Philosophy
We honor the vision held by the founders of the EDH format, who intended to create variable, interactive and epic multiplayer games . We also hold up the the principle to not create another modern or standard format with decks similar to these formats with the only difference being the singleton restriction, but to develop a format which lets you play thousands of different old cards instead of just a few hundred all repeating best-of cards. (We can’t eredicate staples, but at least can we expand the amount of different cards and the mana curve to let unusual cards hit the table again). We also believe in “games that everyone will love to remember, not the ones you’d like to forget.”, yet we also do believe that players like tuning their decks, build and find out which cards would harmonically fit in their deck and build good decks.
So what does the perfect game looks like?
There is no general one-size-fits-all description for a perfect game, but all players should have enjoyed it, participated in the game and have had the feeling that they could have won the game or their efforts changed the gameplay. So a game, which builds up quite balanced in the early turns, then leads to an always, turn by turn, changing situation where one or the other side holds the upperside seems quite perfect: „Team A down to 2 Life. Team B plays an Aven Mindcensor with flash at Team A’s end step. No blockers there. Team B attacks, but Team A has a Lightning Bolt. Team B reacts with a Bathe in Light… but then the other player in Team A can play an Aim High and untaps the Sengir Vampire of his Teammate and provides a blocker. Wow, that was close.“
Some people are very tightly aligned with the concept of weenie creature decks and that a game must be won by creatures. We refuse to this as a must. Aggro decks can prevail, but they can also easily run out of options once a boardwipe occurs. Aggro decks should be a possible deck type, but not the strongest nor predominant one. We highly encourage people to have a plan B and to build broader deck variaties like some final burn cards or a Living Death to resurrect your creatures. While we do love creature themed games and battles, we don’t complain about strong, game deciding cards (or combos) in the late (late!) game. There is no big difference for us between a Fireball with 9 Mana dealing the final 8 damage nor a combination of several carefully collected and assembled pieces in turn 15 ending the game nor a single card like a kicked Rite of Replication which leads to victory. We are also not able to ban every possible card synergy or combination which could result in oppressive situations, nor is this our intention (e.g. Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and Wrath of God which can lead to Mass landdestruction, or a Gilt-Leaf Archdruid – if a player piles up 7 druids it is a nice way of play and a cool win – get over it and shuffle your cards for a revenge!) Magic has evolved – some may say not always in a better way with planeswalkers being too omnipotent, and cards got too mighty; farewell Serra Angel or Mahamoti Djinn, once icons of strong cards in our youth, now too weak to be included in most decks. But staring at the past is no solution, we also have to adept. (Or the magic creators have to do 😉 e.g. build mechanisms to awaken older cards and concepts like megamorph, which added more morph cards and rejuveniled the morph theme and made it about possible to be build around as commander theme. Another mechanic would be a type of Commander enchantment, which can be used with very specific commanders like a partner, to strengthen up older commander cards and adjust their powerlevel and increase the playworthyness of such cards.)
We are very sad that some rule changes occured in the past like that in 2HG/3HG, if a single player takes an extra turn, the whole team gets an extra turn. This proved out to be way too strong, and therefore the options would be either a lot of card bannings, altering the rules for our format, or change the card text of these cards. We decided to go with extensive card bannings. We know that our ban list is long, but when keeping in mind the Philosophy you can also categorize cards – „no cards which (can) provide(s) extra turns“ and that’s easy to remember. Changing card texts is an inelegant way and would also mean you need access to this website at all times as you might need to look-up certain cards – this is the missed opportunity which came with Beatdown. While cardtexts were changed to „any target“ for the new planeswalkers rules, some cards would be better worded with „… deals 
damage to each opposing team“ than “ … deals damage to each opponent“ to align the mana cost and efficiency to a team based format. Sigh.
It is true, that once you ban a card just the next card in the power level will follow up replacing it. And, as the amount of cards increases with every expansion, the interactions and possibilities of combinations multiply. We can’t restrict all combinations. But, in contrast to the political/free-for-all Commander rules, we don’t think that a card is not ban worthy if regular players like to play the card in a harmless, non-exploiting manner. If a card can be exploited (especially in a team format where your teammates can clone or enchant the card etc.) and the impact on the game would be too devestating, it will be banned in our format. Infusing the deck construction approach is noble, but didn’t always work out, even in a group of friends let alone it be playing with players you don’t know in stores or thereelse. Regular players won’t miss such cards a lot and will easily find replacements.
Our Team Commander Banned List contains the worst cards, and it is awefully quite long, we know. While we’ve tried to make it fairly objective, there will always be a measure of subjectivity since different people evaluate cards and their impacts differently. We won’t explain every card banning in detail, as this would fill up hundreds of pages. We can’t ban every strong card. But we can try to get rid of the worst cards which influence the games in a frustrating way.
There are several criteria for banning individual cards:
* Interacts Poorly with the Structure of Commander. Commander introduces specific structural differences to the game of Magic (notably singleton decks, color restrictions in deckbuilding, and the existence of a Commander). Magic cards not designed with Commander in mind sometimes interact with those elements in ways that change the effective functionality of the card. Cards that have moved too far (in a potentially problematic direction) from their original intent due to this mismatch are candidates for banning. This criterion also includes legendary commanders that are problematic if always available and too strong once they resolve. Example: Karakas.
* Creates Undesirable Games. Losing is not an undesirable game state. However, a game in which one or more players having minimal participation in the game is something which players should be steered away from. Warning signs include massive overall resource imbalance and cards with limited function other than to win the game out of nowhere. This category also includes cards which would make the format less enjoyable otherwise, as they are extremely frustrating to play against like mass landdestruction, one-sided mass discard, extra turns and mass denial. Example: Armageddon, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur.
The most cards which were banned belong to this oppressive card category. Our philosophy is that Team Commander is a game played with each other – it is not fun for a player to be locked out and forced to play a game for an hour without being able to participate. Example: Player A plays a Forest and a Llanowar Elves. Player B plays a land. Player A plays a Swamp and a Bitterblossom. Player B plays his second land. Player A plays a Smokestack -> Player B will probably never be able to recover or ever reach 4 mana or thelike. This would be a bad game, not epic nor rememberworthy.
* Problematic Casual Omnipresence and Combos. Some cards are so powerful that they become must-includes in decks that can run them and have a strongly negative impact on the games in which they appear, even when not built to optimize their effect. This does not necessarily (but may) include cards which are part of a specifc one or two-card combination – there are too many of those available in the format to usefully preclude – but may include cards which have numerous combinations with other commonly-played cards or enabling combinations. Example: Gifts Ungiven, Godo, Bandit Warlord.
* Produces Too Much Mana Too fast. Commander is a format of epic spells and plays, but they need to happen at appropriate times. Some acceleration is acceptable, but plays which are epic on turn ten are undesirable on turn three. Too fast mana will lead to turn 2 or 3 wins, which are not the proclaimed epic matches but the frustrating ones. If a player takes a great advantage early in the game (Example : turn one Island, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Jace, the Mind Sculptor), his opponent won’t be able to get back in the game. Example: Mana Crypt, Sol Ring. In a free-for-all/political Commander game, such „outbursts“ mostly get compensated by all other players seeing the potential danger and playing together to handle this situation – in a team based-format you can’t.
* Exploits the Structure of a Team based game. A team based game alters the game in certain elements as there is an enhanced Starting Life pool, the presence of two or more oppopnents, more spells and land drops per turn and other aspects. Some cards were not desigend with team based games in mind and exploit these occurences in a way too overpowered manner. Example: Havoc Festival, Felidar Sovereign.
Meeting one (or more) criteria on the banlist is not a guarantee of a ban. Some cards fit the description, but either aren’t problematic enough to justify a ban or possess other redeeming factors. Similar cards may have just enough difference to put them on opposite sides of the line, or we might just limit the amount of cards of a specific type available. As our banned list is quite long due to the rule gaps/exploits possible in this format we are thankfull for discussions, but we won’t be able to explain every reason behind every card banning or to write back at every suggestion. We nevertheless hope that our list will become quite popular, so that players don’t have the need to rebuild their decks for every local group or store they play in, but have a general universal list which fits for most of their games.
While we are focused on 2HG/3HG and not on other Commander styles (such as 1v1, politically orientated groups) we might think that our additional bannings don’t harm other formats too much, so that a deck tailored and build around our list won’t miss much in a political free-for-all surrounding or a friendly duel and is still strong and playable and fun to play (though they might not ba able to compete with a styled cEDH deck or tournament Duel commander deck.)