Removing commander damage would be a massive balancing adjustment for the worse. Balancing so bad you may as well knock the scale over completely.
that's what every player say literally for every change in magic rules since the dawn of times lol
Some cards will get worse and some better, obviously. This always happend, is normal. Also with the removal of mana burn many cards got much worse and others much better. It's physiological. That's what always happend when a rule change occur.
Excuse me way late forgot to mention something else
Here's the idea: There are four power brackets, and every Commander deck can be placed in one of those brackets by examining the cards and combinations in your deck and comparing them to lists we'll need community help to create. You can imagine bracket one is the baseline of an average preconstructed deck or below and bracket four is high power. For the lower tiers, we may lean on a mixture of cards and a description of how the deck functions, and the higher tiers are likely defined by more explicit lists of cards.
For example, you could imagine bracket one has cards that easily can go in any deck, like Swords to Plowshares , Grave Titan , and Cultivate , whereas bracket four would have cards like Vampiric Tutor , Armageddon , and Grim Monolith , cards that make games too much more consistent, lopsided, or fast than the average deck can engage with.
clearly this is not the best idea but the best way to TLDR for this is they are attempting (I believe the old RC is working with them) to once and for all get rid of the problem of someone claim it’s jank/casual/optimized/competitive or say what power level it is… all for a opponent to immediately claim they lied the moment they see the deck in action with certain cards (ps: this is a factor of mana crypt and jeweled lotus bans)
Removing commander damage would be a massive balancing adjustment for the worse. Balancing so bad you may as well knock the scale over completely.
that's what every player say literally for every change in magic rules since the dawn of times lol
That's true, but this would actually make the format do a 180. Would be a miserable format without it and may as well just play a different game or format if you want to change something that's such a big part of the gameplay.
But at the same time, you're free to house rule commander damage out if you're playing with a couple of lads who agree with you. That's one of the nice things about casual formats
According to the rules and how it was created, hybrid has been "OR" for everything but color identity (202.2d). When paying a cost, you pay one OR the other(107.4e). When adding mana based on a hybrid cost (106.8), you add one OR the other. Cost reduction applies to one half OR the other (118.7e).
Being payable with white OR black does not stop a hybrid card from being both white AND black - in every zone and at all times. This is according to the rules and how hybrid was created.
At least there is a chance they will eventually fix the hybrid color identity rules and other shenanigans.
There's nothing to fix. Hybrid has always meant "AND" in the rules, not "OR". Ashiok, Dream Render will always be both blue and black and can always be hit by Red Elemental Blast, even if you cast it for BBB. Lurrus of the Dream-Den will always be white and black, and is always immune to Doom Blade, even if you cast it for WWW.
Given that the rules say they are always "AND," why should the one format with color identity treat them otherwise? Commander treats Damn as WB despite being castable in either, and Avacyn's Pilgrim's identity is GW, noy monogreen.
Anyone arguing for a change to hybrid identity may as well ask for monoblack reanimator to be allowed to run any fatties it wants because they could be discarded and reanimated - while this works in formats without color identity, it flies in the face of the format we love and enjoy.
Also, the original plan for hybrid was that its color would match the mana you spent on it. If you had a black-red hybrid card, for example, it would be black if you spent only black and/or colorless mana to cast it, red if you spent only red and/or colorless mana to cast it, and black and red only if you spent black and red and/or colorless mana to cast. One of the last things we changed about it was making it both colors no matter what you spent to cast it, not because we thought the card was inherently both colors (again it's "or" not "and"), but we didn't think the memory issue was worth the pain of tracking. So, the core of the reason it has a two-color identity is based on simplicity of use, not the essence of what hybrid is supposed to represent.
You'll note I didn't say the cards color wasn't both. A card's color is "AND" in this way. But Hybrid as a mechanic refers to the cost, which is an "OR". It was only after he came up with the cost that he made the color identity both. I will note that I agree with you on the hybrid rules for color identity. They should be "AND". But to say the mechanic has always been "AND" is completely false. The ability to pay with "OR" is what defined the mechanic. This is about intellectual honesty in the argument.
They shouldn't keep hybrid cards as multicolor because they've "always been and". They should keep hybrid cards as multicolor because they can affect and be affected by both.
Let me turn your question back around to you - why should we trash the entire concept of color identity just to make a couple dozen cards marginally more playable?
Not treating hybrid as OR is literally trashing the entire mechanic, because you're ruining the very core concept of hybrid. Hybrid becomes just "easier to cast multicolor".
Allowing a GU hybrid card to be played in a mono-G commander isn't trashing color identity at all. It amends it. You can't play Mono-R cards, you can't play multicolor RG cards. All you do is allow hybrid cards to function as intended in the deck-building part of the game.
What is more harmful for the gameplay of the format is that every single player in a 4 player pod are forced to track 4 different sources of damages (making virtually up to 16 different trackings)
In 15+ years of playing EDH/Commnader, I don't think I've ever had a game that required tracking more than 3-4 commander damage totals. For the decks that rely on it, it's easy to track. For the ones that don't, the commander doesn't usually attack, and when you occassionally poke someone, we tend to say "Don't bother tracking it - if I hit you 11-20 more times, we've got bigger problems." But the main argument for keeping commander damage is that without it, you would eliminate an entire archetype from the game - namely, Voltron. Dealing 21 combat damage to each of 3 opponents is quite a challenge, and if you remove commander damage, those decks disappear.
Let me turn your question back around to you - why should we trash the entire concept of color identity just to make a couple dozen cards marginally more playable?
Not treating hybrid as OR is literally trashing the entire mechanic, because you're ruining the very core concept of hybrid. Hybrid becomes just "easier to cast multicolor".
Allowing a GU hybrid card to be played in a mono-G commander isn't trashing color identity at all. It amends it. You can't play Mono-R cards, you can't play multicolor RG cards. All you do is allow hybrid cards to function as intended in the deck-building part of the game.
But that's exactly what hybrid is. Again, the intention, or the spark of the idea, doesn't matter. Only the execution. It literally is easier to cast multicolor.
Magic designers have intended lots of things over the decades, but what we get is all that matters.
And we'll have to disagree about your last statement, because I find it disingenuous and dishonest for someone to say they have a mono-green deck if it has red, blue, black, and white cards in it. I don't care that they are also green - if your Quirion Dryad is triggering or All Suns' Dawn is grabbing five cards, it's a five color deck at that point. And the rules and card interactions back me up on that.
Let me turn your question back around to you - why should we trash the entire concept of color identity just to make a couple dozen cards marginally more playable?
Not treating hybrid as OR is literally trashing the entire mechanic, because you're ruining the very core concept of hybrid. Hybrid becomes just "easier to cast multicolor".
Allowing a GU hybrid card to be played in a mono-G commander isn't trashing color identity at all. It amends it. You can't play Mono-R cards, you can't play multicolor RG cards. All you do is allow hybrid cards to function as intended in the deck-building part of the game.
Brawl is quite different from regular commander though
-"We all, WOTC and RC, reached this conclusion together."
-They are taking precautions to ensure the safety of RC members.
-They still want to keep it a community-driven format.
-Gavin plans to establish a committee similar to Pauper Format Panel. RC and CAG members are likely members.
-Aaron addresses the worries about profit-driven actions. "I'm also here for the love of the game(like RC).Yes Hasbro wants things. Yes my bosses wants things. I have a lot of freedom to do what I think is best. Our goal is to make things last forever. Keeping the community happy is our way to make money."
-They want to wait until the Panel is established to talk about the banlist.
-Beyond the initial banlist changes they don't want to make changes too often.
-Quarterly banlist updates similar to RC. It won't follow B&R of other formats.
-Power brackets: E.g. tier 1 swords, tier 2 thalia, tier 3 drannith magistrate, tier 4 armageddon etc.
-Aaron Forsythe used to play Armageddon
-They aren't trying to replace Rule 0, they are trying to make it easier.
-At least 1 person from the CEDH community will be part of the panel. WOTC will still focus on casual commander.
-No separate banlists. Brackets will already do that job.
-Aaron: "4th bracket will be cards that you will rarely see in precons."
-Sol Ring isn't going anywhere. Sol Ring is "Bracket 0" so to say. (Basically no more claims of “precons are bracket 4”)
-Points system similar to Canlander is too complex and competitive for casual commander.
-Brawl in Arena already separates decks into 4 categories.
-Jeweled Lotus, Arcane Signet, Dockside etc. were mistakes. Cards that were banned recently are the kinds of cards they wouldn't want to make today. They want to reduce ubiquitousness going forward.
-They are discussing implementing more digital tools. E.g. you enter your decklist and it tells you your bracket.
-They want to release first Brackets article before MagicCon Las Vegas.
-Committee will be in the range of 10-20 people. There are also 10 commander designers working in WOTC.
-They are not tied to number 4. They can make a 5th bracket for CEDH.
-It is undecided whether the Committee will be anonymous. At least some names will be known.
-They can divide combos into different brackets: Thoracle combos bracket 4, SangBond+EqBlood bracket 3 etc.
-Gavin reads reddit a lot.
And to me this is a great start for my belief that commander wont be hurt as much i heard the Pauper Committee is phenomenal system.
Plus sounds like they will have mostly Gavin at the Helm
And to me this is a great start for my belief that commander wont be hurt as much i heard the Pauper Committee is phenomenal system.
Damn, i have to say me too. Them admitting that Arcane Signet and similar cards are design mistakes and combos having their own bracket? Amazing
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
And to me this is a great start for my belief that commander wont be hurt as much i heard the Pauper Committee is phenomenal system.
Damn, i have to say me too. Them admitting that Arcane Signet and similar cards are design mistakes and combos having their own bracket? Amazing
the only mistake with that part is.... just simply how did Nadu, Winged Wisdom get in with the card text. but saving grace is it was originally gonna just gonna be a legendary Vedalken Orrery for permanents
Interesting. So the habit of printing dumb autoincludes is called "design mistake" these days... It might be just me but i can't really take those guys serious. After 14 years of doing the same thing over and over again they suddenly realize it's dumb but only for the absolute worst offenders and obviously by mere chance also conveniently just after their employers finished filling it's pockets using said "design mistake". It's almost offensive they seem to think everyone is stupid enough to believe they are that stupid. Well, almost as for a large part of their audience they are sadly likely spot on.
Also who really needs this bracket stuff anyways? I've played tons and tons of strangers over the years and we've pretty much always been able to work something out. Sure, working something out sometimes means realizing that you are simply not on the same page and costs you about 5-10 minutes but it's seriously not rocket science. The 1-10 system was already cringeworthy enough but at least it could be easily ignored.
Well, enough of the ranting, i guess. I know perfectly well that i'm not the intended recipient of this statement. If Wizards wanted to make me happy they'd simply find something else to spend their time on. EDH doesn't need Wizards but then Wizards needs EDH, so the chances of them making me happy are pretty much non existent as long as they don't happen to come across something that makes them even more money. Seriously, even setting aside my personal opinion, this whole "keeping the community happy is our way to make money" verbiage is such manipulative nonsense. People's happiness doesn't make them a single cent. Printing cards people buy (for whatever reason) is what does. Whenever they are happy while doing so doesn't matter even the slightest bit.
But the main argument for keeping commander damage is that without it, you would eliminate an entire archetype from the game - namely, Voltron. Dealing 21 combat damage to each of 3 opponents is quite a challenge, and if you remove commander damage, those decks disappear.
That's not a valid argument because every single rule change make casualties of war. When they made the "tuck" rule disappeared literally many cards that were all-stars staples become unplayable and disappear from the format (Spint into Myth, Hinder, Spell Crumple, Oblation, etc.)
When mana burn died, hundred of cards that were designed around it, also died and nobody used anymore because they were too nerfed (basically all the ones that tap lands or do stuff to untapped mana, etc.) and stuff like Mana Flare was supposed to literally burn the opponent and not just give symmetrical double mana.
Rule change made cards abilities even literally useless like in the Master of Arms case (tapped creatures dealed no damages before 6th edition rules).
When exile zone became a thing all "wish cards" immediately died in EDH, because of how they choose to make them work for the format.
So don't tell me that some cards will be nerfed or even unusable. That's obvious. That's inevitable. That's irrelevant. What matters if in the long term, this will give more benefits or harm for the overall gameplay. And since we already have poison as a damage that is supposed to not be interacted with and designed exactly to be ineliminable (and every deck can run Grafted Exoscheleton if you really wanna go for the voltron route) and unlike commander damages, infinitely much easier to track (since poison is the same for everybody), we don't need another unfun mechanic that how you said half of times won't even matter and no magic card was designed around it (the fact that WotC never wanted to mention commander damage in cards, and never used in his own commander variant, Brawl, pretty much proves it. And proves it also the commander without commander damages just works as fine and is not the end of the world like many players seems to fear.)
People's happiness doesn't make them a single cent. Printing cards people buy (for whatever reason) is what does. Whenever they are happy while doing so doesn't matter even the slightest bit.
First of all, sales proved that people don't buy and hate low-powered sets, so even if you can't prove that high-powered sets makes them happy, is absolutely true the contrary.
Second, we're talking about EDH, were you argument doesn't hold much water and that's because EDH is mainly a social, non-tournament format, opposed to normal formats where people are forced to keep buying staples to have decks relevant in tournaments. In this format people just buy cards that reflects their gamestyle and personality and they can play low-powered decks with other people playing low-powered decks and be perfectly happy (damn, even my LGS, literally FORCE people to run low-budget decks to make games affordable to anybody), so if in EDH high powered cards sells a lot you can bet whatever you want that is because players love them.
-At least 1 person from the CEDH community will be part of the panel. WOTC will still focus on casual commander.
-They are not tied to number 4. They can make a 5th bracket for CEDH.
When they made the "tuck" rule disappeared literally many cards that were all-stars staples become unplayable and disappear from the format (Spint into Myth, Hinder, Spell Crumple, Oblation, etc.)
Agreed. Tuck removal had quite some impact. Not so much due to obsoleting a bunch of cards (my lonely Oblation might disagree here but oh well...) but because it vastly complicated keeping problematic commanders off the table.
When mana burn died, hundred of cards that were designed around it, also died and nobody used anymore because they were too nerfed (basically all the ones that tap lands or do stuff to untapped mana, etc.) and stuff like Mana Flare was supposed to literally burn the opponent and not just give symmetrical double mana.
Well, it's not like i'm saying you don't have a point but i fell that you are exaggerating the impact of mana burn removal a bit. At the time of it's removal i didn't see any actual strategies around it. It was rather a mild inconvenience that happened now and then when you couldn't manage to produce a matching amount of mana. Sure people were doing cute things with Spectral Searchlight and such but those were, well, ... "cute things". I don't really feel comfortable claiming that removal of combat damage using the stack had that much of an impact either but from my perspective at the time it at least seemed to be more than the removal of mana burn and while i didn't really like Mogg Fanatic go the way of the dodo it was kind of a relief to know that i'd never have to tell the damned thrown-grenade-analogy to some baffled new player again.
and every deck can run Grafted Exoscheleton if you really wanna go for the voltron route
So a single Grafted Exoskelleton somewhere in your 99 enables you to play voltron? I'm not much of a voltron fan myself but i *highly* doubt this would work out.
As of now i'm not really seeing the "we" here. Personally i'm simply neutral (as in i don't mind keeping track but don't tend to care that much about killing people using my commander either) and voltron players probably wouldn't be voltron players if they thought it to be unfun.
And proves it also the commander without commander damages just works as fine and is not the end of the world like many players seems to fear.
It sure does (at least it doesn't make the format any more broken than it already is anyways) and it's obviously not the end of the world. I've done worse things in my life than keeping track of a couple numbers to make a bunch of people that found fulfillment in playing Magic dress up doll style happy though
On a more serious note: If you ask around you'll probably find that more than enough players will happily agree to ignore commander damage, even if just because it simply doesn't matter to them. So if the numbers cause you grief it should be more than easy to reduce it to an absolute minimum.
But the main argument for keeping commander damage is that without it, you would eliminate an entire archetype from the game - namely, Voltron. Dealing 21 combat damage to each of 3 opponents is quite a challenge, and if you remove commander damage, those decks disappear.
That's not a valid argument because every single rule change make casualties of war...So don't tell me that some cards will be nerfed or even unusable. That's obvious. That's inevitable. That's irrelevant.
Read it again. I didn't say "some cards will be nerfed" - I said it would eliminate an entire archetype. That's far, far bigger than a few cards. It's an entire strategy and wincon that happens to focus on the commander, the central piece to the whole format. If you can't see that's different than a few cards, that's on you.
WotC never wanted to mention commander damage in cards, and never used in his own commander variant, Brawl, pretty much proves it. And proves it also the commander without commander damages just works as fine and is not the end of the world like many players seems to fear.)
Yes, Brawl, the format that uses a much lower life total - of course Commander Lite doesn't have commander damage. They also only run 60 standard-legal cards, but that sounds like a terrible idea to push on the real Commander format, doesn't it? They are two different formats. Commander damage acts like checks and balances against rampant lifegain strategies. It offers an additional archetype and makes use of a much larger card pool. Just because Brawl doesn't use it, well, to quote someone: "That's not a valid argument... That's obvious. That's inevitable. That's irrelevant."
First of all, sales proved that people don't buy and hate low-powered sets, so even if you can't prove that high-powered sets makes them happy, is absolutely true the contrary.
Who's those "people"? Personally (and i know quite a couple other people too) loved the Kamigawa set, which is famously known for being "low powered". Well, the original Kamigawa set that is as i didn't even get around to draft the new one yet as we still have to a ton of other Boxes to finish. Whatever Wizard's "sales data" shows these days can be pretty much flushed down the toilet as hardly any person having actual responsibilities can even keep up with the rate at which they keep churning out "products". Funny enough neither me nor *any* other Magic player i know draws "happiness" from this. Could it be that Wizard's bottomline and people's happiness just aren't connected after all? I've heard rumors but i guess their "market research" shows otherwise.
Well, excuse my rambling since that's actually besides the point anyways as your whole argument of equaling sales data with happiness is flawed. People buy things for a bazillion reasons. Yeah one of them is because it makes them happy but it's far from the only one. In relation to Magic boxes FOMO and straight up gambling like qualities are a large factor. Besides, i'm pretty sure that i'm not to far off that even after factoring in R&D at least a good portion of Wizard's products are sold at something like 1000% profit. If people's "happiness" was such a huge factor couldn't they just do with only 500%? I mean way more people could be "made happy", right? Or might those those rumors that it's really just about corporate image and appeasing the people that make those insane profits possible actually be true? Oh what a big mystery.
Second, we're talking about EDH, were you argument doesn't hold much water and that's because EDH is mainly a social, non-tournament format, opposed to normal formats where people are forced to keep buying staples to have decks relevant in tournaments. In this format people just buy cards that reflects their gamestyle and personality and they can play low-powered decks with other people playing low-powered decks and be perfectly happy (damn, even my LGS, literally FORCE people to run low-budget decks to make games affordable to anybody), so if in EDH high powered cards sells a lot you can bet whatever you want that is because players love them.
Sure thing because "social" and "non-tournament" translates to "hey look, these are my 100 most beloved pet cards and i don't really care what happens from here on". Yeah, i've built dumb stuff like Wall tribal too and it's fun once in a while. Key point here being "once" since after losing that round i'll rather want an actual game and you can be sure i'll try to have some realistic chance at winning when up against somewhat serious decks. No, that doesn't mean i'll run Thoracle, drop Armageddon on people (Ruination, well, ruinating greedy manabases is mostly just a learning experience though - signed a guy who played 5C with Panoramas and basics to avoid such "surprises"), neither will i play some random "good stuff" and even if my deck might have a Crucible, an Exploration and a Stripmine i'll 99% not abuse it. That's my idea of "social" and "casual". I know this doesn't match the "it's commander bro, we're just acting like it's a game where someone wins but in reality we're just expressing our personality" vibe these days but it very much matches the mind set of everyone i started playing EDH with like 15+ years ago. I mean, seriously, if i just want to sit down and talk to people i'll just do that instead of distracting myself with some random cards.
As to your last statement in relation to player "loving" certain cards because your generalization portrays them like that. Let's claim for a moment your characterization is correct and it's really just about "love" of the card itself (also the "self expression" it provides of course) and totally not because of some kind of arms race people (secretly or even subconsciously obviously - trying to win is somewhat frowned upon after all) want to get ahead in, it feels rather sad to me that this "love" goes to a bunch of mana rocks, which when looked at objectively are as boring as a Magic card can be. Not to mention that those which are foolish enough to chase "their love" in Wizards official product are likely to just burn a bunch of money while ending up with a broken heart. Oh the happiness burning money on lottery tickets while getting all duds brings. There's true altruism in letting people have such wonderful experience for such a "low" price. Seriously, i totally don't blame Wizards for being a company but being BS'd is just uncalled for.
Jokes aside, what you are describing is simply Wizards doing whatever it takes to sell printed cardboard at premium prices viewed through pink glasses. Nothing more nothing less. I'll spare the part about how power creep has some upper ceiling, which means that even if people really "love" those cards and being able hand over hefty sums to get those makes them happy, they might as well dearly regret that later on. Also powerful and dumb autoinclude are far from synonymous.
-At least 1 person from the CEDH community will be part of the panel. WOTC will still focus on casual commander.
-They are not tied to number 4. They can make a 5th bracket for CEDH.
And thats wonderful news, I couldn't ask better.
Well, suit yourself. Over on reddit people are already discussing how building an actual effective "Bracket 2" deck is "deceptive". My personal recommendation would be to subdivide the brackets by letters A-R. From there on maybe the Greek alphabet could be used to provide more fine grained specification. I have a feeling in the end it might be more pragmatic to just build every deck twice to be able to hand one's opponent a straight up copy though. This way everyone can be 100% sure to never be outclassed or be faced with something he/she/it doesn't like.
Oh yeah and of course let's not forget the cEDH boogeyman. I've recently learned that those are the people that dare to play measly creatures, which force their opponent to play removal from their hand (removal! from their actual hand!! can you believe it???) if they want to keep continuing with their graveyard strats or whatever. Obviously i agree that such oppressive action has no place in this format and everyone even thinking about something like this needs to be put far, far away for the sake of humanity. I mean, seriously, that's almost as bad as playing Bojuka Bog after someone spend a ton of effort on milling half of their own deck. Only a monster would interfere with such a beautifully crafted gamestate and deny those people their legitimate payoff.
Read it again. I didn't say "some cards will be nerfed" - I said it would eliminate an entire archetype. That's far, far bigger than a few cards. It's an entire strategy and wincon that happens to focus on the commander, the central piece to the whole format. If you can't see that's different than a few cards, that's on you.
No, it won't eliminate completely for who wanna play it. People even in Brawl still have ways to wreck people using only their commanders. Hexproof, aura based, equipment based, poison based etc, commanders will still exist, they will just be nerfed, but voltron will still be viable, especially in more casual contexts. The commander is still your most reliable piece that never leave the battlefield forever for the rest of the game, so it's still worth to build a deck around powering him. That's not even comparable to, let's say wish cards that are unusable in EDH for real and not just nerfed by the rules changes.
Yes, Brawl, the format that uses a much lower life total - of course Commander Lite doesn't have commander damage. They also only run 60 standard-legal cards, but that sounds like a terrible idea to push on the real Commander format, doesn't it? They are two different formats.
There's also historic commander with 100 cards, and actually now historic is called just Brawl and the standard version being a sub-type of it, so it can be much, much more similar to EDH than you think. Also, as I said I propose to make all planeswalkers as commanders just like in brawl - so even if we "lose" a single strategy, voltron, we would gain, in exchange, hundreds and hundreds of new gameplay patterns, strategies and designs.
Who's those "people"? Personally (and i know quite a couple other people too) loved the Kamigawa set, which is famously known for being "low powered". Well, the original Kamigawa set that is as i didn't even get around to draft the new one yet as we still have to a ton of other Boxes to finish.
The people are exactly the vast majority of players that care enough of the game to actually buy booster packs. Kamigawa is a great example, is a set that for multiple reasons (and one of them was power level, yes, I literally hated Kamigawa of their useless parasitic mechanics and narrow cards opposed to the grandiosity of Mirrodin block) saled extremely poorly, and that's the main reason Wizard was afraid to ever return to that plane, and took them almost 20 years to find a way (Neo-Kamigawa has NOTHING to do with the first kamigawa expansions in terms of power levels and game designs), and even that happened only because a vocal minority begged forever on blogatog to MaRo to return to Kamigawa despite all the odds against.
Who's those "people"?
And who are YOU and your friends? You are just a minority and your anecdotal experiences have zero relevance in order to say what the vast majority of players wants or do not wants, and WotC do not see only sales, but have multiple datas and way to do surveys with players that you can't simply have access of. Sorry then if I find a bit more reliable WotC that can gather data from all over the world than your little, provincial, subjective experiences with magic sets.
Let's claim for a moment your characterization is correct and it's really just about "love" of the card itself (also the "self expression" it provides of course) and totally not because of some kind of arms race people
Again, you're either talking without having no idea of how the actual EDH community in LGS works (which is not a monolitic entity, but wildly changes from playgroups to playgroups) or you are again using your little, irrelevant personal experience (presumably you live in an environment where players apparently just do the arms race to play the best cards possible in EDH) and extend that personal experience to the whole world and EDH community. That's not how it works. I already told you that my LGS, like MANY others in the world, have established house rules or playgrops that self-limits the power level of decks and encourage the talking and confronting with the other EDH players, so if you think to play in a harsh and cutthroat environment that you don't like because apparently you have around only CEDH players that refuse to rule 0 things, just look around you and change playgroups and you will find PLENTY pf EDH players that will be more than enthusiast to play also against your Wall tribal deck and probably even win if you're smart enough in politics (I have seen decks doing literally nothing for almost all the game and consequently being ignored by the other 3 players that were wrecking each others like there's no tommorrow, just to see that said decks would win the game in the last moment because the last opponent survived was weakened enough to be killed very easily, so everything it's possible in a free-for-all 4 players pod, power level is NOT everything in EDH, and you should know very well that)
Who's those "people"? Personally (and i know quite a couple other people too) loved the Kamigawa set, which is famously known for being "low powered". Well, the original Kamigawa set that is as i didn't even get around to draft the new one yet as we still have to a ton of other Boxes to finish.
The people are exactly the vast majority of players that care enough of the game to actually buy booster packs. Kamigawa is a great example, is a set that for multiple reasons (and one of them was power level, yes, I literally hated Kamigawa of their useless parasitic mechanics and narrow cards opposed to the grandiosity of Mirrodin block) saled extremely poorly, and that's the main reason Wizard was afraid to ever return to that plane, and took them 20 years to find a way (Neo-Kamigawa has NOTHING to do with the first kamigawa expansions in terms of power levels and game designs), and even that happened only because a vocal minority begged forever on blogatog to MaRo to return to Kamigawa despite all the odd against.
That's great. Problem is it doesn't make a claim of sales stats equaling "happiness" any more true. Besides "Community" is not synonymous with "majority". I guess my somewhat lengthy style kind of muddled the general statement here.
Fun fact on the side: I'm drafting pretty much every weekend (at least). How exactly am i supposed to do that without buying packs? Well, OK, it's actually really whole boxes but i guess that's even better for Wizards bottom line, so i guess that makes me "care" quite a lot? By the way, do you notice the disconnect between hailing EDH as "that great format where you don't need to update" and trying to make people who (for whatever reason - maybe they simply can't) don't buy Wizards luxury products into kind of second class community members?
And who are YOU and your friends? You are just a minority and your anecdotal experiences have zero relevance in order to say what the vast majority of players wants or do not wants, and WotC do not see only sales, but have multiple datas and way to do surveys with players that you can't simply have access of. Sorry then if I find a bit more reliable WotC that can gather data from all over the world than your little, provincial, subjective experiences with magic sets.
What does it matter who i and my "friends" (i don't remember claiming to exclusively refer to some kind of friends but OK) are? I'm not the one constantly trying to speak for whole groups of people. I've just given a couple opposing examples to your generalizations. That's all and i sure as hell didn't make any claim in regards to those examples being representative for just about anything. For a good part because it really doesn't matter.
Let's claim for a moment your characterization is correct and it's really just about "love" of the card itself (also the "self expression" it provides of course) and totally not because of some kind of arms race people
Again, you're either talking without having no idea of how the actual EDH community in LGS works (which is not a monolitic entity, but wildly changes from playgroups to playgroups) or you are again using your little, irrelevant personal experience (presumably you live in an environment where players apparently just do the arms race to play the best cards possible in EDH)
Funny enough i've written opposite but OK.
Edit: Thinking about it, i guess you kind of have a point. Even if one doesn't go for the literal best deck available trying to get most efficiency out of a given niche is probably also a small arms race.
and extend that personal experience to the whole world and EDH community.
I don't think that i need to "extend" anything here. Just ask yourself why someone would want to be able to cast their commander 3 turns earlier (which obviously a lot of people want). It's either because said commander was impractical for speed reasons the begin with or the generally increasing speed has made it that way. Well, in any case, if there was some specific excitement in relation to cracking a manarock it certainly escapes me.
I already told you that mine LGS, like MANY others in the world, have established house rules or playgrops that self-limits the power level of decks and encourage the talking and confronting with the other EDH players, so if you think to play in a harsh and cutthroat environment that you don't like because apparently you have around only CEDH players that refuse to rule 0 things
Well, it's not like i overly regularly run into those guys (maybe it's because i've been somewhat inactive in recent years and it's a phenomenon that's been growing? - i don't know) but even if i do it's not that much of a problem. It'll take me at worst 2 (if it isn't instantly obvious what their primary gameplan is) likely pretty short games to see if they'll just do the same thing over and over again and then we'll either move on to something a little more interesting or simply part ways. If they are just a bit mean when the situation requires it that's no problem for me. I once lost a 1vs1 that had been going on for almost 2 hours in the literally last second when i just thought i had finally made it because my opponent managed to Yosei lock me and it was on of the greatest games i've ever played. All i really care for is having an interesting game. I.e. one that doesn't revolve around mulliganing into/tutoring up something as worn out and boring as Thoracle/Consultation.
I know that many people want to formalize something like this these days but to me it just feels weird. I don't want to limit my opponent as much as i don't want to limit myself (using my 5C deck as an example: sure, i could ask my opponent to not play Ruination or friends but if i'd win this way there would always be this nagging feeling that i probably wouldn't have done so if i had just let him capitalize on my biggest - 100% self inflicted! - weakness making simply fixing my weak spot the far more rewarding option for me). Just bring what you think will make a good game and we'll figure it out from there. I admit some kind of system in that regard might be good for newer players which don't yet have the experience to quickly realize what they are up against though. While i've done pretty well myself i actually have witnessed people (let's assume the best here) "not being very good at dealing with new players". Like the first match was a total disaster, so the winner offered to tone down a bit and he actually did but the "toned down" option was still a heavily tuned deck that just went on the repeat match one. If it hadn't been for third parties clueing the new guy in about the impossible matchup he would have probably thought of himself as a bad player when he was really doing alright given his available options.
just look around you and change playgroups and you will find PLENTY pf EDH players that will be more than enthusiast to play also against your Wall tribal deck and probably even win if you're smart enough in politics (I have seen decks doing literally nothing for almost all the game and consequently being ignored by the other 3 players that were wrecking each others like there's no tommorrow, just to see that said decks would win the game in the last moment because the last opponent survived was weakened enough to be killed very easily, so everything it's possible in a free-for-all 4 players pod, power level is NOT everything in EDH, and you should know very well that)
Yeah, of course but let's be real while there's surely people that would try to adjust to that level of silliness just as i would if someone else came to me wanting to goof a round for a couple games such silliness is not what i consider a real challenge. I'm obviously picking an extreme example with Wall tribal here. I mean, sure, it's hilarious but also very, very bad. Bad to the point that piloting it is pretty much mind numbing compared to anything remotely serious. It's really just for the lols but at least for me the joke gets old pretty fast. Admittedly if it would somehow (i.e. by whatever crazy star alignment) manage to steal the win it would be massive lolz. In general i'd rather pilot something where i feel like my decisions actually make a difference though.
House rules are amazing because it's obvious many of us are not just on different pages but on completely different planets. I'd say at this point, house rules are almost a necessity given the insanely huge card pool you can build decks from.
House rules make room for everyone who wants to play, even the players who want to play a fundamentally casual format in a "competitive" way. They can just do it in the corner somewhere with other handful of like minded. Or you know, you could also just play an actual competitive format if you want actual competition.
House rules are amazing because it's obvious many of us are not just on different pages but on completely different planets. I'd say at this point, house rules are almost a necessity given the insanely huge card pool you can build decks from.
House rules make room for everyone who wants to play, even the players who want to play a fundamentally casual format in a "competitive" way. They can just do it in the corner somewhere with other handful of like minded. Or you know, you could also just play an actual competitive format if you want actual competition.
Well, i'm not entirely sure if or how this refers to me but if it does: Don't worry, i'm basically already off to start some subformat with people around me. A lot of the stuff surrounding the recent events has very much pushed in my face just how much things have changed over the years. I mean, i was pretty much aware that this isn't 2010 but then i was also blissfully unaware of the actual extend (have they really printed *that* many generic legendaries so people can stuff just about any effect imaginable and then some more into the command zone? - well, rhetorical question, they obviously have) much. Sure, it's a bit sad but there's no hard feelings overall. It's just how things go. It was fun while it lasted but i figure at least under the official framework the party is pretty much over for me and it's time to move on. Luckily i actually have people that will just move along and continue having fun so it's really not that big of a deal after all.
There's one thing that really nags me though: Where exactly does one draw the line between the fabled "casual" and the oh so wrong "competitive"? As trying to win seems be a clear indication of a competitive mindset (which for some reason is wrong in game designed to lead to someone winning) wouldn't it be best if people ran stuff like "99 of my favorite forest artworks + 1 legendary Ornithopter which snapped the pictures"? I mean, if some monster actually dared to put a creature with positive power on the board and started attacking it would be an obvious sign of them trying to win and therefore being "competitive", which further not only justifies but requires to segregate them. This is obviously very, very exaggerated but maybe it gets the basic concept across (which i seriously don't have high hopes for in 2024 but oh well) that bewilders me so much.
The constant "casual" this and "competitive" that is a good part of what made EDH turn sour for me. In the end it's really little more than buzzwords that people will interpret how it fits them best in my opinion. Seriously, why would anyone care (and actually pay 3 digit sums) to cast their commander 3 turns earlier when they are not competing for anything anyways? There really is no reason but that obviously doesn't stop people from drawing the line so what they are doing is "casually" "non-competitive" and what other do isn't.
There's really *very* little people that take the results of EDH games overly serious but even then pretty much everyone else can always be accused of still being "competitive" unless they spent the game marveling over their forest artwork or whatever other "non-competitive" function their deck serves. OK, there's the oh so creative and eternally funny group hug players, which feel not adding any kind of wincon is actually the epitome of epicness. These are pretty much the only factually existing group of 100% non-competitive players. Personally i think group hug is the dumbest and most unfunny thing ever (maybe it sometimes even borders on the malicious as the whole point of those decks is to mess with people for no real reason but to mess with them) but i'd never ever try to push those people out. They are building within the confines of the format to play something they enjoy without pushing for the extreme brokenness that lies at the outer limits. Seems perfectly fine to me even if i seriously don't like it.
Maybe it's just me but i feel a lot of EDH players these days almost act like they are entitled to play solitaire to varying levels. Maybe a little interaction is OK but it probably shouldn't be too efficient (kinda funny when even precons wield swords or similar super efficient staples) or maybe you are just allowed to try stopping their wincon (a little bit) and any kind of disruption to their buildup makes you a competitive monster, which has no place in the format, while doing something as vile as punishing one of their deck building choices... no, better not even be guilty of the thought crime considering it. What baffles me most about this line of thinking is: If the choices i make are supposed to have no consequences is it even still technically a game? Yeah, it's seriously time to move on, i guess.
House rules are amazing because it's obvious many of us are not just on different pages but on completely different planets. I'd say at this point, house rules are almost a necessity given the insanely huge card pool you can build decks from.
House rules make room for everyone who wants to play, even the players who want to play a fundamentally casual format in a "competitive" way. They can just do it in the corner somewhere with other handful of like minded. Or you know, you could also just play an actual competitive format if you want actual competition.
Well, i'm not entirely sure if or how this refers to me but if it does: Don't worry
It was more a general reply for the thread than anything direct, no worries man
In my experience, it's been very easy to tell who are the competitive types and who aren't, so it's fairly easy to find a table where everybody is on the same page and you can have some fun games.
Read it again. I didn't say "some cards will be nerfed" - I said it would eliminate an entire archetype. That's far, far bigger than a few cards. It's an entire strategy and wincon that happens to focus on the commander, the central piece to the whole format. If you can't see that's different than a few cards, that's on you.
No, it won't eliminate completely for who wanna play it. People even in Brawl still have ways to wreck people using only their commanders. Hexproof, aura based, equipment based, poison based etc, commanders will still exist, they will just be nerfed, but voltron will still be viable, especially in more casual contexts. The commander is still your most reliable piece that never leave the battlefield forever for the rest of the game, so it's still worth to build a deck around powering him.
Why do you think appealing to Brawl somehow validates arguments for Commander? They're not the same, and we don't want to turn Commander into Brawl.
Brawl is a 25-30 life format, which requires a bit more damage than the 21 commander damage in Commander. But do away with Commander damage, and now in a real game of Commander, you have to eat through 40 life per player. Instead of stretching the damage required to kill by 25-37%, you're nearly doubling it. That alone is tough, but now instead of beating lifegain with either commander damage or combo, you're removing one check and saying only combois the main viable path to victory.
Having only ONE member of the cEDH community in Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's EDH / Commander Rules Committee feels a bit disingenuous. It really feels like the Casual EDH community is trying to gate keep the format away from the cEDH community. I don't think it's intentional when I feel as though the Casual EDH community and the cEDH community have become separate echo chambers that aren't able to compromise on how to keep the EDH / Commander format healthy that would satisfy both communities. However Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is stuck in a situation where they can't please everyone and not everyone's definition of fun in this format is going to be the same which was pretty evident with the recent EDH / Commander bans. It also doesn't help that the cEDH community doesn't get as much exposure on Social Media like the Casual EDH community does simply because they lack the necessary sponsorships and is hated by the YouTube algorithm.
The idea of 1 vs. 1 cEDH especially when it comes to events and tournaments also gets neglected as well. When I see other popular Magic YouTubers play cEDH like with The Spike Feeders channel for example it's always with a 4 player pod. Why not stream best 2 out of 3 matches 1 v. 1 cEDH as well? cEDH is really nothing more than 100 card Singleton Vintage / Legacy but slightly less expensive. The mana bases are almost as unforgiving as they could cost a fortune unfortunately unless you're allowed to run proxies. I figured a really good cEDH deck would be a deck with VERY low mana curves where speed is everything as opposed to the slow play of Casual EDH with higher mana curves with less explosive starts early game except for Sol Ring because Sol Ring. I'm still wary of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's proposal on their Tier Bracket idea. It could work but we won't know the full details until they post the article before MagicCon Las Vegas.
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"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
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In my experience, it's been very easy to tell who are the competitive types and who aren't, so it's fairly easy to find a table where everybody is on the same page and you can have some fun games.
Exactly. This has been my experience too. Besides there's a lot of room between someone trying to be competitive and someone actually succeeding at it. With a lot of the less successful types the biggest from my perspective is them having an increased chance of being a bit salty when they realize that they/their deck ultimately aren't as good as they thought/hoped. Also there's a fair chance that i might get a good laugh out of it. Playing "everything goes" simply needs a little more than some scary lists/interactions you found online, which can lead to absolute crazyness when people are faced with having to make decisions they aren't prepared for. More than once this has pretty much made my day.
I figured a really good cEDH deck would be a deck with VERY low mana curves
Yeah, combined with every possible effort you can make to "mitigate" the inconsistencies caused by 100 card singleton. Ideally you'd want to start off with something like Thoracle/Consultation (aka UUB => you win) and enough (fast) mana to cast it in hand or at least some way to tutor for said pieces. Something like Thoracle, Consultation, Petal, Chromemox, Swamp, [any-blue-card] would be a cEDH's player dream starting hand with the 7th card probably being a Pact of Negation or something similar. Unable to hit such a "dream" hand it then goes on to cards that'll either get those pieces into your hand or stop your opponent from assembling/executing the same/similar setup. If you manage to cram other wincons between those cards without diluting your primary gameplan therefore increasing consistency it's obviously an upside too. I don't claim to be an expert on these types of decks but the basic concept is pretty much obvious in my opinion.
I'm still wary of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's proposal on their Tier Bracket idea. It could work but we won't know the full details until they post the article before MagicCon Las Vegas.
Removing my own emotional investment from the equation i'm actually pretty curious what they'll come up with since after taking the EDHrec poll in regards to assigning cards to brackets i'm even more at loss as to how this should lead to some kind of practical system than i was before. Sure, there's a bunch of cards, which are just obviously very powerful but even there their actual value largely depends on the circumstances and the deck that runs them and the idea put forward by Wizards to rate them by "their ideal value" (not the exact wording but pretty much what they are saying practically) doesn't really help.
Sure in general some spells power level would be massively crippled by requiring 5 different colored mana to cast but if i put it in magical wonderland to asses it's "best case scenario", well, i guess i'll have to assume a hand full of fast mana and it being casted turn 1 and that's just the tip of the iceberg. For a lot of cards there's so many variations that having 4 groups would declare some of them "equal" while them obviously being not, many are hard to asses in general and last but not least a good part of the cards that would seemingly belong to the upper tiers come straight from Wizard's precons... Not to mention the insanity of declaring Sol Ring tier 1 when, even if one doesn't factor in the power of fast mana, is so obviously strictly better than tons and tons of other mana rocks. To me this pretty much seems like a rushed idea (maybe as a distraction from all the negativity or as a demonstration of their willingness and capability to "improve" the format?) that will ultimately become a total clusterf... but then i'm certainly not the smartest person in the world, so maybe they'll surprise me, who knows?
In my opinion another interesting tidbit of the whole drama is how according to JLK (recent Command Zone video) Wizards supposedly pleaded with the RC to not ban these cards. Obviously noone knows their reasoning behind this and a well meaning interpretation would be them simply anticipating the massive fallout such a decision would cause but on the other hand it again shines a pretty strange light on them supposedly having realized these cards being design mistakes. I don't really know what to make of it and i also don't feel like bashing them yet again but in any case it putting these statements next to each other feels weird to me.
So what was the whole point of the Rules Committee to even HAVE an Advisory Group (CAG) If they were just going to be ignored in the first place? That their voice doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things? Now I feel even more sorry for Josh Lee Kwai. The Rules Committee actually had the courage to do something that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro didn't want to do with Modern and that was to help balance a format. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro wanted these cards to stay legal in EDH / Commander so that they could sell off whatever leftover sealed product they had of Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt being some of the high end chase cards in these products. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro, especially their employees enjoy whaling as much as their customers to flip online and sell for profit. They don't like the idea of a third party like the Rules Committee deciding when Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro should stop extracting money from expensive cards.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom is a good example of this before it got banned in Modern and eventually in Commander because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro hesitated to ban it in Modern right away simply because they weren't done making money off of it's Secondary Market value. They rely too much on tournament results to determine whether or not a card gets banned to where it gives off the illusion of possible inside trading. Hasbro Corporate sadly only gives Wizards of the Coast a VERY short time frame to play test cards before they're finalized because they're forced to meet unrealistic deadlines to help boost profit margins for Hasbro Corporate. It won't stop until leadership at Hasbro changes. They're kinda going through an identity crisis right now due to the declining state of the Toy Industry and are trying to pivot away from what they're supposed to be when they're jealous of other corporations making more money than them. They act like it's a competition when it's not.
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"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
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that's what every player say literally for every change in magic rules since the dawn of times lol
Some cards will get worse and some better, obviously. This always happend, is normal. Also with the removal of mana burn many cards got much worse and others much better. It's physiological. That's what always happend when a rule change occur.
clearly this is not the best idea but the best way to TLDR for this is they are attempting (I believe the old RC is working with them) to once and for all get rid of the problem of someone claim it’s jank/casual/optimized/competitive or say what power level it is… all for a opponent to immediately claim they lied the moment they see the deck in action with certain cards (ps: this is a factor of mana crypt and jeweled lotus bans)
That's true, but this would actually make the format do a 180. Would be a miserable format without it and may as well just play a different game or format if you want to change something that's such a big part of the gameplay.
But at the same time, you're free to house rule commander damage out if you're playing with a couple of lads who agree with you. That's one of the nice things about casual formats
Mark Rosewater on the original idea for how color worked on hybrid.
You'll note I didn't say the cards color wasn't both. A card's color is "AND" in this way. But Hybrid as a mechanic refers to the cost, which is an "OR". It was only after he came up with the cost that he made the color identity both. I will note that I agree with you on the hybrid rules for color identity. They should be "AND". But to say the mechanic has always been "AND" is completely false. The ability to pay with "OR" is what defined the mechanic. This is about intellectual honesty in the argument.
They shouldn't keep hybrid cards as multicolor because they've "always been and". They should keep hybrid cards as multicolor because they can affect and be affected by both.
Brawl doesn't use commander damage and it's fine.
Not treating hybrid as OR is literally trashing the entire mechanic, because you're ruining the very core concept of hybrid. Hybrid becomes just "easier to cast multicolor".
Allowing a GU hybrid card to be played in a mono-G commander isn't trashing color identity at all. It amends it. You can't play Mono-R cards, you can't play multicolor RG cards. All you do is allow hybrid cards to function as intended in the deck-building part of the game.
Magic designers have intended lots of things over the decades, but what we get is all that matters.
And we'll have to disagree about your last statement, because I find it disingenuous and dishonest for someone to say they have a mono-green deck if it has red, blue, black, and white cards in it. I don't care that they are also green - if your Quirion Dryad is triggering or All Suns' Dawn is grabbing five cards, it's a five color deck at that point. And the rules and card interactions back me up on that.
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Brawl is quite different from regular commander though
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2265055461?t=0h0m1s
TLDR
And to me this is a great start for my belief that commander wont be hurt as much i heard the Pauper Committee is phenomenal system.
Plus sounds like they will have mostly Gavin at the Helm
Damn, i have to say me too. Them admitting that Arcane Signet and similar cards are design mistakes and combos having their own bracket? Amazing
the only mistake with that part is.... just simply how did Nadu, Winged Wisdom get in with the card text. but saving grace is it was originally gonna just gonna be a legendary Vedalken Orrery for permanents
Also who really needs this bracket stuff anyways? I've played tons and tons of strangers over the years and we've pretty much always been able to work something out. Sure, working something out sometimes means realizing that you are simply not on the same page and costs you about 5-10 minutes but it's seriously not rocket science. The 1-10 system was already cringeworthy enough but at least it could be easily ignored.
Well, enough of the ranting, i guess. I know perfectly well that i'm not the intended recipient of this statement. If Wizards wanted to make me happy they'd simply find something else to spend their time on. EDH doesn't need Wizards but then Wizards needs EDH, so the chances of them making me happy are pretty much non existent as long as they don't happen to come across something that makes them even more money. Seriously, even setting aside my personal opinion, this whole "keeping the community happy is our way to make money" verbiage is such manipulative nonsense. People's happiness doesn't make them a single cent. Printing cards people buy (for whatever reason) is what does. Whenever they are happy while doing so doesn't matter even the slightest bit.
That's not a valid argument because every single rule change make casualties of war. When they made the "tuck" rule disappeared literally many cards that were all-stars staples become unplayable and disappear from the format (Spint into Myth, Hinder, Spell Crumple, Oblation, etc.)
When mana burn died, hundred of cards that were designed around it, also died and nobody used anymore because they were too nerfed (basically all the ones that tap lands or do stuff to untapped mana, etc.) and stuff like Mana Flare was supposed to literally burn the opponent and not just give symmetrical double mana.
Rule change made cards abilities even literally useless like in the Master of Arms case (tapped creatures dealed no damages before 6th edition rules).
When exile zone became a thing all "wish cards" immediately died in EDH, because of how they choose to make them work for the format.
So don't tell me that some cards will be nerfed or even unusable. That's obvious. That's inevitable. That's irrelevant. What matters if in the long term, this will give more benefits or harm for the overall gameplay. And since we already have poison as a damage that is supposed to not be interacted with and designed exactly to be ineliminable (and every deck can run Grafted Exoscheleton if you really wanna go for the voltron route) and unlike commander damages, infinitely much easier to track (since poison is the same for everybody), we don't need another unfun mechanic that how you said half of times won't even matter and no magic card was designed around it (the fact that WotC never wanted to mention commander damage in cards, and never used in his own commander variant, Brawl, pretty much proves it. And proves it also the commander without commander damages just works as fine and is not the end of the world like many players seems to fear.)
First of all, sales proved that people don't buy and hate low-powered sets, so even if you can't prove that high-powered sets makes them happy, is absolutely true the contrary.
Second, we're talking about EDH, were you argument doesn't hold much water and that's because EDH is mainly a social, non-tournament format, opposed to normal formats where people are forced to keep buying staples to have decks relevant in tournaments. In this format people just buy cards that reflects their gamestyle and personality and they can play low-powered decks with other people playing low-powered decks and be perfectly happy (damn, even my LGS, literally FORCE people to run low-budget decks to make games affordable to anybody), so if in EDH high powered cards sells a lot you can bet whatever you want that is because players love them.
And thats wonderful news, I couldn't ask better.
Agreed. Tuck removal had quite some impact. Not so much due to obsoleting a bunch of cards (my lonely Oblation might disagree here but oh well...) but because it vastly complicated keeping problematic commanders off the table.
Well, it's not like i'm saying you don't have a point but i fell that you are exaggerating the impact of mana burn removal a bit. At the time of it's removal i didn't see any actual strategies around it. It was rather a mild inconvenience that happened now and then when you couldn't manage to produce a matching amount of mana. Sure people were doing cute things with Spectral Searchlight and such but those were, well, ... "cute things". I don't really feel comfortable claiming that removal of combat damage using the stack had that much of an impact either but from my perspective at the time it at least seemed to be more than the removal of mana burn and while i didn't really like Mogg Fanatic go the way of the dodo it was kind of a relief to know that i'd never have to tell the damned thrown-grenade-analogy to some baffled new player again.
So a single Grafted Exoskelleton somewhere in your 99 enables you to play voltron? I'm not much of a voltron fan myself but i *highly* doubt this would work out.
As of now i'm not really seeing the "we" here. Personally i'm simply neutral (as in i don't mind keeping track but don't tend to care that much about killing people using my commander either) and voltron players probably wouldn't be voltron players if they thought it to be unfun.
Wizards usually tends to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I'm not entirely sure if that's something i'd use to substantiate a point.
It sure does (at least it doesn't make the format any more broken than it already is anyways) and it's obviously not the end of the world. I've done worse things in my life than keeping track of a couple numbers to make a bunch of people that found fulfillment in playing Magic dress up doll style happy though
On a more serious note: If you ask around you'll probably find that more than enough players will happily agree to ignore commander damage, even if just because it simply doesn't matter to them. So if the numbers cause you grief it should be more than easy to reduce it to an absolute minimum.
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Who's those "people"? Personally (and i know quite a couple other people too) loved the Kamigawa set, which is famously known for being "low powered". Well, the original Kamigawa set that is as i didn't even get around to draft the new one yet as we still have to a ton of other Boxes to finish. Whatever Wizard's "sales data" shows these days can be pretty much flushed down the toilet as hardly any person having actual responsibilities can even keep up with the rate at which they keep churning out "products". Funny enough neither me nor *any* other Magic player i know draws "happiness" from this. Could it be that Wizard's bottomline and people's happiness just aren't connected after all? I've heard rumors but i guess their "market research" shows otherwise.
Well, excuse my rambling since that's actually besides the point anyways as your whole argument of equaling sales data with happiness is flawed. People buy things for a bazillion reasons. Yeah one of them is because it makes them happy but it's far from the only one. In relation to Magic boxes FOMO and straight up gambling like qualities are a large factor. Besides, i'm pretty sure that i'm not to far off that even after factoring in R&D at least a good portion of Wizard's products are sold at something like 1000% profit. If people's "happiness" was such a huge factor couldn't they just do with only 500%? I mean way more people could be "made happy", right? Or might those those rumors that it's really just about corporate image and appeasing the people that make those insane profits possible actually be true? Oh what a big mystery.
Sure thing because "social" and "non-tournament" translates to "hey look, these are my 100 most beloved pet cards and i don't really care what happens from here on". Yeah, i've built dumb stuff like Wall tribal too and it's fun once in a while. Key point here being "once" since after losing that round i'll rather want an actual game and you can be sure i'll try to have some realistic chance at winning when up against somewhat serious decks. No, that doesn't mean i'll run Thoracle, drop Armageddon on people (Ruination, well, ruinating greedy manabases is mostly just a learning experience though - signed a guy who played 5C with Panoramas and basics to avoid such "surprises"), neither will i play some random "good stuff" and even if my deck might have a Crucible, an Exploration and a Stripmine i'll 99% not abuse it. That's my idea of "social" and "casual". I know this doesn't match the "it's commander bro, we're just acting like it's a game where someone wins but in reality we're just expressing our personality" vibe these days but it very much matches the mind set of everyone i started playing EDH with like 15+ years ago. I mean, seriously, if i just want to sit down and talk to people i'll just do that instead of distracting myself with some random cards.
As to your last statement in relation to player "loving" certain cards because your generalization portrays them like that. Let's claim for a moment your characterization is correct and it's really just about "love" of the card itself (also the "self expression" it provides of course) and totally not because of some kind of arms race people (secretly or even subconsciously obviously - trying to win is somewhat frowned upon after all) want to get ahead in, it feels rather sad to me that this "love" goes to a bunch of mana rocks, which when looked at objectively are as boring as a Magic card can be. Not to mention that those which are foolish enough to chase "their love" in Wizards official product are likely to just burn a bunch of money while ending up with a broken heart. Oh the happiness burning money on lottery tickets while getting all duds brings. There's true altruism in letting people have such wonderful experience for such a "low" price. Seriously, i totally don't blame Wizards for being a company but being BS'd is just uncalled for.
Jokes aside, what you are describing is simply Wizards doing whatever it takes to sell printed cardboard at premium prices viewed through pink glasses. Nothing more nothing less. I'll spare the part about how power creep has some upper ceiling, which means that even if people really "love" those cards and being able hand over hefty sums to get those makes them happy, they might as well dearly regret that later on. Also powerful and dumb autoinclude are far from synonymous.
Well, suit yourself. Over on reddit people are already discussing how building an actual effective "Bracket 2" deck is "deceptive". My personal recommendation would be to subdivide the brackets by letters A-R. From there on maybe the Greek alphabet could be used to provide more fine grained specification. I have a feeling in the end it might be more pragmatic to just build every deck twice to be able to hand one's opponent a straight up copy though. This way everyone can be 100% sure to never be outclassed or be faced with something he/she/it doesn't like.
Oh yeah and of course let's not forget the cEDH boogeyman. I've recently learned that those are the people that dare to play measly creatures, which force their opponent to play removal from their hand (removal! from their actual hand!! can you believe it???) if they want to keep continuing with their graveyard strats or whatever. Obviously i agree that such oppressive action has no place in this format and everyone even thinking about something like this needs to be put far, far away for the sake of humanity. I mean, seriously, that's almost as bad as playing Bojuka Bog after someone spend a ton of effort on milling half of their own deck. Only a monster would interfere with such a beautifully crafted gamestate and deny those people their legitimate payoff.
No, it won't eliminate completely for who wanna play it. People even in Brawl still have ways to wreck people using only their commanders. Hexproof, aura based, equipment based, poison based etc, commanders will still exist, they will just be nerfed, but voltron will still be viable, especially in more casual contexts. The commander is still your most reliable piece that never leave the battlefield forever for the rest of the game, so it's still worth to build a deck around powering him. That's not even comparable to, let's say wish cards that are unusable in EDH for real and not just nerfed by the rules changes.
There's also historic commander with 100 cards, and actually now historic is called just Brawl and the standard version being a sub-type of it, so it can be much, much more similar to EDH than you think. Also, as I said I propose to make all planeswalkers as commanders just like in brawl - so even if we "lose" a single strategy, voltron, we would gain, in exchange, hundreds and hundreds of new gameplay patterns, strategies and designs.
The people are exactly the vast majority of players that care enough of the game to actually buy booster packs. Kamigawa is a great example, is a set that for multiple reasons (and one of them was power level, yes, I literally hated Kamigawa of their useless parasitic mechanics and narrow cards opposed to the grandiosity of Mirrodin block) saled extremely poorly, and that's the main reason Wizard was afraid to ever return to that plane, and took them almost 20 years to find a way (Neo-Kamigawa has NOTHING to do with the first kamigawa expansions in terms of power levels and game designs), and even that happened only because a vocal minority begged forever on blogatog to MaRo to return to Kamigawa despite all the odds against.
And who are YOU and your friends? You are just a minority and your anecdotal experiences have zero relevance in order to say what the vast majority of players wants or do not wants, and WotC do not see only sales, but have multiple datas and way to do surveys with players that you can't simply have access of. Sorry then if I find a bit more reliable WotC that can gather data from all over the world than your little, provincial, subjective experiences with magic sets.
Again, you're either talking without having no idea of how the actual EDH community in LGS works (which is not a monolitic entity, but wildly changes from playgroups to playgroups) or you are again using your little, irrelevant personal experience (presumably you live in an environment where players apparently just do the arms race to play the best cards possible in EDH) and extend that personal experience to the whole world and EDH community. That's not how it works. I already told you that my LGS, like MANY others in the world, have established house rules or playgrops that self-limits the power level of decks and encourage the talking and confronting with the other EDH players, so if you think to play in a harsh and cutthroat environment that you don't like because apparently you have around only CEDH players that refuse to rule 0 things, just look around you and change playgroups and you will find PLENTY pf EDH players that will be more than enthusiast to play also against your Wall tribal deck and probably even win if you're smart enough in politics (I have seen decks doing literally nothing for almost all the game and consequently being ignored by the other 3 players that were wrecking each others like there's no tommorrow, just to see that said decks would win the game in the last moment because the last opponent survived was weakened enough to be killed very easily, so everything it's possible in a free-for-all 4 players pod, power level is NOT everything in EDH, and you should know very well that)
That's great. Problem is it doesn't make a claim of sales stats equaling "happiness" any more true. Besides "Community" is not synonymous with "majority". I guess my somewhat lengthy style kind of muddled the general statement here.
Fun fact on the side: I'm drafting pretty much every weekend (at least). How exactly am i supposed to do that without buying packs? Well, OK, it's actually really whole boxes but i guess that's even better for Wizards bottom line, so i guess that makes me "care" quite a lot? By the way, do you notice the disconnect between hailing EDH as "that great format where you don't need to update" and trying to make people who (for whatever reason - maybe they simply can't) don't buy Wizards luxury products into kind of second class community members?
What does it matter who i and my "friends" (i don't remember claiming to exclusively refer to some kind of friends but OK) are? I'm not the one constantly trying to speak for whole groups of people. I've just given a couple opposing examples to your generalizations. That's all and i sure as hell didn't make any claim in regards to those examples being representative for just about anything. For a good part because it really doesn't matter.
Funny enough i've written opposite but OK.
Edit: Thinking about it, i guess you kind of have a point. Even if one doesn't go for the literal best deck available trying to get most efficiency out of a given niche is probably also a small arms race.
I don't think that i need to "extend" anything here. Just ask yourself why someone would want to be able to cast their commander 3 turns earlier (which obviously a lot of people want). It's either because said commander was impractical for speed reasons the begin with or the generally increasing speed has made it that way. Well, in any case, if there was some specific excitement in relation to cracking a manarock it certainly escapes me.
Obviously.
Well, it's not like i overly regularly run into those guys (maybe it's because i've been somewhat inactive in recent years and it's a phenomenon that's been growing? - i don't know) but even if i do it's not that much of a problem. It'll take me at worst 2 (if it isn't instantly obvious what their primary gameplan is) likely pretty short games to see if they'll just do the same thing over and over again and then we'll either move on to something a little more interesting or simply part ways. If they are just a bit mean when the situation requires it that's no problem for me. I once lost a 1vs1 that had been going on for almost 2 hours in the literally last second when i just thought i had finally made it because my opponent managed to Yosei lock me and it was on of the greatest games i've ever played. All i really care for is having an interesting game. I.e. one that doesn't revolve around mulliganing into/tutoring up something as worn out and boring as Thoracle/Consultation.
I know that many people want to formalize something like this these days but to me it just feels weird. I don't want to limit my opponent as much as i don't want to limit myself (using my 5C deck as an example: sure, i could ask my opponent to not play Ruination or friends but if i'd win this way there would always be this nagging feeling that i probably wouldn't have done so if i had just let him capitalize on my biggest - 100% self inflicted! - weakness making simply fixing my weak spot the far more rewarding option for me). Just bring what you think will make a good game and we'll figure it out from there. I admit some kind of system in that regard might be good for newer players which don't yet have the experience to quickly realize what they are up against though. While i've done pretty well myself i actually have witnessed people (let's assume the best here) "not being very good at dealing with new players". Like the first match was a total disaster, so the winner offered to tone down a bit and he actually did but the "toned down" option was still a heavily tuned deck that just went on the repeat match one. If it hadn't been for third parties clueing the new guy in about the impossible matchup he would have probably thought of himself as a bad player when he was really doing alright given his available options.
Yeah, of course but let's be real while there's surely people that would try to adjust to that level of silliness just as i would if someone else came to me wanting to goof a round for a couple games such silliness is not what i consider a real challenge. I'm obviously picking an extreme example with Wall tribal here. I mean, sure, it's hilarious but also very, very bad. Bad to the point that piloting it is pretty much mind numbing compared to anything remotely serious. It's really just for the lols but at least for me the joke gets old pretty fast. Admittedly if it would somehow (i.e. by whatever crazy star alignment) manage to steal the win it would be massive lolz. In general i'd rather pilot something where i feel like my decisions actually make a difference though.
House rules make room for everyone who wants to play, even the players who want to play a fundamentally casual format in a "competitive" way. They can just do it in the corner somewhere with other handful of like minded. Or you know, you could also just play an actual competitive format if you want actual competition.
Well, i'm not entirely sure if or how this refers to me but if it does: Don't worry, i'm basically already off to start some subformat with people around me. A lot of the stuff surrounding the recent events has very much pushed in my face just how much things have changed over the years. I mean, i was pretty much aware that this isn't 2010 but then i was also blissfully unaware of the actual extend (have they really printed *that* many generic legendaries so people can stuff just about any effect imaginable and then some more into the command zone? - well, rhetorical question, they obviously have) much. Sure, it's a bit sad but there's no hard feelings overall. It's just how things go. It was fun while it lasted but i figure at least under the official framework the party is pretty much over for me and it's time to move on. Luckily i actually have people that will just move along and continue having fun so it's really not that big of a deal after all.
There's one thing that really nags me though: Where exactly does one draw the line between the fabled "casual" and the oh so wrong "competitive"? As trying to win seems be a clear indication of a competitive mindset (which for some reason is wrong in game designed to lead to someone winning) wouldn't it be best if people ran stuff like "99 of my favorite forest artworks + 1 legendary Ornithopter which snapped the pictures"? I mean, if some monster actually dared to put a creature with positive power on the board and started attacking it would be an obvious sign of them trying to win and therefore being "competitive", which further not only justifies but requires to segregate them. This is obviously very, very exaggerated but maybe it gets the basic concept across (which i seriously don't have high hopes for in 2024 but oh well) that bewilders me so much.
The constant "casual" this and "competitive" that is a good part of what made EDH turn sour for me. In the end it's really little more than buzzwords that people will interpret how it fits them best in my opinion. Seriously, why would anyone care (and actually pay 3 digit sums) to cast their commander 3 turns earlier when they are not competing for anything anyways? There really is no reason but that obviously doesn't stop people from drawing the line so what they are doing is "casually" "non-competitive" and what other do isn't.
There's really *very* little people that take the results of EDH games overly serious but even then pretty much everyone else can always be accused of still being "competitive" unless they spent the game marveling over their forest artwork or whatever other "non-competitive" function their deck serves. OK, there's the oh so creative and eternally funny group hug players, which feel not adding any kind of wincon is actually the epitome of epicness. These are pretty much the only factually existing group of 100% non-competitive players. Personally i think group hug is the dumbest and most unfunny thing ever (maybe it sometimes even borders on the malicious as the whole point of those decks is to mess with people for no real reason but to mess with them) but i'd never ever try to push those people out. They are building within the confines of the format to play something they enjoy without pushing for the extreme brokenness that lies at the outer limits. Seems perfectly fine to me even if i seriously don't like it.
Maybe it's just me but i feel a lot of EDH players these days almost act like they are entitled to play solitaire to varying levels. Maybe a little interaction is OK but it probably shouldn't be too efficient (kinda funny when even precons wield swords or similar super efficient staples) or maybe you are just allowed to try stopping their wincon (a little bit) and any kind of disruption to their buildup makes you a competitive monster, which has no place in the format, while doing something as vile as punishing one of their deck building choices... no, better not even be guilty of the thought crime considering it. What baffles me most about this line of thinking is: If the choices i make are supposed to have no consequences is it even still technically a game? Yeah, it's seriously time to move on, i guess.
It was more a general reply for the thread than anything direct, no worries man
In my experience, it's been very easy to tell who are the competitive types and who aren't, so it's fairly easy to find a table where everybody is on the same page and you can have some fun games.
Brawl is a 25-30 life format, which requires a bit more damage than the 21 commander damage in Commander. But do away with Commander damage, and now in a real game of Commander, you have to eat through 40 life per player. Instead of stretching the damage required to kill by 25-37%, you're nearly doubling it. That alone is tough, but now instead of beating lifegain with either commander damage or combo, you're removing one check and saying only combois the main viable path to victory.
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The idea of 1 vs. 1 cEDH especially when it comes to events and tournaments also gets neglected as well. When I see other popular Magic YouTubers play cEDH like with The Spike Feeders channel for example it's always with a 4 player pod. Why not stream best 2 out of 3 matches 1 v. 1 cEDH as well? cEDH is really nothing more than 100 card Singleton Vintage / Legacy but slightly less expensive. The mana bases are almost as unforgiving as they could cost a fortune unfortunately unless you're allowed to run proxies. I figured a really good cEDH deck would be a deck with VERY low mana curves where speed is everything as opposed to the slow play of Casual EDH with higher mana curves with less explosive starts early game except for Sol Ring because Sol Ring. I'm still wary of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's proposal on their Tier Bracket idea. It could work but we won't know the full details until they post the article before MagicCon Las Vegas.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Exactly. This has been my experience too. Besides there's a lot of room between someone trying to be competitive and someone actually succeeding at it. With a lot of the less successful types the biggest from my perspective is them having an increased chance of being a bit salty when they realize that they/their deck ultimately aren't as good as they thought/hoped. Also there's a fair chance that i might get a good laugh out of it. Playing "everything goes" simply needs a little more than some scary lists/interactions you found online, which can lead to absolute crazyness when people are faced with having to make decisions they aren't prepared for. More than once this has pretty much made my day.
Yeah, combined with every possible effort you can make to "mitigate" the inconsistencies caused by 100 card singleton. Ideally you'd want to start off with something like Thoracle/Consultation (aka UUB => you win) and enough (fast) mana to cast it in hand or at least some way to tutor for said pieces. Something like Thoracle, Consultation, Petal, Chromemox, Swamp, [any-blue-card] would be a cEDH's player dream starting hand with the 7th card probably being a Pact of Negation or something similar. Unable to hit such a "dream" hand it then goes on to cards that'll either get those pieces into your hand or stop your opponent from assembling/executing the same/similar setup. If you manage to cram other wincons between those cards without diluting your primary gameplan therefore increasing consistency it's obviously an upside too. I don't claim to be an expert on these types of decks but the basic concept is pretty much obvious in my opinion.
Removing my own emotional investment from the equation i'm actually pretty curious what they'll come up with since after taking the EDHrec poll in regards to assigning cards to brackets i'm even more at loss as to how this should lead to some kind of practical system than i was before. Sure, there's a bunch of cards, which are just obviously very powerful but even there their actual value largely depends on the circumstances and the deck that runs them and the idea put forward by Wizards to rate them by "their ideal value" (not the exact wording but pretty much what they are saying practically) doesn't really help.
Sure in general some spells power level would be massively crippled by requiring 5 different colored mana to cast but if i put it in magical wonderland to asses it's "best case scenario", well, i guess i'll have to assume a hand full of fast mana and it being casted turn 1 and that's just the tip of the iceberg. For a lot of cards there's so many variations that having 4 groups would declare some of them "equal" while them obviously being not, many are hard to asses in general and last but not least a good part of the cards that would seemingly belong to the upper tiers come straight from Wizard's precons... Not to mention the insanity of declaring Sol Ring tier 1 when, even if one doesn't factor in the power of fast mana, is so obviously strictly better than tons and tons of other mana rocks. To me this pretty much seems like a rushed idea (maybe as a distraction from all the negativity or as a demonstration of their willingness and capability to "improve" the format?) that will ultimately become a total clusterf... but then i'm certainly not the smartest person in the world, so maybe they'll surprise me, who knows?
In my opinion another interesting tidbit of the whole drama is how according to JLK (recent Command Zone video) Wizards supposedly pleaded with the RC to not ban these cards. Obviously noone knows their reasoning behind this and a well meaning interpretation would be them simply anticipating the massive fallout such a decision would cause but on the other hand it again shines a pretty strange light on them supposedly having realized these cards being design mistakes. I don't really know what to make of it and i also don't feel like bashing them yet again but in any case it putting these statements next to each other feels weird to me.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom is a good example of this before it got banned in Modern and eventually in Commander because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro hesitated to ban it in Modern right away simply because they weren't done making money off of it's Secondary Market value. They rely too much on tournament results to determine whether or not a card gets banned to where it gives off the illusion of possible inside trading. Hasbro Corporate sadly only gives Wizards of the Coast a VERY short time frame to play test cards before they're finalized because they're forced to meet unrealistic deadlines to help boost profit margins for Hasbro Corporate. It won't stop until leadership at Hasbro changes. They're kinda going through an identity crisis right now due to the declining state of the Toy Industry and are trying to pivot away from what they're supposed to be when they're jealous of other corporations making more money than them. They act like it's a competition when it's not.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta