All posts by Sheldon Menery

RC Statement on Poison Counters

We understand that the new toxic ability from Phyrexia: All Will Be One has folks asking about raising the number of poison counters in Commander.  We’ll keep an eye on how it goes, but don’t see a need to take action before we’ve experienced the cards out in the wild.  Back when he was a member of the Commander Advisory Group, Jim did a great video on the topic, which pretty much still encapsulates how we feel. 

As always, if you’d like to discuss this (or any other topic), head over to the RC Discord, where there are specific channels to do just that. 

November 2022 Quarterly Update

Cards

No Changes

Rules

No Changes

Administrative

No changes*

The asterisk on Administrative Changes is a reminder that we added two folks, Olivia Gobert-Hicks and Jim Lapage, to the Rules Committee.  Then all six of us descended on Magic 30 in Las Vegas.  We embraced the opportunity to get out into the crowd and not just play, but talk Commander with a fairly large number of people.  

The overwhelming sentiment that we found at M30 is that Commander is in a pretty healthy space.  There are still a few anxieties, like how to make the best of playing in games with strangers.  We continue to work internally on brainstorming just how we might help relieve those fears.  We also continue to encourage you to have good pregame conversations with folks who you have just met.  The best games are the ones in which everyone is on the same page.  

As far as cards are concerned, nothing has crossed the line into being dangerous enough across the broad spectrum of the format to warrant a ban.  We’ll continue to keep our eye on hot-button cards, like Dockside Extortionist.  If it or any other card creeps out of the corners of the format to have a large-scale negative impact, we’ll take action. 

As always, please drop by the RC Discord server if you’d like to talk about format philosophy or any of the myriad topics we have there.  It’s the place you’re most likely to catch one of us, just hanging out and ready to chat.  

We’ll see you in January for Phyrexia: All Will Be One.  Until such a time, let The Brothers’ War begin!

2022 August RC Quarterly Update

Cards

No Changes

Rules

No Changes

Administrative

Commander Advisory Group (CAG) additions

At the moment, there are no cards which we feel need banning.  We recognize that there has been a fair amount of discussion of both Dockside Extortionist and Thassa’s Oracle.  For the moment, we believe that both of these cards have been self-selected to the appropriate tables.  Dockside Extortionist is far closer to the line due to the recent uptick in Treasure-related cards; it will remain firmly in our sights.  Thassa’s Oracle remains distant enough that we don’t consider it a serious cause for concern.  When it comes to evaluating cards for banning, it’s not just what a card does (its power), but what a card does to the broader format (its impact).  We don’t currently see a negative enough impact

Quite a bit of energy has gone into discussing one of the community’s most talked-about issues, untrusted games—those in which you don’t know the other people you’re sitting down with.  This is a tough nut to crack.  Foremost, we don’t believe it’s an issue that we can ban our way into solving.  What we think we can do is help not just players, but LGS owners/managers and event organizers, with some best practices and other advice on how to craft the kind of Commander environment they want.  There isn’t a single, homogenized view among all the people who are running Commander in various places, so one of our new efforts going forward will be to provide those folks with some living documentation that will help them get to where they’d like to go.  

One of the other things we’ve spent time on is RC expansion.  We’ve conducted two rounds of interviews over the last few months and are on the verge of making  a decision.  We aren’t going to make it at the moment, but we expect to announce the addition(s) before the next quarterly update–likely some time in the middle of September.  As we’ve been thinking about RC membership, we’ve taken the opportunity to talk with some folks that we’d love to hear more from.    

To that end, welcome three outstanding individuals onto the Commander Advisory Group:  Rebell, Benjamin Wheeler, and Tim Willoughby.  Rebell brings deep knowledge of the format across all levels of play and she combines it with an insatiable drive for building high-quality, inclusive communities.  Few people know community-built formats better than Wheeler, who was responsible for crafting both Canadian Highlander and Gladiator, then bringing them to the Magic forefront. His propensity for building oddball Commander decks is now legendary.  Tim was an early adopter of EDH, jamming games with Sheldon and other judges as early as 2005 in the after-hours of professional Magic events.  His essay on why each card is banned is commonly regarded as the best of its kind and will be adapted for inclusion on the RC website.  Each of our new members brings to the table a unique voice paired with a first-rate Magic and Commander mind.  We look forward to their advice on both existing and new projects.  You can check out their bios over on the RC website.  

There’s a specific channel on the Commander RC Discord server dedicated to discussing the quarterly updates.  We look forward to you stopping on by and discussing it, as well as a host of other topics, with now more than 7,000 friends.  

RC 2X2 Preview cards

Check out these sweet preview cards sent to us free by our friends at Wizards of the Coast. The first was an early icon of the format since it came out in Planar Chaos. It looks sweet in any treatment. The second will slot nicely into a deck led by the first.

Intet, the Dreamer, art by Dan Scott

League Guildmage, art by Svetlin Velinov

April 2022 Quarterly Update

ADMINISTRATIVE

No Changes

RULES

No Changes

CARDS

No Changes

We’re comfortable where the format is at the moment, especially given that it hasn’t been a full quarter since our last update.  As we get back fully into in-person play, we’ll see how or if the landscape changes.  We’ll also see if the significant uptick in cards which make Treasures will bring any deeper consideration regarding Dockside Extortionist. 

Our next scheduled quarterly update is in conjunction with the release of Dominaria United in late summer/early fall.  Between now and then, we look forward to enjoying what new things come to us in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate.

As always, we have a channel on the Commander RC Discord server dedicated to a good-faith discussion on format philosophy.  If you have questions or comments, pop on by and join the more than 6,000 friends willing to engage on this and a host of other topics.  See you there! 

New Voices: What Commander Players Can Learn from Conquest

By Savannah Beard

The Commander format produces myriad experiences within multiplayer Magic. The Rules Committee and Commander community-at-large stress the importance of open-mindedness and communication, regarding gameplay preferences, and the kinds of experiences its players wish to have. This directs worthwhile attention to “the Gathering” aspect of our pastime, and harbors shared appreciation of the game itself. Meanwhile, the optimization of a player’s or group’s Commander decks, strategies, and political maneuverings to win games, is considered fun by some, and problematic by others. 

The Philosophy of Commander admits “it does not seek to regulate competitive play,” and encourages “groups to use the rules and the ban list as a baseline to optimize their own experience.” Commander’s underlying malleability gives cause for Conquest, a community-driven variant of Commander, aimed at addressing common barriers to accessibility and balance, particularly in the context of optimized Commander.

The Conquest variant adapts Commander’s ten rules, with four changes:

  • Legendary creature or planeswalker commanders.
  • Decks are at least 80 cards.
  • Players begin with 30 life.
  • 12 commander damage eliminates a player.

Conquest also uses a substantial banlist to regulate the high-power metagame.

Conquest is rooted in a culture of competitive Commander, that celebrates both the wonders of high-power Magic and the social experience of the multiplayer format. This article explores how Conquest promotes harmony in this context, and invites the reader to apply the lessons of Conquest to your own understanding of Commander. 

Accessibility

What do we mean by “accessibility,” or making Commander more “accessible?” One answer is affordability: the expense of a highly tuned deck is prohibitive to many, especially because of the scarcity of Reserved List cards. To provide a more affordable experience, Conquest excludes all cards on the Reserved List as a first principle. We recognize that history, collectibility, and nostalgia are driving factors in Commander playership. While unfortunate to leave behind some of Magic’s most interesting and powerful designs, a path for everyone to acquire excellent Conquest decks must begin with this difficult step. 

Accessibility means more than just affordability. The size of Conquest decks, which can be as few as 80 cards, is another major accessibility feature. Smaller decks are easier to learn and master for beginning players, easier to construct and test for brewers, and easier to handle, search, and shuffle for everyone. Improved decklist legibility lightens mental load. 80 cards being only a suggested minimum adds flexibility to making cuts, and permits constructing a deck that fits both Commander’s and Conquest’s parameters. 

The Onslaught/Zendikar fetchlands, like Polluted Delta, are uniquely disruptive to game flow in any format where they are present, especially Commander. Their activated ability requires searching a large library, tracking a life payment, and shuffling. Sequencing their deployment in multiples creates a tedious attention and time sink that other lands do not. The power of fetchlands in fixing mana and enabling other synergies is missed by some in Conquest, where these cards are banned, but the consensus is that the experience without them feels much more streamlined. 

Bettering accessibility in our games is vital to sustainable community building. We need to recognize and eliminate barriers to access in the hobby, especially in terms of gender, social class, and disability, because we should foster inclusion and belonging, and reward improvement and success, without elitism and gatekeeping. Community has transformational power, but before we can wield it, we must first involve our authentic selves. All gamers in our pastime can take this to heart–Conquest engrains this mentality from Commander even deeper into its rule set.

Balance

The curation of competitive play in Conquest is its main philosophical departure from Commander. The Rules Committee conservatively maintains Commander focusing primarily on the casual experience; Conquest’s rules and ban list, on the other hand, invite open exploration of Conquest’s fringes and upper boundaries. While competitive balance is a nebulous topic in gaming, expertise in powering and piloting optimized Commander decks has especially crystalized in the past few years.

In the competitive Commander context, a core of fast artifact mana and powerful tutors homogenizes deck building and makes luck in mulliganing a strong factor in success. Card combinations that win with few resources and no prerequisite board state detract from Commander’s stability as a strategy game. The dominance of combo, prominence of disruptive anti-combo decks (which often win with their own combos), and Commander’s starting life and commander damage constraints, threaten the variety of viable archetypes

So how does Conquest create strategic and archetypal balance? Players start Conquest games with 30 life, and 12 combat damage from one commander eliminates a player. These tweaks from Commander alleviate the strains on strategies that attack life totals directly, and particularly invigorate commander-damage-dealing archetypes. These gameplans are atypical in optimized Commander pods, but are commonplace in Conquest. 

With its ban list, Conquest prohibits some centralizing fast mana, tutors, combo enablers, and card advantage engines, but none of these kinds of cards are totally eliminated. For instance, instead of Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and Jeweled Lotus, Conquest players work with Chrome Mox, Mana Vault, and Lotus Petal. A banned-as-commander section allows proven legendary cards like Tymna, the Weaver and Oko, Thief of Crowns to remain playable inclusions without being clear best choices in commanders. 

And oh, Planeswalker commanders! Conquest implements an idea demonstrated in Brawl and Oathbreaker, that most planeswalker commanders add new dimensions to deck personalization and metagame dynamics. Advances in planeswalker design technology have yielded compelling new characters and mechanics, as well as efficient non-combat answers to planeswalkers. The renewed emphasis in Conquest on creature combat, due to the life and commander damage changes, pressures planeswalker permanents to keep them in check.

Conquest accentuates the process of optimizing constructed Magic, but encourages players to progress at their own pace. An average Conquest deck can still have a good game against a top-performing deck, because Conquest, in some ways, narrows the power level spectrum. For those who take pride in optimizing strategies that push the envelope, Conquest welcomes that attitude too. Taken to its extremes, the Conquest metagame can show which play patterns might be too successful: if you think Conquest can be broken, you should try and prove it! 

By incorporating balance and competitive play into its identity, Conquest destigmatizes optimization and the mindset of playing to win. Studio X’s significant design attention on Commander Magic, and some of its most power-pushed products like Jeweled Lotus, may necessitate amending Conquest’s ban list, but we are optimistic that the future holds more designs in line with Command Tower. 

Conquest, in my Commander?

It’s more likely than you think. 

Much like Elder Dragon Highlander was first brought to light by remote Magic judges cleansing their palette from the monotony of tournament Magic, Conquest originated in online competitive EDH cabals, where repetitive play patterns, especially involving the card Flash, also warranted discussion of change. Conquest serves a broad audience: since being unleashed on the public, Conquest has garnered playtime not just from former and current competitive Commander players, but self-described “casuals” and non-Commander Magic enthusiasts as well. Adoption of Conquest has transcended literal borders and language barriers, too.

At a technical level, Conquest and Commander are separate formats, and this is advantageous to both leadership groups. Conquest is guided by a different yet related set of principles from Commander-as-written, justifying bans that support the health of the high-power metagame. Format supervision in our online era can transparently incorporate community feedback, and Conquest’s management works to meet this standard regularly. By distinguishing itself, Conquest makes breathing room for Commander.

Philosophically, the similarities and compatibilities between Conquest and Commander are robust. Conquest retains Commander’s foundational principles: singleton constructed decks, legends to lead them, and a welcoming, multiplayer atmosphere. A relaxed, “beer and pretzels” social environment is not mutually exclusive to tight decision-making and powerful Magic. Thus, the experiences Conquest precipitates align with Commander Magic, or the greater vision of what Commander can be, because Commander licenses groups to suit our own passions by modifying its overarching framework.

Further practical evidence for the compatibility of Commander and Conquest is found in the abundance of resources that support enjoyment in both formats. Most game knowledge, card collections, piloting expertise, and interpersonal relationships, are just as applicable in Conquest as they are in Commander. In fact, virtually any preconstructed Commander product can be modified to Conquest simply by cutting Sol Ring! The threshold to Conquest entry is very low. At the other end of the spectrum, Conquest can reward advanced skills like primer writing, metagame analysis, event management, and high-production content creation. (The deck building website Moxfield has Conquest format integration.)

However, Conquest is not immune to the core critique of “competitive multiplayer” as a concept: competitive logic in multiplayer has contentious, gnarled consequences. We believe Conquest can be instrumental in establishing new norms for competitive and tournament multiplayer settings. The Conquest community, as all gaming communities should, strives to root out antisocial and unsporting behavior, such as collusion, kingmaking, spite play, and quarterbacking. We know fair play, shared learning, and mutual respect to be integral to the Conquest and greater Magic ethos. 

A Harmonious Future for Multiplayer Magic

Conquest does not intend to polarize nor splinter the groups that already love Commander. Commander players are independently discovering intuitions about modifying the format to the interests of our own groups, and the shared language, for when players with different preferences intermingle, is continually evolving. Conquest stands, on its own merits, in dialogue with Commander Magic: it is a peace offering, renewing Commander’s social contract with optimized play in mind.

When viewed from the basis of Commander, Conquest might inspire players of all persuasions to further assess our own metagames.

  • Which cards and strategies in your games are leading to amusement or annoyance?
  • Which cards and (planeswalker) commanders, prohibited by the letter of Commander, would enrich your group’s playstyles?
  • How can you streamline access in your group, including through house rules and bans?
  • How can you balance the desires of everyone in your group, when those ideas go in different, sometimes competing, directions?
  • What, precisely, do you like most about Commander? 

Commander’s overwhelming popularity has matured the appetite for the kinds of Magic events that its community attends. Some local game stores award booster and promo packs for winning pick-up Commander games, and an international subculture of tournament Commander is germinating in the competitive online space. In these contexts, the uncompromising pursuit of victory can drown out the prosocial pretense of the Gathering. Because Commander-as-written remains fundamentally “not competitive,” Conquest manifests an alternative accessible and balanced environment for these settings.

Thank you for engaging with this essay. I hope this has at least given you new fodder for pregame and aftercare conversations in your Commander circles, and maybe it enticed you to try Conquest on its own terms. Conquest has enriched my appreciation for the Philosophy of Commander and my passion for Magic as a whole ecosystem of recreation. For the Conquest community, our format is not merely a reconstruction of Commander with the architecture of competitive Magic, but a bridge to more sublime, resonant experiences that the pastime engenders.

Cat lover and Brawl apologist Savannah “beard_umbra” Beard is a Level 1 Judge, moderates the PlayEDH Discord, and after composing this article, was appointed to Conquest’s Balance Team. Follow Savannah on Moxfield.

RC Monday Morning Check-In

After a few sneak peeks a few weeks back, later this week we’ll see the first deep dive Kamigawa: Neon Destiny previews. While you’re waiting, you can review the State of the Format 2022 article.

The joint RC/CAG meeting is coming up on 30 January, so if there’s anything you want to bring up, now’s the time. We generally bring some closure to topics we’ve discussed over the previous quarter, but if there’s something you think deserves last-minute consideration, we’re listening. Head on over to the RC Discord server’s #format-philosophy channel and join the already-lively discussion.