As one of the old fogies of Magic, I've seen a lot of weird stuff go down over tables. Before the current bracket rating was established, we used a scale of one to ten to grade Commander decks (most of you would remember that), but we didn't have any idea of Game Changers (even though we knew what they were in theory). Then the Game Changers list came out and suddenly, decks I'd considered fun were now Bracket 4.

WotC did say they were monitoring the Game Changers list and would eventually remove cards from it that they thought didn't belong there. A new bracket update announcement added some cards back to the general pool and removed them from the Game Changers (GCs) list. This set of removals opens the doors to fun decks once again... for some definitions of fun. Let's take a deeper look at these cards and where they fit best.

Expropriate

This is a good example of a card that was designed for Commander play primarily. It's not just a great extra-turn spell, but also tacks on huge benefits since your opponents also have to vote. I can see why it was deemed a Game Changer. Getting at least one extra turn or one permanent your opponents own is already worth the 9 mana this spell costs, but getting one or the other from each opponent makes it absurdly powerful.

A card like this would work really well in decks that like to grab opponents' stuff (Don Andres, The Renegade, comes to mind), but also works well in any cost-reducer decks like Mizzix of the Izmagnus.

Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger

These praetors are, individually, backbreaking if you can resolve them. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur ensures that each of your opponents are locked out of cards in hand, and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is a strange sort of starvation, causing an opponent's lands to remain tapped for a turn. While neither are immediate game-winners, they skew the table in their controller's favor.

Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur fits into any Blue deck seamlessly, because having more cards is always a plus. The fact that it reduces your opponents' hand sizes by seven means that each opponent without something removing the maximum handsize is quite literally screwed. I shouldn't need to say this, but avoid playing Folio of Fancies in a deck with Jin-Gitaxias since it negates one of the Praetor's abilities.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is a bit different, but not in a bad way. You can't flash him in like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, but he starves your opponents of resources, making them plan their plays two turns in advance. His super-ramp, doubling your mana production from lands, is also very useful, but the reason he was on the Game Changers list was primarily because shutting down your opponents' lands is just slightly better than blowing them up. As someone who has suffered under a resolved Vorinclex, I can tell you it's not nice.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is wonderful in ramp decks that love having extra mana to play around with. He fulfills a particular role in those decks as a ramp piece with the benefit of locking your opponents off from their own mana, but by doing so, you're likely to make yourself a target for the whole table.

Sway of the Stars

The bane of a mill deck is having the opponents shuffle their libraries back in. Sway of the Stars is a great card for resetting a mill player's game, but it's got a lot more utility use too. In a wheels deck, it's a good way to ensure that you don't deck yourself out. Narset, Parter of Veils remains a Game Changer so you won't be able to lock your opponent out of their draws, but it's still a powerful ability to have access to.

Commander Legends Off The Game Changers List

We got four commanders removed from the list, one of which is a competitive commander for cEDH in Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow. Yuriko decks have always been a pain for a table to deal with. Yuriko's threats are twofold, making it difficult to lock her down. Her ability to deal damage from revealed cards is already powerful, but she's also a card-draw engine that sits in the command zone and is easily replayed thanks to Commander Ninjitsu. If you see a Yuriko on the other side of the table, at least you have the consolation that it'll be a quick death. That said, there are ways to beat her, if you know how.

Urza, Lord High Artificer is another cEDH commander that's been released into the general pool of cards. Urza seems well-suited to running in a storm deck. A combination of low-cost artifacts to power his shuffle-and-play ability as well as an easily accessible beatdown in this "Karnstruct" creation (0/0 artifact that gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control) already makes it powerful. Add to it that he's in the most control-heavy color and it's easy to see why he ended up on the GC list in the first place. That isn't to say he's unbeatable, there are also ways around Urza, Lord High Artificer's shenanigans.

Winota, Joiner of Forces is a nice addition to the general card pool, since a deck built around her requires a bit more fiddling. The balance of non-humans (usually tokens) combined with the humans in the deck you can play off the top make for interesting deck-building possibilities. The best you can hope for is a horde of goblin tokens pulling bombs off the Winota player's deck. The worst case scenario is getting into a game with a Winota Hatebears player.

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is ripe to be a deck for people who like playing solitaire. Since Kinnan's ability doesn't tap him, once the Kinnan player can generate enough mana, they can keep spinning things off the top of their deck. It's unsurprising Kinnan is one of the top 5 Simic commanders. You know what works really well in a Kinnan deck? Our old pal Vorinclex, mentioned above. If you're not into sitting around for 20-minute turns, avoid the table with the Kinnan player on it.

Deflecting Swat and Food Chain

The last two GC removals are surprising, but are also not nearly as powerful as other non-GC cards. When Game Changers were first announced, free spells were among the first added to the list. Deflecting Swat was placed there because it was free, and it redirected a spell or ability. Adding it back just makes it into a strictly better Wild Ricochet or Aethersnatch. It's not nearly as powerful as a free counterspell, like Force of Will, for example, but it's still very, very useful regardless of matchup.

Food Chain has the potential to be explosive, but it's all dependent on the deck. Its removal from the GC list isn't that huge of a surprise. A far more powerful card in Birthing Pod exists as a non Game Changer, not to mention tutor abilities along the same lines in the command zone like Rocco, Cabretti Caterer.

Not A Bad Change

While I disagree with a few removals because of the inherent power level of some of the cards, I don't see this as a bad change. Giving players more access to cards without forcing their decks into higher brackets is always a good thing. Magic is about solving problems given tools, and if your opponents have access to really hard problems, it just makes you need to think harder on how to solve them.