balancing act and natural balance don't exactly reward a single specific player but they do a great job of pulling the table back to a level where the player most behind can benefit.
It feels like everybody is missing an important piece to the problem: the sac outlet. She really kind of sucks and is rather slow if you can't capitalize on those triggers every turn (Sakura tribe elder being an exemption). Before the commander, I would focus on the sac outlets as a primary target. Artifact enchantment removal if it's through that, nonbasic land removal through that.
-potential slippery slope? Once something like this has been done it opens up the question "why can't we allow other things to become commanders?" for example people may ask for double sided cards with a legendary on the back to bypass the rule, for example elbrus, the binding blade or dark depths
or cards like genju or the legendary vehicle? There are limitations but I do like the idea of pws as a commander... Just some will be problematic and sadly the biggest offenders would also be multicolored. Meaning most decks would end up mono blue or mono green. (jace or access to doubling season)
Gideon 1.0 would be by far the most balanced of the gang, except maybe ajani. Elspeth would be an issue. Sorin. Tezz. We may get 79 new commanders. But half will be gone due to power level. Over time with proper testing they will slowly be unbanned. (Or none will be banned when the rules comitee says "but you can get a llanowar eleves and birds of paradise with tooth and nail... Not broken"
As for Elbrus. It should be legal. Since it can only be played in a black deck. Eve. Though Elbrus is not black the back side is banning it from. Non black decks. So that means that the flip side matters so it is a legal commander in my books (and if not then Elbrus should be playable in any deck.)
One possibility I feel Wizards might eventually experiment with (maybe even with the upcoming Commander product in order to enable the Nephalhim) is 'commander emblems' that you can start the game with in your command zone that simply say "X can be your commander".
In that way it becomes less of an issue because we are essentially looking at a whitelist of non-legendary creatures that can be commanders. It could obviously start with the four Nephalhim, and then have extra versions released through some promo program or something that enable cards like chromanticore and possibly a Planeswalker or two.
If they're reserved about it and don't go printing something stupid like emblems for Arcbound Ravager or Jace the Mind Sculptor then it could possibly be quite successful.
oblivion stone needs to be reprinted and it needs to go in every deck. It's the most staple-ey card there is in Commander and it's a serious issue if the cost increase causes players to not have access to it.
There are much fewer games where a lucky start causes a player to run away with the game when everybody at the table has a reset button or two somewhere in their decks.
Perilous vault and Oblivion Stone go in every non-white deck I believe. Unless your meta is super removal-happy and like to break peoples' toys before they get any benefit from them, there will be games when a player simply gets way too much value early on for the table to be able to deal with them. Things like turn one land tax into turn two sol ring and scroll rack into spending the foreseeable future dumping your deck onto the table. Unless people are running cards like nature's claim, someone is going to need to sweep the board before the white player just kills the table.
It's really easy for anybody, even people in low powerlevel playgroups, to just add a bunch of wheel effects while building a Leovold deck "because that looks like a strong synergy" and regularly enter into "deal with this guy turn 3 or lose instantly" situations.
So basically it boils down to: How often do players end up accidentally destroying everybody's fun? The accessibility bar here is really, really low so it's conceivable that this could be a fairly common occurrence among playgroups. The kind of stress he brings into playgroups that don't want to go into hyper-cheap removal mode could be cause for the RC to look into it, though admittedly he isn't really analogous to any other banned card with the exception of maybe Braids or Erayo, but both of them are singular in their purposes while Leovold could be built to accommodate a variety of metagames.
I'm inclined to choose the wurm as well. 2 damage per creature doesn't seem like a lot, but in my experience it really adds up quick nearly every time I play the guy.
But to look at them in a more stricter sense:
- The Wurm's ability is always relevant except against excessive lifegain decks. Going from 40 to 32 might not seem like much, but people will certainly wish they had that missing 8 life when they're at 12.
- The demon's ability is only relevant in multiples of four (energy/proliferate interactions aside), only if you have the mana to activate the ability before he dies, and only if there is a relevant target in a graveyard to hit.
You could "play him for 9", an opponent then sacrifices or kills a creature in response, and you're stuck at 3 energy and the demon then dies before anything else bumps it up to 4. You could be at 32 energy from playing him after a storm herd but that's not going to be very helpful if there's a smattering of mana dorks in graveyards (or no creatures at all!). Heck, you could need a board answer right now at turn six, only to have him die before you untap.
So I guess to put it plainly: Massacre Wurm has maybe one exclusive zero-effect situation, Demon of Dark Schemes is contingent on a handful of things in order to have an impact on the game. The effect is stronger and more interesting, but that doesn't make it better.
I'd still run the Demon in a variety of decks just because it does interesting things.
I basically agree with the whole "intent to win" side of the argument, but there's one important distinction people are missing:
Competitive decks are built to win as reliably as possible within the restrictions of the group.
In that sense, if your playgroup has banned MLD, a competitive deck does its best to win in a metagame where there is no MLD. If a playgroup has banned infinite combos, a competitive deck will do its best to win without combo. House rules and social agreements don't automatically mean everybody's playing soft Hello Kitty-style Magic. Heck a very common house rule I hear people often bring up on my time in these forums is "No Banlist" EDH, so it can clearly go the other direction. These rules doesn't even have to be enforced: If everybody at your table are playing slightly modified precons, busting out an $800 deck filled with Legacy staples might not be the most effective pathway to victory simply because it's considerably more difficult to win when you're sitting down to archenemy every single game.
To put it in the 75% mentality, a 75% deck will leave out some of the most powerful or back-breaking effects from the deck, or leave it poorly tuned simply because bringing the deck's potential to 100% isn't really a priority. For a competitive deck, bringing it as close to 100% as possible is so important most of the deckbuilding boils down to deciding what exactly 100% is for that deck.
I'm not a fan of "Removal on the stack or the table loses" situations. Leovold, Emissary of Trest in play and opponent casts windfall? You have that one moment to lightning bolt him or the Leovold player will run away with the game. Insurrection and Craterhoof Behemoth create similar situations. Most forms of instant-win combo also fall under this category.
I'm not saying these situations are too strong, just that playing with that as the standard basically warps decks to favor cheap removal like lightning bolt and Nature's Claim, de-values sorcery-speed removal, and basically ends up forcing players to run a lot more removal just to ensure that they have a reasonable chance to stop people from winning the game from out of nowhere.
I enjoy seeing people play turn-four Kalonian Hydra and watch the table try to figure out a way to keep that from dominating the game, see players weigh the chances of the hydra hitting them while they decide whether to use their sorcery-speed removal, and the occasional copy/theft effect to turn the tables. That's more interesting to me than playing Hermit Druid, move to equip it with lightning greaves, then letting opponents' hands and untapped lands decide if I win or not.
I had a Karador Shadowborn Apostle deck a while back that had around 20-ish or 25-ish Apostles in it. Similar idea to you, it ran a few choice Cleric tribal cards like battletide alchemist, which makes a pretty good pillowfort card when you can use Karador to re-cast it whenever it dies to a non-repeatable effect. It also ran a bunch of cards that love multiples like pack hunt.
14 seems a little light unless you have some drastic effects to pull out the six you need. If you don't get six of them out they're incredibly lackluster 1/1s for 1 mana.
To be fair regarding doubling season, that card was expensive before EDH was a thing because of 60-card casual, which is functionally the same within the scope of the current discussion (card prices propped up exclusively from non-tournament social formats).
A lot of cards used to be much worse before getting a main set reprint. I seem to recall Akroma's Memorial getting pretty high up there back before it showed up in M13.
You could probably count "Vintage staples with high availability" as well; Pre-Commander Sol Ring being a good example. Sure everybody ran one in their Vintage decks, but even before the precons I would be willing to bet the people who played EDH greatly outnumbered those who played Vintage, Sol Ring had a ~$15 minimum price tag as a result. This was before the Commander boom, so that was quite a lot back then.
I think the above situation greatly depends on group power level and meta.
If your playgroup is the type where games last until turn 20+, people generally don't do anything interesting until turn five, and gunning for quick combo wins is considered bad manners, then the dual + fetch mana base isn't really doing a whole lot anyway, except frustrating the other players.
I can understand the equalizing factor proxies have in more "early play-heavy" playgroups however, where you need to be able to swords to plowshares that turn-one hermit druid and/or shattering spree that mana crypt into sol ring turn one play. Generally in my experience people who belong to those playgroups tend to be very pro-proxy anyway since they enjoy the equal playing field.
I used to be a no permanent proxy kind of guy, but a couple of things changed that:
1) My gauntlet of might went to $200. I don't feel like manhandling something that valuable on a regular basis, cards get lost, sleeves catch while shuffling and bend cards, they could also fall on the floor and moving your chair to find it could pin it. Much less stress if I just leave it at home.
2) I started keeping multiple built decks around at a time. I used to only have four decks built at any given time, "changing decks" would mean scavenging parts from other decks at home before EDH night. I recently decided to fill a longbox with decks to make the process easier, and I found oblivion stone is no longer $3. That's like the most staple-ey card you can get in EDH, every deck wants one and playing at a table where nobody has one in their decks is a very different experience. It's a bit unreasonable to shell out $30 for each of my "B-list" decks, but at the same time I don't feel like going through the old ritual of scavenging cards when changing decks. So proxy it is.
As for how I proxy, I usually murder piles of foils until I manage to cleanly peel the foil layer off and get a blank card to sharpie on. It's clean and about the best I can hope for without a printer at home.
One possibility I feel Wizards might eventually experiment with (maybe even with the upcoming Commander product in order to enable the Nephalhim) is 'commander emblems' that you can start the game with in your command zone that simply say "X can be your commander".
In that way it becomes less of an issue because we are essentially looking at a whitelist of non-legendary creatures that can be commanders. It could obviously start with the four Nephalhim, and then have extra versions released through some promo program or something that enable cards like chromanticore and possibly a Planeswalker or two.
If they're reserved about it and don't go printing something stupid like emblems for Arcbound Ravager or Jace the Mind Sculptor then it could possibly be quite successful.
There are much fewer games where a lucky start causes a player to run away with the game when everybody at the table has a reset button or two somewhere in their decks.
It's really easy for anybody, even people in low powerlevel playgroups, to just add a bunch of wheel effects while building a Leovold deck "because that looks like a strong synergy" and regularly enter into "deal with this guy turn 3 or lose instantly" situations.
So basically it boils down to: How often do players end up accidentally destroying everybody's fun? The accessibility bar here is really, really low so it's conceivable that this could be a fairly common occurrence among playgroups. The kind of stress he brings into playgroups that don't want to go into hyper-cheap removal mode could be cause for the RC to look into it, though admittedly he isn't really analogous to any other banned card with the exception of maybe Braids or Erayo, but both of them are singular in their purposes while Leovold could be built to accommodate a variety of metagames.
But to look at them in a more stricter sense:
- The Wurm's ability is always relevant except against excessive lifegain decks. Going from 40 to 32 might not seem like much, but people will certainly wish they had that missing 8 life when they're at 12.
- The demon's ability is only relevant in multiples of four (energy/proliferate interactions aside), only if you have the mana to activate the ability before he dies, and only if there is a relevant target in a graveyard to hit.
You could "play him for 9", an opponent then sacrifices or kills a creature in response, and you're stuck at 3 energy and the demon then dies before anything else bumps it up to 4. You could be at 32 energy from playing him after a storm herd but that's not going to be very helpful if there's a smattering of mana dorks in graveyards (or no creatures at all!). Heck, you could need a board answer right now at turn six, only to have him die before you untap.
So I guess to put it plainly: Massacre Wurm has maybe one exclusive zero-effect situation, Demon of Dark Schemes is contingent on a handful of things in order to have an impact on the game. The effect is stronger and more interesting, but that doesn't make it better.
I'd still run the Demon in a variety of decks just because it does interesting things.
Competitive decks are built to win as reliably as possible within the restrictions of the group.
In that sense, if your playgroup has banned MLD, a competitive deck does its best to win in a metagame where there is no MLD. If a playgroup has banned infinite combos, a competitive deck will do its best to win without combo. House rules and social agreements don't automatically mean everybody's playing soft Hello Kitty-style Magic. Heck a very common house rule I hear people often bring up on my time in these forums is "No Banlist" EDH, so it can clearly go the other direction. These rules doesn't even have to be enforced: If everybody at your table are playing slightly modified precons, busting out an $800 deck filled with Legacy staples might not be the most effective pathway to victory simply because it's considerably more difficult to win when you're sitting down to archenemy every single game.
To put it in the 75% mentality, a 75% deck will leave out some of the most powerful or back-breaking effects from the deck, or leave it poorly tuned simply because bringing the deck's potential to 100% isn't really a priority. For a competitive deck, bringing it as close to 100% as possible is so important most of the deckbuilding boils down to deciding what exactly 100% is for that deck.
I'm not saying these situations are too strong, just that playing with that as the standard basically warps decks to favor cheap removal like lightning bolt and Nature's Claim, de-values sorcery-speed removal, and basically ends up forcing players to run a lot more removal just to ensure that they have a reasonable chance to stop people from winning the game from out of nowhere.
I enjoy seeing people play turn-four Kalonian Hydra and watch the table try to figure out a way to keep that from dominating the game, see players weigh the chances of the hydra hitting them while they decide whether to use their sorcery-speed removal, and the occasional copy/theft effect to turn the tables. That's more interesting to me than playing Hermit Druid, move to equip it with lightning greaves, then letting opponents' hands and untapped lands decide if I win or not.
14 seems a little light unless you have some drastic effects to pull out the six you need. If you don't get six of them out they're incredibly lackluster 1/1s for 1 mana.
That being said there are quite a lot of cards printed over the past five years that could be included in this list.
A lot of cards used to be much worse before getting a main set reprint. I seem to recall Akroma's Memorial getting pretty high up there back before it showed up in M13.
You could probably count "Vintage staples with high availability" as well; Pre-Commander Sol Ring being a good example. Sure everybody ran one in their Vintage decks, but even before the precons I would be willing to bet the people who played EDH greatly outnumbered those who played Vintage, Sol Ring had a ~$15 minimum price tag as a result. This was before the Commander boom, so that was quite a lot back then.
If your playgroup is the type where games last until turn 20+, people generally don't do anything interesting until turn five, and gunning for quick combo wins is considered bad manners, then the dual + fetch mana base isn't really doing a whole lot anyway, except frustrating the other players.
I can understand the equalizing factor proxies have in more "early play-heavy" playgroups however, where you need to be able to swords to plowshares that turn-one hermit druid and/or shattering spree that mana crypt into sol ring turn one play. Generally in my experience people who belong to those playgroups tend to be very pro-proxy anyway since they enjoy the equal playing field.
1) My gauntlet of might went to $200. I don't feel like manhandling something that valuable on a regular basis, cards get lost, sleeves catch while shuffling and bend cards, they could also fall on the floor and moving your chair to find it could pin it. Much less stress if I just leave it at home.
2) I started keeping multiple built decks around at a time. I used to only have four decks built at any given time, "changing decks" would mean scavenging parts from other decks at home before EDH night. I recently decided to fill a longbox with decks to make the process easier, and I found oblivion stone is no longer $3. That's like the most staple-ey card you can get in EDH, every deck wants one and playing at a table where nobody has one in their decks is a very different experience. It's a bit unreasonable to shell out $30 for each of my "B-list" decks, but at the same time I don't feel like going through the old ritual of scavenging cards when changing decks. So proxy it is.
As for how I proxy, I usually murder piles of foils until I manage to cleanly peel the foil layer off and get a blank card to sharpie on. It's clean and about the best I can hope for without a printer at home.