So I have two different EDH decks that, for various reasons, run 100% basics (Karametra, God of Harvests and Wort, the Raidmother) - these would have been fun to add to one of those decks, but not for these prices. Then again, that goes for pretty much all secret lairs.
I'd be curious to know what those reasons are. One of my main commanders is Karametra.
People had been complaining for years that the commander deck themes were starting to lose focus, with a fair amount of pessimism that WotC was running out of novel design space. Tying theme to the release of accompanying sets has proven to be both an elegant and organic solution, if not an inevitable one.
My point was that the set associated Commander decks should not be set associated. For a deck to be set associated, it must mostly have cards drawn from the set, is themed after set, or is plane neutral. For a card to be themed from the set or is plane neutral, the name must not reference anything from any other plane, and the art must not feature anything from any other plane. If a deck has basic lands from a different plane, then those lands are not themed from the set or is plane neutral.
I picked 90 out of 100 cards because you are more likely to draw the cards themed from the set than you are not, and I want that likelihood to be very high, and I picked 90 out of 100 to argue that Commander decks should not be set associated.
I honestly don't judge you for wanting this, but at the same time it's not a very realistic expectation.
Quote from signofzeta »
Commander is an eternal format. I do not see a point in tying it to the newest sets. It would make just as much sense to have the Strixhaven Commander decks be released a decade from now as it is to be released this year. I'd rather have it so that the set associated precons are your 60 card regular (I don't use the term standard because you would assume standard competitive) decks while the Commander decks, which don't have to be tied to a set, and is not branded to be set associated, has a loose theme around a plane we visited before. The way WOTC are doing things now, the Commander decks are guaranteed to have your commander be from the newest sets.
Not only have I lost my precious Theme Decks and Intro Packs, although I do wish that the power levels and complexities of those decks were a bit higher, we will never ever get to see the main Commander in Commander Decks from planes that we have visited before, but won't re-visit in a Standard set.
It would not make sense, from a marketing a point of view, to do that at all. I don't approve of every decision that Wizards makes in the pursuit of profit, but I still want them to stay in business. That said, they will certainly go back to revising characters from previous planes.
Quote from signofzeta »
It's not that I dislike the Commander format. It's more like, in terms of precons this year and possibly going forward, why is almost everything Commander? Commander this, Commander that. During the years where we only got the one Commander release with the 5, sometimes 4, decks, I mentioned that there should be two of these releases per year. I didn't mean it for them to tie the Commander decks to the Standard sets. It used to be that you only got 5 Commander decks per year while every other precon was 60 card. Now the balance of power has switched. We get 4 (9 if there is a Core set that year) 60 card decks while everything else is Commander.
Because it's the year of commander! It only started just last May, with the release of Ikoria. Would you be less upset to know that it should now effectively be over?
Well, it's certainly easier to argue about issues that arise "if I asked" than actually asking.
Sure. Why give someone with a penchant for making up arbitrary definitions the opportunity to do more of the same, though? That's just creating unnecessary work for myself in the long run, and doesn't actually add anything to the conversation.
Quote from ZasZ234 »
I think it's a particularly ungenerous interpretation to say they are "worried about lands" (as opposed to "taking them into account for total deck size"), but even then... Nykthos!
I don't. One of the tricks to, erm, reading comprehension is being able to size up a writer's biases. I find it difficult to believe the person has much experience with commander, given their stance on the format and how they've framed their argument. Why, then, should I assume they're not including lands to prove a point when you yourself had to completely twist that same argument on its head to make it sound even remotely plausible? Like I said, it just doesn't square, especially within the broader context of what's actually being asked for here. 90 cards was a poor point of reference if we aren't talking about a single commander deck, and an even poorer one if we are. The fact that I chose to approach it from both angles, across multiple posts, is amply generous so far as I'm concerned.
Quote from ZasZ234 »
You make certainly some ungenerous assumptions yourself with regard to the numbers. How good-faith can your argument be, if you are clearly aware of how many lands are going to be in those decks (many of which will be basic lands), yet you state
if we use your numbers, just 2 decks would be 180 cards out of less than 300 for an entire set.
as if those are 180 unique cardnames (because that's what the "less than 300" refers to, right?)? And how can you use a pool of "less than 300" cards (so even ignoring that "plane neutral" could include cards like Fireball if not reprinted in the set) if you also point out ~80 commander-deck-specific cards (81, one of them IIRC appearing in all decks) that were created for the setting beyond the draft booster cards.
We're not using my numbers, we're using theirs. The point, which I feel you missed, is that the argument doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, either by normal metrics (x/65) or the ones I've been given (90/99). Extending the sample size into multiple decks only makes it worse, not better. If you care to offer up better metrics in defense of someone else's argument, I'm all ears.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure why 90 was used to begin with, since it doesn't serve the original point about theme or intro decks. If they meant 90% instead, they already had an opportunity to clarify.
Quote from ZasZ234 »
You may complain about "generous assumptions", but here is why I make them: If someone's position is indefensible under generous assumptions, it is refuted. If you have to interpret statements in the worst possible way and fudge the numbers, if you weren't even interested enough to know where the goalposts were, then you maybe aren't actually making a good faith effort to understand the position enough to maybe agree with it. Not defining a goal post gives you as much leeway to move them around as the other side.
I sense that maybe we're talking past each other; I'm the one being forced to make generous assumptions here, so that we (zeta and I) can share a debate on the same level as one another. Complaining really doesn't enter into it. Here is why, in good faith, I chose to make such assumptions: if someone's argument is so deliberately nebulous that they can't be pinned down in objective, measurable terms, there is nothing defensible to refute in the first place. It feels as though the alternatives I'm left with are to dismiss the conversation out of hand, or make somebody else's points for them.
Indeed! A skilled reader can often learn as much from what hasn't been said as they can what has. In this particular case, it would take some very generous assumptions to make a reasonable case out of what was expressly stated. I think I addressed part of that, at least, in the sentences you didn't quote; why would a person so thoroughly preoccupied with theme be worried about the lands in a 100 card deck, unless they were either choosing arbitrary thresholds for what should be in that deck, or had no experience with the format at all? It just doesn't square, and I have my concerns about how much further the goalposts would shift if I asked for an objective measure of how many of those 90 cards could be from "plane neutral" sets, and have the deck still qualify as a novel product. Or what qualifies as plane neutral, for that matter.
A reasonable person might think these Strixhaven decks are oozing with both theme and flavor, and I may or may not happen to be one of them.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you meant across all decks, since 90 in a single deck would be a practical impossibility - even for those other sets. Any person who's ever built a commander deck knows that only ~65 of them are non-land cards, but even if we use your numbers, just 2 decks would be 180 cards out of less than 300 for an entire set. It would be foolish, from a manufacturer perspective, to sell a product that effectively represents half of full playset, and mechanically they would play like the world's most terrible sealed pool. If that's really what you're interested in, you can do the exact same thing by purchasing $15 worth of booster packs. Problem solved!
Interesting fact: on the inside packaging of the new commander decks, there's a marketing blurb for Magic's various formats, among them standard, booster draft, and commander. No mention of 'regular' anything, though.
Draft still use the regular gameplay rules of magic though. I played with those 40 card theme decks from old core sets, and I still view it as regular magic.
I liked the sports analogies better; the constantly shifting goalposts made a lot more sense, in a meta sort of way.
Over half of a given player's current life total implies there is no commander damage memory, nothing to be tracked between phases and rounds; if your commander can deal just over half whatever a player's life total is at that moment, that player loses the game. At 40 life, that's 21 damage. Anything short of that means you would have to deal half of their life total during your next combat phase, even if you managed to squeeze in 20 the turn before. That also means it's harder when they have more life, but scales as the game goes on and everybody else gets their hits in. At 30 life, you need to do 16 in a single combat phase, at 20 you need to do 11, etc. In theory, this means you could actually win with commander damage without building a deck around it, and gives you a reason to risk spending mana in the double digits after your commander tax has gone up 3 or more times. For existing commander damage strategies, it gives you the ability to pull off a late game win against players you hadn't even swung at yet, without nearly as much setup.
It's.... theoretical, and needs some better wording for the actual rule to be intuitive and not broken, but I think it could work. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to swing in for a win after setting my commander up by dealing non-combat damage beforehand, or piggy backing off of what the other players at the table have been doing all game. Instead, for commander damage to have any meaningful impact right now you need to pull off a successful voltron strategy, which is easily disrupted and has to work against multiple players over the course of several turns.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad rule. It means that even relatively vanilla legends can be useful beyond just deck flavor.
This is more or less what I meant. It doesn't take anything away from the game by existing, apart from maybe being a chore to track, and still gives you some marginal benefit should you need it. Whether it's competitive or not won't stop the occasional person from dawdling with infinite life gain.
The only real reason the number 21 was chosen was simply because the original elder dragons when commander started were all 7/7, so exactly 3 attacks from them, which are 21, would kill the player. The origin of this rule is simply for very narrow flavor reasons, than for gameplay reasons.
Is that true? Seems far more arbitrary than just "over half / majority of a given player's starting life total." Personally, I'd like to see them change commander damage to "over half of a given player's current life total."
I'd be curious to know what those reasons are. One of my main commanders is Karametra.
I honestly don't judge you for wanting this, but at the same time it's not a very realistic expectation.
It would not make sense, from a marketing a point of view, to do that at all. I don't approve of every decision that Wizards makes in the pursuit of profit, but I still want them to stay in business. That said, they will certainly go back to revising characters from previous planes.
Because it's the year of commander! It only started just last May, with the release of Ikoria. Would you be less upset to know that it should now effectively be over?
Sure. Why give someone with a penchant for making up arbitrary definitions the opportunity to do more of the same, though? That's just creating unnecessary work for myself in the long run, and doesn't actually add anything to the conversation.
I don't. One of the tricks to, erm, reading comprehension is being able to size up a writer's biases. I find it difficult to believe the person has much experience with commander, given their stance on the format and how they've framed their argument. Why, then, should I assume they're not including lands to prove a point when you yourself had to completely twist that same argument on its head to make it sound even remotely plausible? Like I said, it just doesn't square, especially within the broader context of what's actually being asked for here. 90 cards was a poor point of reference if we aren't talking about a single commander deck, and an even poorer one if we are. The fact that I chose to approach it from both angles, across multiple posts, is amply generous so far as I'm concerned.
We're not using my numbers, we're using theirs. The point, which I feel you missed, is that the argument doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, either by normal metrics (x/65) or the ones I've been given (90/99). Extending the sample size into multiple decks only makes it worse, not better. If you care to offer up better metrics in defense of someone else's argument, I'm all ears.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure why 90 was used to begin with, since it doesn't serve the original point about theme or intro decks. If they meant 90% instead, they already had an opportunity to clarify.
I sense that maybe we're talking past each other; I'm the one being forced to make generous assumptions here, so that we (zeta and I) can share a debate on the same level as one another. Complaining really doesn't enter into it. Here is why, in good faith, I chose to make such assumptions: if someone's argument is so deliberately nebulous that they can't be pinned down in objective, measurable terms, there is nothing defensible to refute in the first place. It feels as though the alternatives I'm left with are to dismiss the conversation out of hand, or make somebody else's points for them.
A reasonable person might think these Strixhaven decks are oozing with both theme and flavor, and I may or may not happen to be one of them.
Interesting fact: on the inside packaging of the new commander decks, there's a marketing blurb for Magic's various formats, among them standard, booster draft, and commander. No mention of 'regular' anything, though.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/formats?redirect-formats=
There are over 80 new cards in Strixhaven Commander / 2021.
I liked the sports analogies better; the constantly shifting goalposts made a lot more sense, in a meta sort of way.
Would you like to play Magic on TTS with me?
It's.... theoretical, and needs some better wording for the actual rule to be intuitive and not broken, but I think it could work. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to swing in for a win after setting my commander up by dealing non-combat damage beforehand, or piggy backing off of what the other players at the table have been doing all game. Instead, for commander damage to have any meaningful impact right now you need to pull off a successful voltron strategy, which is easily disrupted and has to work against multiple players over the course of several turns.
This is more or less what I meant. It doesn't take anything away from the game by existing, apart from maybe being a chore to track, and still gives you some marginal benefit should you need it. Whether it's competitive or not won't stop the occasional person from dawdling with infinite life gain.
Is that true? Seems far more arbitrary than just "over half / majority of a given player's starting life total." Personally, I'd like to see them change commander damage to "over half of a given player's current life total."