I've loved edh since I started playing magic again around six years ago, and as a mtgo-only player, I've naturally had more of affinity for 1v1 than the average edh player. So, ever since the 1v1 Commander leagues went live on mtgo, I've been playing a ton of them. That experience has been, let's say, mixed. I've struggled with several aspects of the implementation of the leagues that I think (hope) will get ironed out, of which 1-game matches is probably the largest problem right now. However, that's not what I'm here to talk about.
What I'm here to talk about, is the perverse effect that the inability to tuck commanders has on deck-building on the format. In short, it has allowed decks to flourish in the format that are completely unbalanced, because they don't need to build in redundancy in one area of deckbuilding, creatures. For reference, I want to point you all to the current "meta" of 1v1 Commander online: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander_1v1#online. Go ahead and take a gander through these top decks in the format. With a few notable exceptions (mostly various flavors of ramp-based mono-green commanders), you'll notice one shared factor. They play very few creatures. Being able to skimp on creatures allows them to build in massive amounts of redundancy in other areas, but mostly in playing a comically large number of counters. I'm looking in particular at the two "best decks" in the format right now, Tasigur and Baral. They play 7 and 3 spells that aren't instants or sorceries, respectively. Imagine a 60/4 constructed control deck that had the luxury of playing 1 win condition without losing out on any consistency. It would make for a nightmare of a format, and I think that's where we are right now with 1v1 Commander.
I've done a lot of thinking about what could improve this situation, and I think the simplest possibility is simply to reinstate the Tuck Rule, specifically for 1v1 competitive Commander. Now, I'm well aware that this would not entirely solve the problem. For one thing, the number of cards that "tuck" cards is pretty limited, so it's never going to be a huge threat in the format, but the mere possibility of really losing their commanders might force some of these decks to build their decks a little more honestly. Even if reinstating the tuck rule brought about marginal improvements in terms of deckbuilding balance, I feel like that would be a big improvement in terms of the balance of the format.
I'm curious to hear what other people think about this notion, and about the mtgo 1v1 Commander environment in general, so I hope people will think about this and respond, and maybe we can get WotC to take some healthy steps to make the format a little more healthy.
I dont think tuck rule will solve it. There arent that many spells that tuck commanders unconditionaly. Also, I dont realy think it would change the deckbuilding of the decks you think.
So, first off, I actually tend to agree with what you're saying. There are not a ton of these cards, and I'm really not at all sure what effect re-instituting the tuck rule would have.
That said, while there aren't a ton of "tuck" cards (Hinder, Spell Crumple, Condemn, Chaos Warp, even Spin Into Myth to name the most prominent), the tuck cards that do exist are powerful and efficient enough that they do represent legitimate answers. I don't think that reinstating the tuck rule would "fix" the problem of these control decks that dominate the format right now, but if it made a difference at the margins, I think it might be worth doing.
The decks that most gain from the tuck rule are blue, so you propose to give more power to blue commanders?
+1, Blue does not need a 'soft' buff
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French EDH BRGW Saskia the Unyielding BRGW GUWB Thrasios, Triton Hero // Tymna the Weaver GUWB B Braids, Cabal Minion B G Titania, Protector of Argoth G R Zurgo Bellstriker R
Founding Father of [Team Stepfathers]: We beat you and you hate us My Street Art
The only decks that gain from this are blue, nobody's gonna let their Commander go to the grave when you have Deathrite Shaman or Scavenging Ooze on the field.
Guys, I appreciate, and expect people to disagree with me, but you're not really engaged with the substance of the argument. Do you guys disagree with my assessment that by being too secure in relying on their commanders, 1v1 decks are able to build-in excessive redundancy in other areas? If you agree with that, but disagree about the tuck rule, what do you think can be done to improve the situation?
Play Highlander.
The problem is there isn't a way to punish over-reliance on the commander without breaking things even further. Removing the tuck rule overwhelmingly favors blue, increasing the commander tax overwhelminggly favors green, any additional disadvantage generated by having your commander removed overwhelmingly favors black, and as usual white and red get the shaft.
We always knew EDH would come to this. Tutors are only valuable because the very first thing competitive singleton players do is seek ways to cheat on the singleton rule, and WotC's notorious affection for functional reprints only makes things worse on the "one of a kind" spirit of the format.
At this point all we can do is save a couple spells for problem decks like Grafdigger's Cage vs Baral or Torpor Orb vs Selvala while the meta corrects and births a deck to prey on their monotonous card selection.
The problem about tuck rules, is that it pushes even further to not having commander dependent decks. The thing about EDH and 1v1 Commander, is that you can have commander dependent decks and they are already fighting a lot of hate, putting something that shut down the tier 2 decks is just not a good weapon to have on the commander.
Some tier 2/3 decks that will get harmed heavily by the tuck rule (only for 1v1): Kaalia, Prossh, Skithiryx, Jhoira, Mayael, Grenzo and some more.
The tier 1 decks that gets hit by tuck hard, Vial (which has a huge ban target on its head) and Geist (which you usually can't actually target tuck effects..)
Basically what I always saw, is that the tuck rule is harmful for decks that are commander dependent, but those decks almost always are tier 2 or 3 decks, since being commander dependable is already a weakness that makes those decks hard to be tier 1, I think tuck rules only enhances the goodstuff decks that don't actually care about their commander, and the commander is just the best commander in its color combination (Jenara, Marath, Anafenza...).
Guys, I appreciate, and expect people to disagree with me, but you're not really engaged with the substance of the argument. Do you guys disagree with my assessment that by being too secure in relying on their commanders, 1v1 decks are able to build-in excessive redundancy in other areas? If you agree with that, but disagree about the tuck rule, what do you think can be done to improve the situation?
The very nature of EDH makes that an impossible question. One of the aspects of Commander is the Commander, a card outside your hand that you always have access to. Eliminating the ability to access it all the time overly favors the colors that can do that, or colors where it doesn't matter (Green/Black).
There really isn't an effective solution.
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"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
I agree that the tuck rule favors the colors that have access to tuck cards tuck (predominantly blue and white, with a smidge of red), but unless you're playing a black/green deck, that still means that most competitive decks would have access to these cards. People seem to be responding to my point as though my goal is to improve certain colors against other colors, or certain commanders against other commanders, to bring down Tier 1 decks, or something like that. That isn't it at all. The point of bringing back the tuck rules is to make it less viable (not completely unviable, but less reliable) to play a minimal numbers of creatures and 50+ reactive spells.
If tuck were a real threat, decks would be forced to build threat redundancy in their decks. If this reduced the number of counters/hand disruption/removal spells players could play just from 50 to 40, that would make a HUGE difference in the format. Again, the point here isn't to make, Tier 2 decks stack up better against Tier 1 decks, or to make non-blue decks more viable (clearly), it's to make the format more fun by forcing some more honest deckbuilding restrictions.
People seem to be responding to my point as though my goal is to improve certain colors against other colors, or certain commanders against other commanders, to bring down Tier 1 decks, or something like that. That isn't it at all. The point of bringing back the tuck rules is to make it less viable (not completely unviable, but less reliable) to play a minimal numbers of creatures and 50+ reactive spells.
I don't think anyone necessarily has issues with your goal. People have issues with the idea because of the collateral damage of it making blue even stronger. It's one step forward and one step back at the same time. Beyond that, I'm not even sure this would change the effectiveness of decks that are 50+ reactive spells and few creatures. Most of them would gain from this change and the real losers would be decks like Titania and Bruse which play a bunch of creatures but also rely on the commander as a finisher in a lot of games.
What I'm here to talk about, is the perverse effect that the inability to tuck commanders has on deck-building on the format. In short, it has allowed decks to flourish in the format that are completely unbalanced, because they don't need to build in redundancy in one area of deckbuilding, creatures. For reference, I want to point you all to the current "meta" of 1v1 Commander online: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander_1v1#online. Go ahead and take a gander through these top decks in the format. With a few notable exceptions (mostly various flavors of ramp-based mono-green commanders), you'll notice one shared factor. They play very few creatures. Being able to skimp on creatures allows them to build in massive amounts of redundancy in other areas, but mostly in playing a comically large number of counters. I'm looking in particular at the two "best decks" in the format right now, Tasigur and Baral. They play 7 and 3 spells that aren't instants or sorceries, respectively. Imagine a 60/4 constructed control deck that had the luxury of playing 1 win condition without losing out on any consistency. It would make for a nightmare of a format, and I think that's where we are right now with 1v1 Commander.
I've done a lot of thinking about what could improve this situation, and I think the simplest possibility is simply to reinstate the Tuck Rule, specifically for 1v1 competitive Commander. Now, I'm well aware that this would not entirely solve the problem. For one thing, the number of cards that "tuck" cards is pretty limited, so it's never going to be a huge threat in the format, but the mere possibility of really losing their commanders might force some of these decks to build their decks a little more honestly. Even if reinstating the tuck rule brought about marginal improvements in terms of deckbuilding balance, I feel like that would be a big improvement in terms of the balance of the format.
I'm curious to hear what other people think about this notion, and about the mtgo 1v1 Commander environment in general, so I hope people will think about this and respond, and maybe we can get WotC to take some healthy steps to make the format a little more healthy.
So, first off, I actually tend to agree with what you're saying. There are not a ton of these cards, and I'm really not at all sure what effect re-instituting the tuck rule would have.
That said, while there aren't a ton of "tuck" cards (Hinder, Spell Crumple, Condemn, Chaos Warp, even Spin Into Myth to name the most prominent), the tuck cards that do exist are powerful and efficient enough that they do represent legitimate answers. I don't think that reinstating the tuck rule would "fix" the problem of these control decks that dominate the format right now, but if it made a difference at the margins, I think it might be worth doing.
+1, Blue does not need a 'soft' buff
BRGW Saskia the Unyielding BRGW
GUWB Thrasios, Triton Hero // Tymna the Weaver GUWB
B Braids, Cabal Minion B
G Titania, Protector of Argoth G
R Zurgo Bellstriker R
Founding Father of [Team Stepfathers]: We beat you and you hate us
My Street Art
The problem is there isn't a way to punish over-reliance on the commander without breaking things even further. Removing the tuck rule overwhelmingly favors blue, increasing the commander tax overwhelminggly favors green, any additional disadvantage generated by having your commander removed overwhelmingly favors black, and as usual white and red get the shaft.
We always knew EDH would come to this. Tutors are only valuable because the very first thing competitive singleton players do is seek ways to cheat on the singleton rule, and WotC's notorious affection for functional reprints only makes things worse on the "one of a kind" spirit of the format.
At this point all we can do is save a couple spells for problem decks like Grafdigger's Cage vs Baral or Torpor Orb vs Selvala while the meta corrects and births a deck to prey on their monotonous card selection.
Some tier 2/3 decks that will get harmed heavily by the tuck rule (only for 1v1): Kaalia, Prossh, Skithiryx, Jhoira, Mayael, Grenzo and some more.
The tier 1 decks that gets hit by tuck hard, Vial (which has a huge ban target on its head) and Geist (which you usually can't actually target tuck effects..)
Basically what I always saw, is that the tuck rule is harmful for decks that are commander dependent, but those decks almost always are tier 2 or 3 decks, since being commander dependable is already a weakness that makes those decks hard to be tier 1, I think tuck rules only enhances the goodstuff decks that don't actually care about their commander, and the commander is just the best commander in its color combination (Jenara, Marath, Anafenza...).
The very nature of EDH makes that an impossible question. One of the aspects of Commander is the Commander, a card outside your hand that you always have access to. Eliminating the ability to access it all the time overly favors the colors that can do that, or colors where it doesn't matter (Green/Black).
There really isn't an effective solution.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
If tuck were a real threat, decks would be forced to build threat redundancy in their decks. If this reduced the number of counters/hand disruption/removal spells players could play just from 50 to 40, that would make a HUGE difference in the format. Again, the point here isn't to make, Tier 2 decks stack up better against Tier 1 decks, or to make non-blue decks more viable (clearly), it's to make the format more fun by forcing some more honest deckbuilding restrictions.