The proliferate support is actually more concerning to me than anything in this set. It's going to be absolutely intolerable. And PW commanders would just make it worse. It's honestly close to enough to make me not want to play EDH just thinking about it.
Agreed. And at first glance my initial reaction is "gee I'm glad I dont have to face some of these as commanders".
And now we have a Landfall proliferator. That one made me blink to see if I read it right.
I honestly cannot believe they doubled down on proliferate so hard. If they ever manage to make planeswalker commanders legal I seriously doubt I will keep playing. The whole "sweep the board, plus and proliferate all my walkers" decks are going to be bad enough as is if you're not playing CEDH.
Question for those who voted yes in this poll: did you consider the second order effect that if all PWs were allowed as Commanders, knowing we'd ban some (which I'm pretty sure you figured out), you then wouldn't have the banned ones available as 1 of 99? If you thought of it, how did it factor into your decision?
I wound up changing my vote to no after much discussion and thinking about it.
Seeing cards like Tezzeret or Venser that I generally enjoy banned definitely impacts my thinking just a little but it's very low down the list. Most of the guys you'd banned would be more like Tezzeret, who as much as I enjoy, I would not mind seeing banned -- I can't think of any walker more bannable than the existing two bannable ones (teferi and estrid) who are already legal, so it doesn't stress me out a lot.
The thing that I fear the most is that they would create more incentives to play small numbers of creatures and high number of effects that stall the game. This is already a style of game that is not particularly that fun in EDH and I think there's plenty of support for it.
On the flipside, the thing I like the most about walkers is that they potentially enable some color combinations with weak commanders to have stronger options or at the least more varied options.
The proliferate support is actually more concerning to me than anything in this set. It's going to be absolutely intolerable. And PW commanders would just make it worse. It's honestly close to enough to make me not want to play EDH just thinking about it.
Total side note, though it touches on a few points I've seen floating around about power level:
My anecdotal experience playing with precons was that the PW precons always felt significantly stronger than the other precons to me.
Am I the only one who had this experience? Obviously it doesn't necessarily mean anything if so but the Nahiri precon for example tended to just crap on the others when we played with them. That could just be that Nahiri and Daretti had some powerful mechanics in them I guess (tokens and artifacts).
I see a lot of the same contradictions that Impossible does see.
There is a lot of Hey this thing will happen with these Walker commanders that already happens in games anyway but it is not a huge problem. There is a lot of that in this thread too. The archenemy conversation on the last couple pages has the same features.
Very few people have said "this thing will happen" as opposed to "this thing could happen and that is a risk." Most of the certainty comes from Impossible
Honestly, I've only seen one person really go that far. Though a couple get close, they don't cross the line and are making relevant arguments. I don't find their arguments to be very good, but they aren't just descending into personal attacks. Saying that answers exist is a valid counter argument to someone presenting a card or strategy as a problem. It's effectivesness as an argument depends on the degree to which those answers are effective against the card/strategy, as well as whether even if the answers are effective the mere presence of the strategy is detrimental.
My comment doesn't pertain to personal attacks so much as the completely binary dismissive attitude toward counter-arguments. Complete unwillingness to acknowledge a single point, and little digs like "that's just silly" or whatever. It's not just one side for sure, but there's a lot of just unpleasant discussion where it feels like talking to a brick wall.
One thing I think might be missing is a collation of the various lists of walkers that might actually see play and what value they add to the format, but that's really about it for me. Trying to quantify the "VARIETY GOOD" argument might be useful.
You can take a quick swing through this thread and it's basically a who's who of forum denizens who approach discussion the same way they approach EDH - as if it's a zero sum dog-eat-dog game with only winners and losers.
Being perfectly honest the way people defend the pro-PW position is rapidly becoming the biggest turnoff to the idea of all for me It all seems to be boiling further down to some degree of "GIT GUD SCRUB."
There're a ton of Heliod and Teshar mono white stax decks already so not really a new ground there.
All of those strategies already exist, they just might exist in a really annoying way with walker commanders. Not guaranteed of course but why take the chance?
It's tough but I think Tezz might be the most annoying stax one, since your commander can be Pithing Needle, Torpor Orb, or Tormod's Crypt or Winter Orb/Static Orb/etc., tanglewire. People are mostly on the "tezz is worse than Teferi" bandwagon but I think that's fairly shortsighted Hell, even Smokestack potentially pretty gross.
I do think we're kinda circling back on ourselves at this point with the fundamentals being one side thinks the potential diversity is worth the risk and the other doesn't.
[Honestly this feels like evidence for my argument. If Atraxa, Praetors' Voice didn't cause any PWs to get banned, it seems unlikely being able to play them as your general would. She's simply the best option for Superfriends and it's not even particularly close. If someone just wants to abuse PWs, they'll build an Atraxa deck.
I'm not sure, I think you're [Impossible] falling prey to the same assumption a lot of folks are, which is that PWs in the command zone == a superfriends deck. Could just as easily be a PW in the command zone enabling a stax, combo or even hard control strategy in ways we can't predict.
I know I don't really have any interest in jamming a bunch of walkers in a Dack deck, for example; I'd be more inclined to play an artifact combo finish with just a couple walkers that make sense (tezz, daretti, maybe saheeli 1 or 2).
Even just a little bit of support (e.g. Deepglow Skate in your Jacerayo deck) is fine, and doesn't mean you need to play a bunch of bad walkers to support it.
I have ultimatted, just from memory:
Venser, the Sojourner - >10 times (lost count, but this is my most played deck)
Nissa, Vital Force > 2 times (and this is the only one that has had any aid from proliferate)
Elspeth, Sun's Champion - >10 times (lost count, but this is my most played deck)
Elspeth, Knight-Errant - >3 times
Garruk, Caller of Beasts -> 1 time, with a deck that I don't particularly play much and have since taken apart
Liliana of the Dark Realms -> 2-ish
Liliana Vess - 2 times
And I do not play a lot of walkers (rarely more than 2 in a deck), but I do tend to play wrath heavy decks that discourage attacks.
My Atraxa deck is literal garbage (see the link, it is seriously trash) and it's ultimatted walkers in 2 / 3 of its games and had Gideon Jura at double digit loyalty in one.
It's not that hard to ultimate walkers in mid-powered metas. In CEDH, sure, I get it, but you might as well not bother talking about CEDH as it doesn't really affect bannings much.
* Obviously that's anecdotal and doesn't tell you what percentage of games I ultimate walkers. My guess offhand would be that ~5% of my Ephara games end in either a Venser or Elspeth ultimate. It's a pretty grindy deck and late in the game when I"m full on cards it's often safer to wait for an ultimate to start killing people--and Elspeth/Venser both go pretty fast (for different reasons).
** If Venser was my commander I would ultimate him a lot. It's pretty easy to set up soft locks with him, e.g. Scourge of Fleets type stuff. I don't know if the deck would win a lot but there'd be a lot of games ending in me vindicating the board with cantrips.
And now we have a Landfall proliferator. That one made me blink to see if I read it right.
I honestly cannot believe they doubled down on proliferate so hard. If they ever manage to make planeswalker commanders legal I seriously doubt I will keep playing. The whole "sweep the board, plus and proliferate all my walkers" decks are going to be bad enough as is if you're not playing CEDH.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I wound up changing my vote to no after much discussion and thinking about it.
Seeing cards like Tezzeret or Venser that I generally enjoy banned definitely impacts my thinking just a little but it's very low down the list. Most of the guys you'd banned would be more like Tezzeret, who as much as I enjoy, I would not mind seeing banned -- I can't think of any walker more bannable than the existing two bannable ones (teferi and estrid) who are already legal, so it doesn't stress me out a lot.
The potential banning of support cards like Deepglow Skate or Doubling Season that have other fair uses gives me a lot more heartburn personally (even Contagion Engine).
The thing that I fear the most is that they would create more incentives to play small numbers of creatures and high number of effects that stall the game. This is already a style of game that is not particularly that fun in EDH and I think there's plenty of support for it.
On the flipside, the thing I like the most about walkers is that they potentially enable some color combinations with weak commanders to have stronger options or at the least more varied options.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
That said, I appreciate you guys testing and your results - very interesting stuff.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
My anecdotal experience playing with precons was that the PW precons always felt significantly stronger than the other precons to me.
Am I the only one who had this experience? Obviously it doesn't necessarily mean anything if so but the Nahiri precon for example tended to just crap on the others when we played with them. That could just be that Nahiri and Daretti had some powerful mechanics in them I guess (tokens and artifacts).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Very few people have said "this thing will happen" as opposed to "this thing could happen and that is a risk." Most of the certainty comes from Impossible
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
My comment doesn't pertain to personal attacks so much as the completely binary dismissive attitude toward counter-arguments. Complete unwillingness to acknowledge a single point, and little digs like "that's just silly" or whatever. It's not just one side for sure, but there's a lot of just unpleasant discussion where it feels like talking to a brick wall.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Being perfectly honest the way people defend the pro-PW position is rapidly becoming the biggest turnoff to the idea of all for me It all seems to be boiling further down to some degree of "GIT GUD SCRUB."
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
All of those strategies already exist, they just might exist in a really annoying way with walker commanders. Not guaranteed of course but why take the chance?
It's tough but I think Tezz might be the most annoying stax one, since your commander can be Pithing Needle, Torpor Orb, or Tormod's Crypt or Winter Orb/Static Orb/etc., tanglewire. People are mostly on the "tezz is worse than Teferi" bandwagon but I think that's fairly shortsighted Hell, even Smokestack potentially pretty gross.
I do think we're kinda circling back on ourselves at this point with the fundamentals being one side thinks the potential diversity is worth the risk and the other doesn't.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I'm not sure, I think you're [Impossible] falling prey to the same assumption a lot of folks are, which is that PWs in the command zone == a superfriends deck. Could just as easily be a PW in the command zone enabling a stax, combo or even hard control strategy in ways we can't predict.
I know I don't really have any interest in jamming a bunch of walkers in a Dack deck, for example; I'd be more inclined to play an artifact combo finish with just a couple walkers that make sense (tezz, daretti, maybe saheeli 1 or 2).
Even just a little bit of support (e.g. Deepglow Skate in your Jacerayo deck) is fine, and doesn't mean you need to play a bunch of bad walkers to support it.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Venser, the Sojourner - >10 times (lost count, but this is my most played deck)
Nissa, Vital Force > 2 times (and this is the only one that has had any aid from proliferate)
Elspeth, Sun's Champion - >10 times (lost count, but this is my most played deck)
Elspeth, Knight-Errant - >3 times
Garruk, Caller of Beasts -> 1 time, with a deck that I don't particularly play much and have since taken apart
Liliana of the Dark Realms -> 2-ish
Liliana Vess - 2 times
And I do not play a lot of walkers (rarely more than 2 in a deck), but I do tend to play wrath heavy decks that discourage attacks.
My Atraxa deck is literal garbage (see the link, it is seriously trash) and it's ultimatted walkers in 2 / 3 of its games and had Gideon Jura at double digit loyalty in one.
It's not that hard to ultimate walkers in mid-powered metas. In CEDH, sure, I get it, but you might as well not bother talking about CEDH as it doesn't really affect bannings much.
* Obviously that's anecdotal and doesn't tell you what percentage of games I ultimate walkers. My guess offhand would be that ~5% of my Ephara games end in either a Venser or Elspeth ultimate. It's a pretty grindy deck and late in the game when I"m full on cards it's often safer to wait for an ultimate to start killing people--and Elspeth/Venser both go pretty fast (for different reasons).
** If Venser was my commander I would ultimate him a lot. It's pretty easy to set up soft locks with him, e.g. Scourge of Fleets type stuff. I don't know if the deck would win a lot but there'd be a lot of games ending in me vindicating the board with cantrips.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall