About NBS MTG

NBS MTG is a curated card pool and set of house rules for Commander (EDH) that aims to preserve the original identity of Magic: The Gathering. We maintain a blacklist of sets and cards that introduce third-party intellectual properties, digital-only mechanics, and other elements that break the game's fantasy setting.

This is a tool for playgroups who share our preference. Use it as a reference, a starting point for your own list, or ignore it entirely. Magic is a game — play it however makes you happy.

In the late 1990s and through the 2000s, Magic: The Gathering existed in its own universe. Every set — from Dominaria to Ravnica to Innistrad — was built around Magic's own lore, its own characters, its own creative identity. Whether you were battling Phyrexians or exploring Zendikar, you were inside Magic's world.

Starting in 2021, Wizards of the Coast began releasing Universes Beyond — officially licensed crossover products that bring external IPs into the Magic card pool. What started with a few Secret Lair drops has become a flood:

Each of these products adds cards that are fully legal in Commander and other eternal formats. The result is a game where Spider-Man can fight Gandalf, Optimus Prime can crew a Weatherlight, and a Space Marine can lead an army of hobbits. The mechanical game of Magic is still there, but the identity of what you're doing at the table has changed.

This is not a campaign against Wizards of the Coast or against people who enjoy Universes Beyond. These products clearly have an audience, and people have every right to play with whatever cards they want. If you love having Frodo in your Commander deck, go for it.

This project exists because there's no official way to opt out. Commander doesn't have a format variant that excludes UB cards. The Rules Committee (now Wizards themselves) treats all legal cards equally regardless of IP. So we built our own filter.

We're not angry. We're not protesting. We just want to play Magic in a world that feels like Magic.

We maintain a blacklist stored in a database. The blacklist operates at two levels:

Card-level decisions override set-level ones. So if a set is blacklisted but one card from it is explicitly allowed, that card stays in. Likewise, a card can be individually excluded even if its set is fine.

This site is built with Next.js and uses the Scryfall API for card data and images. Scryfall is an independent, community- maintained Magic: The Gathering search engine and database. We are deeply grateful for their work.

Magic: The Gathering, including all card names, artwork, set names, and related content, is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC. NBS MTG is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.