Rule 7 Thoughts

[ISBPathfinder]

"If a commander is in a graveyard or in exile and that card was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone. If a commander would be put into its owner's hand or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event."

In another thread we were talking about the old days of clones and tuck and it got me thinking a little about how they have bandaged this rule a few times now. There was also the shift that allowed for commanders to die which is a mostly upgrade functionality allowing some commanders who previously didn't function to work. That said though a large part of the reason they changed the ruling back in the day to remove commander tuck was to allow more commander centric tactics to be able to function better and it did do a really good job. That said though, there are still two big outliers that this rule didn't address and that was Theft and Transform effects.

Now, I am all for allowing counter play to commanders but I can't even tell you how many times I have seen people get completely hard locked by a transform or theft effect. I have in the last year eaten several of these effects while playing colors that don't have answers to them. I am not trying to argue that they do or don't feel bad but I am curious why we have a rule #7 that is super wordy and yet leaves out several effects that can be almost as degenerate depending on what you are playing.

I think Rule #7 could be redone as:

"Once a turn you move your commander from anywhere to the command zone. (updated from post 3)"

My point is that most of what rule #7 outlines is reloading the commander, tuck protection, and death trigger alowment. You can easily cut several of these in with less words while also giving more protection from transform and theft which my argument here is that they primarily hurt decks with less colors as decks with more colors tend to have options to get out of these issues.

Beyond that changing the rules to allow commanders to go to the command zone at any time would open up better recursion options for commanders. As it stands right now if you have a Reanimate effect putting your commander into the graveyard and leaving them there is a risk if anyone can counterspell you as you get stuck in the graveyard. This further weakens blue which if you ask me is probably a good change on top of hitting transform and theft which blue can also use.

I wouldn't say that transform and theft are as big of a problem as tuck once was but I also don't see why they are still allowed to disrupt at the level they can. They aren't really a problem for decks in good colors but when someone transforms your commander into a land / indestructible thing in mono red it can be a huge problem. I just don't really see much of a reason not to simplify the rules in a way that probably helps mono red while removing some currently sort of toxic answers. Green white and blue are probably the colors least impacted by these effects being used on them while also being the most common to likely implement them on others. With this proposed change all of those effects can still effectively result in a commander kill the same way that the tuck rule still technically can be used on commanders I just don't see a reason not to bring them all in line together.

If I am overlooking something that would break in half with this proposed change I would love to hear about it as well as any other discussion on this topic.

[pokken]

I think I am on board with this primarily for the same reason as I hated tuck. Theft and transform are bandaid mechanics and exist disproportionately in two colors. "Dealing with commanders permanently" is not a fair color identity division.

At this point I think people need to have serious conversations about how powerful of a commander is reasonable to play at a table. Some commanders just create awful experiences. Transform and theft bandaid that and make people think it's ok.

I had someone Oubliette my commander for the first time recently and I just sat there and lost. Then he lost because he chose the wrong person to lock out. Why? Because you can't critical mass these effects. Randomly drawing one of a handful of a very small pool of cards is not an answer to problem commanders.

It's another giant benefit to blue that does not need to be there. It's bad enough.

I do think it would do well to combine this with a "you may only cast your commander from the zone once per turn." A clear and simple fix for a lot of %$#%$#%.

[ISBPathfinder]

I think I am on board with this primarily for the same reason as I hated tuck. Theft and transform are bandaid mechanics and exist disproportionately in two colors. "Dealing with commanders permanently" is not a fair color identity division.

At this point I think people need to have serious conversations about how powerful of a commander is reasonable to play at a table. Some commanders just create awful experiences. Transform and theft bandaid that and make people think it's ok.

I had someone Oubliette my commander for the first time recently and I just sat there and lost. Then he lost because he chose the wrong person to lock out. Why? Because you can't critical mass these effects. Randomly drawing one of a handful of a very small pool of cards is not an answer to problem commanders.

It's another giant benefit to blue that does not need to be there. It's bad enough.

I do think it would do well to combine this with a "you may only cast your commander from the zone once per turn." A clear and simple fix for a lot of %$#%$#%.

You could also shift that to a "Once a turn you move your commander to the command zone." just from a simplifying language standpoint. It would still stop some Food Chain things. Good call out on Oubliette as well as its another super annoying effect.

I also agree that using degenerate answers as the means to deal with degenerate commanders isn't great. I ate a T2 Darksteel Mutation while playing a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer deck a while back. In like 5 games I never once even killed a player but for some reason I needed to be put out to die on turn 2 playing mono red....

[pokken]

Yeah if you don't limit it it makes every commander that draws cards or deals damage an infinite mana outlet which is a problem.

[Mookie]

From a rules perspective, I'll call out that there are probably issues with putting commanders into the command zone from libraries - at the very least, it would introduce additional shuffling if you don't have the option of using a replacement effect to make it so they don't ever enter the library zone in the first place.

From an ideological perspective, I do think there should be counterplay to shut down problematic commanders. I won't necessarily say that Oubliette / Imprisoned in the Moon / theft effects are a particularly good answer (particularly against commanders with ETB / cast triggers), but they're what we have. That said, I am in the 'if your commander is dealt with and your entire deck falls apart, you have only yourself to blame' camp, and I will concede the point that people that prefer more commander-centric decks may have a different opinion.

[ISBPathfinder]

From a rules perspective, I'll call out that there are probably issues with putting commanders into the command zone from libraries - at the very least, it would introduce additional shuffling if you don't have the option of using a replacement effect to make it so they don't ever enter the library zone in the first place.

From an ideological perspective, I do think there should be counterplay to shut down problematic commanders. I won't necessarily say that Oubliette / Imprisoned in the Moon / theft effects are a particularly good answer (particularly against commanders with ETB / cast triggers), but they're what we have. That said, I am in the 'if your commander is dealt with and your entire deck falls apart, you have only yourself to blame' camp, and I will concede the point that people that prefer more commander-centric decks may have a different opinion.

To some degree though you could use that same argument to say that commander tuck should still exist. Generally speaking most of these answers benefit decks with diverse tools to remove them and tutors to find these answers and answers for them when they happen to you. Back when tuck existed mono red, mono white, and boros were almost completely unplayable due to lack of means to get out of tuck.

If you look at most of the degenerate commanders today as well which are ideally what you would use a tuck / theft / transform answer on they are often using lots of colors and access to tutors and good answers. They tend to impact them the least and they tend to punish the deck that shouldn't really be drawing that hate in the first place. I know back when tuck was a thing I would play Bant all the time because they had both tutors and tuck and they just pushed people around because they played goodstuff well and had access to everything while shutting opponents down left and right.

Its hard to have mono red decks that don't fall apart to their commanders getting transformed. I get your comment on the problem of some commanders and the need to answer them but I feel like these effects punish decks that are poorly positioned against them far more than they do the problem commanders.

[WizardMN]

That said, I am in the 'if your commander is dealt with and your entire deck falls apart, you have only yourself to blame' camp, and I will concede the point that people that prefer more commander-centric decks may have a different opinion.

I think I am more in this camp to be honest. And I do prefer more Commander Centric decks (just see my comments on my test build of Marchesa and my Jenara threads). But I also believe, especially with a variety of "problematic" commanders, that there should be some answer somewhere. I do admit that the problem with tuck comes up here: not all colors easily have access to these effects but these are a bit easier to deal with in general than Tuck.

For example, there aren't a ton of transformation effects that absolutely shut out a commander. The two main ones I can think of are Imprisoned in the Moon and Song of the Dryads. And these are more of a problem simply because they turn the creatures into lands which aren't the easiest to deal with. At least with most others, you can still sac, destroy, or bounce the commander itself even if the Aura can't be removed. Sure, it is bothersome, but it is doable. Theft effects fall into the same camp where almost all colors can get rid of a single creature in order to get their commander back.

I am certainly not suggesting that these can always be dealt with nor am I suggesting that these effects lead to fun play patterns. But I do think going too far into the other direction and basically saying Commanders are sacrosanct and cannot be properly dealt with at all leads to far worse games than a few here and there where someone got locked out.

At the very least, Red has 2 pretty good cards that can deal with these situations: Chaos Warp and Wild Magic Surge. Both of which I would expect would be in mono red decks anyway. Worst case, Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast both deal with Imprison (though they are a bit more narrow so not the greatest to add in every deck).

In the end, I am firmly in the camp of not wanting Commanders to be able to run unchecked. Most aren't powerful enough that repetition is really that much of a problem but some can be and having some way to deal with them on a more "permanent" basis isn't the worst case. And they are more easily gotten back compared to the finality of tuck. Still doesn't feel great of course, and I am not suggesting it is absolutely easy to get around, but I think these types of effects fall into a more reasonable middle ground than Tuck does.

[pokken]

I don't understand the desire to see a commander dealt with even semipermanently at all. I like seeing the commander. If the deck is too annoying or powerful for the pod, don't play it (or against it).

It is much the way that archenemy is used as the alternative to dealing with problematic decks. If the solution is to gang up on someone and run them out of the game every time, the real issue is the power level.

If the only way you can stomach playing against Billy's Winota, Joiner of Forces deck is if you can randomly draw a card that specifically eliminates him from the game on its own a percentage of the time, the problem is the power level.

It's a gimmick. A gimmick that's overly represented in blue creating stupid asymmetry.

[ISBPathfinder]

Also, there are other ways in which you can indirectly deal with commanders such as Pithing Needle, Torpor Orb, Rest in Peace that don't remove them from play. Just saying from the standpoint of still having answers for commanders. I also think that just removing a commander while applying pressure is completely fine. Killing your opponent is always a good answer to problem commanders.

[Legend]

Would it still be a problem if red could deal with enchantments?

[ISBPathfinder]

Would it still be a problem if red could deal with enchantments?

Technically red can deal with enchantments (Chaos Warp / Wild Magic Surge). They can also potentially have sac outlets and or some colorless answers. Because they can run a few answers though isn't the same as it not being an issue for them. Its my own personal take but a lot of the better decks end up being in more than one color and often pair together a few colors and have access to good tutors and generic answers. Less competitive concepts will generally be in worse colors with worse draw and ramp and often tuck and theft hurt less competitive concepts more than they do more competitive ones. I get that you can argue with people socially that they shouldn't do these things to the mono red player but honestly a lot of people play based on the player rather than the boardstate. I can't even tell you how many playgroups I have just blindly received infinite targeting from some player I don't know that I have ever played against before because he has some perception of me I didn't even know about.

I am getting a little off of your question though. I don't know that I would classify tuck and theft as a problem but I didn't really think anything of tuck existing or Primeval Titan being legal until they changed. Even if you made a change and somewhat of killed theft and transform effects it would still make them be answers and I think there are some concepts such as enchantress concepts that may still want to play transform effects as answers. There is also an advantage of cleaning up the wording on rule #7 as well because the current wording isn't super clean so I would say that by cutting some of these effects out you also work towards simplifying the rules in a way that the intention of the format is probably retained better while the rules being clearer.

[pokken]

Would it still be a problem if red could deal with enchantments?

Theft is included here. Lots of theft is on creatures and sorceries. Blatant Thievery for example. No fix for that but to remove your commander and then recast it.

[Legend]

Would it still be a problem if red could deal with enchantments?

Theft is included here. Lots of theft is on creatures and sorceries. Blatant Thievery for example. No fix for that but to remove your commander and then recast it.

Then why mention red's impotence in the first place?

No fix for that but to remove your commander and then recast it.

I think dies-to-removal has a case here anyways since every color has removal. And if a commander is particularly resilient, well then taste your own medicine.

[materpillar]

Wasn't the tuck rule changed because basically only blue had access to tuck? The only counter play to Hinder is Counterspell?

The lock effects like Oubliette, Imprisoned in the Moon, Darksteel Mutation and Song of the Dryads are actually spread out pretty evenly (lol R) and are permanent based and thus much easier to interact with. Wizards has been pretty good about sprinkling enchantment hate into BR.

With those lock effects and theft effects at the absolute worst case scenario you can slow roll your commander and hold up removal to kill your own commander in response. Which sucks and is a terrible line but it is counterplay that every deck has unlike Hinder which basically required you to be playing u to actually be able to interact.

I don't understand the desire to see a commander dealt with even semipermanently at all. I like seeing the commander. If the deck is too annoying or powerful for the pod, don't play it (or against it).

I don't enjoy playing wack-a-mole having to kill Chulane, Teller of Tales or Korvold, Fae-Cursed King every other turn before it's owner untaps or immediately losing the game to an utter flood of value. In my experience it's a lot simpler and easier to Oubliette a Yarok, the Desecrated than it is to explain to the Yarok Deck's owner why you really don't feel like playing against their favorite Yarok deck. I've also found roughly no difference in the Yarok Deck owner's reactions between Oubliette your commander and Swords to Plowshares your commander for the 3rd time in 3 turns because I'm literally never letting you untap with that obnoxious card, I know you're running Palinchron.

[pokken]

It's still blue dunking on every other color because of format specific rules that favor blue. The format specific rules favoring blue are not intrinsically good. They just are.

@materpillar much like most of this kinda thing blue has 15 playable theft and transform effects and each other color has one or two. It's actually worse for theft effects than tuck since white had near parity with tuck count.

I don't enjoy playing wack-a-mole having to kill Chulane, Teller of Tales or Korvold, Fae-Cursed King every other turn before it's owner untaps or immediately losing the game

Then stop playin against those commanders. When you Oubliette a fair commander just because you can, that's the collateral damage here.

The problem is people playing overpowered %$#%$#% not an intrinsic need for commander removal.

Most commanders cease being correct to recast after they die a couple times. The ones that don't are the problem with this format, full stop.

[darrenhabib]

"Once a turn you move your commander from anywhere to the command zone."

So you propose you can do this anytime you have priority in any players turn?
I guess the first thing that will happen is that people will always leave their commander in the graveyard by default. It makes sense even if you don't run reanimation spells, because there is the possibility that others play mass reanimation like Living Death.
If there is literally no downside to leaving it in graveyard then there is no reason not to. If you have your commander in graveyard and somebody else goes to reanimate it, then you'd just be able to miss-target it by moving to command zone.
I think having all commanders in the graveyard at all times (after dying) would make commander feel less like commander.

It allows players to specifically miss-target cards on your commander, so let's say there is a draw effect on a removal card then you could use this rule to make it fizzle.

As Mookie pointed out being able to shuffle your deck at anytime if your commander goes to library is pretty awkward also.

It opens up commanders with symmetrical effects to use just for yourself. For example you can cast Edric, Spymaster of Trest and get a big draw and then move him to command zone before opponents gets the effect.

You can specifically use "exchange" effects to use your commander as the swap to then just put back into command zone.

I personally think it opens up too many flaws into how it would be used as opposed to trying to stop a particular mechanic from working.

[pokken]

i think Darren got it. Just not rules practical in this form.

Once you start fixing the corner cases it will get messy.

I'm not sure if there is a side effect free way to do this.

Making it sorcery speed fixes most problems but the exchange effect thing is really awful. Could have it cost what the current commander tax would be?

But the complexity starts to add up

[Rumpy5897]

At the time the current wording of the rule got announced, the RC mentioned they tried a version where the player could move the commander from the bin/exile to the command zone at will. This led to the dynamic Darren outlined, where the commanders just sat around in the bin opportunistically waiting for something.

That said, any sort of rule tampering will lead to weird corner cases. Necromantic Selection is now suddenly a way to steal a commander due to current rule 7 wording. The symmetry breaking angle convinces me more than the swap stuff angle, but you'd think that in both cases the need to recast the commander with increasing tax would balance things out to an extent.

This won't properly solve the issue of possibly getting locked off a commander though. Nevermore sorta stuff still exists. Also at some point you can start setting your crosshairs on effective hate pieces like Torpor Orb.

Also I really like the format very commander-dependent and routinely cut responsible backup lines because I find them boring in practice However, I tend to operate at a benign power level.

[ISBPathfinder]

Keep in mind with a lot of effects like Torpor Orb you have to get lucky into opponents being on those strategies. Torpor Orb can be a sweet hate card if your meta runs a lot of ETB but I can name 5 games where it would do almost nothing for every game it does something in my recent metas. You don't have to get lucky to have theft / transform work against opponents. Even with Nevermore you have to get it before someone's commander is in play or play it alongside a lot of kill effects. My point is that a lot of the cards that still affect commanders can be a lot more situational on what they affect and have a real cost to run them where as most of the transform and theft effects generically work well against most strategies.

Nevermore is probably the closest to theft / transform but its also pairing a removal effect with itself and in this case you are generally accomplishing half as much as what a single effect does currently.

My point in a lot of this is that theft and transform effects are a little over strong and have very little drawback to running them. The only real reason not to run them is because well... they are really lame. While it might feel good when you get to cast them on some busted commander it can also feel really lame when you hit them on a commander and that player is out of the game period.

[Rumpy5897]

I was trying to paint a slippery slope where there will always be something around capable of ruining your day This class of effect was brought up earlier in the discussion, and if it somehow becomes impossible to shut off commanders via current means then people would start complaining about those instead on similar grounds. Every now and then you hear of final forms of such groups, with removal banned and whatnot. So yeah, something is always going to be a big bad. Question is where do we end whacking the big bads.

Having thought about it a bit more, being able to just arbitrarily yeet your commander into the command zone from the battlefield at your leisure just feels weird. It could lead to some interesting deals/mind games with Edric, where you're incentivised to not have to cough up for recasting him but also to not give your foes too many cards. Who does what and how does it end? But the fact you can just despawn Edric whenever with no sac outlet or anything is strange.

[pokken]

Having to pay the tax at sorcery speed if it's on the battlefield feels like it would fix most of that stuff. (So you wind up double taxed for using your "recover commander" mechanism if it's from the battlefield).

(And it would scale so if your tax is now 6 having to pay 6 to recover and then 6 more to recast would be pretty prohibitive)

Recall commander: up to once a turn, If your commander is on the battlefield you may spend the current tax amount at any time you could play a sorcery as a special action to return it to the command zone

[ISBPathfinder]

I don't buy the slippery slope argument. There are so many cards that probably should be banned that are just socially unacceptable that they rely on players just not playing to regulate. The RC is great, I just think they have a no change is best approach that I have strongly disagreed with since fire design started. I would much rather prompt a slope of changes right now than sitting on our thumbs.

I think its probably more important to ask yourself if you want commander disruption to exist to that level. Tuck was removed because it was seen as something they didn't want to exist and it depends a lot on your opponents deck as to how much of a variance from tuck theft and transform really are. Its not really a slippery slope in my mind its a related disruption and I don't think its that big of an argument to say that tutoring for your commander can be just as much of a pain as tutoring for an answer to the transform / theft effect. It is true that answers for theft and tuck can be more plentiful but it depends a lot on what you are playing and what sort of effect was used.

Every argument against theft and tuck going away seems to revolve around saying what about busted commander X/Y? The answer I have is probably for better communication because I can always list another 5 commanders that you probably shouldn't play without opponents playing a similar power level. If nobody has tuck / theft how is this really different if you are playing on a similar power level? If you are playing a bad deck with theft / transform and they are playing a good deck with good colors and a busted strategy its probably still going to end the same.

[Rumpy5897]

It's not exactly weird to complain about things that stopped one's deck in its tracks and led to someone else winning. If it's not going to be the commander turning into a tree, it's going to be something else. I might have misused the term "slippery slope", my overarching idea is that there will always be someone unhappy with the state of the format. Hence the mention of the bizarre groups that take this too far.

In terms of looking at phasing and auras... somehow the latter doesn't really bother me, weirdly enough. However, phasing does bug me somehow. There's little functional difference in outcome between Oubliette and Imprisoned in the Moon, yet the former kind of feels more like an Oblivion Ring to me conceptually for some reason. Huh.

I like the elegance of the original idea. How about a not exactly future-proof, kinda clunky hotfix that removes the "Edric sac" option?

Once a turn, you may move your commander from anywhere to the command zone. You may not perform this action if your commander is on the battlefield under your control and is not enchanted by any Auras you do not control.

[pokken]

There are a lot of non aura theft effects unfortunately. Agent of Treachery a menace

[Rumpy5897]

Well, then it's not on the battlefield under your control and you can ship it off to the command zone

That said, there's always a loophole, isn't there. This one is called Sludge Monster.