On April 22nd, 2025 the Commander Community was shaken up with a new update to the Commander Banned and Restricted List. The cards Gifts Ungiven, Coalition Victory, Sway of the Stars, Braids, Cabal Minion and Panoptic Mirror were unbanned much to the surprise of the player base at large. While these cards are classically powerful, the growth of the Commander format gives us more than enough tools to deal with their return. While every card we've listed could have its own article and full discussion, the one we'll be evaluating today is Panoptic Mirror.

Panoptic Mirror, in layman's terms, is a 5-mana artifact that we can imprint an instant or sorcery on. Imprinting is an evergreen way to say, "exile this card and we can use its effects later." During each of our upkeeps, for as long as we control the mirror, we get to cast the imprinted spell without paying its mana cost. The first thing most players think of is jamming something like Time Warp onto the mirror to take consecutive and indefinite turns.

While taking a billion turns is fun, I don't predict your pod will be super excited just watching you play solitaire for 20 minutes. So, let's evaluate a handful of cards that we can imprint on the mirror to give various levels of enjoyment to the game. We'll use a sale of 1 to 10. 1 being Silly and 10 being Salty.

1. Teferi's Protection

Teferi's Protection is easily the silliest card we could put under Panoptic Mirror. We've basically set ourselves up to not play the game. Which obviously defeats the purpose of initiating a game of Commander in the first place.

2. Rampant Growth

Rampant Growth and any other ramp spell is a no-brainer with the mirror. It will put us ahead on lands consistently and even help us if we're missing the current turn's land drop. Get spicy with something like Growth Spiral or Urban Evolution to bundle in a little extra card draw!

3. Lightning Bolt

Lightning Bolt is silly, and kinda bad in Commander. It does give us a way to police the board from 3 toughness creatures with silly effects, like Voice of Victory or Grand Abolisher. While not ideal, there is an argument for potentially choosing Lightning Bolt.

4. Divination

Divination is a placeholder here for any and all draw spells. We could tuck an Ancestral Vision, Expressive Iteration or Harmonize to see tons of cards during our turn. Does your deck care about graveyard synergies? Why not Faithless Looting or Frantic Search?

5. Titanic Ultimatum

Just like Divination, Titanic Ultimatum is a placeholder for any card that makes our creatures better. Overrun, Overwhelming Stampede or even Trumpet Blast could be stuck on the mirror and make every strike at our opponents an Alpha Strike!

6. Balance

Balance is the first card on our list to make sure we're lightly salted. While it doesn't stop the game entirely, it ensures that everyone is even. Obviously our strategy would be to keep as few resources as possible so we could take advantage of Balance over our opponents. But at least they can still play the game!

7. Demonic Tutor

Demonic Tutor may not seem like a salty choice for the mirror, but it's the play patterns that revolve around searching your deck every turn. Demonic Tutor is a functional second copy of any card in our deck and slowing the pace of the game to get the perfect card every turn can be really draining on a table.

8. Wrath of God

Just like some of the cards before, Wrath of God is a stand in for any board wipe. We could put something far more obnoxious under the mirror like In Garruk's Wake. If your deck doesn't necessarily rely on a creature strategy then who cares if the board gets obliterated every turn, over and over again!

9. Armageddon

It's hard to look at this list and think that Armageddon isn't the saltiest card here. Blowing up every land on the board will drag the game to a screeching halt. Clearly, if we're throwing this combo in our deck we're going to rely heavily on mana rocks or treasure strategies so we don't face such awful setbacks as the rest of the board.

10. Expropriate

The card Expropriate is saltier than the Dead Sea. So let's use it every turn! If our opponents don't concede to us taking infinite turns, they may scoop it up to us taking all their permanents as well! Honestly, you could throw any extra turn spell under here and your current pod will groan.

Panoptic Mirror being unbanned gives the casual Commander player some unique potential. We could do something as simple as searching for an extra land every turn or drawing a few extra cards. We could also get saltier than a soft pretzel and take infinite turns or blow up everyone's lands over and over again. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.