Hey I was wondering for the commander rule with a commander going to exile, could it possibly be modified a little? For example if a commander is under the effects of oblivion ring or helvaultit shouldn't be able to go back to the command zone because it's not permanently exiled and technically it's stuck inside the helvault or oblivion ring. The commander zone is designed to save a commander card from certain doom, but in the case of cards such as oblivion ring and helvault they are stuck inside of a prison.

I was wondering could you possibly add in something like, "if the commander is being exiled by an on going effect of a card in play, you may not have him go to the commander zone. If the card leaves play, you may have him put in the commander zone since there is no longer a way to get rid of the card exiling your commander."

If not tell me why this would be a bad Idea to a rule change.

This would mean more decks that look like this:

Trigger on stack, remove permanent causing the trigger.
Commander exiled forever.

Joz actually said something smart for once. Who knew?

Also, the wording of such a rule is impossible since there is technically no such thing as an ongoing exile effect. Technically, Oblivion ring is just an exile effect, there really isn't any keyword or set of descriptions that could capture what you want. It would be far too clunky of wording to make an official change.

However, if you want, you can houserule it the way you want, preferably by way of listing which specific cards have this errata. However, this is too clunky, abusable, and frankly unnecessary of a change to officially make to the format, especially for the tiny amount of flavor. In fact, you could simply look at it as the commander is just able to escape the prison, as he would death or exile.

The rules already work like this 99% of the time. Putting your Commander into your Command Zone is an optional replacement effect. If your Commander is being exiled by O-Ring's effect, you can choose whether to send it to your Command Zone instead or let it get exiled as normal. If you do let it get exiled, you get it back when O-Ring dies, unless an opponent takes advantage of Stifle /Time Stop/Sundial of the Infinite tricks to keep it exiled forever. If you choose the Command Zone instead, you don't get it back if the O-Ring dies, but you do get to cast it again as normal (with an additional 2 mana tax).

It would be a little clunky, but not impossible.

The abilities on O-Ring are linked abilities, so you just have to create a rule that references an effect that would exile a commander, and the source of that effect has a linked ability that returns it from exile. Although, that just handles things like O-Ring and Fiend Hunter ... other stuff that just blinks your commander wouldn't be affected, nor would stuff like Astral Slide.

But yeah - what Joz said is still applicable.

Plus this kinda flies in the face of what the command zone replacement rule is trying to accomplish to begin with - to keep the commander available. Green players wouldn't give a crap, because they can usually nuke an O-ring all day long, but what does the red/black player do when you O-ring their general? Too often the answer would be "never see their general again", and that's why this is a terrible, terrible idea, even if you made the rules work and even if you solved the "stack trigger, be an asshole" loophole.

Yes, I'm not saying to remove the commander. I'm saying in the case of oblivion ring, where the permanent it's self is on the field, the effect seems more like a prison, rather than an exile. If the commander is going to be exiled forever, they should have the option to send him to the commander zone. What I'm saying is for cards such as oblivion ring and helvault when they leave play and the commander can't come back into play, they should be allowed to be moved to the commander zone.

Example:

A player exiles a commander with helvault. The commander exiled with helvault can't go to the commander zone since the helvault is it's' prison. the helvault gets exiled (not put into the graveyard) so the commander can not either stay in exile, or be moved to the commander zone.

See I'm not trying to have a way to remove the commander, but rather change the interactions with cards such as fiend hunter, oblivion ring, and helvault. The cards themselves, aren't exiles that last forever, but they seem rather more like "prison" cards. It just seems rather unfair in the case of helvault that if I choose to exile my commander instead of sending him to the commander, some guy exiles the helvault right before i can destroy it.

I dunno, maybe I should post on the MTG forums again, they made changes last time I talked to them about clones.

I'll be honest, this idea is awful. I understand the intended goal, but it would never be applicable due to game mechanics/color balance. The basic rules of the format are 100% fine in the vast majority of cases.

Just think of commanders as having the Misthollow Griffin ability -- by nature of their commanderness, certain types of removal are less effective against them than normal things. I'm fine with O-Ring being one of those types of removal.

If the intention was for Oblivion Ring to be functionally identical to Arrest but hitting other permanents, it would just be Arrest that could enchant permanents (I'm sure there's a card for this but I can't think what it is). The exiling part is clearly part of the flavour.

Faith's Fetters.

I agree with most others in this thread that rules are fine as-is.

But at the same time, you don't have stuff like fiend hunter, oblivion ring, and helvault doing their intended jobs. Their mechanics are broken when it comes to commanders. Why not change the rules up a tad to do their intended jobs? I'm not asking for a complete rule overhaul. Just a small blip to make these types of cards to work right. Especially helvault which isn't working at all as intended. You'll never imprison a commander avycn and a commander GB (if he was allowed to be played) in a helvaut in commander :<

In case you were unaware, Commanders function differently than other creatures. When a creature dies it's supposed to be dead so should we get rid of the commander rules completely? How about color identity? That goes against the "normal" rules as well.

If we go by the story, Avacyn was the one who went to put Griselbrand in the Helvault...and then he dragged her in along with him. That means the card's functionality is completely broken since it doesn't require you to control Avacyn in order to imprison creatures.

Tuck effects are already better in Commander than they normally are, so I don't see any reason exile effects can't be slightly worse than normal. They're still great against non-Commander creatures/permanents.

Exiling it doesn't kill it. It sends it to another dimension. In this case I'm referring to cards that exile it with a condition shouldn't give the option to send it to the commander zone in order to force the player to deal with the card such as fiend hunter, or oblivion ring. If the card forces the commander card to be exiled forever at any point then it should give the option to be sent to the commander zone.

Temporary exile are cards like fiend hunter, and oblivion ring, that need to stay in play in order to keep the card exiled. These cards are the ones the rule change would effect.

Just how the clone rule got tweaked a bit to work properly so should the exile rule be updated for commander. Sure players are going to hate it at first, but overall you'd be fixing the game mechanics to work right.

See, the reason you're wrong is because you assume the format needs fixing. That's where you're horribly wrong.