Should we ban Yoshimaru yet again?...

Yoshimaru has been a powerful staple of the duel commander metagame for the past few months. He has been banned once, is it finally time to ban him yet again? In this article I want to talk about the reasons why he might end up on the banlist and also reasons not to. Is he really that problematic, and should we expect him to be included in the next ban/restricted update in a few weeks?

Metagame dominance

It's been a year since Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful was freed from the duel commander banlist in the september of 2022. He has dominated the metagame ever since. These days, he is the most popular commander along with Aragorn, King of Gondor. Yoshimaru is often paired with Bruse Tarl in a boros build of the deck or with Tana which also adds green to the deck.

The most powerful thing is that Yoshimaru is a 1-drop meaning he will often come down on the very first turn of the game. His ability to scale by playing any legendary permanent, icluding some lands, makes him a must answer threat because he will soon overpower your creatures. As wotc continues to print more cheap legendary permanents, Yoshimaru will only become more powerful and problematic as time goes on...

On the banlist yet again?

Thanks to this fact, many players want this dog to be on the banlist once again. We can see truly how powerful the deck can be as it took 3 consecutive hits in terms of bans in the span of just the last few months. Mox Amber, Comet, Stellar Pup and Flawless Maneuver all ended up on the banlist. The deck replaced these cards rather quickly thanks to the release of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth which brought with it some really powerful cards for the deck. Merry, Esquire of Rohan, Flowering of the White Tree and Forth Eorlingas! and even the new legendary lands found a home in Yoshimaru decks.

TukTukWho'sThere, the DC regional coordinator for Czechia, has said during his stream that the comitee has their eyes on Yoshimaru even before the realase of LotR. He agreed that Yoshimaru could be quite a problematic card in the future but the comitee didn't choose to ban him just yet. It is currently unknown whether the comitee is for or against the ban.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I don't think that we will see the ban of Yoshimaru that soon. He has been the most popular deck for a while but he's been dominating only mostly smaller local tournaments. This could mean that the comitee doesn't really want to put him on the banlist as much as past banned commanders. Although he could become quite problematic in the future he isn't that much better than other commanders in the format right now so I would be surprised to see him get banned. But who knows, meaby the comitee will surprise us?...

Author: Tomas Solovic
Date: September 10th, 2023