September 25, 2017 Announcement/Update
September 25, 2017

Price of Progress

Price of Progress exploits Duel Commander's singleton restrictions in particularly punishing ways. The format's limited fetchland access forces players into higher nonbasic land counts compared to traditional formats, as duplicate fetchlands cannot provide the same protective utility. Two-color decks suffer especially, requiring numerous dual lands for consistency without fetchland flexibility.

The singleton nature creates an additional problem: Price of Progress appears too infrequently to warrant specific preparation, yet delivers devastating damage when drawn. Unlike tutorable threats that demand respect through consistent presence, this card lurks as an occasional but game-ending surprise in decks without search effects.

Among burn spells prevalent in Duel Commander, Price of Progress occupies unique design space through its scaling damage potential. While other burn has predictable outputs, this spell ranges from minimal to lethal based solely on opponents' manabase construction—a deckbuilding requirement they cannot meaningfully adjust for.

Key ban reasons:

• Singleton restrictions force vulnerable nonbasic-heavy manabases
• Impossible to build against without crippling consistency
• Damage scaling exceeds all comparable burn effects
• Creates instant, undercosted wins against normal manabases
• Two-color decks disproportionately punished
• Warps deckbuilding around an infrequent threat

Price of Progress must be banned to prevent manabases from being weaponized against their owners and eliminate variance-based instant wins.

Edgar Markov

Commander 2017's ""Eminence"" mechanic followed problematic precedents set by Oloro, Ageless Ascetic and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician—both banned for command zone manipulation. Abilities functioning from the command zone fundamentally undermine the casting requirement that defines commander gameplay. These effects prove particularly oppressive in duel formats where no political pressure exists to balance their advantage.

Edgar Markov epitomizes this design flaw while enabling an explosively powerful vampire tribal strategy. The passive token generation creates overwhelming board presence without investment or interaction opportunity. Tournament results demonstrate immediate format domination—within four weeks, the metagame devolved into Edgar strategies versus desperate anti-Edgar responses.

This binary polarization represents the antithesis of healthy diversity. When a single commander warps the entire format around its presence or countering it, competitive balance collapses. The card's tournament dominance confirmed theoretical concerns about passive command zone abilities in duel environments.

Key ban reasons:

• Passive ability circumvents fundamental casting requirements
• Creates tokens without mana investment or interaction
• Dominated tournaments immediately upon release
• Polarized metagame into binary Edgar versus anti-Edgar
• Eliminates strategic diversity through overwhelming presence
• Command zone abilities inherently broken in duel format

Edgar Markov must be banned as a commander to prevent passive command zone abilities from destroying format diversity and restore the fundamental requirement that commanders be cast to generate value.