I'm really not worried about it, but it's nice to have the option without needing to specifically build around countering it.
There's no need to build around your entire deck or strategy. As I said, any black deck can run a Sorin Markov, which is both not game ending (so not unfun like instant win combos) but versatile and useful enough (and very difficult to answer if u dont run counters) to shut down life gain players and still do other stuff in the game. But really, life gain decks are such a minority in edh world that justifing "commander damage" only for their existence really isn't enough of a good reason alone. Even Oloro players, if it's in dominant position, can be reasonably beated by simply doing politics and alliances inside a multiplayer game, without the need of the commander damage rule.
Combos are essentially running the format, and although competitive and casual are different metas, eventually people upgrade their decks and then tend to lean in to stronger strategies... like combos.
If combo decks are a problem, then commander damages do almost nothing to stop them, because assembling any 2 card combo, it's much faster and efficent than wasting time to summon a creature, hoping nobody got removals meanwhile and wasting time with equipments and/or auras with multiple combat phases. Unless you are planning to one-shot always with a single combat, which is just another combo monster beating a combo monster and you didn't resolve nothing, because the combo problem is still there. Anyway, from a practical viewpoint, voltron is not a reliable strategy to beat combos, thats why in CEDH the only decks you see to contrast efficently combo decks are control, stax and/or hatebears archetype.
Also, with Brawl, I don't think it's so much as WotC hating Commander Damage as it is having a lower life total in a 1v1 game. What would you set the Cdamage to? 15? 10? It just doesn't work as well.
The only real reason the number 21 was chosen was simply because the original elder dragons when commander started were all 7/7, so exactly 3 attacks from them, which are 21, would kill the player. The origin of this rule is simply for very narrow flavor reasons, than for gameplay reasons.
Also, with Brawl, I don't think it's so much as WotC hating Commander Damage as it is having a lower life total in a 1v1 game.
If it's true that MTGO Commander 1vs1 has Commander Damages, while multiplayer Brawl that starts at 30 lifes in multiplayer still doesn't have commander damages, means in that case that lower life has no meaning for WotC and that definitely try to get rid of commander damages.
I mean, by that same argument, isn't 1v1 Commander a sign that WotC is trying to get rid of the Partner mechanic?
Brawl is a different format. You have smaller decks, greater restrictions on deck lists, and can use Planeswalkers as commanders. They might not have had Commander Damage to encourage people using Planeswalkers as well as creatures. Or they might have decided it's a bad rule.
Maybe WotC doesn't like Commander damage as a mechanic, I'll happily concede that. I literally can't know one way or the other. I haven't personally seen anything on CD, but people at WotC have commented on things they don't like, like MaRo and his intense dislike of political cards.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad rule. It means that even relatively vanilla legends can be useful beyond just deck flavor.
I mean, by that same argument, isn't 1v1 Commander a sign that WotC is trying to get rid of the Partner mechanic?
No, because Partner is a mechanic actually made by WotC done multiple times, and the recent set Commander Legends proves they crazy love the mechanic and will to put it in future sets as well.
On the other hand, not a single card in Magic that was made for commander ever mention the existence of Commander Damage. We have cards that outright mention commanders and command zone, but nothing that cares about commander damages. Which means that if this rules wouldn't exist, it would literally change nothing to the life to new players approaching to the format because not a single card would ever need an errata to fix that.
I mean, by that same argument, isn't 1v1 Commander a sign that WotC is trying to get rid of the Partner mechanic?
No, because Partner is a mechanic actually made by WotC done multiple times, and the recent set Commander Legends proves they crazy love the mechanic and will to put it in future sets as well.
On the other hand, not a single card in Magic that was made for commander ever mention the existence of Commander Damage. We have cards that outright mention commanders and command zone, but nothing that cares about commander damages. Which means that if this rules wouldn't exist, it would literally change nothing to the life to new players approaching to the format because not a single card would ever need an errata to fix that.
I think he meant the fact that in MTGO 1v1 commander partner does not work you cant have 2 commanders.
Yeah, just pointing out that Brawl not having Commander Damage is no more a sign that "WotC thinks Commander Damage shouldn't exist" than 1v1 Commander not allowing partner meant WotC thought it was a bad mechanic they should never have printed.
I'm really not worried about it, but it's nice to have the option without needing to specifically build around countering it.
There's no need to build around your entire deck or strategy. As I said, any black deck can run a Sorin Markov, which is both not game ending (so not unfun like instant win combos) but versatile and useful enough (and very difficult to answer if u dont run counters) to shut down life gain players and still do other stuff in the game. But really, life gain decks are such a minority in edh world that justifing "commander damage" only for their existence really isn't enough of a good reason alone. Even Oloro players, if it's in dominant position, can be reasonably beated by simply doing politics and alliances inside a multiplayer game, without the need of the commander damage rule.
Combos are essentially running the format, and although competitive and casual are different metas, eventually people upgrade their decks and then tend to lean in to stronger strategies... like combos.
If combo decks are a problem, then commander damages do almost nothing to stop them, because assembling any 2 card combo, it's much faster and efficent than wasting time to summon a creature, hoping nobody got removals meanwhile and wasting time with equipments and/or auras with multiple combat phases. Unless you are planning to one-shot always with a single combat, which is just another combo monster beating a combo monster and you didn't resolve nothing, because the combo problem is still there. Anyway, from a practical viewpoint, voltron is not a reliable strategy to beat combos, thats why in CEDH the only decks you see to contrast efficently combo decks are control, stax and/or hatebears archetype.
Also, with Brawl, I don't think it's so much as WotC hating Commander Damage as it is having a lower life total in a 1v1 game. What would you set the Cdamage to? 15? 10? It just doesn't work as well.
The only real reason the number 21 was chosen was simply because the original elder dragons when commander started were all 7/7, so exactly 3 attacks from them, which are 21, would kill the player. The origin of this rule is simply for very narrow flavor reasons, than for gameplay reasons.
Also, with Brawl, I don't think it's so much as WotC hating Commander Damage as it is having a lower life total in a 1v1 game.
If it's true that MTGO Commander 1vs1 has Commander Damages, while multiplayer Brawl that starts at 30 lifes in multiplayer still doesn't have commander damages, means in that case that lower life has no meaning for WotC and that definitely try to get rid of commander damages.
I'm not saying that Commander damage is a counter to combos; I'm saying that it is pointless to get rid of commander damage because it is not something that is hurting the format like too many combo decks.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad rule. It means that even relatively vanilla legends can be useful beyond just deck flavor.
This is more or less what I meant. It doesn't take anything away from the game by existing, apart from maybe being a chore to track, and still gives you some marginal benefit should you need it. Whether it's competitive or not won't stop the occasional person from dawdling with infinite life gain.
The only real reason the number 21 was chosen was simply because the original elder dragons when commander started were all 7/7, so exactly 3 attacks from them, which are 21, would kill the player. The origin of this rule is simply for very narrow flavor reasons, than for gameplay reasons.
Is that true? Seems far more arbitrary than just "over half / majority of a given player's starting life total." Personally, I'd like to see them change commander damage to "over half of a given player's current life total."
Is that true? Seems far more arbitrary than just "over half / majority of a given player's starting life total." Personally, I'd like to see them change commander damage to "over half of a given player's current life total."
Absolutely, but I think it would be more competitively viable, and reduce the amount of tracking.
As described, you'd only have to deal 14 damage with a commander to kill someone. Seems functionally pretty similar to having commanders deal triple damage, which would actually be much easier to track, though I think double would be more balanced (yes, I know it stops being the same thing when multiple commanders are involved). The idea of losing when some random creature knocks you down to 6 life because you took 3 damage from a commander several turns ago is pretty weird to me.
Absolutely, but I think it would be more competitively viable, and reduce the amount of tracking.
I think having a set number your Commander needs to reach is a bit easier to track than needing to do comparative math every time your life total changes from anything after a Commander hits you once. (Plus you can end up in weird situations where "X Commander hit me for 10, Y Commander hit me for 10, I've just been drained by player 3, my life total is now 20, who do I lose to for the purposes of rules?")
Over half of a given player's current life total implies there is no commander damage memory, nothing to be tracked between phases and rounds; if your commander can deal just over half whatever a player's life total is at that moment, that player loses the game. At 40 life, that's 21 damage. Anything short of that means you would have to deal half of their life total during your next combat phase, even if you managed to squeeze in 20 the turn before. That also means it's harder when they have more life, but scales as the game goes on and everybody else gets their hits in. At 30 life, you need to do 16 in a single combat phase, at 20 you need to do 11, etc. In theory, this means you could actually win with commander damage without building a deck around it, and gives you a reason to risk spending mana in the double digits after your commander tax has gone up 3 or more times. For existing commander damage strategies, it gives you the ability to pull off a late game win against players you hadn't even swung at yet, without nearly as much setup.
It's.... theoretical, and needs some better wording for the actual rule to be intuitive and not broken, but I think it could work. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to swing in for a win after setting my commander up by dealing non-combat damage beforehand, or piggy backing off of what the other players at the table have been doing all game. Instead, for commander damage to have any meaningful impact right now you need to pull off a successful voltron strategy, which is easily disrupted and has to work against multiple players over the course of several turns.
it is not something that is hurting the format like too many combo decks.
It is actually hurting gameplay wise for the following reasons:
- Memory issues for multiplayer (it's really bad to need for every game a pen and block note just to note something that from a practical voewpoint seldom will matters in games. It's objectively a mess and isn't worth doing it)
- Memory issues part 2 : another rule that new players must remembers for an already complicated format.
- Encourage toxic pick on against a single player in order for commander damage to be effective. It's definitely a feel-bad experience for a casual and relaxed environment.
- Like combo decks, encourages un-interactive strategies (one-shotting attacks / hexproof generals / unblockable etc.) or voltron is otherwise just uneffective and unreliable as a wincon.
Also, I have more than 10 years of non-stop testing of EDH without commander damages to see how is not necessary for the format (not to mention countless of observation of edh games in cockatrice of all power levels were commander damage rarely matters at all). From all these elements I can say that is an obsolete and clunky rule that the format doesn't really need. Even without commander damages, if you really wanna one-shot somebody through combat damage no matter how much lifes opponentws got, giving them infect is still an option (and cards like Grafted Exoscheleton or Blightsteel Colossus are available for every deck).
like too many combo decks
When a combo is too strong and predominant in EDH games, usually RC do official bans about it (flash was the last case)
Anyway the whole point is that commander damage is overall an unelegant rule. Unelegant like was unelegant to have separate banlists for "commanders only" or banned completely (and RC removed the category exactly because it was unelegant, even if it was somehow helpful gameplay wise)
There's no need to build around your entire deck or strategy. As I said, any black deck can run a Sorin Markov, which is both not game ending (so not unfun like instant win combos) but versatile and useful enough (and very difficult to answer if u dont run counters) to shut down life gain players and still do other stuff in the game. But really, life gain decks are such a minority in edh world that justifing "commander damage" only for their existence really isn't enough of a good reason alone. Even Oloro players, if it's in dominant position, can be reasonably beated by simply doing politics and alliances inside a multiplayer game, without the need of the commander damage rule.
If combo decks are a problem, then commander damages do almost nothing to stop them, because assembling any 2 card combo, it's much faster and efficent than wasting time to summon a creature, hoping nobody got removals meanwhile and wasting time with equipments and/or auras with multiple combat phases. Unless you are planning to one-shot always with a single combat, which is just another combo monster beating a combo monster and you didn't resolve nothing, because the combo problem is still there. Anyway, from a practical viewpoint, voltron is not a reliable strategy to beat combos, thats why in CEDH the only decks you see to contrast efficently combo decks are control, stax and/or hatebears archetype.
The only real reason the number 21 was chosen was simply because the original elder dragons when commander started were all 7/7, so exactly 3 attacks from them, which are 21, would kill the player. The origin of this rule is simply for very narrow flavor reasons, than for gameplay reasons.
If it's true that MTGO Commander 1vs1 has Commander Damages, while multiplayer Brawl that starts at 30 lifes in multiplayer still doesn't have commander damages, means in that case that lower life has no meaning for WotC and that definitely try to get rid of commander damages.
Brawl is a different format. You have smaller decks, greater restrictions on deck lists, and can use Planeswalkers as commanders. They might not have had Commander Damage to encourage people using Planeswalkers as well as creatures. Or they might have decided it's a bad rule.
Maybe WotC doesn't like Commander damage as a mechanic, I'll happily concede that. I literally can't know one way or the other. I haven't personally seen anything on CD, but people at WotC have commented on things they don't like, like MaRo and his intense dislike of political cards.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad rule. It means that even relatively vanilla legends can be useful beyond just deck flavor.
No, because Partner is a mechanic actually made by WotC done multiple times, and the recent set Commander Legends proves they crazy love the mechanic and will to put it in future sets as well.
On the other hand, not a single card in Magic that was made for commander ever mention the existence of Commander Damage. We have cards that outright mention commanders and command zone, but nothing that cares about commander damages. Which means that if this rules wouldn't exist, it would literally change nothing to the life to new players approaching to the format because not a single card would ever need an errata to fix that.
I think he meant the fact that in MTGO 1v1 commander partner does not work you cant have 2 commanders.
I'm not saying that Commander damage is a counter to combos; I'm saying that it is pointless to get rid of commander damage because it is not something that is hurting the format like too many combo decks.
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Innistrad - The Darkest Night
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A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
This is more or less what I meant. It doesn't take anything away from the game by existing, apart from maybe being a chore to track, and still gives you some marginal benefit should you need it. Whether it's competitive or not won't stop the occasional person from dawdling with infinite life gain.
Is that true? Seems far more arbitrary than just "over half / majority of a given player's starting life total." Personally, I'd like to see them change commander damage to "over half of a given player's current life total."
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
As described, you'd only have to deal 14 damage with a commander to kill someone. Seems functionally pretty similar to having commanders deal triple damage, which would actually be much easier to track, though I think double would be more balanced (yes, I know it stops being the same thing when multiple commanders are involved). The idea of losing when some random creature knocks you down to 6 life because you took 3 damage from a commander several turns ago is pretty weird to me.
I think having a set number your Commander needs to reach is a bit easier to track than needing to do comparative math every time your life total changes from anything after a Commander hits you once. (Plus you can end up in weird situations where "X Commander hit me for 10, Y Commander hit me for 10, I've just been drained by player 3, my life total is now 20, who do I lose to for the purposes of rules?")
It's.... theoretical, and needs some better wording for the actual rule to be intuitive and not broken, but I think it could work. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to swing in for a win after setting my commander up by dealing non-combat damage beforehand, or piggy backing off of what the other players at the table have been doing all game. Instead, for commander damage to have any meaningful impact right now you need to pull off a successful voltron strategy, which is easily disrupted and has to work against multiple players over the course of several turns.
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
It is actually hurting gameplay wise for the following reasons:
- Memory issues for multiplayer (it's really bad to need for every game a pen and block note just to note something that from a practical voewpoint seldom will matters in games. It's objectively a mess and isn't worth doing it)
- Memory issues part 2 : another rule that new players must remembers for an already complicated format.
- Encourage toxic pick on against a single player in order for commander damage to be effective. It's definitely a feel-bad experience for a casual and relaxed environment.
- Like combo decks, encourages un-interactive strategies (one-shotting attacks / hexproof generals / unblockable etc.) or voltron is otherwise just uneffective and unreliable as a wincon.
Also, I have more than 10 years of non-stop testing of EDH without commander damages to see how is not necessary for the format (not to mention countless of observation of edh games in cockatrice of all power levels were commander damage rarely matters at all). From all these elements I can say that is an obsolete and clunky rule that the format doesn't really need. Even without commander damages, if you really wanna one-shot somebody through combat damage no matter how much lifes opponentws got, giving them infect is still an option (and cards like Grafted Exoscheleton or Blightsteel Colossus are available for every deck).
When a combo is too strong and predominant in EDH games, usually RC do official bans about it (flash was the last case)
Anyway the whole point is that commander damage is overall an unelegant rule. Unelegant like was unelegant to have separate banlists for "commanders only" or banned completely (and RC removed the category exactly because it was unelegant, even if it was somehow helpful gameplay wise)
Monologue Tax and Archaeomancer's Map are overrated trash for their current pricing.