Commander: Revised Edition

[Dudecore]

I've done a lot of research, looked a lot of places and heard nearly every complaint there is. The fact remains that Commander as a format isn't appealing to nearly as many people as has been expected. One could chalk that up to a vocal minority, as is mostly the case with anything in today's world. But it is not difficult to realize that Commander, while eminently awesome, could use some adjustments. The official commander group says "make house rules", players say "make your own format" and others say "commander is healthy". The fact remains that the commander banned list and rules are based upon a casual format called EDH. In an effort to change some of the problems plaguing the format (unless you think it works as people insist it always does.) I'm here to break new ground on a new format tentatively titled "Commander: Revised Edition".


UPDATE: Wizard's has officially sanctioned Commander for FNM. They also have an interesting caveat called "Create a Format". I can think of none better then printing up this list right here and seeing if anyone at FNM is interested in playing Commander: Revised Edition.

Step 1. Fix the color identity rules.
1. A card's colour identity is its colour plus the colour of any mana symbols in the card's rules text. A card's colour identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects. The Commander's colour identity restricts what cards may appear in the deck.

2. A deck may not generate mana outside its colours. If an effect would generate mana of an illegal colour, it generates colourless mana instead.

Why do you need the first rule with the second one in the game? You want to stop people from playing cards with other colored mana symbols on them—but they won't be able to produce the color to use them anyway. A deck SHOULD be allowed to play Hybrid cards because they are not gold cards. Decks SHOULD be allowed to play {Obelisk of Alara} for only the abilities they can pay for, because it's a card who's other abilities they cannot utilize. If you want to use {Ancient Grudge} in your mono-red deck, by all means, but you won't be able to pay its flashback cost.

Step 2. Ban cards unhealthy for the format, not for the casual "fun" of game.
Fun is extremely subjective concept. What may be fun for some players may not be for others. Thus is life, and so it goes with Magic. The very idea of a casual format is counter-intuitive to begin with. You simply cannot ban enough cards to keep the game still "fun". Players come in all shapes and sizes, all looking to experience different things from their games. Magic has always had a kitchen table for this reason. There was never a reason to write "make house rules" for a casual format, because it is implicit. Any banned list for a format should include cards that unhealthy for the format, degenerative, or just down right break the format. You can then sit with your friends and decide what isn't "fun" with your house rules. Imagine that Wizards banned {Acidic Slime} when it was standard legal because it wasn't "fun" to have lands blown up. {Worldfire} is one of those cards for Commander. You can say what you want "just counter it", but it is a symmetrical spell that essentially defeats the purpose of playing the game. There are ways to cheat it out early, ways to make it uncounterable and ways freeze the entire table until it finally comes out. The format should not become Vintage/Legacy where Force of Will is required for every single deck, to keep degenerative cards honest. {Trade Secrets} is not that card. Just because players conspire together to draw a bunch of cards defeats the purpose of a casual "fun" game, not the format. The only thing a rules committee can actually be in control of is banning format breaking cards, not dictating the amount of "fun" people can have.

Step 3. The Nephilim are now playable Commanders.
    {Yore-Tiller Nephilim}
    {Glint-Eye Nephilim}
    {Dune-Brood Nephilim}
    {Ink-Treader Nephilim}
    {Witch-Maw Nephilim}

Step 4. Lower the life total to 30.
This may be the more controversial rules change I will be introduction here, it's also one I believe in very much. For those play Standard or other formats know that 20 life games are rarely that quick. That is just in a 1v1 environment. Now you double the life total and add 2 other players, it lengthens games, significantly. The original reason for having 40 life was to presumably allow for MANY turns of players ramping up for an explosive finish. The format as it stands now does none of those things (unless its strictly casual). Lets look at some other positives:

•Cards that care about how much life you have ({Serra Ascendant}) function better as a result (if you've taken any damage whatsoever before it is dropped).
•It lowers the inevitability some decks require to combo to a finish. If it takes at least 5 rounds away from someone hoping to Entwine {Tooth and Nail}
•Red, which deals a lot with glass cannon decks and direct damage can make otherwise less useful cards like {Searing Spear}into somewhat of a weapon. It now deals 1/10th of your total life damage to someone. Also global spells like {Earthquake} with the right amount of damage can be downright devastating.
•Forces combo/control decks to interact earlier in the opening rounds, because aggressive creature strategies are viable.
•Makes shocklands, fetchlands, pay life spells, {Dark Confidant}, {Phyrexian Arena} and other "use life as a resource" cards slightly more damaging as it now represents a larger amount of damage dealt.
•Lessens the amount of game times thus making a poor hand into more of a fighting chance.

Step 5. Change the Mulligan rules.
The Partial Paris mulligan is a colossal failure. It makes games completely degenerate. It makes mulliganing the correct decision 95% of the time, and it vastly favors combo decks by allowing them to dig for pieces without card disadvantage. An overwhelming amount of combo players prefer the Partial Paris for that exact reason. It also encourages poor deck building and less then optimal curves. A way to fix this is by either employing the standard Paris mulligan (7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1.) or playtesting an alternative:

British Mulligan
Because Commander games are long and usually not played in multi-game matches, the format uses a custom mulligan rule that allows some flexibility and reduces shuffling. This is also known as the two-shuffle mulligan.

•     1. In turn order, each player may take one free mulligan by shuffling his or her hand into his or her deck and drawing a new hand of seven cards.
  
•     2. Continuing in turn order, each player who did so may then take any number of "exile" mulligans, setting aside his or her hand face-down and drawing a new hand with one fewer card each time.
  
•     3. Once all players have kept opening hands, players shuffle all set aside cards into their decks.
  

[Dudecore]

TENTATIVE BANNED LIST
    {Ancestral Recall}
    {Balance}
    {Black Lotus}
    {Channel}
    {Emrakul, the Aeons Torn}
    {Fastbond}
    {Gifts Ungiven}
    {Grindstone} *Banned 7/15/14*
    {Hermit Druid}
    {Karakas}
    {Library of Alexandria}
    {Limited Resources}
    {Metalworker}
    {Mox Emerald}
    {Mox Jet}
    {Mox Pearl}
    {Mox Ruby}
    {Mox Sapphire}
    {Oath of Druids}
    {Painter's Servant} *Unbanned 7/15/14*
    {Panoptic Mirror}
    {Protean Hulk}
    {Shahrazad}
    {Sundering Titan}
    {Sway of the Stars}
    {Time Vault}
    {Time Walk}
    {Tinker}
    {Tolarian Academy}
    {Upheaval}
    {Vampiric Tutor}
    {Worldfire}
    {Yawgmoth's Bargain}

Cannot be used as a commander
    {Griselbrand}
    {Braids, Cabal Minion}
    {Erayo, Soratami Ascendant}
    {Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary}

Dexterity/Ante Cards
    {Amulet of Quoz}
    {Bronze Tablet}
    {Chaos Orb}
    {Contract from Below}
    {Darkpact}
    {Demonic Attorney}
    {Falling Star}
    {Jeweled Bird}
    {Rebirth}
    {Tempest Efreet}
    {Timmerian Fiends}

I would add that I'm up for debate about just about all of these ban choices. Some things like {Karakas} I would have considered unbanning, except it kind of breaks the format (as Commanders represent Legendary creatures) and with the new color-identity rules I'm proposing, it would essentially make it an auto-include in most decks.

[Dudecore]

The Commander format as it stands right now is also unsanctioned. That presents a few immediate problems:

How many truly broken decks do we not know about?
Because professional players and homebrewers alike have not been incentivized to break the format for monetary gain, some of the truest format breaking decks may not have revealed themselves. It is quite possible every broken combination has been thought up, but it is also likely a Draw-Go deck is somewhere under the surface. I would never underestimate the power levels of some decks that top teams could devise, and they currently have no reason to devote their full attention to breaking this format.

We do not have access to deck lists.
Which causes groups like us, and the official Commander RC, to be banning cards in a vacuum. Magic Online can be used to pull data from, but I am unaware of any such way to do so. Having access to experimental data can give us all the chances we need to know what we're dealing with. If we see certain cards routinely being played, it could be more then possible it represents those degenerative cards we're looking to stop.

Update: Top 8: Commander and MTGDecks.net sort of elevates slightly one of the long standing issues. It is based around 1v1, but does give a look at some of the formats most used cards. 

Prize support.
There is little to no incentive to play currently unless you are one of those casual players the format was designed for. No Pro Points, no DCI rankings, no player rewards. If anything, this new format is being designed to help push sanctioning. The current Commander RC insists on it being casual fun, it will not be sanctioned as long as the "social contract" is in place and harmless cards are banned, while degenerative ones are not. Again, this isn't to make the format competitive, it is to make it not casual. Designing a format catered to casual players is picking sides. Having a format any type of player can do any type of thing in is the goal.

Wizards/Independent groups lack cohesive resources
There is no overarching umbrella site that can make these things possible. But I believe there is a lot of money in it for someone who can put it all together. A Commander 2.0 website with deck lists, articles, cards for sale, and collected data from tournaments/MTGO (like MTGO-stats.com is for MTGO Standard) that puts certain archetype cards into a "package" based upon its frequency of appearance. Even an app that ties all of these things together. Magic has a multi-million dollar secondary market, and if someone had the resources to tie it all together into a cohesive package to help push a new format for sanctioning - they could be rich because of it.

[Munchlax]

The only issue I see here would be the life total thing. This is because the decks that are specifically made to deal the twenty one commander damage get a nerf because they just need a few more creatures to do the same thing. Also, EDH is supposed to be slower than other formats. The forty life is there so people can play the more expensive CMC cards in their decks. Everything else looks great

[Gocougs509]

The only issue I see here would be the life total thing. This is because the decks that are specifically made to deal the twenty one commander damage get a nerf because they just need a few more creatures to do the same thing. Also, EDH is supposed to be slower than other formats. The forty life is there so people can play the more expensive CMC cards in their decks. Everything else looks great

Agreed. There are definitely a lot of cards that need to be banned. I think that any card that says "take an extra turn" should be banned EXCEPT {temporal mastery}, because the exile clause keeps it fair.

[Dudecore]

The only issue I see here would be the life total thing. This is because the decks that are specifically made to deal the twenty one commander damage get a nerf because they just need a few more creatures to do the same thing. Also, EDH is supposed to be slower than other formats. The forty life is there so people can play the more expensive CMC cards in their decks. Everything else looks great

I don't think it speeds the format up that much, in fact it might not even change. Playing EDH as my main format, I routinely see players give up 8-10 life to shocks, fetches, anything they can trade life for. Those things in particular hit harder with less life. I believe the benefits outweigh the cons. It creates situations where hyper aggressive strategies can be punishing, or be punished by going all-in.

I know the idea is to have more turns so we can see the big CMC creatures and spells, but the format actually functions better with lower life, and might not even notice a difference. We really don't loss too many turns by lowering the life, because most players are too eager to give away the added life advantage to speed the games up.

Also, I haven't articulated it properly, but I think Commander damage is among the most stupid ideas in the history of gaming. It sets up a seperate, confusing set of memory issues. You could end up in a scenario where you're tracking up to 4 different life totals. It is rules baggage that I'm sure we can come up with a better solution to.

[Condor-Wingman]

Interesting proposals to consider. Maybe play test this on a online tournament client to better evaluate the impact of certain cards and combos for banning/unbanning.

[LinkCelestrial]

The only issue I see here would be the life total thing. This is because the decks that are specifically made to deal the twenty one commander damage get a nerf because they just need a few more creatures to do the same thing. Also, EDH is supposed to be slower than other formats. The forty life is there so people can play the more expensive CMC cards in their decks. Everything else looks great

I don't think it speeds the format up that much, in fact it might not even change. Playing EDH as my main format, I routinely see players give up 8-10 life to shocks, fetches, anything they can trade life for. Those things in particular hit harder with less life. I believe the benefits outweigh the cons. It creates situations where hyper aggressive strategies can be punishing, or be punished by going all-in.

I know the idea is to have more turns so we can see the big CMC creatures and spells, but the format actually functions better with lower life, and might not even notice a difference. We really don't loss too many turns by lowering the life, because most players are too eager to give away the added life advantage to speed the games up.

Also, I haven't articulated it properly, but I think Commander damage is among the most stupid ideas in the history of gaming. It sets up a seperate, confusing set of memory issues. You could end up in a scenario where you're tracking up to 4 different life totals. It is rules baggage that I'm sure we can come up with a better solution to.

I'm actually a huge fan of commander damage. It's keeps life gain decks from being unbeatable (in multi extort is almost impossible to beat).

That being said I was thinking of some sort of life cap. With maybe Commanders lower maximum life?

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

What if you put a life cap? It would eliminate the memory issues of commander damage while also eliminating the issues of dumb infinite life combos. You could actually make a rule saying all infinite combos top off at 100 or so, because you can't actually go infinite anyways (you still have to name a number).

[MuggyWuggy]

But its hilarious when you can let their creatures by and take 123,638 points of damage & live

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

But its hilarious when you can let their creatures by and take 123,638 points of damage & live

True....and making infinite mana, then stealing the entire board with {Memnarch} is just too fun.

[Remillo]

I like the ideas, here, and I think it's worth at least testing.  As someone that has been playing much more proactive, aggressive decks, a lower starting life would be amazing.  However, after brief discussion with my own group, we feel that maybe 30 is too low.  Sure, it punishes more 'greedy' decks that push the idea of life as a resource, but being able to push it beyond reasonable levels is part of the format's character.  As it stands, any sort of aggro deck needs a combo element to be able to keep up with reduce three opponents from 40 to 0.  90 is a much lower target number than 120, and 60 is much lower than that.  Testing will need to be done to find the right spot.  We should find a good number where aggressive decks aren't overly punishing, but control and combo don't HAVE to play Oloro to survive long enough to do their thing.

As for your proposed ban list, I noticed that Painter's Servant} is still on there.  While it insta-wins when combined with two different cards ({Iona}, {Grindstone}), I don't feel like it should be banned at all.  The card, by itself, has a really cool ability and sweet applications outside its combos, whereas {Grindstone} is only ever played in the combo.  Iona?  No one likes playing against an Iona anyway.  Sure, it's a huge, 9-drop Angel will an incredibly huge effect, but there are so many ways to cheat it in early to shut people out, even without painter.  I propose trying unbanning Painter and Banning Iona and/or Grindstone.  You'll see Iona on her own, but Stone won't see play outside the combo.  Painter has a really cool effect that can do cool things, if only it were given the chance.

Also, I noticed {Vampiric Tutor} is up there.  Can I hear your reasoning?

[LinkCelestrial]

{Iona, Shield of Emeria} should be banned. I hate that card with a burning passion. Anything that makes it impossible for somebody to win should be banned. I'd rather be combo'd to death then somebody pays 9 mana and I'm locked down. And don't say you should have an answer for that. Two of my Commander decks are mono coloured and the other two would be hard pressed to find removal with ~50% of the deck being unplayable. Nevermind that it's on a 7/7 frame. I think it goes against the spirit of Commander in so many ways.

[Dudecore]

I like the ideas, here, and I think it's worth at least testing.  As someone that has been playing much more proactive, aggressive decks, a lower starting life would be amazing.  However, after brief discussion with my own group, we feel that maybe 30 is too low.  Sure, it punishes more 'greedy' decks that push the idea of life as a resource, but being able to push it beyond reasonable levels is part of the format's character.  As it stands, any sort of aggro deck needs a combo element to be able to keep up with reduce three opponents from 40 to 0.  90 is a much lower target number than 120, and 60 is much lower than that.  Testing will need to be done to find the right spot.  We should find a good number where aggressive decks aren't overly punishing, but control and combo don't HAVE to play Oloro to survive long enough to do their thing.

As for your proposed ban list, I noticed that Painter's Servant} is still on there.  While it insta-wins when combined with two different cards ({Iona}, {Grindstone}), I don't feel like it should be banned at all.  The card, by itself, has a really cool ability and sweet applications outside its combos, whereas {Grindstone} is only ever played in the combo.  Iona?  No one likes playing against an Iona anyway.  Sure, it's a huge, 9-drop Angel will an incredibly huge effect, but there are so many ways to cheat it in early to shut people out, even without painter.  I propose trying unbanning Painter and Banning Iona and/or Grindstone.  You'll see Iona on her own, but Stone won't see play outside the combo.  Painter has a really cool effect that can do cool things, if only it were given the chance.

Also, I noticed {Vampiric Tutor} is up there.  Can I hear your reasoning?

30 life does some other things that I like, and my playgroup and I have been doing it for some time. All these proposed rules changes are from our play tests. It is not drastically different IMO, combo decks do have to interact more in early games. Some strategies suffer (mill) and others get better (midrange aggro, weenies). All and all, it makes deck building DIFFERENT, not exactly better or worse. I noticed when we first voted to adopt my proposed rule changes that games went quicker because the first 5 or so turns that are usually spent throwing down shocklands and building up mana were condensed. In other words, the "strategy" of hiding behind a wall of health is made more immediate. I would really like some more participation in playtesting.

{Painter's Servant} is because of the 2 card combo with {Grindstone} and being colorless, any deck has access to it cheaply. It was based off the 1v1 banned list. 1v1 is a much different game, understandable, but it's also competitive. If they banned it for degenerative game play we would be wise to observe it. Other cards they've banned for 1v1 issues, I've ignored those. Also, the Vintage banned list is somewhat intact.

{Vampiric Tutor} is mostly to do with the cost, speed and the fact you do not have to reveal the card. It can basically dial-a-combo. {Demonic Tutor} is slower, while it may still break the game in half. I'm not attached to any of the preliminary bannings, they're a jumping off point for a conversation.

[Dudecore]

What if you put a life cap? It would eliminate the memory issues of commander damage while also eliminating the issues of dumb infinite life combos. You could actually make a rule saying all infinite combos top off at 100 or so, because you can't actually go infinite anyways (you still have to name a number).

I don't hate this idea. I don't enjoy capping things players enjoy doing. Writing an Actuarial table for each and every commander that hits you is something players do not enjoy doing. It would be the only format where there is a life cap, brave new territory. I wish there were a way to tackle the problem in a more cleaver way that didn't require hard capping. If we're going to cap life, why not mana or cards? I'm trying to justify why life would be the cap.