Ramp+Mana Sink commanders (Golos, Kinnan, Urza, etc)

[Dunharrow]

I was reading the Ban Golos thread in the rules discussion, and I felt like the EDH community needs to communicate our frustrations to the RC/CAG, who in turn can maybe bring this up to Magic itself.

I think we are all tired of these 'do-it-all' commanders. I mean the ones that ramp and have busted mana sinks. Here is a list (which I will update if I missed any):

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
Urza, Lord High Artificer
to a lesser extent
Chulane, Teller of Tales
Thrasios, Triton Hero


I think we prefer ramping commanders like Zaxara, the Exemplary and mana sink commanders like Kenrith, the Returned King (even if he combos easily).

I think Kinnan and Urza would be super interesting to me without their mana sinks. Instead I look at them and I roll my eyes.

This thread is not about banning cards (please refer to the banlist discussion thread for this). I think the commander community needs to have a philosophical discussion and impress onto R&D that these kinds of cards are uninteresting.

[pokken]

The received wisdom is basically that you can just not play those commanders and leave them for more powerful groups.

But what I see is people dragging "jank" versions of these commanders into casual groups and steamrolling them because they don't understand the concept of a power floor.

Commanders like Golos, Tireless Pilgrim set a floor to how bad your deck can be. They fix all kinds of jank and make it really good. And the concept of power floor is not something less enfranchised players understand that well in my experience.

The other problem is that these commanders often present the "best" way to do a particular thing, and people have a hard time resisting that.

The problem with that is that probably half of all decks would be better as Golos. I have friends who have built Golos decks and now struggle to think of new ideas that aren't Golos because he just does everything you want.

[Magiqmaster]

For the record, I built an Urza deck with the goal of keeping it very casual. It's true that the deck can make some crazy things when some cards line up, but nothing that could be called abusive, it's nowhere near the level of cEDH decks. My friends don't complain too much it since it does not break anything. So I can say that any deck with a powerful general can be adapted to make it more manageable and accepted by the community. For sure though, if you play said deck with people you don't know, it might be a hard sell at the beginning, but after a few games, they will realize you speak the truth.

[Sinis]

Does Chulane really have a mana sink?

This is an interesting post. There are plenty of generals like this with varying degrees of power; Tasigur, Shalai, and Zacama, and Sliver Queen are similar, but I notice that most of the ones you listed are Simic+. My initial acid test was 'do you win with infinite mana', but that was poor; lots and lots of commanders win with infinite mana.

Arguably, you can say Ishkanah, Grafwidow or Jenara, Asura of War are mana sinks. Radha, Heart of Keld is definitely a ramp+sink commander.

I think there's a question of what you get for the mana you spend; does it have to change the board state? How significant does that change need to be? I don't think anyone is clamouring for a bunch of these to be banned (not like Golos, apparently), but, is Kinnan's ability really that bad, considering?

[WizardMN]

I think there's a question of what you get for the mana you spend; does it have to change the board state? How significant does that change need to be? I don't think anyone is clamouring for a bunch of these to be banned (not like Golos, apparently), but, is Kinnan's ability really that bad, considering?

I do think this is a good point and was going to be my argument as well. Now, the topic is discussing ramp+Mana sink which doesn't for Jenara or Ishkana so I don't think *just* a mana sink is the issue. Golos, Urza, and Kinnan ramp while also allowing to cheat mama costs. Golos is still the worst offender here as 5 Mana, which can be activated as many times as you have mana for it, gets 3 free cards. His ability is literally unconditional and three times the free spells Urza gives for the same Mana. It is exceptionally difficult to defeat a Golos deck on any fair axis because the very nature of his design is to do unfair things.

Urza is similar though sort of good the other direction in that his Mana sink ability isn't oppressive on his own. But allowing for artifacts to tap for mana allowed him to snowball along the lines of Golos.

Kinnan is conditional enough where she is likely the least oppressive of the three, but she still fuels her own ability.

My biggest issue with these things is being able to cheat mana costs to such a large degree. I am with Pokken that a lot of decks would just be better off as Golos. He has basically no limit to what he is good with. Why try to set up Morophon and Jodah if you can just guarantee yourself 3 free spells of anything? Why bother with Nick Reborn when you can just pay 5 Mana and cast things for free.

Thrasios I think it's an issue that is smaller than Golos but still a problem as it fuels himself to continue ramping/drawing. It isn't quite as bad as they still need to spend Mana so I think there is enough of a difference to separate him from this particular discussion.

In the end I agree that these are arguably boring and honestly a bit uninspired. Urza is a nice throwback but is just too much with the added Mana ability. Golos though ends up being the biggest offender by virtue of being 5 color without an actual Mana restriction on casting him or in terms of what spells can go into the deck.

In the end, I would rather players be forced to actually pay for their spells. You want to cast Time Stretch, Expropriate, and Part the Waterveil? You better have more than 5 Mana to do it. It is the reason I am not a fan of Fires of Invention, Winota, Wilderness Rec (to an extent) and these types of design. They take the Mana system and just chuck it out the window.

[Sinis]

Now, the topic is discussing ramp+Mana sink which doesn't for Jenara or Ishkana so I don't think *just* a mana sink is the issue.

I somehow missed this in the initial post.

Well, yeah, I think when it does both, it's not great. My group just doesn't play them.

[pokken]

His ability is literally unconditional and three times the free spells Urza gives for the same Mana.

A very minor quibble but Golos' ability costs 7 to Urza's 5 and is more restrictive. Still, 3 free spells off the top?

It's such a bummer because I love so many things about his design and just wish his ability was not so nonsensical. They are normally so good about making these types of things require a tap or have some kinda constraint, but they made it just pure gasoline. It's horrible.

[MeowZeDung]

Tayam, Luminous Enigma is a strong mana sink that recurs ramp pieces at instant speed. It's not on the same tier as the gross legendaries in the OP for sure, but I built it for my son and it has led to a couple uninteresting CA solitaire combo fests.

I think WotC wants to draw new players into buying commander product, so they offer Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and Chulane, Teller of Tales levels of dumb as an incentive. They do need to strike a balance between drawing in new players and not turning off experienced ones. I've been fortunate enough to dodge Golos, but it's obvious that a lot of the new legendaries build themselves.

[WizardMN]

His ability is literally unconditional and three times the free spells Urza gives for the same Mana.

A very minor quibble but Golos' ability costs 7 to Urza's 5 and is more restrictive. Still, 3 free spells off the top?

It's such a bummer because I love so many things about his design and just wish his ability was not so nonsensical. They are normally so good about making these types of things require a tap or have some kinda constraint, but they made it just pure gasoline. It's horrible.

Ah right. I thought they were the same and I was typing on Mobile so I was just going off memory.

But yeah, making him tap would have solved a lot. Not everything since 3 free spells is still really good even 1 time per turn cycle (and people would just do more to untap him) but it would have helped.

I am not sure the colored component is all the restrictive though. Considering Golos allows for the mana fixing himself. On paper it is, but practically speaking I don't think I have seen anyone have an issue activating it at least once. And once is too many sometimes

[folding_music]

Tayam, Luminous Enigma is a strong mana sink that recurs ramp pieces at instant speed. It's not on the same tier as the gross legendaries in the OP for sure, but I built it for my son and it has led to a couple uninteresting CA solitaire combo fests.

I've been trying to make a cosy-powered Tayam by making it a kind of enchantress deck and using the commander for resilience - if a key enchantment or yr Femeref Enchantress gets removed you can pay three and put her back into play while getting you closer to delirium and threshold and all that. I understand that from that position you can then easily add Squandered Resources and/or persist combos and/or Earthcraft and do something broken but it seems better for the game if you don't do that and add pet cards instead. unlike Golos and Chulane, Tayam isn't immediately broken when leading a pile of 99 random cards - I think it's quite a cute. quasi-reasonable commander until you decide your deck should activate his ability more than once a turn.

[Dunharrow]

To be clear, I am not saying that Kinnan needs to be banned in Commander. I just feel like it is uninteresting because it gives you ramp + sink to get free cards in your deck. Like Golos and Urza, you don't really need to overthink your build - it will be strong.
I am not really worried about the power level of these cards. And Pokken is right, I could just ignore these cards (and I do).
But to me they just feel like terrible designs. They are goodstuffy commanders because they fuel themselves - literally the rest of the deck can be anything (ok, you need mana rocks and dorks in Kinnan).

To me, it is as if Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary has a mana sink.
Instead of Radha, Heir to Keld which is a cool gruul ramp commander, the new version gets mana and a way to use it.

I just don't get the all-in-one packages.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah, as seen in yesterday's RCOTD post I wholeheartedly support this line of thinking with these commanders. The amount of times I hear people say 'this is a jank meme deck' and then change up to top gear and flatten the table early is far too high.

Wizards really does need to cool it on these cards. I'm still absolutely stunned by how much value you get on a single card that costs 2 mana with Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. Who on earth thought that wouldn't get abused? It's absolutely nonsensical, and stupendously easy to abuse. You don't even need money to afford the combo pieces, literally Basalt Monolith sorts you out on turn 3 or earlier.

Golos is definitely the most ubiquitous offender though. The fact that he enables easy future casts upon his removal makes him really game warping. To the point where it's probably reasonable for a meta to consider things like Pithing Needle just to give the table a chance.

I also want to go on record and say that Chulane, Teller of Tales absolutely hits the mark here too. I've played exactly one game against this commander that he didn't win, and it included a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV that choked the table out until he scooped. That's what it takes to keep these commanders from hitting the finish line way ahead of the rest of the table. It's not fair on anyone and it's boring as hell.

[Mookie]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the two strongest things a commander can provide to a deck are card advantage and mana advantage. For a long time, there was a wide selection of commanders that could do one or the other... but WotC has printed a lot recently that do both, and it makes it difficult for other commanders to compete.

To me, these commanders are the equivalent of junk food. They're fun to play with and easy to build - throw them at the helm of a deck and it will function well every time. But they can also lead to a unhealthy format, since they make it difficult to play less-competitive commanders.

I will call out that a huge number of these commanders pop up in Simic - I'll call out Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Maelstrom Wanderer as two others that push in this direction. Unfortunately, 'ramp and draw cards' is too core to Simic's identity for me to expect WotC to stop printing these cards entirely. See all the Growth Spiral and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath decks in various formats.

[toctheyounger]

I will call out that a huge number of these commanders pop up in Simic - I'll call out Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Maelstrom Wanderer as two others that push in this direction. Unfortunately, 'ramp and draw cards' is too core to Simic's identity for me to expect WotC to stop printing these cards entirely. See all the Growth Spiral and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath decks in various formats.

Yeah, I agree with this. It almost seems like they really haven't thought too much about the territory Simic occupies in the color pie and how they can explore new territory within it's identity, so newer things are just pushed to a significantly higher power. Simic's identity just seems to be 'ramp the best, draw the best'. Which is unfortunate for literally every other colour combination.

[UnNamed1]

In my opinion, none of these decks represent a threat to the format overall. I've fought and previously built, every single one of these commanders, so I'll touch briefly on my views of each.

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim - This deck is all based around the person who builds it. Majority of the time this is attempted to be a pub-stomp deck. Golos isn't good enough to make it cEDH, as really you are only looking for his ramp part. By the time you can infinitely dump mana into Golos, you could have done it easier and faster with any of the other mana-sink commanders. Golos only recently became any sort of issue at my LGS, so I brought out a slightly better deck and proceeded to 4-0 his deck. Afterwards I talked about power-level and that many people think he should tone it down a bit, that while yes he doesn't have any infinite's, he is much faster and consistent than many other players. My previous build of Golos was a superfriends deck that, while strong durdled and didn't always work.

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy - Absolutely a cEDH commander. increases mana, cheap casting cost, easy way to dump mana into. However, this again resolves around who is playing the deck. I haven't yet fought one, but I have theory crafted one, resulting in a 1.66 average CMC, even lower than my current cEDH Elsha list. Since I haven't fought one, I'll compare instead to the Uro deck that is commonly seen by my friend. It ramps hard and faster than most other decks at the table, however, his plan is to play giant creatures and beat face. This would never work at cEDH table, but at a casual table fits perfectly.

Urza, Lord High Artificer - Now this one I am a little biased around. I absolutely love artifacts. I built a casual combat focused Urza deck with lots of big artifact creatures. This was probably one of the most casual lists I have made recently, yet with Urza reputation, I hardly ever got a chance to play my cards. On the cEDH side, Urza is a tier 1.5/2. He is strong but slower than most other decks, His mana sink is no where near as powerful as the others, as he has to run more counterspells being in mono blue. You do not want a feels bad counterspell hitting off 5 mana, then sitting in exile for the rest of the game. Urza is strong when built in a cEDH deck, but honestly is not a problem for casual tables. I have seen much worse from Estrid than Urza.

Really, mana sinking shouldn't be an issue for casual, and outside of Kinnan, none of these are rampant cEDH decks. The biggest problem I see is only that Golos enables people to be pub-stompy. But then you just have to have a rule 0 talk with that player, or maybe decide to run more answers. EDH is about adaptation. No one deck will fit in every meta, no one card is an issue everywhere for everyone. Anyway, I feel like i'm rambling now.

TLDR; The cards aren't a problem, the players are. Have a talk with your playgroup.

[pokken]

TLDR; The cards aren't a problem, the players are. Have a talk with your playgroup.

This question is to help me understand where you come from a bit more --

Where do you stand on Sylvan Primordial?

[Dunharrow]

In my opinion, none of these decks represent a threat to the format overall. I've fought and previously built, every single one of these commanders, so I'll touch briefly on my views of each.

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim - This deck is all based around the person who builds it. Majority of the time this is attempted to be a pub-stomp deck. Golos isn't good enough to make it cEDH, as really you are only looking for his ramp part. By the time you can infinitely dump mana into Golos, you could have done it easier and faster with any of the other mana-sink commanders. Golos only recently became any sort of issue at my LGS, so I brought out a slightly better deck and proceeded to 4-0 his deck. Afterwards I talked about power-level and that many people think he should tone it down a bit, that while yes he doesn't have any infinite's, he is much faster and consistent than many other players. My previous build of Golos was a superfriends deck that, while strong durdled and didn't always work.

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy - Absolutely a cEDH commander. increases mana, cheap casting cost, easy way to dump mana into. However, this again resolves around who is playing the deck. I haven't yet fought one, but I have theory crafted one, resulting in a 1.66 average CMC, even lower than my current cEDH Elsha list. Since I haven't fought one, I'll compare instead to the Uro deck that is commonly seen by my friend. It ramps hard and faster than most other decks at the table, however, his plan is to play giant creatures and beat face. This would never work at cEDH table, but at a casual table fits perfectly.

Urza, Lord High Artificer - Now this one I am a little biased around. I absolutely love artifacts. I built a casual combat focused Urza deck with lots of big artifact creatures. This was probably one of the most casual lists I have made recently, yet with Urza reputation, I hardly ever got a chance to play my cards. On the cEDH side, Urza is a tier 1.5/2. He is strong but slower than most other decks, His mana sink is no where near as powerful as the others, as he has to run more counterspells being in mono blue. You do not want a feels bad counterspell hitting off 5 mana, then sitting in exile for the rest of the game. Urza is strong when built in a cEDH deck, but honestly is not a problem for casual tables. I have seen much worse from Estrid than Urza.

Really, mana sinking shouldn't be an issue for casual, and outside of Kinnan, none of these are rampant cEDH decks. The biggest problem I see is only that Golos enables people to be pub-stompy. But then you just have to have a rule 0 talk with that player, or maybe decide to run more answers. EDH is about adaptation. No one deck will fit in every meta, no one card is an issue everywhere for everyone. Anyway, I feel like i'm rambling now.

TLDR; The cards aren't a problem, the players are. Have a talk with your playgroup.

I get the impression you didn't read the OP.

I am not talking about power level. I am not talking about 'pub-stompy' or cEDH. I am really not concerned about these cards in that sense.
This thread is about a philosophical discussion about designing legendary creatures. I think it is a mistake to give a legendary creature a mana-ramping ability + a mana sink.
It makes them 'dumb'. There is no build-around needed - they are just good on their own. It leads to goodstuff decks.
It was mentioned that these cards also make it difficult to make a 'for fun' deck, because they are so good on their own. I can make Golos Unicorns and it will still be pretty decent.

My biggest problem is how often I see these cards - it's like everyone wants to build goodstuff decks with them. I like more focused generals. The ones where you have to play weird and weak cards because of synergies. Think of Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow , or Teysa Karlov as recent examples of good build-around commanders. They push people in interesting directions.
Chulane pushes people to play creatures... and the payoff is insane. If you want to make a bant creature deck, why would you use anything other than Chulane?
If you want to make a 5-color deck - Niv-Mizzet Reborn is really interesting. But also clearly worse than Golos. Golos ramps you and lets you play the cards for free.

So yeah - not a power level concern - just a bad design concern. They invalidate other generals by being generically good. Repeatable ramp + card draw (or casting cards for free) is a huge concern.
I am not saying they are warping the format and need to be banned. I just want WOTC to understand that this is boring.

[onering]

Terrible, lazy design, all of them.