I'll admit it's slightly confusing, but I mentioned
Narset, Parter of Veils as a comparison to
Leovold, Emissary of Trest, not in reference to anything he said in the article. Later I mention
Narset, Enlightened Master and say that I wouldn't mind it being banned. But I didn't autocard either so like I said, it's a little confusing.
dunharrow wrote:dirkgently wrote:While it's hard to say for certain, my intuition is that this argument doesn't remotely hold up against what people actually care about. When I think of the decks I've built, in a solid 80% of cases if the commander got banned, I'd toss the whole thing out the window. Take Zirilan of the Claw - sure, there are other mono-red dragon tribal commanders, like
Lathliss, Dragon Queen, but it functions in an entirely different way from Zirilan. I'd have to make huge changes to modify the decklist for Lathliss, but more importantly, the gameplay with Lathliss isn't what I wanted out of the deck, even if it was a functional deck by switching the commanders.
While I'm sure some decks (1) could be easily swapped for an alternative, i.e. Golos for Jodah, and (2) would still be enjoyable to the pilot, I think a lot of people built around that particular commander because they really liked THAT commander and building around having consistent access to it. Putting them in the 99 is going to be a very different experience.
If you take the cards from the article:
Narset BaaC - would kill the deck. Also, not very highly played in the 99.
Atraxa - would kill the deck. But Atraxa can be great in the 99.
Chulane - would not kill the deck. Just play another bant good stuffy guy. Chulane is good in the 99.
Derevi - would kill the deck. Derevi is good in the 99.
Golos - would not kill the deck. Good in the 99.
Grand Arbiter - It would certainly change the deck, but you can adapt your UW control deck to play without this general.
Hokori - would kill the deck.
Sen Trip - would kill the deck
Tergrid - would not kill the deck. You would have to change it a bit, but Tergrid fits so well in the 99 of any of these decks.
Urza - would kill the deck. Urza is great in the 99.
Vorinclex - would not kill the deck. Great in the 99.
So, from that list, the best candidates for banning as commanders would be Vorinclex, Tergrid, Grand Arbiter (but really this must not be that played), Golos, and Chulane. Though I will concede that Tergrid and Grand Arbiter are pretty unique so banning them is debatable.
Also, I think Kinnan would be a great candidate for BaaC.
Urza, Atraxa and Derevi are great in the 99, but banning them would kill certain deckbuilding strategies, so I get being more reluctant to banning them.
Nobody wants to ban niche commanders from being in the command zone. We just want to make it so that over-represented powerhouses like Golos are in the 99 instead of the command zone.
Just for fun, I'll go through the list, as though I'd built decks around them.
Narset - yep, deck almost 100% killed since I've always seen it as extra turn/combat tribal which doesn't work without her.
Atraxa - for superfriends, the most common though not only build, it could still work without her, but it would function very differently. Not 100% dead, but I think it would really lose its luster since no other commander in 4c really incentivizes pws.
Chulane - I think this is pretty dead. If you're just playing goodstuff, sure, it doesn't require chulane, but what other bant commander wants to play
Shrieking Drake? If you're optimizing for playing maximum creatures, another option wouldn't make sense.
Derevi - absolutely kills the deck in most cases.
Golos - depends on the build. If it's just fat stuff.dec, then Jodah is a reasonable switch, but he changes a lot of things - your curves since now you're ramping to 4 instead of 5, you actually need some protection for Jodah whereas recasting Golos wasn't a big deal, and Golos has his CA built in whereas Jodah kinda needs support. Esika could be an ok switch, but realistically incentivizes a much lower density of bombs. If it were my deck, I'd feel it necessary to make pretty major changes to accommodate another commander. And that's not even touching the "land is my commander" version, which is basically irreplaceable.
GAAIV - most versions I've seen do not rely heavily on the mana discount, so he's probably not completely irreplaceable. That said, while he's annoying I don't see him as that big of a problem per se.
Hokori - dead as a doornail.
Sen Triplets - dead as a doornail.
Tergrid - absolutely dead as a doornail. Without tergrid, symmetrical discard is not a means to an end. You could play
Geth, Lord of the Vault or something to take advantage of discarded cards, but then you've got wildly different motivations to take advantage of it, since you're not relying on big mana. Tergrid is giving you value and tempo whenever you play discard or sac effects, symmetrical or asymmetrical - no other commander does that afaik. Retooling the deck for another commander would not only require a complete overhaul, but also play in a totally different fashion.
Urza - probably kill the deck since tapping artifacts doesn't really appear elsewhere in mono-blue.
Vorinclex - I think the deck would likely change pretty dramatically since it's going to change your ramp targets and your payoffs for doing so. Vorinclex takes small/mid ramp to get to 8, and then gives you the ability to tap for very large mana, which can be paid off with X spells and whatnot. Another ramp commander like, say, Azusa, has very different setups and payoffs - she doesn't need small/mid ramp since she only costs 3, what she needs is draw power, with a heavy value placed on land draw/recursion. She's also not easily able to generate 20 mana, so she probably wants smaller bombs than Vorinclex.
Kinnan, since you brought it up, would be dead as a doornail, no question. Any other commander would have wildly different motivations in deckbuilding.
The only one of these that I think might be able to be replaced without drastically changing how the deck is built and plays is GAAIV. Everything else, I think, would be a "throw the deck out the window" situation, at least for me. GAAIV is definitely an annoying commander, but idk, he doesn't seem bannable to me personally, not that I'd cry at his grave or anything.
As someone working on
Sorrow's Path.dec, I take offense to Golos not being niche.
But tbh you didn't really address my main point at all, which is why I left in quoted - I think for most people, banning a card as the commander is by far the most important thing to them, and letting it continue to exist in the 99 is relatively meaningless. BaaC, for most legendaries, is 95%+ of the way towards completely banning them. With rare exceptions, banning a card in the 99 doesn't drastically change a deck. So by corollary, as long as you're going to BaaC a card, you might as well fully ban it. Which is why BaaC is a waste of time. If you want to ban Golos, ban Golos. Don't pretend like we're doing anyone a favor by letting him exist in the 99. You're giving someone back a nickel after you stole their bank account.
EDIT: Btw, I think one thing that people are totally discounting is that many of these commanders CAN be built for fun. Golos is a great example - there's nothing inherently oppressive about him. Put him in charge of a 5c ally deck and he seems totally benign. Tergrid, on the other hand, can only really crew miserable staxy decks, same for Hokori, GAAIV, and arguably urza and narset (though that's based more on how they're played in the field than just the mechanics on the card). Much like the format as a whole, I don't think Golos is the problem - it's the people playing it, and who would play the next oppressive thing if Golos were banned. You can't ban human nature.