Picking Up The Pieces: The Most Important Month In History -TopDeck.gg Newsletter

Welcome to the TopDeck newsletter! Read on for upcoming events, a breakdown of the bombshell Commander news including bans and leadership changes, and an early look at the new cEDH metagame with professional cEDH grinder and coach Memo.

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The Upheaval

By Drake Sasser

It would not be an understatement to say that September 2024 may go down in history as the most monumental month for Commander ever. The month started fairly quietly, but with the typical discussions around the latest set release, Duskmourn: House of Horror but all of that was quickly forgotten when the Rules Committee for the Commander format posted their quarterly announcement on their website and across the various social media platforms.

Dockside Extortionist is banned.

Jeweled Lotus is banned.

Mana Crypt is banned.

Nadu, Winged Wisdom is banned.

This announcement shocked the Magic world. Commander players, haters, and onlookers alike engaged in heated discussions about everything from the specific cards chosen to be banned, the timing of the bans, the financial impact of the bans and everything in between. Many cEDH players used their platforms to voice mixed opinions ranging from optimism to extreme skepticism, but the casual players are where the weight of the bans were felt the hardest.

While a Nadu ban is low impact, and given its progressive bannings in other formats doesn't really come as a surprise. The other three cards banned were both very surprising bans to make given their longevity in the format and very expensive, with prices over $80 for the cheapest version of the cheapest card. This left casual players feeling soured, as sets like The Lost Caverns of Ixalan and Commander Masters had featured all of the freshly banned fast mana cards as chase cards for the sets within the last calendar year. Many players had finally scooped up copies of these format pillars, and felt safe in their hefty investments due to the RC’s typical cadence of inaction. Players felt so blindsided and outraged, the emotions boiled over and things quickly got out of hand.

The End of An Era

With emotions running high, animosity towards RC and the way they managed the format reached a deluge, and when threats started to roll in towards the RC members themselves, both Wizards of the Coast and the RC decided they had to do something. Thus the future of Commander took a dramatic turn, as WOTC and RC both announced that they had decided the format would instead be managed by WOTC themselves for the foreseeable future.

This change represents a massive shift in direction for Commander as a format, and speculation around the future of the format was immediately renewed. Some players began to speculate on cards on the banned list, causing price spikes across the board for such cards, while others speculated that Commander design mistakes, such as the freshly banned Jeweled Lotus which no longer was allowed to make useable mana in any format, were going to become even more common with WOTC in charge.

Whatever your belief is about the bans and the change in management for the format one thing is for sure: anything is possible. As players wait with bated breath for the next development for Commander, the September 2024 banned list remains in effect for the time being and will be in effect for all Topdeck.gg events going forward. That means all 320 players registered for The Boil 2 in November will be battling without their Mana Crypts, Docksides, and Jeweled Lotuses. How will this impact cEDH? That remains to be seen, but keep reading for a first look from the cEDH German juggernaut himself - Memo.

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A First Look at cEDH After The Bans

By Memo

The Aftermath

Will our rounds end on turn 2? Or will each round go to overtime and end in a draw?

My friends and I asked ourselves these and more questions last Saturday on our way to BallonCon 3 in Landsberg am Lech, Germany. It was the first 100+ person cEDH tournament since the latest bans shook the metagame to its core.

120 players registered for the tournament, in the end only 113 showed up. Nothing that would have fallen out of the norm and calls for a boycott of the new banlist were largely absent in the relevant German servers leading up to this event.

Since I did not have a great run, at least partly because of my suboptimal deck choice, I decided to drop from the tournament after the fourth round with a record of 3 draws and a loss.

After the abrupt end of the fifth round, I used the time to look around the tournament and exchange ideas with other players.

No More Bird To Bolt?

While conversing with the other competitors, I talked to a couple of former Nadu players and asked them about their feelings and thoughts about the bans. The players I spoke to agreed that the Nadu ban was justified. Although most of them didn’t think Nadu was busted from a power level perspective, they are aware of the issue of non deterministic storm turns that sometimes didn’t end in a win.

With Nadu no longer in the metagame picture, I was curious how the overall metagame breakdown for this event would look. According to the edhtop16 meta breakdown of the event, Tymna/Kraum was still the most played deck at this event with 12 entries. It was closely followed by Kinnan with 11 entries, which confirmed my suspicions about Kinnan seeing more play. Most Kinnan decks are designed to grind with engines like Seedborn Muse or slow down the game with haymakers like Void Winnower. This works especially good in a slower meta, where Kinnan’s artifact ramp doesn’t pale in comparison to a powerful Dockside Extortionist play.

Stax is Dead – Long Live Stax?

Also because of the resurgence of Magda (8 entries, 4 of them made top16!) I saw far more Blood Moon effects. With no Dockside Extortionist, you cannot break parity with Moon effects easily anymore. To all my fellow 5 color enjoyers, buckle up. We might be in for a long ride.

The absence of the need to have dockside in the 99 in order to keep up with the best decks lead to a refreshing revival of sans-red decks as well (48 of 113 at the BallonCon were sans-red), also making Blood Moon an even more appealing option.

Be it Yuriko, Ukkima Food Chain or the new Master of Keys – Dimir, Sultai and Esper decks looked more popular than ever.

How to Move Forward

In summary, the majority of the rounds I played or watched myself had one of two different outcomes: They were either over on turn 2 due to a turbo deck forcing early win attempts with plays involving Necropotence or Ad Nauseam, or went to overtime due to being an absolute grindfest. I haven’t seen too many specific new cards being responsible for slower games, but I will shout out the Tevesh / Rograkh turbo stax players being excited about polymorphing Valgavoth, Terror Eater into play as a new contributor.

Whether this is a good or bad development remains to be seen. I am personally happy about the changes and very excited to see how the format will evolve. I don’t think the recent changes outright killed any archetype, which is a good thing. Turbo strategies are at least as strong as midrange plans and stax will always have a place in the meta. Sounds healthy to me!

Especially with the upcoming Boil 2 on November 9th (320 players!) in mind, the tension is rising. Will players sleeve up Magda and try to overcome the table with a “Moon stompy” strategy? Or will they rely on what worked in the past and settle on the Grixis “storm” shells?

It will be very interesting to see whether the American cEDH players will take some of these European developments into consideration for their own deck building approach or take a completely different route entirely?

I am very excited for the next couple of months!

With over 100,000 games played on Topdeck.gg software to date, we have implemented an Elo rating system for Commander available to all users of Topdeck! If you have played at least 10 games in events run on Topdeck with over 30 players, you will appear on the Elo Leaderboard. The leaderboard is updated weekly, and features the greatest talent in cEDH at the top. Want so see where you currently rank? Check your rating now!

Exclusive Playmat Art Sneak Preview

While The Boil 2, our next cEDH 10k at Charlie’s Collectible Show from Nov. 9-10, is currently sold out, keep a close eye out for refunded tickets as the event approaches!
Here is a sneak preview of the playmat artwork for the event as it nears completion. Want to preorder the playmat right now? Click the link below for an exclusive early access to preorder, available only to newsletter subscribers! Only available while supplies last.