I have a method for upping your political game that no one is talking about. Once you start using it, you’ll rarely ever make deals again. What comes to mind when you think of “politics” in Commander? Chances are, you’re probably thinking about making a sales pitch to another player for your “mutual benefit” and the destruction of everybody else. Sounds great, right? But there’s a problem.
The Problem with Deals
The problem with deals is that they lock you in to what could be a bad play in order to convince an opponent to do something that is probably beneficial for them anyways. Say I’m playing a game with my friends, Taylor, Spencer, and Jordan, and at 10 life, with no creatures on the board, and just a Path to Exile in hand, I’m tempted to make a deal, especially because Taylor has an Ulamog the Infinite Gyre on the board, while Jordan has four 3/3 Beast tokens.
If I get attacked by both players, I lose the game even after using my Path to Exile on the Ulamog, so I decide to make a deal with Taylor. “Hey Taylor, if I get rid of the Ulamog, will you attack Jordan with all your creatures for the next two turns?” It might seem like a fair trade: I don’t take damage from the Ulamog or the tokens, I don’t have to annihilate anything, I stay alive, and Taylor gets to attack Jordan without fear of Annihilator retaliation! But by making a deal I lock myself into a course of action.
What if Spencer plays out a combo like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Zealous Conscripts, making enough creatures to kill me and all other players at the table? I won’t have my Path to protect me. Also, what if Taylor overestimates how much influence the deal had in stopping them from attacking me, and Taylor attacks me even more than before? This is why instead of making a deal, I like to use the Art of Inception.
The Art of Inception
The art of inception is to convince your opponents that it’s in their best interest to help you. Sometimes, our goals will align with the goals of our opponents. In fact, sometimes our opponents will also perceive that their goals align with ours.
Instead of making a deal, say I ask, “Hey Taylor, I don’t think I can deal with Jordan on my own, so I guess that means we are allied against them, right?” That simple question launches the entire political move! At this point, I am forcing Taylor to evaluate the board state. Mentally, they have to decide which opponent is the greatest obstacle standing in the way of them winning the game, and to keep the example fundamental, the simple details tell us that they are going to see Jordan as the primary hurdle to overcome. In that way, Taylor will definitely attack Jordan (unless my commander is scary enough that I’m still a threat without a board state, like Golos, Edgar, or Kykar).
As a result, now Jordan will have to make the same decision for themselves, and with someone attacking them for 12 each turn, they certainly have to start annihilating their board before things get uncontrollable. So, how did I manage to do all this with just a simple question?
The concept behind inception is using the board state to my advantage, and leveraging my unthreatening appearance and the threatening appearances of my opponents to lead them to their own conclusions that they should use their resources to fight back against the biggest threat. In this way, I get what I wanted to make a deal for, but at the same time without having to use any resources of my own! It’s free real estate.
Now that I have performed the political move of inception, I can continue to prepare for whatever happens by waiting to use my Path to Exile, both Taylor and Jordan will use their resources to diminish each other’s life total, and once the dust settles, I’ll know exactly who to use my resources on! But of course, there’s an exception to every rule.
An Exception to Every Rule
There are still times where you know that inception won’t work, and that a deal is your best shot at winning. Sometimes, it’s a hail mary. Sometimes, it’s just the least risky path to victory. Let’s add a few more details to the example and we can see where it might be better to go for the deal instead. Let’s say I also have Heartless Hidetsugu and Loxodon Warhammer in hand, but I have to cast Heartless Hidetsugu this turn in order to cast and equip the Warhammer, tap Hidetsugu, and gain a bunch of life on my next turn. At the same time, I know that playing it down would immediately make my opponents attack me.
In this situation, I can lock in a deal before the game state changes, allowing me to have a better chance at victory. In fact, this is the most common example of when I’ve seen deals being necessary: when you know you need to become threatening in order to secure a good position, but becoming threatening would kill you.
At the end of the day, politics are key to winning games when all hope seems lost, and I know that using this strategy of inception will be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal to get there.
So what do you say, deal or no deal?
MagicalHacker is a thinker, a philosopher, and a scientist, constantly searching for the needles of truth in the haystack of what we assume to be true. You might know him from his plethora of YouTube videos (including multiplayer game play, deck techs for commanders previewed within the past week, top 10s featuring only cards he plays in multiple decks, live deckbuilding of underplayed commanders, or even his monthly deck doctor or game play videos for each of his patrons.
You’ve seen the changes to companion (you can check them out here). As far as Commander goes, we find no additional changes necessary before our next regular update, scheduled on 29 June. Companion will operate in Commander similarly to other formats (meaning you’ll have to pay the 3, etc.), save that it will not come from a sideboard.
We’ve reached Affiliate on Twitch, and the Commander RC Patreon, Twitch channel, and Discord are now all available. Patreon tiers grant additional Discord channel access. You can link to them here:
You may have noticed there’s a small line missing from banned list page today. We’ve eliminated the line “Commander is played with Vintage-legal cards.” While the idea has been a useful shortcut for years, it wasn’t really a philosophical foundation, it was merely a convenience. We’ve long been proponents that Commander isn’t alt-Vintage, so it makes sense given the two formats’ divergence to decouple the wording.
The upshot is that between yesterday and today, nothing has changed for us. The exact same cards remain legal (specifically, Lurrus of the Dream-Den is not banned). We’ve clarified the legality language a bit, but none of the descriptions result in specific cards being banned or unbanned. We’ll have our normally-scheduled update in the next cycle, currently slated for 22 June.
We normally reserve changes for the regular schedule; we felt as though the clarification here warranted providing an update out-of-cycle update.
To help with social distancing, people are finding ways to play Commander online more and more. Playing with physical cards over webcam is easier than it seems, but requires opponents you really trust. Arena is another option, but only supports two-player Brawl which falls far short of the experience many Commander players want.
MTGO has a full multiplayer Commander implementation, but is what we call an “untrusted” experience. That means you don’t have much (if any) chance to talk to your opponents and hash out what kind of experience you want ahead of time.
Those rule-zero pre-game discussions are more than just power level… it’s agreeing how long you expect the game to go, what levels/types of interaction are enjoyable, etc. If that sounds like it takes effort, well… it does.
If that sounds like it takes effort, well… it does.
Surprise! It’s worth it!
So how do we do that in an untrusted environment? Sub formats are effective because they can be communicated quickly using just the name of the variant in the game description. If that name is self-explanatory, even better.
A format for deck-builders!
One such variant of Commander which has picked up a lot of traction lately for MTGO games is 10-ticketCommander. I originally learned about it from Eric Levine… an old friend and Commander content producer under the nickname Raging Levine. He originally wrote up the format back in 2016, but for the aforementioned reasons it’s got a real shot in the arm this year.
You will have to make hard choices… which feels great!
Eric invited me to join a Discord community where folks play Commander on MTGO, with the restriction that the total “cost” of the cards in the deck (excluding the commander) should be 10 tickets or less. I use mtggoldfish to price out decks, and there are a bunch of sites online which have prices built in. (If you run such a site, feel free to message me and I’ll add a link here).
Is ten tickets enough?
Remember: Your commander doesn’t cost towards the limit.
Because MTGO ticket “prices” are very different than physical card prices, the power level you can squeeze out of 10 tix is actually pretty reasonable… this isn’t low-budget magic in the classic sense. Even rares usually only cost 0.05 tix, so you can fill a deck with interesting choices.
What the price cap does preclude many of the “usual suspects”… the automatic must-haves, which usually cost 1-2 tickets and now aren’t worth the cost. You’ve got some room to wiggle if there are a couple of cards you REALLY want for a particular archtype, but either way you will have to make hard choices… which feels great!
Cards you won’t have to play, or play against:
Sol Ring (3 tix)
Eternal Witness (2 tix)
Cyclonic Rift (2 tix)
Smothering Tithe (2 tix)
Mystical Tutor (1 tix)
Rhystic Study (3 tix)
Avenger of Zendikar (3 tix)
Craterhoof Behemoth (3 tix)
Insurrection (1 tix)
Demonic Tutor (4 tix)
Since most cards you’ll want are less than a tenth of a ticket (Your non-basic lands need to average about 0.13 tickets), it’s useful to think of cards in centi-tix (cT). You’ve got 1000cT to spend.
How do I build a 10-ticket deck?
You can easily put together a first-cut deck in an hour or so, and might have more fun. Ten ticket decks tend to evolve over time more than my full-price decks, because the set of playable cards is larger, so it’s less important to get the first cut “just right”… a pile of playables will likely be sufficiently powerful to be involved in the game. From there you can learn as you go; I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where I didn’t witness at least one card I wanted to add to my deck after I was done.
Building with a mechanical theme will help, as always. Mechanics like Cycling or Reanimation, which have been printed at common in multiple sets, are a good place to start. Counters (+1/+1, -1/-1, poison, etc) are another… just about any non-parasitic mechanic will have enough support to build around, but you should keep that support in mind when choosing your commander.
I tend to start by pasting a bookmarked manabase into MTGGoldFish’s deck pricer tool and then go from there. It will find the cheapest “printing” of each card for me.
A card which costs 0.03 tix is 3cT.
You’ve got 1000cT to spend.
What if the price of cards goes up?
It’s always a bit bittersweet when a card you like becomes unavailable, and it does happen in 10-ticket commander… but it helps to see it as a blessing in disguise. A card spiking in value is an opportunity to find a replacement… harsh, but fun.
In the end, it’s mostly up to you. If the cost of some of your cards creeps up over time by 10-20%, it’s probably fine for you to leave the deck as-is. Maybe check once a year by pasting it back into a pricing tool… but don’t sweat it too much.
Unless your deck is blatantly cheaty, it’s unlikely people will call you out… you’re the only one who will know you’re bending the rules, but the community is small so if you betray the public trust you can be sure people will share your name and ostracise you.
(It’s worth noting that some cards will never go up in price no matter how popular they are in Commander, or even 10-ticket commander.).
Mana Bases
Duals, Shocks, Tricycles, and Fetches are a mainstay of regular Commander mana-bases, but they’re also the first thing to go under budget constraints. Making your mana work with only a ticket or so is a good place to start, and there’s a lot of pre-existing solutions:
Two- and Three-colour mana bases (sans green)
To start with, a surprising number of top-shelf mana fixers are 1-3cT. Thawing Glaciers hasn’t been playable in any online format other than commander, so it weights in at a paltry 3cT. Unfortunately, some cards (like Command Tower), occasionally list at “default” price of 0.01 but aren’t actually available for that price… the format rule is you have to be able to actually purchase it for a given price to count towards your budget.
Actually 150-200cT (not 2cT like it shows online), so we’ll need to get clever.
The real secret to building a budget mana base is finding ways to leverage basic lands, and there are a bunch of colour-agnostic ways to fetch basics without spending significant tix. Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse effects are fairly easy to come by as a start: Panoramas, Myriad Landscape, Thaumatic Compass, and Warped Landscape are all less than 5cT.
Magic has a huge variety of lands which tap for two or three colours, but only saw play in one standard format. It turns out that many of those “Tier 2” lands are quite cheap even at rare, e.g. Ravnica Karoos, Tarkir Trilands, M10 Buddy Lands (Dragonskull summit and the like), and Hybrid Lands (e.g. Graven Cairns). Tapping into those will easily round out a mana base with only three colours, without needing to play anything bad like Invasion duals. (Invasion Lair lands are some of the most stylish three-colour lands, but they’re still fairly unplayable outside Landfall decks).
The Hybrid lands in particular are some of the best mana-fixing lands ever printed, and cost 2cT. Some of the two-colour animating lands are about 5cT, but others are more than a ticket so you’ll have to shop around… when they fit, they’re a great addition.
Cheap mana rocks are the third piece of the puzzle, and again there’s a lot of them available which are suddenly very playable in a 10-ticket metagame. 2-mana rocks sometimes cost more (Some Ravnica Signets are more than 100cT), but the three-mana counterparts are usually around 5cT:
Once you have more than three colours, lands which tap for any colour become worth considering, and the good news is that, once again, many all-star 5-colour lands are nearly free on MTGO.
Even if you have access to green, it’s usually not a good idea to lean hard on one colour for fixing; you might not draw it till mid-game. Instead, spending a little more on your mana is a good idea for 5-colour decks, because you’ll be able to easily make up the power from multi-colour uncommons and junk rares (Conflux is 11cT!).
Gate package: 10 Gates + Circuitous Route, Open the Gates, Gateway Plaza, Guild Summit, and Maze’s End (total 14cT)
5x Panorama + 5x Mirage Fetches will get you any basics you need for 10 buddy lands to come into play untapped. You shouldn’t need to dip into stuff like Vivid lands, but can if you want (usually because you want to play some 1-colour utility lands).
Price check every card though, because some ostensibly “common” solutions might sneak up on you… Expedition Map is more than 3 whole tickets!
Green-first 3+ colours
Another way to go for mana is to make green a majority colour, and then splash other colours. One advantage to this approach for 3-colour decks is that you can usually guarantee 2, and even 3, copies of those off-colours in the late game. To that end, there are a collection of Rampant-growth style fixers which are cheap enough that they won’t take up any of your budget:
Journey of Discovery, Edge of Autumn, Kodama’s Reach/Cultivate, Fertile Growth, Weirding Wood, etc. Gaea’s Balance does yeoman’s work in 5 colour decks.
One-colour mana bases (aka: good utility lands)
There’s been lots written about good utility lands, which often make your mana base worse, but if you’re playing only one land are a good way to go. Again, managathering.com has a good rundown of lands and rocks which generate colourless mana, which can be good utility+acceleration.
Tutors
Now that we’ve cranked up the variance, it’s worth talking about ways we can make sure our deck still hits on its theme? One area where 10 ticket commander shines is the value of tier-2, unappreciated tutors. Goldfish again comes to the rescue, with a starting list someone put together. You can find others easily though, by searching for cards with “search your library” and then browsing for old favorites you’d forgotten about or could never find a home for. Sometimes the good ones, like Bribery, will top out your cost-curve at 70cT, but Acquire can be had for 3cT!
Some cards, like Vampiric Tutor or Tooth and Nail, are still available for only a few cT. Others like Liliana Vess, Cruel Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Fabricate, Brutalizer Exarch, Idyllic Tutor and Hoarding Dragon are super cheap, but you will need to get creative. Transmute Cards are restricted in what they can fetch, but also serve as spot removal/counterspells/anti-token hate in a pinch. Even jank like Night Dealings can be a power house.
Wrapping up
10-ticket magic is one of many ways to easily quantify deck power, by capping everyone at a low level. It’s easy to communicate (just put “10-ticket Commander” in the game description) and will lead to a lot of veritable Commander-style games. Deck building skill and/or experience are more significant, but the higher variance means you can afford to explore the corners of your collection (or your favourite trader bot’s collection) for stylish plays. Feel free to join the format’s discord (linked above) and say hi!
Sources
mtggoldfish.com
managathering.com
edhrec.com
gatherer.wizards.com
Footnotes
[1] The pre-game conversation is core to the format’s experience and success and it’s always worth it. When we talk about “power level” conversations, and ways to communicate power level, it’s actually more than that… really what we’re doing is communicating play style preferences. But lowering power level usually increases variance and interactivity; limited-vs-constructed, standard-vs-modern, etc.
Personally, I’ve fought hard to ensure that “rule zero” conversation remains core to the Commander format because in my experience it is the ONLY way to create a social experience. We can’t write rules which force people to be social. The discussion invariably increases the enjoyment of the game for everyone (well, except trolls).
And if someone says “But I don’t have that option.”? Remember that you never HAVE to play with someone. The freedom to walk away from a game is an essential right you should protect, and exercise. It’s what makes Commander work.
When we first saw the companion mechanic, our immediate reaction was “well, this is cool; it won’t work in Commander.” But, looking at the mechanic, there was nothing problematic about it. It was actually the kind of thing we really like to encourage. Brew with restrictions! Since we want the rules of Commander to match up to Magic where possible and healthy for the format, we took a second look.
We still don’t think Wishes and the other get-other-cards-from-outside-the-game are something we want in Commander. We outline our stance on wishes in the FAQ and none of the concerns we have with them applied here. The only issue was that the mechanic referred to outside the game. If the companion started in the Command Zone or Exile, it would have been fine. Since that’s clearly an arbitrary mechanical distinction, how could we adjust the rules to reflect this?
It turns out that it was easy. The problem with all prior mechanics which used outside-the-game was their open-endedness. They brought cards in from a giant unbounded set. All we had to do was change one word in Rule 11:
11: Abilities which bring other card(s) you own from outside the game into the game (such as Living Wish; Spawnsire of Ulamog; Karn, the Great Creator) do not function in Commander.
Companion now works within the framework of Commander – it’s bringing itself in – and nothing else changes. Similar mechanics will be fine in the future as long as they remain self-contained (though if we think they’re problematic, we’ll obviously take another look and ask ourselves why).
We recognize that this does let you go past the 100 card rule that is iconic to Commander. However, a single extra card you have to jump through serious hoops to get is philosophically okay in the same way that a tiny number of cards (like Relentless Rats) are able to violate the even-more-important singleton rule.
Lutri
That left Lutri. We hate the idea of banning a card prior to release. We gave serious consideration to announcing that the card would almost certainly be banned with Core 2021 and letting it be legal rather than break our stance that all cards should be given a chance.
The argument that finally won the day was that not everyone would see that announcement. Many people would buy a legal Lutri as it goes alongside every deck with red and blue in it. Knowing that it would certainly be banned, we were uncomfortable setting up those folks, who are in many ways our primary audience, for far greater disappointment. Better to bend our stance.
This is where we say that it was a one-time thing and we don’t expect it to happen again, but that might not be entirely accurate. Wizards is free to explore weird spaces, and, as demonstrated here, those spaces may occasionally do something really problematic. If another card comes along that also does something novel that is incompatible with the format, we’ll ban it immediately. Note that “stupidly powerful” is not novel; those cards will get their chance to prove themselves.
Flash
Speaking of exceptional decisions, we are banning Flash (the card, not the mechanic). Enough cEDH players who we trust have convinced us that it is the only change they need for the environment they seek to cultivate. Though they represent a small fraction of the Commander playerbase, we are willing to make this effort for them. It should not be taken as a signal that we are considering any kind of change in how we intend to manage the format; this is an extraordinary step, and one we are unlikely to repeat.
We use the banlist to guide players in how to approach the format and hope Flash’s role on the list will be to signal “cheating things into play quickly in non-interactive ways isn’t interesting, don’t do that.”
We believe Commander is still best as a social-focused format and will not be making any changes to accommodate tournament play. Taking responsibility for your and your opponents’ fun, including setting expectations with your group, is a fundamental part of the Commander philosophy. Organizers who want to move towards more untrusted games should consider adding additional rules or guidance to create the Commander experience they want to offer.
If the rules for Commander are intended as a starting point (spoiler: they are, and ignoring that won’t earn you anything), then one of the best things you can do is mess with its fundamental rules. Last month’s variant was a strictly tougher set of rules than normal, and hence always “acceptable” to other players. This time I want to talk about how to diverge from the rules of Commander but still embrace its spirit, in a way that other players will enjoy.
Of course, before breaking the rules it’s useful to understand why they exist. Colour Identity is one such fundamental rule of the format, which dates back to the early days of the format. It provides two things…
A deck building restriction, which increases diversity of card choices
A more coherent theme for each deck
… each of which serves the over-arching purpose of the format: richer experiences. Done right, Commander isn’t just competition, it’s performance art.
But Colour Identity is only one way to achieve those goals, and you should feel free to experiment with others. Back in Coldsnap, I experimented with a way to abandon the mana-symbol restriction, and replace it with a restriction on creature types.
I decided to build a deck with any colour of mana symbols, but only cards which fit the “Warriors, Barbarians, and Berserkers” theme. Adapted the standard rules for Tribal decks:
At least one third (33) of the cards must be creatures
All non-land cards must
Mention a relevant creature type in their name, subtype, or text, OR
Contain the text “Choose a creature type”
This is a pretty high bar… which is one of the secrets to making it work. It’s obvious to other players that I’m not trying to circumvent the normal deckbuilding challenge to a net advantage. I considered restricting non-basic lands as well, but it goes over the top — the effective prohibition on mana rocks and other fixing is sufficiently punishing. Excluding all non-basic lands as well would be equivalent to saying that all lands in a Commander deck must generate coloured mana.
(Yes, allowing “Choose a creature type” cards is a hack, with several holes… it’s not something which could ever be codified in real rules, but we have the advantage of just having fun)
So, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way:
Is this deck good? No, not even close.
Is this deck fun? Oh yes.
Could I could have made a mono-red deck instead? Of course, but the result would have been less interesting than a deck which really leveraged her ability.
Could I have used a different commander for the same deck? Sure… a Najeela deck would be much better at winning the game, and lots of other commanders would suffice. Less interesting though, somehow.
Could I have abused this? Yes… but nobody would want to play against it.
I’ve rebuilt this deck a few times over the years. These days it looks like this:
Again… could I have broken this more? Absolutely, but it’s important to notice that’s no different than any other Commander deck. It’s easier in this case for potential opponents to refuse to play against me (using the rules-as-written to justify their preference), but they shouldn’t be forced to play against ANY deck. If you look at a deck and think “This works because other people have to play against me”, you’re doing it very, very wrong.
So does a Tribal Identity commander need to have an intrinsic “creature type matters” mechanic? No, but it’s a good idea… it makes the “creature identity” of the card clear. There are tribes which are more or less powerful… I don’t even know if there are enough Digeridoos to make an all Minotaur deck, but Kangee Bird Tribal is fine. You’ll have a hard time convincing people your Elf Tribal deck is fun to play against.
Going further…
Are there other “identities” your group could experiment with? Card Type Identity springs to mind… there’s lots of commanders who would work well with only “Lands and Instants”. Karn with only lands and Artifacts is a challenge as old as the format (first built by format pioneer Gijsbert Hoogendijk circa 2005?). Mechanic Identity could also be viable… all-flying for easy mode, all-coinflip if you’re nasty.
Whatever variants you try, it’s important to decide (or at least think about) whether it’s a variant that mixes well with “basic” Commander, or should be used alone. Most Tribal Identity decks will play fine with “colour identity” based decks… restricting the cards in your deck by creature type is arguably more of a constraint than restricting the colours available.
To recap, the key is that Colour Identity is meant to provide a thematic coherence and deck building challenge, both of which improve the experience for everyone involved. You can use other constraints instead (or in addition) to achieve the same thing… just remember to embrace them, not try to abuse them.
When the initial Commander product was announced back in 2011, I was asked to speak at the unveiling panel at Pax East. I prepared some remarks in case I needed to give them (I didn’t). It lived on the Commander forums until they were taken down and it remains a piece of writing I’m pretty happy with. Leaving it here for posterity.
Some of the references are a little dated, but the sentiment remains.
I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about Batman.
Not the dark and gritty Christopher Nolan version, or even the dark and twisted Tim Burton version. I want to talk about the 1960s version, starring an oh-so-earnest Adam West. Those episodes, classic TV that they are, were almost always broken into two parts. At the conclusion of the first part, Batman would inevitably have been trapped by the villain and placed in some inescapable deathtrap.
These fiendish killing machines were masterpieces of Rube-Goldberg-ian baroqueness, themed around whichever particular villain had triumphed over Batman that day. But they all had one thing in common – at the start of the second part, once the villain had left the room, Batman would find an equally baroque way of escaping these traps. And by the end of the episode, the villain would be carted away to what appears to be the lowest security prison of all time, since they seemed to have no problem popping up again at will in later episodes.
Some of you out there think this seems pretty silly. Once you have your arch-nemesis incapacitated, you kill them and you’ll be able to run rampant through Gotham City for the rest of your career. Scott Evil, in the original Austin Powers movie, summed this up: “I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I’ll get it, I’ll come back down here, BOOM, I’ll blow their brains out!” To which his father replies “Scott, you just don’t get it, do ya?”
Scott Evil doesn’t understand Commander. He sees a format he can break easily and a banlist that doesn’t make any sense. The Joker? To the Joker, the journey is more important than the final result, and if Batman gets away, there’ll be another chance to break out of Arkham and concoct a new fiendish deathtrap. The Joker loves Commander.
Commander is a Vintage format in which you’re guaranteed to have a pretty strong card – your general – available to you all the time. You have lots of extra life, and it’s multiplayer, so people’s attentions are spread around. There are too many guns. If your goal is simply to win, you’re likely to be frustrated at how easy it is. The good news is that there are lots of formats – Standard, Legacy, etc – that are all carefully managed to cater to you. Commander wasn’t designed that way. It was built as a social format, a way to hang out with your friends, play some Magic, and see what kind of craziness develops. If a game goes well, everyone gets a few moments to cackle like a supervillain.
What we can do as the Rules Committee is try to steer people away from cards that we have found accidentally make the game uninteresting. We want to make sure that the shark-infested custard you plan to dangle your enemies over isn’t emitting toxic fumes, because that would be awkward. If you are using Erayo, or Armageddon, or putting Curiosity into your Niv-Mizzet deck, you aren’t thinking about defeating your opponents with a laser mounted on the moon, and there’s no banlist long enough to stop you finding guns too powerful for the format. But if you heard the phrase ‘shark-infested custard’ and that gave you warm fuzzies, I think we have a format for you.
I’m going to start this series with an easy one that I know works well… “JDH”. A common way to mix up Commander games is to restrict the cardpool to provide fewer “obviously correct” choices and more room for interesting deckbuilding. Brawl is one popular version of this, but tries to serve too many masters, and the rotating nature isn’t for everyone… to build in just 4-6 sets, it was necessary to loosen the restrictions drastically.
Whether you’re trying to keep yourself in check (vs a playgroup that maybe isn’t on your level, yet), or inviting an entire playgroup to build with the same rules, the easiest way to restrict your cardpool is based on the year a card was printed. Most cards list their year of printing at the bottom, and most deck building sites can filter by set easily.
Choosing a year is up to you, but three versions which work well are:
Mercadian Masques and later: Taking away Urza’s Block and earlier removes a lot of the most broken, degenerate cards in the format. There’s lots of goodies in later sets, but they’re usually not as obvious as [Sol Ring], [Demonic Tutor] and [Swords to Plowshares]. The year 2000 was arguably the point at which R&D really started to figure out how to balance magic card design.
Mirrodin or later: This cutoff is easy to identify because of the change in card frame, and rules out another four years with a lot of Commander staples which you sometimes feel you “have to” include.
Modern or Pioneer Commander: One downside to setting your “cutoff” somewhere in the recent past is that other constructed formats often have more impact on card availability. That said, if you’re more familiar with the more recent sets, there’s lots of goodies in the last 5-10 years of magic and building within those constraints can feel really good.
Finally, if you really want to be hardcore, you can take it even further and play Block-Commander. Think of it as Brawl-with-a-Tardis: you can build a commander deck with ANY legendary creature, but all the other cards have to come from a single 24-month period in Magic’s history.
Have you ever built a deck with a year-based restriction? What was it, and how did it work out?
With a busy year in the books, we open 2020 all quiet on the B&R front.
The format continues to grow in all its forms, but there’s been a lot of good discussion about ways to improve and capitalize on opportunities. With the introduction of Commander-focused premier events, the number of games played outside local playgroups is rising. Similarly, more games are being played between friends, in stores and homes, than ever before.
In terms of cards, there were no consensus threats to players’ enjoyment and we’re not making any changes at this time. We continue to emphasize the importance of pre-game discussions as an important part of finding enjoyable games.
Oh, and we’re releasing a new website.
In addition to hosting the rules, banned list, and leadership contact information, members of the rules committee will be posting regular content here. The new site also aims to help players find interesting content about the format, from across the web.
The RC would like to thank Andrew “Shoe” Lee for his assistance with site construction and coding. To provide feedback on the site, message Gavin.