You Don’t Want Primeval Titan Unbanned in Commander

When it comes to community discussion, Primeval Titan – or “Prime Time” – has been at the forefront of unban discussions for years. Whether in response to increasingly powerful value cards being printed, the speed of Commander games, or the new Game Changers list, Primeval Titan never leaves the debate. But is it a safe card to unban? Commander Format Panel member Kristen shares some thoughts.

PRIMEVAL TITAN IS A COOL MAGIC CARD

The first thing to address is that Prime Time is a cool Magic card. The original Titan cycle were iconic, and even though it feels like every card is a “Titan” nowadays thanks to Wizards’ insistence on having creature-Magic be the driving force of all formats, the original cycle are iconic for a reason. I’m still running “the Sun that never sets”, Sun Titan, in plenty of decks. 

Primeval Titan is loved by many for its gameplay in Amulet Titan, or in Cube, where it can leverage the ability to tutor for a toolbox of lands and utilize powerful synergy cards to dominate play. If there’s anything card game players love – and by extension Magic players, and Commander players – it’s a toolbox. Toolbox packages are one of the deckbuilding approaches that feel the most customizable and personal, but they’re also a way of building a deck that gives players a lot of agency.

It feels great to run silver bullets, make predictions, and be paid off for it. In 1v1 formats, it also allows you to make great use of your sideboard, as tutors make sideboard cards far more relevant without needing to jam a full playset. 

So, where I’m going with this is essentially that a card like Primeval Titan makes people feel clever. And that’s half the reason people want to run it. It’s half the reason people put so much effort into the Show and Tell that is Commander – they’re looking for recognition and to be lauded for their unique and special approach to deckbuilding. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not pathologizing this behavior, and I’m not saying it’s a negative. It’s a universal feeling, and we’re all subject to it. It’s just that it tends to get in the way of objectivity when we talk about a card like Primeval Titan.

IT GOES GREAT IN MY HENZIE DECK

One of the most passionate cohorts clamoring for a Prime Time unban are the Henzie players, who have one of the biggest and most active communities for a single deck outside of cEDH in the format (and maybe even more active than some cEDH communities!). And you can almost forgive the desire to play the card when it comes to a deck like Henzie. To quote the ever wise Gandalf, most Henzie players (myself included) would use Prime Time to do good, but through us, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine.

In Henzie decks, most players want to use it as a post-Henzie ramp piece. A one shot ramp of four lands, that may or may not be reanimated later in the game. Sounds pretty reasonable for six five mana, right? Well, the issue is that once you open Pandora’s box, you can’t really go back.

Once Prime Time is in your deck – and this is the issue with the card – you have no reason not to include the most expensive, most powerful and most game-warping lands in the format, because you have such a great tutor in your deck. Why not, right? It can’t hurt, can it?

Well, actually… it can. And I am happy to report that the pillars of the Henzie community by and large agree, which means I’m not going to be Cast Out for writing this article. 

PRIME TIME’S SINS ARE OF RESOURCE IMBALANCE

Say what you will about the last round of bans (except for extremely unhinged behavior directed at format leadership) but most people could agree that Dockside had to go. Dockside Extortionist – and by extension, a number of Game Changer cards under the new order – creates such a such a resource imbalance that games are forever changed from the moment they are deployed. 

Getting two to four lands out on the turn it enters play isn’t the worst thing to worry about with Primeval Titan; it’s what those lands can be. One of them, Gaea’s Cradle, is mostly inaccessible to the majority of the player base outside of proxying, and it’s an auto include in any toolbox given it’s the same color as Primeval Titan and jumps your mana up so far. It’s so powerful it’s considered a Game Changer for good reason.

Even if we discount the harder to find lands like Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, there are plenty of ways to achieve huge bursts of mana with Prime Time.

Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is the obvious one available to GB/x decks, and the reason Coffers isn’t considered a Game Changer is its reliance on finding the other half. Primeval Titan grabs both at the same time, nixing your need for multiple tutors and/or luck.

You can also grab Deserted Temple to untap your Cabal Coffers – or the Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx that can also be tutored into play alongside it. Grabbing an Eye of Ugin and Sanctum of Ugin in the right deck can be back breaking, for example. Even grabbing Ancient Tomb and Temple of the False God can be such a monumental jump in Mana that you’re skipping multiple turns ahead with limited mana investment. And sure, while the going rate to tutor two lands is around six mana, you’re not factoring in the fact that Primeval Titan stays around, or that by dropping a Sol Ring or Ancient Tomb, or a mana dork that taps for multiple mana early, you’re warping the game as early as turn 3 or 4. 

While it’s true that we’re quite far removed from the beg/borrow/clone/steal/reanimate era of 2010s Commander in which Prime Time was deemed too game-warping, it isn’t entirely fair in 2025, either. I’d go as far as to say that unbanning it would permanently alter the meta, and that’s not only because of how it can ramp you.

PRIME TIME WOULD CHANGE THE META

Why do some cards get banned in 1v1 formats? Well, if you take a card like Smuggler’s Copter, it’s because of ubiquity. A card that can appear at every table, in multiples, that centralizes the same gameplay patterns? It’s boring, and it stifles creativity. We’re not a 1v1 format, and we’re a singleton format. We all collectively (for the most part) hate how deckbuilding starts with Command Tower, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and potentially now Roaming Throne. 

So why entertain unbanning a card that will not only strengthen the most dominant casual color, but make its play patterns even narrower?

Worrying about Prime Time when you sit across from a green deck isn’t just worrying about how it can ramp. It’s worrying about how to deal with a potential Turn 4 Flying Indestructible 20/20 Marit Lage from Dark Depths + Thespian Stage every. single. game. 

It’s worrying about how your cheap answer in Swords to Plowshares is going to more often give that green player a 20-point life buffer while leaving the problem Titan in play to do more degenerate plays.

It’s having to deal with another format staple that got banned for ubiquity, Field of the Dead, in more games. Because the opportunity cost of running these game-warping lands is so little, you can bet your bottom dollar that most Primeval Titan players are going to be running them. And if they already have to proxy Gaea’s Cradle, then why wouldn’t they add cards like Field of the Dead to the same sheet of paper they’re printing on?

Perhaps more of an issue is the lack of self-restraint around Glacial Chasm. With Glacial Chasm and Field of the Dead, aggressive, low to the ground decks that can otherwise take advantage of Green’s weakness to go-wide and swarm effects are entirely stonewalled from being able to interact.

“But Primeval Titan wouldn’t see play in Bracket 2!”, I hear you cry. And while yes, you’re technically correct, it would still have a massive impact on Bracket 3, and that’s one of the Brackets that we’re seeking to balance for the more casual player. Primeval Titan with Glacial Chasm and one more Game Changer can run rings around a lot of Bracket 3 decks, especially with a Sol Ring start. Remember: Smothering Tithe and Rhystic Study are at their most obnoxious with a Sol mana start. 

Availability of Toolbox Lands and need for proxying aside, how exactly would Primeval Titan impact the meta?

META CHANGES

Well, for starters, the more go-wide weenie decks that have seen an enjoyable resurgence in recent years would potentially be stone-walled by Prime Time lines. In Bracket 3 especially, this could further push midrange and combo decks to be preferable, which isn’t healthy for the format. The format works best with the classic rock-paper-scissors approach to aggro-combo/control-midrange, and disincentivizing any of them messes with the balance of the format significantly – it’s why combo should always be available to control decks in a social format. Nobody wants to win by boring opponents to death and forcing concessions when they could deploy a combo and retain their friends.

In Bracket 4, overcentralizing Prime Time lines could push out combat decks even more, but personally I’m more interested in the impact on Bracket 3. So how would deckbuilding need to change?

Well, with more of the exact kind of effects that casual players don’t enjoy so much: land destruction and exile effects. The clamoring to put Farewell on the gamechangers list is one change that I’m unlikely to ever get behind. Taking a slot to deal with other game-changing cards puts you at a significant disadvantage, and besides which, I don’t think the card is unhealthy or too powerful for the format. Complaints about it adding “an hour” to the game are hyperbole. Your playgroup needs to learn to play faster and talk less, learn your decks and your lines, and know when to concede. It’s entirely possible to play 10+ turns with multiple wraths in 90 minutes or less. 

Graveyard exile in particular would need to see a greater emphasis, as lands-based strategies have a habit of recurring key pieces. Single target land destruction is also significantly weaker against a Primeval Titan fetching two lands or more a turn, and so the pivot would generally be to either significantly up the number of cards that destroy lands (which is hard in Bracket 3, with the blanket ban on Mass Land Denial), or to run Primeval Titan yourself in order to tutor up more Wastelands. 

The casual player base dislikes these effects, and it would be hard to get people wanting to play in Bracket 3 to adapt to them. On top of this, there’s another impact that Primeval Titan would have that I don’t really like:

PRIME TIME ISN’T JUST ONE MORE GAME CHANGER

Primeval Titan’s unban could balloon the Game Changer list. Not only would you have to add Prime Time, but you’d have to consider adding a bunch of the lands (like Field of the Dead, Cabal Coffers, etc) not already on the list. The Game Changer list’s real-estate isn’t as large as you’d think. While invested players find it easy to navigate more complex systems – and will always demand a system for Commander that will be entirely too much for new players and casual players to keep up with or on–board with – you can’t have too many cards on the GC list. 

While I think there’s definitely space to add more cards, there is a consideration for how unbanning a card might affect the size of the list. By taking up 3+ slots by unbanning Prime Time, you’re taking slots away from other cards that deserve to be on there that don’t deserve to be banned, such as Teferi’s Protection – or maybe a currently banned card that isn’t quite so format warping as Primeval Titan.

SOL MANA CONTINUES TO BE A PROBLEM

As an aside before winding down this article, I do want to highlight something that bears thinking about: Sol Ring (and by extension, Sol Mana) continues to be an issue. A phrase that we’ve coined internally is that Sol Ring is the “Game Changer of the Game Changers”. It makes Game Changer cards that much more obnoxious and impactful.

How do you handle that? Do you “point” Sol Ring as a Game Changer, but make it a freebie in Bracket 1 and 2? I’m interested to hear from the community on this one. It’s hard to talk about unbanning a card like Primeval Titan when Sol Ring exists.

END STEP

Primeval Titan is a really cool and really fun Magic card, especially when you’re the one casting it. When you’re not, it can feel backbreaking. The toolbox Prime Time has access to in Commander, at no opportunity cost, is expansive, powerful, and game-warping on its own. As it stands, I don’t think it’s healthy to unban this card as a Game Changer, as it would have a huge impact in Bracket 3 games, which don’t want such a monumentally powerful game piece encroaching on their casual games.

Also, consider for a moment the section of the player base who haven’t adopted the Bracket System. As friend and fellow Panel member Tim Willoughby pointed out, that population would have to deal with Primeval Titan as a straight unban, in an environment with no restrictions or guidance on concepts like Game Changers. As much as I’m mostly concerned with lower Brackets, that’s not the kind of environment I’d want to encounter Prime Time in either.

What do you think? Let me know on BlueSky.