I understand that i'm going to get some flak for this, but i believe that it's an important discussion to have. Also, i'm NOT necessarily advocating the removal of commander damage, but some sort of fix would be greatly appreciated.
Basically, it's this:
Commander damage is highly fiddly for what usually amounts to unnecessary paperwork. I have a zedruu the greathearted voltron deck that is supposed to kill through command damage, and STILL i've yet to actually kill anyone through the 21 (come close though). I understand that the command damage is one of the pillars of the format that helps define this format for what it is, but there has got to be a more elegant way to deal with this.
In a typical 4 player game, i gotta have:
My life total die (1d30 and 1d20)
a d22 for player B, a d22 for player C and a d22 for player D, all three of these have to be in a different colour.
That's pretty nutty, innit? And this is just for me; each other player has to somehow also mark all this information. And even if it DOESN'T seem relevant at first, it sometimes feels like it MIGHT (i.e. a blind seer general who just gets in a couple of free hits, then realises that they're half-way already), so we're sort of bound to count it, just in case (anyone remember the mana burn rules?).
There has got to be a smoother way of doing this; maybe a collective 21 damage from any number of generals? or if a single general deals 21 damage to any number of players they win instead? or something along those lines?
Also, i get that there are apps to manage all this; we use one, and the best we've found so far are STILL ultra fiddly (having to memorise player numbers, then go into a special sub-screen, jiggle some numbers, and then go back to our 'real' life totals).
I'm curious to know if my playgroup's the only one who's had issue with this (we usually get close with incidental commander-kill, but i don't remember when the last time anyone actually hit 21), and if anyone else's had some homebred-fix. I can understand if this is something that's quite low priority for the RC, but i feel like it's this harbinger that's gonna rear it's head around some point in time, so we might as well ponder about it a bit.
Why do you need a d22, just use a d20 and when it needs to be 21 they dead?
I just track it. It's easy. I started using a boogie board which has proven much better than dice. I'll offer to track for others sometimes if needed.
I don't think it needs a fix much. If someone doesn't track we just try to reconstruct how many hits there were since usually someone will be paying attention
I usually carry around five d20 in color pie colors anyways. Playing 3-4 player pods i'll then assign the closest fitting ones to each of my opponents, set them on "20" until they actually are dealt damage and use the rest as my life count.
I also carry 72, 12mm dices in 3 colors in this cute box to visualize token amounts (blue), +1/+1 and "positive" counters (green) and -1/-1 and "negative" counteres (red) respectively. In case i go beyond 40 life total they also come in handy.
Bottom line: While an akward design keeping track of commander damage is quite easy.
I agree, current commander damage rules aren't optimal, but changing them could end up being a major clusterf*ck.
Especially accumulated commander damage from different commanders... Person A hits Person B for 15-commander damage with Person C swinging in for a tiny sum still killing? Getting close with Rafiq of the Many just to see something like Sir Shandlar of Eberyn (i'm exagerating, i now) finishing the job by pure happenstance would be a huge feel bad.
If anything i feel they could lower lethal commander damage. Voltron is already an akward deck strategy, which is a shame. Say lethal would be 15, that archetype would become a lot stronger, commander damage would be more distinctive - we all know rounds where the person in question doesn't even have enough life compared to lethal commander damage - and i'm sure it wouldn't create a broken archetype.
So is the issue that you and your group have a difficult time building decks that perform as they're supposed to, or that bookkeeping is a pain? Because I have built a fair number of decks that consistently eliminate opponents and win games through Commander damage. I also bring a deck box full of various dice, not unlike NoNeedToBragoBoutIt described.
I agree, current commander damage rules aren't optimal, but changing them could end up being a major clusterf*ck.
Especially accumulated commander damage from different commanders... Person A hits Person B for 15-commander damage with Person C swinging in for a tiny sum still killing? Getting close with Rafiq of the Many just to see something like Sir Shandlar of Eberyn (i'm exagerating, i now) finishing the job by pure happenstance would be a huge feel bad.
I would personally laugh my ass off to see Sir Shandlar kill anyone ever. Not exactly relevant to your point, but still.
I always have a bag of d20s.. enough for the whole table usually. Everyone tracks their life total. If I attack someone with my general for 4 damage I don't track it with a die... but I will remember that I attacked. If I attack a second time then I will suggest we track it.
In my experience, few games are ended with commander damage over multiple turns. You don't need to track it when the commander one-shots you. If my Karador is hitting you 7 times you probably should have scooped already.
I really don't think it is hard to track. You don't need an extra 12 dice per game to track commander damage. Just pull out a die when it is relevant.
There have been some situations where I will attack and say "by the way, I have already hit you twice with my Maelstrom Wanderer". It is not hard to remember a couple attacks.
I can't remember the last time I had a game where I had to track more than one commander's damage. Three opponents, but one isn't attacking with their general, and the other would literally take so many hits the game would have been long over before it got lethal. Unless your group is all Voltron, I don't see where all the bookkeeping issues are, and even then, it's not that hard.
I hate the idea of collective commander damage because now a creature that has no business attacking could become an attack of opportunity and kill someone, whether it's just because they got in one or two damage early on and someone else completed the 21, or because someone else did most of the work and now suddenly it only needs a point or two more. Games would become far more defensive the later they got, slowing gameplay because people who could normally take a couple points of damage would do everything in their power to keep blockers.
We barely even keep track of life totals. We aren't cheating, we make sure we someone doesn't forget anything. It's usually fine. We don't have any Voltron commanders but can usually say "well I've swung through 3 times so you're at 12 cdmg..." or something along those lines. It is a casual format (usually), and just have fun. Most Voltron isn't down to off by 1, but more "My Rafiq swings in for 28 doublestrike?" "Oh, scoop?"
I could have killed someone via commander damage if I had just focused on that person, as others have stated we've never had an issue tracking CD using d20s to represent the number and once it goes over 20 you dead.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to track, just that it feels unnecessarily complicated, and a lot of the paperwork is unnecessary (I.e. counting pot shots of opportunity 99% of the time doesn’t amount to anything).
On the issue of the d22, I’m surprised y’all think that it’s massively complex; it’s the same as any other polyhedral die, except it has 22 possible faces. They aren’t too hard to come by, but D21s have been hard to come by.
Yes, I get that my voltron decks are rubbish, but it still doesn’t mean that command damage isnt a fiddly mechanic.
Maybe if a commander deals 15 or more damage in a single hit or turn..? Probably not, and it’s not like it’s an emergency that needs fixing, really. I generally like the way edh is right now.
That being said, even with the ways that you guys have mentioned in this thread, it’s still fiddly.
It's fiddly but it's the smoothest way to achieve what is intended I think (a way to make each commander relevant in a game and also limit the value of arbitrarily large life totals in the absence of board control).
Every suggestion I hear for changing it just makes it less relevant or more fiddly or both.
15 damage in one turn arbitrarily limits it to commanders with pump effects or decks designed to boost the commander; I've played decks where all I wanted to do was get my commander to 7 so I could kill in 3 hits, because it was primarily a control shell otherwise.
In my Ephara deck I will often kill one person with commander damage and another with creature damage, just because my commander represents a 3 turn clock with Elesh Norn out.
Anyway, I think if brainstorming a replacement the first thing to do is note down requirements; what're we trying to achieve with the mechanic?
On the issue of the d22, I’m surprised y’all think that it’s massively complex; it’s the same as any other polyhedral die, except it has 22 possible faces. They aren’t too hard to come by, but D21s have been hard to come by.
That's not what i was hinting at.
I was just astonished that anyone would actually look for D21s or D22s. A D20 is already sufficent enough.
You've taken commander damage? Fine. It exceeds a D20? You're dead. Literally no use for anything beyond a D20 and those already come in handy, anyways.
I think if brainstorming a replacement the first thing to do is note down requirements; what're we trying to achieve with the mechanic?
If you were to ask me, the main goal would be making Voltron a more viable archetype.
In 3 player pods it's fine, but far from perfect. In 4 player pods it's already very hard to get a W. God forbid 5+ players.
Just thinking aloud here, but maybe 18 would be an improvement already. A power of 6 to get a 3 turn clock is hardly broken, doesn't speed up commanders that sit at 7 power (e.g. Traxos, Scourge of Kroog) and opens up for a lot of "smaller" Voltron commanders.
Going as low as 15 could be problematic, because it could get "too easy" to kill that way out of pure chance.
If you don’t want to track lots of dice, tokens, effects, people, life totals, sleeves, zones, emblems, commander damage, abilities, counters, food, drink, rules, and the like, then Commander isn't the format you’re looking for. The only thing you shouldn’t track while enjoying a game of Commander is the time. 🙂
Why are you having to track multiple people regularly enough that it's a problem? Commander damage is either irrelevant (I attack someone with Saffi Eriksdotter because they're open, I'm not going to care that they're on 2 commander damage), or you've only got 1 person to keep track of as you're only attacking one one person - that's how Voltron works, the entire archetype is about focusing people down one at a time.
Why are you having to track multiple people regularly enough that it's a problem? Commander damage is either irrelevant (I attack someone with Saffi Eriksdotter because they're open, I'm not going to care that they're on 2 commander damage), or you've only got 1 person to keep track of as you're only attacking one one person - that's how Voltron works, the entire archetype is about focusing people down one at a time.
we've tried paper, app and paper, and at least with paper, it takes quite a bit of space and is kinda messy-looking. Might look into getting dry-wipe pens and a board or laminated sheet or something.
but that's part of what i mean. it's a part of the rules that's usually quite pointless/irrelevant, but there's always the thought that it might become relevant. Anyone play against a life-gain deck that basically put themselves out of reach...only to almost die of command damage (after like 10 attacks of opportunity from Thada Adel, Acquisitor)? it's usually irrelevant until some bizarre game state makes it relevant again.
mana burn is somewhat similar - it's usually irrelevant. but occasionally, people build decks where it IS relevant and requires tracking. some players went all-out on a whinge about it, but at the end, the game's now more elegant and less cumbersome. I'm not saying we need to remove it; i feel like we need to either make it more relevant more often (and thereby making it worth tracking more often than not), or make tracking easier (so it's not nearly as painful having to track every little pot-shot), or some other way to improve the rule.
i don't think that being content with the current rules means that there aren't better ways of dealing with this. There might be, there might not be, but at least i'll be trying to think of ways to make the rules more elegant, less fiddly, and/or more relevant.
...to be honest, i'm surprised that i (and many in my playgroup) seem to be the only one here who sees it as an aspect that can/should be improved.
If your decks goal isn’t to commander beats theres two choices: either a) your commander is five power or greater and is a five turn clock or b) your commander was never going to ‘naturally’ kill someone via commander damage. A five turn clock isnt that big of a deal to keep track of mentally.
If your decks goal is commander beats: it’s your responsability to keep track of it, and again if big enough you should be killing people in like three hits max. If you need to keep exact track of it then one or two 20 sided die should be sufficient as you shouldn’t be spreading out the damage anyways.
In a lot of cases I will ask if I need to track it when I take commander damage. Sometimes a random utility commander will hit me but really have no real chance of killing me via commander damage and I will just track the life loss in that case. I would say in an average game of commander its unlikely to see more than one commander who is likely to commander damage me out so its rare I need to track much.
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Well, its official, we celebrated our first 'commander damage kill'! woop woop!
Not with my voltron general either, mind you, it was the guy playing gaddock teeg, killing the life-gain player, under a meekstone. a very scary angelic chorus-phyrexian processor meant that it was basically the only way to kill that player (stopped tracking after it hit the thousands). ended up wiping the rest of the table, slowly, too.
I suspect that the game would have been faster if we'd tracked the original first couple of pot-shots properly, but sometimes, it becomes relevant even if we don't expect it to be relevant.
We're using a laminated sheet and whiteboard markers now; doesn't feel as wasteful as just using paper.
Basically, it's this:
Commander damage is highly fiddly for what usually amounts to unnecessary paperwork. I have a zedruu the greathearted voltron deck that is supposed to kill through command damage, and STILL i've yet to actually kill anyone through the 21 (come close though). I understand that the command damage is one of the pillars of the format that helps define this format for what it is, but there has got to be a more elegant way to deal with this.
In a typical 4 player game, i gotta have:
My life total die (1d30 and 1d20)
a d22 for player B, a d22 for player C and a d22 for player D, all three of these have to be in a different colour.
That's pretty nutty, innit? And this is just for me; each other player has to somehow also mark all this information. And even if it DOESN'T seem relevant at first, it sometimes feels like it MIGHT (i.e. a blind seer general who just gets in a couple of free hits, then realises that they're half-way already), so we're sort of bound to count it, just in case (anyone remember the mana burn rules?).
There has got to be a smoother way of doing this; maybe a collective 21 damage from any number of generals? or if a single general deals 21 damage to any number of players they win instead? or something along those lines?
Also, i get that there are apps to manage all this; we use one, and the best we've found so far are STILL ultra fiddly (having to memorise player numbers, then go into a special sub-screen, jiggle some numbers, and then go back to our 'real' life totals).
I'm curious to know if my playgroup's the only one who's had issue with this (we usually get close with incidental commander-kill, but i don't remember when the last time anyone actually hit 21), and if anyone else's had some homebred-fix. I can understand if this is something that's quite low priority for the RC, but i feel like it's this harbinger that's gonna rear it's head around some point in time, so we might as well ponder about it a bit.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
I just track it. It's easy. I started using a boogie board which has proven much better than dice. I'll offer to track for others sometimes if needed.
I don't think it needs a fix much. If someone doesn't track we just try to reconstruct how many hits there were since usually someone will be paying attention
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I usually carry around five d20 in color pie colors anyways. Playing 3-4 player pods i'll then assign the closest fitting ones to each of my opponents, set them on "20" until they actually are dealt damage and use the rest as my life count.
I also carry 72, 12mm dices in 3 colors in this cute box to visualize token amounts (blue), +1/+1 and "positive" counters (green) and -1/-1 and "negative" counteres (red) respectively. In case i go beyond 40 life total they also come in handy.
Bottom line: While an akward design keeping track of commander damage is quite easy.
I agree, current commander damage rules aren't optimal, but changing them could end up being a major clusterf*ck.
Especially accumulated commander damage from different commanders... Person A hits Person B for 15-commander damage with Person C swinging in for a tiny sum still killing? Getting close with Rafiq of the Many just to see something like Sir Shandlar of Eberyn (i'm exagerating, i now) finishing the job by pure happenstance would be a huge feel bad.
If anything i feel they could lower lethal commander damage. Voltron is already an akward deck strategy, which is a shame. Say lethal would be 15, that archetype would become a lot stronger, commander damage would be more distinctive - we all know rounds where the person in question doesn't even have enough life compared to lethal commander damage - and i'm sure it wouldn't create a broken archetype.
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I would personally laugh my ass off to see Sir Shandlar kill anyone ever. Not exactly relevant to your point, but still.
In my experience, few games are ended with commander damage over multiple turns. You don't need to track it when the commander one-shots you. If my Karador is hitting you 7 times you probably should have scooped already.
I really don't think it is hard to track. You don't need an extra 12 dice per game to track commander damage. Just pull out a die when it is relevant.
There have been some situations where I will attack and say "by the way, I have already hit you twice with my Maelstrom Wanderer". It is not hard to remember a couple attacks.
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I hate the idea of collective commander damage because now a creature that has no business attacking could become an attack of opportunity and kill someone, whether it's just because they got in one or two damage early on and someone else completed the 21, or because someone else did most of the work and now suddenly it only needs a point or two more. Games would become far more defensive the later they got, slowing gameplay because people who could normally take a couple points of damage would do everything in their power to keep blockers.
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Also, why would you spread commander damage across all 3 opponents at once on a voltron deck?
Edit - Also also, why not just use two d10s to track your life.
On the issue of the d22, I’m surprised y’all think that it’s massively complex; it’s the same as any other polyhedral die, except it has 22 possible faces. They aren’t too hard to come by, but D21s have been hard to come by.
Yes, I get that my voltron decks are rubbish, but it still doesn’t mean that command damage isnt a fiddly mechanic.
Maybe if a commander deals 15 or more damage in a single hit or turn..? Probably not, and it’s not like it’s an emergency that needs fixing, really. I generally like the way edh is right now.
That being said, even with the ways that you guys have mentioned in this thread, it’s still fiddly.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Every suggestion I hear for changing it just makes it less relevant or more fiddly or both.
15 damage in one turn arbitrarily limits it to commanders with pump effects or decks designed to boost the commander; I've played decks where all I wanted to do was get my commander to 7 so I could kill in 3 hits, because it was primarily a control shell otherwise.
In my Ephara deck I will often kill one person with commander damage and another with creature damage, just because my commander represents a 3 turn clock with Elesh Norn out.
Anyway, I think if brainstorming a replacement the first thing to do is note down requirements; what're we trying to achieve with the mechanic?
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I was just astonished that anyone would actually look for D21s or D22s. A D20 is already sufficent enough.
You've taken commander damage? Fine. It exceeds a D20? You're dead. Literally no use for anything beyond a D20 and those already come in handy, anyways. If you were to ask me, the main goal would be making Voltron a more viable archetype.
In 3 player pods it's fine, but far from perfect. In 4 player pods it's already very hard to get a W. God forbid 5+ players.
Just thinking aloud here, but maybe 18 would be an improvement already. A power of 6 to get a 3 turn clock is hardly broken, doesn't speed up commanders that sit at 7 power (e.g. Traxos, Scourge of Kroog) and opens up for a lot of "smaller" Voltron commanders.
Going as low as 15 could be problematic, because it could get "too easy" to kill that way out of pure chance.
I think trying to parse out a design specification is a good idea; gives us something concrete to work with.
What do you guys think about something like:
1. Making command damage relevant more often than not
2. Reduce the number of individual tracks required
I’m sure Ive missed something tho
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
we've tried paper, app and paper, and at least with paper, it takes quite a bit of space and is kinda messy-looking. Might look into getting dry-wipe pens and a board or laminated sheet or something.
but that's part of what i mean. it's a part of the rules that's usually quite pointless/irrelevant, but there's always the thought that it might become relevant. Anyone play against a life-gain deck that basically put themselves out of reach...only to almost die of command damage (after like 10 attacks of opportunity from Thada Adel, Acquisitor)? it's usually irrelevant until some bizarre game state makes it relevant again.
mana burn is somewhat similar - it's usually irrelevant. but occasionally, people build decks where it IS relevant and requires tracking. some players went all-out on a whinge about it, but at the end, the game's now more elegant and less cumbersome. I'm not saying we need to remove it; i feel like we need to either make it more relevant more often (and thereby making it worth tracking more often than not), or make tracking easier (so it's not nearly as painful having to track every little pot-shot), or some other way to improve the rule.
i don't think that being content with the current rules means that there aren't better ways of dealing with this. There might be, there might not be, but at least i'll be trying to think of ways to make the rules more elegant, less fiddly, and/or more relevant.
...to be honest, i'm surprised that i (and many in my playgroup) seem to be the only one here who sees it as an aspect that can/should be improved.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
If your decks goal is commander beats: it’s your responsability to keep track of it, and again if big enough you should be killing people in like three hits max. If you need to keep exact track of it then one or two 20 sided die should be sufficient as you shouldn’t be spreading out the damage anyways.
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Not with my voltron general either, mind you, it was the guy playing gaddock teeg, killing the life-gain player, under a meekstone. a very scary angelic chorus-phyrexian processor meant that it was basically the only way to kill that player (stopped tracking after it hit the thousands). ended up wiping the rest of the table, slowly, too.
I suspect that the game would have been faster if we'd tracked the original first couple of pot-shots properly, but sometimes, it becomes relevant even if we don't expect it to be relevant.
We're using a laminated sheet and whiteboard markers now; doesn't feel as wasteful as just using paper.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom