The impact of the May 2023 ban announcement on Duel commander

On the 29th of May 2023 Duel commander got one of the most impactful and controversial ban announcements in the recent years, banning 4 popular cards. The some powerful decks got banned and many others were hurt and it will certaintly severly change the metagame. Let's look at the bans and their impact on duel commander...

The ban of Dihada, Binder of Wills is probably the most impactful ban from this announcement. She wasn't that great at the time of her release back in dominaria united, but as the lists got more and more refined, she became a real contender in the metagame even being the most popular commander for a short while.

As time went on it became obvious that Dihada was a problem. She allowed you to play both the classic "reanimator" playstyle and also play as a control deck while giving you access to three colors. Graveyard hate as a usual counter suddenly didn't work because Dihada could ramp you to those big creatures even without reanimating them. The deck also ran the powerful card Underworld Breach which gave the gameplan of the deck minimal drawback and she was eventually deemed too strong for the format.

Dihada was one of the most powerful decks in the metagame at the time of her ban and this change will quite heavily impact meta. It could give other "reanimator" commanders a time to shine and make some decks which had a poor matchup against her more viable again.

This is probably the most controversial change from this announcement. Hogaak was a pretty good aggro deck for the last few years but he was never the best aggro deck to play even before Dihada got printed.

One of Hogaak's strengths was that he had a great matchup against most if not all aggro decks and could still have a good winrate against control lists thanks to his ability to "revive" himself from the graveyard. The committee feared that he would become the best deck in the format with Dihada gone and ruin the diversity of aggro decks so they decided to preemptively ban him from duel commander completely. Many players don't agree with this change as this also strongly hurts Grist, which is yet another popular golgari commander.

The ban of Hogaak helps pretty much any aggro deck in the format as he had a great matchup against them. The only loser from this change is of course Grist, we should see the deck decline a bit in popularity as Hogaak was an important card in the deck.

Yet another controversial and surprising change is the ban of Comet, Stellar Pup. Comet wasn't really that powerful of a card but he still got played in some decks such as Yoshimaru or Niv-Mizzet, Reborn. 

Comet is a very difficult card to evaluate thanks to the random nature of the card. Depending on your luck with dice rolls he could be very underwhelming or completely carry the whole game. The game being decided on randomness isn't really the best thing and players hate to lose because of it. Still, people didn't really mind the existence of Comet in the format and it certainly wasn't a broken card by any means.

His ban doesn't really impact the meta on any level. It only nerfs the before-mentioned decks- Yoshi and Niv-Mizzet, Reborn, but it can be easily replaced by another powerful card or planeswalker. This change doesn't hurt the decks a lot and they should still see the same levels of play as before the announcement even without Comet, Stellar Pup.

Mox Amber was the last of the mox cards legal in duel commander. Mox Amber has always been a card debated by many as it enabled decks to have explosive starts if they had it in their opening hand.

With the rise of cheap and powerful commanders such as Yoshimaru and others, the power level of Mox Amber has been put into the spotlight. It allowed decks to have really quick starts and the games tended to be very one-sided as it allowed you to accelerate mana for free even on turn 1. Mox Amber was a popular card in quite a few decks such as Yoshimaru, Sai and even Light-Paws. The ban of it prevents these commanders from having an explosive start which the opponent won't have an answer to and makes the format overall more healthy. It would only become more and more powerful as cheap legendary creatures get printed so it's probably a good call...

Author: Tomas Solovic

Prices are from the 1st of June, 2023