Gifts Ungiven

This is a beloved card with a great history. Many of you out there have enjoyed casting this card in all sorts of formats. We're excited to return it to Commander. The previous concern had been the nature of this as a power tutor, the time-intensive casting process, and the combos enabled by this card.

We considered this within the structure of brackets and just regular pregame conversations. If your deck is trying to infinite combo people with this, they should often help sort out if you are playing in the right environment. On the other hand, a fair Gifts Ungiven is very fun and akin to Fact or Fiction in the politics and interplay between players it can create.


Sway of the Stars

A ten-mana way to reset the game akin to Worldfire, which was previously unbanned in Commander to little fanfare or play. There are some players who enjoy this effect. It is an impactful card but not very powerful. There are plenty of other spells that cost eight or more mana that have a far higher impact than Sway. Our guess is this will see little play, but the people who enjoy cards like these will now be able to play another one.


Braids, Cabal Minion

This card is a beloved character, and a card many are nostalgic for. When played as one of your 99 cards or later in the game, it is a totally reasonable effect with an appropriate impact on the game.

The most frustrating Braids games are when it's put out extremely quickly and people feel locked under it. However, as little as a single removal spell can really set that entire plan back. As Commander decks have become more efficient, with more targeted removal spells, and players have gotten better at identifying commanders they don't want to play against and having pregame conversations, so that gives us the confidence to bring back Braids.

A lot has changed since Braids was banned in 2009. We mostly believe people will know what they're signing up for in a game with Braids as a commander, and as a card in the 99, it is reasonable and acceptable.


Coalition Victory

This card engendered a great deal of discussion. A lot of it boils down to how impactful and how much of an auto-include it is. In a deck with a five-color commander, it essentially reads, "You win the game if you control your commander." That is not the most satisfying end to a game, and it does begin to become an auto-include for many decks. Is that an appropriate card to exist?

However, it can easily be interacted with. A single removal spell in response to your five-color commander means you spent eight mana to do nothing. You also need to untap with your commander and eight mana, and there are many expensive spells that will do something akin to ending the game in a five-color deck if you resolve them.

Additionally, for those engaging with Commander Brackets, it is within the timeframe of where we expect an "I win" combo to fall.


Panoptic Mirror

I, personally, have been a Panoptic Mirror enjoyer since it was originally printed back in Darksteel. The promise of using a cool spell turn after turn is so fun! That's still true today. A value Mirror is a blast. There are two problems with it.

The first is imprinting an extra-turn spell. The game is over immediately. The second is imprinting something extremely repetitive, such as a board sweeper, so that the game cannot move forward.

The latter is something to be a lot less worried about in 2025: there are so many answers to artifacts in decks that, even if you're under a board lock, can get you out of it.

The first one is well addressed by bracketed play through the restrictions on combos and a lower overall density of extra-turn effects. And regardless of the bracket system, many tables have a good idea of whether they enjoy infinite combos appearing in their games and if that's something they want players to do in their decks.

Finally, it does take a full turn and a large mana investment, and people have several windows to respond to it in. They can kill it before you untap, in response to the ability, or after the ability resolves and your opponent is down a card.

Trouble in Pairs

The first card being delisted is Trouble in Pairs . This card has certainly emerged as a standout card since it was released about a year ago. While it can draw a lot of cards, it's on par with some cards that are not on the list. The general feeling is that it is just slightly under the bar for the Game Changers list and that we probably jumped the starting line a little on this one. It's plausible it could get added back in the future as the list evolves and we receive more feedback.


Trinisphère

The second card being delisted is Trinisphere . This card is not the most fun card to play against—no denying that. However, it tends to be strongest at the highest power levels, like Optimized (Bracket 4) and cEDH (Bracket 5). There are many cards on the level of unfun Stax pieces, like Sphere of Resistance, Rule of Law, and Nether Void, that aren't on the Game Changers list, and generally, if your deck is trying to lock other players out in a Stax style, that's a play pattern that doesn't match the intent of Bracket 2 and you should bracket up. If you want to play a single fair Trinisphere, it may be a little frustrating but ultimately reasonable.


Teferi's Protection

While ultimately a defensive spell, if you want to talk about cards that are quite definitionally game changing, this is one of them. It protects you completely. Much like Cyclonic Rift, Teferi's Protection saves you from targeting while freely making big plays or attacks without risk. It is certainly a Game Changer.


Humility

This card slows the game down to a crawl, disabling everyone's creatures and shutting down a card type that everybody has likely built their deck around. In comparison to Trinisphère, a fair Trinisphere forces people to pay some more mana; even a fair Humility tossed onto the board will usually make games massively frustrating to play.


Narset, Parter of Veils; Orcish Bowmasters; and Notion Thief

While punishing additional card draw is a reasonable thing to have in a game of Commander, these are particularly aggravating to encounter. At best, these are frustrating to play against; at worst, they combo with wheels to do some nefarious things.


Intuition

Intuition is a very strong tutor, giving you one card and dumping two into the graveyard. While it's not always the exact card of the three you want, with redundancy, you're usually getting something strong, and it also stocks your graveyard in the process. Combine that with the fact that it can be a "one-card combo" in the right deck, and that brings it up to Game Changer status.


Consecrated Sphinx

This is a must-kill threat at most Commander tables. Untapping with a Sphinx and the six or more cards you've drawn by the time it gets back to your turn puts you dramatically ahead. Additionally, the gameplay of other players cloning it and then allowing them to each draw as many cards as the other will allow is not the best gameplay. This fits right in as a Game Changer.


Necropotence

Though it does cost to cast, once down, the ability to turn as much of your 40-point life total into cards as you want is extremely powerful. This has been one of the most requested additions, and we were happy to add it to the list.


Deflecting Swat

Strong, free countermagic made the list previously, and this often does the job of free countermagic and more. It's deserving of a spot on the list.


Gamble, Crop Rotation, and Worldly Tutor

The lower brackets do carry the restriction of "few tutors" already. However, one-mana tutors that can search up a wide array of cards are some of the most efficient out there, and like Imperial Seal , Mystical Tutor , and others, these are in line with that. We may be revising the notes around tutoring on brackets in the future, but for the time being, we wanted to get these three large swings onto the list.


Seedborn Muse

This card causes you to take what is essentially, when built properly, three additional turns worth of effects each turn cycle. It also causes one player to take a disproportionate amount of time in the game.

It is worth calling out here that, yes, Seedborn Muse was just in the Abzan Armor deck from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. First, this was finalized long ago before Commander Brackets existed. Second, I'll use this moment as a reminder that Core (Bracket 2) is on the level of an average, modern-day preconstructed Commander deck, but that doesn't mean there can't be some variance there. We are looking at updating the terminology in the future to pull away from preconstructed Commander decks as a benchmark, as we understand that has caused some confusion. I just want to be clear that we know about the collision in Tarkir: Dragonstorm and want to avoid that seeming like a mixed message.


Natural Order

This is one of the strongest ways you can cheat out big creatures early. Natural Order cheats mana and acts as an efficient tutor all in one.


Food Chain

People tend not to play fairly with Food Chain. It mostly fuels infinite combos, and while those are kept out of the first two brackets, it still feels worth calling out and limiting as a Game Changer slot for Bracket 3.


Aura Shards

While it is important to have limiters on artifacts and enchantments in games of Commander, some cards can go overboard. Aura Shards is a permanent source of removal, consistently destroying build-around cards, mana rocks, and even the odd creature. Many popular deck archetypes have trouble fighting through an Aura Shards—especially since it's in a color pair full of putting creatures onto the board. While a one-shot sweeper like Vandalblast is totally reasonable, this persistent effect on the game is something we wanted to hit.


Field of the Dead

It takes so little for a land to be strong. Though it only makes colorless mana and enters tapped, getting Field of the Dead online is incredibly easy. Once you do that, with fetch lands, additional land drops, and more, this land can churn out three or more Zombie tokens a turn. Which doesn't sound too wild … until you consider that, once again, it's a land. Those Zombies protect your life total and close out games. It was strong enough to make the Game Changers list for us.


Mishra's Workshop

Though not highly played due to its difficulty to acquire, a land that taps for three mana for artifacts definitely meets some of the restrictions we put around fast mana and belongs on the Game Changers list.

Content de voir qu'en EDH multi elle soit enfin autorisée, parce que je trouve qu'il y a bien d'autres raisons de ne pas trouver des parties fun en EDH...