Elder Goblin Highlander
Like playing commander, but mad about power levels/fast mana/ramp/no more battlecruiser magic? I have the solution! It's Elder Goblin Highlander (#EGH)!
What is EGH?
EGH uses the same rules as commander, except that you can only include cards with mana value four or greater in your deck. This includes your commander! You also get two basic lands in your command zone, because I don't want to wait around for you to make good deckbuilding decisions and mulligan.
Why is EGH?
Basically all of the complaints about commander come from cards that cost three or less mana. Now, you don't have to worry about them!
Split Cards, Adventures, and cards with abilities that can be activated from hand for less than four mana
If you're trying to cast a spell for less than four mana, that's a no go, because then people start jamming all the split cards they can for advantage, and booooo on your house! This is easy for split cards, but harder for things like Adventures/MDFCs. Talk to your playgroup, but the idea is that you shouldn't be casting spells before turn four. A possible split difference is if you force Fuse casting on spells that have that option.
Activated abilities, like cycling, should be fine! We've done limited playtesting mostly around things like Krosan Tusker and Yidaro, and it played fine. If you run into problems let me know!
Banlist
In our playtesting and thought experiments, there wasn't much that arose as too problematic. Consider using the regular commander banlist, but also most of the cards there that are a pain are also less than four mana, big exceptions being Prophet of Kruphix and Primeval Titan.
A big exception to this are four and five mana smokestack effects. For this reason, the following cards are banned:
Smokestack Braids, Cabal Minion Descent Into Madness
You should not play cards that look like these cards. They generate non games, and the only reason to play them is to make non-games. Braids, especially, if you go first you can just play 99 swamps and then your opponents never get to cast spells.
The biggest thing is don't be a jerk! Stax is fine (though difficult, a lot of stax pieces cost less than four mana), being a jerk about it is not.