As one of the 99 cards in your deck, Lutri offers quite the same value as Dualcaster Mage or Naru Meha, Master Wizard.

Besides this we stick to our philosophy known as „a card may end the game in its lategame and have a decisive interaction, especially if its cmc is 7+“ and to the „Mass-Landdestruction is not fine“. We therefore limit especially Non-Basic-LD like From the Ashes. We know that there are similiar cards unbanned (Wave of Vitriol), but its high cmc is what we were talking about as lategame cards may win a game. (And you can of course still play basic lands, don’t you 😉 )

We also have an eye on other formats and their banned lists and try to consider their spirit and reasons for bannings, too. So, with the bannings at Duelcommander for various cards, we also follow some of their suggestions.

• Wasteland – the possibility of reiiteration and random mana screweing other persons is no fun. We follow the ban.
• Field of the Dead – searchable, free blockers. We follow the ban.
• Cavern of Souls is strong, and quite awefully a brainless must include like a Sol Ring.
  It’s a colorless land, so it can be put into every deck, and grants huge benefits. We don’t want cards which are a must have in every deck. We follow the ban.

We are aware that some decks like combos with Sisay and Kenrith and Golos in general are quite dominating right now. We have an eye on this. We also think that Kinnan is too strong, but we won’t ban it before there is more game-testing. Also the free commander-spells like Fierce Guardianship and co are quite strong, but at least they kind of need the commander to be played, and we do encourage decks which rely and build upon their commanders (we still play Commander, and not Highlander, right?), so we give it a try. We don’t think they are worse than a Force of Will or the like.

High Tide is strong, but other colors have their mana doublers, too, and mono-u is right now more of artifact driven by Emry and Urza than combo relying on High Tide in our format, so we don’t see a ban incoming right now.

The fast mana and combo potential of LED and the extra turn problematic: you know that here we were pioneers, and we are happy that other formats follow our advise at least a bit 😉 – Ancient Tomb was also one of the cards which Duelcommander banned some time after our bannings of this card as fast mana.

We also do reconsider unbannings – new cards and new strategies, especially new commanders – may shift the metagame, and we do think that commanders with combo potential for infinite combos are still hard and can be quite dominating and offer the risk of fast game endings, but we think that the game evolved: even [Heliod,Sun-Crowned[/c] can easily combo off with a Triskelion or a Walking Ballista, meaning that next to the ever-available Commander just one additional card is needed – so no several combopieces must be gathered and played and hold alive. Should this lead to a ban of Heliod ? Chances are pending. But we do unban Marath and Ghave, which can also combo off with Doubling season and Ashnod’s Altar and other stuff, but they need several pieces and might be inferior therefore, though still being utterly strong.

We also think that Teferi isn’t the dominating powercommander anymore by itself, but unbanning him would result that other powerful commanders could combo off or explode even earlier, resulting in even worse games, so please understand that this is necessary for the whole picture.