I'd reprint all the money cards I could cram into the decks, no question. And cut the price to production costs. ($1-5?) But then, I'm an anarchist, so of course I'd open the vaults.
why do so many people want 4 color generals all for a cycle of nephilim. why not use a 5 color general and cut out one color if they are that important. they aren't very good.
I think each deck should be dedicated to a plane before mending for nostalgia. And make new versions of old legends as commanders, kinda like the time shifted cards.
that would be pretty cool. blue white is dominaria. blue black kamigawa...
One allied colored pair, and one enemy colored pair, and one tricolored general for each of the five decks, ideally all new.
The main focus of design would be to design mechanically interesting commanders. There wouldn't be any basically vanilla beater legendaries like Kalemne, or if there were, they wouldn't be Boros at least, because that guild really needs some more expression outside of the combat zone.
Each deck would feature two flavorful mechanics from past magic revisited. For instance, the sultai deck could get dredge, but it could also get flashback. The Jeskai deck would be the big problem. The mechanics, and the deck itself would have to be constructed to avoid pidgeonholing izzet into storm, and the boros side into combat. Both of those guilds are entirely too one dimensional in their available cards. So I'd probably just reverse it: The boros side gets storm mechanics, and the izzet side gets morph.
We should be expecting ally-colors, so here's some ideas for a twist on each color-pair;
Azorius (WU would make for a nice "flying matters" deck. The two colors have always had fliers, but relatively recently, they've begun exploring some stuff there with Favorable Winds and Windreader Sphinx. A flying commander that got bonuses for having other flying creatures, along with some "flying lords", would be neat as the main focus. A flicker sub-theme with Brago, King Eternal as a reprint as well as a more controlish new commander would fit Azorius well.
Dimir (UB needs a non-mill commander. Blue Black, according to MaRo, is the hardest allied combo to make new stuff for, but I think some "steal yo stuff" commander would be rather fitting for the colors. Of course, there should be some mill component, but what if it was an exile mill that messed around with the exile zone, ala Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. And as for the usual reprint, Vela the Night-Clad or Sygg, River Cutthroat could open up those underated generals to a wider audience.
Rakdos (BR) is fairly well-defined. A very aggro combo, Rakdos needs some help in multiplayer, but too much control cuts into the heart of the cards. I propose pushing Red Black discard, allowing people to draw extra cards, but forcing them to discard randomly. Add some more "every turn" punisher effects like Mogis, God of Slaughter (a good reprint for the deck). Finally, make things go boom with effects like Showstopper stapled to commanders. Rakdos shoots itself in the foot to ricochet into your jaw, and the next R/B commander should emphasize that.
Gruul (RG) is in a fine place right now. Landfall got a major boost with BFZ and OGW, but what about a dedicated "fight" commander? Lots of fight effects and tons of big creatures to take advantage of them. I'm not at all a Gruul player, so I have no idea what else would be needed. Go nuts
Selesnya (GW would obviously have a focus on tokens, but what else could be done with the pair? Life gain is feasible, but that's more W/B. Again, I don't play these colors, so someone else go crazy.
I also like the idea of going back into Magic's history and bringing some of the characters back as Legendary creatures like they did with Feldon and Titania in C14. Just from Antiquities alone, I'd love to see the Brothers War continue to be brought to life with cards for Tocasia, Tawnos, Ashnod, and Drafna (and/or his wife Hurkyl).
I think every Commander set should heavily push for the reprinting of Portal cards that are expensive only because they are so rare.
I would also like to see them explore linear or parasitic mechanics that did not get a lot of room to explore in the sets they were in or are difficult to bring back without dedicating a lot of room for them. For example, cards with Ninjutsu or Arcane (with Splice onto Arcane, but not badly costly).
There are two glaring flaws with the Commander decks.
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
I like this suggestion of a sealed Commander Masters booster product, however, it would likely be priced in the same way that Modern Masters is priced, so individual booster products would not be cheap, which cuts against the grain that Commander is a more casual environment.
However, I would defend the Commander pre-cons as a good way to introduce a new player to the Commander format. Yes, they provide some great new cards for the format, but their primary audience is new or relatively new players, not seasoned players with large existing card pools.
I also would like to see more land destruction (akin to Ruination and not From the Ashes) or cards that reset land counts to a certain number (Keldon Firebombers and Natural Balance), which would be a way to counter ramp strategies with out wonton mass land destruction
Because there are already a lot of allied two-color generals, I'd really want any allied two-color commander decks to be specifically designed to support strategies that are in-color, but not well supported by existing commanders. That means that the UB deck isn't mill, the WG one isn't tokens, and so on.
WU is maybe the two-color combination that has the widest array of commanders. Potentially a deck could be built around tap/untap tricks, or feature commanders that interact with artifacts or fliers in a different way than Hanna and Isperia.
UB has basically one job, which to be not a mill deck. Maybe a deck with -1/-1 counters (and other counters) that's built around proliferate?
If BR has an issue, it's not that its commanders aren't that diverse as much as it is that its commanders, with a couple of exceptions, just aren't that good. They tend to do things that just aren't scaled to EDH as a format. A general with something like Pain Magnification might be interesting. You could also do some sort of a recursion theme, or even something off the wall like things that grant deathtouch + pingers. Wizards likes Act of Treason effects + sac outlets in this combination, although there are already okay generals that support that. You could also open things up with some kind of demon/devil tribal thing.
RG is another combination with a good general spread. If it's missing one thing, it's cheap general options. Some kind of fight lord might be interesting - Foe-Razer Regent has played around in this space.
GW is a slam dunk. Enchantress.
WU Fliers would be a nice theme; the best support we have for it right now is Isperia the Inscrutable.
UB could focus on sneaky creatures that like to deal combat damage to players; Ninjas and Rogues would be good tribal subthemes. A UB Ninja legend would make a lot of Ninja fans happy.
BR should get dedicated aggro; most BR legends focus on saccing stuff. Perhaps some Vampire tribal as well? Ogre tribal would also be interesting.
RG could have power matters, making use of Ferocious and Power 5 cards as well as lots of fight and fling effects. What about a Shaman that reduces the cost of creature spells you cast by an amount equal to the Shaman's power, or can tap for mana equal to its power?
GW could work with enchantments, or it could focus on +1/+1 counters or lifegain. Shoot, since Commander decks usually have two complimentary themes going, why not two of the above?
Indeed, perhaps we could try to name two themes each deck could use?
WU: Flying and artifacts.
UB: Stealth and Ninja/Rogue tribal.
BR: Lifeloss and Ogre tribal.
RG: Power matters and Kicker/Multikicker.
GW: Enchantments and lifegain.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
So you can see, the value of even having such a product is iffy at best. It's only 18 cards, and even given that they are all foil versions, it seems rather steep to charge $300 for it (The MSRP was $75). Taken individually, the non-foil versions of those cards add up to $248*** at current prices (prices from SCG, least expensive, non-foil English version). You are paying a higher premium on the cards because they are foil (and some are the first time in the modern card frame), for the 10 oversized cards, and for the other stuff you get (120 sleeves and a pretty cool life counter).
* Ironically, the Foil Diochan from Commander's Arsenal sells individually for only $3
** Along those same lines, the Foil Loyal Retainers from Commander's Arsenal sells individually for $16
*** So if you go by the least expensive, English version of Diaochan and Loyal Retainers, it takes the value down from $248 to $182...
The reality of the situation is that unless they print the hell out of the Commander supplement product, the cost that stores will charge for it will always be well above MSRP and probably well above what it would cost to obtain those cards individually. In the case of Commander's Arsenal, the product supply dried up almost immediately; stores only received less than 10 copies in a lot of cases and almost all of those went to somebody's friend or a store owner's own collection. I don't think I ever actually saw one available until 6 months after it was printed and the price has always been in the "not worth it" range. I think that WotC learned a bit about how such a short print run really fouled up what could have been a cool product, but any future product runs the risk of running into the same problems.
Now having it be a booster pack-oriented product makes things a bit more interesting, but you couldn't load it up with rares/mythics whose average value is $15 on the secondary market and not expect a 15-card booster to sell for anything less than $50. Even if you went and made sure that the set included commons were only $1 ea, uncommons at $5, and the rares averaged $25, you would average $50 in value out of every pack; prices for those packs will get out of hand quickly, especially if there are $50-$60 cards in it (and even higher priced foils). I would venture that packs would go for at least $10 each; that's a high price to pay for not even knowing what you are going to get...
Mostly I would just ensure RB has a ludicrous Aggro commander. Aggro is under represented in this format because of how fast Combo can be, and how hard Stax can be to fight through.
Someone from Ravnica (Rakdos' newest High Priestess?) with something like "Whenever this creature attacks, creatures you control gain +X/+0 and Trample until end of turn, where X is equal to 7 minus the number of cards in your hand".
Dump a bunch of 2/2s, swing with a bunch of 9/2 Tramples.
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
We usually get 3 ccreatures that are the feature commanders for the deck. I think that making sure that we get 3 new commanders with CMC respectively being 1-2, 3-5, 6-10 then that would be pretty cool. Having those commanders be foil cards would be even better. And instead of oversized commander cards I would want 1-3 planeschase cards that relate to the different planes that are represented within that deck. I can't stand the oversized cards that have been released over the years. There is no point to them at all.
There are two glaring flaws with the Commander decks.
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
It's funny that you mention Modern Masters in your post without actually dealing with the fact that modern masters is how the hypothetical commander booster would work in reality. Two things would happen:
1. Wizards would limit the most desirable reprints to mythic. You can see this with Tarmogoyf's status in Modern Masters. This serves too purposes: It drives sales, and it keeps the set from negatively affecting prices too much, which seems to be a high concern for wizards.
2. Resellers would sell packs at many times the recommended sale price, because the expected value of the packs would be many times any reasonable price.
A Commander Masters would not succeed in lowering prices given wizard's current price maintaining priority and scummy reseller behavior.
There are two glaring flaws with the Commander decks.
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
It's funny that you mention Modern Masters in your post without actually dealing with the fact that modern masters is how the hypothetical commander booster would work in reality. Two things would happen:
1. Wizards would limit the most desirable reprints to mythic. You can see this with Tarmogoyf's status in Modern Masters. This serves too purposes: It drives sales, and it keeps the set from negatively affecting prices too much, which seems to be a high concern for wizards.
2. Resellers would sell packs at many times the recommended sale price, because the expected value of the packs would be many times any reasonable price.
A Commander Masters would not succeed in lowering prices given wizard's current price maintaining priority and scummy reseller behavior.
Good points. Wizards would need to stop this nonsense of limited print runs and just print the dang cards to demand. I can live with them charging 6-8 bucks MSRP a pack for a premium product as long as there is value in the set to justify it but if they don't print cards to demand then the MSRP is meaningless. Assuming a set is printed to demand, it would be impossible for resellers to price gouge in the long run because eventually some resellers are going to cave and cut their prices to the lowest possible price while still maintaining profitability. (See commander decks just before release compared to commander decks six months later as a prime example)
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
You misinterpreted my post. I am well aware that they already printed a supplemental product called Commander's Arsenal and I'm not suggesting they create something similar. My point was that they need a booster pack based product that is printed to demand in order to give us the reprints that we want to see. When I referenced Commander's Arsenal and Commander Masters I was simply giving examples of names that they could call the set.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
You misinterpreted my post. I am well aware that they already printed a supplemental product called Commander's Arsenal and I'm not suggesting they create something similar. My point was that they need a booster pack based product that is printed to demand in order to give us the reprints that we want to see. When I referenced Commander's Arsenal and Commander Masters I was simply giving examples of names that they could call the set.
You didn't read the entirety of my post. I talk about a booster-pack oriented set in the last paragraph...
Anyway, the point was that filling a set up with a bunch of cards that are currently high-priced will only drive up the cost that retailers will be willing to sell the boosters for. A limited print run like Commander's Arsenal was a total disaster. Modern Masters was a huge success mostly because it was a ton of fun to draft, but I would hardly call that set based on card value. If it was, it would certainly have become too expensive to even draft except on MODO.
The other thing to consider is that it makes little sense to even package a supplemental product like this in boosters unless the set was created with drafting in mind, which seems somewhat antithetical to creating a high value product and would have its own issues regarding balance and playability while utilizing Commander staples. I just don't see a booster-pack set being something that would work.
Oh god. I completely agree with Gutterstorm. I hope very much that most people commenting here will never design commander products. I understand the competitive side of EDH is very vocal in these forums but I think the overwhelming majority of EDH players are very much casuals through and through. Which is what EDH is all about: it's an multiplayer, 100card singleton format with extra quirky rules (like color identity and commander), ideas which very clearly oppse to the idea of a streamlined competitive deck. I also understand that there is a lot of fun in overcoming these contraints and try to build a streamlined deck anyways, but that is not what the commander product is about. Me and most of my friends got into EDH with a pre-con commander product clearly designed for new players, and it has been a blast to get to know these decks and improve them. Stripmine and 30+ dollar cards in precons? Hell no. /rant
Back to the original question: I think I would push multiplayer and commander specific cards, especially cards with political aspects to them. Myriad, Tempting offer and Will of the council (although not from an commander product) are very nice mechanis I would love to see more often. I also loved the command zone interactions in COM2013 and would like to see more of those, like the Leuitenant cycle.
I also agree with the idea of putting more commanders with a subset of the decks color identity in commander products (like Nin and Vish Kal in the original commander product).
Also, I would make sure that cards like Command Beacon are NOT just in one deck, but at least in 3 ore more to make it more accessible. I would probably also push for the printing of yet unseen tokens. It frustrates me to no end that I can't have nice Tokens for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher or Marath, Will od the Wild ...
Back to the original question: I think I would push multiplayer and commander specific cards, especially cards with political aspects to them. Myriad, Tempting offer and Will of the council (although not from an commander product) are very nice mechanis I would love to see more often. I also loved the command zone interactions in COM2013 and would like to see more of those, like the Leuitenant cycle.
Myriad, Tempting Offer, and Will of the Council have all been terrible mechanics that either further push new/bad players into being bad, or don't do anything for the competitive table.
Myriad is only useful on Blade of Selves, which is only equipped to creatures with ETB abilities. Every creature the keyword is on is a vanilla beater, because adding any ETB effect (even one as simple as Scry 1) to them means Do it X times every attack step, where X is the number of other players in the game. The keyword is either worthless or too powerful.
The only two Tempting Offers that get used are Tempt with Vengeance in Token decks that don't care if other players get the tokens (Gahiji, Purphoros) or Tempt with Discovery, where it's either "I search up Cabal Coffers and Urborg, you guys each get basic lands" or "I search up Cabal Coffers and Urborg, why did all of you get Wastelands?"
Will of the Council is decent, but again; either the cards have to be overpowered to make up for the fact that everyone else gets to choose what happens, or one choice is obviously more powerful than the other.
The only card that has used the Political Mechanic of any commander friendly product has been Mana-Charged Dragon, where suddenly EVERYONE is capable of pumping a dragon to kill you/your creature if you piss off the table.
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
I'd push for some more experience counter play. It was interesting but not really the best. They need to add more access to it. Sure meren is laughing as she can. Rack up the counters with ease. But what about the r/u one? She is good until your spells no longer cost more than your exp counters
You would also want exp counters to do more then just play the commander's effect.
Each deck gets:
3 three color commanders, reprinting some of the more popular ones: Kaalia, Mimeoplasm, Riku, Zedruu, Ghave, otherwise new
6 two color commanders, mostly new
6 mono colored commanders, mostly new
The goal being to drastically increase the number of generals one can use for deck construction. I'm actually at the point now where I struggle to find interesting deck ideas, and I think a large part of that is the lack of interesting legendary creatures to build around.
I would also be satisfied if they released some sort of commander mega pack that was just a ton of new generals.
Personally, I would like to push for 2 color hybrid commanders in the 1-4 mana range (no real reason for the hybrid mana other than I like it). The next one will most likely be allied dual colors so:
Add more selective draw effects to white. Ideally ones that aren't so bad but just have niche situations to work.
UW:I have always wanted to see UW have an equipment based commander as well since white focuses on equipment and blue tends to have artifact interactions it seems like a direction that blue could reasonably stretch to.
GW: Glare of Subdual on a stick would be really cool. It fits what they colors already have access to but it would make for a really cool feeling commander if you ask me. It would give some aggro / control build options to the same commander as well.
BR: I dont have anything specific but holy crap the commanders here are always so awkward. I would like something that feels rakdos but honestly they need some sustainability. When it comes to this color combination there are 22 legendary options and I would be hard pressed to say that more than 3 of them are all that playable.
UB: Make it control based and please for the love of god have nothing to do with mill. I like a lot of the flavor of several of the commander options but everything ends up costing so much mana to cast that it feels less playable. I have always struggled with the legends here even though I know there are a ton of playable ones. Too often I also feel like the commanders here fall into goodstuff control tactics as well which is unfortunate. Personally I would love to see another sacrifice based commander kind of like Grimgrin, Corpse-Born but perhaps a little less clunky looking and feeling.
GR: unfortunately the design space seems to usually be to give something efficient stats and slap trample / haste on it and call it good. I would say its good to stick to what this color is good at but try to package it a little differently. Ideally a little less focus on just face smashing and giving some sustainability to the usual face smash that these colors make up would be good. I am thinking something along the lines of Garruk's Packleader as a legend with perhaps a second ability (perhaps a mana dork effect) and adjusting stats / mana if possible to lower its cost.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I'm pretty sure we'll see duel ally colored decks. I just hope the try new approaches with their commanders. I don't want to see UB mill, UW bounce/pillow fort, GR Hulk smash, BR suicide squad or WG token life. If they took a look at older magic lore, they would see some really nutty and interesting abilities featured in those pairings.
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Going past my mind's desire and being more restrained, I'd say at least reprint Starter/Portal cards like Three Visits, Imperial Recruiter, and Temporal Manipulation. It's absurd that Three Visits is a $30 card. An allied-pair theme seems appropriate given the last few decks, though somehow including a colorless deck would be timely.
I think each deck should be dedicated to a plane before mending for nostalgia. And make new versions of old legends as commanders, kinda like the time shifted cards.
that would be pretty cool. blue white is dominaria. blue black kamigawa...
One allied colored pair, and one enemy colored pair, and one tricolored general for each of the five decks, ideally all new.
The main focus of design would be to design mechanically interesting commanders. There wouldn't be any basically vanilla beater legendaries like Kalemne, or if there were, they wouldn't be Boros at least, because that guild really needs some more expression outside of the combat zone.
Each deck would feature two flavorful mechanics from past magic revisited. For instance, the sultai deck could get dredge, but it could also get flashback. The Jeskai deck would be the big problem. The mechanics, and the deck itself would have to be constructed to avoid pidgeonholing izzet into storm, and the boros side into combat. Both of those guilds are entirely too one dimensional in their available cards. So I'd probably just reverse it: The boros side gets storm mechanics, and the izzet side gets morph.
Azorius (WU would make for a nice "flying matters" deck. The two colors have always had fliers, but relatively recently, they've begun exploring some stuff there with Favorable Winds and Windreader Sphinx. A flying commander that got bonuses for having other flying creatures, along with some "flying lords", would be neat as the main focus. A flicker sub-theme with Brago, King Eternal as a reprint as well as a more controlish new commander would fit Azorius well.
Dimir (UB needs a non-mill commander. Blue Black, according to MaRo, is the hardest allied combo to make new stuff for, but I think some "steal yo stuff" commander would be rather fitting for the colors. Of course, there should be some mill component, but what if it was an exile mill that messed around with the exile zone, ala Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. And as for the usual reprint, Vela the Night-Clad or Sygg, River Cutthroat could open up those underated generals to a wider audience.
Rakdos (BR) is fairly well-defined. A very aggro combo, Rakdos needs some help in multiplayer, but too much control cuts into the heart of the cards. I propose pushing Red Black discard, allowing people to draw extra cards, but forcing them to discard randomly. Add some more "every turn" punisher effects like Mogis, God of Slaughter (a good reprint for the deck). Finally, make things go boom with effects like Showstopper stapled to commanders. Rakdos shoots itself in the foot to ricochet into your jaw, and the next R/B commander should emphasize that.
Gruul (RG) is in a fine place right now. Landfall got a major boost with BFZ and OGW, but what about a dedicated "fight" commander? Lots of fight effects and tons of big creatures to take advantage of them. I'm not at all a Gruul player, so I have no idea what else would be needed. Go nuts
Selesnya (GW would obviously have a focus on tokens, but what else could be done with the pair? Life gain is feasible, but that's more W/B. Again, I don't play these colors, so someone else go crazy.
-Commander-
UBGMill, Sidisi, and Other ShenanigansGBU
WUBRGShingeki no TazriGRBUW
Jalira, Master Polymorphist | Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder | Bosh, Iron Golem | Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Brago, King Eternal | Oona, Queen of the Fae | Wort, Boggart Auntie | Wort, the Raidmother
Captain Sisay | Rhys, the Redeemed | Trostani, Selesnya's Voice | Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight | Obzedat, Ghost Council | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind | Vorel of the Hull Clade
Uril, the Miststalker | Prossh, Skyraider of Kher | Nicol Bolas | Progenitus
Ghave, Guru of Spores | Zedruu the Greathearted | Damia, Sage of Stone | Riku of Two Reflections
I would also like to see them explore linear or parasitic mechanics that did not get a lot of room to explore in the sets they were in or are difficult to bring back without dedicating a lot of room for them. For example, cards with Ninjutsu or Arcane (with Splice onto Arcane, but not badly costly).
Whenever two or more creatures attack or block, exile the top two cards of your library. Until end of turn, you may cast those cards.
3/5
UB guy 1UB
Flying, 1/3
Morbid, tap: Counter target spell.
UG guy 5UG
Reach
At the beginning of your end step, scry X and draw X cards, where X is the number of creatures you control
4/5
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
However, I would defend the Commander pre-cons as a good way to introduce a new player to the Commander format. Yes, they provide some great new cards for the format, but their primary audience is new or relatively new players, not seasoned players with large existing card pools.
Examples:
An izzet general that has a ETB Chaos Warp/Warp World effect
I also would like to see more land destruction (akin to Ruination and not From the Ashes) or cards that reset land counts to a certain number (Keldon Firebombers and Natural Balance), which would be a way to counter ramp strategies with out wonton mass land destruction
WU is maybe the two-color combination that has the widest array of commanders. Potentially a deck could be built around tap/untap tricks, or feature commanders that interact with artifacts or fliers in a different way than Hanna and Isperia.
UB has basically one job, which to be not a mill deck. Maybe a deck with -1/-1 counters (and other counters) that's built around proliferate?
If BR has an issue, it's not that its commanders aren't that diverse as much as it is that its commanders, with a couple of exceptions, just aren't that good. They tend to do things that just aren't scaled to EDH as a format. A general with something like Pain Magnification might be interesting. You could also do some sort of a recursion theme, or even something off the wall like things that grant deathtouch + pingers. Wizards likes Act of Treason effects + sac outlets in this combination, although there are already okay generals that support that. You could also open things up with some kind of demon/devil tribal thing.
RG is another combination with a good general spread. If it's missing one thing, it's cheap general options. Some kind of fight lord might be interesting - Foe-Razer Regent has played around in this space.
GW is a slam dunk. Enchantress.
UB could focus on sneaky creatures that like to deal combat damage to players; Ninjas and Rogues would be good tribal subthemes. A UB Ninja legend would make a lot of Ninja fans happy.
BR should get dedicated aggro; most BR legends focus on saccing stuff. Perhaps some Vampire tribal as well? Ogre tribal would also be interesting.
RG could have power matters, making use of Ferocious and Power 5 cards as well as lots of fight and fling effects. What about a Shaman that reduces the cost of creature spells you cast by an amount equal to the Shaman's power, or can tap for mana equal to its power?
GW could work with enchantments, or it could focus on +1/+1 counters or lifegain. Shoot, since Commander decks usually have two complimentary themes going, why not two of the above?
Indeed, perhaps we could try to name two themes each deck could use?
WU: Flying and artifacts.
UB: Stealth and Ninja/Rogue tribal.
BR: Lifeloss and Ogre tribal.
RG: Power matters and Kicker/Multikicker.
GW: Enchantments and lifegain.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Ummm.... they did print Commander's Arsenal. It's available at Star City Games for $300 or Channel Fireball for $400 (among other places I'm sure).
The set list included the following 18 cards (plus 10 oversized cards that nobody cares about):
1 Command Tower
1 Decree of Pain
1 Desertion
1 Diaochan, the Artful Beauty
1 Dragonlair Spider
1 Duplicant
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Kaalia of the Vast
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Maelstrom Wanderer
1 Mind's Eye
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Rhystic Study
1 Scroll Rack
1 Sylvan Library
1 The Mimeoplasm
1 Vela the Night-Clad
So you can see, the value of even having such a product is iffy at best. It's only 18 cards, and even given that they are all foil versions, it seems rather steep to charge $300 for it (The MSRP was $75). Taken individually, the non-foil versions of those cards add up to $248*** at current prices (prices from SCG, least expensive, non-foil English version). You are paying a higher premium on the cards because they are foil (and some are the first time in the modern card frame), for the 10 oversized cards, and for the other stuff you get (120 sleeves and a pretty cool life counter).
Chaos Warp - $3
Command Tower - $2
Decree of Pain - $1
Desertion - $6
Diaochan - $35*
Dragonlair Spider - $4
Duplicant - $9
Edric - $1
Kaalia - $36
Loyal Retainers - $50**
Maelstrom Wanderer - $18
Mind's Eye - $9
Mirari's Wake - $8
Rhystic Study - $4
Scroll Rack - $27
Sylvan Library - $23
The Mimeoplasm - $7
Vela - $5
* Ironically, the Foil Diochan from Commander's Arsenal sells individually for only $3
** Along those same lines, the Foil Loyal Retainers from Commander's Arsenal sells individually for $16
*** So if you go by the least expensive, English version of Diaochan and Loyal Retainers, it takes the value down from $248 to $182...
The reality of the situation is that unless they print the hell out of the Commander supplement product, the cost that stores will charge for it will always be well above MSRP and probably well above what it would cost to obtain those cards individually. In the case of Commander's Arsenal, the product supply dried up almost immediately; stores only received less than 10 copies in a lot of cases and almost all of those went to somebody's friend or a store owner's own collection. I don't think I ever actually saw one available until 6 months after it was printed and the price has always been in the "not worth it" range. I think that WotC learned a bit about how such a short print run really fouled up what could have been a cool product, but any future product runs the risk of running into the same problems.
Now having it be a booster pack-oriented product makes things a bit more interesting, but you couldn't load it up with rares/mythics whose average value is $15 on the secondary market and not expect a 15-card booster to sell for anything less than $50. Even if you went and made sure that the set included commons were only $1 ea, uncommons at $5, and the rares averaged $25, you would average $50 in value out of every pack; prices for those packs will get out of hand quickly, especially if there are $50-$60 cards in it (and even higher priced foils). I would venture that packs would go for at least $10 each; that's a high price to pay for not even knowing what you are going to get...
Jalira, Master Polymorphist | Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder | Bosh, Iron Golem | Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Brago, King Eternal | Oona, Queen of the Fae | Wort, Boggart Auntie | Wort, the Raidmother
Captain Sisay | Rhys, the Redeemed | Trostani, Selesnya's Voice | Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight | Obzedat, Ghost Council | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind | Vorel of the Hull Clade
Uril, the Miststalker | Prossh, Skyraider of Kher | Nicol Bolas | Progenitus
Ghave, Guru of Spores | Zedruu the Greathearted | Damia, Sage of Stone | Riku of Two Reflections
Someone from Ravnica (Rakdos' newest High Priestess?) with something like "Whenever this creature attacks, creatures you control gain +X/+0 and Trample until end of turn, where X is equal to 7 minus the number of cards in your hand".
Dump a bunch of 2/2s, swing with a bunch of 9/2 Tramples.
BURWGSliver Hivelord's alt wincon deck at Maze's EndBURWG
GWBSidar Kondo and Ikra Shidiq likes big butts
RUMizzix of the Izmagnus Super ThiefRU
BURWGGeneral Tazri, The Megazord AllyBURWG
BURJeleva Mill and Kill BUR
BRGrenzo's get out from under that deck!BR
WUG Roon's Enchanted Evening (enchantment deck) WUG
BUG The Undersea World of Tasigur CousteauBUG
BWGAnafenza, Counter QueenBWG
It's funny that you mention Modern Masters in your post without actually dealing with the fact that modern masters is how the hypothetical commander booster would work in reality. Two things would happen:
1. Wizards would limit the most desirable reprints to mythic. You can see this with Tarmogoyf's status in Modern Masters. This serves too purposes: It drives sales, and it keeps the set from negatively affecting prices too much, which seems to be a high concern for wizards.
2. Resellers would sell packs at many times the recommended sale price, because the expected value of the packs would be many times any reasonable price.
A Commander Masters would not succeed in lowering prices given wizard's current price maintaining priority and scummy reseller behavior.
Good points. Wizards would need to stop this nonsense of limited print runs and just print the dang cards to demand. I can live with them charging 6-8 bucks MSRP a pack for a premium product as long as there is value in the set to justify it but if they don't print cards to demand then the MSRP is meaningless. Assuming a set is printed to demand, it would be impossible for resellers to price gouge in the long run because eventually some resellers are going to cave and cut their prices to the lowest possible price while still maintaining profitability. (See commander decks just before release compared to commander decks six months later as a prime example)
You misinterpreted my post. I am well aware that they already printed a supplemental product called Commander's Arsenal and I'm not suggesting they create something similar. My point was that they need a booster pack based product that is printed to demand in order to give us the reprints that we want to see. When I referenced Commander's Arsenal and Commander Masters I was simply giving examples of names that they could call the set.
You didn't read the entirety of my post. I talk about a booster-pack oriented set in the last paragraph...
Anyway, the point was that filling a set up with a bunch of cards that are currently high-priced will only drive up the cost that retailers will be willing to sell the boosters for. A limited print run like Commander's Arsenal was a total disaster. Modern Masters was a huge success mostly because it was a ton of fun to draft, but I would hardly call that set based on card value. If it was, it would certainly have become too expensive to even draft except on MODO.
The other thing to consider is that it makes little sense to even package a supplemental product like this in boosters unless the set was created with drafting in mind, which seems somewhat antithetical to creating a high value product and would have its own issues regarding balance and playability while utilizing Commander staples. I just don't see a booster-pack set being something that would work.
Jalira, Master Polymorphist | Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder | Bosh, Iron Golem | Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Brago, King Eternal | Oona, Queen of the Fae | Wort, Boggart Auntie | Wort, the Raidmother
Captain Sisay | Rhys, the Redeemed | Trostani, Selesnya's Voice | Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight | Obzedat, Ghost Council | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind | Vorel of the Hull Clade
Uril, the Miststalker | Prossh, Skyraider of Kher | Nicol Bolas | Progenitus
Ghave, Guru of Spores | Zedruu the Greathearted | Damia, Sage of Stone | Riku of Two Reflections
Back to the original question: I think I would push multiplayer and commander specific cards, especially cards with political aspects to them. Myriad, Tempting offer and Will of the council (although not from an commander product) are very nice mechanis I would love to see more often. I also loved the command zone interactions in COM2013 and would like to see more of those, like the Leuitenant cycle.
I also agree with the idea of putting more commanders with a subset of the decks color identity in commander products (like Nin and Vish Kal in the original commander product).
Also, I would make sure that cards like Command Beacon are NOT just in one deck, but at least in 3 ore more to make it more accessible. I would probably also push for the printing of yet unseen tokens. It frustrates me to no end that I can't have nice Tokens for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher or Marath, Will od the Wild ...
UR Mizzix of the Izmagnus ~~~ Build your own win-condition: Finite Spellslinging
UR Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer ~~~ We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic ~~~ A Guide to dying slowly
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose ~~~ Marchesa's undying Marionettes
RGW Mayael the Anima ~~~ All Hail the Big Chungus
GWU Chulane, Teller of Tales ~~~ Permanents Only ETB Shenanigans
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant ~~~ Sidisi's Restless Servants
WUBRG The Ur-Dragon ~~~ Dragons eat your face
Myriad, Tempting Offer, and Will of the Council have all been terrible mechanics that either further push new/bad players into being bad, or don't do anything for the competitive table.
Myriad is only useful on Blade of Selves, which is only equipped to creatures with ETB abilities. Every creature the keyword is on is a vanilla beater, because adding any ETB effect (even one as simple as Scry 1) to them means Do it X times every attack step, where X is the number of other players in the game. The keyword is either worthless or too powerful.
The only two Tempting Offers that get used are Tempt with Vengeance in Token decks that don't care if other players get the tokens (Gahiji, Purphoros) or Tempt with Discovery, where it's either "I search up Cabal Coffers and Urborg, you guys each get basic lands" or "I search up Cabal Coffers and Urborg, why did all of you get Wastelands?"
Will of the Council is decent, but again; either the cards have to be overpowered to make up for the fact that everyone else gets to choose what happens, or one choice is obviously more powerful than the other.
The only card that has used the Political Mechanic of any commander friendly product has been Mana-Charged Dragon, where suddenly EVERYONE is capable of pumping a dragon to kill you/your creature if you piss off the table.
You would also want exp counters to do more then just play the commander's effect.
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
5 Tri colored decks again
Each deck gets:
3 three color commanders, reprinting some of the more popular ones: Kaalia, Mimeoplasm, Riku, Zedruu, Ghave, otherwise new
6 two color commanders, mostly new
6 mono colored commanders, mostly new
The goal being to drastically increase the number of generals one can use for deck construction. I'm actually at the point now where I struggle to find interesting deck ideas, and I think a large part of that is the lack of interesting legendary creatures to build around.
I would also be satisfied if they released some sort of commander mega pack that was just a ton of new generals.
Add more selective draw effects to white. Ideally ones that aren't so bad but just have niche situations to work.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies