Problem Commanders: Do You Play Them?

[JWK]

Many players feel that many of the commanders/legendary creatures printed in recent years are over-powered, often because they reward you in some way for things you want to be doing anyhow, or make it extremely easy to do those desirable things. You know the ones I'm talking about. Korvold. Chulane. Golos. Yarok. Muldrotha. Urza. Kenrith. Kinnan. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain. Lots of people complain about these cards, and more than a few consider their presence to be a negative thing for the format.

I share a lot of those same thoughts, and to some sense the concerns, but at the same time, I run decks with some of those commanders, or I run them in the 99 in other decks. My builds don't tend to be highly maximized - I intentionally avoid including easy infinite combos and things along those lines, and I have cut way back on how many tutors I run - but I stil play with some of those over-powered cards.

I have a Kenrith deck. It isn't even close to maximized, and I have toned back certain win conditions and don't include tutors that would allow me to seek them out. But it's still Kenrith, and thus pretty strong.

I also have a Chulane deck. I built it in part as an experiment, to see if it was really as bad as everyone says, and it isn't particularly maximized as Chulane decks go (though it does include Kinnan among the 99), but yeah, it's broken as hell. I have played it only a few times and will probably end up breaking it down, because taking really long turns in which you draw and put into play 2/3 of your deck in one turn and win on the spot is really tedious for the other players, and this deck can do that pretty easily on around turn 5. I'm not sure one can build a "fair" Chulane deck that would be worth playing. Creatureless Chulane, is that a thing?

I have a Jhoira deck. It isn't one of the storm versions, just a fair artifacts/historic deck, but it draws me a ton of cards and includes lots of ways to get extra turns, then wins with big artifact creatures and/or tons of thopter tokens, or by drawing a ton of cards with Psychosis Crawler in play. It's among my strongest decks, but it can involve some really long turns of drawing and playing a gazillion cards.

I don't play Korvold or Golos or Yarok or Muldrotha, though I have sometimes contemplated a Muldrotha/Yarok deck with one of them as the commander and the other within the 99. I run Urza in my Brudiclad deck (which also includes a copy of Jhoira). Kinnan shows up again in Rashmi (but still isn't nearly as broken as the Paradox Engine that deck was originally built around).

Anyhow, I was wondering how common it is for people to play some of these commanders, even while recognizing them as over-powered and potentially problematic. Does anyone else do this, and if so, where do you draw the line as far as something being too broken?

[Rorseph]

I prefer not to run those problematic Commanders because I don't want to draw hate before I've had a chance to even do anything. I've got a Lands deck that I've been working on that's got Damia, Sage of Stone at the helm, even though it would be objectively better with Yarok, the Desecrated or Muldrotha, the Gravetide because even if it's not "one of those decks" because it's a lot harder to convince strangers on the internet that you can be trusted not to curbstomp them. My normal playgroup even suggested that Yarok is better given the ETB creature suite I'm running, but here we are.

I think the choice is a function of what your expected meta is like. Is it people you know and who know you, or is it randos you're playing pickup games with?

[Magiqmaster]

I built an Urza deck where the main focus is to avoid any combo or busted plays. It is mostly a goodstuff deck. Of course, it still requires some attention but it is not the type of deck that will dominate easily. There are barely any counterspells, no CR, etc. This proves that it IS possible to tone down a general, albeit some may need to really dumb down the deck. It is a matter of choice, really. One thing though, it might be hard to convince strangers about your real intentions upon revealing the general.

[benjameenbear]

I'm guilty of playing a huge number of "over-powered" Commanders. Nu-Bolas, Yawgmoth, and Golos are all decks that I regularly play and my Breya deck is tuned for cEDH.

Golos is probably the most obnoxious of them all because I have no dedicated win condition except steal all the things with Memnarch. That's it. I can sometimes squeeze in for Combat Damage but it's a dedicated ETB Control deck with an absurd Ramp engine in the Command Zone. Frankly, I wouldn't be terribly sad if it got banned as a Commander because of how broken he is. I can regularly have 5 mana available to me by T3 in that deck and once that happens it gets wildly out of hand.

[ilovesaprolings]

Not all "problem commanders" are the same.
Some of them are busted no matter what. Yeah, Prossh can do some broken combos, but even without them it's still way more efficient than the 99% of the other jund or token generals. I avoid these like the plague.
Some of them are busted if you want, but are fine otherwise. For example Tazri can be a broken combo general, or she can lead a crappy ally list. These ones are fine with the right list.

[JWK]

I built an Urza deck where the main focus is to avoid any combo or busted plays. It is mostly a goodstuff deck. Of course, it still requires some attention but it is not the type of deck that will dominate easily. There are barely any counterspells, no CR, etc. This proves that it IS possible to tone down a general, albeit some may need to really dumb down the deck. It is a matter of choice, really. One thing though, it might be hard to convince strangers about your real intentions upon revealing the general.

I'm guilty of playing a huge number of "over-powered" Commanders. Nu-Bolas, Yawgmoth, and Golos are all decks that I regularly play and my Breya deck is tuned for cEDH.

Golos is probably the most obnoxious of them all because I have no dedicated win condition except steal all the things with Memnarch. That's it. I can sometimes squeeze in for Combat Damage but it's a dedicated ETB Control deck with an absurd Ramp engine in the Command Zone. Frankly, I wouldn't be terribly sad if it got banned as a Commander because of how broken he is. I can regularly have 5 mana available to me by T3 in that deck and once that happens it gets wildly out of hand.

Part of why I play some of the broken commanders is that, quite frankly, there have always been broken commanders in the game. In the early days of Commander, certain commanders - Arcum Dagsson, Zur the Enchanter , Uril, the Miststalker were recognized as more dangerous than others. Later, the commander products gave us choices like Animar, Soul of Elements and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. Sometimes they definitely go too far - I honestly don't think Yarok or Muldrotha is as broken as Prossh, and Edgar is at least as bad as Urza in his own way - but the fact is, there are always going to be some stronger commanders. I'm kind of interested in where different people draw the line.

I intentionally make decks that aren't super-optimized, but some commanders are just stronger than others. There are some insanely powerful Animar builds out there, and I think my Animar deck - hydra tribal - is among the most fair possible builds while still utilizing Animar's core ability, but it is still a really powerful deck just because of what Animar offers. Similarly, my Edgar deck plays actual interesting and fun vampires instead of the maximized ones that run all the unintereting but hyper-efficient 1/2-drop vamps, but it is still a really powerful deck just due to Edgar being broken as hell, and sometimes it kills people on turn 5 just because synergy + Edgar.

A "fair" Urza deck is still going to be pretty powerful, because Urza. Same with Golos. Same with Chulane.

[JWK]

Not all "problem commanders" are the same.
Some of them are busted no matter what. Yeah, Prossh can do some broken combos, but even without them it's still way more efficient than the 99% of the other jund or token generals. I avoid these like the plague.
Some of them are busted if you want, but are fine otherwise. For example Tazri can be a broken combo general, or she can lead a crappy ally list. These ones are fine with the right list.

This is definitely the case. cEDH Tazri was a whole different thing from my Tazri Allies Tribal deck. But even without Food Chain, Prossh is just insanely good. I don't know how to build a not-broken Urza deck except perhaps by including no artifacts, just like creatureless Chulane. If you build in any sort of synergy with those generals' abilities, the result is going to be super-strong.

I can build a fair enough Animar or Jhoira to be cool with it. Edgar is iffy at best. Chulane, I think he's past the line and over in another county maybe.

[ISBPathfinder]

I will build them but usually after they show what they can do I usually loose interest in maintaining them. Some of them are just so nutty over the top that I never get to having built them but as a whole I am fine with players using them. I more am annoyed at Wizards for forcing such high powered legends on us than being mad at the RC or players who play them.

Everyone likes to have powerful decks, its just that I dislike when the commanders themselves are absolute must answer threats that take over the game on their own.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Oooh, this is something I think about a lot. My ruminations have illuminated the duality of my psyche on this topic.

On one hand, I abhor these degenerate new generals, but on the other hand, EDH has always had problematic generals (like Arcum and Zur circa 2011), they've just changed. E.G. Maelstrom wanderer used to be incredibly competitive way back when, but now he just doesn't turn heads anymore. So we're moot on that point.

Next, I personally cringe whenever I'm building a brew and I realize halfway through that the idea could be done better with a more popular general e.g. Jund value with shattergang vs the same with Korvold. But at the same time, I always envy the success of players who can willingly eschew originality in exchange for raw power, especially when such a deck rends my casual theme pile asunder. Once again, at a deadlock with myself.

Half the time I am enamored with efficacy, the other half with flavor. I have straight netdecked lists and tore them apart for being linear and boring; I have poured my soul into projects that turn out to be garbage despite my devotion. At this point, I have to not overthink my edh experience. If I see something I like, I try it. If I like playing a deck, I tune it to an appropriate power and keep playing it until I need to harvest it for parts to build a new hotness. Holding oneself to arbitrary principles one way or the other has not worked for me at least.

But that all being said, playgroup feedback is important. My Korvold deck wasn't CEDH by a mile, but it was too much for the casual decks in my group. So it was either grow into cedh or die, so die it did.

[benjameenbear]

@JWK
I'm personally fine with playing Commanders that are "over-powered" and the reason for that is because I want to slowly advance my playgroup into playing more optimized builds so that games go faster and I get a higher volume of games played within a specific time frame. Playing a specific Commander with an optimized strategy will be much more powerful than decks that play less-powerful Commanders with generic strategies and I want to highlight this discrepancy without explicitly pointing it out. "Dude, your Tishana Merfolk deck that plays 20 non-powerful Merfolk isn't very good" is a statement I'm averse to saying, so I'd rather make the point through gameplay and winning. This might be a little callous, because I'm semi-stomping on the spirit of the format somewhat, but as a father of 3 kids under 5 my time is extremely precious. Any block of time where I can get 2-3 hours of uninterrupted EDH game time is a premium for me and I want to maximize the number of games I play. Additionally, playing my decks and winning as often as I do causes skill growth and deck growth behind the scenes that I'm proud of when I play them again.

I think every Commander can be reasonable to play against when every other player's deck is optimized as well.

[materpillar]

I won torment draft and got a Cabal Coffers. I wanted to build an edh deck specifically around it. I thought "hey if I run Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, it can be my secret commander". I played a couple of games and was like "man golos is really strong", I was not aware of this until after I played the deck a couple of times. I admit my card analysis was pretty off on that one. I still have that deck floating around and I'm trying to craft it into a deck that is fun to play with and fun to play against. I can't say that I've succeeded but efforts are ongoing. I also have a Gaea's Cradle golos storm deck. That deck is goldfish only though, so I don't really count it.

I aggressively avoid easy, boring, unflavorful value engines. Chulane, Teller of Tales can go burn in a fire, I hate that card and everything it stands for. As can Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. I want to blow people out with Oath of Scholars and Rishadan Pawnshop. I want a challenge, building a good Chulane deck is not a challenge.

[Kelzam]

I've built almost everything mentioned in the OP because I was like "Great! Some open ended cards for shards/wedges with few options!", other than Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Kenrith, the Returned King. When I saw those I felt WotC had gone too far and frankly was completely turned off by them. Anyways, I then inevitably decommissioned all of those decks for very similar reasons . Either other players just get bored playing against them, or I myself get bored because I'm basically spinning my wheels and winning at a high rate without really trying and I value the experience and atmosphere of my LGS/playgroup over my desire to win. But, the gravitation towards these powerful Commanders has multiple layers beyond it being natural for players to want to play powerful cards that make fireworks happen. Is power creep the problem, or are the other options just not interesting and very narrow? I'd actually argue it's significantly more the latter, and that the more open-ended a Commander lets you be, the more powerful it seems by comparison. One part of the problem is a lack of options in 3-color decks. I've leaned towards trying to build/play a lot of the more powerful ones mentioned that have come out in the last few years because there are only a handful of options that were interesting.

Take Bant, for example. Most people are quite over playing against Derevi, Empyrial Tactician and Roon of the Hidden Realm at this point, and the community has shifted away from Voltron making Rafiq of the Many undesirable with the Maze of Ith type effects being more accessible and Voltron itself just not being strong, anymore. Before the addition of Tuvasa the Sunlit, Estrid, the Masked, Arcades, the Strategist and Chulane, Teller of Tales, Derevi and Roon were easily the most popular and open-ended of the bunch, yet accidentally end up downright oppressive, leaving Chulane, Teller of Tales as the most interesting to build around. Go figure, Chulane is also considered to be a boring value engine. There are other options but they're too narrow like Arcades, the Strategist despite him being the top Bant Commander on EDHREC, or Rubinia Soulsinger and Angus Mackenzie that are built to be generic goodstuff decks or turbofog, which I'd argue aren't much fun to play or play against than value engine Commanders. The rest are barely worth mentioning as they're not really inspiring, and never see play because of that. So as you can see, that makes Chulane, Teller of Tales one of the most open-ended Commanders in Bant in recent years with a lot of unique build potential that actually utilizes him. He's automatically going to seem OP or more powerful because you have to compare him to the other options. The lengthy time table on which new 3-color Commanders appears leaves people wanting, so they're bound to jump on less narrow, new Commanders.

The above can be said of Sultai when thinking about Muldrotha, the Gravetide and Yarok, the Desecrated. There just aren't many options and most are pretty narrow, which automatically makes the newer, more open-ended Commanders that much better by comparison. There are some examples of newer Commanders that just flat our usurp others, such as Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. People like to compare him to Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, but in my case I directly upgraded Lord Windgrace into Korvold because I was doing exactly the same thing I would be doing with Windgrace, which could already be pretty powerful, except now I was also drawing a crap ton of cards and the Commander itself was a threat while the Land synergies were still super powerful. I actually prefer Korvold to Prossh at the table, personally. I played Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain because I enjoy Artifacts and Storm, and that was when Paradox Engine was still unbanned. It became a foregone conclusion in pods if I pulled her out everyone just went through the motions but had basically given up before even playing and knew they wouldn't be able to actually focus on playing their deck or setting up a strategy because they'd have to play the entire game attempting to keep me on the back foot.

And that last point is where I think the only really egregious Commanders I've refused to build have been Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Narset, Enlightened Master. For the same purpose that no one enjoyed playing against Jhoira (who I eventually took apart before Paradox Engine was banned because even I got bored with how brainless it was to play), I can't stand playing against them so I'm sure as heck not going to play them. If a Commander's presence means the entire rest of the table has to do nothing but hold up removal for fear that you're going to win or run away with the game immediately when your Commander hits the table, it's not fun for anyone but you. We have a particular player at our store no one likes to play with because his three decks are Narset, Golos, Atraxa, Praetors' Voice Super Friends and Captain Sisay. He has even confessed he's not good at deck building so he just builds the best goodstuff decks possible and it lets him win. On one hand, is it good that there are Commanders out there that can be good and thus make the format more easily accessible for all range of budget and skill? Of course there are. Are they still healthy for the format after anyone beyond a certain threshold gets a hold of them and builds them with any mote of competency and resources? Absolutely not.

I do wonder how many of these Commanders were souped up in design because they wanted them to be interesting in Brawl, as Brawl is otherwise a slog of a format to play. I'm actually pretty sure that's the main culprint of why the Brawl precon Commanders were so generically good, and why the only bad one was Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale, since in a Standard format coming out of a set with Equipment being tied to Knights, being costed any more aggressively would have made her too good. So we ended up with a lot of Commanders that were designed to make Brawl more exciting that were too pushed outside of the confines of Standard, and one that would have ended up fine in Commander but oppressive if costed aggressively in the realm of Brawl. In hindsight it makes sense, really, since they were all going to see play in Commander, either way.

[pokken]

I have mostly moved on from playing the overpowered stuff. I have a couple golos decks still together but I am in the process of retiring them.

I'm trying to just not ever play these things anymore. The obvious super strong stuff with obvious signposts are just so boring for people to play against.

[toctheyounger]

I've played a couple of them, but they inevitably end up being pretty boring. The only one of these that I have at the helm of a deck at present is Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and I haven't played it in gods know how long. It is going to be pulled apart. It's undoubtedly strong, but it's boring to play, and boring to play against.

To me, that seems to be the case with these commanders. They're just too strong to be interesting.

[BaronCappuccino]

The fastest way to make me scrap a deck is to make it popular. When I go on EDHRec, I try never to take a top row commander. The most fun in Commander comes from trying to turn Bs and Cs into As.

[Dragoon]

I think those commanders are ok as long as you don't focus on building around them and their strength. My Golos deck is a "random tribal" deck with coin flips, cascade, clash and co. And it is by no means dangerous unless you really leave it alone for like 3 to 4 turns. I think the "right" way to build those generals is to first build the deck with a unique and specific theme or restriction you have in mind, and then appoint them as the commander. Use them as support for your strategy rather than the main engine.

[Rumpy5897]

Just to play devil's advocate for a second here, they come with the upside of helping enable jank decks with powerful support engines out of the command zone. Within my group, we've had Golos land auras, Korvold devour and Muldrotha lhurgoyfs. There's a Golos alternate win condition primer on these boards. I don't use them personally. I tend to build decks from the legend down, rather than around kooky commander-independent concepts, and tune up to the best of my ability with time. I'd end up with the very sort of deck I would very much not like to have played against me.

It's a bit worrisome that the Brawl Class of 2019 is still dominating EDHREC. 2020's legends are not as blatantly broad and powerful (Kinnan is a strong one, but narrower, ergo flashed in the pan and went away), and haven't managed to catch on. There are literally two commanders from this year in the top 21 commanders of the week at the time of writing this, despite there being a new set released and everything. The recipe for longevity is open-ended value engine, and last year delivered that in excess while trying to support an artificial format. I'm concerned that they'll see this data and interpret it as a sign that this is healthy for the format. That said, the Power Nine must sure have been popular early on, yet they didn't use that as future goals, so there's hope

By the way, I've got a friend who's played Golos exclusively since his spoiling. Golos ultimatums. Golos ETB snoozefest. Golos blast you in the face with six Casualties of War in a 1v1. Golos shrines. Golos Emeria. Golos Boonweaver. A practical demonstration of how centralising that damned legend is, if given the chance to. Thankfully I'm in a self-moderating group.

[ilovesaprolings]

It's a bit worrisome that the Brawl Class of 2019 is still dominating EDHREC. 2020's legends are not as blatantly broad and powerful (Kinnan is a strong one, but narrower, ergo flashed in the pan and went away), and haven't managed to catch on. There are literally two commanders from this year in the top 21 commanders of the week at the time of writing this, despite there being a new set released and everything. The recipe for longevity is open-ended value engine, and last year delivered that in excess while trying to support an artificial format. I'm concerned that they'll see this data and interpret it as a sign that this is healthy for the format. That said, the Power Nine must sure have been popular early on, yet they didn't use that as future goals, so there's hope

I really hope they actually understand the mistakes that Chulane and Korvold were. Really dumb designs.
Since wotc understood that Trasios and Tymna = bad, i'm hopeful they'll do the same with this kind of designs.

[Kelzam]

It's a bit worrisome that the Brawl Class of 2019 is still dominating EDHREC. 2020's legends are not as blatantly broad and powerful (Kinnan is a strong one, but narrower, ergo flashed in the pan and went away), and haven't managed to catch on. There are literally two commanders from this year in the top 21 commanders of the week at the time of writing this, despite there being a new set released and everything. The recipe for longevity is open-ended value engine, and last year delivered that in excess while trying to support an artificial format. I'm concerned that they'll see this data and interpret it as a sign that this is healthy for the format. That said, the Power Nine must sure have been popular early on, yet they didn't use that as future goals, so there's hope

Indeed, the Commander precons the last few years have been extremely focused on a specific theme and mechanic and aren't very open ended, so they're bound to have ended up falling off the radar. The ones that stick around like Atraxa and Lord Windgrace have a lot more room to explore different routes within their themes and the ceiling for upgrading them and staying relevant is very high. The same can't be said for most of 2020 or 2019. They couldn't have done that with Brawl, being built for Standard power levels as well and had them be interesting to both. Ser Gwyn ended up being pretty awful as the only one that focused in on more of a theme because Equipment was tied to Knghts in Eldraine.

[darrenhabib]

I have a Kenrith deck. It isn't even close to maximized, and I have toned back certain win conditions and don't include tutors that would allow me to seek them out. But it's still Kenrith, and thus pretty strong.

I have a few Kenrith helmed decks, but he isn't a problem in my opinion. The contents of the decks are all themed, he is just for 5 colors and some backup for mana sinks. But as a commander I don't think he is broken in anyway.

I also have a Chulane deck. I built it in part as an experiment, to see if it was really as bad as everyone says, and it isn't particularly maximized as Chulane decks go (though it does include Kinnan among the 99), but yeah, it's broken as hell. I have played it only a few times and will probably end up breaking it down, because taking really long turns in which you draw and put into play 2/3 of your deck in one turn and win on the spot is really tedious for the other players, and this deck can do that pretty easily on around turn 5.

I had exactly the same experience with both Chulane and Korvold and I wasn't near to building maximum builds. I've actually only played them a handful of times because they were part of the "deal with them or lose" category of commanders that got printed last year and so played out their fun value really quick.
I haven't played either of them in like 6 months, which is about as telling as you can get.

[Mimicvat]

I've often seen these generals as ways to prop up terrible strategies.

I have a Derevi deck that is highly tuned, but its purely flier aggro and counters etc to keep the bodies on the board. It draws hate because its %$#% but anything way too obscene or kept taking over the game I'd just take it out after a couple of times. Its still decently good despite the aggressive theme because of how good Derevi is

Likewise I built Chulane, but it's legitimately Leviathan tribal - just the worst fatties in the history of magic with the best value engine in the history of magic to support them. It's super, duper bad but I find it incredibly funny. At the end of the day who cares who the general is for a deck like that.

If I see something I like, I try it. If I like playing a deck, I tune it to an appropriate power and keep playing it until I need to harvest it for parts to build a new hotness. Holding oneself to arbitrary principles one way or the other has not worked for me at least.

This sums it up perfectly for me. The whole post, but I've clipped it to the most important part for brevity's sake. For a while I overthought EDH. Certain things were not ok, other things ok when I did them but not other people (total hypocrisy I know but at the end of the day thats what many dislikes come down to), certain things unfair blah blah. But man, just not... caring too much, lets me enjoy the game way more.

If something seems cool, I'll build it. If it's treading the line and strays into something oppressive, I just take the worst offenders out and call it a day. Easy

[materpillar]

Likewise I built Chulane, but it's legitimately Leviathan tribal - just the worst fatties in the history of magic with the best value engine in the history of magic to support them. It's super, duper bad but I find it incredibly funny. At the end of the day who cares who the general is for a deck like that.

That's legitimately really funny. Anything that enables Leviathan gets a thumbs up from me.

[DirkGently]

I did build Kenrith. In my defense I wasn't sure how strong he'd be, and I did try to build it with certain limitations.

Generally, though, no. I like trying to abuse my commander's abilities as much as reasonably possible within the bounds of good taste. To combat this, I try to start from a low-powered base so things don't get too out of hand.

Looking at my sig, I don't think I've built anyone else I'd consider a problem commander, at least not recently.

[PrimevalCommander]

I currently have Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician as my strongest commanders. Yawgmoth is part of a mini-project of mono color decks and is typical aristocrats. Not over powered for a 75% meta. It is strong, and has a couple 4 card combos included and I toned down the tutors. The shear number of cards Yawgmoth can draw can be hard to compete with for less value oriented decks.

Korvold is a deck I made for my brother who is learning commander and not highly experienced at Magic. It is a jund goodstuff deck that allows him to compete with more experienced players without getting bogged down in convoluted value engines. He likes the deck and the card selection is not optimized to go crazy with Korvold. The land base is mostly basics and cheap duals. It is a mostly fair deck, but give it to an experienced pilot and you can see the potential very quickly.

It all depends on what you want out of commander. Some people really want to win, and these commanders offer the straightest path to victory for many. Some like to have an experience and solve in-game problems in a more thoughtful way, those players will not like many of the pushed commanders as they get "solved" too quickly and loose their flair.

I'm currently working on a Kalamax, the Stormsire temp/aggro deck and it is looking decent. It has an interesting ability, but I think the "First Instant" keeps is pretty fair. Just like many of the Wedge commanders that used "Limiter keywords" to help keep them in check. "First time you...", "On opponent's turn", "If it is the first ... you have cast". These are the words they need on busted value engines to keep them from doing stupid stuff. If Chulane was "The first creature spell you cast on each turn draws you a card and gives you a land drop" would be good, have some flash synergies, and be totally fair but useful.

[Treamayne]

I've played Uril, the Miststalker in the past, when he was the only legendary beast (pre-Gahiji) and I wanted to try a tribal Beast deck. I'd hoped that having a theme (and only 1 aura in the whole deck) would make him more palatable (these were the days when he was really overplayed); however, I was still target one in almost every game and nobody would ever believe the deck was not designed to abuse his ability.

Ditto for UG rogues under Edric, Spymaster of Trest, despite being more about Rogues than Unblockable the deck generally failed to get more players into the Red Zone, and just focused removal on me until it was "safe" to spread the hate. I could be mana screwed with no creatures, but until I was knocked out of the game all removal came at me (if not necessarily all attacks - if Edric was out, they'd attack to draw, then remove him...again)

Since then, I *might* use a problematic legend in the 99 (e.g. Maelstrom Wanderer in WUBRG Elementals) but I avoid them in the command zone. If I had a regular playgroup that might let me experiment with lower powered themes for problematic Generals, I might give it another go if one of them interested me (none have in the last few years - e.g. my Vampire deck is Garza Zol, Plague Queen to avoid the WBR Vampire stigma).