The Right Level of Commander Reliancy

[FoxOfWar]

Or, "how I am thinking of taking apart yet another tap-ability commander because the deck is very reliant on having my commander around".

Atla Palani, Nest Tender. Great flavor, great art, in theory pretty cool set of mechanics, ended up promoting a deck design that utterly falls to pieces if Atla does not stay on board. Made a deck with Pyrohemia + enrage-type effects, with a fair amount of really-big-drops for Atla's effect. Feels like Atla is (rightly) a huge, huge target and the deck kind of fobbles to 'not much' if I can't get a reliable egg-sacrifice shenanigans going early on. Not the greatest of feels, that.

I've had similar conclusions before: Mayael the Anima, Jalira, Master Polymorphist, Damia, Sage of Stone, Brion Stoutarm, Jolrael, Empress of Beasts, Odric, Lunarch Marshal... where the deck was pretty great when my commander was on board, and mediocre-at-best if it had an extended vacation on the command zone instead. On/off commanders, if you will. It's also not the best of things to realize that quarter of your nonlands are dedicated to keeping your commander around...

(Linearity tends to be another problem with keep-around commanders, but that's a topic for another time methinks.)

I do give more leniency on being commander-dependant if the commander either has built-in resiliency (Polukranos, Unchained, Athreos, God of Passage) or situates itself into a deck where I will be ramping like nuts anyway so commander tax is a non-issue(Polukranos, World Eater, Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis). (*Though K&T does have the added benefit of being something people actually don't want to kill, even if it gives way more to me in the long run because it's a landfall deck.)

On the other end of the spectrum, I've taken apart decks where my commander contributed almost nothing to the general idea of the deck and probably played better if I didn't spend a turn casting my commander. If I never feel like I want to cast the commander in the first place, what am I even doing here? (Looking at you, Invasion/Planar Chaos dragons.)

What are your experiences/adventures in finding that middle ground, of commander being relevant to the deck but not folding completely if your commander gets decommissioned?

[pokken]

The absolute best balance of this for me ever has been Ephara, God of the Polis. She contributes cards and an endgame body but rarely is scary enough for anyone to bother removing, and I can win games without her through other card advantage engines (emeria, sun titan, soulherder/thassa/displacer).

[KMA_Again]

Sounds like more haste will solve some of your problems, and Red has a ton of that, like the new Footfall Crater which can cycle if unneeded.

When the tuck rule was around I used the commander more as an alternate wincon, though now my decks are a lot more commander-focused, for better or worse.
Still, I am tempted to rebuild Wydwen, the Biting Gale sometimes, as she was one of my first and played a fun controlling style.

[FoxOfWar]

Sounds like more haste will solve some of your problems, and Red has a ton of that, like the new Footfall Crater which can cycle if unneeded.

Haste does help (in Atla's case) ensure at least one egg comes out - and the deck has some outlets - but for any lasting impact you still sort of want Atla to stick around.

Feels like if you want to get any reliable effect out of the lady(or most any similar 'cheat' commander), you're spending enough resources and protection to start wondering why you don't just ramp and hardcast the big things.

[KMA_Again]

My first deck that wasn't one of the original pre-cons (goat) was Merieke Ri Berit. Esper control that wasn't very super defined, a mix of different elements and what I had lying around. Even so, she was potent in scaring people to slow-play big threats and gave me time to establish a good board position. If she managed to nab a few critters, that was a bonus. It later became Wydwen. Both styles used the commander more as another tool in the drawer, one as a rattlesnake, the other as an alternate win-con, neither depending too much on them.
Nowadays, Merieke seems a lot slower and would have issues sticking around.

War has changed.

[RxPhantom]

My Merieke Ri Berit deck kind of has the same problem. I've had to dedicate a lot of slots to protecting her, and if my opening hand doesn't have any of those or a way to tutor for them, I mulligan. It was the right thing to do though, because any strategy that relies on creatures will want to get her off the board, because she will effing wreck the place. The rest of the deck is dedicated to abusing not only her ability, but the tap abilities of other creatures.

[Mookie]

My general heuristic for commanders is that while they ought to be one of the better cards in the deck, I don't want to be overly reliant on them. This is partially because I learned to play EDH back when tuck was a thing, so I wasn't guaranteed access to my commander at all times. There are a few things I do to accomplish this:

• Redundancy - if your commander does something that your deck needs in order to function, try to have some other copies of that effect in case your commander isn't available. For Atla Palani, Nest Tender and Mayael the Anima, I'd consider Elvish Piper and Quicksilver Amulet as other ways to cheat out big creatures. For Brion Stoutarm, I'd run other sacrifice outlets and ways to gain life. Having a general that performs a specific function means you don't need as many copies of that effect in your deck, but it's still good to have redundancy.
• Have a plan B - if you can't win via your primary gameplan, have a backup one. Decks designed to cheat fatties into play can also just play a bunch of ramp and hardcast them. Honestly, the plan B for a lot of my decks is just 'play a healthy balance of ramp and card draw'. Winning via playing fair is certainly harder than most plan As, but it's also pretty consistent.
• Minimize dead cards - if a card doesn't do anything without the commander out, it needs to be incredibly high-impact to justify its inclusion. For Atla, I'd try to avoid running too many 10-drops that are impossible to hardcast, and I probably also wouldn't play too many low-impact cards like Dragon Egg.

[darrenhabib]

It depends on how many games you get to play to satisfy your Magic needs.

If you only get to play maybe 3 games at your local store each week, then you are going to be far more incentivized to have a deck that is more consistent at playing any type of game, even those without your commander, so that you get to play each turn with some satisfaction.

However if you play a lot of games, so don't care as much if you get locked out some games, then the name sake of the format is "commander", so you might as well go all in, as this is what makes brewing decks fun.
I think far too many people pride themselves on being resilient without their commander, like it makes their decks better in some way.
But at the end of the day you can always do more powerful and in my opinion fun things if you build around your commander.
So it just comes down to if you play enough games that you can ride out "feels bad" games

[Rumpy5897]

I build very commander dependent. Like, so commander dependent that Atla Palani looks hyper resilient by comparison as you can theoretically cast your fat at some point. I get away with it as I'm in a pretty laid back, removal light meta where people let other people do a good degree of stuff. That said, all three of my most commander-dependent builds are aware of this fact to some degree, and handle this in different ways:

• Feather does literal actual nothing without Feather around. As a result, 10+ slots are devoted to various repeatable cheap protection spells to help her stick. That said, most of those offer some other value, such as a stapled-on scry or flickers leading to a mild ETB subtheme. This works quite well, actually. The deck manages to be resilient enough to hold its own in Cockatrice pubs, where no other of my contraptions dare venture.
• Daxos wins via spirit hordes. While there is a decent helping of protection/recursion in the list, Daxos's survival tends to result from various other things being juicier targets in the moment. Most anything that costs 4 or more has potential to win the game if left unchecked, and the deck actively pursues ridiculous mana. As such, are you going to waste your finite spot removal on a dude I can just recast relatively easily, or try to take me off a high-end haymaker that's going to flood me with value if left around?
• Eutropia is a cast-heavy enchantress deck that uses the commander for closing. It has access to blue, so it jams various counterspells that are primarily used to stop attempts at killing Eutropia off.

Honestly, would I condone building like this? Not really, but this is what's fun in the format for me. Doing whatever stupid jank stuff the commander incentivises you to do. I attempted to run responsible Plan B's in my decks on many occasions, and they'd rot unused in hand and get cut.

[3drinks]

Hi, Kaalia's personal liaison here, and oh god yes does this ring true. Literally the poster girl for reliancy. Sometimes, you can take it in stride and absorb the iMPACT of being overly reliant and take it in stride, such as if the effect is powerful enough. Other times, such as your Atla Palani example, it's not or at least I don't perceive it to be as such and you really at that point have two choices;

• cut your losses and move on
• keep playing despite the shortcomings and really lean into it harder

There's really not a cut-and-dry solution to the problem. Though, I will say it gets harder and harder to stay the course as more "easy mode" cards are introduced that practically build themselves by comparison to the hoops our reliant messes force us to jump through. Do you love Atla Palani? I mean really love, like I've demonstrated for Kaalia since 2011. If no, I reckon your mind is keeping you on the deck for a sense of nostalgia, because it's felt like "your's" for so long. If you do carry such a passion, which strikes me as hard to develop given she's only one year old by now, then you just gotta pull through and decide that, if you want to play it and you enjoy it that much, then your only real recourse is to just accept it for it's flaws, remember it for it's experiences, and build to the fullest extent which maximizes it's strengths and minimizes it's weaknesses while knowing full well that you probably have an inferior deck. In my case, this was accomplished by becoming "that guy that plays MLD Tribal". In your case, I'd presume this becomes "that girl that plays the privileged position deck". Also keep in mind that it's okay to drift from the deck you "love" sometimes and try new experiences - in my case, that's become my Kari Zev labour of love, and my penchant for white border exploration and maximization.

I'm not completely sure what the premise was in your opening post, but I hope this helps you some.

[DirkGently]

I think this middle-ground idea is a bad way to think about it. I think you should make your deck as commander-centric - or not - as you feel like making it. The trick is more in preparing your deck accordingly. If you're heavily reliant on your commander, you'd better come packing some ways to reliably cast it, protect it, and recur it. On the other hand, if you're not reliant on your commander, then your deck will naturally be built so that it has alternative ways to win.

The problem with certain commanders, which I've railed about before, is that some commanders are very on/off. One of the best examples I've built was Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker. When it stuck, within a turn cycle my opponents would usually be out of cards and creatures. And if it didn't stick, the deck didn't do anything and was hot garbage. I find these sorts of commanders, that either win the game or leave you with nothing, create very unfun experiences for everyone involved, save maybe a rush of excitement the first couple times you pull it off. In general I'd avoid any commander that is a must-kill target, because I think you're either going to create a game that's uninteresting for yourself or your opponents.

[Dunharrow]

I have decks that don't work if the general is not in play, and I have decks that use the general as a backup more than anything. The only reason I have ever taken decks apart is:
1. The deck was too slow (usually built around a general that costs too much mana)
2. I found the deck boring to play.

Never because the general was a target and always removed before I got to do anything.

A lot of the generals you mentioned need a huge mana investment for them to do anything. Is it possible that this is the main issue?
Mayael, to me, has always been the posterchild for this - You have to pay so much mana to get an effect... the decks are more consitent if they just ramp into fatties than if they rely on Mayael.
Compare her also to Maelstrom Wanderer. MW gets you your effect upon cast. Mayael needs to be activated first.
Also, people don't want to kill MW. Mayael is a huge target.

Brion Stoutarm actually seems to me like it should be fine. Probably compares to my Arjun deck. Arjun costs 6 mana and does nothing unless I can cast another spell. I prioritize protecting Arjun before casting it. I also try to have a 0cmc card in hand. With Brion, I don't think I would ever cast him without having haste and the ability to activate right away. What did you find happened with this deck?

Anyway... In my decks that rely on having the general out, I try to have protection at the ready before casting it. Or, I make sure it can have a strong effect right away. I never cast Reyhan unless I have a sac outlet in play and shenanigans to do.

Jalira is cool. But I would make sure to give her hexproof or shroud the turn I play her.


That being said, I also have decks that are very different because sometimes I don't want to rely on my general. It is nice to change things up.

[FoxOfWar]

Brion actually is not hugely a posterchild of this problem(though it did have difficulties doing much if Brion wasn't around), and actually that deck's problem was being one of the most boring, linear things I recall building. Though that was also years and years ago so might be worth another gander.

In general, yeah, I think @DirkGently nailed it best - on/off commanders are a problem and that's certainly been part of the dilemma for me over the years. I try to avoid that, at least. Damia was probably worst in that regard for me - when the deck went off, it really went off but third of the deck was also dedicated to me getting there and keeping the gorgon around. (Also eternal Forbid looping is only fun for so long.)

It's a similar sort of reasoning that led me to going down to an eventual zero of dedicated voltron decks; either I get that 21 across in record speed, or I fobble about and do nothing much at all. These days I keep voltron as an option in my mind if my commander somewhat leans to that (say, by being a HugeMcLarge hydra or dragon) by having a few enablers, but I won't dedicate the deck to it.

Atla does to a fair degree have the same problem as Mayel did back whenever - in green, you have zero problem getting to twelve mana by turn five if you so desire, so it feels kind of silly to jump through hoops to do the same thing but way easier to disrupt.

Now, building around a commander being a suicidal 'game plan wants me to recast them about seven times anyway', that's a different sort of Gonti/Jeleva/Omnath 3.0 sort of wheelhouse that I most assuredly do like.

Commanders that are must-kill are slowly losing their appeal to me, heh. Decks that broadcast their entire plan from the command zone, if you will. I do have a Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder deck for example, but Yidris is almost red herring levels of not the goal of the deck, just a bonus should I get a hit off. That I reckon is my general goal: have my commander enhance the deck, but not have my gameplan being dependant on the commander staying on board a good chunk of the game.

It's a neverending quest I've been on since I started with the format - finding that 'fun' in each deck that I build. And I consider a level of 'don't necessarily need the commander, but would love to have it stick' a part of said fun.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

It's more art than science in my opinion, but it ultimately boils down to "Did you build the deck to facilitate the general or vice-versa?" Bottom-up design differs radically from top-down design, and a given deck's reliance on its commander will lean one way or another (regardless of any specific commander or strategy) based on that initial direction.

[BeneTleilax]

I like commanders that stick around. Most of my commanders are synergy pieces around which the rest of my deck is built, but don't win on the spot. If you don't obstruct a Feather or a Korvold after 5 turn cycles, you're gonna be hurting, but they can't kill the table on untap, at least not how I built them. I find this sort of commander most interesting, and try to make sure they spend most of the game in play. If they just squat in the CZ, I feel like I'm playing 60-card Casual, but slightly worse, and if they kill on my next untap step, I hardly got to play with them for any time at all. This is why I took apart Jhoira.

[Mookie]

Sort of interesting in that there is a bit of paradox - the more your deck requires your commander to function, the less likely it is to stick around. I know that when I'm playing, deck-defining commanders like Feather, the Redeemed and Mairsil, the Pretender are removal magnets. On the other hand, I don't think I would ever throw removal at Barktooth Warbeard. On the other hand, the former decks are also much more likely to invest in protection for their commander, so sort of balances out.

....definitely a spectrum though. A commander that functions more like a one-shot spell (such as Yorion, Sky Nomad, Maga, Traitor to Mortals, or Maelstrom Wanderer) may be deck-defining, but is still less likely to attract removal because their impact has already been performed. Meanwhile, cheap commanders like Tymna the Weaver and Rhys the Redeemed attract less removal because killing them doesn't set the controller back very far. I guess the real thing here that attracts removal is tempo - the greater the tempo loss for losing a commander, the more likely it is to be removed.

[3drinks]

On the other hand, I don't think I would ever throw removal at Barktooth Warbeard.

Idk man...did you know he barks as well as he bites?

[Mookie]

On the other hand, I don't think I would ever throw removal at Barktooth Warbeard.

Idk man...did you know he barks as well as he bites?

If I'm attacked by a 100/99 Barktooth Warbeard equipped with every Sword of X & Y, double strike, and a bunch of +1/+1 counters because someone made a Barktooth Warbeard voltron deck... I'm pretty sure I'd just take the hit on principle, even if I had the ability to stop it.

....on the other hand, I've thrown removal at The Grand Calcutron to prevent lethal commander damage before, so maybe I would stop it? Hmmm...

[FoxOfWar]

Something I've also started to do lately is doing a commander that traditionally seems like it'd be the lynchpin of the deck... and then merely make it one more cog in the machine.

As mentioned above, my Yidris is 'pretty much there for the colors', a red herring that's a cool thing with really nasty potential, but the wheels of the wheel/count-of-spells-in-graveyard-matter deck will keep turning regardless. Cascade merely charges the plan some more.

My Karador, Ghost Chieftain, is a Soul Sisters/Aristocrats deck where Karador is my plan B should too much of my board get wiped before I've set up. Nice if he stays about, but the deck has almost zero self-mill and I'm in no hurry cast Karador usually. More focused on draw than recursion, simply because a Karador deck will eat that grave hate anyway.

General Tazri is an extra ally trigger + searching for another ally trigger in command zone once I've exhausted my hand. The nature of the deck, winning on stacking ally-enter-effects via clones, means I'm not sure I've ever even used the second ability. I've had her magnet plenty of removal in fear of the second ability when she's already done her job.

I'm also now toying with a Ghired, Conclave Exile build that's actually a self-mill deck centering on casting stuff from my graveyard - Flashback, Aftermath, Retrace, Escape, Unearth... and where Ghired comes in, Embalm/Eternalize(and Elephant Ambush!). He's relevant, but more in the 'ten, potentially more power in the command zone for five'-sense than the entire deck being all populate, all day.

It's fun to think about, the question of how much the commander matters to the gameplan - and how much you want it to matter.

[BaronCappuccino]

The most effective decks, I would guess, either use their commander as one part of a combo and only cast when they're about to go off, or are just gigantic value engines. Neither are incredibly interesting, and mine is the former. As a three drop in a combo deck with an average cmc of 2.25, I'm not incredibly concerned about commander tax with Judith, the Scourge Diva. Back when I could actually win a game at all with a non-linear value-centric deck, I valued redundancy and flying under the radar.