Commander is the most popular format to emerge from the popular card game, Magic: The Gathering. While WotC supports the format with new products, the format itself is maintained by a player-ran committee. This in itself is the best of both worlds, an insanely popular format to drive sales, but managed by a group not affiliated with WotC. This means that overarching decisions for the format, like bans, allows WotC to easily sidestep criticism from MTG’s very vocal “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” community.
Recently, Pauper, the common-only format that originated on your Dad’s version of digital MTG, MTGO (your dad will call it MODO) received this treatment. A handpicked group of highly influential twitter bubbles were selected to oversee the format, and to serve as the meat shields for the backlash that will inevitably come when the committee does anything, or nothing.
We’ve obtained a leaked document that outlined the thought process behind the descision.
While it’s true that these players are nothing more than mere advisors and WotC has every right to ignore their recommendations, it’s going to serve the Hasbro subsidiary either way by allowing them to point the finger to the players outside of the hole they dug themselves to hide in.