Shit, let's ban Teferi, Temporal Archmage, too. You can lock the game down with just him, Stasis, and Frozen Aether. THAT'S ONE WHOLE CARD LESS GUYS.

Mathematical fact, yes. But there's also the other side of that coin: Leovold, the card that lets the whole lockdown happen, is the commander. Yes, the combo takes a minimum of two additional cards, more often three, but Leovold is what stops people from drawing. Interrupting the lockdown isn't a guarantee that Leovold won't come back and start it up again. The only way to stop Leovold from coming back it to permanently exile him by taking control of his owner's turn. Mass land destruction only goes so far.

The big difference between the Stasis/Frozen Aether combo and a Leovold lock is that, after Stasis gets destroyed, everything untaps on it's owner's turn. It also stops it's owner from untapping, meaning the lock isn't going to last without extra cards. With Leovold, after someone breaks the lock, they don't get back the cards they discarded or lost during the lockdown. With Braids, nobody gets back the permanents they lost to the lock. With Erayo, nobody gets back the cards she countered. Yeah, it takes extra cards to make the lock a game winning strategy, but the lock has lasting effects even after it gets broken.

A lockdown that causes discards hits anything that someone had in their hand. Doesn't matter if it's a land, creature, artifact, sorcery, or instant., it all gets discarded. Instants can be used, but cards like Fog have almost no use when played on their owner's turn. Also, with Anvil of Bogarden, I don't know if it gives the chance to cast the card drawn before it gets discarded, since the two are both part of the same effect, and it happens at the start of the draw phase, which I believe happens before the normal draw.

A lockdown that has lasting effects (Cards sent to the graveyard from anywhere) is a lot worse then a lockdown that just puts the game on hold for four or five turns. An empty hand also means there's no playing anything, even lands.

Anvil of Bogardan and Teferi's Puzzle Box both trigger at the beginning of the draw step, so you draw for turn first. If that card is an instant, you can cast it before the trigger resolves. If not, you'll lose it and not draw replacements.

All I know is this is another commander that makes Vision Skeins cool to play. I'm okay with that. Arcane Denial is much better?

Heck... Suddenly I can play Prosperity like a second Mind Spring?

I think this guy is gonna prove more fun for us than not.

Leovold is acting as a spirit of the labyrinth. He is part of what enables the combo, but he alone does not "let it happen". You can make sure the lock down cant continue using return to dust targeting the puzzlebox.



All true, but the reason the comparison to braids and erayo are lacking is because braids doesnt need any help to remove players resources, she has an immediate effect on the game from the moment she enters until she leaves. Leovold does nothing in play unless you add more effects in. Stoping additional card draw is annoying, but you can remove him, then cast your draw spell and he has almost no effect.


People are really caught up with what he could to ruin the game instead of what he should do to make it an interesting and fun game. His effect is powerful but if you exclude wheel effects and mass discard effects (and how fun are those anyway?) and focus on breaking the synergy of "each player draws" effects he could be a sweet fun commander.

If my opponent has gone out of thier way to build and play wheel and deal leovold, then Im finding someone else to play with. If it's online it's really easy, click the red X and jump into a different match.

So you're group really doesn't run artifact removal? Board wipes? This might be why you'd have such a problem with cards. Arbiter/Champion is in no way a lock. It's the softest of soft locks, if it can even be considered a soft lock. It doesn't stop people from even attacking each other.


Not a single one of those is an actual combo, beyond making people discard on their upkeep to prevent them from sandbagging cards. Mind Funeral is not a combo with Leovold. Every single UB/x deck in the game can put Mind Funeral in their decks. Every deck can put a spell in to clear the board for commander damage >.>
There is a lot of misunderstanding in this paragraph.


Lots of these cards are actually bad and would not see play anyway, but i get the point. If no one has cards in their hand and you play a "discard every upkeep" card, they get 1 turn to play it...

Leovold, Chains of Mephistopheles, and Notion Thief can all fill the one side... Possibly some others. Yes, Chains is expensive but there are at least two copies seeing play in my meta.

Puzzle Box, Anvil of Bogardan, Geier Reach Sanitarium in draw step, Lore Broker in draw step, a few other one shot effects... Many more options when adding a third card.

Puzzle box is the only one that turns a 5 card hand into a 1 card hand. Anvil works over time but only costs you 1 card per turn, it might as well say, at the beginning of your draw step, discard a card.

The Sanitaruim and Law broker stop one person out of 3 so the rest of them are free to draw as they like. Annoying for that person, but no more so than yosei lock.

If you want these to have the desired effect you also must add a way to force everyone to discard their hand. So my point stands that only the puzzle box achieves the desired soft lock effect with leovold. All the others require a third spell to resolve.

I only listed the two card options but they are all effectively a lock, even if it's a single player or gives an extra turn or two to find an answer. There's generally one player that's more likely to have an answer anyway so locking that player out can be the same as the full table without actually drawing the ire of the full table. Not to mention a 2 v 1 is a lot easier to handle than a 3 v 1 so locking a single player out with no additional effort is not insignificant. The three card options aren't going to be any harder to pull off considering they all play nice with your commander so your deck will be loaded with the types of effects.

Just to be clear, Anvil and Sanitarium don't limit to playing instant speed in your draw step. Only Puzzle Box limits to instant speed spells.

I suspect you have more faith in people than I, sir. That said, I don't think Leovold decks will be as cookie-cutter as say, Nekusar decks, just to pick another general that runs all the wheels forever. Limiting your opponents' excessive card draw has some appeal... it's just annoying that it can be broken in half so easily.

Yes they do.
With Anvil, you draw for turn, and Anvil's ability is on the stack during your draw phase. You either cast the card in your hand or not. Then Anvil resolves and you don't draw a card, and then you discard a card.

Geier Reach Sanitarium is not worth playing in Leovold imo, but works the same way (if activated during draw step). It just also only works against one person.

And these all require that you get your opponents down to 0-1 cards in hand, too, of course.

Puzzle Box just does it alone.

This is the only bit that is concerning. Since when are 2 (or more) cards+general combos worrying? This is like wanting to ban Merieke because of Intruder Alarm, IMO.

Please explain how any of them don't "do it alone". Anvil of Bogardan caps you at however many cards are currently in your hand. If you play anything, you're now capped lower. Same for the other two options I listed. By the third or fourth turn unless you've been playing draw go or set up a very quick draw engine, you're at 4-5 cards. If you keep hitting your land drops and casting spells you're now at 1-2 cards. Then you're instant locked. Do you just "play it smart" and skip playing anything until you draw an answer? Guess what, you locked yourself out. You're now behind on board. You're now enabling the Leovold player to focus on someone else. Any discard effect that can be played in a draw step IS a lock.

Puzzle box does it immediately while the other options are slightly slower but they're very much still a lock.

Fine, call it a lock. It is just a lock about as secure as the door of a $25/night motel.

Anvil of Bogardan is only going to get you down to an empty hand if nobody has an answer to either the artifact or the creature and if the table doesn't just archenemy out the Leovold player and if you aren't playing non-draw sources of card advantage (you know, like Land Tax, Fact or Fiction, Oversold Cemetery, Outpost Siege, or Nissa's Pilgrimage off the top of my head) or ways to draw cards off-turn. It sure isn't going to be particularly fun unless you like that kind of resource battle, but broken it isn't.