Ban List Update and Changes - 3rd November 2025
- Leviathan Committee
- 22 hours ago
- 4 min read
Hello Leviathan players!
In line with our commitment to maintaining a diverse, dynamic, and above all, healthy play environment, the time has come for our cyclical update to the Ban list for November.
Over the past months, we have closely observed the evolution of the metagame—analyzing the latest dominant strategies and looking at cards that disproportionately contributed to one-sided games, or those that have lost their original significance over time. We believe that formats should evolve naturally, but our intervention is necessary when individual decks become too resilient or too fast for healthy interaction.
Today, we are announcing changes designed to: open space for new archetypes, balance dominant decks, and re-evaluate cards whose initial threat has been neutralized by the format's evolution.
Let's move on to the specifics.
Rules change:
No change
Commander changes:
No change
Individual card changes:
Auriok Salvagers is now legal
Force of Will is now banned
Grindstone is now legal
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is now legal
Necropotence is now legal
Experimental change
No change
Further explanation
We decided to remove Auriok Salvagers from the banned list because we concluded that this once game-breaking combination has now lost its strength due to the contemporary game environment. The card was historically banned primarily because of the ease of the infinite combo with Lion's Eye Diamond (LED). However, the acceleration of the meta and the release of new, better creature and artifact destruction have made the slow, two-card, and interactive Salvagers-LED combination simply less effective. Despite its power, we believe that the current environment, capable of quickly destroying key combo pieces (such as Salvagers or LED), allows for balancing the effect of this card.
We made the difficult but necessary decision to ban Force of Will, as we concluded that the card had become too omnipotent within the context of the rapidly evolving metagame, disproportionately reinforcing already dominant decks. We determined that its ability to provide free interaction—countering any spell at the cost of merely pitching a blue card—constituted an unhealthy breach of tempo balance in the early game. FoW also allowed players to proactively secure key plays (such as an early Commander, big play or combo) before the opponent had a chance to gather the necessary mana for a sensible response. Furthermore, FoW forced the opponent to incur a massive Card Disadvantage, which too often resulted in one-sided, non-interactive games, thus impoverishing the format's strategic depth.
We decided to reintroduce Grindstone to the pool of legal cards because we concluded that this formerly dangerous artifact mechanic has been weakened by today's tournament realities. The historical reason for its prohibition was the obvious, infinite combination with Painter's Servant. However, the dynamic evolution of game pace and the availability of new, more efficient cards for creature and artifact destruction has made assembling and defending the Grindstone and Servant combination uneconomical. Although the combo still exists, we believe that the current arsenal of format interaction—including the instant removal of key components—is sufficient to keep this powerful effect in check.
We decided to restore Jace, Wielder of Mysteries to the legal card list because we concluded that its potential for an immediate win has been weakened by current tournament realities and the dynamic evolution of game pace. The card was originally banned due to its highly non-interactive win condition via library exhaustion. Nevertheless, in conjunction with the update to our policy regarding combo cards that are neither too fast nor too resilient to interaction, we deemed that Jace qualifies for a return. In light of the acceleration of the meta, strategies based on quick wins through direct damage or other more resilient combinations have become significantly more efficient, making the attempt to assemble Jace’s combination too slow and vulnerable to attack. We believe that the wide availability of interaction—including effective counterspells, Planeswalker removal, and hand disruption cards etc—is now sufficient to balance Jace's effect and force players into more strategic threat management.
We have decided to restore Necropotence to the allowed card list because we concluded that this once powerful enchantment has now lost part of its strength in the context of the current Leviathan Commander metagame. This was made possible by the continuous evolution of new cards we got and the format's dynamics. We recognized that the acceleration of the meta and the transition to 25 life points in the format are factors that have fundamentally balanced the effect of the card; losing the significant life required by Necropotence is now a high risk, high reward. Furthermore, the emergence of many new cards that offer equally effective resource advantage without requiring such a drastic life payment means that Necropotence's power is now appropriately situated within the environment.
Thank you for your involvement and valuable feedback. The next update will be released according to our schedule.
Leviathan Commander Format Committee
Announcement Date: November 3, 2025
Date of entry of changes: November 3, 2025
Date of next announcement: January 5, 2026
Current banlist - website version Current banlist - moxfield version
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