I like tucking. Some argue that it stops people from using their commander, but you can say the same about Song of the Dryads type cards or Nevermore family too. It should be every players' incentive to protect their commanders, otherwise even a simple Doomblade could "stop people from using their commanders" in time.
I played Commander for years when tuck was a thing. I included tuck cards, and anti-tuck defenses, in my decks, because that was what you had to do. I was happy when it left and I don't want to see it return.
The new rule is simpler and cleaner: Any time your commander is kicked off the battlefield, you can pull it back to the command zone. Magic is a super-complex game and Commander adds another layer on top of that. Anything that adds further complexity has a high bar to meet to justify its inclusion, and "I hate dealing with other people's powerful commanders" does not come close to meeting it IMO.
The people who run Problem Commanders and do so in a problematic way are the sort of people who had no trouble playing around the tuck rule. It's the casual player whose deck collapses when the commander gets blown out. Tuck just makes life harder for the casual player and puts another weapon in the hands of the pubstomper.
I played Commander for years when tuck was a thing. I included tuck cards, and anti-tuck defenses, in my decks, because that was what you had to do. I was happy when it left and I don't want to see it return.
The new rule is simpler and cleaner: Any time your commander is kicked off the battlefield, you can pull it back to the command zone. Magic is a super-complex game and Commander adds another layer on top of that. Anything that adds further complexity has a high bar to meet to justify its inclusion, and "I hate dealing with other people's powerful commanders" does not come close to meeting it IMO.
The people who run Problem Commanders and do so in a problematic way are the sort of people who had no trouble playing around the tuck rule. It's the casual player whose deck collapses when the commander gets blown out. Tuck just makes life harder for the casual player and puts another weapon in the hands of the pubstomper.
I counterspell/destroy/exile/edict your commander. Over and over and over. To the point you now have such a high commander tax, that you can't cast your commander from the command zone. Do you have other cards in your deck that rip the commander from the command zone to your hand OR do you fold?
All commanders are problematic if a player wishes to view it as "everything looks like a nail if you got a hammer".
I counterspell/destroy/exile/edict your commander. Over and over and over. To the point you now have such a high commander tax, that you can't cast your commander from the command zone. Do you have other cards in your deck that rip the commander from the command zone to your hand OR do you fold?
There's a big difference between 'I play one spell to tuck your commander, I hope you didn't need him' and 'I play half a dozen spells to keep knocking him back in the command zone, I hope you didn't need him'. In the second case, at least it took a concentrated effort, rather than a single blue spell.
I counterspell/destroy/exile/edict your commander. Over and over and over. To the point you now have such a high commander tax, that you can't cast your commander from the command zone. Do you have other cards in your deck that rip the commander from the command zone to your hand OR do you fold?
There's a big difference between 'I play one spell to tuck your commander, I hope you didn't need him' and 'I play half a dozen spells to keep knocking him back in the command zone, I hope you didn't need him'. In the second case, at least it took a concentrated effort, rather than a single blue spell.
Well it wouldn't be a dozen spells.
Lets say your commander costs 1 mana.
I exile it once, you return it to the command zone. That is +2 tax and your commander now costs 3.
Which as we reach 4+ times, your commander now costs 9 or more mana. As we start climbing to possibly 11 or more mana, the only decks that actively get around that would be decks that actively pack a higher than average amount of ramp, mana dorks, or rock-ramp.
And if your commander has an initial cost that is more expensive? The process gets acclerated for every 1 mana in its base cost.
So Sen Triplets for example is 5 mana. Using the 4-strikes from before, Sen Triplets now costs 13 mana on a hard cast.
If we wanted to use 12-strikes as per your version, even if its just to blow it out of proportion, that would be a +24 tax on the mana cost.
There is also the probability that you get mana screwed. So after being hit by a single counterspell you may not have enough mana for an unknown variable of turns to cast your commander again. There is also the possibility that before that counterspell, someone might have blown up all the artifacts such as mana rocks very early on, and you managed to topdeck a land to cast your commander. If it gets countered, you now need to scrape two mana together.
Remember one of the main reasons for tuck being banned? That U/W/x was mandatory? Guess what becomes mandatory? B/x because of Netherborn Altar. Whether or not someone is actively gunning for your commander, that altar provides a cheap and abusable method to skirt around standard commander tax at the cost of only 3 life per activation. And as everyone knows in commander, the only life total that matters is really 1. So as long as you 4 or more life, you can activate it, even if just once, to play your commander and make a comeback.
You know what was mandatory when tuck existed? Tutor spells. Even a Mwonvuli Beast Tracker is a tutor that could be used to grab your commander if it had the requisite keyword.
All thats been traded is one removal spell for another, and one retrieval method for another.
i've found the format much more enjoyable without tucking.
there's less shuffling, decks that are reliant on their commander aren't totally hosed, and generally things just flow better.
someone used the example of song of the dryads, but you can pop song, and your'e likely to have a way to do that through good deck building, you're less likely to be able to pull your commander back out of the deck, especially at casual tables or in certain colors.
I don't see why decks should have to run super inefficient tutor effects like Flute, Ring and Portal to combat overefficient removal (were tuck to be a thing again), in 3cmc counters/removal, when the format is based around commanders. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the format is certainly better for the rules change. Forcing someone to take 2x turns off to be able to play something as awful as Flute for a 4+ mana commander is scummy, even for a comparison. All it does is let the opposition line up more removal in a timed manner, which is certainly less enjoyable for those at the table when someone's running "You don't get to play, only I do".
Removal is often cheap, so effects that get rid of Imprisoned in the Moon and the like are potentially abundant. That's not even to mention the broader answers that remove multiple/all of a given type that get rid of those answers as collateral damage. Decent tutor effects aren't abundant in all colors, and tuck effects serve as a 2 for 1 against commanders; the tutors are resource intensive to cast (at times), use a card to recur it, and then to recast it. Commander Tax alone is sufficient and simple enough, and doesn't serve to invalidate the intended purpose or use for a deck.
If your deck completely falls apart because you do not have access to your commander you made a bad deck, plain and simple. You can certainly build a deck that's primary strategy involves your commander, in fact I much prefer decks that do (or at the very least benefit greatly from their commander), but you should always have a contingency plan. Removing the tuck rule simply encouraged bad deck building by removing a check for decks that were overly reliant on a single card they always have access to.
I understand you argument, but that is a very spikey perspective. What about the Jhonnies and Timmies? Commander allows me to build decks around mechanics unique to specific legendary creatures, decks that could never funcion in a format where i don't have guaranteed avaiability of a certain card. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer is a prime example of this. Would that deck work once the commander is tucked? Definately not. But why should that make it a bad deck? It plays well (in the absence of tuck), its fun, its unique and it has cool flavor. Now YOU may not care about any of these things, but a lot of people do, and in my perspective that makes it a pretty good deck. Maybe putting together a deck that is filled with options to wiggle out of every corner is super fun to you, but thats not true for everyone. I don't want to fill half my deck with tutors and counters, both of which make commander games unfun (for me) in large numbers. Point is, preventing tuck opens up a lot of interesting deck builds and that is a good thing imo. My Commander playgroup nearly died because tuck was so frustrating and it flourished since the tuck change.
If your deck completely falls apart because you do not have access to your commander you made a bad deck, plain and simple. You can certainly build a deck that's primary strategy involves your commander, in fact I much prefer decks that do (or at the very least benefit greatly from their commander), but you should always have a contingency plan. Removing the tuck rule simply encouraged bad deck building by removing a check for decks that were overly reliant on a single card they always have access to.
I understand you argument, but that is a very spikey perspective. What about the Jhonnies and Timmies? Commander allows me to build decks around mechanics unique to specific legendary creatures, decks that could never funcion in a format where i don't have guaranteed avaiability of a certain card. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer is a prime example of this. Would that deck work once the commander is tucked? Definately not. But why should that make it a bad deck? It plays well (in the absence of tuck), its fun, its unique and it has cool flavor. Now YOU may not care about any of these things, but a lot of people do, and in my perspective that makes it a pretty good deck. Maybe putting together a deck that is filled with options to wiggle out of every corner is super fun to you, but thats not true for everyone. I don't want to fill half my deck with tutors and counters, both of which make commander games unfun (for me) in large numbers. Point is, preventing tuck opens up a lot of interesting deck builds and that is a good thing imo. My Commander playgroup nearly died because tuck was so frustrating and it flourished since the tuck change.
We'll take your Brudiclad example. So it is a red/blue token deck, while yes the ability to have your tokens become copies of another is really cool, is it really nonfunctional without that? You can't still just swing with a token army or make use of them in some other form?
That's where it goes into "poorly built", if you answer no to that.
If your deck completely falls apart because you do not have access to your commander you made a bad deck, plain and simple. You can certainly build a deck that's primary strategy involves your commander, in fact I much prefer decks that do (or at the very least benefit greatly from their commander), but you should always have a contingency plan. Removing the tuck rule simply encouraged bad deck building by removing a check for decks that were overly reliant on a single card they always have access to.
I understand you argument, but that is a very spikey perspective. What about the Jhonnies and Timmies? Commander allows me to build decks around mechanics unique to specific legendary creatures, decks that could never funcion in a format where i don't have guaranteed avaiability of a certain card. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer is a prime example of this. Would that deck work once the commander is tucked? Definately not. But why should that make it a bad deck? It plays well (in the absence of tuck), its fun, its unique and it has cool flavor. Now YOU may not care about any of these things, but a lot of people do, and in my perspective that makes it a pretty good deck. Maybe putting together a deck that is filled with options to wiggle out of every corner is super fun to you, but thats not true for everyone. I don't want to fill half my deck with tutors and counters, both of which make commander games unfun (for me) in large numbers. Point is, preventing tuck opens up a lot of interesting deck builds and that is a good thing imo. My Commander playgroup nearly died because tuck was so frustrating and it flourished since the tuck change.
We'll take your Brudiclad example. So it is a red/blue token deck, while yes the ability to have your tokens become copies of another is really cool, is it really nonfunctional without that? You can't still just swing with a token army or make use of them in some other form?
That's where it goes into "poorly built", if you answer no to that.
so here's where i take issue with the whole thing. it really doesn't have to do with bad build or good build because a few different factors unique to edh.
we can all come up with examples of decks that will be crippled by a commander getting tucked, and examples where the deck runs just fine. let's say i'm playing feldon, i know if he gets tucked because of the colors i'm in (monored), i will never see that commander again this game. my options were run subpar tutors because of my colors, or just never see him. the subpar cards don't do anything outside of a tuck situation, or you can run things that just hone the deck better in their place. the deck can function just fine without him, but with him locked out like that you're removing half of what the build does, half that deck's purpose - there are tons of commanders that are built around like that and are further limited by color - its not really fair to remove half of a deck's capabilities so easily.
by the same token, if i'm running let's say a zegana build, and she gets tucked, well given what the build does, and the colors its in, i'll either tutor her up efficiently, or just draw into her within a turn or two if the deck is working. we can all come up with builds and commanders where this is true. so now accessibility to certain cards not only improves what the deck inherently does, but also gives it an advantage in a tuck situation. there's no downside for these colors/builds.
additionally, there's the problem of resources. you tuck someone's commander, now they have to spend time and resources to get that commander back. that sets them behind. that gives you an even bigger advantage over decks that need their commander to function. it becomes even riskier to play those commanders at all because they just won't be able to keep up. what you're doing is reducing the commander card pool even further without realizing it. when players feel certain commanders just won't ever be able to keep up in the face of that - they just don't build them. this was a phenomenon i definitely observed when tucking was a thing. the array of decks showing up weekly exploded just after the tuck rule changed because suddenly there was a fighting chance.
so the point i'm making here is that you can't really blame it on poor deck building every time. there are major limitations to some colors, and some commanders are just not going to be as competitive as others. on top of that, some commanders really want the deck built around them and that's going to change the nature of the entire deck reducing ability to deal with a tuck potentially even further.
now here's where it all differs from cranking the tax up. with the tax, you need multiple ways to remove the commander to keep cranking that tax up. on top of that, i can still produce mana. there are points where i can recast my commander, or maybe i go infinite and it doesn't matter anyway. the point is the options are still there, they're never really completely eliminated through a tax increase. i'm sure we've all seen games where the commander tax for someone is 10+ and they still manage to win by sticking their commander back in play.
all of this means, and i feel this is really important to consider in all things edh, that if someone sits down at a table and has half their deck neutered consistently chances are they just aren't going to come back. that's not a fun experience, and there are minimal ways to get around it if you want to play certain commanders. personally i feel that at the end of the day the format is a social one. anything that increases breadth of deck building and helps bring players back every week is more important than the competitive edge.
Without the tuck rule there would be no point in designing a deck around a commander. Where's the fun in not having your commander in an otherwise "fun" format? Instead, which is what people did, they would play "pure value" commanders and then have a deck that doesn't depend on whatever legend or effect you're going for, whatever that may be.
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The new rule is simpler and cleaner: Any time your commander is kicked off the battlefield, you can pull it back to the command zone. Magic is a super-complex game and Commander adds another layer on top of that. Anything that adds further complexity has a high bar to meet to justify its inclusion, and "I hate dealing with other people's powerful commanders" does not come close to meeting it IMO.
The people who run Problem Commanders and do so in a problematic way are the sort of people who had no trouble playing around the tuck rule. It's the casual player whose deck collapses when the commander gets blown out. Tuck just makes life harder for the casual player and puts another weapon in the hands of the pubstomper.
All commanders are problematic if a player wishes to view it as "everything looks like a nail if you got a hammer".
There's a big difference between 'I play one spell to tuck your commander, I hope you didn't need him' and 'I play half a dozen spells to keep knocking him back in the command zone, I hope you didn't need him'. In the second case, at least it took a concentrated effort, rather than a single blue spell.
Lets say your commander costs 1 mana.
I exile it once, you return it to the command zone. That is +2 tax and your commander now costs 3.
1st Time: +2
2nd Time: +4
3rd Time: +6
4th Time: +8
Which as we reach 4+ times, your commander now costs 9 or more mana. As we start climbing to possibly 11 or more mana, the only decks that actively get around that would be decks that actively pack a higher than average amount of ramp, mana dorks, or rock-ramp.
And if your commander has an initial cost that is more expensive? The process gets acclerated for every 1 mana in its base cost.
So Sen Triplets for example is 5 mana. Using the 4-strikes from before, Sen Triplets now costs 13 mana on a hard cast.
If we wanted to use 12-strikes as per your version, even if its just to blow it out of proportion, that would be a +24 tax on the mana cost.
There is also the probability that you get mana screwed. So after being hit by a single counterspell you may not have enough mana for an unknown variable of turns to cast your commander again. There is also the possibility that before that counterspell, someone might have blown up all the artifacts such as mana rocks very early on, and you managed to topdeck a land to cast your commander. If it gets countered, you now need to scrape two mana together.
Remember one of the main reasons for tuck being banned? That U/W/x was mandatory? Guess what becomes mandatory? B/x because of Netherborn Altar. Whether or not someone is actively gunning for your commander, that altar provides a cheap and abusable method to skirt around standard commander tax at the cost of only 3 life per activation. And as everyone knows in commander, the only life total that matters is really 1. So as long as you 4 or more life, you can activate it, even if just once, to play your commander and make a comeback.
You know what was mandatory when tuck existed? Tutor spells. Even a Mwonvuli Beast Tracker is a tutor that could be used to grab your commander if it had the requisite keyword.
All thats been traded is one removal spell for another, and one retrieval method for another.
there's less shuffling, decks that are reliant on their commander aren't totally hosed, and generally things just flow better.
someone used the example of song of the dryads, but you can pop song, and your'e likely to have a way to do that through good deck building, you're less likely to be able to pull your commander back out of the deck, especially at casual tables or in certain colors.
I don't see why decks should have to run super inefficient tutor effects like Flute, Ring and Portal to combat overefficient removal (were tuck to be a thing again), in 3cmc counters/removal, when the format is based around commanders. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the format is certainly better for the rules change. Forcing someone to take 2x turns off to be able to play something as awful as Flute for a 4+ mana commander is scummy, even for a comparison. All it does is let the opposition line up more removal in a timed manner, which is certainly less enjoyable for those at the table when someone's running "You don't get to play, only I do".
Removal is often cheap, so effects that get rid of Imprisoned in the Moon and the like are potentially abundant. That's not even to mention the broader answers that remove multiple/all of a given type that get rid of those answers as collateral damage. Decent tutor effects aren't abundant in all colors, and tuck effects serve as a 2 for 1 against commanders; the tutors are resource intensive to cast (at times), use a card to recur it, and then to recast it. Commander Tax alone is sufficient and simple enough, and doesn't serve to invalidate the intended purpose or use for a deck.
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We'll take your Brudiclad example. So it is a red/blue token deck, while yes the ability to have your tokens become copies of another is really cool, is it really nonfunctional without that? You can't still just swing with a token army or make use of them in some other form?
That's where it goes into "poorly built", if you answer no to that.
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so here's where i take issue with the whole thing. it really doesn't have to do with bad build or good build because a few different factors unique to edh.
we can all come up with examples of decks that will be crippled by a commander getting tucked, and examples where the deck runs just fine. let's say i'm playing feldon, i know if he gets tucked because of the colors i'm in (monored), i will never see that commander again this game. my options were run subpar tutors because of my colors, or just never see him. the subpar cards don't do anything outside of a tuck situation, or you can run things that just hone the deck better in their place. the deck can function just fine without him, but with him locked out like that you're removing half of what the build does, half that deck's purpose - there are tons of commanders that are built around like that and are further limited by color - its not really fair to remove half of a deck's capabilities so easily.
by the same token, if i'm running let's say a zegana build, and she gets tucked, well given what the build does, and the colors its in, i'll either tutor her up efficiently, or just draw into her within a turn or two if the deck is working. we can all come up with builds and commanders where this is true. so now accessibility to certain cards not only improves what the deck inherently does, but also gives it an advantage in a tuck situation. there's no downside for these colors/builds.
additionally, there's the problem of resources. you tuck someone's commander, now they have to spend time and resources to get that commander back. that sets them behind. that gives you an even bigger advantage over decks that need their commander to function. it becomes even riskier to play those commanders at all because they just won't be able to keep up. what you're doing is reducing the commander card pool even further without realizing it. when players feel certain commanders just won't ever be able to keep up in the face of that - they just don't build them. this was a phenomenon i definitely observed when tucking was a thing. the array of decks showing up weekly exploded just after the tuck rule changed because suddenly there was a fighting chance.
so the point i'm making here is that you can't really blame it on poor deck building every time. there are major limitations to some colors, and some commanders are just not going to be as competitive as others. on top of that, some commanders really want the deck built around them and that's going to change the nature of the entire deck reducing ability to deal with a tuck potentially even further.
now here's where it all differs from cranking the tax up. with the tax, you need multiple ways to remove the commander to keep cranking that tax up. on top of that, i can still produce mana. there are points where i can recast my commander, or maybe i go infinite and it doesn't matter anyway. the point is the options are still there, they're never really completely eliminated through a tax increase. i'm sure we've all seen games where the commander tax for someone is 10+ and they still manage to win by sticking their commander back in play.
all of this means, and i feel this is really important to consider in all things edh, that if someone sits down at a table and has half their deck neutered consistently chances are they just aren't going to come back. that's not a fun experience, and there are minimal ways to get around it if you want to play certain commanders. personally i feel that at the end of the day the format is a social one. anything that increases breadth of deck building and helps bring players back every week is more important than the competitive edge.