Management of the popular Magic: The Gathering format, Commander, moves to a new master.
The format, which has been under the purview of the Commander Rules Committee up until now, has been taken under the care of the collectible card game's publisher, Wizards of the Coast.
This is in light of the recent card bans to the format and the backlash and personal attacks upon Committee members since.
"No matter how you feel about something in Magic, it is never appropriate to threaten somebody," says the company in the official announcement. "Everyone at Wizards of the Coast is united on this front—we will not hesitate to take action against individuals who threaten to harm community members or employees."
The company continues, stating that "this week has also demonstrated the truly monumental task that faced the Commander Rules Committee. The Commander RC is made up of five talented, caring individuals, all with other jobs and lives which they must balance with managing the most popular format in Magic. It results in incredible amounts of work, time spent deliberating, and exposure to the public."
Despite the change in management of the Commander format, WotC says that the members of the Commander Rules Committee will still have a say in the format.
"...the vision for a social format will not change," the company states. "We've had some preliminary conversations already about what we would like to accomplish and have some ideas we will be rolling out together in the months to come."
The change has met with some criticism amongst players and MTG content creators alike.
"We're moving from a RC whose primary concern is the health of the format (whether you agree with their decisions or not) to an RC whose primary concern is making money," says Tomer Abramovici of MTGGoldfish's Budget Commander.
Popular Magic streamer and YouTuber, Saffron Olive (also of MTGGoldfish) agrees, stating: "I disagreed with the Commander RC quite often, but I never doubted that they were trying to do what they thought best for the format. I don't have this same confidence with Wizards in charge. Their job is to make money. Period."
Still, changes are already occurring. This includes a change in the structure of how a deck is rated in terms of power level.
"Here's the idea: There are four power brackets, and every Commander deck can be placed in one of those brackets by examining the cards and combinations in your deck and comparing them to lists we'll need community help to create," WotC explains. "You can imagine bracket one is the baseline of an average preconstructed deck or below and bracket four is high power. For the lower tiers, we may lean on a mixture of cards and a description of how the deck functions, and the higher tiers are likely defined by more explicit lists of cards."
It's a plan that's being met with some skepticism amongst players.
"It's interesting, but I have some doubts about how well it will work since so many cards depend on context," says Reddit user xahhfink6. "Hell... Is every deck just technically a 4 because they're playing the best fast mana card in the format (sol ring)?"
LoonyLucy, a gaming YouTuber has her own thoughts: "There's SO many possible bad outcomes here but I'm going to try and stay positive about it. Though I do hope they don't try to impose like..."formats" upon commander with these brackets, that sounds like a bad time"
Others, though, have a different outlook.
"Interesting bracketing concept here but from what I've understood from hinting in the latest RC announcement, this is what the RC was already working on for the future of the format," says Cal Jones of the Herald's Horn podcast.
As for the Commander ban list, the company says they have no plans to address or adjust it at this time.
"We will not ban additional cards as part of this evaluation," they state. "While discussion of the banned list started this, immediate changes to the list are not our priority."
To learn more about the Commander format, visit the Wizards of the Coast website.
