Monthly recap!
Hi Higher, and congratulations on your position with the Commander Format Panel! I’m coming from the Reddit post, so my comments are a direct response to the points you presented there.
Firstly, I agree that Orcish Bowmasters is a card that should be on watch. As someone who primarily plays Ob Nixilis, it would obviously sting to see the card go for me personally, but I’ve seen the card lead to some ludicrous moments that make for an absolutely rancid play experience for what is often more than one player time and time again.
Putting aside the timesuck that prolonged hypotheticals, repeated aggressive political posturing, and overly complicated agreements can make, they also lead to the most frustrating and unsatisfying endings to a game of Magic I’ve ever had. Temporarily teaming up to stop someone from shoving a win is totally natural and often goes without saying, and short deals of an “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” nature that are one and done and able to be satisfied immediately make total sense, but anything larger than that often makes me reconsider playing the format and is something I have to wrestle with often.
Currently, I’m very happy at the prospect of brewing, chatting about, and playing Commander under the context of any bracket, but I’m extremely weary of tournament Commander play (coincidentally, there was a tournament happening in my city today that I decided not to go). The rules can facilitate friends at home or friendly strangers at an LGS playing the format without issue, so I don’t see a reason to change the rules of the game or format on a fundamental level. However, there are constant occurrences of tournaments running face first into a messy spot or players like myself having troubled tournament experiences. Magic having been primarily a 1v1 game for its competitive history means that while we technically have infrastructure, procedures, and heuristics for tournament Magic play, we also have major blind spots for a 4 player context of said competitive play. I would be much more open to return to Commander tournaments if the Commander Format Panel was working with WotC’s regenerating judge program to develop more solidified support around excessive stalling via chatter, a more granular point structure that allowed for an underdog effect that grants a greater point reward the worse your seat position was, and keeping a real track record of cheaters so they can’t just brush off any potential punishment.
I honestly think banning Orcish Bowmasters when blue decks are so dominant would be strange. It’s just going to homogenize the meta further and force non-blue decks to be even more turbo focused with no midrange plan at all. Why not ban a blue card or unban a non-blue card?
Rhystic seems to somehow really dodge everyone’s radar because we were in a turbo meta for a little bit, I heard someone (don’t remember who) say on a podcast with you, that Rhystic wasn’t that relevant in the Frenzy of the Falls final, and when I watched back that final I’m pretty sure I saw the winning player draw at least 20 cards from Rhystic and winning mostly because of it. I understand the problem with bowmasters but when blue has access to these types of effects I really don’t think it’s a good idea to ban a black card over a blue card, it will only make the meta into more of the same midrange piles.
Another problem of Rhystic Study(&friends) which I haven’t heard mentioned yet, is that it creates game states where every action taken by a player increases the total resources in the game rather than ever reducing them, which leads to more draws. That’s because game states where resources are eventually depleted are much more likely to result in a winner.
Bowmasters also creates game states that incentivize collaboration. There are times when a single bowmaster can dominate - and that’s true with many strong cards in the right pods like Tithe or Rhystic. That said, the issue with OBM is the same as the two best black draw engines - that, ironically, don’t draw cards (Necro and Naus.) Because EDH life totals are so high we are incentivized to NOT to ping face. This coupled with the fact that card draw decks don’t often play as many creatures (UFarm tends to max out ~18 compared to a 30 for Rog Thras which relies on them to win) that unless they are drawing 5+ cards a turn, the 2-4 damage pinging creatures has a stronger impact on that board state.
I think OBM’s punishing state is primarily true in a midrange meta. As turbo continues it’s uptick, OBM becomes a crucial tool in stopping pushes due to dying to triggers. it allows a group of players to stop pushes in another way and gives black/non-blue players more tools at their disposal to interact with high risk/high reward win attempts.
Hey Higher,
Shout out from Vancouver Island. Congrats on the CFP representation. Stoked to have a solid advocate like you on the CFP.
I feel like there has to be a better solution to the “all or nothing” approach of the current ban list. I’d like to see some unbans moving forward, save for a few super busted cards. I have an idea to make that more feasible.
I think the brackets system is step in the right direction. I fell in love with cEDH because it literally cuts out all the pod composition uncertainty. Everyone is here to jam. One thing that I find tricky, is the fact that Brkt 4 and Brkt 5 are technically identical. I come from a Canadian Highlander background (best 1v.1 format IMHO), which uses a very simple curated points system to fine tune decks and power level. The game changers list is already essentially a points list. Brkt 3 decks are only allowed 3 game changers. If you consider each card on the game changer list as a “1 point” card, then Bracket 3 gets “3 points” worth of game changers to add to their deck. Pretty simple.
This leads to my initial suggestion, that Brkt 5 be “unlimited points” and Brkt 4 could be curated to say 10 or 15 points, or whatever the CFP and community deemed appropriate. I think this would offer a great and unique technical difference between Brkt 4 and 5 decks, and allow for some interesting brewing on a “points budget”.
It also opens up the possibility of unbanning some cards pretty powerful cards. Say, just for sake of example, you wanted to unban mana crypt, but there was concern about play patterns. You could make it a “20 point” card on the game changers list, effectively keeping it out of the lower brackets, but letting the Brkt 5 decks cook.
I often hear opposition to ideas like this, related to “complication”. We’re all here playing the most complicated game on the planet. I really don’t think enthusiasts are going to struggle with the concept of a game changers list, or a points list, or a 2 tier game changer list. Heck, you expect Brkt 3 to figure it out…pretty sure we can too.
I think the format is moving in a positive direction, and looking forward to upcoming tweaks.
P.S. Unban Prophet of Kruphix 
And “say hi” to Wheeler:)
P.P.S. also unban Jlo and Crypt and leave Rhystic alone… for now…
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Love this idea, and not something I’ve seen floated before. Would love to see it adopted. Cheers!
Counterpoint to Bowmasters discourse: I have won more games since cutting OBM in Farm. Feels bad to run it right now.
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That’s another reason why bowmaster ban would hurt non-blue decks much more than blue decks: blue decks don’t even care about bowmasters right now.
I want to start by saying I think your concern about blue dominance is a fair one, and it’s something a lot of players feel even if they articulate it differently. I don’t disagree that blue often seems to escape scrutiny in ways that can be frustrating, especially when cards like Rhystic Study continue to define so many games.
On the Frenzy at the Falls point specifically, my read of that game is that the deciding factor wasn’t Rhystic itself, but the Niv player being unable to convert on their turn. That said, I completely understand why watching a player draw that many cards makes Rhystic feel like the real engine behind the win, and I don’t think that reaction is wrong or unreasonable.
Where my concern with Orcish Bowmasters differs is less about its surface-level role as “anti-blue” and more about how it actually functions in real games. In practice, Bowmasters often doesn’t meaningfully punish the blue player drawing cards. Instead, it tends to clear out small creatures and stax pieces that were applying friction to the table, often those belonging to non-blue or creature-based decks. For Bowmasters to do its work, the Rhystic player has to keep drawing cards, and once those creature checks are gone, the Bowmasters controller pushes for a win. Very often, the blue player who benefited from the cleared board is then the one who interacts, untaps, and closes the game.
That pattern is why I think Bowmasters is worth talking about, not as an automatic ban target, but as a card whose incentives may be doing the opposite of what we want long-term. If Bowmasters weren’t in the picture, I genuinely think creature-based stax and midrange strategies would regain meaningful footing, which could help rebalance archetypes without simply pushing everyone further toward turbo.
I don’t expect us to land in the same place on this, and that’s okay. I value the pushback, especially when it’s grounded in actual games and observations like yours. These are exactly the kinds of disagreements that help sharpen the conversation, and I appreciate you engaging in good faith.
I genuinely love this idea.
Framing Game Changers as a finite resource rather than a binary yes or no is especially compelling to me. The idea that you can consciously choose to “spend” your entire budget on something like Mana Crypt, knowing exactly what you’re giving up elsewhere, creates real deckbuilding tension and meaningful tradeoffs. That kind of constraint is healthy, and it rewards intentionality rather than raw card access.
What really stands out to me is how this opens space for experimentation without forcing the format to absorb risk all at once. Being able to explore unbans in a controlled, bracket-specific way feels far more sustainable than swinging the pendulum back and forth on the main ban list. It lets Bracket 5 truly be the place where people can cook, while still protecting the integrity and expectations of the lower brackets. I don’t know exactly what shape something like this would ultimately take, and I don’t want to overpromise outcomes, but philosophically this lines up very closely with where I’d like to see brackets land.
Also, noted on Prophet, JLo, Crypt, and Rhystic… no promises, but I hear you 
And I’ll absolutely say hi to Wheeler.
Really appreciate you sharing this, and I hope you keep the ideas coming.
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I get it, and it’s fine to disagree. What I do want to clarify that your point here about creature stax is, to me, probably the number one mistake in the anti-bowmaster argumentation.
There’s this myth floating around about how creature stax will just come back, if only there was no bowmaster. This feels really exaggerated, stax has been a dead archetype at the highest level for a long time now and it really has way bigger issues than a few bowmasters. I understand that it’s annoying for the few players that try to make stax work that they get bowmastered once in a while, but this will not make a comeback if it would be banned. The archetype has major issues, and in fact one of the main issues with stax is that it almost always just freely hands the game to the kinnan/cradle deck. And kinnan/cradle decks will only become more popular without bowmasters.
Anyway, I’ll stop bothering you, thanks for taking the time to engage.
To extend this argument a little further: it’s rare that a single card is the dam holding back the rushes of an archetype.
The main problem with stax is its inability to win games, especially in a timely manner. There’s plenty of non-creature-based stax pieces that could see play. But they don’t, because the archetype is generally not good.
Dockside wasn’t the end-all of turbo, and bowmasters isn’t the end-all of stax or creature strategies.
Hey Higher,
I am curious on some of what you were saying on the Win and In podcast. You brough up adding in a discard step to make necro flash less effective. My question for you would be what is the benefit of this? I understand that it makes Necro weaker but it greatly strengthens silence effects that are also already quite strong. Why is this something you think needs to change?
Thank you,
Josh Z-E
Thanks for taking the time!
If we do have another round of unbans, what cards in your opinion are the most/least likely to be unbanned(not counting cards like the power nine)?
A little sad with the lack of adjustments made today. Was hoping for more unbans IMO
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Hello @higher do you think the CFP is open to changing whether seat 1 draws on their T1?
With the talk of potential unbanning of griselbrand in the future I’d love to see some of the less offensive legendary creatures/ creatures in general to come off the banlist before then. Things like emmy and Levold would have a whole lot less impact than the creature that just says win the game (Coming from a CEDH view) But I still don’t think the social repercussions would allow a sneaked in Emy would allow for much under bracket 4
It’s odd to think that Leovold would have less of an impact than Griselbrand