JWK, absolutely agree with you that good ideas can come from everywhere. The heart of my question is what would be your discriminators for picking a less-known person (let's call them VSFP (very smart forum poster)? Content creators have a demonstrable body of work to draw on; it's much more difficult to distill what VSFP has to say, since unlike the content creator, they haven't assembled and focused it. The follow-on remains then how to discriminate between all of the VSFPs out there.
Carthage, fair enough. What in your view is stale about the format that making PWs commanders would change (again, other than "it'd be different"). I suppose the question is what's the source of the staleness and does PW->C solve that?
The question still stands. It's easy to say "this person would be as good or better," but that's only part of the equation. To quote Jed Bartlet, now give me the next ten words.
We're still pretty firm on our stance about PWs as Commanders and from this poll it looks like we have solid support. For the folks who voted yes, I'm curious. What problem do you see getting solved by making all PWs commanders? Is there a need not getting addressed (other than "We'd like PWs to be commanders")?
For the long term health of the format, making changes needs to have purpose; the bigger the change, the greater the purpose.
No changes. I would have liked a couple (see some posts back) but can live with this.
I would personally like to have seen some more typical fans of the format on the CAG, as opposed to more Magic officials and MtG celebrities like the Command Zone guy. I can think of a half-dozen people who post on here and on other Commander/EDH sites who probably would have been as good or better choices, but whatever. More input is good, and this is a nice FU to the people who cry out for WotC to take over the format.
I'm curious as to what your metrics are for considering someone a better choice. Take into account they have to be a better individual choice PLUS be better as part of the team. There are lots of people who might have been "as good," but as we say in the announcement, there are a far more of them than we have room for. What do you do when you have 25 or 50 equally-qualified candidates for something and only 5-7 spots?
While there's definitely not a specific rule for multiplayer, I asked one of my rules guru friends. She said because there's nothing contravening the two-player rule that the winner of the roll *chooses* who goes first, she'd rule it that way for MP as well.
It shares characteristics with Commander. The reason I would say that it's not a variant it wasn't developed that way. I'd consider a variant to come from "we're going to start with X and modify it." Brawl, to the best of my knowledge, was more like "we're going to do Y, and borrow some neat things from Commander." I'll see if I can get Gavin's direct response.
According to the EDH rules committee, the Power 9 is banned because of how inaccessible the cards are to almost everyone. If you look today at the price of Tabernacle, it currently exceeds the prices of every Power 9 card with the exception of [card]Black Lotus.
Thats a pretty bad misrepresentation of what 'Barrier to Entry' means. Ubiquity is also part of the rule, like everyone would play Lotus, but Tabernacle is pretty niche. You dont need it to compete, but Moxes you would.
Dunharrow, the category wasn't just about price, but the iconic nature of those cards--we didn't want them to become what you needed in order to play in the format. There are so many cards and choices fifteen years after the format's founding that there's no really a danger that Tabernacle or Library could develop that role.
This piece was about confronting and improving upon our individual prejudices, especially as they apply to Commander. If that's not the central message you took away, then that was my failing as a writer. My "surprise" was intentionally overstated for dramatic effect, but that device seems to have missed the mark.
To be clear, I do not believe there is a "right" way to play Commander. Sure, I have my preferences (which I freely share), and there's a way that the RC promotes (ditto), but we recognize that the player base is far too large for one size to fit all; in fact, trying to make Commander all things to all players is a fool's errand.
One of the secondary messages of the piece was that good communication is the key to our interactions, especially in unknown environments. The best Commander games are the ones in which everyone is on the same page, whether that's a dramatic and intense cEDH game that's intended to end in just a few turns or the battlecruiser durdle-fest that's meant to take a while. To wit, "are you the type of person?" was poor communication, when the question was better put "what kind of deck are you playing?" I was there as SCG's guest to play with whomever was in the Command Zone, so even if the answer is "I'm going to do my best to combo you out Turn 1," then I would invite them to sit. I might try to convince them that the other folks at the table might not enjoy that, but in the end would accept whatever they wanted to play.
Thanks to everyone who offered constructive criticism; I'll do my best to take to heart what you had to say. For those of you who believe that I and/or the RC are out of touch, let's see what we can do to convince you otherwise.
For the long term health of the format, making changes needs to have purpose; the bigger the change, the greater the purpose.
I'm curious as to what your metrics are for considering someone a better choice. Take into account they have to be a better individual choice PLUS be better as part of the team. There are lots of people who might have been "as good," but as we say in the announcement, there are a far more of them than we have room for. What do you do when you have 25 or 50 equally-qualified candidates for something and only 5-7 spots?
You might be burying the lead there.
I agree with MRHBlue's assessment.
To be clear, I do not believe there is a "right" way to play Commander. Sure, I have my preferences (which I freely share), and there's a way that the RC promotes (ditto), but we recognize that the player base is far too large for one size to fit all; in fact, trying to make Commander all things to all players is a fool's errand.
One of the secondary messages of the piece was that good communication is the key to our interactions, especially in unknown environments. The best Commander games are the ones in which everyone is on the same page, whether that's a dramatic and intense cEDH game that's intended to end in just a few turns or the battlecruiser durdle-fest that's meant to take a while. To wit, "are you the type of person?" was poor communication, when the question was better put "what kind of deck are you playing?" I was there as SCG's guest to play with whomever was in the Command Zone, so even if the answer is "I'm going to do my best to combo you out Turn 1," then I would invite them to sit. I might try to convince them that the other folks at the table might not enjoy that, but in the end would accept whatever they wanted to play.
Thanks to everyone who offered constructive criticism; I'll do my best to take to heart what you had to say. For those of you who believe that I and/or the RC are out of touch, let's see what we can do to convince you otherwise.