Thought Exercise: Changing the Commander Tax

[Jemolk]

I think that's one area where WotC can actually design for commander and have it actually be a benefit: removal with a rider that if it targets a commander, it cannot be recast that turn.

I think I'd rather tweak the rules until regular removal is fine to use on commanders, honestly. I wouldn't trust them not to just undercost it so it's strictly better than old cards that I still want to be at least semi-justified in using. Also, I would genuinely appreciate the side effect from @pokken's suggestion of avoiding the possibility of someone pulling some nonsense to keep your commander in exile permanently, whether it be with a Stifle on a delayed return trigger or a Mindslaver. Making things more generally stable and straightforward to work around would be a good thing, IMHO.

Also, if there's a way to get the commander tax added to activated abilities of the commander itself that take the commander out of the zone, and also make using them increment the commander tax, that would probably be a good thing too. Something like editing the commander tax rule to read "Casting your commander or activating abilities of your commander that would cause them to change zones from the command zone cost an additional 2 for each time the commander has left the command zone in one of these ways." Probably a better way to word that, but it should be functional enough, and there would remain utility to the abilities of both Yuriko and Derevi even if they cost extra based on commander tax. (Derevi having flash from the CZ for a 1 mana premium, and Yuriko costing less and coming in swinging.)

[onering]

I don't really think using removal on commanders sucks, and a "can't cast again until next turn" rider at a premium would create deckbuilding choices based on how much you actually care about the effect. It honestly doesn't even have to be commander specific, removal our counters that have a rider that says "its controller can't cast spells of the same name this turn" would work just as well, have some corner case applications against cards that break the singleton rule, and have real applications in 60 card.

[pokken]

I don't really think using removal on commanders sucks, and a "can't cast again until next turn" rider at a premium would create deckbuilding choices based on how much you actually care about the effect. It honestly doesn't even have to be commander specific, removal our counters that have a rider that says "its controller can't cast spells of the same name this turn" would work just as well, have some corner case applications against cards that break the singleton rule, and have real applications in 60 card.

Or instead of tailoring a whole class of new cards to work with commander we can tailor commander to work more like other formats, where you don't get unlimited free cards whenever you want =P

[Dragoon]

I think alternative removal like Darksteel Mutation, Imprisoned in the Moon, Oubliette or Song of the Dryads works just fine to remove problematic commanders. Sure, their controller can have an enchantment removal for them, but it's probably more bothersome than just recasting the commander.

[onering]

I don't really think using removal on commanders sucks, and a "can't cast again until next turn" rider at a premium would create deckbuilding choices based on how much you actually care about the effect. It honestly doesn't even have to be commander specific, removal our counters that have a rider that says "its controller can't cast spells of the same name this turn" would work just as well, have some corner case applications against cards that break the singleton rule, and have real applications in 60 card.

Or instead of tailoring a whole class of new cards to work with commander we can tailor commander to work more like other formats, where you don't get unlimited free cards whenever you want =P

New designs that have a reason to be played, and are useful for different reasons in different formats, yet do not simply outclass the competition is a good thing. This is a pretty narrow problem we're looking at here, commanders being cast multiple times in a single turn without a combo being involved, not worth adding a rule over. Even in the example you gave, the table let the Brago player set up a board where it would be game if Brago stuck, so when the pilot hit 10 mana and moved to cast his commander for the first time, the table needed 2 removal spells to stop him and only had 1. There's just a lot going right for the Brago player in that scenario already, and that's the only reason him being able to cast Brago twice was an issue.

The big bad here is Prossh. That's the biggest issue I see this solving, and it could be solved just as easily by banning Food Chain, which is pretty much only used to go infinite. If a now tier 2 cEDH commander's combo is worth nerfing, then nerf it by nuking Food Chain, not by changing the rules in a way that impacts more casual commanders.

I just look at the consequences of the move and ask myself if the gameplay improvement of killing food chain prossh and not letting someone with a good boardstate spend 10 mana to cast a 4 mana commander through a removal spell is worth it to set up the feel bad of people having their commander removed on their upkeep and then having to wait another turn cycle to recast it in more casual games, which is going to actually happen a lot more often. Its just a mechanic that is really fair most of the time, and only an issue in specific cases that could be solved by alternative means.

[pokken]

The big bad here is Prossh

It's really not just prossh or Food Chain. There are a massive number of generals who win the game instantly with infinite mana or other loops and removal means nothing against them if their infinite mana/combo outlet can't be answered by creature removal

There're subsets of generals who combo with stuff like Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar, and similar, who you can't possibly get a reprieve if they happen to set up an engine and then have enough mana to try again. There are generals like Chulane, Teller of Tales and Maelstrom Wanderer who make a bunch of mana as part of their normal mode of doing business to enable multi-cast combo turns.

Perhaps that is a case for going line by line and nailing every combo piece that goes with a general, but my treatise is basically:

If you have removal for their general and they try to use it to combo off, you should get a turn off to answer it.

And you shouldn't have to depend on the banlist to nail combo pieces Since we know for a fact they are explicitly not doing that anymore (see Staff of Domination

The splash damage in low powered games is *very* low. Most of the time recasting generals the same turn happens in higher power groups or when it happens in lower power groups it's someone bringing a gun to a knife fight. I used to recast Golos multiple times a turn quite a lot with my "low powered" Golos builds, for example, before I put together just how toxic it is to play generals like that in low power groups.

[onering]

I mean, answer the combo before you have to answer the general. The problem here isn't that you can cast a general more than once a turn, its that there's an infinite mana combo going off.

[pokken]

I mean, answer the combo before you have to answer the general. The problem here isn't that you can cast a general more than once a turn, its that there's an infinite mana combo going off.

Just a hard disagree here. Part of the thing that makes infinite combos so toxic in commander is that so many of them can use the general as an easy, always available outlet or as a component.

And many, many combos either 1) are not vulnerable to creature removal, or 2) require the general as the only creature component.

And in many scenarios you would hurt the infinite combo guy a lot more by killing (or countering) their outlet and leaving them with infinite mana and nothing to do with it, forcing them to be public enemy number 1 for a turn cycle vs. being knocked far out of contention.

I really cannot think of what is good about the way it is, where everyone has to run Gilded Drake and similar shenanigans to have any prayer of keeping problem commanders in check.

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In case you need a ton of examples

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy + Basalt Monolith
Zirda, the Dawnwaker + Basalt Monolith
Chulane, Teller of Tales +Shrieking Drake --> they can just activate chulane to protect the drake and drake costs frigging 1, so killing Chulane would make a lot more sense if they couldn't just recast it for 7.
Rings of Brighthearth combos out the wazoo (Deserted Temple etc. with coffers/cradle/nykthos)
Kodama of the East Tree + karoo shenanigans (of various sorts that do not require an additional creature that is vulnerable to removal, e.g. Scute Swarm at a certain point, Field of the Dead, etc.)

And the list just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on that's off the top of my head with no thought.

[RxPhantom]

I really cannot think of what is good about the way it is, where everyone has to run Gilded Drake and similar shenanigans to have any prayer of keeping problem commanders in check.

Ok, maybe you need to do this, but I don't think this is a universal problem in the format. As someone mentioned above, auras have been a solid, if inefficient way to deal with some of these commanders. And sometimes people combo off and win. I don't care for those lines of play, but the alternatives presented thus far in this thread range from inelegant to cumbersome to convoluted. So sure, we can craft some complicated rules baggage to hobble the Kinnans and Chulanes of the world, but the format would probably be worse off for it.

I like the tax as is, but...I wish tuck was never removed.

[onering]

Pokken, your solution doesn't actually solve kinnan or Zirda, except when you are countering them. Target either with STP and the controller finishes going off at instant speed. Kinnan and Chulane are problems evens without their combos, just as nonsense value engines and ramp, with Chulane being borderline bannable. Rings of Brighthearth should simply never be left alive. Kodama is significantly easier to manage because it doesn't go infinite with those cards, it just drops things from your hand rather than generating CA on its own. Even with Karoos you need a way to fill your hand to get really stupid with it.

In high powered metas I can see these things happening often enough to be frustrating, but that's kind of the point of high powered. Its not trickling down into 75% and below like Golos spam was. Even on mtgo, random Chulane bs is by far the most prominent, and as I said Chulane is BS even without the drake combo.

[pokken]

I like the tax as is, but...I wish tuck was never removed.

You like tuck, but are discomfited by the idea of losing a commander for a turn to normal removal? Can't say I can empathize with that.

Pokken, your solution doesn't actually solve kinnan or Zirda, except when you are countering them. Target either with STP and the controller finishes going off at instant speed. Kinnan and Chulane are problems evens without their combos, just as nonsense value engines and ramp, with Chulane being borderline bannable. Rings of Brighthearth should simply never be left alive. Kodama is significantly easier to manage because it doesn't go infinite with those cards, it just drops things from your hand rather than generating CA on its own. Even with Karoos you need a way to fill your hand to get really stupid with it.

In high powered metas I can see these things happening often enough to be frustrating, but that's kind of the point of high powered. Its not trickling down into 75% and below like Golos spam was. Even on mtgo, random Chulane bs is by far the most prominent, and as I said Chulane is BS even without the drake combo.

If you've played vs. kinnan/zirda, they almost always run them both out first and you can kill them in response to monolith (typically because the decks have a lot to gain from having them on the field, just using other abilities). In fact, you must kill them in response to monolith. It's a very awkward thing where once monolith resolves you can't do much of anything. So then they can just recast them and blow you out. It's a very rough sequencing problem.

Like I said, Kinnan/Zirda are just scratching the tip of the iceberg. There're so many generals who serve as infinite mana outlets. Food Chain absolutely happens in 75% in my experience.

Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith happens very regularly in 75% decks as well at least in my experience, and most decks that run it see a monolith.

Kodama of the East Tree + Simic Growth Chamber + Field of the Dead makes infinite zombos (you bounce the growth chamber and play it again from the zombie token, etc.) IIRC.

---

Bottom line for me anyway is that I think normal removal against commanders should be a little better than it is, across the entire spectrum of power levels, and I don't see the disadvantage (other than adding a new rule).

The rule I proposed, trying to formalize it a little, is basically:

When your commander is placed in the command zone (with any of the various rules), it is face down.
If your commander is face down in the command zone at the start of your turn you may turn it face up in the command zone as a special action during your turn.
(Worded like this to prevent any future things that cause you to skip your beginning phase, akin to Stasis, and to avoid enabling Stifle et. al. to interact)
If a commander would leave the command zone face down, turn it face up.
(Enable various 'leave the command zone' effects; optional, could change this).

There're some corner cases I'm missing I'm sure, but effectively if your commander dies you lose access to recasting it for a turn. You could adjust the rule to disable leaving the zone via effects but I think that's undesirable (as those effects are rare and usually pretty cool. Except that dragon that vomits out Ur-Dragon, ugh).

I can totally understand disagreement on this. I think commanders are becoming more and more of a problem as power creep continues. It already was pretty awful with Maelstrom Wanderer but it gets worse with every Chulane, Teller of Tales. The commander rule is simply too powerful as is.

YMMV of course. All I know is I (who advocated very strongly for tuck to be removed) find myself missing Hinder sometimes lately, and that's disturbing to me

Good stuff:

• gives some kind of reprieve from yuriko and derevi
• allows the play pattern of "kill commander in your upkeep, get a friggin turn off"
• stops Food Chain combos
• allows new avenues to interact with many infinite commander combos
• even gives you a turn off of Eminence commanders if they die. Bonus!
• fixes most of the problematic play patterns with Zacama, Primal Calamity
• even fixes some stuff about hasted commanders in end game situations.

[Jemolk]

@pokken -- I think I like @Maluko's suggestion better, with my slight errata that means you can pull your commander out of your library without actually seeing what any of the other cards are, and thus without shuffling, to answer your concern there. It has the bonus upside of avoiding Mindslaver or (in certain circumstances) Stifle being able to keep your commander permanently in exile, and also makes a few cool, niche things like Colfenor's Urn less absurdly dangerous to use on your commander. Granted, I've never been hit by either of the potential problems, but honestly just removing the ability to just keep a commander permanently exiled is a good idea IMHO. There appear to be people who think that's "fun" that I've run into in the occasional comment section, and I'd like to see that sort of "fun" discouraged (because it's not fun for anyone else, naturally), preemptively if possible.

[pokken]

@pokken -- I think I like @Maluko's suggestion better, with my slight errata that means you can pull your commander out of your library without actually seeing what any of the other cards are, and thus without shuffling, to answer your concern there. It has the bonus upside of avoiding Mindslaver or (in certain circumstances) Stifle being able to keep your commander permanently in exile, and also makes a few cool, niche things like Colfenor's Urn less absurdly dangerous to use on your commander. Granted, I've never been hit by either of the potential problems, but honestly just removing the ability to just keep a commander permanently exiled is a good idea IMHO. There appear to be people who think that's "fun" that I've run into in the occasional comment section, and I'd like to see that sort of "fun" discouraged (because it's not fun for anyone else, naturally), preemptively if possible.

At the beginning of your turn, if a commander card you own is not on the battlefield or in the command zone, you may search your library, hand, graveyard or exile for that card and put it in the command zone. If you searched your library this way, shuffle it.

Maluko's idea allows other people to reanimate your commander. That is...maybe desirable, but I don't particularly care for Reanimate becoming premium commander removal

Unless I am missing something about the details of the design.

edit: and not to pick nits but the phrasing is problematic in a few other ways (being phrased as a trigger, potentially giving you priority before your untap step, etc.).

[Jemolk]

Maluko's idea allows other people to reanimate your commander. That is...maybe desirable, but I don't particularly care for Reanimate becoming premium commander removal

Unless I am missing something about the details of the design.

edit: and not to pick nits but the phrasing is problematic in a few other ways (being phrased as a trigger, potentially giving you priority before your untap step, etc.).

Fair points. Personally, I think it's a decent idea to allow reanimation effects to steal commanders, though. That adds a class of cards from an additional color able to long-term remove commanders, which is not a thing black usually gets. You can already Mind Control someone's commander, and having that sort of thing be more accessible outside of blue seems good to me, even if it does have the effect of making some really good recursion spells even better. We could also probably find a way to phrase it not as a trigger as well.

Your is probably the less dramatic change by a solid margin, but I don't tend to consider that valuable on its own anyway, so that may be another point of potential disagreement. And Maluko's idea would probably have an impact on a significantly larger portion of games played, but I think the quality of the change (adding additional ways to remove a problem commander long-term, but removing completely the ability to just permanently make it impossible to use) is for the better.

[pokken]

Personally, I think it's a decent idea to allow reanimation effects to steal commanders, though.

The play pattern of everyone reanimating everyone's commanders after sweepers just feels like a really bad play experience to be typical to me. Animate Dead is a hugely popular and powerful card without the added benefit of splash commander removal.

I honestly don't find Gilded Drake to be a great play pattern either. It typically reads: "1U: Remove target player from being engaged in the game" a pretty high percentage of the time. Theft effects are some of the saltiest in commander and adding a whole new angle to them does not sound like a good plan.

[Jemolk]

Theft effects are some of the saltiest in commander and adding a whole new angle to them does not sound like a good plan.

Definitely fair enough in general. It's a valid concern. Although, I do wonder if having them become more prolific would have the effect of more people running things that get around them. But then, we don't want people to have to do that, do we? Yeah, probably not. I'm still not completely sold, but it's definitely a strong point to make.

[pokken]

Definitely fair enough in general. It's a valid concern. Although, I do wonder if having them become more prolific would have the effect of more people running things that get around them. But then, we don't want people to have to do that, do we? Yeah, probably not. I'm still not completely sold, but it's definitely a strong point to make.

The circle of life there basically is like...
everyone runs anti-theft effects
everyone runs theft and reanimator effects
every damn game involves someone stealing or reanimating a commander, and every now and then someone hits an anti-theft effect and gets'em

That feels like hyper inbred to me but I might be thinking of it the wrong way.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I'm going to propose a pretty radical solution to commander tax conundrums, using my 10+ years in the format as the basis. It's not going to be popular, but I've never courted popularity.

Change Commander tax to something more akin to the current state of companions, i.e. you begin the game with the general in the CZ, but after the first cast, it becomes just a regular card. It dies, it goes to the GY. It gets exiled, it stays exiled. No redirection to the CZ whatsoever. It is my belief that this would radically push EDH away from commander centric deck design and kills numerous infinite combos like food chain. IMHO, EDH is better when generals are a cherry on top of a bottom-up designed deck rather than top-down decks where resolving/exploiting the commander is the whole game.

Does this kill a lot of niche build-around decks? Absolutely. But it's a price I'd pay for a better overall format. I can remember 2010 when tuck effects forced players to build a deck rather than build a commander and I think the overall game experience was better then than now.

Alternatively, bring back tuck and up commander tax to 4. But the status quo is asinine imo.

[Jemolk]

I'm going to propose a pretty radical solution to commander tax conundrums, using my 10+ years in the format as the basis. It's not going to be popular, but I've never courted popularity.

Change Commander tax to something more akin to the current state of companions, i.e. you begin the game with the general in the CZ, but after the first cast, it becomes just a regular card. It dies, it goes to the GY. It gets exiled, it stays exiled. No redirection to the CZ whatsoever.

That's... yeah, I can't endorse that, just on the basis of how many cool decks would be absolutely decimated as collateral damage. I appreciate the aspect of having to build a deck and not just a commander, but this definitely goes much too far in the other direction for me. It throws out far too much good in order to get rid of the bad. It's certainly interesting as a suggestion, but I wouldn't even consider the status quo, broken as it regularly is, to be bad enough for this to constitute an improvement.

Though, that doesn't at all make it bad as a suggestion. "Just how big a problem do we think the status quo is" is a pretty worthwhile question to answer, and taking this suggestion seriously definitely forces us to answer it. And for me, the question of tweaking the commander tax is about how to improve something already pretty good, because we should always seek to improve things where possible, rather than overhauling something seriously messed up or replacing something rotten to the core.

[BeneTleilax]

bring back tuck and up commander tax to 4. But the status quo is asinine imo.

Maybe in your meta, people built highlander decks with a legend as companion, but mostly in my experience, people still built around their general and sometimes got absolutely blown out by the UW player. The meta was basically only as good as the threat assessment of the local UW guy. People want to build around legends, that's the appeal of this format, it's why it's so much more popular than CanLander. They will accept the risk of getting dumpstered by Hinder in order to build around a legend. If you don't want to build around a legend, I question why you aren't playing CanLander or one of the many other Highlander variants.

Also, the frequency of combo has remained pretty constant for me, if not declined since the tuck change. People ran way more tutors in casual, in my experience, to try to die less to Hinder. Once you're running tutors already, you want to do something if they stack up in your hand, and the best thing to do with them is give consistency to your "jank" combo. These were "casual" in the sense that they were fragile, weird and inconsistent, but tutors could often more than make up for those failings. In addition, the omnipresence of tutors changed the politics around them; someone firing off a tutor and passing turn wasn't a clear sign that they were setting up a combo, they might just be finding their general or trading a spare one in for some removal. Now that they are far less common at the casual level, someone tutoring and passing almost certainly becomes the threat, because it's assumed that they are planning to go off.

Repealing the tuck fix will also shift the EDH scene more towards goodstuff, and away from specific synergies. If you can no longer rely on your general and the specific synergies they offer, you're more likely to start relying on the best cards in your colors, homogenizing decks and play, even if diversifying the CZ specifically. I would not even be sure of that diversification, because guys like Chulane and Omnath are card-neutral if not positive against removal even if they stay dead, and Korvold has enough sac outlets to escape most tuck, so I could see tuck driving even more people that way.

This would be true of your other proposed rules change as well, except that that would also funnel more people towards reanimator.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Maybe in your meta, people built highlander decks with a legend as companion, but mostly in my experience, people still built around their general and sometimes got absolutely blown out by the UW player. The meta was basically only as good as the threat assessment of the local UW guy.

Sounds lame that your meta basically orbited one control player. I don't think that's a problem with tuck as it is how inbred your metagame appeared to be.

People want to build around legends, that's the appeal of this format, it's why it's so much more popular than CanLander. They will accept the risk of getting dumpstered by Hinder in order to build around a legend. If you don't want to build around a legend, I question why you aren't playing CanLander or one of the many other Highlander variants.

This might be relevant if the name of this topic was "What format would you rather be playing based on your preference?" Spoiler: it isn't. The question is thinking about changing the commander tax, and I answered. Please don't bring up these non-argument non-sequiturs, it's just wasting your time writing and mine reading while adding nothing beyond empty rhetoric. (Though Legacy is the goat format as long as you're asking)

Also, the frequency of combo has remained pretty constant for me, if not declined since the tuck change. People ran way more tutors in casual, in my experience, to try to die less to Hinder. Once you're running tutors already, you want to do something if they stack up in your hand, and the best thing to do with them is give consistency to your "jank" combo. These were "casual" in the sense that they were fragile, weird and inconsistent, but tutors could often more than make up for those failings. In addition, the omnipresence of tutors changed the politics around them; someone firing off a tutor and passing turn wasn't a clear sign that they were setting up a combo, they might just be finding their general or trading a spare one in for some removal. Now that they are far less common at the casual level, someone tutoring and passing almost certainly becomes the threat, because it's assumed that they are planning to go off.

It's nice that combo hasn't stormed your meta in the absence of tuck, but statistically, we can see that combo decks comprise more of the worldwide meta (based on data from EDHREC) than they did 10 years ago. Furthermore, many of the decks require their commander as a critical component. I argued that tuck might fix this. Tutors have also increased on average, so why not force people to look for their commanders with some of them? It would slow combo decks and deprive them of a tutor. You can also tutor once again without becoming auto-threated, as per your own argument. Seems like everyone wins to me.

Repealing the tuck fix will also shift the EDH scene more towards goodstuff, and away from specific synergies. If you can no longer rely on your general and the specific synergies they offer, you're more likely to start relying on the best cards in your colors, homogenizing decks and play, even if diversifying the CZ specifically. I would not even be sure of that diversification, because guys like Chulane and Omnath are card-neutral if not positive against removal even if they stay dead, and Korvold has enough sac outlets to escape most tuck, so I could see tuck driving even more people that way.

I don't think this catastrophizing is really useful to the topic, but whatever. I disagree that people would automatically move to the worst offenders, that didn't happen in 2010, it won't happen again because EDH isn't that kind of format. Furthermore, the commanders you mentioned are typically very commander-oriented builds. I somehow doubt they'd still be top dogs without the ability to cast them with impunity and 99 cards centralized around their abilities. I do think the format in general would play more goodstuff, as it once already did, but that didn't end the world either.

This would be true of your other proposed rules change as well, except that that would also funnel more people towards reanimator.

Again, I doubt it. But reanimator rules, let's see more of it.

[BeneTleilax]

Sounds lame that your meta basically orbited one control player. I don't think that's a problem with tuck as it is how inbred your metagame appeared to be.

My meta had pretty high turnover, but within each game, we only saw one or two tuck effects go off against a general, so the placement of those really mattered. Because of how limited the playable tuck effects were in color and number, and because even then tucking generals was considered something of a dick move, they were never common. If the guy who happened to draw a tuck one game had bad threat assessment, it sucked for everyone.

This might be relevant if the name of this topic was "What format would you rather be playing based on your preference?" Spoiler: it isn't. The question is thinking about changing the commander tax, and I answered.

If I posted in the Legacy thread that most cards printed before 8th edition should be banned by default, it would be germane for someone to ask if I might rather just play Modern. The same applies here. Being facetious here does not help your argument. If you're trying to terraform EDH into highlander, which you certainly seem to be, why don't you play highlander and let us play the format of our own choosing? If there is a reason you want the particular hybrid of EDH and highlander you propose over either, then give it.

(based on data from EDHREC) than they did 10 years ago

EDHREC only goes back to 2014, so please tell me how you're getting data from 10 years ago.

I disagree that people would automatically move to the worst offenders, that didn't happen in 2010

That wasn't what I was saying. I was saying that a shift toward goodstuff will incentivize a shift towards the generals that incentivize it, and those right now are the generals that draw you cards for doing whatever you do anyways (playing creatures, sacrificing stuff, playing lands, etc). I never said everyone would drop what they're doing and play Chulane, just that on the whole, players will be more drawn to generals that give card advantage on ETB and/or reward goodstuff decks for just doing what they do. The lists of "generals that give CA on ETB and/or reward goodstuff" and "problem generals" look pretty close to me. If the tuck counterspells see high uptake, maybe the Eldrazi Titans will see more use as well.

[pokken]

Definitely do not agree with anything super drastic like getting rid of the command zone state based effect. The game is already extremely biased toward cheap commanders and partner commanders, and changes like that push it much further in that direction.

My proposal does the opposite - which is part of why I phrased it the way I did. Removal is much, much worse against cheap commanders and there is at best a modest correlation between commander power level and mana cost.

(And that is before we even get into all the absurdly ridiculous side effects you get from removing the CZ. Things like:

- Every highly resilient commander gets a massive power up (including theros gods, and hexproof anything)
- Every recursive commander gets a massive powerup (e.g. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
- (As mentioned by someone else) A huge upgrade to reanimation effect power and graveyard shenanigans, as well as the sac outlet poweru
- Deveri and Yuriko as essentially banned.
- Massive powerup for eminence commanders (and The Ur-Dragon is getting borderline problematic as is).
- effects like Command Beacon are just deleted from the format.


The 4 mana commander tax - I don't even know what to say to that, it's just way too much. May as well make Lands the only archetype in the format other than Goodstuff, as Command Beacon and Volrath's Stronghold become comically overpowered.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

My meta had pretty high turnover, but within each game, we only saw one or two tuck effects go off against a general, so the placement of those really mattered. Because of how limited the playable tuck effects were in color and number, and because even then tucking generals was considered something of a dick move, they were never common. If the guy who happened to draw a tuck one game had bad threat assessment, it sucked for everyone.

You're contradicting yourself. You referred to a specific UW player, I addressed that, now you say this player didn't exist/only periodically appeared? Which is it then? Was the UW player a tangible boogeyman or not? It can't be both.

If I posted in the Legacy thread that most cards printed before 8th edition should be banned by default, it would be germane for someone to ask if I might rather just play Modern. The same applies here. Being facetious here does not help your argument. If you're trying to terraform EDH into highlander, which you certainly seem to be, why don't you play highlander and let us play the format of our own choosing? If there is a reason you want the particular hybrid of EDH and highlander you propose over either, then give it.

"If you don't like it, leave it" might be an argument that works for Merle Haggard, but you are not he. Once again: the topic is about what to do about commander tax, which I answered. If you're in a legacy thread, and someone says, "we should ban brainstorm to improve format health", telling people to GTFO and let your play your brainstorm format isn't moving the dialogue along; you're just screaming at the void that the people who disagree with you should go away. It really doesn't dignify a response, so I won't from this point forward.

EDHREC only goes back to 2014, so please tell me how you're getting data from 10 years ago.

Well, there's this thing called the internet, and it's a wonderful tool for amassing data. EDHrec only goes back to 2014, true, but that aggregate site did not mark the dawn of posting decklists. Shall I go find you some lists circa 2010 to prove it?

That wasn't what I was saying. I was saying that a shift toward goodstuff will incentivize a shift towards the generals that incentivize it, and those right now are the generals that draw you cards for doing whatever you do anyways (playing creatures, sacrificing stuff, playing lands, etc). I never said everyone would drop what they're doing and play Chulane, just that on the whole, players will be more drawn to generals that give card advantage on ETB and/or reward goodstuff decks for just doing what they do. The lists of "generals that give CA on ETB and/or reward goodstuff" and "problem generals" look pretty close to me. If the tuck counterspells see high uptake, maybe the Eldrazi Titans will see more use as well.

I disagree heartily. Most of those "goodstuff CA" generals are only problematic because they can never really go away. With one cast to work with, I think they'd become less problematic and open more things to compete with them. Consider game theory, eh? I sit down with Korvold under the draconian ruleset I provided earlier, and my general's never gonna last a turn given common, correct threat assessment, and if that's the case, I'm better off playing something less noticeable or stickier to the board rather than never get to actually play my general because of its threat profile. Speculation goes both ways.


EDIT: @pokken @Jemolk I did say it was a radical idea. Someone's gotta represent the heavy-handed response in these discussions. A wide field of opinions adds a nice je ne sais quoi to a good debate.

[Jemolk]

EDIT: @pokken @Jemolk I did say it was a radical idea. Someone's gotta represent the heavy-handed response in these discussions. A wide field of opinions adds a nice je ne sais quoi to a good debate.

I don't disagree, to be clear, and often enough, I'm the one doing it. I just don't think this situation calls for such a dramatic solution -- but just how drastic a solution is called for, and how overwhelming the problem is, is certainly a worthwhile question to answer.

Speaking as someone who does think the current position is mostly pretty good, though admittedly it could use some improvements, I suppose I ought to justify my position, huh? Well, here goes, then. I'm speaking here from mostly personal experience, sadly. It's anecdotal, and nowhere near comprehensive enough to function as any sort of statistical analysis of overall trends (though it should be noted that even EDHRec isn't that useful for statistical analysis of actual play patterns). Even so, I hope it's worth some insight here.

I've been building decks around themes and concepts since I started the with format. However, I've noted a great deal of variance in how much other people follow suit. In my early days, a theme had to have significant non-commander support to be viable because of the tuck rule, which didn't seem, over all, to be a terrible thing at the time. However, it caused everyone to want to run a glut of tutors to grab their commander out of their deck in case it was tucked. Every blue deck ran Hinder and Spell Crumple, no matter what. Every red deck ran Gamble, because it could be relied on 100% to fetch your commander if it had been tucked. And every black deck ran Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor if they could afford it, and similar. I used to think that all the tuck was keeping problem commanders in check, and was alarmed when the rule was changed. And you know what I observed after that? ...People started building fairer, more niche, more oddball decks with wonky conditions. I was able to change my decks to add to their flavorfulness and strip out universally necessary staples. The incidence of goodstuff decks went down, not up as I had feared it would.

Since that time, relatively goodstuff-style decks have seen an occasional resurgence, mainly around the time that commanders like Yarok, Muldrotha, Korvold, or Golos were released. And every time, as we got further from release, people got bored of them, and they went away again. Meanwhile, most of the cool jank hung around far better.

So what do I take away from this? I take away that the problem with goodstuff commanders is not that they can't be effectively removed, but that WotC has been spam-printing the wretched things one after another for years now, and each one has reliably made some people think, often incorrectly, that it would be cool to build. The last of these that I can think of is 4c Omnath from Zendikar Rising. Maybe Koma qualifies, but I've never seen him, so I can't say. Regardless, the point is, I think that trend is, thankfully, coming to an end. So... doing something to the commander tax in a desperate bid to freeze out that nonsense despite enormous collateral damage, when it seems to be beginning to pass on its own, seems misguided to me. But maybe this is overly optimistic. As I said, I can only speak to my own experience here.