Commander 2019 Post Mortem

Cow31337Killer
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Post by Cow31337Killer » 4 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
Check the other sets. C16 is dwarfed by everything that isn't C18 (that one's the real dud of the pack, even after you correct for the fact it's only got a year's worth of decks in the system).

That said, I feel our little back and forth is derailing the thread, so let's call it here, shall we? Sorry, folks, carry on. C19!
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ilovesaprolings
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Post by ilovesaprolings » 4 years ago

Honestly i liked c19 approach: less broken and goodstuff cards, more focused and niche cards.
However some of them came out too weak or still not supported enough and the reprints were really %$#%

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Post by Zordrath » 4 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
I feel C19 will go down like C15, in that the set will be largely forgotten but sport a small group of devotees jamming the legends. It's a step up from C17/C18 for sure though.
Is that actually true of C15 though? Mizzix, Karlov, Meren and Ezuri have been sitting in the EDHREC Top 3 for their respective colors ever since they were released, and are still all extremely powerful options for very popular archetypes. Personally, I think even C18 will ultimately have more longevity than C19, if only due to Lord Windgrace.

C19 just didn't inspire me at all. Chainer is the only commander from the set I considered building because he provides an interesting mix of cool interactions and broad synergies, giving you quite a bit of leeway in how to build him. My main issue with C19 is that keywords are one of the worst things to build Commander decks around. Mainly because by their very nature they usually only offer a card pool of two or three blocks. Populate is the only exception as it can tap into the broader pool of general token synergies. While I do appreciate the intention of opening up some new ways to play certain colors instead of giving us more goodstuff, I don't think it was executed well.

Taking Kadena as an example, she does make Sultai Morph a much more viable deck than it was before - but that deck is very narrowly defined because you simply don't have that many cards with facedown mechanics or synergies. Ultimately, most players will end up with very similiar decks for her. This is disappointing for experienced players, but not great for newbies either because their first Commander doesn't have a lot of interesting upgrade paths. Sevinne has a similiar problem, on top of being a lot weaker than Kadena. Anje can avoid it through sheer power, but if you actually want to use her for full madness synergy instead of just as a deck-thinning machine, you'll once again end up with very narrow card choices. Only Ghired is a bit broader as any card that synergizes with tokens can work with him, and there are tons of those.

A better approach would have been to build around new playstyles or strategies instead of strictly keywords, or have the new commanders grant the keywords instead of requiring them. Sevinne isn't what a flashback commander should look like - Dralnu and Kess are! Granted, those commanders already existed, but they exemplify my main issue with these designs. Both commanders can certainly use graveyard casting synergy like River Kelpie, but can also use any instant or sorcery ever printed. This is also why I like Chainer the most of the C19 commanders: He basically grants a form of madness (discard a card, then you get to cast something), he works with the keyword in a natural way because he grants a discard outlet that offers value, but he also can function more broadly.

These issues extend to the regular cards as well. To make the keyword themes work, they really should have used most of their new design slots for new madness, morph and flashback cards tailored specifically towards commander, but then the decks would have offered too little to the wider format in general. In the end, they tried to do both, but I think fell short in both areas as a result.

Ultimately, C19 has been the most disappointing commander product of them all for me so far. It has inspired me the least and in my opinion also contributed the least to the overall format. I haven't felt a strong urge to build any of the commanders and haven't been overly excited by any of the new cards or reprints either.

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Post by Nimbaway » 4 years ago

Initially Anje peeked my interest but after having played her a few times I found her to be rather boring, as your turns are mostly filtering till you hit your limited amount of combo pieces. It's a quite linear deck in that regard. I've since switched the deck to a Greven build but haven't gotten to play it yet.

The other issue I had was simply that some themes just didn't interest me, which reduced the appeal of some of the other decks. Flashback sounded fun to me, but in the end it didn't inspire me enough to actually play it.

As far as singles go, because of the themes it offered only few upgrades for my existing decks.

All in all, I feel they are more consistently built than the decks of last year, but my personal opinion is that C19 isn't going to leave a lasting impression and will in the end be a fairly forgettable year. C18 will be more remember just because of how bad it was.

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Zordrath wrote:
4 years ago
Mizzix, Karlov, Meren and Ezuri have been sitting in the EDHREC Top 3 for their respective colors ever since they were released
That's actually a fair point - I thought Meren and, to a lesser extent Mizzix, were the only ones to make a lasting impression. It's surprising to see Karlov and Ezuri hanging in the top tiers of their respective pairs. Even Daxos, my point of reference for C15's "cult following", is actually the fifth most played Orzhov commander. I might have underestimated the impact of the set's legends.

I see a bunch of you discontent with the fact the set focused on mechanics. As a 100% pure Melvin, I actually welcomed this design decision with open arms. Between 2013 and 2016, arguably the defining time for the product, the EDH decks came with some unifying mechanical element (planeswalkers, experience counters. what have you) as well as a shared colour relationship of the decks. 2017 chucked all that out the window, and the relatively weak shared theme between the decks made 2018 in particular feel a bit hollow. Sure, each deck has a walker, but the colours are all askew and the themes are incohesive. However, having 2019 be mechanics created a clear outline that I was able to relate to and respect, forgiving the relatively forced face legend cycle in the process.

...does my belief that C19 is a step in the right direction hedge largely on this mechanics theme? :\
 
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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
I see a bunch of you discontent with the fact the set focused on mechanics. As a 100% pure Melvin, I actually welcomed this design decision with open arms. Between 2013 and 2016, arguably the defining time for the product, the EDH decks came with some unifying mechanical element (planeswalkers, experience counters. what have you) as well as a shared colour relationship of the decks. 2017 chucked all that out the window, and the relatively weak shared theme between the decks made 2018 in particular feel a bit hollow. Sure, each deck has a walker, but the colours are all askew and the themes are incohesive. However, having 2019 be mechanics created a clear outline that I was able to relate to and respect, forgiving the relatively forced face legend cycle in the process.

...does my belief that C19 is a step in the right direction hedge largely on this mechanics theme? :\
Some of that was given that the mechanics they were hitting on were largely not really all that playable as focus mechanics before this product. Trostoni was probably one of the few commanders that enabled one of those 4 mechanics to work.

I actually really like the RB commander design but there feels like there is still a large void in making madness a core focus with those commanders or any other really. Madness felt like it didn't get much for playable commander cards from this set in my mind and while some of those cards can be put in the RB commanders, I still largely don't see a way to really close out games with madness as a focus.

Flashback similarly, I don't really see the ability to focus on.

I really love flashback and madness but it felt like they were nowhere near viable before this set, and then we got this set, and it still feels like they aren't viable to me. I think the commander design is cool, I just don't think I can approach those mechanics and build a cohesive deck that feels like its based in those mechanics and has reasonable ways to win.
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Post by Zordrath » 4 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
I see a bunch of you discontent with the fact the set focused on mechanics. As a 100% pure Melvin, I actually welcomed this design decision with open arms. Between 2013 and 2016, arguably the defining time for the product, the EDH decks came with some unifying mechanical element (planeswalkers, experience counters. what have you) as well as a shared colour relationship of the decks. 2017 chucked all that out the window, and the relatively weak shared theme between the decks made 2018 in particular feel a bit hollow. Sure, each deck has a walker, but the colours are all askew and the themes are incohesive. However, having 2019 be mechanics created a clear outline that I was able to relate to and respect, forgiving the relatively forced face legend cycle in the process.

...does my belief that C19 is a step in the right direction hedge largely on this mechanics theme? :\
I'm with you on unity of mechanical theme, I liked that about C15 as well (C14 less so, but that's largely because I'm not that interested in monocolor decks). However, the mechanical themes were much broader then, which is why I liked them much better. Imagine, for example, if Meren wasn't a generalist reanimator commander, but one that only rewarded you for playing cards with Unearth. That's the difference between C15 and C19 for me - the mechanical theme of C19 just felt overly forced and specific. C15 had just enough to feel like a cohesive lineup of decks, while C19 feels on rails in terms of deckbuilding.

I'm curious though, if Planeswalker commanders worked for you as a mechanically unifying theme, why did tribal and the C18 batch of planeswalker commanders fall short for you? Personally, I also preferred these sets to C19. For example, I'd much rather build a Lord Windgrace or Saheeli deck than any of the C19 face legends. Tribal didn't suit my personal preferences, but I can accept that not every product is for me and apparently lots of people liked Edgar and the Ur-Dragon (and at least C17 gave Kess to people like me :D ).
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

I think that C14 worked as it was a combination of colour cohesiveness and the walkers. The walkers were also a new thing at the time. By contrast, C18 rehashes the concept, doesn't do colour cohesion, instead opting for enchantress, top of library shenanigans, goodstuff masquerading as lands.dec, and not-Jhoira. There's still some fun to be had with these legends, mind you - I've got a Brudiclad and Windgrace in my meta. Tribal is an extremely stereotypical EDH thing, so C17 didn't feel fresh either in spite of formally going for new ground.

That does actually check out - I guess C19 being narrow with the mechanical focus made me view it as fresh territory.
 
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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

I'll admit, I was excited to see a different focus than shards/wedges/enemy guilds plus walkers or experience counters or why have you. There was a real opportunity here to make these mechanics more ubiquitous and usable within the format.

To do so though, they would've needed to solidly expand on the available card pool for said mechanics, because the existing card pool in most of these cases is varied at least, if not generally fairly weak. There's some exceptions, but not many. Madness is not strong, populate sees little play, morph you don't see outside of Animorph, and flashback you don't see a ton of outside of [card]Past in Flames[card]. The decks could have been pretty well embraced if there were more consistency in supporting these mechanics, but I for one didn't see it.

I also feel like with any of these discussions there's a bit of a divide between set success and commander success. There's quite a bit of difference between seeing widely usable new format staples printed and seeing conmanders that will become format stalwarts. The two aren't mutually inclusive, and I don't feel like either one being the case is guaranteed to be enough support for a set release being ultimately a success. I guess this reads as someone greedy for more value in the format, which I guess isn't untrue (aren't we all to some degree?). Nonetheless, I don't know about anyone else but for me it leaves a bad taste in the mouth shelling out for a precon you might use like 4-5 cards from and the rest just see the inside of a bulk box. Especially when, due to the cost of said singles it makes more sense financially to just buy the pack. It's just weird and frustrating I guess. I know they need to be careful how much value they pack in these decks, but I feel like there's a middle ground that Wizards is really struggling to find over the last couple of years with these releases.
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Post by Airi » 4 years ago

I enjoyed what they were going for, with hitting more niche strategies and ideas, but if they only have a limited number of support cards they can add, and given the set, they want to make the new non-general cads more generally applicable to the people with the decks, I'd prefer if they tried lining up the generals with mechanics supported by the sets surrounding it (e.g. putting the morph general around the release of a morph-themed set like Tarkir, and what not). That way, you're getting a legend that might not have been standard applicable, but around the time there's mechanics being released to increase the hype for it.

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Post by bobthefunny » 4 years ago

They did that well with the 2017 precons, with C17 coming out in between Amonkhet and Ixalan.

Amonkhet had a number of Cat tribal cards for the Cat deck, and Ixalan had some Vampires for Edgar. Dragons weren't really supported in those sets, but had a larger tribe to begin with, although Modern Masters 2017 and Iconic Masters both had a decent support of dragons, as well as GY spell themes in UR.

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