I've been one of the louder anti-tuck voices in the community since long before I joined the RC. When I first heard that the Command Zone was being introduced back in 2010, I argued that the RC should use the opportunity to remove tuck from the format.
Five years later, I'm finally unsleeving my Hinders and Condemns. A lot of people are pretty loudly upset right now, so I wanted to talk through some of my thoughts on the subject.
Game RulesThe purpose of game rules is to encourage good games.
As players, we're used to treating the rules as a given. This makes it easy to think of them as some invioble principle, and any change to them outside meddling.
But all game rules were designed by people who had specific goals and ideas of what constitutes good gameplay. Chess has a rule that players take turns, so you always get a chance to respond to your opponent. Magic has a rule that you can only play one land each turn, because it means that games scale up and more powerful cards are played over time. Commander has a rule that you start at 40 life to encourage longer, more epic games.
Many people already understand this, but I wanted to bring it up because whenever any game is changed there's a crowd that asks, "Who are you to say what is good gameplay? How can you make changes based on something as subjective as fun?" when that's the reason that every rule exists in the first place.
Was Tuck a Good Rule?Okay, so we've got the premise that rules can be good or bad. But what's the case for tuck being a bad rule?
Tuck was always pretty arbitrary and unintuitive. It's not a rule that any one would guess is true without knowing about it, and there's not really any logical or flavorful justification for it. It was a weird loophole that people decided was a good tool for the format.
Getting your general tucked feels bad. But then, so does having your creatures killed, having your spells countered, and losing the game. Why is tuck different?
A big part is the combination of these two elements. Losing a videogame to a bug feels very different from losing it to something that you expect within the logic of the game. Tuck isn't a natural result of the rules of Magic or Commander, it's a weird loophole that exists only to allow the situation that's screwing you over right now.
Can you imagine how people would react if tuck was being added to the format, if they weren't operating on the assumption that it was part of the game? You wouldn't be hearing, "This will be a good way to answer problem generals." You'd be hearing "This is the stupidest rule I've ever heard" and "Why are we adding a rule for these 10 random cards?"
Gameplay and BalanceThis is the most contentious area, and the one with the most legitimate concerns. Will tuck's removal be the straw that breaks Prossh and Maelstrom Wanderer's back? Will the balance be shifted too far towards general-centric combos?
Time will tell, but personally I'd be surprised if much went wrong here. I don't think 3 good tuck cards were the only thing holding back the floodgates and skilled deckbuilders won't find other avenues to tune against combo and ramp.
But even if I'm wrong and some generals do turn out to be degenerate, I don't think tuck was the right solution. A weird loophole buffing a half dozen cards is not the right way to tune a format, and tuck has high collateral damage. We can ban generals if we need to, or Wizards can print
Nevermore-type effects balanced for Commander.
StrategyOn the other end of the legitimacy spectrum, we have, "This removes strategic depth," or even, "They're dumbing down the game to appease noobs."
These arguments generally the opposite of the truth. Removing a known tool rewards skilled players and deckbuilders - the people clever enough to figure out the best replacements and strategies in a tuckless world will win games because of it.
When M10 removed stacking combat damage, it actually made Magic more skillful - there were more meaningful decisions and fewer best-of-both-world scenarios. But many medium-skill players complained loudly about the change dumbing down Magic, because it was taking away a tool that they new how to wield.
In ConclusionIt's totally understandable that so many players are upset about tuck. It was a tool that they had been given, something that they had learned to accept as part of Commander.
But I believe that Commander will be more fun and balanced without it. I hope that people are willing to give the new world a chance.
I tried to lay out my thoughts in a reasonably logical and comprehensive manner, but I'll be happy to talk through soem of the details if people have questions or wrathful derision.