The fastest banned commanders in Duel commander history

New sets are among the most exciting things for mtg players. These sets always contain atleast a few powerful cards but there have been instances where a new commander proved too broken. I have looked at each of the commanders currently found in the ban list and found out which ones were banned the fastest. This shows that some cards are really not as equally powerful as everything else...

Emry, Lurker of the Loch (5 weeks)
Urza, Lord High Artificer

Emry and Urza are both similar commanders. Both are mono blue legendaries that synergise really well with artifacts.

 Throne of Eldraine is known as one of the most powerful sets of all time and Emry was one of the cards in it. As she has basicly affinity for artifacts she could come down very early in the game. This allowed her to nearly ignore commander tax which proved quite problematic. On top of that she had graveyard synergies and gave you card advantage thanks to her second ability. Any of your artifacts could be replayed to get even more value out of them.

Urza, Lord High Artificer was released a few months before and also ended up on the ban list quite quickly. Instead of coming down endlessly he came down once a generated a ton of value and mana. Giving you a giant body on top of all that mana was just insane. He even allowed you to use that mana quite well because of his ability, which yet again gave you card advantage. Both of these commanders quickly took over the competitive scene which forced a ban only a little longer than a month after their release. 

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer (5 weeks)

Ragavan is one hell of a one-drop. He is one of the best creatures to play on the first turn of the game as he does pretty much everything an aggro deck wants. Now imagine that you have that turn 1 play every game. All of the other options for a mono red commander were outclasses because Ragavan gave you everything. Extra mana, more cards, disruption on top of an aggresive body. 

This forced your opponent to have an immediate answer or you would quickly run away with the game as he simply provided that much value. These decks could also play less one drops as they had a guarantied turn 1 play which improved their draws throughout the game quite substantialy. For all of this, he got banned as a commander but remained legal in the format for a few more months causing mayhem in any aggresive/tempo deck.

Edgar Markov (1 month)

Now we have reached the truly broken commanders. Allegiance is a really powerful mechanic designed for commander and was never meant to be played in a 1v1 format. He was broken enough in commander but his power reached a new level in duel commander. 

Having a commander that gave you access to the best aggro colours the format has to offer and a powerful passive ability is insanely good. You didn't even have to play Edgar to get the value out of him, you just had to have a deck filled with vampires. All of them synergise together well and this made the deck really hard to deal with as you couldn't really interact with the passive ability of Edgar. This caused the metagame to warp completely around him and players were forced to play either decks that countered him or Edgar Markov himself. After about a month of this madness he got quickly banned as a commander and will hopefully never return again.

Prime Speaker Vannifar (2 weeks)

And the title of the fastest banned commander goes to Prime Speaker Vannifar bein banned only 2 weeks after release. Vannifar was basicly a tutor in the command zone which made it quite the combo commander. Each turn you could tutor out pretty much any creature you needed at the moment and you had a whole toolbox of them. Access to both blue and green meant that you had plenty of counterspells and protection spells to secure your combo.

Vannifar was banned so quickly that she was registered in only 3 tournaments, winning two of them and top 8-ing the third. The deck would be able to easily adapt to the current metagame as you could just search out the perfect card against your opponent. Vannifar was a very high level card and proved too good for the format resulting in one of the fastest bans in duel commander history.

Author: Tomas Solovic

Date: 15th November, 2023