Why Was Dockside Extortionist Banned In Commander? - Magic: The Gathering
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- What Is Dockside Extortionist?
- So What Made Dockside Extortionist So Good?
- Why Did Dockside Extortionist Have To Be Banned?
- Where Can You Still Play Dockside Extortionist?
Having a Magic: The Gathering card gets banned is a big deal, especially in a format like Commander, where every card Magic has ever printed is available for play. A recent string of bannings in Magic has culminated in four cards getting the axe in the Commander format, with the little enterprising Goblin Dockside Extortionist being banned from decks.
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PostsDockside Extortionist is good; it’s pretty plain to see just from looking at the card. But why exactly was it banned? We took a look at one of the most influential Goblins in Magic and explored why it deserved to be cut from your Commander decks.
What Is Dockside Extortionist?
CloseThe mono-red Dockside Extortionist is a Goblin Pirate card originally printed in Commander 2019. This punishing little guy does quite a bit but is dependent on your opponent’s board state to reach its true potential.
Dockside Extortionist works by creating Treasure tokens when it enters the battlefield equal to the number of artifacts and enchantments all your opponents control.
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PostsWhat this means is when you have it enter the battlefield, you get a ton of Treasure tokens since it adds up the total number of all artifacts and enchantments across all your opponents. You can easily rack up five or more Treasure tokens even just by playing it on curve on your second turn.
So What Made Dockside Extortionist So Good?
The main problem with Dockside Extortionist, and with all the other cards banned in the wave, is that it can generate more mana than it costs to play exceptionally easily. If your opponents have three or more artifacts and enchantments out, you’re already pulling in a higher amount of mana than what you have put into casting it.
Even just at your second turn, you could be looking at five or more mana, more than enough to cast a few spells, a higher-cost commander, or some powerful mid-game bomb at the earliest point of the game.
There’s also the fact that you could use Dockside Extortionist strategically to force your opponents to get rid of their own Treasure tokens just by playing it.
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Posts 1Let’s say you play it into a board with a ton of Treasure tokens out already. Maybe your opponents played their own Docksides Extortionists and racked up a few Treasure tokens that way, or they created their own through some other means.
When you go to drop your own Dockside Extortionist you are either forcing your opponents to sacrifice their Treasure tokens early in response, or they will be giving you a ton of Treasure tokens of your own.
Why Did Dockside Extortionist Have To Be Banned?
CloseDockside Extortionist starts to get a little out of control when you start combining it with ways to blink it or retrigger it, giving you more and more Treasure tokens every time it enters the battlefield.
One of the most straightforward ways of doing so is with Temur Sabertooth, an uncommon creature that lets you spend two mana to bounce another creature back into its owner’s hand. You can give Temur Sabertooth indestructible for the turn, but that’s irrelevant; the real power comes when you are generating more Treasure tokens than what it costs to trigger the ability and then recast Dockside Extortionists.
So long as you are making at least five Treasure tokens, you have yourself infinite mana with just two cards. You also have infinite enter the battlefield triggers, an infinite storm count, and infinite leave the battlefield triggers all at the same time.
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PostsAnd that’s just one of these infinite combos with Dockside Extortionist, there are plenty more out there.
Having a card that makes so much mana so easily can be a hindrance to card design for future sets by throttling what blink spells and effects Magic can produce.
Dockside Extortionist has been on the Rules Committee’s radar for quite some time, and it has been deciding games for the past five years with a fair amount of consistency. While a bit more swingy than other cards that were included in the ban, like Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt, it also has plenty of potential to be a bit of a dud if no one else is playing a large number of artifacts and enchantments.
Where Can You Still Play Dockside Extortionist?
Just because Dockside Extortionist is banned in Commander does not mean that you can’t play it anymore, but it does remove it from the most popular format. You can still play the money-conscious Goblin Pirate in Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker.
It is unlikely that Dockside Extortionist will ever get unbanned in Commander given the nature of the card and shifts in Magic’s focus on how they want to keep Commander from being such an explosive format with incredibly fast early turns.
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7.0/10 Franchise Magic: The Gathering Original Release Date August 5, 1993 Publisher Wizards of the Coast Player Count 2+ Age Recommendation 13+ Length per Game Variable Expand Collapse
