After 18 years on the banlist, the alternate win condition MTG card Coalition Victory is finally legal in Commander, with an official announcement from Wizards of the Coast arriving on Tuesday. Enough fans anticipated the unbanning that the price of Coalition Victory spiked by 300% in the last week, as collectors bought up copies in advance of the announcement.
The Commander Format Panel announced changes to the popular multiplayer MTG format on Tuesday April 22, with several cards being removed from the Commander Banlist:
- Gifts Ungiven
- Sway of the Stars
- Braids, Cabal Minion
- Coalition Victory
- Panoptic Mirror
Many fans had been banking on Coalition Victory being unbanned – or perhaps ‘gambling’ would be a better word. According to price tracking website MTG Goldfish, several printings of Coalition Victory have shot up since April 15. The regular Invasion printing of the card – the earliest MTG set it appeared in – went from $9.10 to $17. The List version saw a steeper climb, jumping from $6.20 to $20, while the Time Spiral ‘Timeshifted’ variant is up from $7.90 to $27.90.
We first noted foil copies of the card surging in price in October 2024, and those premium versions have climbed even higher since then. The Time Spiral foil crossed the $60 threshold in February, while the Invasion foil levelled out at $130 by the end of October, before experiencing a temporary spike up to $239 during March.
Coalition Victory’s inclusion on the Commander banlist has long felt like an anachronism. It’s an eight mana sorcery that, if you control a basic land of each type and a creature of each color when it resolves, will win the game for you.
Meeting the alternate win condition is a little easier to pull off now than when it was first printed, thanks to the various cards that make your lands count as all basic land types, and the proliferation of five color commanders.
But it hardly feels broken by modern Commander standards. It’s especially vulnerable to disruption – countering it, killing the controller’s multi-colored creatures, or turning off the tech that makes their lands count as all types are all options for stopping it.
It seems that the folks at Wizards of the Coast agree. Who knows – perhaps a Commander Precon built around Coalition Victory will make its way onto the MTG release schedule before the year is out?
Has your pod always allowed Coalition Victory under rule zero? Are you dead certain that it should stay banned for the health of the format? Come and tell us about it in the official Wargamer Discord server!
