Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus | Art by Alayna Danner

With Gavin Verhey's recent video alongside the Commander Ban List update, there have been some murmurings about unbanning Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus. There is a lot to unpack about this potentiality, but before we can get into the unbanning we must talk about the banning and its fallout first.

The Banning of Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus, Mana CryptMana Crypt, and Dockside ExtortionistDockside Extortionist

September 23, 2024 was a fateful day in Commander - maybe, for Magic: The Gathering in general. It created a distinct rift between players, possibly bigger than any announcement before it. It created a web of dissonance between the value of money, people, and cards. It was the announcement banning the following cards:

Dockside ExtortionistDockside Extortionist
Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus
Mana CryptMana Crypt
Nadu, Winged WisdomNadu, Winged Wisdom

Nadu didn't have much backlash; it was newer, and the community was happy to see non-deterministic, extremely long turns come to an end. But the other three bans were poorly received.

Cards get banned pretty regularly in Magic, though certainly less frequently in Commander. What was unique about this ban?

Tolarian Community College did a lovely video talking about some of the concerns: The Commander Rules Committee not alerting the community about potential bans, not consulting the Commander Advisory Group, and Wizards of the Coast's strict reprinting policies, making these cards incredibly expensive to come by.

The Committee's statement was, "The philosophy of Commander prioritizes creativity, and one of the ways we have historically reflected that in the rules and ban list is to encourage a slower pace of game than traditional formats. This gives decks time and space to develop and do different things. We have a goal to make it easier for players who enjoy slower, more social games to have an environment for them to explore."

A lot of players didn't like this reasoning. This is mainly because of the cost of this decision. I did a little digging and found that Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus was going for around $90-$100, Mana CryptMana Crypt for around $160–$180, and Dockside ExtortionistDockside Extortionist went for around $80. If you owned one of each, you were out about $360 dollars of value after the bans. That's definitely a good chunk of change.

To The Professor's point, this is what he meant about not hinting about the bans. The cards suddenly went from a ton of value to worthless, or next to worthless.

Even then, bans aren't an unprecedented event. People were angry. Things were different. It happens, but what followed from the community is what made this event unlike many before. The Professor said:

"Despite the fact that I both disagree with these bans and have a lot of criticism about how they were handled, the community reaction of intense harassment towards the individuals on the Rules Committee including an overwhelming number of death threats is beyond unacceptable and in no way justified what has happened here. It's fine to be upset...but targeting individuals with harassment, doxing, and threats of violence is absolutely shameful. There is no excuse for such behavior and it needs to stop."

Yes. The community of Commander - a casual format - had threatened lives over expensive cardboard. I don't mean to make the cards we play with seem small or insignificant. I don't. Magic: The Gathering is everything to me, more than I could explain in this article, but a person's life isn't even remotely in the same stratosphere of value as the maximum of $360 per person lost.

There is no excuse for threatening a life over losing access to a card in a format. In that perspective, these are just cards, just cardboard.

Unbanning Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus

So the community reacted poorly. What's the rest of this article about? The question on everyone's mind lately is: Do we keep these cards banned?

I did some asking online specifically about whether or not Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus should be unbanned. Why just Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus? Gavin Verhey said in two of his videos (here and here) that it had been the one card discussed to be unbanned the most. I knew how I felt about this potentiality, but I wanted to ask the community.

Sentiments could be broken up into a handful of camps: unban, but not now; never unban; and unban now.

Unban Now

I'm going to start with the least popular perspective. This perspective can be translated to the wider community as a whole. Just because it was small on my personal poll doesn't mean there aren't sentiments about this. The belief here boils down to: we've been punished enough.

A lot of this sentiment goes back into the sunk cost of these cards. Players want their value back, and as soon as they talked about potentially unbanning Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus it went from a $30 card back to $70. There is a strong motivator here to recoup what was lost.

Some people responding to this poll who are against unbanning replied to these comments saying that whichever way we go, money shouldn't be the motivating factor; but I think that might be difficult. People have lost money, and that is a good reason to be angry. Is it worthy of a change, though?

Some commenters believe that the community has been punished enough aren't only people wanting to unban Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus. A lot of people who are in favor of upholding the bans understand the logistics of banning Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus, some even thinking the banning decision was wrong in the first place. Some believed, in a vacuum, Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus should be unbanned, but other factors play a role in why they insist on upholding the bans.

We'll get a bit more into that in the next section.

Unban, but Not Now

This is a more complicated, more popular sentiment. These players think WOTC should be firm that harassment and threats is completely unacceptable. They think they should continue to uphold a ban for these cards for a period of time. Basically, until players have learned their lesson. The reasoning here is similar to the Unban Now camp: it's not everyone's fault. They want to send a message, but not lose out on these cards.

This sentiment is an intermediary, a best of both ways, which is why people feel the most morally supported in being in this camp. It doesn't ruffle as many feathers.

I believe the Commander Format Panel and WOTC as a whole probably fall into this camp. The fact that they've been teasing Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus as much as they have sort of confirms that they're thinking about it. This is not the sentiment of the greatest subgroup of commenters.

Never Unban

This is by far the largest group for my poll. The sentiment here is pretty straightforward: Cardboard isn't more important than people's lives. The best way to send that message is keeping these cards banned in perpetuity. A lot of people who made this comment felt any leniency on this would encourage bad actors to believe that harassment would result in what they wanted: a reversal of the decision. They perceived any reversal of the bans would embolden players to be bad actors in the future.

Additionally, a lot of the commenters who agreed with above didn't necessarily agree with the other Never Unban beliefs. Some simply believe that the initial decision was correct, that Mana CryptMana Crypt, Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus, and Dockside ExtortionistDockside Extortionist were in fact bad for the format. They believed that fast mana allowed for unsavory play patterns that weren't healthy for the format.

Some even called for Sol RingSol Ring bans in this vein too.

Conclusion

This is a tough position that I find myself in. I used to be a teacher, who initially didn't like to punish the whole class because of unidentifiable behavior of some stragglers. As I continued in my tenure, it became the best way to control the behavior of a group. People holding each other accountable to the rules, because it will affect the whole, is something I agree with in real life.

Everything we do as a group affects us all, and holding each other accountable for those things might feel unfair, but ultimately it's for the greater good of the whole.

So, I'm sure you want to know if I'm a Not Now or Never unban. I've thought about a lot of the points my peers have brought up and at this point I'm in the camp of Never Unban.

Hear me out before you blow me out in the comments. We don't need these cards. We know we don't need them, because we've been playing without them for a year and a half. Commander wasn't ruined. cEDH had some meta changes, but it was fine. The Commander Rule Committee is gone. I don't want to in any way suggest that threats and harassment are the sort of thing we can get over or move on from, like we do with so many other wrongs in the world.

People's lives are more important than three extra mana into Tivit, Seller of SecretsTivit, Seller of Secrets on turn two. I play Tivit and I'm fine without it in Bracket 4. I don't want to equate real lives with a couple hundred dollars. I don't want to equate people's lives with the sentiments about a card game. I don't want people to feel emboldened by a desire to appease the very community that made this horrible thing happen.

Now or later doesn't matter. We shouldn't ever unban these cards. It's not just because they're too good. It's not just because they warp the format. It's because a volunteer group of around 18 years had to close down because of death threats. We need to take that seriously. And we can't take it seriously and give the offenders back what they deserved to lose, even if that means punishing all Commander players.

Again, this is just my opinion. I want to hear yours. I'm @strixhavendropout