The overseers of Commander, Magic: The Gathering's most popular format, have banned the card Hullbreacher from last year's Commander Legends. The popular card game from Wizards of the Coast is traditionally a one-on-one affair, with players bringing decks of 60 cards to the table for a set of matchups. Commander supersizes the decks to 100 cards and adds two more players to the mix, opening up lots of strategies that are unique to the format. Commander also takes advantage of cards from throughout Magic's history, creating plenty of opportunities for powerful card combinations that can quickly overtake the entire match.
Hullbreacher is a merfolk pirate that can drop early in a game and hold their own in the stats department. However, the creature's true power lies in its ability to appear on the battlefield during any turn and steal away resources from opponents instantly. As it arrives, any occurrences of opponents getting additional cards from their decks become extra manner for Hullbreacher's controller. Because Commander is a four-player format, its ability can also trigger multiple times in a single round and even synergize with specific legendary Commander creatures, giving players that use it a big advantage on the subsequent turn.
In a new post on the Commander Rules Committee's official website, Hullbreacher was officially banned from the Magic: The Gathering format. The card has been controversial since its arrival because of its disruptive ability, but it seems to have gone over the line when players started designing strategies around the card. Players would get the pirate into play and then play cards that made opponents draw cards as a drawback. Instead of helping opponents, Hullbreacher would ensure that only one player got the card's intended advantage, an outcome that the Commander Rules Committee has deemed unsatisfactory. The ban is instantaneous, leaving the card only legal in games utilizing Legacy and Vintage, Magic's two oldest (and most expensive) formats.
Hullbreacher's ban has gone over well with a good portion of the Commander audience, with many agreeing that the card was format warping. The name Hullbreacher even trended on Twitter throughout the day, showing the immense popularity of the Commander format among Magic: The Gathering players. Commander is unique in that its rules and regulations are decided by a group outside of Wizards of the Coast, the company that creates the card game and regulates every other popular format. Magic: the Gathering card bans have been much more common in recent years within Magic, but Hullbreacher's ban is bound to cause less of an uproar simply because it comes from outside the corporate walls of the game's producer.
Even though many Magic: The Gathering players will now be putting their Hullbreachers into their trade binders and not taking it out any time, there are still plenty of new cards to replace it with. The community is preparing for the release of Magic's first full crossover set, a new group of MTG cards themed after Dungeons and Dragons. With full draft boosters and Commander decks to be released in the coming weeks, Hullbreacher's exit will soon Fade From Memory as the cycle continues.
Source: Commander Rules Committee