The Rules Committee announced today that it has banned Golos, Tireless Pilgrim from Magic: the Gathering’s Commander format, while unbanning Worldfire.
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
“Golos, Tireless Pilgrim has been a much-discussed card that is both popular to play with and unpopular to play against,” the Committee said. “There are many problems with the card, but the greatest is that in the low-to-middle tiers where we focus the banlist, Golos is simply a better choice of leader for all but the most commander-centric decks.”
As a result, “[i]ts presence crushes the kind of diversity in commander choice which we want to promote.”
Interestingly, it appears that the Rules Committee has proactively communicated with Wizards of the Coast in order to reduce the need for similar types of bans in the future.
“We’ve talked to the folks in Studio X [Magic’s R&D team] and they understand the problems created by generically-powerful five-color commanders that don’t have WUBRG in their mana cost,” the Committee said. “We don’t expect similar cards to come from them in the future, so a surgical strike [on Golos] now makes sense.”
They also acknowledged the fact that Golos, Tireless Pilgrim was a favorite for many in the Commander community. “We understand that many players love Golos, so we don’t take this action lightly,” the Rules Committee said. “In the end, the health of the format is our primary concern and we find Golos unhealthy. While Kenrith, the Returned King is a similarly flexible and popular commander for good stuff five color decks, we see it as a clear step down from Golos.”
This isn’t the first time Golos, Tireless Pilgrim has upended a format to the point where bans were necessary. Golos was initially released in the Summer of 2019 as a part of Core Set 2020 and had an immediate impact in both Standard and Historic in combination with Field of the Dead. The duo was so powerful that it made up over 40% of the field Mythic Championship V that October. Wizards acted quickly by banning Field of the Dead in both Standard and Historic—though they allowed Golos to remain legal.
Worldfire
Worldfire, a nine-mana spell, was banned years ago due to the fact that players could float mana and the play their Commander after Worldfire resolved. But the format has changed a lot since then, and the Rules Committee wants to “foster a Commander environment where eight- and nine-mana spells are viable and likely to show up in a game.”
After reevaluating the card in that context, the Committee concluded that Worldfire is no longer problematic. “Unlike Coalition Victory and Biorhythm, which we continue to believe are problematic in that environment, the level of effort needed to make Worldfire effective is sufficient that we suspect it will not be as much of an issue,” they said. “There are already cheaper ways to do similar things in the format. We believe the social contract and robust pregame discussions will keep Worldfire out of games in which it doesn’t belong.”