Commander:
Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes is no longer banned as a commander.
Partners / Companions:
No changes.
Cards:
Out of Time is no longer banned;
Rule Changes:
The rule 1000.5 – Gameplay regarding Commander Tax has been modified for cards with the “Choose a Background” ability. The new rule 1100.2 – Choose a Background has been added for clarity.
| Announcement Date: | January 15, 2026 |
| Date of entry of changes: | January 15, 2026 |
| Next Announcement Date: | April 16, 2026 |
See the banlist (changes might not be immediately visible)
Centurions,
welcome to 2026.
We want to open this new year by thanking you for your continued support and for helping make last season’s championship a success. We have already presented the changes to the 2026 tournament circuit, and we hope this announcement helps fuel the enthusiasm and interest that players are showing for Centurion.
This update comes at a particularly favorable moment for the format: the metagame shows no significant issues, continues to evolve, and new commanders are managing to emerge and find space. The unbanning work carried out over past years has resulted in a banlist composed almost exclusively of cards with an extremely high power level, significantly reducing the margin for intervention.
While these conclusions make us confident about the game’s balance, we want to avoid leaving the format in a stagnant state and instead keep it dynamic. For this reason, we have decided to make an important choice to avoid a prolonged period of “no changes,” promoting greater variety. The goal is to test, in practice, the return of some cards whose risks we acknowledge, treating them as truly experimental changes.
This approach will be monitored with the utmost care and does not imply that every card will return permanently to the format. All future decisions will be carefully weighed, taking into account historical context and the needs of the metagame. For every new introduction, we reserve the right to intervene quickly if the impact proves excessive in the immediate post-release period. At the same time, we want to avoid hasty bans that do not allow the metagame to adapt and identify effective answers to cards returning to the format.
We are aware of the challenges of this path, but our commitment will be total: data analysis will be constant, and listening to the community will continue to be a central element of the process. We rely on your fundamental contribution to the ongoing improvement of the format and we are confident that we will hear your feedback.
Shields up!
Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes
Minsc & Boo was one of the commanders that remained legal for the shortest amount of time in Centurion. Its ability to generate board advantage, optimized by a very aggressive support shell, was the main factor that earned it a place on the banlist.
More than two years after its ban, threats costing four or more mana that can win games very quickly have significantly increased. The increased speed of the format and the growing efficiency of answers have made it possible to keep pace with the ever-increasing power level. We therefore believe the time has come to give this commander a chance to see play again.We are aware that having a threat of Minsc & Boo’s caliber in the command zone is a bold choice, so we will treat this unban as an experimental change, remaining ready to intervene quickly should its reintroduction lead to a negative evolution of the metagame.
Out of Time
Out of Time has been on the banlist since 2021, when Aminatou, the Shapeshifter in its control version was one of the top-tier commanders in the metagame.
However, almost five years later, the metagame has evolved and control is no longer the dominant archetype in the format. Creature-based decks have gained a plethora of highly impactful cards.
The addition of Out of Time will allow for more effective management of decks that primarily rely on having their commander in play (thanks to its unique feature of making the commander no longer accessible) to develop their gameplay.
In addition to the above, Aminatou is no longer a consistent presence at the top of the metagame, especially in its control version, despite being a deck that interacts very well with opposing threats.
We therefore believe that this choice can offer new options to control players, both from the perspective of the command zone and the main deck.
For these reasons, Out of Time is no longer banned.
Rule change: Choose a Background
With the aim of expanding experimentation opportunities and increasing available gameplay options, we have made a technical change to how the Choose a Background ability works.
Until now, commanders with this ability were subject to shared Partner Tax, a rule that reduced their effectiveness compared to other combinations. With the current update, the commander tax no longer applies cumulatively to pairs formed through Choose a Background: each commander now tracks its own tax separately.
We are aware that this change may appear, at first glance, to add further rules complexity. However, we believe that clarifying how these interactions work helps create a fairer, more consistent, and more engaging play environment.
For this reason, we have updated rule 1000.5a, introducing a specific exception for Choose a Background, and added the new rule 1100.2, which explicitly defines how it works.
Below is the formal text of the updated rules:
1000.5 – Gameplay
a. A player may cast a commander they own from the command zone. A commander cast from the command zone costs an additional {2} for each previous time that player has cast a commander from the command zone during that game. This additional cost is informally known as the “commander tax.” This is the Centurion commander variant relative to [MTG CR 903.8] (see 1100.1 – Partner Tax).
However, if a player’s pair of commanders is formed via the “Choose a Background” ability, a commander cast from the command zone costs an additional {2} for each previous time it has been cast from the command zone during that game (MTG CR 903.8) (see 1100.2 – Choose a Background).1100 – Shared commander tax
1100.1 – Partner tax
A player may cast a commander they own from the command zone. A commander cast from the command zone costs an additional {2} for each previous time that player has cast a commander from the command zone during that game. This additional cost is shared among all commanders the player owns.
1100.2 – Choose a Background
If a commander has the “Choose a Background” ability and the second commander has the Background type, MTG CR 903.8 applies. The additional cost (commander tax) is not shared among the commanders owned by the player.
We believe that combinations such as Gut, True Soul Zealot/Inspiring Leader and Wilson, Refined Grizzly/Cultist of the Absolute can bring greater variety and provide valid alternatives for deck construction and metagame diversity.
News & Notes:
We look forward to seeing you on 15/01/2026 at 22:00 to go through all the changes together during the live stream, hosted by @ManaOpenMTG su YouTube.
Here you can find the rules for the 2026 championship.
We are always looking for volunteers to expand our staff. If you would like to apply, if you believe you have the skills to contribute to the Centurion project or produce valuable content, contact us at centvrioncommander@gmail.com or on our official Facebook page.
Thank you for your support.
The Committee
Thanks for reading.
The Centurion Committee
