MTGNexus

My playgroup have come up with an idea (though I'm sure other people have had the same) - colourshifting commanders to create new variants of decks that haven't been seen before.

The general rule of thumb, is to swap the colours of a general - ie, Red/Blue/Black would become Green/White. But this is a guideline only, and for things like monocolour and colourless generals, we limit it to 3 colour.

Its easy to take a strong commander, give it strong colours, and make a superpowered deck. But thats not the point. The idea is to make a commander who plays "differently, but similar" to the original, and to be weaker than what can already be achieved in the format.

Just wanted to post up the idea and some examples that I put together. Its actually quite fun researching a character or other lore to try and create an alternative colour version. What do you guys think?
(Edit: Just noticed Niv Mizzet's name - doh!)

The problem with colorshifting is it breaks what little semblance of color pie EDH still has.

From my experience, simply running blue breaks the colour pie as it is.

The main thing imo is to have fun an express yourself. Having this type of control over the general helps facilitate that.

Jivanmukta wrote: ↑

4 years ago

The problem with colorshifting is it breaks what little semblance of color pie EDH still has.

On the contrary, it simply substitutes in a new one, as it excludes the commander actual colors in the same way regular commander excludes other colors. This concept is interesting. Maybe not as deep as it seems at first blush, but there could be some really cool things. Like, Azami is a boring deck to build, but without access to blue? What would a Gruul Azami look like? Or OP's example, Rakdos Arcades? A Red Black Walls deck, seems fun. I'd think this would be best enjoyed as a planar chaos style format with ONLY color shifted commanders.

Wouldn't it be more interesting if the rule was something like:
1. run a normal general as per normal EDH rules
2. the other 99 cards in the deck CANNOT have colours associated with the general's colour, including land types.
3. Have fun.

So if one were to build chromium, the other 99 cards can only be green or red. so you can use stuff like lure, force your opponent to mass block chromium, then fling it.

That'd open up a lot of really weird game-space that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Can you imagine a "mono red" avacyn, angel of hope aggro? that'd be super weird. Or a GB sevienne 'graveyard' deck? Possibly broken. But also probably hilarious and fun.

Thats pretty much what colourshift is, save the "how do you cast Chromium without relevant lands" questions. Instead of forcing any-colour rocks or enchantment ramp into every deck, we change Chromium's colour.

Basically the Planar Chaos set with whichever commander you want to play. I've done something like this by building a completely colorless deck for a 5C commander.