Power creep in the command zone - interesting article

[pokken]

Saw this article linked on Reddit and think it's worthy of a thread:
https://articles.edhrec.com/superior-nu ... commanders

I've been talking a bit around things relating to these concepts in different threads, and think the author does a really good job of illustrating it - basically that we're getting to the point where there are a lot of commanders and commander pairs that:

1) Make lots and lots of others obsolete
2) Specifically obsolete 1 and 2 color strategies, narrowing the cardpool by encouraging more colors
(which virtually shrinks the pool of playable white cards, say, by making decks with white strategies tending to play 3 colors instead of 1 or 2)

The renaissance of powerful 3-5 color commanders that take up a lot of design space previously covered by commanders with fewer colors is something that really bugs me about the last 4-5 years of insane power creep in commanders.

It's very nice that lots of strategies have new fun commanders but on the flipside they're just so dang overpowered and often don't have any real drawbacks.

What think you?

[folding_music]

that's a great article and I kinda agree. on the other hand I don't think deckbuilding has to be an arms race; you can ignore it when Muldrotha or Chulane appears on the scene and continue building at your own dorky power level. Or maybe another way of saying that is that more casual theme-decky players need to be putting articles out there among the ones about building a competitive synergetic deck with all the world's most expensive cards!

edit: i wonder how edh would differ if every card with "commander" written on it was banned provisionally. giggle

[Mookie]

For the record, I'm in the 'partners were a mistake' and 'people should play more Blood Moon and Back to Basics' camps. :D

I did some back-of-the-hand analysis of top-tier commanders a while ago, and there were three attributes with very high correlations to power level:

• whether or not a commander provides card advantage (by drawing cards or tutoring)
• whether or not the commander provides mana advantage (by producing mana, ramping, or cheating things into play)
• how many colors the commander is (four and five color commanders tend to be stronger)

There used to be a lot fewer commander options for three colors, and they were generally pretty specialized - think Mayael of the Anima, Kaalia of the Vast, and Sen Triplets. And the five-color options were even more limited - Cromat, Progenitus, Atogatog.... The commanders may have provided card or mana advantage, but they required a substantial amount of deckbuilding investment, and five-color commanders provided almost no functionality at all. Hence the meme of 'playing it for the colors'.

....but now, there are a lot of commanders that reward you for just playing the game - Chulane, Teller of Tales, Omnath, Locus of the Roil, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim.... when your commander generates card advantage and mana, that takes a massive burden off the rest of your deck. You don't need to run as much card draw or ramp, because your commander just does it for you. And on the flip side, when your commander is a snowbally value engine, you get massively rewarded for playing it out early off Mana Crypt or Sol Ring. I find T2 Rafiq of the Many to be much less threatening that a T2 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter, for example. New commanders provide substantial benefits, while simultaneously not really requiring any deckbuilding restrictions.

...that said, while there has certainly been power creep from new commanders and cards being printed, I think that a large percentage of power creep in the format has also come from there being more and better resources available. The commander precons are much, much better than they used to be, and people have learned that cheap ramp and card draw are pretty good. Plus there are tools like EDHRec, and plenty of YouTube channels that give pretty tuned decklists. As a result, if you're new to the format and build a deck, I think you're much more likely to build a good deck than you would have been several years ago.

[toctheyounger]

It was an interesting read. I....can't say I disagree, for the most part. The games I've had against Yarok the Desecrated and Chulane, Teller of Tales have been among the most boring foregone conclusions I've ever played, and frankly I have no desire to play them again. Not from a ragequit perspective either, just...this guy has a win button in the command zone, where's the challenge for him and why should I care? I personally don't like building decks that don't have some sort of restriction or limitation - I'm infinitely happier with my Glissa, the Traitor deck than I ever was with Meren of Clan Nel Toth for example.

Part of it is the format getting more popular - these days, when a new commander is spoiled people have broken it before you can even get it in your hands. We're getting better at synergies and streamlined brews. So ultimately a lot of this comes down to the pilot - spikes will spike, and a commander is only as broken as you, the pilot, want it to be. I don't build combos because I don't enjoy the 'oops I win' vibe, it's just not me. Others beg to differ, it's a round world.

I think to some degree this issue is sort of symptomatic of a constantly evolving game, though; there comes a point where there's no room to explore different design space without exploring better design space, you know? That being said, Wizards has printed some zany ass stuff specifically for Commander, so it'd be nice to see the R&D team go 'what about this card, how cool is it? It goes to 11!' 'That's great Jim, but let's dial it back to 7 so we don't screw the format'.

Those are my ramblings. I think if it's a concern to you as a player you just need to keep an eye on what you build, and who as a meta you play with.

[darrenhabib]

I haven't read the article yet, but deck building around a lot of the commanders in the last year, there has been a very common and familiar thread among them..

Do opponents have a way to remove your commander within one or two turns?
If "No", then you win the game.

Now we had a number of these with Zur the Enchanter in a competitive build and Narset, Enlightened Master. These basically just require a single attack and the game is heavily skewed towards that player winning.
I've definitely found the same thing with Elsha of the Infinite, Chulane, Teller of Tales and to a slightly lesser extent but still very close Kykar, Wind's Fury, Greven, Predator Captain, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King.
Lets say its a 3 turn window on those others rather than 1 or 2 turns.

Is this a design flaw by WotC?

There is an obvious desire for players to play new commanders that they feel can compete against older powered decks. So from a deck builders perspective I was certainly was happy by all these powerful new commanders.

However after playing them a reasonable amount, there is a dissatisfaction in terms of what it means for games. Like it literally hinges off winning games if opponents are unable to remove the commander. In many ways my Elsha of the Infinite deck doesn't play differently than my Zur the Enchanter than it does my Chulane, Teller of Tales deck. That is if I get to have them around for a turn or two, I'm bound to have won the game.
Sure the content and way they sequence to win are different, but it just feels like the same sort of over-powered inevitability.

Is this the future of commander? Where every new commander has such a powerful build around, that it comes down to untapping with them?
I mean unfortunately Wizards have painted themselves into a bit of a corner on this. A lot of this will come down to literally not having the people resources to think about "how actually breakable these abilities are for the commander format?".
Of course when you have a culture of people who will say that it doesn't matter how powerful a card is, its up the community to moderate itself, then this will continue to be a trend.
Now I'm not saying this is wrong, I'm just saying that as long as you don't have quite the expertise and more importantly time for Wizards R&D to spend on commander as a breakable format, then you'll continue to see the format heading off in a very linear direction of deterministic commanders.

[Rorseph]

A lot of the new commanders have been 'feels bad, man' once I've played them long enough. Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer was the worst offender for me in the last year or so. I was really excited for an actual morph commander and in Sultai, but she's linear as hell. There's pretty much one build for her and that's it.

I switched that deck slot to Tatyova and that's been hit and miss for me. I like playing the Great Aurora towards victory and everything, but it's too easy. I'm moving onto the Simic Doomsday deck with Uro at the helm that a few folks are brewing here in the forums. Uro's still wickedly powerful, but I like using that and building towards a janky-ass combo win with a horde of zombies.

My favorite deck remains my modular Thassa deck. She's an engine, but not a turbocharged one like Chulane is.

I feel like I should end this with a "Get off my lawn!" but I'll just keep building the decks that I want to play and maybe start moving towards more removal than is healthy. That's one thing all these new commanders aren't teaching about deckbuilding.

[Kelzam]

At first glance cards like Yarok, the Desecrated are completely boring value engines, but I've also seen it built a few different ways that isn't always the default ETB value train. Sheldon and a few others have found the only actually viable Energy commander so far (for what little of the deck actually ends up benefiting with how few payoffs there are). There's still a large amount of choice involved in what exactly goes in value decks, and there are similar style of decks still being built using other Commanders. Bemoan the deck builder going the most obvious route, rather than the Commander itself. I still see Muldrotha and Tasigur decks for Sultai, for example, and other ETB Commanders being played. What pisses me off more than anything is Commanders like Edgar Markov that outclass the competition so much that there's zero reason to consider alternatives. Compared to Olivia Voldaren or Mono-B Commanders, there's no reason to play him, and the only way he would be dethroned is a better Commander and... let's not go there.

I also don't mind value Commanders for newer players who are still grasping such a gigantic format, where they can add newer cards they have and still do alright. The Brawl Commanders weren't just better than the 2019 precons because they were more powerful - they were better because they weren't so niche. Morph is a boring mechanic - sorry if you like it. I do, too, but there's only so much design space for it. Kadena was going to be linear and get boring pretty fast. Same with Anje and a Madness theme. Without printing a bunch of new Madness cards, she was never going to be a decent Madness deck. When they put out extremely niche precons like last year's, anything that is more wide open is going to trump them by a large margin and be vastly more interesting.

Print the value engine Commanders for all I care. People have a lot of fun with them, new Commander players have something to ease into the format with, there's plentiful ways to build them that isn't just going to EDHREC and dumping every card listed on there into a deck. Just stop printing Commanders like Edgar Markov where there's zero reason to build any other Commander in that tribe, or Narset, Enlightened Master where the entire game is warped and the table held hostage, holding back removal and answers to ensure Narset never gets an attack step to win the game until that player is dead.

P.S. - Power aside, has this guy heard of a little thing called "recency bias"? It plays a big part in the Commanders being played. As time goes on, older Commanders become more expensive, newer product is more easily accessible and everyone is hyped about new cards. It's a thing.

[DirkGently]

I kind of agree with the general concept, but I think he does a pretty poor job of arguing it.

For one thing, he seems like he wants his shtick to be that he's using numbers to back up his claims. And, frankly, didn't see a lot of numbers here. EDHrec is right there, with their list of most popular commanders. And there are those cool infographics that show the popularity of various commanders over time. It really wouldn't have been hard. His only numbers I noticed were around how many new commanders used draw (though unhelpfully couched in his rather vague P1-P3 terminology) which I think is more indicative of how uncreative a lot of them are, rather than any objective indication of power creep. This felt like a lot of feelings and not a lot of data.

On that score, I think he chose pretty poor examples to prove his point. Prossh, for example, I think is a terrible of example if he was trying to show commanders getting more resilient over time, because prossh is the only one he mentioned that gets value - a lot of value - through even counterspells. He's couching it as though people were playing prossh as a 5+ power dragon with no other synergies, which is what absolutely no one has ever done with prossh. Meanwhile he's singling out Yarok as giving immediate value with no synergy or extra mana required, which obviously isn't true. And he's trying to argue that korvold is better than windgrace, which...I mean, maybe? Kinda depends a lot on the deck? Plus isn't windgrace inside the P3 window he's trying to prove anyway?

On the flip side, he's bemoaning that chulane is better than jenara for angel tribal. Which...well, if you're making angel tribal, you're already making a deck for flavor, not power, so who gives a crap if there's a stronger option? Obviously there's a stronger option, there's multiple stronger options. Jenara isn't particularly exciting commander, and she doesn't really synergize at all with angels outside of being one herself. If anything she's more of a draw-go commander, which Chulane is less designed for. They do different things, and if you want a creature-centric deck obviously chulane is the stronger option. So what is your point, exactly?

He's trying to say there's this clear demarcation between types of commanders and there just isn't. You can point to commander 2011 as releasing some major beasts into the wild, but beyond that it's mostly been more of the same, or at least a very slow power creep, with a few bumpy hills.

Meanwhile Zur and Arcum are honestly still very very strong - I think they mostly just don't get played as much these days because they're older, more obscure, and people who played them have just gotten bored of how repetitive they are or moved on to other newer commanders. Or just been drowned out by the flood of newcomers who pick up the latest precon rather than digging through 25 years of legends.

Now, I did really like the pre-2011 commander vibe. There was super broken stuff still, but it was all a bit more charming imo. Power levels were all over the place, everyone was figuring stuff out, and it just a more fun task to take cards not designed for this and figure out what to do with them, rather than be handed commanders that scream "play me with a bunch of etbs!" or "play me with a bunch of enchantments!" or whatever. I do think modern legends have been more obviously targeted towards specific archetypes, and I blame that on the precons which force the designers to build towards a deck, rather than just release a creation into the wild and see where it goes. And I share his trepidation with each new commander release, because yes, a lot of new commanders are pretty miserable to play against. I think Golos is a good example of this - it has a powerful etb, and then also a powerful effect while on the table, and also it takes the brain power of a pistol shrimp to build a strong deck around it. But at the same time, in an objective sense, he's still less powerful than something like Zur.

What I think is the real issue is less the commanders themselves, and more the interaction between wizards design and commander players. With commander more and more the only casual format around, and a major source of revenue for wizards, they're motivated to:

-print lots of new "for commander" cards and force them into every product to draw commander buyers I mean players (oh hi theme booster exclusives YOU MISERABLE BLIGHT UPON OUR WORLD). And now they're pushing this even further in 2020 with how many specifically commander-targeted products they're making.
-make commanders that appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, which means very easy-to-build commanders, as well as commanders that help you do whatever stupid thing it is you want to do, and kowtowing to whatever the playbase wants instead of designing what they want to design.

And at the same time, as he mentions, the proliferation of online resources as well as strong, easily-available precons makes it harder and harder to be a true scrub. This is probably a good thing for new players, but I think it does curtail the possibility to really climb up from the bottom. Which, personally, I enjoyed getting to do. I spent years being very bad at magic with my friends, and then more years being decent at magic but still figuring out commander with my friends. And those were great times. And new players won't get that, they "get to" skip over it, and I think that's kind of a shame. The wild west has been tamed. And it's better, I guess, but I still miss those wide open prairies and wondering what was over the horizon.

[toctheyounger]

And at the same time, as he mentions, the proliferation of online resources as well as strong, easily-available precons makes it harder and harder to be a true scrub. This is probably a good thing for new players, but I think it does curtail the possibility to really climb up from the bottom. Which, personally, I enjoyed getting to do. I spent years being very bad at magic with my friends, and then more years being decent at magic but still figuring out commander with my friends. And those were great times. And new players won't get that, they "get to" skip over it, and I think that's kind of a shame. The wild west has been tamed. And it's better, I guess, but I still miss those wide open prairies and wondering what was over the horizon.

Hard agree. This is the difference between being a good player of the format and just having a good deck. With a big enough bank balance anyone can have a good deck, or the best deck or whatever. Not that I consider myself an amazing player, but crafting brews and working up from the relative bottom teaches a lot of how to build, how to pilot and how to get better as a player.

[pokken]

Wow, great analysis all around

[DirkGently]

Hard agree. This is the difference between being a good player of the format and just having a good deck. With a big enough bank balance anyone can have a good deck, or the best deck or whatever. Not that I consider myself an amazing player, but crafting brews and working up from the relative bottom teaches a lot of how to build, how to pilot and how to get better as a player.

There's kind of two ways to make a deck:
-Start from a precon/netdeck/edhrectop or whatever, then revise it over and over until it's "yours".
-Start from the ground up with a commander

I'm not saying either is more legitimate, but I think wotc really wants to emphasise the former as a way to reduce the intimidation factor of the latter. And I think it results in a lot of people who can play decently if not very critically beyond single card value. working from the ground up really motivates you to have a whole plan, not just "is this card good?"

Granted, I think that's also true for commanders like Yarok that ask very little and pay off massively, and direct you very obviously towards a certain direction. I really dislike tribal, enchantress, artifact, etc strategies, because they are really trivial to build. Just shove in a bunch of X and get value. I guess it's nice for new players for whom the intimidation factor is large, but it's pretty uninteresting to me.

Granted, those on-rails commanders always existed, but because most precon commanders (at least the face commanders) are of those types, and are also designed for commander exclusively and don't need to be standard-balanced, they new ones are frequently among the most powerful options. And I think it's a little lame that wotc has kind of made these ez-bake commanders the pinnacle of power for most people. There's a lot less room to grow.

i think the root of many of these problems is that commander has become too successful. Which is fine in theory, but the problem is that it's forced out any other casual format. And that's a problem because commander is a

TERRIBLE

Beginner format. There are so many cards in the pool, so many complex interactions, so much to keep track of...it's a nightmare. But it's what's popular, so wotc has to make it accessible. So, precons, on-rails commanders, and all of it power crept to box out old cards so that card pool feels smaller than it is. And you end up with a bunch of players who have decent decks but little understanding of the game, and often little ability or reason to improve when most people around them are in the same boat.

[toctheyounger]

But it's what's popular, so wotc has to make it accessible.

Yeah, this is important to the discussion, Set and forget commanders make it easier for a beginner to not get stomped. Which is good in that they get nice vibes from the game. But terrible in that these busted ass commanders are let out into the wild for other folks to abuse for tons of easy wins.

It's a little frustrating because again that's why rule 0 exists. Play the sort of game you're all down for - if there's a beginner at the table they shouldn't need to have the game on easy mode for fear of getting brutalised.

End of the day though, rule 0 covers most of the complaint around this topic too. It's not the most elegant solution, and that too can be a bit problematic.

[3drinks]

Idk. Like, really? Power creep is rapidly encroaching and it's obvious in the new sets like that's all WotC can do to sell packs. OK. We got it. Now, how does it iMPACT you? No, really. No one is holding a glock to your head and saying goddamnit play effin 5c Kenrith or else. Partner is a huge mistake, though at least it was done right in BBD.

I don't agree that you can't play anything under 3c and be good, either. I think people are lazy, and there's a lot of playing whatever they see others play, and others play 3-5c because it's easy mode. Look, I PLAY MONO-R people, both because I enjoy it but also because it still steals plenty of wins. My deck isn't suddenly invalid because people play Golos. In fact it's usually better tbh, because people are overly reliant on nonbasic lands but I digress.

There's an illusion of massive power creep happening because that's all we see is new haymakers, but like...these don't make a Grim Monolith not as good as it is. Great old cards are still great old cards, and no amount and playability of new cards will do anything to change how strong Vampiric Tutour is. I think there's a whole of over analyzation going on for absolutely nothing, and writers are trying to capitalize on that to drive site hits and spike ad revenue.

Oh, and #BanProteanHulk2020

And that's really all I have to say about that.

[Rumpy5897]

It's always encouraging when an article opens by quoting a blatantly incorrect tweet. The Ikoria decks are C20, thank you very much. The rest of the write-up follows suit, being alarmist drivel loosely based on reality. You simply cannot discuss things like Golos or Korvold and not mention WOTC's push to get Brawl going. The very reason those monstrosities walk the earth is an attempt to bring the gameplay standard we know and love from EDH into this forced format. The standard card pool is super shallow, what do we do, we just put out extremely broad and synergistic legends that will carry the game for us! And seeing how removal in standard is usually mana-intensive, we'll get away with it! The M20 wedge legends, Golos, and ELD Brawl deck stuff are all prime examples of this. Zero acknowledgment of this in the article.

When you remove these blatantly Brawl-minded beasts from the landscape, things look a lot nicer. Every now and then you get a solid value engine legend like your Muldrothas or whatever, but it's not an everyday occurrence. Even the C19 McDonalds "draw a card" stuff is not that game breaking, forcing you into rather narrow niches for payoff. There is some reason for worry that R&D will see the crazy level of success of the hyper broad value engine ones and go deeper, but there's hope this won't happen. There's been nothing even close to that filthy in THB or the main body of ELD, which is hopeful. The Prosshes etc. were also egregious outliers back in their day, something the article nostalgically glosses over, but then some sense was acquired as to how to design for EDH specifically. It's kinda funny how I was able to touch on both of these phenomena in a crummy decade retrospective I penned, yet a dedicated article misses the mark so spectacularly.

The thread's got a bunch of stuff right. There's been "baseline creep", people having a plethora of resources to figure out how to piece together a sensible, functional deck. I mean, we're an online forum with a healthy EDH/deck section, if anything this should make us happy that maybe we're part of this to some small degree. The precons run smoothly out of the box. But when you check the deck constituents, it's still largely the same old stuff. It's not like every new set delivers barrels of Smothering Tithes. In terms of new cards, there's been a lot of push for specialisation, which is a good thing.

Oh yeah, and just to take one last cheap potshot at the article - there are angles you can take against the Chulanes and what have you. That said, they are a bit antisocial. You just attack them on an axis they're likely unprepared to fight on, throttling their ability to cast spells.

[DirkGently]

Yeah, this is important to the discussion, Set and forget commanders make it easier for a beginner to not get stomped. Which is good in that they get nice vibes from the game. But terrible in that these busted ass commanders are let out into the wild for other folks to abuse for tons of easy wins.

It's a little frustrating because again that's why rule 0 exists. Play the sort of game you're all down for - if there's a beginner at the table they shouldn't need to have the game on easy mode for fear of getting brutalised.

End of the day though, rule 0 covers most of the complaint around this topic too. It's not the most elegant solution, and that too can be a bit problematic.

I hate rule 0. It's such a cop out. It assumes everyone is playing with, like, their three best friends and everyone is on the same page.

Sure, in a public group you can, and should, talk about what sort of game you're going to play to make sure everyone's on the same level, but it's pretty difficult to accurately talk about power level and expectations with strangers outside of "we're not playing cEDH, right?" Like, I dislike a lot of commanders because I find them unfun to play against. But it would be pretty rude to say "hey, I specifically dislike your commander (and by implication I think you're a dick for picking it)" to a near-stranger at my LGS.

For example, there's one guy who I've played a decent number of times, and he's a pretty good player, but he almost always plays marchesa 1.0 and the deck is really miserable to play against. I don't think I've ever had fun playing against marchesa. It gets out of hand really quickly, and once it's out of hand you need 2 removal spells and a board wipe, or a board wipe and grave hate, to even start to get it under control again, and that's if they don't have any interaction at all. So the correct play, provided no one else is getting too scary, is to just keep killing Marchesa until she's priced out of the game. Then nobody is having a good time.

And then at the end of the game, it's hard to talk about it because I still win a decent amount of the time. So there's not really a "problem" per se, in terms of power level. I'm not looking for a lower power level, really. I just want to play against a deck that doesn't say "I'm going to demand answers from you, and if you don't have them I'm going to win, and if you do have them I'm going to make you look like a bully for not letting me vomit explosively all over this game."

Quick point back to the original article: Another bad example imo that contradicts his own point is when he says:

Moreover, they often give you advantage in a way that makes recasting the commander a non-issue[...]Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is yet another example, a commander who provides the resource that will both allow him to cast free spells and make it easier to recast himself later. (and don't even get me started on Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath).

How does Uro help you recast himself? He doesn't put anything else into the grave on his own. I guess technically you could command-zone him and recast him on 5 next turn? Sick, a 5 mana explore. Too OP wizards, plz nerf.

Obviously Uro can be fairly hard to kill when built well, but he does actually take some effort to make effective. He's not just free value in the way, say, Golos is. If you re-purposed a random Zegana deck into Uro, with a bunch of value etb creatures and whatever, it would be crap. You'd have a mediocre ramp spell in the CZ that wouldn't become an actual creature until turn 8, and it'd be a chore to recast when it dies.

Uro is strong, but I think he's a good kind of strong. He requires some effort to build around to be good. And the value he generates is pretty reasonable. Even if you're able to recast him nearly indefinitely, best case you're basically getting 1 draw, 1 land drop, 3 life, and a decent swing every turn. He's not going to become an exponential BS value engine making your whole board invincible on turn 4......like that butthole Marchesa.

It's honestly pretty frustrating hearing some points I mostly agree with being argued so badly.

But of course, part of the problem is that the real progression of power in commander isn't a straightforward story, especially right at this second when the last set was actually pretty tame commanders-wise. I actually think main set of Throne did pretty well too, outside of the supplementary products.

I think the last set to really give us a healthy dose of cancer-commanders in the main set was core 2020. Which I suspect is because they worried a core set wouldn't sell, so they decided to force a "bone" down our throats throw us a bone. And isn't that funny, brawl was also a risk, and ALSO had some miserable, obnoxiously designed commanders. What a crazy random happenstance!

It's almost like wotc is deliberately using commander players as a way to ensure risky products sell, because they know they can just shove in some broken BS and, thanks to the format's popularity, most of us are new, casual, and inexperienced players who aren't going to critically consider whether this influx of ez-bake powerhouse commanders is going to be a net positive for the format. They're just going to go "OMG, I like etb creatures, and Yarok is good with ETB creatures!....time to go buy a booster box of core 2020!"

It's kind of frustrating because, looking at recent years, it really seems like the normal, safe sets, where they know they'll sell and they can do what they want and what's good for the game, we get legends that are nicely designed and well balanced, and as a result take some thought and skill to build...but then whenever they have some risky idea that they need to make sell, or a supplementary product that's relying on commander players to buy it, they go "NAWW, LET'S CRANK THE POWER UP TO ELEVEN AND MAKE IT ALL REAAALLLLL DUMMMMM."

@Rumpy5897 I swear I typed this all out before I saw your post. But yeah, you really can pick out the places where the vast majority of the stupidest legends have been printed...and for the most part, the commonality is that they were all risky, so they targeted commander as deliberately as possible to ensure sales.

[ilovesaprolings]

Meh. Honestly, maybe i am from a different world, but the notion that something like Yarok is more broken than Prossh makes me laugh.
By the way it's kinda a dumb article, i mean... have you seen the spoiler? Have you seen partner? Have you seen damn eminence?
If you try to complain about these broken ass mechanics that warps the format when they get spoiled, you get drowned by fanboys comments. So no one really complain, everyone just accepts them... and then people start complaining 2-3 years after? What's the point?
Wizards has shown poor judgement regarding commander. They don't know the format, they try to warp it year after year.
Try to let your voice be heard.

Honestly i'm hopeful regarding Ikoria commander. The fact that they are linking it, flavorfully and mechanically, to Ikoria probably means less format-warping %$#% like eminence.
The Eldraine brawl deck were a step into the right direction, but they tried so hard to sell them that made broken %$#%. Why the hell Chulaine is so goodstuffy and not based around adventures? Why the hell Korvold is so goodstuffy and based around food? Oh yeah, we need to sell them MORE.
Also they were probably balancing them around brawl and not commander, a terrible format.

[PrimevalCommander]

brain power of a pistol shrimp

This made me laugh. Interesting analogy.

I'm not looking for a lower power level, really. I just want to play against a deck that doesn't say "I'm going to demand answers from you, and if you don't have them I'm going to win, and if you do have them I'm going to make you look like a bully for not letting me vomit explosively all over this game."

You are looking for a lower power level. Higher power games require more answers, or faster decks. Without tuck, players go all-in on commander synergies and you can't expect to just let a commander sit on the table and do their thing. Most any high power commander will require and answer within the first turn rotation or two at the most or become a serious problem. If your looking for games where commanders just chill on the field for a few turns and nothing bad happens, your looking for a lower power game.


Overall the power creep is hard to ignore, but largely inevitable for an eternal format. Eventually an overpowered card will get printed. Other formats either ban it or simply wait until rotation for the format to self-correct. With eternal formats those cards never go away until players either get bored of them or something better comes along. For casual, just waiting for players to get bored and play other things is a valid part of the format evolution. As others mentioned, there are plenty of broken commanders from the format's infancy, and they are seen less frequently because after 10+ years of playing those commanders, you want to try other things. There will be an eb and flow of highly popular commanders, and some of them will stick for many years, but they will get diluted quickly with the new hotness and the format will move onto the next value vomiting legend to come along.

The rate at which these OP legends are getting printed is concerning, and I don't like it. But as stated, with commander being the most played format in Magic, this may be the new norm. From what I have seen in gameplay vids, and in my experience, bumping up your spot removal can make these games easier. YES, players will whine when you Doom Blade their commander for the 4th time, but like are you just supposed to not interact with your opponents or something? I have no sympathy for players who build decks that fold without one card, even if that card is the commander. "But the format is COMMANDER, so killing my Commander is against the spirit of the format". But the game is MAGIC, and removing the highest threat in your deck is well within the spirit of the game. I'm not a spike, but I do feel that people are too reliant on their commander being on the battlefield, and I will use that to help me win games.

[DirkGently]

You are looking for a lower power level. Higher power games require more answers, or faster decks. Without tuck, players go all-in on commander synergies and you can't expect to just let a commander sit on the table and do their thing. Most any high power commander will require and answer within the first turn rotation or two at the most or become a serious problem. If your looking for games where commanders just chill on the field for a few turns and nothing bad happens, your looking for a lower power game.

I disagree.

Being fast and being strong are not the same thing. Decks that are built all-in on their commander might be fast, but they're not going to be very strong if they don't have a plan to protect their commander, or function effectively without it. A deck that folds to a couple removal spells in the middle turns of the game is not a strong deck. Sure, you can beat up on weak decks pretty easily if they're not packing disruption, but that doesn't mean the deck is actually good.

The problem really is with commanders, like marchesa, who are very on/off. Probably my best example of a commander like this would be shirei, shizo's caretaker which I built a couple years back. When they were in play and doing the thing, the value was off the chain. No one else ever got to have a hand. They never even got to keep their draw step. Enemy creatures all died and I could grind all enemy resources to dust in one or two turn cycles at most. But when shirei got killed, especially after I'd sacked a bunch of dudes, or if someone had enchantment-based grave hate, suddenly my deck was absolute appalling garbage that did nothing.

Both marchesa and shirei are commanders that want you to build around them pretty strongly, but also set you up for epic failure if you can't keep them on the board. So no, I don't think marchesa is too powerful for me. My Phelddagrif is built to handle cEDH decks trying to win on turn 1-2, marchesa isn't really a huge threat if my only goal was winning. The problem is that she essentially forces my hand because I can't ever afford to let her get out of control. Which then means she forces me into being a bully by repeatedly killing this guy's commander when he hasn't done anything of significance all game. That's not fun for him, and it's not fun for me. I've had similar annoyances with commanders like teshar, ancestor's apostle, another on/off card. When the whole deck is built only to combo, it puts me in a position where I'm forced to be the bad guy or else let them win, and it's as much fun as a root canal either way.

By contrast, I'd say the Uro deck I built a few weeks back was significantly stronger than the marchesa deck. But Uro being in play for several turn cycles is totally fine. He gives decent value but nothing unbeatable or anything. But the benefit is that I haven't had to warp the whole deck around making my commander good. It's just a good control deck with a durable value engine slash beater in the command zone. If my opponents find a way to deny him being in play for a while - say a RIP - that's chill. I'll want to deal with it eventually, but my deck still functions just fine until then. It's not a bunch of junk included to turn my command on. It's not fast, it doesn't demand immediate answers, but it's a powerful deck nonetheless. If I were bringing one or the other to a cEDH table, I'd much rather have (my) Uro than (his) marchesa.

This is in danger of veering wildly off topic, but I really detest that, for many cEDH players, the goal seems to be winning quickly rather than winning consistently. It's exactly the sort of simplistic mindset that I expect would vanish if EDH ever had a real pro scene, not that I necessarily want such a thing.

[pokken]

The problem really is with commanders, like marchesa, who are very on/off. Probably my best example of a commander like this would be shirei, shizo's caretaker

I just wanted to give you props for really pithily describing this concept I've struggled against myself a lot.

This concept of on/off commanders culminates with monsters like brago, king eternal and animar, soul of elements for me. I hate playing against those decks because I'm always the bad guy gilded drakeing their commander so they can't play. But then when I don't they go off in explosive fashion and there's no recovering.

I try never to build commanders like this; my Golos decks even, despite Golos being part of this phenomenon, are pretty bad and generally don't generate overwhelming power from Golos since they can only ever activate him once a turn due to the mono-color limitation. Every time I do I wind up regretting it.

[materpillar]

Well that's interesting, I didn't know Golos, Tireless Pilgrim was so wildly reviled since no one plays him in my metagame and most of what I see about him on this website is that cool All the Alt-Wincons Golos deck. Now I feel a little bad for recently building a deck with him as the pilot.

I agree somewhat with the author's points. Wizards printing cards with EDH in mind as driven the power level of the format up. A higher powerlevel format results in more efficient, streamlined decks. More efficient, streamlined deck results in a smaller card pool of viable cards. If everyone is playing commanders that have to die this turn or the table loses you just have to be packing way way more answers and way less durdly fun wacky stuff. 2010 commander felt much more like a bar fight where everyone slowly built up a board-state and slugged it out. With so many lethal commanders it can homogenize the games by seeing how can actually stick the commander. In higher powerlevel settings it feels much more like a handful of cowboys around a poker table all diving for their guns and then whoever got there first mows everyone else down. There's a lot less room for error and everything feels much more like it's on a knifes edge. That's fine, it's just doesn't feel great if you got into the format to hard-cast Worldspine wurms and wack people with them.

I built an elf-storm deck based around using Citanul Hierophants + Lightning Greaves + Soul of the Harvest + 1 drops. Then oh cool, Chulane, Teller of Tales does literally everything that deck does, except better and it's all just stapled onto a bant commander. I'm sure that card will create memorable games for everyone to enjoy. I hate everything about Chulane. That being said I'm pretty sure Arcum Dagsson wipes the floor with him.

[freelunch]

edit: i wonder how edh would differ if every card with "commander" written on it was banned provisionally. giggle

I've actually been mulling about a Highlander variant, with some of the commander rules, where only Expansion and Core sets are legal. Do you (or anyone else for that matter) think that would be an interesting format to play?

[Mimicvat]

Very much a rule 0 person on this issue. Yeah Chulane etc are obnoxious and crowd out the cards with less raw power, but so do cEDH cards, extra turns, cyclonic rift etc and we don't let that break our meta either. They exist to open up options for new players (my mate's 9 year old kid plays Yarok) and for meming on.

One take on this we usually abide by is that these monsters are allowed when they are enabling something really weak and janky. Imagine someone playing pure bant aggro using Chulane to cantrip their creatures. Helps bring the powerlevel of something that is weak in the format to a level more equivalent to the rest of the table.

Their existance does make playing random pick up games a bit of a problem, but still less so than the issues we used to face of cEDH players joining regular pods and insta-winning at the last club.

[folding_music]

edit: i wonder how edh would differ if every card with "commander" written on it was banned provisionally. giggle

I've actually been mulling about a Highlander variant, with some of the commander rules, where only Expansion and Core sets are legal. Do you (or anyone else for that matter) think that would be an interesting format to play?

i know it'd suit me, I keep up way more with the main sets than anything else (although I wish I'd grabbed the Planechase stuff at the time, that turned out to be a great gimmick!)

I hate to badmouth about the Commander and Brawl specific cards cos I know a lot of effort goes into them, including the efforts of well-known edh folk, but I feel like the point of a game variant is to make something that suits you out of a product that might not. I feel slightly awkward when I see "X can be your commander" written on a card, somehow.

[ISBPathfinder]

I think that this is a format that if your goal is to break it, you will. All commanders are viable if you and others aren't trying to break things. The more ramp, draw, and combo you see in your metas probably the less casual friendly its going to be.

[pokken]

I think that this is a format that if your goal is to break it, you will. All commanders are viable if you and others aren't trying to break things. The more ramp, draw, and combo you see in your metas probably the less casual friendly its going to be.

While that's true I think before the last few years it was a bit harder to pair every archetype with a busted inevitable commander. Especially if you wanted to play 5c you were making sacrifices. Now the 4 and 5c commanders are strict upgrades for the most part.

I wouldn't mind if they would stop making so many overwhelmingly powerful training wheels commanders.

Partners feels like where it started to turn for me. And it's been a cavalcade of busted 5c legends since then.