Magic: The Gathering’s Commander Bans Have Me Worried About Making My Ideal Deck

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Magic: The Gathering's Commander Bans Have Me Worried About Making My Ideal Deck

Key Takeaways

  • MTG’s Commander format offers endless deck possibilities, but recent bans and controversies may impact card choices and gameplay.
  • Flubs, The Fool is a unique Temur Commander with the potential for infinite combos, leading to concerns about monopolizing time in games.
  • The ban of Nadu sets a precedent for future Commander bans, raising uncertainty about whether investing in specific decks is worth the risk.

I’ve been playing Magic: The Gathering since I was a kid, and let me tell you, it’s like my second language! But recently, I’ve found myself in a bit of a pickle with this new card, Flubs, The Fool. It’s not every day you fall in love with a card that could potentially be banned!

During my teenage years, I was serious about playing Magic: The Gathering. Once, at a major tournament, I played for an uninterrupted four days, even dreaming of mulligans and flooded lands in my sleep. It was then that I realized I was giving up too much of my mental health to the game, so I quit a couple of days afterwards. The adorable Bloombury expansion brought me back to the game fifteen years later, and tinkering with Commander decks reeled me in again.

Commander is a fantastic format – I absolutely love the endless possibilities with each deck, though there’s no chance you’ll see me spending $850 on a Mox Diamond to slightly improve my builds, I’m sorry. Speaking of expensive cards, let’s just address the elephant in the room: MTG‘s Commander bans. Some people love them, some people hate them, but the point is that the last wave of bans was extremely controversial and sparked a chain reaction that led to the Commander Rules Committee quitting and dissolving within WotC. In the aftermath, I’m worrying over whether I should just “go for it” and make my ideal Magic: The Gathering Commander deck with Flubs, The Fool at the helm or make a different deck.

MTG’s Commander Bans Spell Bad News For Flubs, The Fool After Nadu, Winged Wisdom’s Fate

Magic: The Gathering May Ban More Time-Monopolizing Cards in Commander in The Future

To begin with, what makes Flubs an excellent choice as a Commander in MTG? I’ll outline a couple of key factors, but let me emphasize that there are several others:

  • I love frogs, to the point I have two frog tattoos if you count a frog Pokemon among them
  • I adore the idea of winning by playing lands and casting your whole deck
  • Personality-wise, I am very much Gruul with a splash of Blue, and Flubs is a Temur Commander

If you haven’t had the opportunity to witness it yet, Flubs, The Fool is an unusual commander that debuted with the Bloomburrow expansion in Magic: The Gathering. I affectionately call it Flubsy. It costs 1 Red, 1 Blue, and 1 Green mana and transforms into a 0/5 frog. On your turn, you can add an extra land to your battlefield, but then Flubsy might interfere with your card draw, either by causing a hiccup in your deck or perhaps a froggy-like disruption. When you don’t have any cards in hand, Flubsy forces you to draw a card every time you play a land or cast a spell. If your hand is already full, however, you must discard a card instead.

This goofy frog-like character essentially functions as a “play what you sketch” Temur leader, allowing for rapid mana accumulation followed by infinite possibilities using Landfall activations or alternative win conditions. The connection between MTG’s Commander bans and Flubs might seem puzzling at first, but the original article clarifies the ban of significant Commander staples like Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Notably, Nadu was outlawed due to its domination of time during a Commander game, in addition to other reasons.

In this situation, Flubsy behaves quite similarly to Nadu, focusing solely on playing as many cards as possible during each turn until no more can be played. Notably, it features a mechanism that allows you to discard all your cards, which might lead to a situation where you play through your entire deck consecutively from the top. This could result in endless turn combos with Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait combined with Walk the Aeons, Mystic Sanctuary, and Conduit of Worlds, or perhaps a Landfall strategy using Scute Swarm, Tireless Provisioner, and Perilous Forays in Magic: The Gathering’s Commander decks. To put it simply, Flubsy is not here to mess around; it’s all business.

The Gathering (MTG) states that the way Nadu wins is problematic because it involves lengthy, non-deterministic sequences that can’t be skipped and may eventually end without resolution. This issue arises when players are forced to spend an excessive amount of time during the game due to these decks. Decks containing Nadu unintentionally can still lead to a situation where one player dominates the entire game. Essentially, this is similar to the playstyle of Flubs, The Fool.

Should Flubs, The Fool Be Banned in Magic: The Gathering After Nadu?

Is it appropriate to consider banning the card “Flubs, The Fool” due to its potential for dominating gameplay? While I might not be the best person to ask given my possible bias, I believe establishing a ban for cards that monopolize table time could lead to calls for banning many widely-used picks. The recent ban of Nadu, the Guardian of the First Day has set a precedent for commanders that take up too much attention during gameplay, and it’s worth contemplating which other cards might share similar characteristics or pose potential issues. Since Flubs is still relatively new, any decision to ban it by Wizards of the Coast’s new Commander committee would likely not be implemented immediately.

Just like Flubs, Nadu has the ability to create an endless series of combinations in various forms, and both rely on a non-deterministic strategy, with Nadu primarily relying on drawing from its deck for the majority of its gameplay.

However, the possibility is there, and there wouldn’t be much to argue about the reasoning when Nadu was banned on the exact same grounds. Sure, they play differently and have different win conditions, and Nadu was arguably less limited because Simic can be splashed into more decks than Temur in terms of Magic: The Gathering colors. Still, Flubsy can and will take a lot of time to play some turns where it allows you to have over 20 lands on the field and play pretty much anything from your deck.

Should I take the chance and invest in a deck I adore, knowing it might get damaged by future bans due to its key component becoming obsolete? While I’m drawn to it, I also believe it would be wiser to acquire a Flubs replica for my home instead, and construct a different deck. It’s understandable that many players are finding it difficult to make a decision with the recent bans. Even though future Magic: The Gathering sets or Commander updates could potentially benefit many players, it’s also tough not to suspect that cards such as Mana Vault might be next in line for a ban. Given the striking resemblance between Flubs’ and Nadu’s situations, it seems prudent not to overlook this issue.

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2024-10-06 13:23