Hello dear Leviathan Commander players to the December update of the ban list and rules. Since our previous update, Wizard has given us another set from the Inistrad universe called Crimson Vow. This set did not disturb our meta as Inalla started in September. She dominated almost every corner of the world from which reports were sent to us. For this reason, we have taken the following steps.
Banned as Commander
Inalla, Archmage Ritualist
Announcement Date: December 13, 2021
Date of entry of changes: December 17, 2021
Date of next announcement: March 14, 2022
Rules Change:
In this update, we also decided to refresh and simplify the principle of partner starting hand size. After the Wizards presented Secret Lair: Stranger Things, in which we got a new kind of Partner mechanic called Friends Forever (who are legal in Leviathan), we came to the conclusion that we need to include them in our principle.
Old version:
- Players start each with seven (7) cards in hand. But in case you choose to start with more than one commander by playing two (2) cards with the partner ability the starting hand size changes as following:
* If a player uses partner commanders then he or she draws seven (7) cards and puts X cards in the bottom of their library in any order, where X is 1 plus the number of mulligans taken.
- This way if players start the game with two (2) commanders and choose to take no mulligans, X will be one (1) and the player will have to put a single card from their hand on the bottom of their library. If they choose to mulligan once the number of cards put on the bottom of their library will be two (2) and so on in the same way for more mulligans.
New version:
- Players start each with seven (7) cards in hand. But in case you choose to start with more than one commander the starting hand size changes as following:
* If a player uses more than one commander then he or she draws seven (7) cards and puts X cards in the bottom of their library in any order, where X is 1 plus the number of mulligans taken.
- This way if players start the game with two (2) commanders and choose to take no mulligans, X will be one (1) and the player will have to put a single card from their hand on the bottom of their library. If they choose to mulligan once the number of cards put on the bottom of their library will be two (2) and so on in the same way for more mulligans.
This change is more of a cosmetic procedure than a change in the operation of this rule.
Further Explanation:
Inalla, Archmage Ritualist came out in Commander 2017 along with other legends with the Eminence ability. It took her 4 years to appear in our meta. However, she did it with a very strong punch and actually dominated all Leviathan tournaments right away, winning first place time and time again. Inalla is a very fast Combo-Control deck, a single card combo deck to be exact. What exactly does one card combo mean? Well, this is a term for combo decks that only need to draw one card from their deck because the other is always on the Command Zone to win the game. In the case of Inalla, there is no need to even play her from the Command Zone. Additionally, this combo only requires 4 mana and a Spellseeker to win the game. This is a very simple condition to fulfill. She is also a combination of grixis which gives her access to blue and black. Thanks to these colors, Inalla easily protects its combo with discard and counterspells. It also has a very large number of tutors to find a Spellseeker which makes this deck very consistent. For the past three months, the entire Leviathan committee has been playing and testing Inalla to gather as much data as possible about her beyond the tournament reports. After playing a lot of games together as a committee, we got 73.76% winrate with it, which is the highest win rate so far. For the above reasons, Inalla is banned as Commander.
As always, we are looking forward to your feedback.
Your comitee:
Wojciech Kopański, Justo Chacon, Diego Rivera, Meng Du, Leonardo Leal, Marcos Mayora, Pawel Dziewulski.
And Your RP: Diego Paredes, Mengshi Guo, Nacho Monza.