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

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Post by Hermes_ » 2 years ago

*pulls out pop corn and watches the fire works*
https://articles.starcitygames.com/sele ... AXrlyMk3lM


For those in the back : As I get into this short but wordy list, please remember two things. The first is that this isn't a doom-and-gloom scenario. We're doing well, I just want to see where we can do better. The second is that while these things are being talked about at the RC level, no immediate action or aggressive action is looming.
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Post by BeneTleilax » 2 years ago

I think his response is quite well-reasoned. While I wish they would start taking action on Hullbreacher, I get that this article was not the place to send any but the most preliminary signals on that. I do like how evenhanded he was regarding both artifact and land ramp as accelerating the tempo of the format, and how he did not pull punches on the cultural shifts behind that. As EDH players, we need to start being more protective about the philosophy of our format. It's not gatekeeping to say that this is our house, and our norms.

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Post by folding_music » 2 years ago

nah I agree with all the points
it's the sheer density of cards used to sidestep the classic mana curve-out of the game which makes the choice of win condition less interesting, just the sting in a long tail of elves, rocks, tutors and fetches

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Post by SchmertinBooskingall » 2 years ago

Long time lurker, first time poster.

My biggest concern was the mention of becoming more involved/exploring format variants. Something in that signals that the RC has possibly discussed that the format has veered too far from their vision to be course-corrected without serious backlash, so the evaluation of variants that align more with their conception of what the format should be is happening. Speculation? Sure. But the breadcrumbs are there.
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Post by Mookie » 2 years ago

The points, for those that can't check the article:
  • Decay of other formats
  • Excessive ramp
  • Homogenization
  • The Reserved List
  • Fast mana / time creep
Pretty much all of the points Sheldon makes sound reasonable to me. My personal current concern re: the format is power creep - the format has matured greatly over time, going from a niche format to the #1 most played one. That increased focus has resulted in the power level of the format rising significantly, and not just from stronger cards being printed - there has also been a ton of power creep from people becoming better deckbuilders, and also arms races as people feel compelled to power up their decks in response to their meta. I don't want to play a bunch of cheap ramp in my deck, but I definitely feel compelled to at times by my meta.

....personally, I like the idea of there being some officially-endorsed subformats. I occasionally toy around with various deckbuilding restrictions, but those are difficult to pull off in a higher-powered meta. Similar to how Modern and then Pioneer were created when the previous formats got too mature, I wouldn't mind shrinking the EDH cardpool a bit, if only so different cards can become more relevant. Modern-only, no-reserved-list, no-special-sets.... definitely a lot of options for smaller, lower-powered subformats.

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

Man, I feel for Sheldon; he and the RC are in one hell of a pickle. That being said, I think the good ol' invisible hand needs to sort this out. No formal decrees can eloquently solve the problems of commander as it stands. All we can really do is wait and see if the good thing that is edh collapses under its own weight. C'est la vie, nothing lasts forever.
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Some key bans could help reduce homogenization and time creep. There are a few excessively played, overpowered commanders and a few excessively fast combos that if removed from the format would restore a great deal of diversity. If Wizards is being honest and trying to avoid printing nonsense like Golos, Chulane, and Korvold, that's great, but it also means that those commanders will continue to hang around as the go to nonsense commanders outside of cEDH, especially Golos. Golos also is 5 color, which means there are more auto includes available for his decks, again decreasing diversity.

As for the reserved list, that solution is on the community, and its allowing proxies.

Fast mana rocks and too much ramp are much harder to solve. Fast mana rocks contribute to time creep and enabling 4+color decks too easily, but they also keep Green from just dominating the format by being the ramp color.

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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

I don't think subformatting is a good answer to anything, personally. The vast, eternal card pool has always been one of the selling points of the format; when I got into it, it was the one format where a) you could play all of those old-school cards except for the small number on the banned list and b) where some of those cards would actually be relevant, which isn't the case in vintage/legacy, where only the very best of the best need apply. "Modern only" or whatever might sound good, but aside from leaving out long-time players with deep card pools, that doesn't really fix the problem that even recently-printed cards can be way beyond the price point of a good chunk of the player base. The prices of things like Smothering Tithe and The Great Henge just keep rising.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think the reserved list needs to die and I hope the RC will pressure WotC about this, but a) they have very limited influence, and b) there is nothing that says ending the reserve list will fix the problem if, say, original duals and other reserve list cards are only made available as a box topper for collector boosters or some other crazy premium product like that.

The real fix is to endorse proxying, and I don't think the RC wants to go there.
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Just a solid all around article that has great analysis of the problems. Unfortunately they're all problems with few solutions that aren't years of printing cards and influence campaigns from making a difference but big problems are rarely simple.

I especially enjoyed the bits on ramp. I've been working hard to create decks that are not so ramp dependent for years and it's very doable.

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Post by BeneTleilax » 2 years ago

SchmertinBooskingall wrote:
2 years ago
My biggest concern was the mention of becoming more involved/exploring format variants. Something in that signals that the RC has possibly discussed that the format has veered too far from their vision to be course-corrected without serious backlash, so the evaluation of variants that align more with their conception of what the format should be is happening. Speculation? Sure. But the breadcrumbs are there.
The tone was far too mild for that to be the case I think. What's more likely seems to be Sheldon offering support to competitive variants, so that they silo off and stop mucking with the philosophy of EDH. More quarantine formats than conservatory formats, if that makes sense.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

I think the idea of building no reserved list or modern or even historic/pioneer decks is a pretty cool one. They can cross pollinate easily and can approach pretty close to the power level in many cases.

That said I wouldn't build more than one at most. I just like my weird RL cards. I never complain bout proxies tho and would love wizards to abolish the rl despite my massive rl portfolio

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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

I would be perfectly okay if the value of my RL cards tanked. Most of them I picked up many, many years ago, most often from packs or trades, and even the ones I obtained later, I got for play value, not monetary value.

Really, though, proxies are the easiest answer, and the one that doesn't depend on WotC doing the right thing (hint: they won't). cEDH realized this ages ago, and the general embrace of proxies by the cEDH community has allowed that end of the format to thrive. Without proxies, the player pool would be limited to the small subset of players able to afford to purchase from among the very small available pool of some cards that are necessary to compete at that level. I am pretty sure the number of cEDH players is substantially larger than the number of some cEDH staple cards (LED, for example) in existence.

That's probably the future of legacy and vintage as well, if those formats are to have a future. And since current signals suggest WotC is disinvesting from pro-level play, maybe it's time for those formats - and us - to stop worrying about rules that are based around sanctioned play.
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Post by Vertain » 2 years ago

One has to be a very special kind of dense to show Llanowar Elves, Arcane Signet, and Sol Ring as examples of fast mana, only to then say in the same passage, that the strongest of the three isn't in fact the problem, it's that there's too many of the other, weaker ones.

And as for the reserved list problem... gee, I sure wonder who axed "perceived barrier to entry", discourages the use of proxies and greenlit the "Walking Dead" cards. Hopefully Sheldon gives that person a really stern talking to...

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

I'm not sure I'm going to phrase this correctly, this is going to be stream of consciousness style. I'm not trying to "tell people how they should play the game", but with regards to the ramp and fast mana issues, people need more stax/hate pieces in their games and more need to be printed.

There is this notion that lands are untouchable while simultaneously ramp is a problem. People hate fast mana but without some sort of efficient artifact ramp, you risk giving green way too big an edge if lands can't be messed with also. 4 and 5 color decks go crazy but Blood Moon and Back to Basics are frowned upon in some circles.

With more acceptance of Ashiok, Dream Render, Stranglehold, Aven Mindcensor effects to stop searching out lands (hurts tutors for those who hate them as well), Null Rod, Energy Flux type stuff to hurt masses of mana rocks, and other stax type effects can keep this stuff in check.

Certain colors are great at acquiring certain resources (green - lands, blue - cards, etc.,) and other colors should be able to attack those resources so there is push and pull, without people getting bent out of shape.

Maybe we need white to get more Balance effects. A balance that just hits lands and artifacts could be great (no idea what the "fair" mana cost on that might be). Maybe some sort of Limited Resources stuff without that multiplayer gamebreaking static ability.

Let green ramp, that's its thing. Other colors can attack resources more. If you aren't ramping, you should be able to try to slow others down to your speed as a counter without whining coming at you.

I don't want to say people need to change their attitudes or whatever, it doesn't sound the friendliest and might come off as elitist and that's not my goal but there are ways that this stuff could be dealt with. I don't want to say people are playing "wrong", I run some awful casual decks and some fairly tuned decks myself. I just think more acceptance of this sort of stuff would ultimately be healthier.

I probably could have worded some of that better.

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Post by Mookie » 2 years ago

Vertain wrote:
2 years ago
One has to be a very special kind of dense to show Llanowar Elves, Arcane Signet, and Sol Ring as examples of fast mana, only to then say in the same passage, that the strongest of the three isn't in fact the problem, it's that there's too many of the other, weaker ones.
No, I think this point is correct. The issue isn't one Sol Ring in the 99. It will be drawn in the opening hand of a small percentage of games, but.... high variance is sort of the entire point of the format. The issue is when a deck is running ten copies of Arcane Signet - that makes the plan of ramping on turn 2 into bigger plays on turns 3-5 extremely consistent. Accelerating the game by one turn in 90% of games is a much more significant effect on the format than accelerating the game by two turns in 10% of games. A faster format also means that a lot of slower strategies and cards get pushed out of the realm of playability, and places a heavy burden on decks to run lower curves and cheap removal so they don't get tempo'd out.

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Post by DirkGently » 2 years ago

I generally agree with his points, though personally I'd put them in a different order.

1) Decay of other formats (not as much because of other format players being forced into commander, but because of how all cards are now being designed primarily for commander and the massive uptick in production and underhanded sales tactics that wotc is engaging in to combat the fact that their most popular format is eternal and casual, which are both poison for a business model that requires them to constantly sell new products)

2) Homogenization (he hit a lot of points I've made recently, especially the tendency of people to say "you HAVE to play X card", where X card is some nasty competitive garbage. But I disagree slightly in that I don't think it's really a problem that people push for strictly better versions of the same effect - his entomb vs unmarked grave example. I think the issue is more in the bigger scale effects that drastically change the play patterns of a deck, like how many people are running craterhoof. Playing entomb instead of unmarked grave is going to have a very minor boost to your winrate but it's not going to change how you play it, and I really don't care either way which card my opponents play between those two in terms of my own enjoyment. But playing hoof over, say, overrun is going to have huge implications for how your deck plays, and can homogenize both the format as well as the experience of playing with and against that particular deck)









3 + 4) Ramp-related stuff (I feel like splitting these was just an excuse to get to 5) (and also they're both kind of just a subsection of homogenization) (and I think ramp is only as bad as what you're ramping into. For example, my Kaervek deck is one of the rampiest decks imaginable, but I don't feel it's remotely problematic. I think if more people took serious stock of what their deck is doing and whether or not that creates fun play experiences, the ramp problem wouldn't really be an issue)







5) Reserved list (if you think homogenization is a bad thing, then people shouldn't "need" cards on the RL anyway - and personally I'm okay with not everyone having the abyss easily available no matter how much FOMO they have. Plus there are plenty of pricey cards not the RL and plenty of relatively cheap ones that are on the RL so it's a loose correlation anyway. And while I feel for the guy who wants to make a sweet Adun Oakenshield deck, I'm pretty sure the vast majority complaining just want to break the format wide open with cradles and timetwisters so I feel nothing but disdain)
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Post by TheGildedGoose » 2 years ago

Is anyone clamoring to ban Arcane Signet et al. though? 2mv artifact ramp is the textbook definition of fair. Take those away and we might have a reasonable argument that green's ramp is too good, but as it stands now I can't think of a single green piece of ramp I'd like banned, whereas I can think of at least three pieces of artifact ramp I wouldn't mind going.

I am flabbergasted by his assertion that green is far and away the best color in the format. I don't think this is true except at the most casual of tables that don't run much interaction. Maybe I'm biased because my primary deck is poised to lrey on those kinds of decks, but I'm always more wary of the blue/x player than I am the green/x player. Unless they're in Simic/x.

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Post by BeneTleilax » 2 years ago

I do think ramp tends to homogenize decks' answer packages and curves. Also, in-game answers, while they are a useful corrective and the clear first resort, I don't think can solve ramp. As Sheldon mentioned, ramp is diversified enough that current stax effects cannot effectively punish it. I think the answer lies in creating a social aversion to excessive fast ramp, in the same way as one has been built around excessive tutors.

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Post by Sinis » 2 years ago

On the one hand, I can see how they're in a tight spot. WotC shovels out stuff like Hullbreacher (and the mountains of broken stuff over the last couple of years) and someone trying to maintain a short ban list is definitely going to have their hands full. I'm glad they got the chance to talk to Gavin V and there was good talk about Golos, Korvold and Chulane.

The other stuff. Well, I think a lot of that can't be helped. Format Homogenization? That was always going to happen. The more brains that are applied to something, the fewer agreed-upon forms of optimization will appear for that thing.

Fast mana is a huge problem, but I think we're already at saturation. Even a mono-colour deck can run an 'adequate' number of 2-mana rocks. Even if they print more Explosive Vegetation analogues (they just made Terramorph...), I don't believe it will matter. We already have all the 4 mana ramp we could possibly want. The solutions for that are to make 'equalizers', but who knows what they'll look like. Unbanning Balance probably isn't the solution (even though they keep reprinting it).

Good chat, but
Sheldon wrote:If the solution isn't splitting the format, I think that still offering an appropriate version of a sub-format (along with the several others) is the way to go in order to enhance the opportunities of the folks who are already self-selecting and having good Rule 0 talks.
uhhh....

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Post by toctheyounger » 2 years ago

Generally in agreement with all of the points, to various degrees. I don't think any of them are easy fixes, so it seems we're all on the same page in that respect.
DirkGently wrote:
2 years ago
I think if more people took serious stock of what their deck is doing and whether or not that creates fun play experiences, the ramp problem wouldn't really be an issue
This kind of covers a lot more areas than ramp tbh. If people were more honest with themselves there'd be less pubstomping, abuse of wheels, and probably plenty of other issues.
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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

Speaking of CMC 2 mana rocks, Liquimetal Torque somehow escaped my attention during the MH2 previews and I didn't notice it until I pulled it from a prerelease pack. It's no Arcane Signet, but as rocks that make colorless go, it's pretty darn good, turning all your artifact hate into nonland permanent hate. I am pretty sure that will be replacing Mind Stone in some of my decks, especially red ones.
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Post by CommanderMaster999 » 2 years ago

Oh by the way he clarified what he meant on wheels being bad as well in the article

He was talking about cards that benefits gives wheels a benefit a little too much like Hullbreacher and Underworld Dreams

My thoughts TBA
But to start I agree with most his thoughts besides a couple of things.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
2 years ago
3 + 4) Ramp-related stuff (I feel like splitting these was just an excuse to get to 5) (and also they're both kind of just a subsection of homogenization) (and I think ramp is only as bad as what you're ramping into. For example, my Kaervek deck is one of the rampiest decks imaginable, but I don't feel it's remotely problematic. I think if more people took serious stock of what their deck is doing and whether or not that creates fun play experiences, the ramp problem wouldn't really be an issue)
So in general I think that you're right and I've made the same argument numerous times with respect to busted mana rocks and such (and now they relate to keeping green from being the only explosive color).

That said, I do think there is something separately problematic about the sheer number of ramp spells people are playing these days (as opposed to any amount of fast mana being problematic, which I do not think it is). It creates a really boring experience where people are trying to skip the early/mid game entirely by ramping super hard in every game, and then either flooding or jumping right to bombs.

I think you nailed it though that this is really just an extension of the homogenization problem. Everyone is running 20 ramp spells in their decks because the hivemind told them to not because it's actually right for the experience they want. And that sucks.

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Post by Legend » 2 years ago

I'd like to see Sanctioned Commander and Unsanctioned Commander, each with ban lists disparate from one another, possibly with Unsanctioned having no ban list other than conspiracy cards, dexterity cards, ante cards, and silver border cards. Sanctioned could remain Vintage Commander with a thorough ban list or just be "Modern Commander" with a ban list or maybe "Post-RL Commander" with a ban list.
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Post by Dunharrow » 2 years ago

Booster Draft is an immensely popular format. Why do people want to draft Strixhaven week after week but have no interest in Standard? Variation. Slower game play. Fun strategies that are not constructed-viable.
If I were to make a variant commander, it would focus on preconstructed commander decks. Maybe the format is everyone has precons. Maybe it's precons and you can sub 5 cards or 10 cards. I dunno. I just think it would be a lot more fun and a lot more palatable than highly tune commander play. And I think it would strike a similar cord to booster draft. Weaker decks can make for fun games!

I also think they need to explore banning the effects that make games homogeneous, especially ramp. How about a test month where the top 20 ramp cards are not allowed? The thing is, the next 20 ramp cards after that are so much weaker you are better off building without as much ramp.
I think if people tried it they would find it makes the format more interesting.

In any case, with virtual play what it is today I think they could manage a way to test out philosophical bannings that have high impact on the format.

I appreciated the nuance Sheldon used for each of his points. Yes, they are concerns, but they are not really things that can be solved.
If I could talk to Sheldon though I would encourage the use of experimenting with large changes to the format like banning ramp, banning RL, banning tutors. Otherwise, we will all see these 5 concerns grow and grow until the format is dead.
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