Nov 30 Banned & Restricted Predictions: What Could Change in Commander?

The Commander list hasn’t changed since February 9. What the panel has said about Iona, Jeweled Lotus, Griselbrand and Rhystic Study, what prices are betting on, and why no change is likeliest.

Aymeric Lamontagne

Oct 30, 2026

Here is the honest headline: the likeliest change to the Commander banned list on November 30 is no change at all. The list has not moved since February 9, 2026, when Biorhythm came off it and Lutri, the Spellchaser came back everywhere except the companion slot. Wizards has published four multi-format banned and restricted announcements since then — May 18, June 29, August 10 and October 12 — and Commander was not part of any of them. November 30 is the next date on that calendar, and Wizards has said plainly that Commander keeps its own schedule.

That does not leave nothing to talk about. The people who run the list have been unusually specific, in print, about which cards they argued over, and the market has been trading on their words ever since. The Zendikar printing of Iona, Shield of Emeria — a card that is still banned — sat at $5.31 the day before February’s announcement and at $12.11 on October 26, after touching $17.90 in June. Commander players are not paying that for a card they can’t play. They are paying for a sentence.

This piece covers four things: who actually decides now, what February 9 changed and what it did to prices, what the panel has said about each card that might come off the list or go on it, and our read for November 30 — labelled as exactly that.

Who runs the Commander list now

The short version: Wizards does, with a paid panel of community members in the room.

The longer version has three dates. On September 30, 2024, in On the Future of Commander, Wizards announced that the old Commander Rules Committee was handing management of the format to Wizards’ own game design team. On October 22, 2024, Gavin Verhey introduced the Commander Format Panel: seventeen members in its first year, paid for the work, modelled on the existing Pauper Format Panel, with some seats rotating every year. The panel advises; it does not rule. Verhey was explicit that he and other Wizards designers make the final calls.

The third date is the rotation. The December 11, 2025 update rotated six members off and two on, and thirteen panelists signed February’s announcement. That announcement also describes the process more concretely than anything before it: the panel and Wizards’ Commander design group discussed the banned list together and voted on potential unbans.

So when you read a prediction — this one included — the useful question is not "what would the community vote for." It is "what has the panel already said in writing," because the panel has been remarkably willing to show its working.

What they have said they are looking for

Three statements do most of the predictive work.

On unbans, the April 22, 2025 announcement listed what the panel looks for in a card coming back: fond memories attached to it, the potential for positive play patterns or splashy moments, and no tendency to create runaway games or negative play patterns.

On bans, February’s announcement put it in one line while discussing Rhystic Study: "The bar to ban a card in Commander is quite high." The one fast-track exception comes from April 2025, where Verhey coined the "Nadu contingency" — if a new or unbanned card becomes broadly reviled and players want it gone quickly, the panel can act outside its normal rhythm.

On timing, February said Commander is no longer limited to one update window a year, and that the format generally operates on its own schedule even when an announcement happens to coincide with everyone else’s.

There is a fourth thing, which is not a statement but a mechanism, and it explains every recent unban: the Game Changers list. A card on it is kept out of Brackets 1 and 2. That changes the question the panel has to answer about a dangerous card. It no longer needs to be acceptable at every table — only at Bracket 3 and above, where players have opted into stronger games. The five cards unbanned in April 2025 went onto the list when they came back, and so did Biorhythm. When the panel discusses an unban now, it discusses it as a future Game Changer.

What February 9 actually changed

The February 9, 2026 announcement made two changes and argued about six more cards.

Biorhythm was unbanned and went straight onto the Game Changers list. The panel’s case rested on precedent: it had already unbanned expensive game-ending spells such as Worldfire, Sway of the Stars and Coalition Victory, and those turned out fine. It conceded that Biorhythm is stronger and easier to set up than those, and argued that an eight-mana sorcery reading "each player’s life total becomes the number of creatures they control" still needs a lot of setup, has counterplay, and is often a weak draw.

Lutri, the Spellchaser was unbanned as a card in the deck or in the command zone, and stays banned as a companion — a status that did not exist before February. The worry was that a legal companion Lutri is a free card in every blue-red deck, since a singleton deck meets its condition automatically. The panel went out of its way to say this is not the start of a banned-as-commander list, and that the companion list will likely only ever hold Lutri. Lutri was also deliberately kept off the Game Changers list, a break from the usual practice, because it was only ever banned for what it did as a companion.

The same day, the Commander Brackets beta update added Farewell to the Game Changers list — the one Game Changer change that day besides Biorhythm.

Then the cards that were discussed and left alone: Sundering Titan, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Griselbrand and Jeweled Lotus stayed banned, and Thassa's Oracle and Rhystic Study stayed legal. Those six are the whole of this article’s shortlist, because they are the six the panel itself put on the table.

The chart is what an unban does to a card nobody could play. The Onslaught Biorhythm was $7.74 on February 3, had already crept to $10.61 by February 6, and read $56.30 in our archive on February 9. It gave a good part of that back within weeks — $25.31 on March 28 — then recovered, and sat at $34.46 on October 26: four and a half times where it started, eight months on.

The mechanism is simple. A banned card has collectors and other-format players behind its price and no Commander demand at all. An unban adds the largest casual format’s demand overnight to a supply that cannot respond for months. The spike is the rush; the plateau is the new real level.

What the unban did not do is put Biorhythm everywhere. Its EDHREC rank in Scryfall’s card data on October 26 was 9,334 — about where Worldfire (8,266) and Coalition Victory (9,527) sit, the precedents the panel cited. Expensive is not the same as ubiquitous. That is the Game Changers mechanism working as designed: the card is real, it ends games, and it stays at the tables that asked for it. For predicting the next unban, that matters more than any price. The panel has now unbanned a game-ending sorcery and watched it settle in quietly, which is exactly the evidence it said it wanted before taking the next risk.

The unban shortlist

Discussed on February 9 and left banned

• Iona, Shield of Emeria — Called "right on the cusp" in February. The closest thing the list has to a named front-runner.
• Jeweled Lotus — Named in April 2025 as the likeliest of three banned fast-mana cards to return someday. Kept banned in February, not ruled out.
• Griselbrand — A real power risk, by the panel’s own account — which then asked whether Bracket 3 and above could take it.
• Sundering Titan — Would be a Game Changer if unbanned. Kept banned anyway, because land destruction is what tables hate most.

Before the cards, the prices — because the market has already placed its bets, and they are worth reading as a record of what people believed after each announcement rather than as a forecast. Each figure is the TCGplayer market price of one named printing from Manamancer’s archive; the February 3 column is a week before the announcement, February 9 is the day itself.

Two of those rows tell the whole story of unban speculation. Jeweled Lotus rose 86% between February 3 and February 6 — $44.00 to $81.89 — on hope alone, then was not unbanned, and by October 26 had lost more than half of that peak. Iona did nothing before the announcement and more than tripled by June, because the announcement itself said it nearly happened.

Iona, Shield of Emeria: the panel’s own front-runner

Iona, Shield of Emeria is the card the panel has talked itself closest to. In April 2025 it was "discussed heavily": a nine-mana Angel that makes for interesting decisions against a table of three-colour decks, and a miserable one against a mono-coloured deck, which it simply switches off. In February the language moved to "right on the cusp," with one new concern named — the two-card lock with Painter's Servant, which makes every card the chosen colour so that Iona naming that colour stops opponents casting spells at all.

The price chart above reads like a market that took "on the cusp" literally. The Zendikar printing went from $5.31 on February 8 to a high of $17.90 on June 19 — around the time February’s announcement said the panel would likely be back, "in May or June." We could find no Commander update on magic.wizards.com since. Iona has slid 32% from that high, to $12.11 on October 26, as the summer passed without one. That is a correlation of timing, not proof of motive, but it is hard to read the shape any other way.

Our read: if one card comes off the list the next time the panel acts, Iona is the likeliest, and by the panel’s usual practice it would go straight onto the Game Changers list. The Painter’s Servant lock is the obstacle the panel named itself, so the thing to watch is whether it decides the brackets can contain a two-card lock the way they contain Biorhythm.

Jeweled Lotus: the promise with no date

Jeweled Lotus is the one card on the list with something close to a public promise attached. In April 2025, discussing it alongside Dockside Extortionist and Mana Crypt, Verhey wrote that if any of the three ever returns, "the most likely one is Jeweled Lotus" — a one-shot artifact, iconic, and a genuine help to commanders with high mana values. It reads "add three mana of any one color" with a single restriction: the mana can only cast your commander. In February the panel discussed it again, declined, and pointed back to the April reasoning.

The price is the cautionary half of the story. The market bought the April sentence before February’s announcement, then sold it after: $81.89 on February 6, $39.62 on October 26.

Our read: possible, not imminent. A zero-mana artifact that can put a commander out on turn one is a recipe for the "runaway games" the unban criteria warn against, and unlike Iona, nothing the panel has written since April 2025 has moved its language closer.

Griselbrand: the question the panel asked out loud

Griselbrand went from one of the less likely returns in April 2025 to an open question in February 2026. The panel was blunt about the risk — paying 7 life to draw seven cards, twice if you can afford it, often wins on the spot — and equally blunt that the card is widely loved. Then it asked the community directly whether, at Bracket 3 and above, an unban is really out of the question, and noted it could open something new in competitive Commander.

The Avacyn Restored printing has nearly doubled since, from $4.65 on February 9 to $8.85 on October 26, with its high of $9.05 on October 11. Unlike Iona, it is still near its peak. We can’t separate how much of that is Commander speculation, since Griselbrand has a life outside the format.

Our read: a panel that asks a question in public is usually testing an answer it is considering. Griselbrand is the most likely surprise unban — further from the cusp than Iona, but moving the right way.

Sundering Titan: discussed, and not happening

Sundering Titan shows the Game Changers mechanism reaching its limit. The panel granted that the land-destruction and blink-loop decks it used to enable are less common now, and that as a Game Changer it would be kept out of Bracket 2 and below. It stayed banned anyway: outside the brackets it is very unfun, it is colourless so any deck can play it, and an eight-mana artifact is easy to ramp into. The same announcement called land destruction among the most disliked mechanics in the format.

The Darksteel printing was $1.17 on February 9 and $1.52 on October 26. The market does not believe in this one, and neither do we.

April 2025 named a longer tail of cards that could come back someday — Sylvan Primordial, Primeval Titan, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, Prophet of Kruphix and Paradox Engine among them — but February did not single any of them out, so we would not expect them first.

The ban side: two cards, both told no

Every year someone predicts a Rhystic Study ban. The panel has answered that in writing.

Rhystic Study was the 46th most popular card on EDHREC in Scryfall’s card data on October 26, and it is a Game Changer. February’s announcement conceded it is very powerful and a nuisance for many players, especially in competitive Commander, and that it is also widely loved. Touching it would take serious signs and a real shift in public opinion. The market agrees: the Prophecy printing was $44.17 on February 9 and $64.82 on October 26, after a high of $70.56 on August 8. A card people expected to be banned would be getting sold, not bought.

Thassa's Oracle, rank 458 on the same date and also a Game Changer, got shorter treatment. The panel described it as mostly enjoyed by the competitive community and rarely seen outside the highest power levels, and called the case mostly closed, while allowing that things could change.

Both are on the Game Changers list, and that is the point. The list is where Wizards now puts the cards it would once have been pressured to ban: they stay legal, and they stay at the tables that opted into them. A ban of either would be an admission that the bracket approach failed for that card, and nothing published since February suggests the panel thinks it has.

The Nadu contingency, and the card we can’t see

That leaves the fast-track. A ban on November 30 would most likely be the Nadu contingency in action — a new card that tables have quickly come to loathe. We looked for one in our own data and did not find an obvious candidate. On October 26 no card first printed since November 1, 2025 was inside EDHREC’s top 500 in Scryfall’s card data; the widest-played was Redirect Lightning, at 516.

Two caveats before anyone relaxes. First, EDHREC rank accumulates over time, so new cards start behind and the top 500 is a high bar for anything less than a year old. Second, popularity is not the ban criterion; being reviled is, and no rank measures that. We can’t see the next Nadu in the data, which is not the same as there not being one.

One more thing that is not evidence: the October 12 announcement banned Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, Spider-Man 2099 and Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice as commanders — in Competitive Brawl, a different format with its own list and its own managers. None of that applies to Commander.

Our read for November 30

Labelled clearly, as promised. This is what we think, on October 27, from the evidence above.

1. Most likely: no change to the Commander list on November 30. Commander keeps its own schedule, it was absent from the last four multi-format announcements, and we could not find the "May or June" check-in that February anticipated anywhere on Wizards’ site. A Commander update could still come — on November 30 or any other day — but the calendar date by itself tells you nothing.
2. If the panel does act, the likeliest move is an unban, and the likeliest unban is Iona — onto the Game Changers list, on the panel’s own "right on the cusp" logic. Griselbrand is the surprise candidate. Jeweled Lotus is possible but has not moved closer.
3. A new ban is the least likely outcome. The two cards people ask about most have been told no in writing, and a Nadu-contingency ban needs a card nobody has shown us yet.

What would change our mind: Wizards scheduling a Commander-specific update for that date, or a new panel statement between now and then. If either happens, this section gets rewritten first.

Where I land

How Manamancer checks format legality — The deck builder flags banned cards from its local Scryfall-derived index — which has to refresh after an announcement before a change shows up in your decks.

We will be back after November 30 with what actually changed, and with this prediction graded honestly either way.

Until then: may your Iona always name the one colour nobody else at the table is playing, and may your Biorhythm resolve on the turn you are the only one with an army.