Quote:
When FRF came out, manifest led us to talking about what it meant to be a commander—which is what got us talking about tuck in the first place. After a long discussion, we decided the best course regarding commander-ness was no change. Your commander is always your commander regardless of where it is or its status. That means enough hits from a face-down commander can kill you.
What I am getting from this is that face-down commanders still have commander status. So if you manifest your general into play with
Jeskai Infiltrator then it will not exactly be a secret which is which. What I am unclear about is whether a general is identifiable in other hidden zones.
If I choose to send my commander to my hand and then an opponent plays
Hymn to Tourach on me, will my general be identifiable throughout the whole process as being in a certain position in my hand? Also cards in hand are supposed to be unidentifiable. For instance it should be unknown which card in my hand is the card I drew for the turn, even though if you watch closely you could be able to tell. Being able to tell where the general is in the hand doesn't sit well with me.
Suppose I choose to have my general be shuffled into my library. Will everyone at the table be able to know the ending position of where my general is in my deck? Couldn't that lead to a player using
Soldier of Fortune to have me shuffle my deck when they see that I'm about to draw it? If I shuffle my deck and present it to an opponent to cut, will they know the position of where the general is and can they use the information to determine how they do the cut (maybe subconsciously)?
I think that knowing the position and location of cards in hidden zones flies in the face of core rules of game which prevent players from cheating.
If players do not know which card is the general in a deck, then there would be the "issue" of losing access to a general through cards like
Pyxis of Pandemonium. Then again I don't think that this would be as bad as allowing for players to cheat.