One of the oldest and most infamous cards on Magic: The Gathering’s Commander banned list has just been set free. As part of Wizards of the Coast’s Feb. 9 ban announcements across all formats, the green sorcery Biorhythm was officially unbanned in Commander. Originally released as part of 2002’s Onslaught set, Biorhythm costs eight mana for a straightforward but devastating effect: Each player’s life total becomes the number of creatures they control. In other words, if your opponents have no creatures on the board, then it’s instant game over.
In a 2013 blog post about the history of Commander, Sheldon Menery (who helped popularize the format and led the now-defunct Commander Rules Committee) wrote that Biorhythm was actually the very first card he ever suggested banning in the format.
“Indestructible wasn’t really a thing, so there weren’t too many ways to win that way, but games were devolving into Biorhythm battles,” he wrote. “This was a time when the creatures weren’t so great that there weren’t really too many creature strategies. The idea was to get just one or two more creatures into play than anyone else, cast Biorhythm, and attack for lethal whomever you hadn’t already killed.”
Biorthym was officially banned in April 2005 alongside the Power Nine, Balance, and Library of Alexandria. Now, more than two decades later, the card is once again allowed in Commander. Magic‘s Principal Game Designer Gavin Verhey wrote in the Feb. 9 announcement post that, “as a situational eight-mana sorcery,” Biorhythm isn’t the huge threat it once was. He compared it to other expensive spells that “radically warp” or end the game outright that have previously been unbanned, namely Worldfire, Sway of the Stars, and Coalition Victory. Each of these cards essentially wipes the board clean and/or adjusts all players’ life totals in some fashion, but they also cost a lot of mana. (Coalition Victory simply lets you win the game if you meet certain criteria.)
“We accept there is some risk here, but it’s also a card with big moments that will generate some excitement,” Verhey wrote. “I personally can imagine a lot of games totally turned upside down in a memorable way as a Biorhythm resolves and suddenly the game is changed. It makes for a very memorable experience, as long as it isn’t happening too often.”
Modern Commander is defined by more explosive creature-based strategies, compared to the early days. Plenty of decks generate a large number of creature tokens, or they might include a few indestructible creatures that would prevent an instant kill. There’s also the fact that in order for Biorhythm to eliminate an opposing player, you’d have to remove all of their creatures first.
In an update to the Commander Brackets, Verhey also confirmed that typically every card that gets unbanned is added to Wizards’ Game Changers list. This collection functions as a sort of watch list of powerful, game-warping cards. Certain, more casual brackets don’t allow any of these cards, while others put a hard cap on how many a deck can have. So for the time being, that’ll be the case with Biorhythm.
“This card quite definitionally changes the game,” Verhey said.
Two decades ago, Biorhythm helped define what Commander couldn’t tolerate. In 2026, Wizards is betting the format finally knows what to do with it.
