If you could make one change in Commander...

[onering]

I'd have to decide between:

• Lower Commander Damage from 21 (3x7) to 18 (3x6).
• Ban Sol Ring and Mana Crypt.
• Unban Biorhythm and Gifts Ungiven

In the end i would choose to ban Mana Crypt and especially Sol Ring. Whenever i play outside my playgroup - where both were house-banned unanimously - i quickly become bored of seeing it in each and every game. Same goes for Field of the Dead, which doesn't have that much of a bad influence on the format and Cyclonic Rift, which is at least limited by the decks that can run it.

As far as commander variety goes i'd love to see Commander Damage lowered from 21 (3x7) to 18 (3x6). Making Voltron more viable would be great, since those decks struggle to overcome the usual pods of midrange control et al.

Of the current banlist Biorhythm and Gifts Ungiven would be fine to get unbanned. I don't see either of them being more degenerate than what we have in the format already and would consider it fair game to allow them too.

I like the thought of banning overly efficient tutors, but my playgroup isn't combo-centric at all, so subjectively i'm fine as things stand.

I really don't like the idea of unbanning Biorythm because its sort of a posterchild for what not to do in commander. Its not a strong card, its wrong to play it strictly from a min max perspective, so power level isn't an issue. What makes it a problem is that it invalidates most of what came before and randomly kills people, and its the sort of big splashy spell that kind of seems cool but in reality just ruins games. The Shaman version is a telegraphed play that requires setup and either haste or a cycle of turns to hit, so there's more interactivity there and it avoids the things that make Biorythm a problem. Wrathing the board with an indestructible creature on the board then casting Biorythm isn't the issue, that's just an expensive, janky combo. Even casting it as a follow up to Cyclonic Rift isn't the issue. Casting it on its own and randomly killing whoever got caught without creatures is the issue. Can you achieve that effect elsewhere? Yes, with setup. Biorythm, CV, Worldfire, Upheaval, Sway of the Stars, etc are all banned because they are basically table flip cards. They, without any help, just flip the table on the game, and all are banned because the RC wants to signal that the play experiences they create are discouraged because they tend to ruin games. Those cards being banned doesn't just say "You aren't allowed to run these cards" it also says "Don't do what these cards do, that makes for bad games." The RC is pretty libertarian when it comes to the game, they want a small banlist and want players who enjoy a style of magic that is contrary to their vision to still be able to play that style of magic when playing commander if they want to, but they want to make that something that happens among people who want it and not to just show up randomly.

The 3 point decrease for commander damage is really intriguing. I'm not a fan of Voltron, but it has been lagging of late, and maybe that's the boost it needs. It would also make commander damage more viable as a backup wincon for certain commanders, and may even help aggro out slightly by making it easier to focus on killing one player with commander damage while directing other damage at the other players. I'd certainly support the RC and CAG testing this out. The reasoning for the change is pretty obvious: keep the commander damage rule, a defining part of the format, relevant. Actually doing the change would depend on whether the RC sees a threat to the rules relevancy, and whether they see 18 as the right number, but I personally love that it turns six power into a 3 hitter, and 9 into a two hitter (Yargel %$#%!).

[Card Slinger J]

If I could make one change in Commander it'd be running more official events for the format. If players don't like playing Standard anymore why not give them the option to be rewarded for playing Commander? Would it kill Wizards of the Coast to officially sanction FNM style Commander events especially for WPN stores? Maybe sweeten the pot a little by bringing back FNM promos while penalizing LGS owners for selling them instead of giving them away for attendance. If it helps get people to buy more product at their LGS the better.

I know there's some local game stores in my area that advertise Commander events but only on days when it's less convenient at least for me being Tuesday. Even then it doesn't get as much of a draw as it should without the backing of Wizards of the Coast promoting this sort of thing especially through live streams on Twitch. I know that Standard is their bread and butter especially on Arena but choosing to ignore the most popular and profitable format in MTG with Commander is unheard of. Yes I get that the EDH Rules Committee owns the rights to the format but that's still no excuse IMO.

[Mimicvat]

Damn, just one change? I'm gonna cheat a bit with "Reduce the life totals to 30 and commander damage to 16". If I was talking cEDH I'd go even lower, all the way to 20.

Life is just way too high, to the point where fetchlands, necropotence etc are a joke. The life pillow pushes combo and durdle decks in a format that naturally pushes them, so aggressive decks are on a tremendous back foot. I want to see more face smashing and less rampy BS and even just a shift to 30 life can have a huge impact on beatdown strats

The Commander Damage effect is a side effect of the life change, being half+1. I've seen the arguments for 18 in particular and agree massively with them, but in this case going with 16 pretty much entirely to cheat on the one change rule lol.

[Kavu Enthusiast]

These are usually my go to house rules if people let me experiment with them so one of these:

• Starting lift total is 30. Honestly, I'm getting tired of just how much easier 40 life makes it for poorly built and piloted combo decks to still be able to pull off wins because it's just that hard to chew through 40 life; alternatively, I am also tired of just how easy 40 life makes exploited life as a resource win games much faster when people choose cards that were obviously never balanced around 40 life and obviously busted at 40 starting life.
• Commander damage is pooled. Almost every person who complains about commander damage, and can come up with a coherent reason why that isn't just 'I don't like it', usually cites something about the annoyance of keeping track of it. Commander damage is already not that powerful a strategy generally, so this isn't going to suddenly make it broken. I'd also be open to the idea of a slightly lower number needed to kill, especially if starting life is 30, but the pooled damage is a good single change to start with.
• I think if you were going to adjust poison in any way that 12 would be enough.
• I'm not sure if I would ban Sol Ring and Mana Crypt, but I want to experiment with a rule that they can't be played T1, similar to the wording on Serra Avenger. The reason they are broken has a lot to do with the proportional mana advantage they give players for such a small cmc and card investment, not the absolute advantage. A T6 Sol Ring or Crypt is good, but not back-breaking or game-changing. A T1 play is. It's because you now have 4 times the mana at a critical point in the game where people are just starting to establish their first plays, and you suddenly can make many times more early game plays or single mid gameplay for the investment of a 0-1 cmc and 1 card. The closest analogy is Exploration, which also gives you 4 mana on T2, but it costs you G instead of 0-1 and costs you 3 additional cards instead of 1. I think T2 Sol Ring or Crypt would still be super strong plays, but just not so game direction altering plays.
• Don't ban tutors outright, but set a limit to the number of non-land search tutor slots allowed in a deck. A limit of, say, 5 tutors in a deck is still pretty strong but stops decks from playing 12 tutors and having 20% of their non-land cards be tutors aimed at ramping out the same combo faster.

If you held a gun to my head and made me pick one of those, it'd have to be one of the first 2 and it'd be hard to pick which one I liked better but I imagine 30 starting life would have far more and better impact.

[DirkGently]

For my money, lowering the life total is probably the best single change. So many of the biggest problems with the format seem more solvable, to me, if aggro is given some advantages to keep greed in check.

I agree wholeheartedly with @onering 's defense of the biorhythm ban. It's not a card I want to see played. Even if everyone has creatures, being set to single-digit life is pretty ridiculous and very hard to interact with. I mean, I'd consider having 10 creatures in play to be having a LOT of creatures - so many you're probably badly overextended unless you're playing tokens - but you're still getting sorin'ed. And that's happening to everyone at once. Bleh.

I know a lot of people don't like tutors, but imo they're a double-edged sword. A lot of fun, janky ideas need tutors to hit specific effects. Without tutors, it's harder to build towards specific synergies, so outside of fairly obvious things, decks tends more towards being goodstuff. They can create fast combo decks, or funny decks that otherwise wouldn't exist. As is the case with other cards that can be used for good or ill, I tend to prefer they stay legal, and hope that the spirit of the format drives people to use them for good.

[Yatsufusa]

Rework life total and commander damage together as one system I guess? Not drunk, but even thinking about this idea makes me think it gives an impression I'm drunk when I thought of this.

Every player starts with 3 life totals, each starting with 20 life.

"Player/Normal Life"
- You lose when this hits 0, barring "lich" card effects.
- Anything can hit you in this (but by doing so, does not hit the other lifepools).
- Has no cap.
- You cannot pay life from this pool for cards you control, but you can do so for cards you don't control.

"Commander Life"
- You lose when this hits 0, "lich" effects don't apply and can't save you here.
- Only Commander Combat damage can hit you in this life pool (and by doing so, does not hit the other lifepools).
- Has a hard cap of 20 (but lifegain can restore life here at the cost of not restoring other lifepools).
- Can't pay life from this pool at all.

"Contract/Payment Life"
- You don't lose when this hits 0, "lich" effects don't apply here.
- Anything can hit you in this (but by doing so, does not hit the other lifepools).
- Has no cap (but restoring life here does not restore other lifepools and you still die if the others hit 0.)
- You can pay life from this pool for anything, you can split the payment between pools for cards you don't control as well.
**BONUS**OPTIONAL** players can put a customized "payment life" tax of X life for each time a player searches his or her library because of cards they control from this pool if they're trying to reduce/curb tutoring/land ramp in games.

It could be argued making Player/Normal Life 30 and Contract/Payment Life 10 instead might be better, but I can't seem to mentally emulate the scenarios at the moment so I just bluntly went with "using 3 D20s would be much easier for the casual playerbase who has more D20s anyway".

For added bonuses, Fateful hour triggers when any pool is at 5 life at below, even the Payment pool, because I can't remember if I saw any card with the ability even trigger anyway, like ever.

Sounds complicated, which is the way the RC doesn't like things done, but I'd argue separate commander damage is equally annoying to keep track of anyways. Sure, it's more mandatory upkeeping here, but I'm also using it to tidy combo by a bit, while giving more variety for lifegain strategies to run about.

[Maluko]

Gonna jump on the bandwagon here and agree that reducing the starting life total to 30 and commander damage to 18 ("Primeval" commander damage rather than "Elder" commander damage) would be my priority.

[Dragonlover]

Combined Commander Damage. It's how we used to play when game night was at my house, and it makes things so much easier. For starters, you don't have to track partners separately, and also commander damage then works the same as life totals. If I take 39 from player A, player B only has to deal me 1 damage to get the kill in, not 40, so why is it different for commanders?

Dragonlover

[pokken]

I could really get into combined commander damage if the number was a bit higher. 21 I think is just too low for random chipshots to be lethal.

[Toshi]

Commander damage is pooled. Almost every person who complains about commander damage, and can come up with a coherent reason why that isn't just 'I don't like it', usually cites something about the annoyance of keeping track of it. Commander damage is already not that powerful a strategy generally, so this isn't going to suddenly make it broken. I'd also be open to the idea of a slightly lower number needed to kill, especially if starting life is 30, but the pooled damage is a good single change to start with.

Combined Commander Damage. It's how we used to play when game night was at my house, and it makes things so much easier. For starters, you don't have to track partners separately, and also commander damage then works the same as life totals. If I take 39 from player A, player B only has to deal me 1 damage to get the kill in, not 40, so why is it different for commanders?

I could really get into combined commander damage if the number was a bit higher. 21 I think is just too low for random chipshots to be lethal.

I'm just gonna copy what i wrote about it last year when someone discussed a pooled commander damage of 30.

I also think unified commander damage is a great idea.

I think it's an abysmal idea, with all due respect.

1.) From what i can tell, it more or less kills Voltron strategies.
For most Voltron decks an additional 9 damage to edge through means another 2 swings that have to connect. Said decks are already fringe and at a disadvantage. There's no reason anyone would help swinging for lethal commander damage if they'd realize there's a straight forward Voltron deck aiming to. So an additional 2 turns to kill per player means another 6 combat steps for an archetype that's easily disrupted.

2.) Once commander damage becomes the (last remaining) win con games could stall out completely.
The easiest example would be two Voltron decks as the last heads up. Given there'll be spot removal, board wipes and Mazes a few more extra swings per player to win could mean the game is dragged to a halt.

The format needs anything but control/midrange to become stronger. So for the love of god, lower life totals and commander damage, if they are going to tweak anything at all.

[pokken]

Just me of course but I am fairly happy with life totals as they are. I think the dynamic of how low your curve needs to be to survive at 30 life is not something that is going to be as fun as people think. Lower life totals means shorter games which means lower curves, and more early interaction required - and particularly increases the value of sweepers and anti-combat stax effects.

I don't know if any of you guys have played against a lot of serious aggro decks (e.g. Gore Claw) that start cranking out 10-12 point swings on turn 3 but I think the game is a lot different if you need to be interacting with that stuff on turn 3 or 4 to survive instead of 4 or 5, or even 5 / 6 in some metas.

Another side effect I'm not particularly excited about is people being knocked out of a game early only to have the game drag on for a while; that already happens sometimes with a fast start aggro player knocking someone out, but it's much worse when you leave someone dead instead of at 10 early on.

[Airi]

If I had to pick a single thing to change, I'd bring back Banned as a Commander. There's no reason it shouldn't exist given that legendary creatures operate in completely different contexts between the 99 and the command zone. There are other things I'd like to see, like changes to life totals, but to be honest, none of them come close to BaaC for me.

[Kavu Enthusiast]

Commander damage is pooled. Almost every person who complains about commander damage, and can come up with a coherent reason why that isn't just 'I don't like it', usually cites something about the annoyance of keeping track of it. Commander damage is already not that powerful a strategy generally, so this isn't going to suddenly make it broken. I'd also be open to the idea of a slightly lower number needed to kill, especially if starting life is 30, but the pooled damage is a good single change to start with.

Combined Commander Damage. It's how we used to play when game night was at my house, and it makes things so much easier. For starters, you don't have to track partners separately, and also commander damage then works the same as life totals. If I take 39 from player A, player B only has to deal me 1 damage to get the kill in, not 40, so why is it different for commanders?

I could really get into combined commander damage if the number was a bit higher. 21 I think is just too low for random chipshots to be lethal.

I'm just gonna copy what i wrote about it last year when someone discussed a pooled commander damage of 30.

I also think unified commander damage is a great idea.

I think it's an abysmal idea, with all due respect.

1.) From what i can tell, it more or less kills Voltron strategies.
For most Voltron decks an additional 9 damage to edge through means another 2 swings that have to connect. Said decks are already fringe and at a disadvantage. There's no reason anyone would help swinging for lethal commander damage if they'd realize there's a straight forward Voltron deck aiming to. So an additional 2 turns to kill per player means another 6 combat steps for an archetype that's easily disrupted.

2.) Once commander damage becomes the (last remaining) win con games could stall out completely.
The easiest example would be two Voltron decks as the last heads up. Given there'll be spot removal, board wipes and Mazes a few more extra swings per player to win could mean the game is dragged to a halt.

The format needs anything but control/midrange to become stronger. So for the love of god, lower life totals and commander damage, if they are going to tweak anything at all.

The only person you quoted that argued that the commander damage lethal number should be *increased* in tandem with it being pooled was Pokken, who also seems to think that 21 is low enough for random small commanders to chip away at to a meaningful degree or at a meaningful pace. No one is consistently dying to random commander damage in a game where someone just decides their 2/2 commander is turning sideways. People die from commander damage when it's clearly the strategy of the Voltron deck at the table in some cases because an otherwise large commander in an aggressive creature-based deck happens to connect more often than the rest of the board or the opponent has gained a lot of life. If commander damage was really so low that it put any player in a precarious position of randomly being offed in most games it would be a stronger strategy that it is. To be clear Voltron is not considered a top power strategy, even at mid-power tables.

There are some games where other opponents at the table will help chip into the commander damage total if it's pooled, but the heavy lift is still going to be on the Voltron player or the player with the naturally 7/7 commander who's put in the position of needing to use commander damage that game to kill someone. It's not going to be a meaningful contribution in most games, not enough to justify bumping up the lethal damage number at least. Pooling is more for decreasing unnecessary complication in EDH games, if the side effect of that is Voltron decks get *slightly* better than we aren't really propping up the already dominant strategy at most tables so I don't think it really matters.

If you actually read my post I said if anything you could reduce the number from 21 to something slightly lower if the starting life total was 30. To be clear I haven't and wouldn't advocate for increasing the commander damage lethal number either in the absence or in tandem with a pooled damage change.

[Kavu Enthusiast]

Just me of course but I am fairly happy with life totals as they are. I think the dynamic of how low your curve needs to be to survive at 30 life is not something that is going to be as fun as people think. Lower life totals means shorter games which means lower curves, and more early interaction required - and particularly increases the value of sweepers and anti-combat stax effects.

I don't know if any of you guys have played against a lot of serious aggro decks (e.g. Gore Claw) that start cranking out 10-12 point swings on turn 3 but I think the game is a lot different if you need to be interacting with that stuff on turn 3 or 4 to survive instead of 4 or 5, or even 5 / 6 in some metas.

Another side effect I'm not particularly excited about is people being knocked out of a game early only to have the game drag on for a while; that already happens sometimes with a fast start aggro player knocking someone out, but it's much worse when you leave someone dead instead of at 10 early on.

I mean, you could use French as a comparison. Aggro still wasn't good enough at 30 in 1v1 match up where you only had to deal 30 damage to 1 person to win. They lowered it to 20 and then certain aggro decks were too good. In EDH you still have to grind through 90 life as the aggro player to win, all the while racing the combo and control players who are still benefiting from an extra 10 life of padding on your clock.

Also, I can believe that a really aggressive deck can achieve a 10-12 point swing on T3, but I a) doubt it is generally with the consistency you are making it sound like (I have a fairly serious Titania deck (tuned for multiplayer and not 1v1 to be fair, so not built to be as fast and glass-cannon-y as it could be in the interest of staying power) and while I've had games where I can put out 10-15 damage on T3 those are rare games about 1 turn ahead of the mean)...

...and b) will only be a real threat if it's a serious aggro deck at a not serious table; pair it with a serious combo deck and it still won't come close most games to put on the pressure needed to race the combo; at least with 30 life they have a chance, at least to force the combo deck to course correct to deal with in tandem with digging for their combo, if not actually outracing them. It's only trouncing a table with 120 life to chew through at that pace if it's playing way above the table, which is the real issue in that scenario. Even if the damage output literally doubles each turn (which would be hard to maintain) the first player targeted still has until their T4 to do something if the aggro player went before them and T5 if otherwise. This is if no other player decided to stop the aggro player with the first target almost dead, which we all know happens plenty in multiplayer and is one of the reasons why aggro was already at a disadvantage back in 60 card 20 life days. Even if they bury their first target with no interaction on their T5, they have 2 more opponents that have done nothing but build into their late-game untouched and now have 60 more life to get through, assuming they aren't about to get board wiped.

It's also funny that you issue with a player getting knocked out and having to wait through a slog of a long EDH game is itself lessened if everyone has 30 life and the games turn out a little shorter.

I stand by my observations about the effects of 40 life on games of magic, be they multiplayer or 1v1: bad players with bad combo decks can still coast into their combos too easily without barely interacting or defending themselves at all and good players with good decks abuse that extra 20 life to achieve game actions that are just so unimaginably powerful, consistent and fast-paced that it's like just gifting the format to that archetype that it's like a big flashing sign that says 'this format is for combo and control that ends with a combo and abusing cards balanced around 20 starting life'. Like, focused strong combo was already the boogeyman of multiplayer tables in 60 card 20 life days; not tuned aggro. I played plenty of magic back then and the point of casual wasn't to play the most tuned decks you could, else you would be playing Legacy. Casual was for exploring cool ideas you liked and expressing yourself to some degree that the freedom to not have the highest win rate possible as your only goal gave you the space to do. Even low to the ground aggro decks generally weren't fully optimized and rolling tables unless you were *that asshole* abusing Goblin Lacky always having an open target to roll tables with Legacy Goblins or something like that. And even if that happened, it was the T2-3 dumb combo deck that people gave the eye-rolling golf clap to and continued playing after you got your 'I win casual' star and sat out the rest of the game. Like, I definitely pulled that garbage when I was 14 and thought the way to be the coolest best player of casual magic was to just build broken combos that were hard to interact with because *duh* they win the most. That was with 20 life. If 60 card casual had 40 aggro would have just been, well... *jerk-off motion*.

I really feel like you are making aggro into this fun ruining force of nature which only 40 life saves the poor weak combo/control players from folding to in every game. I don't want aggro to overrun every game but I really doubt it is going to happen at 30 life across 3 opponents. 40 Just makes it far too easy for combo and control and far too hard for aggro. Removing an entire leg of the 3 leg stool of archetypes of magic and decreases deck diversity and card selection diversity. The best possible example of this is cEDH: when the inherent advantages of the format for combo and stax → combo win are recognized and the 'meta' of top tier decks solidifies around the fact that aggro just can't outpace combo when played to the same level...the strategy just basically disappears and so do all the cards you might want or need to play to deal with more than one other type of opponent. Games become mostly the same kinds of decks trying to do the same kind of thing and using the same types of tools to get there or stop others from getting there. Just look at most decklists in good cEDH decks, there are very few creatures wipes played, it only makes sense when very few creature-based decks at play, which only makes sense when non-infinite creature-based damage decks just can't hope to out-race anyone with 120 life to cut through.

At power levels lower than cEDH aggro and creature damage still have a chance at winning, but generally, if it does the player is out-playing their opponents that game and/or their deck is much better than the table. It just takes a much better play from a much better deck for an entire archetype win currently. Consistently. Across tables and playgroups and power levels. If you want to win with aggro against combo you better be a better player that game and you better hope their deck is not built as well as yours.

In the end the 'big bad outcome' of changing to 30 life you can come up with is that people need to *actually played answers* to creature and large creature-based board state threats. Not 'you are just going to get mowed down and there isn't anything you can change about that'....just...'damn we'd actually have to value leaving open some slots for wrath of god to deal with one of the 3 main deck strategies in Magic instead of just ignoring it as a threat because it isn't one currently'.

[pokken]

The whole knocked-out-and-wait is really a tertiary concern as I hope was clear.

The primary concern I have is the downward pressure on curves and critical turns, and upward pressure on interaction; the game has already changed by leaps and bounds in just the last few years as people have gotten better at constructing decks.

We already have to play lots of removal; lower life total means we've got to play more, and combo players have to try to combo faster.

I don't know that EDH is really that well served as a format by encouraging it to go faster than it does today. You can stand by your opinion and I'll stand by mine I guess.

I don't want aggro to overrun every game but I really doubt it is going to happen at 30 life across 3 opponents.

It doesn't have to overrun every game to make a change for the worse. Bottom line you're not really considering any of the real consequences of shortening the timeline to death for the person who has the slowest start in a multiplayer game.

In your scenarios this person is bad combo player, not guy who just didn't draw a ramp spell.

Play some CEDH and it'll make you appreciate how defining the opening turn ramp spell can be when the critical turn is 4 instead of 6 or 7.

[Treamayne]

One change: If a permanent can become a legendary creature that would be a legal commander, through its own, "on the card" means, I would make it a legal commander by default. Granted, there isn't a playgroup worth playing in that would refuse Elbrus as a commander, for example, but why not save the question.

Would really like this... I've always wanted a Genju of the Realm manland deck

The death triggers happening is the best suggestion I've heard in a long time. It could elegantly be done as well without a special rule. You just change the replacement effect to "When your commander dies, choose whether to send it to the command zone." Or something along those lines. It would hit the yard, triggering effects, then immediately be sent to the cz if you choose without the option for responses (like a token that hits the yard).

Changing it to a trigger just means it works oddly with everything else. Sure, if we focus solely on the "battlefield to graveyard" aspect it looks like it would mostly work in a vacuum. But, how would "hand to graveyard" work? Or "battlefield to exile"? Or, probably worst of all, "hand to library"?

If we don't do triggers for those, then now you have 2 rules in place for zone changes. If you do change them to triggers, "hand to library" doesn't work. At least, it wouldn't work with Timetwister or other Twister effects.

And, not that it matters a ton I suppose, but making it a trigger means things like It That Betrays can't steal them. Though, with the combination of changing how Banishing Light works (if they made "battlefield to exile" a trigger too) it might be overall easier to understand some of the weirder interactions the current replacement effect creates.

I am more on the side of not trying to make it work, though I don't really care too much one way or the other. But a trigger starts to introduce other issues that make the zone change stuff less elegant overall I think.

If going with this idea, I would word the changed rule as something like:

When a commander enters a zone other than the battlefield, it goes to the command zone as a state based effect.

This way triggers get triggered, but the zone change happens before there is a chance to respond. I would also prefer the lack of choice. Example: Arcanis the Omnipotent shouldn't "defeat" command tax with a hand bounce. Either put him in the 99 to abuse that or pay the tax...

My choice for a change though would be this: change the infect/poison death total to 21. Just this past week I saw the same unfortunate player eliminated in 3 different games through poison damage. In a 1 on 1 game 11 makes sense because it is 1 more than half your starting life total, so in a format where you start at 40, 21 (which is also the commander damage total) makes more sense.

Agree on poison needing to be changed. This plays into what my "One Thing" would be - though my one change is actually more of a "MtG" rule change than an EDH rule change.

I would like all life-based rules to be based on starting life. It seems like WotC is tracking the "issue" as they have started making cards like Happily Ever After and Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, so they already have incorporated the concept in their templates.

Poison would be "Half-starting Life" (20 in EDH, 15 in 2HG, etc.)
Fateful Hour would be quarter starting life.
Commander Damage would be Half-starting life +1 (so if you house rule to 30, CD is 16; if you house rule to 50, CD is 26)

This would require some errata/updated oracle text. Such as:
Sorin/Magister Sphinx would set to half starting life (20 for EDH)
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant might be 10 life more than starting life (a la Ajani - 50 in EDH) or 50% more than starting life (60 in EDH)
Felidar Sovereign would require double starting life (80 in EDH)
Angel of Vitality, Serra Ascendant, etc.

[WizardMN]

If going with this idea, I would word the changed rule as something like:

When a commander enters a zone other than the battlefield, it goes to the command zone as a state based effect.

I know what you are getting at and I don't want to dive too deep into better ways to make this work. But, I just find it amusing that your wording there isn't optional (so no leaving it in your hand) and prevents you from casting your commander entirely (or, at least, resolving it) since the stack is a zone

It also breaks things like Banishing Light (which I would be fine with honestly; I am not a huge fan of the confusion they cause now) and blink effects (which I am less a fan of making not work on commanders).

[Treamayne]

I know what you are getting at and I don't want to dive too deep into better ways to make this work. But, I just find it amusing that your wording there isn't optional (so no leaving it in your hand) and prevents you from casting your commander entirely (or, at least, resolving it) since the stack is a zone :)

Hence the "something like." Groupthink can be double plus good.

(it was just a concept "food for thought")

I like the non-optional portion (it wasn't an accident) but recognize that would probably not be a favored addition to such a change.

Danke mucho

[Sheldon]

Just letting everyone know I've read this entire thread up to this point.

[onering]

I personally think it's better when aggro is perceived as more difficult to play, because that means it's usually the better players that try out aggro because it's the better players that can win with it, and this leads to fewer games with recklessly piloted aggro decks. This is a good thing to me because a recklessly piloted aggro deck tends to screw up games and leave people salty. I'm talking about when someone who doesn't know what they're doing takes someone out early and then stalls out and has no real chance of winning themselves, which is something that unfortunately poorly piloted aggro has a propensity to do (see also: poorly played infect). Aggro is perceived by many as being an easy archetype to pilot, because it's straightforward. It's about playing threats and turning them sideways. Aggro in reality is the hardest archetype to play in multiplayer. At 40 life or 30, it requires more skill to pilot to victory because you have such a steep hill of life to overcome, and so many chances for people to disrupt you, that you have to be on your A game with threat assessment, realizing who you need to take out first and who you can hang with as the game goes longer, and whether and when you should focus all fire on one player or spread out damage to try to get people down enough that they can be surprised by a big turn, and you need to balance your threat deployment to ensure you can put pressure on without overextending, and you need to be able to play politics when your being proactive to ensure you don't get archenemied. Going from 40 life to 30 makes it slightly easier for the aggro player to win, buy significantly easier for them to take out a single opponent before running out of gas. It makes the worst case scenario, the aggro player taking one guy out early then stalling, much more likely while not significantly increasing the aggro players chance of actually winning. I do think we'd see a downward pressure on Mana curves, and certain commanders, like purphoros xenagod and torbran who can already do a crapload of damage quickly would move from strong to kill on sight (purph might already be there but he'd be even worse).

The most likely effect of 30 life is that aggro gets slightly better while control and combo remain about the same, as they can easily adjust to be a little faster (and many would withstand the life change in their current form just fine). True midrange would vary based on the deck, but generally midrange feasts on aggro by having slightly bigger creatures and access to plentiful answers, so it should generally do fine. What would suffer is battlecruiser, to the point where it would be nonviable in all but the most casual metas, because it's the easiest for aggro to prey on. That would be a shame, because this is the one format where battlecruiser decks actually have a place. Aggro is viable in every other format, so I'd rather sacrifice aggro's numbers to prop up battlecruiser (and Voltron, which would also suffer, even if CD were lowered to 18) than sacrifice those to prop up aggro.

[DirkGently]

Aggro is viable in every other format, so I'd rather sacrifice aggro's numbers to prop up battlecruiser (and Voltron, which would also suffer, even if CD were lowered to 18) than sacrifice those to prop up aggro.

While I agree with the argument generally, I can easily imagine a parallel universe where the current life total is 30 and we're arguing for 20, or 50 and we're arguing for 40, and the argument much just as much sense in any of those universes. I have a hard time believing 40 is really the perfect number. While yes, aggro becomes better with 30 life, it's still really hard to kill the whole table solo with aggro. And if anything, the deck you're killing last is the crappy battlecruiser deck. The first deck you're killing, and the reason the life total should change, is the combo deck. Yes, they can adapt to play more low-cost removal, but that's only going to weaken their consistency to get their combo, which is what we're hoping for.

I don't see any reason why voltron would get worse if the damage requirement goes down. It becomes better at supporting a kill (not all voltron kills are commander damage!) and it doesn't LOSE win% against anyone except aggro, really.

[onering]

I would say that Voltron would get worse because most Voltron decks win through commander damage, which is less attractive the closer the life total is to the commander damage total. There are drawbacks to Voltron as a strategy, namely putting all your eggs in one basket and being unable to go wide, that are more acceptable when the needed amount of commander damage is just over half of the needed amount of total damage. That's a significant advantage that makes the risks and restrictions that go with Voltron worth it. Obviously getting around lifegain is another bonus. The smaller difference between the regular life total and commander damage doesn't make Voltron worse in a vacuum, but it does make it worse relative to other forms of aggro. So you have the double whammy of Voltron losing win percentage vs aggro, and aggro getting played more at the expense of Voltron. Aggro getting more play would have to come from somewhere, and it makes the most sense to assume that the archetypes most closely related to it, the ones that win primarily through creature damage, are the ones that would lose more of their meta game share, and that would be Voltron, midrange, and battlecruiser. This doesn't discount that some people who play control or combo would like to play more aggro and would do so if life totals were lower, but I would expect them to be outnumbered by people jumping over from more similar archetypes.

As for combo getting weakened by a lower life total, I'm not convinced that 30 would do it. It would weaken decks that durdle around and find a combo on turn 10-12, but control decks with combo finishers are already positioned to handle aggro without much of a problem, and decks that combo off quickly are still going to be able to race aggro even at 30 life, unless they are getting targeted by multiple aggro players. The latter would prove a problem for non cEDH combo decks even in today's 40 life environment, but I would think it would be a more common scenario in a 30 life environment simply because aggro would see more play, and thus it would be more likely to see more than one aggro deck in the same game.

You are correct that the battlecruiser deck should be the one the aggro player leaves for last. It's usually the correct play now and would be with 30 life as well. I've seen aggro played poorly too many times to believe that would be what normally happens though. When the control player is threatening with answers and open mana, and the midrange player has stabilized, and the battlecruiser player has a big slab of beef in the command zone but is open, a smart player tries to force his way through the control deck's early game so they can't fully stabilize or hand back and let them deal with the midrange guy, while too many people will swing at the open battlecruiser dude until he's dead. I've seen way too much poor threat assessment to believe that leaving the battlecruiser guy for last would be the most common play despite it being the most commonly correct one.

As for a perfect life total, I honestly don't think there is one. 40 works but has its issues with damage based decks struggling in large games, and 30 would work but have the problems I discussed. From my perspective, anything less than 30 would be too little, anything more than 40 too much. My reaction to 25 and 45 as the starting totals is hell no and no, but accounting for status quo bias they'd probably be equally bad for different reasons. So maybe 35 is the sweet spot, or maybe 35 would just split the difference and make nobody happy. I know I personally prefer 40 life because I prefer the problems that come with 40 to the problems that come with 30. I'd rather games end due to someone finally getting a combo off late game or making a huge play than someone getting knocked out turn 4 or 5 and then sitting around for an hour twiddling their thumbs while the guy that ended his night runs out of gas. Both of those things are going to happen at 40 and 30, but the latter will happen more often with 30. If you play combo recklessly you get stopped without knocking anyone out if the game, you play aggro recklessly you get stopped after taking someone out early. Aggro is a lot harder to play than many people think and unlike other archetypes can reinforce poor play choices by rewarding them. It's rewarding to take a player out of the game, it's the goal of the game so each time you do it you feel like you're accomplishing something, but with aggro taking one player out doesn't actually mean your winning or even playing right, it could be the result of focusing on the wrong guy or overextending. That's why I'm fine with a format that's a bit punishing towards aggro, because the people who know how to play aggro can handle it and the people who don't tend to avoid it.

[umtiger]

Instead of tiny leaders, brawl, oathkeeper...or whatever new flavor is being pushed, I just want for non-supplement set Commander to be a thing. I might be in the minority but I believe that EDH was better before yearly Commander Sets and other supplemental products like Conspiracy, Battlebond, etc. It'd be nice to see a game restored to before having those kind of cards used in each and every game (e.g. Prossh, Korvold, Meren...)

But no one really wants to build decks like that plus keep a normal EDH deck. So unless you have a private play group, no one is really in on it.

Besides that, yeah 30 starting life.

[DirkGently]

Instead of tiny leaders, brawl, oathkeeper...or whatever new flavor is being pushed, I just want for non-supplement set Commander to be a thing. I might be in the minority but I believe that EDH was better before yearly Commander Sets and other supplemental products like Conspiracy, Battlebond, etc. It'd be nice to see a game restored to before having those kind of cards used in each and every game (e.g. Prossh, Korvold, Meren...)

But no one really wants to build decks like that plus keep a normal EDH deck. So unless you have a private play group, no one is really in on it.

Besides that, yeah 30 starting life.

As much as I dislike a lot of those commanders, I think power creep in general - and a disregard for balance in non-tournament formats - is to blame, moreso than supplementary products. Sure, precons have given us a lot of busted stuff, but so have normal sets. Jhoira, Muldrotha, Yarok, Golos, Kenrith (arguable as supplemental), kykar, niv mizzet, vannifar, gitfrog, vilis...these are all kill-right-now-or-lose commanders printed in the past few years, and they all went through standard sets. Not to mention, the barrier for supplemental is a bit fuzzy. Korvold wasn't draftable, but he did go through standard. Brago didn't go through standard, but he was draftable.

The problem is, we're a target audience. And while some of us are turned off by the likes of emergent ultimatum, there are lots of people who are thrilled by them. And while printing some of this stuff is going to piss some of us off, we're not likely to leave because of it. But the people who get hyped about it, it keeps them buying product. And that's what counts. So we'll keep getting overpowered garbage that makes the format less and less fun to play.

I don't think there's any clean dividing line between the not-obnoxious commanders and the okay ones. If there is, it's probably 2010 commander. Then the worst you have to worry about is zur, arcum, and azami.

[RxPhantom]

I do miss the thrill of finding cool cards and making them work in a deck, as opposed to being spoon-fed a bunch of readymade, obvious, and frankly boring value engine powerhouses. Nothing has been so bad to drive me from the format yet, and I even built around one of the worst offenders (I really like Yarok, sue me), but the format hasn't been as exciting as it once was. Homogeneity bums me out. It's why I posted that 'What's your most interesting deck/commander?' thread a couple months ago. That thread didn't disappoint either.

If I were to change anything, I'd want tuck back. That'll never happen, sooo....

I admit to being intrigued by lowering the Commander Damage threshold from 21 to 18. Even a small change like that could make a big difference for aggressive strategies.

Come to think of it, there is one small, simple change I'd make: changing the term from 'commander damage' to 'commander combat damage' and we could call it CCD for short. In a recent Command Zone episode where they discuss the previous edition of Game Knights, the question they received the most was why damage from Ruric Thar, the Unbowed wasn't being marked as commander damage. I've encountered this a lot with that commander, as well as others like Kaervek, Nekusar, etc. A simple clarification in terminology (that comes with its own nifty acronym) could go a long way toward players grokking the concept.