You’ll need to spend $165 to play Magic’s new limited format

Wizards of the Coast is trying to entice Commander players to spend even more money with a new Magic: the Gathering limited format that requires buying an entire Play Booster box.

Commander Box League will be playable for the first time during the Edge of Eternities prerelease events running July 25-31. Players will purchase a box of the new set – which costs $165 on Amazon – and then build a 60-card deck from its 30 booster packs. They then play against two or three other players with standard Commander rules. Kind of.

In fact, the format abandons some of the restrictions that make building a Commander deck a fun challenge, allowing you to use multiple copies of cards and ignore the color identity of your Commander when determining what other cards you can include. With a whole box to work with, decks promise to be far more sculpted than a typical sealed competition where players build a 40-card deck from six boosters. Ignoring the color identity restriction removes the tradeoffs inherent in mono-colored Commanders and will give a huge advantage to whoever in the pod was lucky enough to open the biggest bomb.

Like the new four-person Pick-Two Draft format, Commander Box League was previously tested at MagicCons. Wizards of the Coast has been looking to change up the mix of events running at local gaming stores with an emphasis on Commander since officially taking up management of the casual format last year. Also joining the mix is Two-Headed Commander Nights, a variation on the Two-Headed Giant team format. Stores will encourage attendance by offering special promo cards for any of these formats.

Edge of Eternities Commander decks sell for $45 each, making them a significantly more affordable way to try out the new set than buying a full Play Booster box. The new format could be embraced by players looking for a fresh challenge, but might also be seen in a negative light, as Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro have often come under fire for “cash grab” strategies. Financial analysts warned in 2022 that the company was in danger of “killing its golden goose” by focusing on “extracting more revenue from each player rather than by growing its player base.”