It hurts Commanders with high mana value the most over low mana value which If they're running mana accelerants like Jeweled Lotus then that might ease the pressure or mana doublers like Mana Flare can help get around it. Commander Orb was a terrible Stax idea but it seemed less oppressive than something like Trinisphere or Damping Sphere. It was almost at the same power level as Stasis, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, and Smokestack.
Let me try to think this out.
When you cast your commander from the command zone, your tax goes up by 2 *for that commander*
If you cast a spell like Grizzly Bears from your hand "as though you were casting it as a commander from the command zone," that would put a tax on that copy of Grizzly Bears and if you were to kill it, raise dead it, and cast it again, you'd have to pay 3G. Or, if it were shuffled into your library, and you had two copies of Grizzly Bears in your deck, you wouldn't know which one had the commander tax. So it's an Alchemy card
Alternatively what you're trying to do is make every spell you cast increase the commander tax of one of your commanders, which essentially puts them in the slammer for the rest of the game even if the orb is removed
What If Commander Orb was worded to where it doesn't include having to pay for Commander Tax and it only applies to the original mana value of the Commander that player is casting? Say for example my Commander is Azusa, Lost but Seeking whose original mana value is 2G, hasn't been sent back to the Command Zone to increase the Commander Tax by 2, and If I cast Rampant Growth which originally costs 1G, with Commander Orb then I'd only be paying 2G instead of 4G since my Commander hasn't been sent back to the Command Zone.
Would that be more fair or unfair still? Even without having to pay for Commander Tax for each spell it still punishes high mana value Commanders more than low mana value Commanders in a way that seems a bit oppressive. I can see a card like Commander Orb being extremely good in cEDH but in Casual Commander unfortunately not so much unless mana doublers are being used like Mana Flare. Now If Commander Orb was worded to say, "Players can only cast spells as though they were casting their Commander from the Command Zone by paying in life instead of mana" THAT might be different.
It hurts Commanders with high mana value the most over low mana value which If they're running mana accelerants like Jeweled Lotus then that might ease the pressure or mana doublers like Mana Flare can help get around it. Commander Orb was a terrible Stax idea but it seemed less oppressive than something like Trinisphere or Damping Sphere. It was almost at the same power level as Stasis, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, and Smokestack.
Players can only cast spells as though they were casting
their Commander from the Command Zone.
Discuss.
In other words, this card literally replaces the original mana value of cards you cast to match exactly with how you would cast your Commander from the Command Zone which also includes Commander Tax. Think of it as a way to slow the game down but in a way where players are racing to get rid of it so they can play normally. I also made this card Legendary so that multiple copies of Commander Orb don't go on the stack.
I might need to increase the mana value of Commander Orb a bit because getting it out on turn 1 with Sol Ring is pretty nasty I'm not gonna lie but at least it doesn't have hexproof, shroud, or ward to make it hard to remove from the battlefield. Considering how fast Commander games have gotten clocking in at 45 minutes at least I figured why not design a card that helps slow Commander games down in a Stax kind of way that isn't AS oppressive.
Jenson, Treasure Excavator1WW Legendary Creature - Human
Sacrifice a land: Create a Treasure token.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if an opponent controls more lands than you, you gain life equal to the difference
and that opponent draws cards equal to the difference.
This reminds me of the recent IHOP promotion for Magic: The Gathering of the "original" 5 color Planeswalkers first introduced in Lorwyn but of course they did Garruk dirty by replacing him with Vivien Reid even though her first appearance on a Magic card was in M19.
A lot of stores disallow proxies for sanctioned events, and fair enough, because they want to sell cards. If you play Commander in a no-proxy setting with money on the line, this heavily favors players who are willing to shuffle up their dual lands or Mishra's Workshop / Timetwister etc.
It's kind of a question of, do you run a ~$100 Budget CEDH tournament? Do you curate a banlist to get the most players interested? Or just suck it up and allow proxies. There's things you can do for sure. Ask your friends what they would like to see, and talk with the owner of your LGS about it. Commander is generally popular because of its less competitive nature, though, and introducing a prize will definitely soil that.
The real challenge is how do you make EDH / Commander as attractive to Local Game Stores (LGSs) as Paper Standard used to be before the global pandemic and Arena pushed for more remote play. Sure you want them to buy Commander product but most importantly you also want them to actually sit down and play in-person as you would in a competitive tournament. If prize support isn't the answer to draw more people to play EDH / Commander at Local Game Stores (LGSs) then what is? Prize support is obviously off the table here.
Why not reward EDH / Commander players for trying to reach specific board state conditions to earn points or store credit for their Local Game Store (LGS)? Best 2 out of 3 matches in a 4 player pod would take too long but given how fast the format has gotten you can finish a 4 player EDH / Commander game in roughly 45 minutes as opposed to an hour or two based on live streams of EDH / Commander games I've watched on YouTube but you probably have an easier time speed running that If everyone was running Mono Red or Mono Green If these events were given color identity restrictions.
I think that's what's missing is that If Local Game Stores (LGSs) can run EDH / Commander tournaments restricting color identity then that can help narrow out the amount of multi-colored decks that are not only prevalent in cEDH but also in Casual as well. Colorless decks have proven to get out of hand I mean look at Zhulodok, Void Gorger which is basically Maelstrom Wanderer but Colorless for 1 less mana without a haste enabler. I don't know If that would help the situation aside from a curated ban list but it's a start I suppose.
Varied Playstyles, EDH/Commander is a format that encourages diverse and creative deck-building. Players have different playstyles and preferences, making it challenging to create a tournament structure that accommodates everyone
That's the thing. If Paper Standard encouraged as much diverse and creative deck-building as EDH / Commander then we'd be seeing more players at Local Game Stores (LGSs) but the fact that Arena exists to take those players away to play Remotely Online instead of In-Person at an LGS is gatekeeping younger generations of new Paper Magic players to enter the game in a way where the overall complexity of the game itself isn't scaring off new players when it actually is right now.
What you're saying is that a format has to be linear in design in order to work for Competitive In-Person Organized Play but If that's the case then why is Paper Standard so boring compared to EDH / Commander? Rotating formats like Standard just proves that Competitive Magic is Pay to Win but more aggressive than your average Loot Box / Loot Crate or Gacha game due to it's short time window. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro refuses to come to terms that they can't please everyone.
Why don't they reprint them faster? There are literally thousands of cards in need a reprints. If you focus on one card there are dozens or hundreds of places to reprint it. However, as I said, there are thousands of cards in need of reprint. The specifics of how they choose what and when to reprint aren't public but whenever you think "X was the prefect place why didn't they reprint there?" Remeber that X was also the perfect place to reprint at least a dozen other cards, probably hundreds. So it's not a simple thing to reprint what you have found to be an egregious failure to reprint.
That's still no excuse to distribute reprints solely as Secret Lairs to undermine the Local Game Store (LGS) unless they're unable to pay for artist commission fees If they're selling direct to Local Game Stores (LGSs) and big box retailers. Set Booster and Jumpstart exclusive cards sounds like Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro creating an artificial "rarity" which is really just artificial scarcity to make more money on cards to try to offset running out of reprint equity when it comes to Masters sets. Based on Paper Magic's release schedule at Gen Con this year we already know that there's no plans for a Masters set release anytime soon yet Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro are known to announce brand new cards out of nowhere kinda like the recent Ponies: The Galloping 2 charity cards and it's even more problematic when it's hard to take their word on anything anymore when it comes to Magic: The Gathering.
I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not just screaming into the void. But no matter no matter how many times I read this I can't find a point that wasn't already covered. The only thing I can parse from this is that you don't want secret lairs to be reprints but that's nonsense so I can't really understand what you're trying to say.
I think I get it. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro wants to continue doing Secret Lairs as reprints so that they don't feel obligated to release a Masters set every year in an attempt to make Paper Magic more affordable for players to actually play (even though card variants have sort of solved this issue already), but it's also coming at the consequence of Local Game Stores (LGSs) not having direct access to these reprints and by reprinting cards in Standard sets and subsets like Modern Horizons means that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't extracting as much money as Local Game Stores (LGSs) would when they're only making money on pallets of sealed products that If I'm not mistaken doesn't make as much as card singles do which is a weird thing to say.
Normally the cost of a booster box or precon would be enough for Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro to make on Paper Magic however it's the Expected Value (EV) of particular card singles within these products that ultimately determine the cost of the sealed product overall. If most of the cards within a sealed product or precon aren't able to carry their own weight in terms of supply and demand then how will the overall product itself be able to stay afloat? They're forced to print new and reprint old cards that are very low in power level to justify a price point that isn't too expensive for customers' wallets. Getting rid of MSRP by partnering with Amazon just to dump unsold products online at a 50% discount is a terrible business strategy.
However, I find it deceptive and confusing when cards have a pseudo-rarity where they masquerade as "uncommon" despite actually being considerably more rare based on print numbers and distribution.
Agreed 100%
Then you have that whole "track printing" business as well. There are some cards at each rarity that already have a lesser chance of being pulled, thereby making them a rarity within a rarity.
Why don't they reprint them faster? There are literally thousands of cards in need a reprints. If you focus on one card there are dozens or hundreds of places to reprint it. However, as I said, there are thousands of cards in need of reprint. The specifics of how they choose what and when to reprint aren't public but whenever you think "X was the prefect place why didn't they reprint there?" Remeber that X was also the perfect place to reprint at least a dozen other cards, probably hundreds. So it's not a simple thing to reprint what you have found to be an egregious failure to reprint.
That's still no excuse to distribute reprints solely as Secret Lairs to undermine the Local Game Store (LGS) unless they're unable to pay for artist commission fees If they're selling direct to Local Game Stores (LGSs) and big box retailers. Set Booster and Jumpstart exclusive cards sounds like Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro creating an artificial "rarity" which is really just artificial scarcity to make more money on cards to try to offset running out of reprint equity when it comes to Masters sets. Based on Paper Magic's release schedule at Gen Con this year we already know that there's no plans for a Masters set release anytime soon yet Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro are known to announce brand new cards out of nowhere kinda like the recent Ponies: The Galloping 2 charity cards and it's even more problematic when it's hard to take their word on anything anymore when it comes to Magic: The Gathering.
Probably the best way to protect The One Ring from getting exiled so that I don't need to use Karn, The Great Creator's -2 is to run board protection like Padeem, Consul of Innovation, Lazotep Plating, and Curator's Ward. Spellskite can be used in case someone tries to exile The One Ring to where I can't get it back from my graveyard. Hopefully that should alleviate some of the targeted removal that goes after The One Ring instead of creating copies of it which nullifies it's cast trigger being important.
Master Transmuter is nice but I don't think we really need her in here. Whir of Invention seems good for getting The One Ring on the battlefield and then bouncing it later to recast. Definitely will look into Mana Drain in here. Hopefully that should round out most of the holes within this deck. Being in Mono-Blue it wasn't easy to squeeze in cards that would give me a more optimal board presence. I did find that Archmage Ascension and Teferi's Puzzle Box is a nice combo for tutoring out The One Ring in case I don't have a draw spell in hand.
Maybe Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could put out a Secret Lair in honor of Sheldon Menery's impact on Magic: The Gathering through EDH / Commander in some way though it feels like it would probably be in bad taste since I really don't like the distribution model for Secret Lairs and how they cut the Local Game Store (LGS).
If 100% of the proceeds went to helping people who have cancer I think it would be excellent
100% agree. St. Jude came to my mind for possible foundations to donate money to charity for.
I remember back when the EDH / Commander format was just starting to take off in the late 2000's and early 2010's and I stumbled onto a website called MTGCommander.net which is actually the website that Sheldon Menery himself created and it even had a message board forum which was eventually taken down but I was able to talk to him before he removed it and we got along quite well actually. I even remember some of Sheldon's old YouTube videos under the channel name CMDRDecks where he'd post his EDH / Commander decks and dedicated the channel to other Magic players showcasing their own EDH / Commander decks before the format became as mainstream as it is today and thought it was really cool to see before other Magic YouTubers started taking off like The Command Zone with Game Knights.
You'll be greatly missed Sheldon. You're the reason why me and many others have been able to enjoy Paper Magic in a way that was more fun and conventional than your average 40 card Kitchen Table Casual games on a late Friday night going into the weekend. Albeit the format in terms of power creep has sped up more progressively compared to how it was when it was created where it didn't feel too much like an arms race like it does now. I will say that I am disappointed that Sheldon never instilled a design philosophy for EDH / Commander that greatly benefited the Local Game Store (LGS) as much as your traditional In-Person Competitive formats with Paper Standard but for what it was worth it's hard for me to say If it was a net positive or negative for Paper Magic going forward that's still being debated on to this day.
I wonder If Sheldon was ever aware of the monumental impact he made from EDH / Commander as a format in Magic: The Gathering? What we should do is organize an EDH / Commander Tournament for charity and live stream it in his honor or perhaps auction off his EDH / Commander decks where all the proceeds go to charity particularly a foundation dedicated to fighting against cancer. I think he'd be really proud of us If we did that and it'd be a great way to honor him and the legacy he created that changed the face of Magic: The Gathering forever. Maybe Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could put out a Secret Lair in honor of Sheldon Menery's impact on Magic: The Gathering through EDH / Commander in some way though it feels like it would probably be in bad taste since I really don't like the distribution model for Secret Lairs and how they cut the Local Game Store (LGS).
It would ultimately result in something like this:
Would that be more fair or unfair still? Even without having to pay for Commander Tax for each spell it still punishes high mana value Commanders more than low mana value Commanders in a way that seems a bit oppressive. I can see a card like Commander Orb being extremely good in cEDH but in Casual Commander unfortunately not so much unless mana doublers are being used like Mana Flare. Now If Commander Orb was worded to say, "Players can only cast spells as though they were casting their Commander from the Command Zone by paying in life instead of mana" THAT might be different.
Legendary Artifact
Players can only cast spells as though they were casting
their Commander from the Command Zone.
Discuss.
In other words, this card literally replaces the original mana value of cards you cast to match exactly with how you would cast your Commander from the Command Zone which also includes Commander Tax. Think of it as a way to slow the game down but in a way where players are racing to get rid of it so they can play normally. I also made this card Legendary so that multiple copies of Commander Orb don't go on the stack.
I might need to increase the mana value of Commander Orb a bit because getting it out on turn 1 with Sol Ring is pretty nasty I'm not gonna lie but at least it doesn't have hexproof, shroud, or ward to make it hard to remove from the battlefield. Considering how fast Commander games have gotten clocking in at 45 minutes at least I figured why not design a card that helps slow Commander games down in a Stax kind of way that isn't AS oppressive.
Legendary Creature - Human
Sacrifice a land: Create a Treasure token.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if an opponent controls more lands than you, you gain life equal to the difference
and that opponent draws cards equal to the difference.
3/3
Discuss.
Why not reward EDH / Commander players for trying to reach specific board state conditions to earn points or store credit for their Local Game Store (LGS)? Best 2 out of 3 matches in a 4 player pod would take too long but given how fast the format has gotten you can finish a 4 player EDH / Commander game in roughly 45 minutes as opposed to an hour or two based on live streams of EDH / Commander games I've watched on YouTube but you probably have an easier time speed running that If everyone was running Mono Red or Mono Green If these events were given color identity restrictions.
I think that's what's missing is that If Local Game Stores (LGSs) can run EDH / Commander tournaments restricting color identity then that can help narrow out the amount of multi-colored decks that are not only prevalent in cEDH but also in Casual as well. Colorless decks have proven to get out of hand I mean look at Zhulodok, Void Gorger which is basically Maelstrom Wanderer but Colorless for 1 less mana without a haste enabler. I don't know If that would help the situation aside from a curated ban list but it's a start I suppose.
What you're saying is that a format has to be linear in design in order to work for Competitive In-Person Organized Play but If that's the case then why is Paper Standard so boring compared to EDH / Commander? Rotating formats like Standard just proves that Competitive Magic is Pay to Win but more aggressive than your average Loot Box / Loot Crate or Gacha game due to it's short time window. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro refuses to come to terms that they can't please everyone.
Normally the cost of a booster box or precon would be enough for Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro to make on Paper Magic however it's the Expected Value (EV) of particular card singles within these products that ultimately determine the cost of the sealed product overall. If most of the cards within a sealed product or precon aren't able to carry their own weight in terms of supply and demand then how will the overall product itself be able to stay afloat? They're forced to print new and reprint old cards that are very low in power level to justify a price point that isn't too expensive for customers' wallets. Getting rid of MSRP by partnering with Amazon just to dump unsold products online at a 50% discount is a terrible business strategy.
Isn't that what serialized cards are though?
Master Transmuter is nice but I don't think we really need her in here. Whir of Invention seems good for getting The One Ring on the battlefield and then bouncing it later to recast. Definitely will look into Mana Drain in here. Hopefully that should round out most of the holes within this deck. Being in Mono-Blue it wasn't easy to squeeze in cards that would give me a more optimal board presence. I did find that Archmage Ascension and Teferi's Puzzle Box is a nice combo for tutoring out The One Ring in case I don't have a draw spell in hand.
You'll be greatly missed Sheldon. You're the reason why me and many others have been able to enjoy Paper Magic in a way that was more fun and conventional than your average 40 card Kitchen Table Casual games on a late Friday night going into the weekend. Albeit the format in terms of power creep has sped up more progressively compared to how it was when it was created where it didn't feel too much like an arms race like it does now. I will say that I am disappointed that Sheldon never instilled a design philosophy for EDH / Commander that greatly benefited the Local Game Store (LGS) as much as your traditional In-Person Competitive formats with Paper Standard but for what it was worth it's hard for me to say If it was a net positive or negative for Paper Magic going forward that's still being debated on to this day.
I wonder If Sheldon was ever aware of the monumental impact he made from EDH / Commander as a format in Magic: The Gathering? What we should do is organize an EDH / Commander Tournament for charity and live stream it in his honor or perhaps auction off his EDH / Commander decks where all the proceeds go to charity particularly a foundation dedicated to fighting against cancer. I think he'd be really proud of us If we did that and it'd be a great way to honor him and the legacy he created that changed the face of Magic: The Gathering forever. Maybe Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could put out a Secret Lair in honor of Sheldon Menery's impact on Magic: The Gathering through EDH / Commander in some way though it feels like it would probably be in bad taste since I really don't like the distribution model for Secret Lairs and how they cut the Local Game Store (LGS).