Sheldon Menery, co-founder of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering’s Commander Rules Committee and one of the guiding voices of the C🌞ommander format, Magic’s most popular format, has died following seven years of treatment for throat cancer.
As well as a former MTG judge and contributor to Star City Games, Menery is best known as one of the co-founders of the Commander Rules Committee, in which he effectively served as its representative. ⛦As🔯 lead of the Rules Committee, he played a large role in the bans, rules announcements, and guiding the overall health of Commander.
The announcement of his death was . In the message, she said “Sheldon’s body could no longer fight. He passed away peacefully last night [September 7, 2023]. I know Sheldon touched many lifes, and I can’t put into words how much he will be missed.” Over the past year, he has 🃏been in and out of hospital underground treatment for his cancer, including a week-long stay in June following a bout of pneumonia.
Menery has been involved in Magic: The Gathering for decades, serving as one of the highest-level judges for the game during his tenure. Since then, he’s primarily been involved with Magic’s Commander format, helping shape it. In particular, Menery advocated for the philosophy of the Commander format, helping solidify its reptuation as a “sociall🔥y interactive”, with a “social contract” at its heart that tries to encourage games to be “resonant experiences” for all players.
Though Menery has been a part of Magic for years, he finally worked directly on the game for the first time in 2021, working as part of the R&D team for Commander 2021 decks rel♚eased alongside Strixhaven: School of Mages. In fact, one of the cards from this release, Ink Shield, became something of a personal brand for Menery, being emblematic of the direction he aimed to take the format.
Menery has also written for TCG site for a number of years, focusing on the health of the Commander format. A recurring theme over the last few years of his work has been , and its sibling the Commander Advisory Group, by bringing in fresh blood and more diverse voices. Last year, we saw the addition of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Olivia Gobert-Hicks and Jim Laplage to the RC as a result of these goals.
He made regular appearances in other creators’ work, such as on , or on . He was also incredibly active within the Commander Rules Committee’s own community, almost constantly being active 🍷in its Discord server and taking part in its regular livestreams.
While Commander is a format managed🎐 by a huge number of people, it’s impossible to overstate the impact Menery himself had on the game. Without him, it’s unlikely Commander would have successfully made the leap from its original Elder Dragon Highlander🐻 form into the behemoth of MTG it is now. Menery helped set the tone for games with his staunch defense of the philosophy of the format, and helped popularise the idea of Magic as a social experience over a competitive one.
Meldeꦚ has said more information on memorial services will be coming at a later date.