Top 5 Current Commander Concerns or have another freak out over Sheldon's thoughts

[Dunharrow]

I would personally hate to keep track of the average CMC. I make modifications to my decks all the time and have 20 decks. I don't want to spend time putting them online because I will need to update them so often.
For me it's just not something I will do.

I would definitely have a go at entering your decks. It makes making changes a lot easier once you get used to it, since you can easily look at the whole deck without having to sort it.

I just posted a decklist - Mina and Denn - that I am actively trying to update, to see if it makes it easier for me.

[toctheyounger]

I feel the decay of other formats can be argued to be a problem for Magic in general. I mean, the popularity of Commander as a format kinda was responsible for the Companion disaster and part of me wonders if all these overpowered value cards like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Omnath, Locus of Creation that wreck standard can also be pinned on WOTC trying perhaps a little too hard to appeal to commander players as our format has kind of taken over. It's ok WOTC you don't need to push value engines so hard, you can trust us to be creative. Just relax and make reasonable cards

Accurate. Part of the fun of the game is finding inventive ways to make things work, not having it handed to you on a platter.

[onering]

You know what kind of mld actually would help against ramp? Balance style mld. Harder versions of the effect could make everyone sacrifice down to the X lands, where X is the number of lands controlled by the player with the fewest lands, or make everyone sacrifice down to a relatively low number of lands, like 4. Softer versions of the effect could make the player with the most lands sacrifice down to the number of lands controlled by the player with the second most lands. Such an effect would probably have to be part of a charm or on an etb creature to be worth it, but would really just slow down the ramp player while not effecting anyone else.

[pokken]

A fixed Balance that somehow didn't reward artifact ramp would be pretty cool (maybe that hit all nonland permanents as a group, then lands as a separate group?).

[Treamayne]

ALCON,

I apologize for derailing the thread through poor word choice.

• An enchant player curse that makes a Blood Moon type effect just for that player (e.g. Nonbasic lands enchanted player controls lose all abilities and are Basic Wastes)
• Cheap multi-target artifact destruction that can address artifact ramp early (e.g. Destroy X (each) tapped artifact MV 2 or less)
• Ruination for a single target (e.g. If target player controls more lands than each other player, that player sacrifices nonbasic lands equal to the difference)
• "Catch up" effects that aren't just "ramp" in disguise or lead to discarding most of your hand - since the lagging player might "get" a number of lands to hand, only to discard due to hand size (e.g. For each player with more lands than you, search for a basic land and exile it. You may play those lands for as long as they are exiled)

"you there, sit and don't play magic for a while" is a really problematic effect in commander.

Ask people how they feel about being knocked out if the game by a mindslaver effect it's basically the same.

I would have to sit down and try hard to imagine a worse play experience than single target ruination. Yuck.

Your first comment is what I am trying to avoid.

That said, you may not have noticed that I included examples of what I meant, because the parallelism was so approximate due to the lack of actually similar cards for comparison. I did not try to template the examples correctly, I just tried to give an idea of the types of effects I think would help (Nonbasic Hate that doesn't blow-out the Casuals, Catch-up effects that are useful, and Manarock hate that actually narrows down to (mostly) manarocks cause - let's face it - a single Shatter does nothing with 3 manarocks on the board before turn 3 per player).

Of course "Destroy each nonbasic land target player controls" would be awful - and more likely misused by the competition crowd than used to reign in the ramp player. So, is "If target player controls more lands than each other player, that player sacrifices nonbasic lands equal to the difference" really as bad a true "Ruinate target player?"

From my perspective (no play group - all games 100% random - with no possible rule 0 conversation because its MTGO and WotC removed the ability to have a pre-game chat for no discernible reason), I have never seen Armageddon, Blood Moon, Ruination, et. al resolve and actually affect the ramp player for more than a turn or three - whereas the casual players like me are generally hurt much more severely. I almost consider them king-maker cards because if player A is ramp heavy and player B uses one of these without winning that same turn - all they have done is guarantee the victory to Player A who will inevitably recover far faster than the rest of the table.

I understand if you don't agree, I'm just trying to make sure we are discussing the same thing - rather than a misconception due to my poor word choice.

[pokken]

From my perspective (no play group - all games 100% random - with no possible rule 0 conversation because its MTGO and WotC removed the ability to have a pre-game chat for no discernible reason), I have never seen Armageddon, Blood Moon, Ruination, et. al resolve and actually affect the ramp player for more than a turn or three - whereas the casual players like me are generally hurt much more severely. I almost consider them king-maker cards because if player A is ramp heavy and player B uses one of these without winning that same turn - all they have done is guarantee the victory to Player A who will inevitably recover far faster than the rest of the table.

I will grant you this for sure. When I am playing my Lands decks, any armageddon/blood moon effects favor me (because I have the easiest time getting basics and getting lands out of the bin) if not combined with graveyard hate or a sweeper or both.

I don't think that anything to do with lands is going to really affect ramp decks.

You know what, to this day, has been the best land hate template for me? Rule of Law

And Scholarship Sponsor has actually been pretty good too, much better than I expected.

The bottom line I think is that rather than giving people more ways to knock people out of the game they should be more creative in changing the texture of the game. cards like Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Tomik, Distinguished Advokist are pretty interesting moves in that direciton, and Archon of Emeria is top tier sauce.

Dauthi Voidwalker is actually something I expect to have a pretty huge impact on Lands type decks that tend to rely pretty hard on Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds effects.

[Treamayne]

A fixed Balance that somehow didn't reward artifact ramp would be pretty cool (maybe that hit all nonland permanents as a group, then lands as a separate group?).

I think it would have to either "Balance" to the average number of lands - or - reduce to the amount of lands at the start of the turn. As I recall, one of the main broken plays with balance was to ramp, ramp, ramp, tap everything, sac all lands (usually Zuran Orb) then cast Balance (and removal of rocks with floating mana, if possible) - so the Stux* player is the only one with mana (from rocks since all lands are gone).

(e.g. If target player controls more lands than each other player, that player sacrifices nonbasic lands equal to the difference)

Which is one reason why I thought a single-player version would be viable. If it only hit nonbasics, and only reduced the player to the same as the second level - then, for example:
- Turn 4: Player A has 7 lands, B has 5 and C has 4. Targeting Player A would sac 2 nonbasics
- - but if there were all basics they would sac nothing
- - even if Player A sacs 2 lands - they at least are choosing which two non-basics to sac

And Scholarship Sponsor has actually been pretty good too, much better than I expected.

The bottom line I think is that rather than giving people more ways to knock people out of the game they should be more creative in changing the texture of the game. cards like Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Tomik, Distinguished Advokist are pretty interesting moves in that direction, and Archon of Emeria is top tier sauce.

Agreed that those are steps in the right direction. However, my problem with them is they are all creatures (being a Tribal guy - these would only go in a deck of the appropriate creature type(s)). Also, the only time I've seen Thalia and Tomik in the wild were in the command zone of oppressive decks (GAAIV light) - not used as a way to "reign in" or "even the field."

Rule of Law/Arcane Laboratory have their uses, but ramp still generally has plenty of ways to spend mana without casting things so it can be of limited assistance - assuming they even last a turn cycle (one of my Werewolf decks is Jacques le Vert - specifically so it can run Rule of Law to support the tribe, except the Rule never sticks).

Thanks for the tip on Scholarship Sponsor, I've barely looked at Strix or MH2 yet and had missed that one.

*Note: portmanteau of Stax Sucks (personal casual opinion)

[cryogen]

Back in the commander net days, we had proposed including a welcome letter from the RC with the inserts in the commander precons that pointed people to the philosophy document and said something like "welcome to the best format in the game, we're here for fun, interesting and challenging games" or something of that nature to help set up expectations around Rule 0 from the start. Sadly, all that work disappeared when those forums went down.

You might be able to use the Wayback Machine to find it. That's how I pulled all the old ban announcements.

[Dragoon]

You know what kind of mld actually would help against ramp? Balance style mld. Harder versions of the effect could make everyone sacrifice down to the X lands, where X is the number of lands controlled by the player with the fewest lands, or make everyone sacrifice down to a relatively low number of lands, like 4. Softer versions of the effect could make the player with the most lands sacrifice down to the number of lands controlled by the player with the second most lands. Such an effect would probably have to be part of a charm or on an etb creature to be worth it, but would really just slow down the ramp player while not effecting anyone else.

Keldon Firebombers, Natural Balance and Fall of the Thran all fill that bill. I hope WotC will print more of that effect as I also think this is the best kind of MLD. Tectonic Hellion is a nice idea but too slow.

[pokken]

and Fall of the Thran all fill that bill.

I figured Fall of the Thran would be well received since it's more limited but every time I played it people insta-scooped and whined about armageddons.

It did break the symmetry a bit having the first land I bring back be Serra's Sanctum or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx I guess =P

[Dragoon]

I figured Fall of the Thran would be well received since it's more limited but every time I played it people insta-scooped and whined about armageddons.

It did break the symmetry a bit having the first land I bring back be Serra's Sanctum or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx I guess =P

Did you try the other two? I feel like Fall of the Thran might be the harshest one of the bunch. Did you played it in an online game or a "real" one? Given what I read on these forums about your and others' past experiences online, if it was a modo game, I can't really say I'm surprised by this reaction.

[pokken]

Did you try the other two? I feel like Fall of the Thran might be the harshest one of the bunch. Did you played it in an online game or a "real" one? Given what I read on these forums about your and others' past experiences online, if it was a modo game, I can't really say I'm surprised by this reaction.

twice on modo with Yorion, Sky Nomad (which I understand is nasty but like, play a removal spell?)

LIke a half-dozen times in paper with my Golos, Tireless Pilgrim mono white deck.

I've never played Natural Balance, and not played firebombers since back in the day where it was not well received

I might try jamming firebombers as the curve topper in a deck I'm mentally brewing though, seems like it'd be good in a deck with nothing over cmc 5 and tons of 1/2/3 cmc dudes and removal spells.

[Dragoon]

twice on modo with Yorion, Sky Nomad (which I understand is nasty but like, play a removal spell?)

Well, if you blinked it repeatedly I can certainly understand their frustration. They might not have had an instant removal in their hand and the mana to cast it. (Although I guess 'anything goes' is the motto there)

LIke a half-dozen times in paper with my Golos, Tireless Pilgrim mono white deck.

This sounds okay. The only way I can really see you taking advantage of that is with Serra's Sanctum and Cascading Cataracts. (Or more classically by having a big board advantage).

I've never played Natural Balance, and not played firebombers since back in the day where it was not well received

I guess MLD is going to be frowned upon no matter what, but those cards can at least offer players a reasonable chance of coming back (plus the mana dead player is going to thank you). They are ways to abuse them of course but this is true of any kind of card. I tend to be rather against MLD in general, mainly because I have seen them being cast at the wrong time, leading to boring turns afterwards. Yet, I feel like I don't really have a problem with those. With 3-5 mana left, your deck should still be able to operate, even if not at its maximum efficiency.

[ISBPathfinder]

I think Sheldon's points are all correct in identifying things that are problems. I think there is one additional one that I would add though which might be a personal one but.

Commander Power - Sheldon mentioned Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, and Chulane, Teller of Tales as being problemantic commander design. I think if you look at the last two or three years its easy to add to that list with Urza, Lord High Artificer, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Kenrith, the Returned King, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Omnath, Locus of Creation, Alela, Artful Provocateur, and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy would all be among commanders I would put as a recent highly concerning factor and this doesn't even add up the long term problematic commanders such as Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver.

I get that the RC wants players to figure out things largely with the social contract but I don't understand how we still have Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and Braids, Cabal Minion banned but the number of new and outrageously powerful commanders that are legal is a little baffling to me. For what this is worth, this isn't me trying to get cards removed from the banned list so much as me encouraging a LOT more being added.

[vandertroll]

The fewer cards are getting the axe the better for the format. Trying to steer EDH in a perceived ''it's how supposed to be played" route was nice when it was played among Sheldon and friends but now, for better or for worse, it's way bigger than him or the RC. No one can be pleased all the time and that's why Rule 0 is paramount for a good game experience in EDH.

I dunno man, I have played a lot at LGS' since 2016 or so and banning stuff like Prophet of Kruphix, Sylvan Primordial and Paradox Engine have greatly improved the casual play experience. I've always had decks of various power levels but any power level playing against Prophet.Dec was unpleasant.

I think they're doing a pretty solid job overall but I think a few more bans are probably warranted. The format's growing so fast both in players and card pool that I think they've gotten a bit behind on their Meta Shaping bans which have always been really effective for improving my experience anyway.

Edit: I saw @pokken 's post above mine. Sometimes not being able to play magic in the corner because of a spell or an ability is part of MtG! Trying to recover from a bad boardstate and sometimes get a win can be even more rewarding. If there is saltiness on the group about this, having a discussion should resolve the situation

I guess, but there's a big difference between "No one can play artifact abilities because of Stony Silence but you're the most effected" vs. "I blew up all your lands but no one else's, have fun digging out!"

Ruination in some decks will function as a win condition where you mosty bork the entire table. I'm not 100% against that though I tend to not want it in lower powered decks where I'm not running as much countermagic.

But ruinationing one person? You seriously think that's a good card design?

No far from it, I was trying to point out the fact that recovering after mass destructive spells can be very rewarding! I don't like targeted removal that can be Ruination - like.

As for the banned cards you mentioned I am not a fan of no banlist EDH and I can get behind the reasoning that led to the bannings of those cards. They are very deck warping cards and can also delay turns significantly (i.e Panharmonicon) But banning Hullbreacher or Narset because they create soft locks with wheels can lead to very niche-y bans in my book. Why not ban Entomb and Reanimate as well? They can lead to very oppressive plays as well. The list could go on forever

[pokken]

But banning Hullbreacher or Narset because they create soft locks with wheels can lead to very niche-y bans in my book. Why not ban Entomb and Reanimate as well? They can lead to very oppressive plays as well. The list could go on forever

Well, I would not lump hullb and narset together, Hullbreacher is problematic because it's goodstuff that combos with wheels. Narset is much less problematic because she's not universal.

Hullbreacher creates extremely problematic patterns just by its text though - even without wheels it's really awful to play against, shutting down a massive part of the format in a one-sided way that also provides ramp at the cost of 3 mana, with flash so it can provide a counterspell effect for draw spells too. The card is too strong period. Its interaction with wheels is grotesque but far from its only problematic aspect.

If you think about how powerful 2-3 mana hate creatures are in magic, they're almost always symmetrical when they are extremely powerful (see Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Hushbringer and Eidolon of Rhetoric). Being asymmetrical and in fact beneficial is just way too much.

Entomb and Reanimate are simple enablers. They don't have basically anything in common with Hullbreacher

[toctheyounger]

Hullbreacher creates extremely problematic patterns just by its text though - even without wheels it's really awful to play against, shutting down a massive part of the format in a one-sided way that also provides ramp at the cost of 3 mana, with flash so it can provide a counterspell effect for draw spells too. The card is too strong period. Its interaction with wheels is grotesque but far from its only problematic aspect.

To my mind, it was close to balanced, they just got the wording wrong. Take out that 'instead you' and put in 'you also', and we've got a much more balanced card. The fact that it monopolises mana resource and denies draw makes it disgusting.

[pokken]

To my mind, it was close to balanced, they just got the wording wrong. Take out that 'instead you' and put in 'you also', and we've got a much more balanced card. The fact that it monopolises mana resource and denies draw makes it disgusting.

Or limit it to once a turn or make it symmetrical but you choose an opponent to get the treasure or whatever. Literally anything but a big dumb one sided flash draw disabler for 3 mana in mono blue.

[toctheyounger]

To my mind, it was close to balanced, they just got the wording wrong. Take out that 'instead you' and put in 'you also', and we've got a much more balanced card. The fact that it monopolises mana resource and denies draw makes it disgusting.

Or limit it to once a turn or make it symmetrical but you choose an opponent to get the treasure or whatever. Literally anything but a big dumb one sided flash draw disabler for 3 mana in mono blue.

For sure. I find it difficult to think that R&D didn't think they'd made a mistake with the wording on that one.

[3drinks]

[This post has been deleted at the request of the original poster.]

[Hermes_]

on the issue of Homogenization, I think sites like EDHrec have had a hand in it for good or ill.

[JWK]

on the issue of Homogenization, I think sites like EDHrec have had a hand in it for good or ill.

They absolutely do, but so do sites like this (and, previously, MTG Salvation) that include primers and deck lists, and so do all sorts of content creators. I have seen people on Spelltable playing lists copied 100% from lists posted here, and from Sheldon and Bennie Smith's lists, and from decks played on Game Knights, and from Commander's Quarters and from various other resources.

[brainface]

Popular commanders have targets. People that despise those commanders - for whatever reason - are going to find ways to stop them from ruining their card night. In my young days I used to get used and abused by an Azami deck, I'd get out-tempo'd by efficient Rafiq Bantvalue decks and I grew tired of losing to the same stuff. The moment they saw my Boil come from nowhere, in the middle of a counter-war with no means to stop it, they looked at me like I wasn't serious. "It resolves, yes?" For the same reasons, I run Perish in Alesha, and Meltdown vs mox decks.

Oh my gosh you're naming all the cards I basically felt I had to play 8 years ago or just not matter. Thankfully the meta around me changed, but god I got some mileage out of boil vs. counterspell full infinite turn combo blue decks.

Flashfires too! I would watch my buddy sit out the first 5 turns of the game ramping, drawing cards, adding nothing to the game state and then I'd destroy all his lands right before he could play the wrath. It was spiteful but the alternative was that I didn't get to play instead.

[pokken]

What's my point. These players shouldn't feel slighted because they lost to their weakness. They should congratulate someone for finding it, and exploiting it because nothing is bulletproof.

If their weakness is "playing the basic land type some rando chooses to hate on" that's not really the same as "playing all creatures with no defense."

Every color has ways to play around removal but not every color has a legit way to defend against Lifeforce or Flashfires level color hate.

I honestly think it's borderline trolling to play that kinda crap.

[TheGildedGoose]

whenever someone plays a color hoser against anyone other than the blue player