Casual Compliance

We're back with a renewed focus on the culture and philosophy of Commander. Welcome to Phase 2. Click here to watch a video of this episode. Support the show! casualcompliance.fun Ask us anything: https://forms.gle/s8hg9NYNHUCe1fs3A Looking for TCG accessories? Head to Palms Off Gaming using the link below and use code CasualCompliance to get 10% off your order! https://palmsoffgaming.com.au/#casu...

It's finally here. The end of Phase 1 of Casual Compliance. The final card on the Commander banlist for us to discuss is none other than the legendary Black Lotus, and we've got a very special guest joining us for this one. One of the members of the Commander Advisory Group, one of the two groups previously shepherding the Commander format, Shivam Bhatt is joining us for this momentous occasion. H...

After 2 and a half years, we're finally at the end of talking about every card on the Commander banlist. We've got one more to go, but in the meantime we thought we'd take this opportunity to reflect on our journey so far with Casual Compliance, talk about what we've learned, and what's coming next. See you in 2 weeks for Black Lotus. Click here to watch a video of this episode. Support the show!...

Welcome to the penultimate episode of us talking about a card from the Commander banlist. This is a real humdinger of a card, so we brought in the big guns for this one, welcoming Violet from Good Games Morley to the show proper! chillybin interviewed her and the team at PAX AUS 2025, so we were stoked to finally have her on a proper episode of the show to talk about maybe unbanning one of the big...

Much like Conspiracy, the entirety of Ante is banned in Commander. The rules still exist, it's an optional variant you can choose to play, but there are some cards designed for Ante play that we almost missed as we work our way towards the end of the ban list. Come and find out what we think of this risky little way to play Magic! Click here to watch a video of this episode. Support the show! casu...

We recorded an episode about Trade Secrets a little while back, but thanks to some technical issues (I forgot to format the memory cards prior to recording), we had to scrap it. Thankfully, we forget everything we talked about the first time around. This is an interesting one, where the ban reason isn't immediately obvious at all. Come and watch chillybin get absolutely lost on this! Click here to...

In Commander, the phrase "life is a resource" is more true than in any other format. 40 life gives you a lot of room to move, and Channel makes the most of this by turning it directly into colourless mana. Is this too much for the modern state of the game? What about the pseudo-reprint it got in Secrets of Strixhaven? Click here to watch a video of this episode. Support the show! casualcompliance....

Another piece of the Power Nine on the Commander ban list finally appears! Ancestral Recall is 1 mana for 3 cards and is one of the best deals in all of Magic. This deal might just be too good to ever see the light of day in Commander. And we mean "ever". It's never been legal in Commander at any point. Find out why in this episode! Huge thanks to Palms Off Gaming for supporting this episode and p...

One of the most recently banned cards, Mana Crypt is a lot of mana for absolutely nothing. Sure, it might hurt you later, but it can make a big impact very quickly. Could it see a return to Commander? We've got thoughts. Come and hear them. You can find a video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/GpAwAXv3Ak8 Support the show! casualcompliance.fun Looking for TCG accessories? Head to Palms...

With 100-card decks in Commander, card draw is a key part of being able to do things in a game. Leovold shuts down your opponent's options for drawing more than 1 card per turn, meaning you will have a hard time finding a way to deal with it. Find out if we think there's any room for unbanning Leovold in Commander in this episode! You can find a video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/cr...

One of the more recent additions to the Commander banlist, Dockside Extortionist is a spicy little guy! Upon entering play, it will net you a whole lot of Treasures, probably worth more than you paid for it, and can get out of hand FAST. But could we bring it back after everything that we've learned since it was banned in September of 2024? Watch this episode to find out what we think about just t...

Do you remember where you were when the Modern Horizons 3 Pro Tour happened? Do you remember all of those Nadu mirror matches? That event led to Nadu being banned in Modern and Commander, and we're here to talk about the latter. Could this dumb bird come back? Hard to say. Read the post-mortem article on how Nadu was designed and eventually banned: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/on-bann...

We've mentioned it on enough previous episodes of this show, it's finally time to talk about Balance! This low-cost handbrake of a card can really drag a game backwards, but there are other legal cards in Commander that do similar things. What's so bad about this one? You can find a video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/wV2xd7m8Suw Support the show! casualcompliance.fun Social links: B...

Since we started this show, there has been an entry on the spin wheel that represented 5 cards, all banned for the same reason: the Moxen. We are finally here to talk about them and what makes them too much for today's game. The reason might not be what you think! You can find a video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/xFDDrx1z3IY Support the show! casualcompliance.fun Social links: Blues...

Cowabunga, friends! The TMNT MTG set is here, and with it we've got a very interesting Commander deck to discuss. Through some very interesting use of the Partner mechanic, this deck has a whopping 6 different ways you can run it! Choose your favourites of the turtles and their friends for your Commander(s) and get to making tokens and +1/+1 counters. We've got another tagged breakdown of the deck...

NOTE: we recorded this prior to the February 2026 updates to the Commander Ban List and Brackets. As a result, we get a couple of things technically "wrong", but it doesn't really affect anything. You'd think 9 mana would be a high enough cost to keep people from playing this angel, but Iona being able to just fully disable your opponents from playing a whole colour of Magic is STRONG We finally t...

Hey, does anyone remember Griselbrand? Remember how that was just not enough of a cost for how many cards it would draw you? Well, we're back with another black card on the Commander banlist that turns your life total directly into cards, and this one's even better! But could it come off the banlist in today's game? Tune in and find out what we think about that! You can find a video version of thi...

We're back in Lorwyn, baby! This time for the Precon Precon, we take a look at Blight Curse, led by Auntie Ool, Cursewretch. This deck is centered around -1/-1 counters of all things, and it's got some neat tricks up its sleeves for them. We do our usual thing of tagging the cards by their function to see how the deck is constructed, break it down and analyse it, and give some thoughts on how to t...

In this episode we take a look at Sylvan Primordial, which is part of a cycle of 5 Primordials from Gatecrash, but stands out from the other 4 a bit. Come and find out why! We shot this one back in December when ScottNoMana was in town for Commandfest Melbourne and we really enjoyed having him come through! Go and follow him everywhere for deckbuilding insights and other MTG updates: TikTok: https...

The first conversation we ever had about what would become Casual Compliance was about whether or not Karakas could be unbanned in Commander. Finally, the spin wheel has blessed us with that very card and we're going to talk about it properly! You can find a video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/RchbqsnPy_w Support the show! casualcompliance.fun Social links: Bluesky TikTok Instagram Y...

While the Avatar: The Last Airbender set didn't have any preconstructed Commander decks, it did have something new and relevant to our interests in the Commander's Bundle. This focused bundle box, including a selection of Commander staple cards with special Avatar art treatments, was a great starting point for building a deck. We set out to build our own idea for an Avatar precon using what we fou...

The Avatar The Last Airbender set for Magic: the Gathering recently dropped and we're very thankful to Wizards of the Coast for sending us some of it to crack open and build decks with. As is tradition around these parts, the first video is a Deck% - our occasional series where we try to build a Commander decklist around a random Commander in 30 minutes. Come watch us explore some new and interest...

The idea of permanents providing access to repeatable counter-magic isn't all bad in Commander, but this one in particular is just a bit too much. Would you unban Erayo, Soratami Ascendant? You can find a video version of this episode at https://youtu.be/qroCzRelbVs Support the show! casualcompliance.fun Social links: Bluesky TikTok Instagram YouTube Email us at casualcompliance@gmail.com ★ Suppor...

It's been almost a month since our last regularly-scheduled banlist episode, but it's good to be back! This time we're talking about Limited Resources, an absolutely brutal way to bring an entire game to a standstill, as early as turn 2. We shot this episode on the same day as our last banlist episode on Golos, and is the last video we shot before we upgraded our remaining 2 cameras, so a couple o...

Here's a bonus third interview from our time at PAX Australia 2025 - a brief but fascinating discussion with Mark Fredrick from Reaction Audio Visual! When it comes to PAX, both in Australia and the US shows, Mark takes care of production for the Main Theatre, which sees some of the largest and most technically demanding performances at the show. As if that wasn't enough, Mark also handles a varie...