I just bought a playset of the shock lands now that they are pretty low. Once khans is about to rotate, i'll grab the fetch lands i don't already have.
Do you think they will reprint the zenidkar fetch's in the next expansion? Or maybe modern masters 2?
No, my point wasn't clear. Using Deadeye Navigator doesn't dumb down the format; quite the opposite. It's a great Johnny card. The things it creates are magnificent.
Now, the problem is that if you investigate properly its applications, if you use Deadeye Navigator as food for brain, like Magic as a game is supposed to encourage (according to Rosewater, for one), it inevitably leads to degenerate board statuses. It is, as we say, "broken".
In order to accept it as a casual card, you have to dumb down the Navigator itself. You have to pretend you don't know what Palinchron or Acidic Slime do when paired with it. But a casual deck is not a dumb deck. We have great casual deckbuilders on PureMTGO, first among them CottonRhetoric. His decks are never dumb. They don't include cards that don't get fully exploited. If a card isn't suitable for a casual environment, he just doesn't include it.
This is the objection I and others make: if by definition Commander is a casual format, and if certain cards aren't allowed because they're "too much", then it's assumed that the Commander players will play all the remaining cards, including cards like Deadeye Navigator (which is just the example at hand here, one of many), in a way that won't lead to degenerate statuses, therefore in a way that stops short of investigating their full applications. (Leading to two categories of "problem cards": those that you're prevented from playing because they're banned, and those that you're not supposed to play "competitively", if at all).
Either that or they never experienced those degenerate statuses on a regular basis, because, by their own admission, they never put the format to the test of a competitive environment, which is where the issues come to light: when people try to win first and foremost, they'll do whatever the format allow them to. If you only test a car at 30 mph, you'll never know what happens when someone pushes it to 100.
The trouble with using 'Smart, creative deckbuilding' as a goal is that this is essentially an aesthetic distinction, according to the tastes of the players involved. One player's creative is another's derivative. It is entirely possible to get a group of commander players who consider Deadeye Navigator an interesting and useful part of the format, and that viewpoint is just as valid, for much the same reasons, as saying that using it is dumbing down the format.
When you're dealing with aesthetic factors, legislating for and around them is a fool's errand.
I'd say it's pretty rare that I am dead set against anything without caveat. 1v1 cmdr is definitely popular in some places and I can't blame people for enjoying it. In fact I want people to enjoy magic in as many ways as possible as long as it doesn't involve me actively not having fun.
I think you may have read too much into my opinion there. It is merely not my cup of tea. I am not all that fond of 2hg standard either really as the decks team mates come up with tend to be pretty broken for the format.
I dislike the way commander rules set up the 1v1 game where 100cs imho was somewhat balanced. Commander 1v1 is just something that rubs me the wrong way (hence my hyperbole.) Don't take it to heart.
Why is 1v1 commander an abomination while something like Two Headed Giant Standard is fine? Is there some reason why it's only acceptable to create alternate formats that use more players than usual rather than less?
I'm very aware that 1v1 commander is a format that plays nothing like multiplayer commander. I don't see that as any sort of problem, just something you need to be aware of going in.
Wow scion, congrats on winning AJ's ticket. I kept meaning to show up and claim it but meh. :D Job well done. Now Kusari seems pretty good. I wonder who will break it first?
Also Kuma nicely done. Using two of my favorite standard tricks in one deck :D
They didn't treat Archenemy or Planechase any differently. Those casual format/products sold quite a bit and were supported by multiple (casual) events and yet no one is even making noises that they should be treated more formally.
I get it. I am someone who has played competitive commander multiplayer (though think 1v1 is an abomination.) Read my old articles if you have forgotten that.
But I don't think WOTC does, yet. Give them time, keep piqueing their interest with articles and forum posts and keep running SunCom and other Commander events on MTGO. That's how it will happen. Probably help your cause if Blippy gets involved since he seems to have some inside juice. :p
Yeah, like you said, Metalworker back in, Rofellos out, Sol Ring/Mana Crypt/Mana Vault untouched just prove once more that they're not looking at the format from a competitive point of view (then again, they outright admitted as much). I don't know how you can even do that. How can you tell what's bad for casual players and what's not, on the basis of "because casual players don't play it anyway"?
It's an approach that's likely to generate a mess, and it's gotten worse in late years, because most of the original EDH ban list was just obvious stuff that worked as a basic guideline for casual players to have a common ground to operate. Like, of course you can't play Karakas, because the format just doesn't make sense with Karakas in it. Those are the cards that "a ban list for casual players only" (assuming it's even conceivable) should include. Then specific playing groups would be free to ban Sol Ring, or Sylvan Primordial, or Shivan Dragon, if they like.
And while I played green ramp for years and I never really used Rofellos (as I want a safe, stable ramp, not one that has a 90% probability to end killed within 2 turns — which is why Rofellos was scary only as a commander), I totally hear you about Primordial being very low on the list of problematic cards, if it ever made that list at all, whereas Deadeye Navigator (and many others) being left free to roam makes me wonder if they ever experienced it in the hands of someone who wasn't actively trying not to win, which seems to be their idea of "casual".
We all know the debate on the actual meaning of the term "casual" is very ample and complex, and pretty much impossible to conclusively settle, but in my idea, playing casual means not pursuing 100% efficiency at any cost, and instead going for elaborate interactions that you pull off once every third game if you're lucky (plus, not trying to end the game as soon as possible, which is about your style of play more than the cards in your deck). Still, if you put Deadeye Navigator in there, it's hard to not think what other cards would be good with it. In fact, I posit that if you're playing Deadeye Navigator without seeking meaningful Johnny interactions for it (which in the end would inevitably land you on some quite degenerate stuff), you're not doing the format any favor, because you're not keeping it casual, you're dumbing it down. Smart, creative deck building is the oxygen of the game. A format that wants for you to avoid that is a format that has an identity problem.
If a card like Deadeye Navigator is not compatible with casual play (and I don't think it's compatible even with competitive play!), then the access to it has to be prevented. Either that, or no cards except the format-specific ones (Karakas, Coalition Relic, etc.) should be banned, leaving to the players the choice, especially on MTGO, where the client enforces the ban list for you. They trust casual players not to play Deadeye Navigator yet they don't trust them with Sylvan Primordial: that's the heart of the contradiction. "Let's have a fair fight, so no guns. You can use chemical weapons and land mines, though."
This is all true, but I feel like we're way past this phase once Commander has become a product sold in worldwide stores that sells more than any other multiplayer product they attempted. It's a corporate brand now, they have to treat it that way, for better or for worse. It can't be "the format the judges play to relax" anymore. That's the genesis. But things evolve.
I'm actually amazed how corporate interests didn't take over already. And it's weird that I'm rooting for that to happen!
I was extremely dissapointed in the recent round of bannings and am still incredibly annoyed by the Sylvan Primordial banning.
First: Rofellos. The issue with this banning is that ramp and creatures are supposed to be green's strengths. In commander though, ramp is easily attainable in every color due to the absurd number of mana rocks. So, the reality of this banning is that due to the lowered ratio of green ramp to colorless ramp, the strength of this color as a whole is severely injured. While it has been said that green ramp will "barely notice" this change is just not true. There is not a single other 2-drop or combination of 2 and 1 drops that can replace the utility of rofellos. For a long time it has been true that if a green ramp deck plays against any other deck with sol ring or mana crypt in it's opening hand, there is a roughly 90% chance of losing (yes, I have quantitatively tracked this in my own playing). Which begs the question, why weren't these banned instead? It was said in the interview that you have to play mana rocks. It's not even a strategic question, it's a necesity. The most insulting part of this banning is that concurrently with this ban metalworker is unbanned. How absurd is that?
Second: Sylvan Primordial. Well yeah, it was banned last round, but I still want to say something about it here. I'm not angry at the fact that this card was banned as much as I am angry that there are literally 20 or 30 other 7-drops that are more degenerate than this. There are at least 20 cards that might as well say "LOL, I have 7 mana now, I win." Yet Sylvan Primordial was banned. It's already been said that Sylvan Primoridal itself wasn't the problem, it was the degenerate blue bounce and copy spells that made it a problem. Namely Rites of Replication and Deadeye Navigator have always been the real issue, because both far more easily unbalance a game than Sylvan.
I think that is true but look at the context. The format started as a purely casual way for players (judges mostly) to kick back after a tourney was over. Slowly it caught on to various people some of whom worked for WOTC. So to the rules committee (and Wizards by proxy), Commander (EDH) IS a casual format, first and foremost. In fact the only reason it is on MTGO at all is because workers coded it in their spare time to play it casually.
The fact that they added 1v1 play and that MTGO somewhat more encourages the competitive player mindset does not negate this history. Looked at in that light, maybe it's just a matter of time and patience for them to come around to seeing that there IS a competitive side to the format.
The difference with Metalworker is that it has been discussed for years as something to unban. Typically after each ban announcement there's at least a couple of threads on sites asking "why haven't they unbanned Metalworker yet?" That's different from the "banned as commander" issue, where there had been literally no concern or outrage that this issue existed.
Heck, if you want to go deeper into conspiracy mode, you can say that the RC was trying to appease people that were losing Rofellos by replacing him with another mana ramp dude, albeit one that helps artifact players rather than Green players. I'm not saying this is true at all, but it is funny.
The RC went out of their way to point out that this was not done due to any confusion issues. Quote from Sheldon on 9/14/14 (practically the only thing he has said about the bans btw): "I went back to the announcement to make sure we didn't say that people are confused by the 'banned as commander' status. We didn't. 'Streamlined' is the operative word there. No one implied that players (or potential players) aren't smart enough to understand the difference." So they specifically aren't doing it because of confusion issues. Really, why was this unnecessary change done then? You can see the quote here: http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17212
I'm not trying to say what happened was a conspiracy. I just think that this was a totally unnecessary change that likely should have been handled by FIXING MTGO. Seriously, don't let MTGO's problems affect my game (even if MTGO is the reason I don't play it anymore, I'm hoping that it will improve at some point). If MTGO had something, anything, at all to do with this decision, just say so.
I do want to apologize, due to Khans not showing up properly I miscounted the deck. There should be 1 more land which will be the UW gain life land. Also there should not be any Defiant Strikes.
I don't know why it should be a problem for MTGO to handle the "Banned as Commander" list. Just check the sideboard separate from the maindeck for the banned commanders. Simple coding to add in an extra legality loop. They have to check that the sideboard is one card, legendary and what its colors are already.
This might be true in casual, but it's not true in competitive play (not to mention in 1v1). As I said elsewhere, in almost 2 years of SUNCOM tournaments, Sylvan Primordial was barely noticed, and its absence has been barely noticed since the banning. Deadeye Navigator was the problem. Navigator doesn't care for Primordial's ramp, because you get infinite mana with Palinchron & co. already. But according to official rules, Deadeye Navigator can still wreak havoc as much as it likes, provided it doesn't use Primordial (so it'll keep using Acidic Slime, Woodfall Primus, etc. etc.).
And this is just one of about two or three dozens of problematic cards that should have ranked higher than Primordial in the "To Ban" list. But how would the Committee know? By their own admission, they don't play competitive Commander!
I don't know, I don't really see the conspiracy here, Mike. I think it might as well be a case where they gave a new look at the banned list (as they're supposed to do periodically), and decided that it was time to get rid of the "banned as commander" rule, which was never particularly elegant (and newbies did find it confusing).
I don't think it was due to MTGO, at least not uniquely. More like, "Okay, MTGO is having issues with this. Is it worth it to push for it to be fixed, or at this point, we might well just get rid of it and call it a day?". I think I would have come to the same decision. After all, it seems a pretty harmless change to implement, so why even bother? I don't foretell any impact on the format: Braids and Erayo as regular cards range between irrelevant and occasionally still annoying, and green ramp will barely notice the absence of Rofellos.
One fact that makes your conspiracy theory debatable is that they didn't just handle the "banned as commander" stuff. They also unbanned Metalworker. So while last time there was nothing to change, this time they found something. It happens with DCI bans too. Of course, this is where the seed of the Great Commander Contradiction resides, because DCI uses tournament results to engineer meta changes. The EDH Rules Committee, instead, doesn't monitor anything more than the games they themselves play. (Another contradiction: why does the committee still refer to EDH when overseeing a format that's called Commander? These aren't certainly signs of being up to date with what the players think and do, as kids at the game stores buy Commander products and don't even know what EDH is.)
But as I said, the main issue to me is that saying that you're making a banned list exclusively for non-competitive play is like saying that you organize events only for people who don't play in organized events.
After that announcement, I'm more certain than ever that the sooner DCI will intervene in the matter, and will start treating Commander as a proper Magic format, the better. As justcanceled said in the interview, Menery did a great job to bring Commander to a wide audience. But now it's become too big to still be managed from his kitchen.
I just bought a playset of the shock lands now that they are pretty low. Once khans is about to rotate, i'll grab the fetch lands i don't already have.
Do you think they will reprint the zenidkar fetch's in the next expansion? Or maybe modern masters 2?
No, my point wasn't clear. Using Deadeye Navigator doesn't dumb down the format; quite the opposite. It's a great Johnny card. The things it creates are magnificent.
Now, the problem is that if you investigate properly its applications, if you use Deadeye Navigator as food for brain, like Magic as a game is supposed to encourage (according to Rosewater, for one), it inevitably leads to degenerate board statuses. It is, as we say, "broken".
In order to accept it as a casual card, you have to dumb down the Navigator itself. You have to pretend you don't know what Palinchron or Acidic Slime do when paired with it. But a casual deck is not a dumb deck. We have great casual deckbuilders on PureMTGO, first among them CottonRhetoric. His decks are never dumb. They don't include cards that don't get fully exploited. If a card isn't suitable for a casual environment, he just doesn't include it.
This is the objection I and others make: if by definition Commander is a casual format, and if certain cards aren't allowed because they're "too much", then it's assumed that the Commander players will play all the remaining cards, including cards like Deadeye Navigator (which is just the example at hand here, one of many), in a way that won't lead to degenerate statuses, therefore in a way that stops short of investigating their full applications. (Leading to two categories of "problem cards": those that you're prevented from playing because they're banned, and those that you're not supposed to play "competitively", if at all).
Either that or they never experienced those degenerate statuses on a regular basis, because, by their own admission, they never put the format to the test of a competitive environment, which is where the issues come to light: when people try to win first and foremost, they'll do whatever the format allow them to. If you only test a car at 30 mph, you'll never know what happens when someone pushes it to 100.
The trouble with using 'Smart, creative deckbuilding' as a goal is that this is essentially an aesthetic distinction, according to the tastes of the players involved. One player's creative is another's derivative. It is entirely possible to get a group of commander players who consider Deadeye Navigator an interesting and useful part of the format, and that viewpoint is just as valid, for much the same reasons, as saying that using it is dumbing down the format.
When you're dealing with aesthetic factors, legislating for and around them is a fool's errand.
I'd say it's pretty rare that I am dead set against anything without caveat. 1v1 cmdr is definitely popular in some places and I can't blame people for enjoying it. In fact I want people to enjoy magic in as many ways as possible as long as it doesn't involve me actively not having fun.
Fair enough. The wording made it sound like you were opposed to the very concept, I can certainly understand someone just not enjoying the format.
I think you may have read too much into my opinion there. It is merely not my cup of tea. I am not all that fond of 2hg standard either really as the decks team mates come up with tend to be pretty broken for the format.
I dislike the way commander rules set up the 1v1 game where 100cs imho was somewhat balanced. Commander 1v1 is just something that rubs me the wrong way (hence my hyperbole.) Don't take it to heart.
Thanks Paul, here are two game replays of the Sunforger in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFU4iSSaUkc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myy27Izohl8
Why is 1v1 commander an abomination while something like Two Headed Giant Standard is fine? Is there some reason why it's only acceptable to create alternate formats that use more players than usual rather than less?
I'm very aware that 1v1 commander is a format that plays nothing like multiplayer commander. I don't see that as any sort of problem, just something you need to be aware of going in.
Wow scion, congrats on winning AJ's ticket. I kept meaning to show up and claim it but meh. :D Job well done. Now Kusari seems pretty good. I wonder who will break it first?
Also Kuma nicely done. Using two of my favorite standard tricks in one deck :D
Insects - ha! Congrats!
They didn't treat Archenemy or Planechase any differently. Those casual format/products sold quite a bit and were supported by multiple (casual) events and yet no one is even making noises that they should be treated more formally.
I get it. I am someone who has played competitive commander multiplayer (though think 1v1 is an abomination.) Read my old articles if you have forgotten that.
But I don't think WOTC does, yet. Give them time, keep piqueing their interest with articles and forum posts and keep running SunCom and other Commander events on MTGO. That's how it will happen. Probably help your cause if Blippy gets involved since he seems to have some inside juice. :p
Yeah, like you said, Metalworker back in, Rofellos out, Sol Ring/Mana Crypt/Mana Vault untouched just prove once more that they're not looking at the format from a competitive point of view (then again, they outright admitted as much). I don't know how you can even do that. How can you tell what's bad for casual players and what's not, on the basis of "because casual players don't play it anyway"?
It's an approach that's likely to generate a mess, and it's gotten worse in late years, because most of the original EDH ban list was just obvious stuff that worked as a basic guideline for casual players to have a common ground to operate. Like, of course you can't play Karakas, because the format just doesn't make sense with Karakas in it. Those are the cards that "a ban list for casual players only" (assuming it's even conceivable) should include. Then specific playing groups would be free to ban Sol Ring, or Sylvan Primordial, or Shivan Dragon, if they like.
And while I played green ramp for years and I never really used Rofellos (as I want a safe, stable ramp, not one that has a 90% probability to end killed within 2 turns — which is why Rofellos was scary only as a commander), I totally hear you about Primordial being very low on the list of problematic cards, if it ever made that list at all, whereas Deadeye Navigator (and many others) being left free to roam makes me wonder if they ever experienced it in the hands of someone who wasn't actively trying not to win, which seems to be their idea of "casual".
We all know the debate on the actual meaning of the term "casual" is very ample and complex, and pretty much impossible to conclusively settle, but in my idea, playing casual means not pursuing 100% efficiency at any cost, and instead going for elaborate interactions that you pull off once every third game if you're lucky (plus, not trying to end the game as soon as possible, which is about your style of play more than the cards in your deck). Still, if you put Deadeye Navigator in there, it's hard to not think what other cards would be good with it. In fact, I posit that if you're playing Deadeye Navigator without seeking meaningful Johnny interactions for it (which in the end would inevitably land you on some quite degenerate stuff), you're not doing the format any favor, because you're not keeping it casual, you're dumbing it down. Smart, creative deck building is the oxygen of the game. A format that wants for you to avoid that is a format that has an identity problem.
If a card like Deadeye Navigator is not compatible with casual play (and I don't think it's compatible even with competitive play!), then the access to it has to be prevented. Either that, or no cards except the format-specific ones (Karakas, Coalition Relic, etc.) should be banned, leaving to the players the choice, especially on MTGO, where the client enforces the ban list for you. They trust casual players not to play Deadeye Navigator yet they don't trust them with Sylvan Primordial: that's the heart of the contradiction. "Let's have a fair fight, so no guns. You can use chemical weapons and land mines, though."
This is all true, but I feel like we're way past this phase once Commander has become a product sold in worldwide stores that sells more than any other multiplayer product they attempted. It's a corporate brand now, they have to treat it that way, for better or for worse. It can't be "the format the judges play to relax" anymore. That's the genesis. But things evolve.
I'm actually amazed how corporate interests didn't take over already. And it's weird that I'm rooting for that to happen!
Goldblum as a verb. Love it.
I was extremely dissapointed in the recent round of bannings and am still incredibly annoyed by the Sylvan Primordial banning.
First: Rofellos. The issue with this banning is that ramp and creatures are supposed to be green's strengths. In commander though, ramp is easily attainable in every color due to the absurd number of mana rocks. So, the reality of this banning is that due to the lowered ratio of green ramp to colorless ramp, the strength of this color as a whole is severely injured. While it has been said that green ramp will "barely notice" this change is just not true. There is not a single other 2-drop or combination of 2 and 1 drops that can replace the utility of rofellos. For a long time it has been true that if a green ramp deck plays against any other deck with sol ring or mana crypt in it's opening hand, there is a roughly 90% chance of losing (yes, I have quantitatively tracked this in my own playing). Which begs the question, why weren't these banned instead? It was said in the interview that you have to play mana rocks. It's not even a strategic question, it's a necesity. The most insulting part of this banning is that concurrently with this ban metalworker is unbanned. How absurd is that?
Second: Sylvan Primordial. Well yeah, it was banned last round, but I still want to say something about it here. I'm not angry at the fact that this card was banned as much as I am angry that there are literally 20 or 30 other 7-drops that are more degenerate than this. There are at least 20 cards that might as well say "LOL, I have 7 mana now, I win." Yet Sylvan Primordial was banned. It's already been said that Sylvan Primoridal itself wasn't the problem, it was the degenerate blue bounce and copy spells that made it a problem. Namely Rites of Replication and Deadeye Navigator have always been the real issue, because both far more easily unbalance a game than Sylvan.
I think that is true but look at the context. The format started as a purely casual way for players (judges mostly) to kick back after a tourney was over. Slowly it caught on to various people some of whom worked for WOTC. So to the rules committee (and Wizards by proxy), Commander (EDH) IS a casual format, first and foremost. In fact the only reason it is on MTGO at all is because workers coded it in their spare time to play it casually.
The fact that they added 1v1 play and that MTGO somewhat more encourages the competitive player mindset does not negate this history. Looked at in that light, maybe it's just a matter of time and patience for them to come around to seeing that there IS a competitive side to the format.
Competitive Commander just isnt a priority to them. They appear content with only attracting casual players and their "bans" reflect that. Shame.
The difference with Metalworker is that it has been discussed for years as something to unban. Typically after each ban announcement there's at least a couple of threads on sites asking "why haven't they unbanned Metalworker yet?" That's different from the "banned as commander" issue, where there had been literally no concern or outrage that this issue existed.
Heck, if you want to go deeper into conspiracy mode, you can say that the RC was trying to appease people that were losing Rofellos by replacing him with another mana ramp dude, albeit one that helps artifact players rather than Green players. I'm not saying this is true at all, but it is funny.
The RC went out of their way to point out that this was not done due to any confusion issues. Quote from Sheldon on 9/14/14 (practically the only thing he has said about the bans btw): "I went back to the announcement to make sure we didn't say that people are confused by the 'banned as commander' status. We didn't. 'Streamlined' is the operative word there. No one implied that players (or potential players) aren't smart enough to understand the difference." So they specifically aren't doing it because of confusion issues. Really, why was this unnecessary change done then? You can see the quote here: http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17212
I'm not trying to say what happened was a conspiracy. I just think that this was a totally unnecessary change that likely should have been handled by FIXING MTGO. Seriously, don't let MTGO's problems affect my game (even if MTGO is the reason I don't play it anymore, I'm hoping that it will improve at some point). If MTGO had something, anything, at all to do with this decision, just say so.
I do want to apologize, due to Khans not showing up properly I miscounted the deck. There should be 1 more land which will be the UW gain life land. Also there should not be any Defiant Strikes.
Thank you, sir. I try :P.
I don't know why it should be a problem for MTGO to handle the "Banned as Commander" list. Just check the sideboard separate from the maindeck for the banned commanders. Simple coding to add in an extra legality loop. They have to check that the sideboard is one card, legendary and what its colors are already.
A recap and a teaser, you are a cruel cruel being.
*applaud*
What Procrastination said!
I've been trying to work "Illusion, Michael!" in an article myself. (I might have to do an article about the Illusion tribe for that).
This might be true in casual, but it's not true in competitive play (not to mention in 1v1). As I said elsewhere, in almost 2 years of SUNCOM tournaments, Sylvan Primordial was barely noticed, and its absence has been barely noticed since the banning. Deadeye Navigator was the problem. Navigator doesn't care for Primordial's ramp, because you get infinite mana with Palinchron & co. already. But according to official rules, Deadeye Navigator can still wreak havoc as much as it likes, provided it doesn't use Primordial (so it'll keep using Acidic Slime, Woodfall Primus, etc. etc.).
And this is just one of about two or three dozens of problematic cards that should have ranked higher than Primordial in the "To Ban" list. But how would the Committee know? By their own admission, they don't play competitive Commander!
I don't know, I don't really see the conspiracy here, Mike. I think it might as well be a case where they gave a new look at the banned list (as they're supposed to do periodically), and decided that it was time to get rid of the "banned as commander" rule, which was never particularly elegant (and newbies did find it confusing).
I don't think it was due to MTGO, at least not uniquely. More like, "Okay, MTGO is having issues with this. Is it worth it to push for it to be fixed, or at this point, we might well just get rid of it and call it a day?". I think I would have come to the same decision. After all, it seems a pretty harmless change to implement, so why even bother? I don't foretell any impact on the format: Braids and Erayo as regular cards range between irrelevant and occasionally still annoying, and green ramp will barely notice the absence of Rofellos.
One fact that makes your conspiracy theory debatable is that they didn't just handle the "banned as commander" stuff. They also unbanned Metalworker. So while last time there was nothing to change, this time they found something. It happens with DCI bans too. Of course, this is where the seed of the Great Commander Contradiction resides, because DCI uses tournament results to engineer meta changes. The EDH Rules Committee, instead, doesn't monitor anything more than the games they themselves play. (Another contradiction: why does the committee still refer to EDH when overseeing a format that's called Commander? These aren't certainly signs of being up to date with what the players think and do, as kids at the game stores buy Commander products and don't even know what EDH is.)
But as I said, the main issue to me is that saying that you're making a banned list exclusively for non-competitive play is like saying that you organize events only for people who don't play in organized events.
After that announcement, I'm more certain than ever that the sooner DCI will intervene in the matter, and will start treating Commander as a proper Magic format, the better. As justcanceled said in the interview, Menery did a great job to bring Commander to a wide audience. But now it's become too big to still be managed from his kitchen.