Old MTGO Commander Banlist by WOTC

mtgo_commander_banlist.txt

Ancestral Recall
Arcum Dagsson
Back to Basics
Balance
Bazaar of Baghdad
Biorhythm
Black Lotus
Braids, Cabal Minion
Channel
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
Doomsday
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Entomb
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
Fastbond
Food Chain
Gaea's Cradle
Gifts Ungiven
Griselbrand
Hermit Druid
Humility
Karakas
Library of Alexandria
Limited Resources
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Mana Vault
Mind Twist
Mishra's Workshop
Moat
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Natural Order
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Painter's Servant
Protean Hulk
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Sensei's Divining Top
Serra Ascendant
Sol Ring
Survival of the Fittest
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Time Vault
Time Walk
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Trade Secrets
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
Zur the Enchanter

taken from waybackmachine (2017) of wotc website:

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Hello!

A brief introduction: I'm Bryan Hawley, a developer in Magic R&D. I joined the team around Theros, have been a Future Future League (FFL) mainstay since that time, and have been on teams for Conspiracy: Take the Crown, Eldritch Moon, Modern Masters 2015 Edition, and several upcoming sets. For the last couple of years, I've also been the content lead for Magic Duels, overseeing the campaigns and designing the card sets for that implementation of digital Magic.

For some time now, the large majority of Commander play on Magic Online has been 1v1 play. Much of the social element of multiplayer is lost in the digital translation, so this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

The format has also been growing lately, and it's clear that 1v1 Commander is something that players enjoy and a format that we think is worth supporting. That said, this growth has prospered despite that the banned list Magic Online has been using is heavily slanted toward multiplayer play, and the resulting 1v1 format is relatively imbalanced.

Starting May 10, Magic Online will be launching tournament play for 1v1 Commander consisting of two-player queues and a Friendly Constructed League, and we will be changing the official banned list of Magic Online Commander to the list that will be detailed below. On Magic Online, 1v1 Commander will have a starting life total of 30, but multiplayer will remain at 40. Both styles of play will be using this new shared banned list. This banned list and rules set is intended to support both experiences, but the banned list leans toward optimizing for the 1v1 experience.

To be perfectly clear, this banned list is only intended for Magic Online Commander. We respect the community roots and oversight of the Commander Rules Committee, and the creation and support of this format is in no way intended to impact paper Commander.

As the developer behind the banned list, I'll give some brief philosophical basis. Broadly, the goal of this banned list is to create a format that's fun for as many players as want to play it. We'll factor in both how strong cards are and how much fun players have both playing with and against them. Cards and strategies that are frustrating and unenjoyable to play against have a slightly lower threshold for banning than cards that are universally enjoyed, but we still consider those bans carefully.

We believe that diversity in a metagame is an important factor in having fun, so having a wide variety of commanders and strategies and avoiding an oppressive top tier are also important. This is one of several factors, but it's an important one.

Given that the majority of Commander play on Magic Online is 1v1, we will lean toward optimizing that experience. But we want both 1v1 and multiplayer to be enjoyable experiences and will adjust the format accordingly.

1v1 Commander is a more casual experience than many of our formats and isn't aimed at the top tiers of competitive play. Changes to the banned list will be driven by negative player experiences, so if/when clearly dominant decks or strategies emerge we'll look to take action. We expect to be relatively reactive when it comes to banning or unbanning cards. Given the lack of pressure from premier-level play, we expect changes to be slower than for formats that have that level of competition. We will also consider the impact of changes; we weigh whether bans invalidate entire decks or just remove individual cards and where possible try to preserve the viability of players' decks.

This banned list may go through relatively rapid iteration as this format is put through its paces on Magic Online. The first few months may see bans at an accelerated pace if the format at launch is problematic, but the eventual intent is that it will fall into our normal banning cadence.

This is the Magic Online Commander banned list, broken down into loose categories. Several of these cards belong in several categories but are only listed in their primary category for ease of reading:

FAST MANA
Black Lotus
Channel
Fastbond
Gaea's Cradle
Mana Crypt
Mana Vault
Mishra's Workshop
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Sol Ring
Tolarian Academy
While mana acceleration is integral to many Commander decks, these cards accelerate mana too quickly and too early in the game, leading to uninteresting and uninteractive gameplay. Especially without the social pressure and political nature of multiplayer, these types of cards create runaway games at too high a rate.

COMBO ENABLERS
Bazaar of Baghdad
Doomsday
Entomb
Food Chain
Gifts Ungiven
Hermit Druid
Protean Hulk
Survival of the Fittest
Time Vault
Tinker
Yawgmoth's Bargain
There are a myriad of powerful combinations available in the format, but these types of cards are either essentially single-card combos (Hermit Druid milling your entire deck) or extremely efficient at enabling other combinations (Gifts Ungiven finding four cards that combine to win the game).

OPPRESSIVE COMMANDERS
Arcum Dagsson
Braids, Cabal Minion
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
Griselbrand
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
Zur the Enchanter
Each of these commanders is essentially a story in its own right, but the common thread is that they are nearly impossible to beat once they resolve. There's a great deal of consistency in being able to play your commander every game and being able to cast them again should they die. In some cases, this means the deck itself becomes too consistent and too powerful, and these are commanders that have shown that to be the case.

OTHER
Ancestral Recall
Back to Basics
Balance
Humility
Karakas
Library of Alexandria
Mana Drain
Mind Twist
Moat
Natural Order
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Serra Ascendant
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Time Walk
This is a catch-all category of cards that are either blatantly too strong (Ancestral Recall, Time Walk), or are very strong but extremely unenjoyable to play against (Karakas, Mind Twist). As mentioned above, the threshold for banning cards is lower when they're particularly frustrating to play against. All the cards in that category are very strong, but the way they warp the format is less about creating imbalance and more about making the format less enjoyable overall.

MULTIPLAYER-POINTED BANS
Biorhythm
Limited Resources
Painter's Servant
Sensei's Divining Top
Trade Secrets
While this list leans toward 1v1, it will also support multiplayer Commander on Magic Online. These are the more egregious cards in that format that aren't covered under the above categories. Sensei's Divining Top may stand out among these; this is a logistical consideration for Magic Online multiplayer