I feel like the argument was at least given a subtle nod with the implementation of what’s always been around covertly in rule 0. It’s a master stroke to make this explicit and formalized, in that it gives people who want to play these sort of variants leeway to play the format the way they want to. They always could in the right time and place of course, but now it’s a little more easy to have that discussion. It’s not a win for the ‘yes’ crowd, but it is middle ground that both sides of this debate can use to test the waters, and no one needs to feel any way for bringing it up as an option.
Regarding ‘if not now, when?’, I agree. If it were ever to be formalized, now would’ve been the time. The hype is up, there’s now focus on walkers than ever and plenty of choices. The fact that the RC and CAG unanimously decided against speaks volumes - allowing a global concession for all walkers would be ill advised. Regardless, the option was always there if you wanted it and now that’s made more obvious. It might not be formal and binding in every game you shuffle up, but does it really matter? Your meta is your meta, so long as they’re cool with it you’re good to go.
To anyone who plays commander outside of a kitchen table setting, nothing has changed. Official rules are the only rules.
If not now, then when? I feel like this was the best shot that PW commanders had.
The moment has passed, and things only go down from here. If you want PW commanders, then make an exception with your playgroup or play Oathbreaker or the like.
I dunno. I think that there is also the possibility that with the new set coming out you would see a LOT of excited people and the hype train would skew the numbers. So there would be a higher number of players making planeswalkers decks since a) they were just legalized, and b) they are excited about the new set coming out. Give this set time to sink in and settle, and you might find the actual number of players who want to build planeswalker decks to be lower.
I think it is insulting to think that those who want to play with new cards "don't count"
It doesn't matter if the cards exist, are people running them? Are they playable when purphoros isn't at the table?
Because almost every deck out there runs a myriad of ways to interact with a planeswalker. Any creatures, bounce, burn, planeswalker removal and/or permanent removal will all make it much harder to execute a planeswalker plan.
That holds true for Planeswalker removal as well, and bounce and permanent removal (in the form of exile) all work against purph too.
Burn is also rarely played.
For Example Out of the top 100 played Cards on edhrec(Anecdotal evidence since stuff like that is subject to change if PW's would be allowed still)
One Burnspell (Boros Charm) one bouncespell (Cyclonic Rift). 15 Spotremoval+Counter (Which helps to get rid of Regular commanders AND if you allow PWs as commanders help protect those) 6,5 Massremovals out of which only one has the posibillity to kill pws, yet they can regularly kill most regular commanders and protect PW ones.
10 Things thet get rid of pw's.
10 things that get rid of purphoros, As an Enchantment.
(+4 if it is a creature which most purph decks tend to not let happen)
Yes Attacking PW's is a thing you can do but most decks run removal for creatures already, most decks run creatures of their own to block so that is not a reliable/effortless answer to pw's, in addition to that a lot of pw's have abilities to protect themselves too (esp. From Creatures) so by the time your opponents can kill your PW you should be able to recast him rather easily, even if you dont get to the ultimate alot of the incremental value of the good ones is pretty strong. Loot/Rummage for two per turn by plussing Daretti or Dack is a bit better that phyrexian arena if you are not graveyard based and if you are its insanely better than phyrexian arena.
If you are red, you are probably just running chaos warp to answer it.
If you are green, similar thing, only song of the dryads
If you are black, you might have an artifact board wipe that can answer it, but I would bet that there is no black card for dealing with purphoros at all
So you could be playing a 3 color deck and have maybe 2 cards to deal with purphoros.
Also please don't so casually disregard the #1 way people take out planeswalkers. Every color has creatures, and maintaining a strong enough defense to keep people from attacking your planeswalker is a very difficult task. And recasting a walker is not even remotely problematic for edh, the format can handle much stronger incremental advantages. consecrated sphinx is legal remember.
there are literally more ways to get rid of purphoros than planeswalkers unconditionally, and purphoros is already a problem for alot of groups.
This is a very misleading way of putting it.
You cannot attack purphoros.
He's an indestructible enchantment. The amount of cards the average deck runs to answer an indestructible enchantment is probably between 1 and 2.
It doesn't matter if the cards exist, are people running them? Are they playable when purphoros isn't at the table?
Because almost every deck out there runs a myriad of ways to interact with a planeswalker. Any creatures, bounce, burn, planeswalker removal and/or permanent removal will all make it much harder to execute a planeswalker plan.
And yet there was no discussion about purphoros being legal when it was printed. It was just brought in no problem.
What do you mean you won't get a chance to attack liliana?
If the player is capable of maintaining complete board control against 3 opponents, I think they deserve a payoff. Even a llanowar elf can lock liliana out from ulting until it's removed. A lightning bolt means that ulting liliana will take so many turns as to not be a problem, by the time it's ticked up that high players will be hard casting eldrazi.
And if she dies once, suddenly you need multiple turns with your 6 mana planewalker, or 8 mana planeswalker.
If you want to talk about problematic cards that create unfun situations because they tick up to game enders, how about we talk about the *currently legal* ones like purphoros, god of the forge, which is legitimately almost impossible to remove and will end the game with ETB effects regardless of removal in about as many turns as it takes liliana to build up to her ult.
Commander can handle purphoros, but you think it can't handle walker ultimates?
You would put...liliana of the dark realms in the banned category.
Can you take a step back and realize what you just said there?
Can you take a good hard look at what you just said there please?
Edit: I looked through the list of cards you think are problematic and most of those things are substantially worse than the average casual play I see. Commander is a powerful format. It takes a LOT for a card to be problematic.
Planeswalkers do not live that long in the Commander games I play now, I don't think peoples desires to keep them down will lessen at all if you make them the Commander.
That is true, but I never had a problem of keeping daretti alive sililar with a friends freyalise. And by the time they are able to kill them you can play them again anyway maybe even twice. Without adequate numbers of PW removal it's easy to defend them long enough with blocks. If your deck is built around PW's you know to protect them if you only run pws in your 99 you are less likely to focus on their protection, just like with every other commander. If you build a Meren or a krenko deck you try to keep them alive and spend deckspace for exactly that, if you only run them in your 99 and your commander doesn't need the protection you are less likely to do so.
Keeping them alive isn't that threatening to a table. It's similar to leaving something like a phyrexian arena sitting on the table, a noticeable but not gamebreaking persistent bonus.
Can you consistently ultimate is the real question, and if the answer to that is yes, I would say your deck is so far above your table that it doesn't matter what general you play, because they are unable to answer a single card.
I do think Ajani Vengeant would be a bad card to build around. You can't build around the first two abilities... they are just controlling abilities. If you want to build around the ultimate, then that is the problem.
I think any planeswalker with a gamewinning ultimate would have to be banned as a commander. Since there is no BaaC list, they would be outright banned. Sheldon mentioned this in his article about this thread - making all walkers commanders would also force them to ban a large portion of them.
Ajani Vengeant or Liliana of the Dark Realms are cards with generic uninteresting abilities when they are cast. I assume if you are building them it is to abuse the ultimates. So if 95% of their commander decks are made to force the ultimates, I think that they need to be banned as a commander.
Braids, Cabal Minion is not a terribly broken card. It just makes broken decks. And the RC doesn't want those decks around.
I am very much against PW generals that can win the game by themselves. If they combo with one other card - fine, it is the same as many other combos in the format. But being a self-contained win con is very frustrating.
My 'rule' for PW commanders would be: "if you can build around the first 2/3 abilities, it's good - if you can only build around the ultimate, it is not good for the format because all of the decks it will enable will be the same"
I don't understand this point of view at all. It just sounds like creating weird arbitrary rules.
What's wrong with building towards a game ender with your general? Are we worried that people might win a game after establishing complete board control? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
They take their 4/5 mana walker and untap with it repeatedly, I'd hope they get some huge play off of it, because their + abilities are usually very small effects.
Keep in mind there are a number of generals that people just run for the colors and almost ignore the general outright.
Point is, out of all the PW's (140 now, 37 incomming), I could find around 20 which I find interesting and make a deck for them (11%+). I hardly find 11% (93 creatures) out of all the 844 which I find interesting.
Cool story. I checked, and of the 179 Planeswalkers listed in gatherer, I believe 8 are DFCs. Of the remaining 171, I found 5 that I would possibly build around (less than 3%), and one of those I have already built around (Aminatou) because it explored a unique design space and has the special text allowing it to be a commander.
On the other hand, I've built nearly 100 commander decks over the last decade (started to lose track because I haven't written them all down). I find plenty of legendary creatures interesting, and I am constantly building more. Even if I had only used 84 unique commanders, that would put me about 10%, which is more than three times my percentage for planeswalkers.
The real point is - personal preference/anecdote means nothing. You like one thing, I like another.
It should be meaningless but the RC has specifically stated that interest in building around them matters, thus creating an unquantifiable reason to continue letting the format stagnate.
This is only going to get worse with how well WAR is being received.
Expect more focus on plot and story and walkers in the future.
The best course of action is to make them legal now, which will encourage wizards to design walkers with EDH in mind.
You mean like they don't design legendary creatures with EDH in mind, giving us stuff like Narset and Leovold? Or do you mean like when they DO design with EDH in mind and give us Prossh and Teferi?
Because remember, Wizards mentality is to make the card and let the Rules Committee deal with it if the card is a problem. So allowing all planeswalkers doesn't mean that Wizards starts making ones.that won't be OP in edh, it just means that many more cards every set that need to be evaluated under a new light (the way it plays in the Command Zone as well as in the 99).
They definitely design legendary creatures with edh in mind. Not exclusively, as they design cards specifically for all sorts of formats from vintage to draft, but the designers do not just ignore the most popular casual format in their process. "It's a legendary creature, does this make an interesting general?"
That's not even attempting to be a logical debate.
It's perfectly logical. Legendary creatures are not made with commander in mind, and even the commanders in commander products lead to poor gameplay.
In the interest of format stability, we should clearly just lock the format with its current cards and carefully evaluate everyone's feelings on the new cards before allowing them in.
I assume all newly printed commanders will no longer be legal at release, and instead evaluated for how "worthwhile" they are and what they can bring to the format.
If your deck is so narrow in it's focus that a single hate card shuts it down, it is probably teetering on the non-interactive itself.
Academically, there's a point there. But there's a difference between someone running Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor and a Razaketh, the Foulblooded shell, and someone who just wants to pop Evolving Wilds to colour fix. The former is shutting down a likely lethal combo deck, the latter is stopping a generally innocent interaction and stopping a deck from being able to interact with the game whatsoever.
Stopping fetch lands is not stopping the deck from interacting.
It certainly won't help the deck to interact if they're already color screwed. Not everyone has a bomb hand from the start, but they keep a so-so hand because they have a fetch land to get that color. Oops, Ashiok says **** that, so have fun 'interacting' until you get the color you need. It may not be the definition you're referencing, but I see what toc is getting at, and it's a valid point. There's also the strategy(such as it is), of just getting the shuffle...but again, Ashiok doesn't like that, so I hope you're confident in how your deck was shuffled to start, because you're not doing anything with it.
On a side point, everybody's kind of fixated on Ashiok(which is legit...I see trouble ahead if that got to be a commander), but now we have Narset 3.0, which is at LEAST Leo 0.5. If Leovold was banned because it was oppressive, how would Narset be any better(I will find it interesting to see if she stays legal even in the 99, personally)?
So in your hypothetical situation, the player kept a hand with a fetch to save themselves from color screw...but also didn't play it before ashiok hit the field?
If your deck is so narrow in it's focus that a single hate card shuts it down, it is probably teetering on the non-interactive itself.
Academically, there's a point there. But there's a difference between someone running Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor and a Razaketh, the Foulblooded shell, and someone who just wants to pop Evolving Wilds to colour fix. The former is shutting down a likely lethal combo deck, the latter is stopping a generally innocent interaction and stopping a deck from being able to interact with the game whatsoever.
Stopping fetch lands is not stopping the deck from interacting.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
To anyone who plays commander outside of a kitchen table setting, nothing has changed. Official rules are the only rules.
I think it is insulting to think that those who want to play with new cards "don't count"
If you are red, you are probably just running chaos warp to answer it.
If you are green, similar thing, only song of the dryads
If you are black, you might have an artifact board wipe that can answer it, but I would bet that there is no black card for dealing with purphoros at all
So you could be playing a 3 color deck and have maybe 2 cards to deal with purphoros.
Also please don't so casually disregard the #1 way people take out planeswalkers. Every color has creatures, and maintaining a strong enough defense to keep people from attacking your planeswalker is a very difficult task. And recasting a walker is not even remotely problematic for edh, the format can handle much stronger incremental advantages. consecrated sphinx is legal remember.
This is a very misleading way of putting it.
You cannot attack purphoros.
He's an indestructible enchantment. The amount of cards the average deck runs to answer an indestructible enchantment is probably between 1 and 2.
It doesn't matter if the cards exist, are people running them? Are they playable when purphoros isn't at the table?
Because almost every deck out there runs a myriad of ways to interact with a planeswalker. Any creatures, bounce, burn, planeswalker removal and/or permanent removal will all make it much harder to execute a planeswalker plan.
And yet there was no discussion about purphoros being legal when it was printed. It was just brought in no problem.
If the player is capable of maintaining complete board control against 3 opponents, I think they deserve a payoff. Even a llanowar elf can lock liliana out from ulting until it's removed. A lightning bolt means that ulting liliana will take so many turns as to not be a problem, by the time it's ticked up that high players will be hard casting eldrazi.
And if she dies once, suddenly you need multiple turns with your 6 mana planewalker, or 8 mana planeswalker.
If you want to talk about problematic cards that create unfun situations because they tick up to game enders, how about we talk about the *currently legal* ones like purphoros, god of the forge, which is legitimately almost impossible to remove and will end the game with ETB effects regardless of removal in about as many turns as it takes liliana to build up to her ult.
Commander can handle purphoros, but you think it can't handle walker ultimates?
Can you take a step back and realize what you just said there?
Can you take a good hard look at what you just said there please?
Edit: I looked through the list of cards you think are problematic and most of those things are substantially worse than the average casual play I see. Commander is a powerful format. It takes a LOT for a card to be problematic.
Keeping them alive isn't that threatening to a table. It's similar to leaving something like a phyrexian arena sitting on the table, a noticeable but not gamebreaking persistent bonus.
Can you consistently ultimate is the real question, and if the answer to that is yes, I would say your deck is so far above your table that it doesn't matter what general you play, because they are unable to answer a single card.
I don't understand this point of view at all. It just sounds like creating weird arbitrary rules.
What's wrong with building towards a game ender with your general? Are we worried that people might win a game after establishing complete board control? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
They take their 4/5 mana walker and untap with it repeatedly, I'd hope they get some huge play off of it, because their + abilities are usually very small effects.
Keep in mind there are a number of generals that people just run for the colors and almost ignore the general outright.
It should be meaningless but the RC has specifically stated that interest in building around them matters, thus creating an unquantifiable reason to continue letting the format stagnate.
They definitely design legendary creatures with edh in mind. Not exclusively, as they design cards specifically for all sorts of formats from vintage to draft, but the designers do not just ignore the most popular casual format in their process. "It's a legendary creature, does this make an interesting general?"
Expect more focus on plot and story and walkers in the future.
The best course of action is to make them legal now, which will encourage wizards to design walkers with EDH in mind.
It's perfectly logical. Legendary creatures are not made with commander in mind, and even the commanders in commander products lead to poor gameplay.
In the interest of format stability, we should clearly just lock the format with its current cards and carefully evaluate everyone's feelings on the new cards before allowing them in.
So in your hypothetical situation, the player kept a hand with a fetch to save themselves from color screw...but also didn't play it before ashiok hit the field?
Stopping fetch lands is not stopping the deck from interacting.