Word broke last week that Wizards of the Coast is gathering the Commander format panel for a high-level, in-person summit at HQ next month to evaluate the state of the format. No bans were announced just yet (meaning your Sol Ring is safe for another four weeks) but the brain trust is finally getting together in the same room to talk about what’s working, what’s broken, and what needs fixing.
While the design team will undoubtedly focus on sensible, high-level format health, I have put together my own wishlist of items that urgently need to be added to that meeting’s agenda.
Item 1: Mandating a Maximum 45-Second Timer on Turn One Sensei’s Divining Top
Look, we all respect the art of micro-managing the top three cards of your library. What we don’t respect is watching a player fall into a deep, meditative trance on Turn 1 while three other people at the table contemplate their life choices. If you activate Top at the end of every single opponent’s turn, you should be legally required to pass a breathalyser test for decision paralysis or forfeit a life point for every 30 seconds of awkward silence.
Item 2: Banning “Did You Pay the One?”
We aren’t asking to ban Rhystic Study itself; we know blue players would riot, and we don’t have the riot gear for that. We just want to ban the verbal phrase “Did you pay the one?” or “Do you pay the two?” for Smothering Tithe. Instead, we propose a system where the enchantment player must ring a small hotel desk bell or simply make direct, unblinking eye contact until you tap your mana. The passive-aggressive verbal tax is doing more damage to pod morale than the extra card draw ever could.
Item 3: A Formal Rule Change Regarding “Invisible” Dice
We’ve all played against the person whose dice collection looks like a set of clear glass marbles filled with liquid glitter. You ask how many floating mana they have or what their creature’s power is, and they point to a microscopic dice block that requires a jeweler’s loupe to read. The summit must mandate a high-visibility standard: if your counter dice cannot be read from across a standard kitchen table without leaning forward and squinting, those counters legally do not exist.
Item 4: Codifying the “Deck Box Tetris” Protocol
We’ve all watched a player spend seven full minutes trying to fit a double-sleeved 100-card Commander deck into a deck box clearly designed for a lean 60-card Standard list. The entire pod sits in tense, breathless silence while they use two hands and a knee to compress air out of dragon shields like a vacuum sealer. The committee needs to mandate standard deck box dimensions: if placing your commander back into its box requires the structural engineering skills of a NASA scientist, you must forfeit your turn 1 draw step as a penalty for unnecessary stress placed on the table.
Item 5: An Immediate Errata for Sol Ring’s Flavor Text
Since Sol Ring remains the undisputed king of Turn 1 blowouts, we need to update its official text box to reflect how it actually functions in casual pods:
New Text: “
: Add
. Automatically make yourself the Archenemy of the table before anyone has even played a land.”
It’s just more honest.
Item 6: Establishing an International Standard for Foils that Curl into Pringles
We’ve all cracked open a brand-new, ultra-premium Commander deck or Secret Lair drop only to watch the foil commander bend itself into a rigid arch within 45 minutes of exposure to room-temperature air. The panel needs to establish a maximum legal curvature angle for foil cards. If your commander looks less like a game piece and more like a miniature halfpipe for a Tech Deck, you shouldn’t be penalised for marked cards. No, you should be given a custom sleeve and a formal letter of apology from the printing press.
Item 7: Capping “Maths Is for Blockers” at 3 Minutes Per Attack Phase
Combat in Commander is supposed to be simple: swing big, turn cardboard sideways, deals damage. But when a modern token deck attacks with 47 1/1 Saprolings, a Cathars’ Crusade, three different anthem effects, and a creature that doubles counters whenever a token enters, the attack phase turns into an emergency calculus exam. We propose a hard three-minute cap on declaring combat damage. If you haven’t finished computing your board state’s variable algebra by the time the timer hits zero, all your creatures simply trip on a rock and deal zero damage out of sheer exhaustion.
Item 8: Banning the Phrase “I Don’t Have a Way to Win, I Just Want to See What Happens”
There is no sentence in the Commander lexicon that strikes more terror into the hearts of a pod than a Chaos or Group Hug player uttering these fateful words. Five turns later, everyone’s hands are swapped, lands are tapping for random colours, nonland permanents are bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong match, and nobody has drawn a playable card since 8:30 PM. The panel must rule that if you cast Possibility Storm, Grip of Chaos, or Scrambleverse, you must present a concrete, viable path to victory within two turns or be assigned to clean up the tables at the end of the night.
Item 9: Regulating the “Tutor and Pass” Honour Code
“I’ll just tutor for my land/removal spell and pass my turn to save time” is a noble, community-minded gesture. In practice, however, it inevitably leads to the player shuffling their 99-card deck for four full minutes, staring blankly into their library, completely forgetting whose turn it is, and then suddenly interrupting the active player with, “Wait, before you do that, I actually tutored for an instant speed answer three turns ago!” We need clear rules: if you “tutor and pass,” you forfeit your right to complain when the active player moves at a brisk pace while you’re mid-shuffle.
Item 10: Regulating the “Counterspell Stagger”
We all know the player who sits with two untapped blue mana sources, holds their hand of cards right in front of their nose, and intensely stares at every single player who tries to cast anything, even a turn-one Sol Ring or a basic Cultivate. They do a dramatic, two-minute theatrical pause for every spell cast around the table, only to ultimately say, “…It resolves.” The panel should rule that you get three “dramatic pauses” per game; if you fake out the table a fourth time without actually casting an instant, your untapped Islands automatically convert into Wastes.
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