built around abusing its commander, but the reason it can get away with that is because Kinnan usually comes down turn two, if not turn one.
Simply put, the commanders that matter now are exactly those which already surpass Drannith Magistrate. Kinnan will have access to the commander by two every game, while even the most dedicated of stax players will still only see Drannith Magistrate in a handful of openers. When the best commander-centric deck plays a commander that costs two mana, it doesn't make sense to try and race it with another two-mana lock piece.
This logic can be more broadly extended to the rest of cEDH's more expensive, impactful commanders. As the mana value of a commander goes up, so too does the likelihood that Drannith Magistrate will be impactful against it. Evaluating things this way, commanders really need to be a minimum of about four mana for Drannith Magistrate to consistently be useful, as this presents the sequencing flexibility necessary to see Drannith outside of your opening hand and still cast it before an opposing commander has been played.
Looking at top tournament results now, however, a stark trend emerges: the best commanders (that players want to cast) cost three mana or less. Kraum, yesteryear's value engine, has now moved to the back burner where it serves a role primarily as a color-fixer, a la Silas, as has Atraxa, Grand Unifier been largely replaced by Tymna and Thrasios.
Underworld Breach's Dominance is Over
Alright, on from one banned card to another. To sum things up bluntly, Dockside Extortionist got banned, red got significantly worse overall as a result, and now you don't see Underworld Breach nearly as much. Blue Farm's dominance was knocked down, leaving RogSi to stand tall as the standard-bearer for red across cEDH. Now, the best deck in the format plays green instead of red, further crowding out Underworld Breach from the top tables.
Other than our aforementioned command zone threats (and the current lack thereof), Underworld Breach existed as the primary antagonist which Drannith Magistrate sought to save us from. Notably, however, this balance was kept when slower decks played red across cEDH, and as such Underworld Breach could be played at much later points in the game. Nowadays, since RogSi serves as both the premier and near-lone dedicated red deck in cEDH's upper tiers, it means that Underworld Breach isn't just getting cast less often, but when it is getting cast it is seeing play earlier on average.
If only one deck at the table is playing red, and that deck is trying to win by turn two, then the same logic from our Kinnan problem can be ported directly over here. Drannith Magistrate may be sufficiently costed so as to be an effective answer, but the fact that it only works preemptively - no flash here - means that it finds itself in the precarious position of trying to out-turbo the turbo deck. Sure, not every game will see the RogSi player jamming on turn one or two, but that's what the deck is primed to do, so it seems unwise to try and depend on Drannith Magistrate when the card is in no way designed to keep up.
Longer Games, More Dead Draws
Finally, we come to a broader issue with cEDH's meta right now: the length of games. Competitive Commander is a much more drawn-out format right now, and that means players are drawing more cards on average. This is great for players that want to play long, interactive games, but it also means that the likelihood of drawing a "dead" card - one which is useless in a given scenario - is significantly higher. Yes, you will see more information over the course of a game, but if some of that information could potentially be null, then the odds of that null occurrence will similarly rise.
Drannith Magistrate can be a great card to see in your opening hand. It can even be a good turn one draw. Depending on your seat order, it's also a fine card on turn two. After this, however, the card's performance plummets substantially; we saw this first when it came to stopping Kinnan, then again when it came to dealing with Underworld Breach. This means that, for the majority of our now-longer cEDH games, Drannith Magistrate represents a dead draw.
To clarify, this isn't just because the threats are faster. If cEDH's threats were faster and the format was overall faster, then the dead draw problem wouldn't matter nearly as much because there wouldn't be more turns coming during which drawing Drannith Magistrate would interrupt your resource accrual. But alas, games go long, and Drannith can only answer the problems of the first turn or two, meaning that there is plenty of time left for it to pop up off the top of your deck and ruin the flow of your gameplan.
Wrap Up
Drannith Magistrate is a powerful card, there's no doubt about that. For a long time, it served a role across non-stax cEDH decks as the lone lock piece in the main deck, keeping track of some of the format's scariest and most common threats. Those days are gone, however, and now Drannith Magistrate is just too slow to keep up. I love this card, but boy, oh boy, does my The Master of Keys deck feel better without it.