Maro's commander changes bracket

[pokken]

What did your playgroup do to you that made you want to play emrakul as your commander? I feel like, for that to be justified, they'd need to have murdered your dead girlfriend's puppy in front of your eyes or something.

I play it as anti-combo in my mono black deck - and used to play it as a wincon in gitrog (where you could loop it every turn with phyrexian tower or tabernacle + volrath's stronghold).

I got tired of getting blued out all the time with my gitrog deck was what got me started using it.

Best thing I ever did was take a combo player's turn and decline to pay his pact of negation.

[DirkGently]

Oops, I read it as you were playing emrakul as your commander, not in the 99. My bad.

Anyway, stranding in the grave is annoying but most decks should have some solution to it. Grave hate or reanimation of some kind. It's not a feature of the game I like, but as I said any change that would "fix" it would be pretty massive.

If he was a combo player, how did he cast pact and not already win the game by protecting his combo with it?

[pokken]

Oops, I read it as you were playing emrakul as your commander, not in the 99. My bad.

Anyway, stranding in the grave is annoying but most decks should have some solution to it. Grave hate or reanimation of some kind. It's not a feature of the game I like, but as I said any change that would "fix" it would be pretty massive.

If he was a combo player, how did he cast pact and not already win the game by protecting his combo with it?

So he was on a thrasios-vial smasher divergent transformations deck and had both his guys on board and resolved a demonic tutor but was short of mana for divergent. To he passes the turn and we know we have to kill him. He pacts the Tasigur's attempt to win, then I end step eye and get him.

I actually wound up losing that game embarrassingly (forgetting we were playing a power level where strip mining everyone out of the game would be appropriate:P).

[cryogen]

@DirkGently I didn't think I was ignoring what you said? I agreed with most of it.

I don't know that it's really that restrictive. They've got the options to do "when it dies, do X then exile it", or "when it leaves the battlefield do X", or if they really want to get clunky that could just say "when it dies or goes to the command zone do X" None of those have precisely the same results as if commanders died and then went to the CZ as a trigger or something, but they're pretty close (well, leaves the battlefield is a bit different with blink of course, but the other two are very close).

These are all options, but the issue is that it creates a trigger which can be responded to and now different types of unintended interactions.

Speaking as someone who played a lot of child of alara back when I was younger and more misanthropic, child of alara is at its most powerful when you aren't paying escalating amounts of mana to recur it. corpse dance is almost certainly superior to recasting from the CZ even if it did trigger that way. If you're CZing you're probably only wiping the board a couple times a game. If you're dancing it, you're wiping the board until everyone quits in disgust.

Agreed, but giving Child the trigger AND option to go to the Command Zone makes it stronger because now you don't need to wait until you have that reanimation spell before letting it die. Again, not saying it would be banned, but it's definitely the general that is the most concerning since it goes against the spirit of Commander and now the drawback would be removed.

As I pointed out (I think accurately but feel free to double check me) there are only a handful of commanders affected at all - the kami dragons, big baby, elenda (which I suspect is the only one anyone cares about), tuktuk, and roalesk. Given the small number affected, it's hardly a surprise that few cards would become problematic. Especially since the nature of the change would only enable less-repetitive (and likely less powerful) versions of those decks. Kokusho with (my favorite) corpse dance is pretty nasty. Kokusho coming back for 8 and then 10 and then 12...much less nasty.

Still agree with all this as well.

I think by far the biggest concerns aren't accidentally breaking any commanders, but:
-the complexity of any change that would make it work as "expected"
-the potentially significant changes to strategy in the format such a change could create
-the trifling justification for doing so, given how few commanders - and even fewer interesting commanders - would benefit

1. yup
2. yup
3. still nope. It's a change the community has proven they want, and it's a drawback WotC has said they have to take into consideration when designing cards.

[DirkGently]

EDIT: amusing mostly-un-serious suggestion: commanders start in your graveyard and can be cast from graveyard or exile. Also fixes haakon, stromgald scourge!

These are all options, but the issue is that it creates a trigger which can be responded to and now different types of unintended interactions.

I guess it depends on what you see as the point of allowing "dies" triggers to work would be.

For my money, it matters more whether the general spirit of "the card does something when it's killed" is allowed, less so the nitty gritty of specific interactions. And I think the existing options provide that general spirit. But that's just my opinion.

I also think death triggers are honestly not great design space for commanders. Looking down the most popular, very few are etb-type effects because 1-shot effects aren't usually what people want to build around. They want something with an ongoing effect on the board. And while etbs can be easily reused with blink or reanimation, using death triggers with intention to send the commander to the CZ are pretty limiting since you're only going to get it once per cast.

Agreed, but giving Child the trigger AND option to go to the Command Zone makes it stronger because now you don't need to wait until you have that reanimation spell before letting it die. Again, not saying it would be banned, but it's definitely the general that is the most concerning since it goes against the spirit of Commander and now the drawback would be removed.

I used to sac baby with no reanimation all the time. If you're all-in on it, it's the right move anyway. You'll hit recursion soon enough.

Does it make it stronger? Objectively yes, but it's a pretty small improvement imo. And afaik no one has seriously considered big baby anywhere near bannable, annoying though it may be. Right now it's the 15th most played of the 5-color commanders on edhrec (holy crap wotc likes printing 5c commanders these days...). I haven't seen anyone playing it in years. I can't imagine it becoming much of a problem. If anything it'd open up more space for CoA decks that aren't trying to fully lock down the game, which is probably a good thing.

Not that I want the change, obviously, I'm just saying that CoA is definitely not a cause for concern.

3. still nope. It's a change the community has proven they want, and it's a drawback WotC has said they have to take into consideration when designing cards.

I wish the poll had a way to see how many total people have voted so we could see what the % in favor is. Was there something I could have checked that would have changed it?

Either way, I think the community might like it conceptually but most probably don't understand the rules baggage that would come along with it. I don't really trust the general magic public to know what's best for the game. Most magic players get super excited for new powerful cards, only to complain weeks later when it's flattened their format.

I think wotc sees it as a bigger limitation than it is. They've got perfectly good tools for recreating the effect right now. Plus I don't see much evidence that the majority of R&D really has a good grasp of what is and isn't fun in commander. Most of what they design on purpose for commander is miserable cancer. I'd rather give them fewer tools rather than more.

[Sinis]

Monumentally opposed is a pretty good characterization.

There are no sad reacts on this forum, but this would have earned it.

[gilrad]

For commander sac triggers:

Kinda a really bold option, but how about keep the replacement effect, in addition give commander cards a special action (like what Morph is so no interaction with the stack or activated abilities) that simply says "You may move your commander to the command zone as long as it is in exile or the graveyard".

Opens up lots of interaction with things like imprint that normally people wouldn't bother with unless they're about to win because the potential of losing your commander forever is a pretty big mental barrier to overcome.


As for Wish, I'm kind of curious: are there any cross-format reprocussions of doing the previously mentioned reversion of wish including exile? I used to have a fun 60 card casual deck before Commander was really a thing in my playgroup that used self-exile and cunning wish for all sorts of fun.