commandermanifesto

[commandermanifesto]

Hi, I’m listening to your guest appearance on the Commander Theory podcast. It is my understanding that you think changing the hybrid mana rule would make the rules less complex just due to the amount of official rules it would take. As someone who teaches a lot of new people how to play, it’s very easy to explain that “all the colored mana symbols on cards in your deck must also be present on your commander.” Changing the hybrid rule would make this a much more complicated explanation, no?

Hello, I just got this message. I know it's been a few months, so my apologies for the delay. Thank you for the question! Whether or not the rule is harder to teach depends on what the rule changes to. There are alternative rules that could be more or less intuitive. I think the important thing to bear in mind in this conversation is that something might be easier but conform to our expectations less. We have settled expectations on how hybrid works, so we're predisposed to think it is clear or intuitive. The proposed change from the episode of Commander Theory is, to my mind, easier to understand because it is more brief and it references fewer cards in your library. For those who have not listened to the episode, (1) Commander Theory is well worth your listen and (2) the change we examined was to replace the entire color identity rule with “If you would add a mana of a color not in your commanders’ color identity, you produce no mana instead. Your commanders’ color identity include your commanders’ colors plus any color featured in a mana symbol present on your commanders.” You characterize the current system as asking the question, "does the symbol match a symbol on your commander?" That's a very clean pitch, but it is inaccurate characterization of the rule. Characteristic defining abilities, colors on the back of DFCs, phyrexian mana symbols, and hybrid symbols referring back to non-hybrid commanders each violate this seemingly simple explanation, or else beg further inquiry. Then, reminder text cuts back in the other direction (because of a relatively arcane rule, I would argue).   There are lots of alternative rules one could use, but a mana production rule would just take the color ID color out of "is this deck legal or not?" territory and places it in "will this deck function or not?" territory. I'd argue this conforms better to expectations imported from other formats, where you can build a deck that uses cards of one color to leverage uncast cards from another. Intuitions on this also depend on the specifics of how the player learned to play. Most limited and constructed environments make it clear that hybrid cards are either color. Commander is the exception to that rule. My experience as someone who has taught several players to play Magic, as well, has been that the transition to Commander typically requires answering a suite of questions about deck construction. It isn't too complex, but there's certainly space for it to be less complex. If someone is being taught using Commander, they will have whatever expectations they are taught, so the rule can be fairly arbitrary before anyone’s expectations are violated.

[commandermanifesto]

Commander Manifesto is a Guest on the Commander Theory Podcast

I’d like to give a big thank you to the wonderful and enterprising minds over at Commander Theory for having me on the latest episode of their podcast! It was a privilege to hear Nick and Zak apply their expertise to a theoretical shake-up to the format.

You can find Commander Theory at https://commandertheory.com/; the episode can be found at https://open.spotify.com/episode/1eH1agLORZDn9oIddkWUa5

[commandermanifesto]

Format “Diversity”: Why is it Good…and What is It?

Wizards of the Coast, the Rules Committee, and a majority of Commander players would be quick to agree that “diversity”  (or “variance”, should one prefer) is important to the health of a constructed format. In the March 9, 2020 banning announcements, Wizards of the Coast stated that several cards had been suspended from Historic for, among other things, “reducing diversity”. (1) Once Upon a Time led to “less divergent gameplay paths” in Modern, earning it a spot on that format’s banlist. (1) The Pioneer announcement extolled the diversity seen in the top-performing decks. (1) The announcement went on to assess the banworthiness of a prevalent combo but decided that the number of different shells the combo was seeing play in meant that games were ending in a variety of ways, which meant Wizards’ desired level of diversity was maintained. (1) This diversity consideration is not one that is new, nor is it a topic exclusively in conversation with banning decisions; this is topic that Magic designers and pundits concern themselves with, too. (2)

The Rules Committee is also concerned with “diversity” in the format, although they have not included that exact language in their recent banning announcements. Instead, the term is relegated to the “Frequently Asked Questions” page on the Rules Committee’s website, where a decrease in deck diversity is cited to justify the current hybrid mana rules and the current rules regarding planeswalker commanders. (3) On the “Philosophy of Commander” page, the Rules Committee states that the format promotes inter-game variance and a variety of play styles. (4) They go on to list a number of criteria which guide banning decisions; the final item on that list: cards which “lead to repetitive game play”. (4)

Clearly, those in a position in a position of stewardship are thinking about format diversity. Intuitively, most of us probably are, too. There is something exciting about playing across from a commander you have never seen in action, and something that dampens the spirits when you just can’t seem to keep Kenrith, the Returned King goodstuff out of your pods. But what is diversity, exactly? There are a few definitions that make sense, and it is some combination of those definitions that creates the alchemy that we all agree we are seeking in a game of Commander.

First, “diversity” can be expressed as the number of viable archetypes circulating in the format. Looking at Standard, one might say Fires of Invention is one viable archetype, Elementals is a second, and so on. The greater the list of decks, the more diverse the format.

In Commander, this viable archetypes model is open to further refinement. On the one hand, one could merely distinguish between common strategies, with Aristocrats counting as one archetype, Voltron as a second, and so on. (5) Under this version of the model, Zurgo Helmsmasher and Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest would not count as distinct viable archetypes.

Of course, my expectation is that many Commander players would distinguish Zurgo and Shu Yun as distinct archetypes. The mass land and creature destruction that work so well in Zurgo are rejected in Shu Yun, where they are at cross-purposes with your mana-intensive objectives. Likewise, the combat tricks that allow Shu Yun to deliver massive strikes are far less relevant to Zurgo, who lacks prowess and double strike. As such, a Commander player might more readily accept a viable archetype tally that counted each legal commander as an archetype unto itself, excluding those commanders who are simply without meaningful direction (and potentially counting twice or more those commanders to whom a variety of strategies are available). Because it more closely tracks the intuition of most Commander players, I will adopt this model of viable archetype diversity in my discussions going forward.

The Rules Committee gives some small nods to a viable archetype model of diversity. When they extoll the “variety of playstyles” offered by the format, they are most likely referring to a measurement rooted in archetypes. (4)

Alternatively, diversity can be viewed on a per-card basis. Put another way, one can assess how many distinct cards are having an effect on the format or, conversely, how strongly the presence of dominant cards is felt. It is hard to find conversations surrounding the former concept, since a high number of distinct cards seeing use is generally an indicator of format health; the latter is another matter entirely. Banning is often precipitated by the offending card seeing success in a disproportionate number of high-performing decks. (6) Put another way, ubiquity is an indicator of banworthiness. As a card’s individual power propels it to preeminence, the cards that synergize with the outlier are lifted by the rising tide. The net result is a format that forces the player into playing one or more “auto-includes” and expels the elements in the format that are incompatible with the outlier.

Per-card diversity is the diversity metric the Rules Committee seems to be most concerned with. In their FAQ on planeswalker commanders, the Rules Committee aptly points out that planeswalkers cannot be interacted with by many spells that affect creatures. (3) If planeswalker commanders were the norm rather than the exception, they continue, the answers people default to during deck construction would skew toward removal which affects creatures or planeswalkers—a much smaller family of cards than creature removal generally. (3) The net effect: a decrease in the diversity seen in removal packages.

A similar, albeit less fleshed-out argument can be seen in the hybrid mana FAQ. The color identity of hybrid mana spells was intentionally made more stringent than mono-colored counterparts in order “to restrict the card pool and encourage diversity in deckbuilding.” (3) A change in the rule, they argue, would decrease deck diversity. (3) This can really only be taken to mean that hybrid cards would be overrepresented when compared to their peers—that is, that diversity would decrease on a per-card basis. This idea that color should serve as a restriction, which will in turn add variance, is echoed in their discussion of deckbuilding generally, as well. (4)

A format might also be diverse from a gameplay perspective, offering a different experience from game to game and match to match. Commander naturally thrives by this metric, with a larger deck and a singleton restriction meaning that a single deck can behave very differently form one game to the next. This kind of “inter-game variance” is called out explicitly as desirable by the Rules Committee. (4) The adoption of tutors lowers this kind of diversity, as tutors make any deck more consistent. Gameplay diversity is naturally connected to per-card diversity, as well: when a card is played in many decks, it is likely to affect a larger number of your games. As per-card diversity decreases, so too does gameplay diversity.

Finally, a format might be diverse in some absolute sense. Absolute diversity might be expressed as the number of arrangements of cards that can constitute a legal deck in a given format. Less flippantly, it might be defined as the number of arrangements of cards that constitute an effective deck. Bannings decrease absolute diversity, since every combination of cards which included the banned card ceases to exist once the ban occurs. The absolute diversity of Commander is incomprehensively massive and increases with every Magic release, but the Rules Committee nevertheless appears concerned with its reduction. In their discussion of banning criteria, the Rules Committee states that they are conservative with their management of the banlist, since a banning can disrupt the emotional attachment Commander players have with their personalized decks and the cards within them. (4)

With these four diversity frameworks laid out, there are a few points that come to the surface. First, none of these frameworks is fully adequate to encompass the monolith of format diversity. Second, viable archetype and absolute diversity naturally rise over time. Third, per-card diversity is shaped by outliers in power level, which is not a feature native to the viable archetype and absolute models. Fourth, these models of diversity are in tension, because a single powerful card might propel multiple archetypes to success, yet a single card becoming too powerful will compel a banning, which in turn would decrease absolute diversity while raising gameplay diversity. Fifth, whatever blend of these concepts the Rules Committee is employing, it leans most heavily on per-card diversity as its preferred indicator of format health.

I do not believe per-card diversity should be of paramount concern, but I do believe it is important. It has a direct correlation with gameplay diversity, which is an explicit and laudable goal of the format. Nevertheless, one must recognize that there are certain pressure points, certain exceptional categories of cards, where a simple mechanical need means that per-card diversity must cease to be a concern. One of these pressure points is mana development. Banning the means to advance one’s mana base is a step that has occurred for only the most extreme outliers (namely Fastbond). The poster child for overrepresentation, Sol Ring, is so tied to the identity of the Commander format that its ban seems remote to the point of impossibility. (7) This is excused because it is viewed as integral to mana development in a format known for the viability of higher CMC strategies. To go one step further, the idea that one or more Shocklands would ever be banned, regardless of their overrepresentation, approaches the farcical. (8) To play Magic, you need mana, and to make mana, you need lands and mana rocks. The best ones will be popular, and we all just accept that.

Another exceptional category is removal. Price notwithstanding, when comparing two removal options, the option presenting the most utility for the lowest cost will always beat the competition for a spot in the ninety-nine. (9) This is why the answers at the crossroads of efficiency and availability—Swords to Plowshares, Counterspell, Beast Within, etc.—are so prevalent. (9) That prevalence does not generate any controversy (excepting, perhaps, Cyclonic Rift, which sees enormous adoption despite its high dollar value).

The last exceptional category is tutors. The number of tutors in Magic is fairly limited, especially once we move beyond those available to Black and Green. The few that do exist outside those colors are coveted because of their uniqueness, and the important role they fill in creating a predictable play experience. (10) While this predictable play experience is at cross purposes with the inter-game variance the Rules Committee seeks to foster, it is nevertheless desirable to players, regardless of the homogeneity it creates in deckbuilding.

There may be other exceptional categories, as well—draw engines, win conditions, and so on—but those are subject to debate to a degree I am simply not comfortable with at this juncture. As such I will move forward with these exceptions in mind, and I invite you to understand the “three per-card diversity exceptions” as including any “must-runs” of the format, if that is your preference.

If per-card diversity is so riddled with exceptions, I propose a working definition of diversity that leans on it a little less and leans on viable archetype, gameplay, and absolute diversity a little more. In my mind, the hallmark of diversity in Commander comes down to archetype viability per card. In other words, Commander is emphasizing its flavor, promoting a variety of play styles, and creating the strongest bond between player and deck when we maximize the number of cards with a home in at least one viable archetype. The more cards the format finds useful from the history of Magic, the closer we get to absolute diversity—and the closer we get to letting everyone play with their favorite cards from when they learned to play. As the number of cards that are useful in a narrow band of decks increases, the more distinct battlefields will look from one game to the next. Because there is a limit on deck size, there is only so much space to add staples before there is no room for the compelling synergies that drew the deckbuilder to the commander in the first place. Every hidden gem competes for its slot with a staple, and the played experience is more varied for it.

It would be great if every card in Magic had at least one viable Commander archetype where it shines. Because the three per-card diversity exceptions exist, we might expect to see the same lands, ramp, removal, and tutor packages serving as the foundation for the handful of cards that make one Aristocrats decks distinct from another. (11) Despite that reality, I aspire to foster a format where every card is viable somewhere, even if it is only in a single build of a single Commander. Every card does not need to be at home in a competitive archetype—after all, we reside in a casual format—but as long as each card matters to someone, we are approaching this goal. Conversely, the fewer cards there are that are hedging out more specialized competition, the better. In my perfect world, the answer to the question “how many viable Commander archetypes is that card good in?” would be the same number for every card in Magic.

We can all agree that “format diversity” is a good thing, so all that’s left is to agree on what definition of “format diversity” we mean. I have offered mine, a blend that recognizes that per-card diversity is subject to inevitable limitations while attempting to maximize the uncontroversial positives of the format. I invite readers to discover their own articulation. Going forward, I will explore the implications of the definition advanced here for a number of format-wide deckbuilding constraints as well as the effect it has on conversations surrounding individual bannings.

(1) https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/march-9-2020-banned-and-restricted-announcement

(2) See, e.g. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/standard-diversity-2016-08-12

(3) https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/faq/

(4) https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/the-philosophy-of-commander/

(5) See generally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aNb2YSZHcY

(6) See, e.g. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/skullclamp-we-hardly-knew-ye-2004-06-04

(7) See https://edhrec.com/cards/sol-ring

(8) See https://edhrec.com/top/lands

(9) See generally https://edhrec.com/top/instants

(10) See, e.g. https://edhrec.com/cards/mystical-tutor, https://edhrec.com/cards/enlightened-tutor

(11) See generally https://open.spotify.com/episode/5e8dvFnFBI5gn6asqRfYRD

Originally posted May 5, 2020

[commandermanifesto]

The Six-to-Eight Problem and the Zero-to-Eleven Scale

The Rules Committee has long maintained that Commander players should have a pre-game conversation during which those players come to an agreement about a number of facets of the game. (1) One of these facets is how “powerful” the decks each player will be piloting ought to be. Many prolific commentators have espoused utilizing a One-to-Ten Scale by which to measure a deck’s power level, with some commentators opining that a deck will have enough power to compete with decks ranked about two ranks above it, while not being so powerful as to obliterate a deck two stages below it. (2) Applied, a “seven” might be competitive at a table of “nines”, but not so powerful as to be unable to play with a table of “fives”. An “eight”, on the other hand, could contend with the most powerful decks in the format, “tens”, but would leave a table of “fives” with almost no window to victory. (2)

Problematically, the advocates of the One-to-Ten Scale typically cannot provide more than heuristic guidelines on how to evaluate a deck’s numerical rank. There are simply too many decks in the format to place them all in an ordered row, too much nuance through Magic’s long history which can become lost in any foray into specific archetypes, and too many opinions on where the line between one number and the next ought to be drawn in the first place. Many players who would use those ranking systems that do exists are not familiar with the underlying theory of what makes for a powerful deck in Commander, are unfamiliar with a particular scale, or are familiar with an alternative numerical metric. Because of the ample opportunity for ignorance or confusion, many are equipped only to rank their deck according to their own played experience.

This reliance on the played experience in evaluating one’s deck’s strength creates what I call “The Six-to-Eight Scale”. Essentially, because no deck exists in a vacuum, there is one easy way to determine if a deck is powerful. It can perform as well as its peers, it can underperform, or it can overperform. If our scale is relying on heuristics anyway, this particular heuristic capitalizes on the core strength of heuristics generally—ease of application—and seemingly achieves results on par with many of the other heuristics proposed for categorizing a deck the One-to-Ten Scale.

Now let us see how we lose seven tenths of our scale. If we suppose, as many players familiar with the letter grading system might, that a “C”, or 70 percent, is passing, any deck which sits at a comfortable power level, performing on par with its peers, should be a “seven”. A deck which fails utterly would get an “F”, fifty percent. Since nobody would choose to live with a failure of a deck, any deck which underperforms but does not get culled is, at minimum, a “six”. Since most players play opposite opponents of a similar level of skill or dedication, their decks are unlikely to significantly overperform. That is, they will see their decks as leaving some opportunity for the underperforming decks in their metagame to win, but also capable of withstanding a “ten”—the most powerful decks in the format—or at least the most powerful decks against which they have played. If they could not, they would not be “overperformers”.

Because no Commander player is equipped to envision their deck’s power level along the absolute continuum of legal combinations of cards which make up the format, our most convenient heuristic reduces the One-to-Ten Scale to just three points. Six, seven, and eight. When you sit down for a game with unfamiliar players at a Magicfest or your local game store, they each appeal to their played experience in whatever metagame they hail from, and they offer you a value ranging from six to eight. Because you have brought conceptions based on your own played experience, you offer a number in the same range. The difference is not in excess of two, and the One-to-Ten Scale is satisfied.

Except, of course, it is not. The metagame consisting of five new players who are building only from cards they drafted over the past six months is going to have a very different “seven” than the “seven” of longtime veterans who consider dual lands and Mana Crypt standard-issue.

This is why I propose a new system. This new “Zero-to-Eleven Scale” will be based, as much as possible, on concrete metrics. It will be grounded in indicators of success into which cards can be broadly categorized. It is intended as a diagnostic tool to aid a deck’s owner in pre-game conversations but will rely very little on the played experience of the deck’s pilot. Some will require a measure of familiarity with the game, but where that is the case, I will attempt to highlight that need. Others are aided by data generated by simulated play (goldfishing), although an experience player may not need that data. This, too, will be explicitly noted. Several terms of art will appear below and will be defined as necessary. Each point will feature demonstrations of the metrics application using my own decks, but the examples I give are not exhaustive. Less mechanical use of the scale will produce more accurate results.

To use the guide below and place your deck on the Zero-to-Eleven Scale, simply go from one criterion to the next and determine, for each, whether the deck meets that criterion. Then, when you have read all eleven, count the number of criteria you have satisfied. That number is your deck’s power level on the Zero-to-Eleven scale, although it behooves you to bear in mind which points your deck has earned.

Before I begin, I will highlight some assumptions upon which this system rests.

First, the appearance of power can often substitute for power. Players who perceive you as doing something powerful will treat you as powerful regardless of the truth behind that appearance.

Second, this scale does not weigh particular powerful features over others, which means that two decks which meet five of them could have done so using completely disjoint sets of criteria. It is my belief that two such decks would nevertheless seem comparable, but I recognize that this point is the greatest weakness of my method. Nevertheless, I believe the need for an easily applicable scale which creates a greater variety in outputs outweighs this deficiency. If you are worried that these criteria are unequal, know that it is also my belief that this list is more useful when employed as a checklist of descriptions by which decks can be compared, anyway. In-depth pre-game conversations can be had about any or all of the topics which follow, and all of them will be more useful than fielding a subjective rating on the six-to-eight scale.

Third, this scale uses turn counts for certain metrics. These are meant to reflect fairly optimized play, and I believe they would be indicators of powerful activity in nearly any format in which they appeared.

Finally, this scale assumes that even if a deck is built to lose, it is piloted to win. If you are not interested in winning when you sit down to play, that pre-game conversation is more important to have than a conversation about deck power level for a variety of reasons, a point which may be explored in the future.

Without further ado, here is the Zero-to-Eleven Scale Checklist, which I urge you, gentle reader, to adopt:

 1. Is your Commander considered “powerful”?

Most players know who to fear as soon as the contents of each command zone are revealed. Certain commanders simply lend themselves to more powerful decks. Nowadays, it seems like it’s hard to sit down at a pod where nobody’s commander worries me. This is not to say there aren’t very powerful decks which feature underwhelming commanders. There certainly are. But the plain fact is, nearly any Xira Arien deck would be made better by swapping her out for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. For that reason, your deck will earn this point if the Commander has a reputation for being powerful.

This criterion lacks a concrete measure, resting fairly cleanly on the expertise of the player. It relies on perception and reputation, but there is ample opinion available online which can guide one to a conclusion, and most players you meet will not begrudge you asking their opinion, as well. If you just aren’t sure, leave this a maybe and decide based on what the players you are sharing this calculation with believe. My Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck, whose reputation, deserved or not, precedes it, earns this point. My partner’s Surrak Dragonclaw deck does not.

2. Is your deck built around a supported strategy?

Most decks will earn this point. Essentially, your deck will earn this point if there are enough cards printed in the history of Magic to accomplish your mechanical route to victory. Rather than enumerate the many supported strategies in Magic’s history, I will instead offer a few examples of under-supported strategies.

Building around a unique non-legendary card is an example of failing to meet this criterion. Warp World is the only card in Magic’s history with an effect of its kind. For that reason, a Commander deck designed to cast Warp World to create a game-winning board state would fail to get this point. A Commander deck cannot include a second copy of the card, so any further consistency will need to be in the form of tutoring. Should the card be countered or exiled, any opportunity to recast it will require dedicated deck infrastructure. By virtue of your deck’s dependence on a card you will not see every game, the power level of your deck is naturally capped at a certain point. Distinguish this example, however, from a deck that uses Warp World not as its main win condition, but merely as a tool in some token-based strategy. In that event, the deck is built around tokens, not around Warp World. Because tokens are a well-supported strategy, that use of the card would not mean the deck fails to gain this point.

Another example can be found in art-themed decks. For most Magic artists, the cards they have illustrated do not share a cohesive plan, in a mechanical sense. The cards might be individually powerful, but without a cohesive plan, they are unlikely to be the equal of a deck with a mechanically-minded through-line. Even among artists whose style lends itself to certain kinds of cards, the artificial restriction placed on your selections will depower your deck enough to rob it of at least some potential. An enchantment-matters deck featuring only art by Rebecca Guay will be playable, but will be second-best to the enchantment-matters deck featuring any artist.

Of my decks, Patron of the Moon comes the closest to failing to earn this point. The limited number of Moonfolk and related effects left early drafts of the deck without a supported route to victory. However, opening the list up to an X spell theme and including mass mana production effects put the game-plan in firmly supported territory. By the same token, my partner’s Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck uses nearly every card which interacts with the color White. It is almost insufficient to create a meaningful amount of interaction—but it is nevertheless sufficient due to the inherent synergy between the Sword of X and Y cycle (e.g. Sword of War and Peace) and a low CMC Voltron strategy. By avoiding “shell” decks and decks where winning is a secondary concern, all eleven of our decks earn this point.

3. Does your deck decline to abide by the “social contract”?

Most Commander players are familiar with the concept of the “social contract”. There are a number of formulations, but when discussing individual card choices, the crux of the idea is that the Commander community has implicitly agreed to avoid certain “antisocial” in-game actions. (3) Commonly cited examples include the use of mass mana denial, infinite and/or time-consuming combos, targeted blowouts, and STAX effects. (4) For the most part, the commonality shared by these kinds of cards is that they deny your opponent the ability to engage with the game in the way a player typically expects to be able to—by producing mana to resolve effects. If your deck features one or more breaches of the “social contract”, it will earn this point.

It should come as no surprise that many of these effects, when applied strategically, can be very potent. Timely mana denial can turn an early lead into an inevitable victory. Infinite combos can end a game regardless of the state of affairs leading up to the game-ending sequence. An untimely Mindslaver can foreclose any possibility of recovery. STAX effects have been known to hand the only player prepared for the quagmire onboard—the STAX player himself—a soft lock on his opponents, who he can then defeat at his leisure.

Swearing off these kinds of effects comes at a cost to your decks’ power level. Properly utilized, each is an avenue to overwhelming advantages. If your deck features cards like Armageddon, Sunder, or Mindslaver, is built to win using an infinite combo, or is geared to play as a STAX deck, your deck will earn this point. My Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck earns this point by using infinite combos, Mindslaver locks, and Parallax Tide shenanigans. My Feather, the Redeemed deck, like many of its peers, relies on interactive removal and a combat-based win, and avoids this point.

4. Can your deck pull off an early kill?

Perception can often influence reality. In Commander, this is no less the case. If you can explain a reasonably straightforward line of play which leads to another player losing before they’ve taken their fifth turn, your deck earns this point. It can be through combat damage, an infinite combo, Commander damage, an alternate win-condition, or any other conceivable avenue. Note that there is no requirement that this line of play be consistent, only that it be straightforward. That is, you might play no tutors for your Commander-plus-other-card-infinite-combo, but if the combo can be pulled off by turn five, it will still create a dangerous possibility in the perceptions of your opponents’—danger worthy of a one-point increase to the deck on this scale. Note also that this is one of the points that often reflects opponents’ perceptions of a deck’s power, and is, at least in some cases, somewhat peripheral to the deck’s power level on an absolute scale.

This point is an indicator of power for various reasons at different levels of Commander play. In casual circles, a kill of this speed will be blisteringly fast. You might not win that game, but you will certainly create a strong impression in both the victim and any witnesses to the event. In more competitive circles, this point reflects the capacity to remain a danger to competitive decks. Even if your deck is lacking many other indicators of a powerful deck, the fact that your deck, with the right hand, could kill them before they kill you means that your opponents’ must remain wary.

This point can, on occasion, be earned by decks which can create “soft locks”—board states from which opponents are unlikely to win due to incapacity. Evaluating whether a deck can create locks which a majority of decks are unable to escape can be an exercise in heuristics, but an illustrative example might be the well-known combo of Lavinia, Azorius Renegade and Knowledge Pool.

My partner’s Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck earns this point with the following line of play: ramp on turn one or two, Ezuri on turn three, Deranged Hermit on turn four, Sage of Hours on turn five. On the one hand, the combo can be interacted with; on the other, it must be interacted with. By contrast, my Kruphix, God of Horizons deck is geared toward a longer game of casting Eldrazi titans and other haymakers. It can apply overwhelming force by turn five, but that force will never be lethal without outside aid.

5. Does your deck have “perfect” mana?

Color screw is second only to mana screw when it comes to taking the wind out of the sails of an otherwise exciting hand. Being unable to cast your spells all but guarantees defeat. (5) And while there are plenty of ways to fight color screw using cards of all rarities, clunky means like searching lands to hand and multi-colored lands which enter tapped can rob you of crucial tempo on the turns that matter most—and deny you full range of motion should you need three of one color one turn, and three of another color the next. Recognizing the power of reliable, on-demand access to all of your deck’s colors, this point is awarded to any deck which essentially never has problems with the colors of its mana while remaining on-curve.

Decks earning this point will next-to-never be delayed a turn by a land that enters tapped, will be able to produce three of one color one turn and four of a different color the next, and will generally take as a given that they will be able to cast their spells on-curve. At its most advanced level, a deckbuilder will likely have calculated their mana needs on a turn-by-turn basis and will have selected their mana base to meet those specific demands. (6) In decks with many colors, this will often be accomplished using fetch-, shock- and dual-lands. In mono-colored decks, simply ensuring that your utility lands are not so numerous as to impede your curve will suffice. It can often be difficult to evaluate this point without a lot of experience with your deck, or even more experience with Magic generally, so evaluating this point will typically rely on the played or goldfished experience of your deck.

My partner’s Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck earns this point by being mono-White and using few mana sources incapable of producing White mana. Her Jodah, Archmage Eternal deck, which relies on karoos and tri-lands, will often meet its color needs at the cost of falling behind the curve because of lands which enter the battlefield tapped, and fails to earn this point.

6. Does your deck aggressively ramp?

It is supposed that the victor of a game of Commander can be predicted by identifying who spent the most mana in that game. (7) Thus, any deck which is more likely than not to have a turn before their sixth where they produce effects worth more two or more mana than the than the turn count will earn this point.

I am aware that is a very dense sentence, so allow me to parse it by explaining why each clause is worded with such particularity. First, “is more likely than not…” means that the deck will aggressively ramp in the manner described below at least fifty percent of the time. Hypergeometric calculators can be useful in ascertaining whether a deck meets this criterion. For example, hypergeometric calculation informs us that a ninety-nine card deck featuring thirteen spells which ramp for a single mana will feature two or more such cards in a twelve card sample forty-nine percent of the time. Thus, a deck with twelve spells which ramp by one and a Sol Ring probably earns this point.

“…to have a turn before their sixth…” simply means that any of turns one through five might be the turn on which your deck is geared for action. Some decks are more concerned with an early Commander than sustained mana production; these will attempt to exploit fast mana to consistently land their commander two or more turns early. Others will attempt to build a lead in the development phase, which they can then exploit in turns six and beyond. The former strategy hopes to effectively close out the game early, while the latter will be poised to dominate the late-game. Successfully pursuing either avenue is likely to increase a deck’s win-rate.

Finally, the clause “…where they produce effects worth more two or more mana than the than the turn count …”, appears to issue the demand to produce four mana on turn two, or five mana on turn three, or six on turn four, and so on. That is nearly accurate. However, the requirement is somewhat more nuanced. Tapping a Swamp to cast Dark Ritual results in the addition of four mana, but only three mana worth of effect will be produced—the effect of whatever is cast using the three Black mana derived from Dark Ritual itself. Relatedly, some decks will opt not to produce more mana, but rather to produce effects at a discount. Sapphire Medallion et al. are a perfectly valid means of working toward this goal—given that the mana savings is more likely than not to put the controller two turns ahead. Cards which offer a means to reduce their own cost should be evaluated with that in mind, but will need to be evaluated heuristically on a card-by-card basis. Obviously, a card like Tasigur, the Golden Fang should not cost a single Black mana—you are probably getting an actual savings of two or more mana if you cast him at that price. By contrast, Emry, Lurker of the Loch costing a single Blue might only be an actual savings of one or so from the retail price of her effects, when you get down to brass tacks. You are encouraged to use your best judgment on this point.

Hypergeometric calculators are also useful for assessing this point. (8) For quick reference, a deck with thirteen spells which put a player ahead single mana (e.g. most mana rocks) has a forty-nine-point-one percent chance to draw five of those cards in the first twelve draws from their deck—the number of cards a player will typically have drawn by the end of their fifth turn.

Because this point begs for unconventional solutions, I will present multiple examples. My partner’s Jodah, Archamage Eternal deck earns this point in an unconventional way—it is more likely than not to cast Jodah on turn four, then cast a spell with CMC seven or greater on turn five. This potentially thirteen mana worth of effect comes before turn twelve, and the test is satisfied. Similarly, my Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck features many, many permanents that tap for two or more mana. By untapping any one of these the turn Derevi enters the battlefield, the mana source can be used to cast another spell that same turn—the deck, more often than not, jumps two turns ahead the turn Derevi enters the battlefield. Finally, Muldrotha, the Gravetide features fast mana, conventional ramp, and a number of tutors for Sol Ring, all of which contribute to the deck, more often than not, playing two turns ahead by turn five. Each of these three decks earns this point.

By contrast, my Ghave, Guru of Spores deck runs very few ramp cards, preferring instead to spend the development phase installing synergy pieces which will begin working once Ghave begins creating and sacrificing Saprolings. These cards, theoretically, all factor their effects into their own costs, so while the resulting machine quickly produces value in the mid- to late-game, rarely does any piece enter the battlefield two or more turns early. The deck fails to earn this point.

7. Does your deck produce reliable card advantage?

It is a simple observational matter that in the standard four-player game of Commander, you draw only one card for every three cards drawn by an opponent. This means that, relative to all potential aggressors, you are disadvantaged by a margin of two cards per turn.

In any other format, this would spell doom for your chances for victory. Because of the social dynamics of the typical game of Commander, it is unlikely that you will need to deal with your opponent’s cards on a three-for-one basis to come out on top. Nevertheless, it never hurts to prepare for the worst and begin to level the playing field. For that reason, a powerful deck will need reliable sources of card advantage. While it is difficult to prescribe a precise metric which captures such a monolithic concept, this point will be awarded if your deck is more likely than not to generate three cards worth of card advantage by the end of its sixth turn.

As many have recognized throughout the years, card advantage comes in many forms. (9) It can be internal card advantage, where one or more of your cards is used to gain access to a greater number of cards (e.g. Divination). Alternatively, it can come in the form of external card advantage, where one or more of your cards is used to answer a greater number of your opponents’ cards (e.g. Decimate). Either is fine for earning this point, so long as the external card advantage proves itself reliably available. Playing ten pieces of mass-removal for artifacts, for example, will mean you can reliably destroy four artifacts by turn five—but if you aren’t consistently able to find enough targets, the card advantage cannot be relied upon for the purposes of this point.

This point uses activity in the first five turns as a prediction for the entire game. Recognizing that this is not necessarily accurate, it is my belief that it will hold true in an extremely large majority of cases. It is hard to envision a deck that is fifty percent likely to create three cards worth of card advantage in the first five turns, but which will then be unable to continue that trend in the next five turns. By playing enough cards that present the opportunity for card advantage that it becomes more likely than not that you will see them in the first five turns, it is difficult to see how the cards you draw over the rest of the game would be unlikely to present that same opportunity. With that said, there are a lot of variables inherent to any attempt to quantify card advantage, and this relatively modest benchmark will nevertheless bear the appearance of high card advantage at most tables.

My Feather, the Redeemed deck earns this point by running over a dozen removal spells and half a dozen cantrips, none of which are lost while Feather is on the battlefield. In an average game, the deck can draw cards and remove threats with no loss of cards from hand. My Derevi deck, by contrast, fails to earn this point. While it does contain cards which I can tap repeatedly to multiple cards in a single turn, they require attacking creatures to reuse, they are not numerous enough to be drawn reliably, and they are not a high enough priority for me to consistently cast them on or before my sixth turn.

8. Does your deck significantly interact with opponents’ play patterns?

A deck that can win quickly is all well and good, but it won’t have much recourse against a deck that can win quicker—at least not without disruption. A deck’s winrate will be greatly increased by the inclusion of spot removal, board wipes, counterspells, hand disruption, and any and all other means of ensuring that your opponents’ plans are foiled. (10) A deck with little besides an excess of answers can fend off far more powerful decks for many turns, and that extra time might be enough to set off a winning combo or grind out a Voltron win. With that in mind, this point is earned by any deck which runs thirteen or more relevant pieces of selective or mass removal. 

There are some terms in the forgoing sentence which beg definition. Selective removal takes the form of targeted “destroy” or “exile” effects, counterspells, discard effects which offer a choice to the caster, cards which neutralize a particular card (e.g. Pithing Needle) or any other effect which could conceivably make a specific problem card into a non-problem for a significant period of the game. Mass removal takes the form of “destroy all” or “exile all” effects, effects that force a player to discard all or most of their hand, exiling all cards from a graveyard, stax pieces which neutralize all cards of some description (e.g. Collector Ouphe) or any other effect which takes all or most cards of some description from one zone and neutralizes them.

Based on this description, you likely have unanswered questions. Are “bounce” spells (e.g. Cyclonic Rift) removal? Narrow counterspells? Cards that exile only one or two cards from a graveyard? That depends. The cards which count for this point must be relevant removal—that is, they must remove things that you are likely to need removed, and they must remove them for the amount of time you need them gone. If the tempo loss to your opponent from your bounce spell is sufficient to create your opening to victory, it is relevant. If exiling a single card from a graveyard forestalls a game-ending combo, it is relevant. And so on. Naturally, this means that it is difficult to be entirely certain that your deck actually runs thirteen relevant pieces of removal, and it guarantees that the same thirteen cards could satisfy the point at one table and not at another. For that reason, this point does require some generalized player experience. Fortunately, the average Commander game has enough in common with even the most extreme outlier that most players have some sense for what will be relevant at a completely unknown table.

My Ghave, Guru of Spores deck is built as a control deck, can disrupt multiple opponents simultaneously, and earns this point with exactly thirteen cards. While the deck does not feature any instants or sorceries, the Saprolings and +1/+1 counters produced by Ghave can fuel repeatable removal for all permanent types, as well as discard effects to suppress spellslinging decks. While the deck has a standard setup which I use for most games, I also carry a ten-card sideboard with the deck, which contains card which challenge particular strategies. Given that my opponents are up to the challenge, this sideboard ensures the slots devoted to interaction are not just relevant to Commander games at large, but relevant to the particular game we are playing.

My Patron of the Moon deck is on its own plan full-time. While some Moonfolk have disruptive payouts, the deck is mostly interested in protecting its mana-doubling pieces, drawing cards, tutoring, and threatening a solitaire win at the earliest possible opening. It fails to earn this point.

9. Is your deck capable of withstanding interaction by your opponents?

Perhaps the most ethereal criterion on this list, this point springs from the premise that threatening a win is good, but protecting that win with a Counterspell or a Teferi’s Protection is better. There are lots of ways to make a deck resilient: leveraging mechanics like Hexproof and Indestructible to make your threats harder to remove, having counterspells available to stop your opponents’ removal, or having recursion for when your pieces get removed. If your deck is commonly the aggressor, disruptions to your opponent’s plan (especially their mana development) might be disruptive enough to preclude them disrupting your plans. If your deck relies on your commander to execute its plan, single-body protection for it can constitute protection sufficient for this purpose as well.

It is sometimes difficult (and other times not) to say with specificity what cards count toward this tally, especially where those cards can serve a dual function of removal or protection. The bottom line is that your deck will earn this point if six or more slots are devoted to any combination of proactive protection of your plan and defensive counter-play. Alternatively, commanders who are inherently protective will earn you this point, given that you are running the kinds of cards your commander inherently protects.

My partner’s Ezuri deck earns this point by having a small suite of counterspells and effects that grant Shroud or Hexproof. The deck can usually sandbag answers to shake off a piece of removal or two on the turns where it really matters, and can seize the opportunity to close out the game through disruption on these key turns.

My partner’s Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck earns this point by caveat. The commander itself is such that the deck will never want for a response to removal that gets pointed at its permanents.

My Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck fails to get this point. The deck relies on late-game card draw, avoiding the command tax, and efficient interactions between Derevi and token producers to rebuild after board wipes, but when an opponent presents that board wipe, the deck takes the hit right on the chin. Since the deck offers no agile counter-play to the humble Wrath of God, it fails to earn this point.

10. Does your deck have a critical mass of tutors?

Some players have all the luck. It’s tough to compete with the player who always seems to draw what he needs on the right turn, game after game after game. We can’t change our luck, but there’s something we can do to alleviate the problem: run tutors—cards that search for cards. (11) Playing a handful of tutors means that, in the average game, we will draw a card or two that will play as a modal spell with five, ten, twenty, or more modes. Put another way, by incorporating, say, six tutors in your deck, you have effectively made it so you are running seven copies of each card in your deck. A sufficient suite of tutors lets us draw exactly what we need, on the turn we need it. The more tutors the merrier, but if your deck has six tutors which are not mana development, your deck has earned this point.

The exception for tutors which only develop your mana is merely to point out that running Farseek and Prismatic Vista—cards which do technically search for other cards—does not get you any closer to this point. Those do contribute to a stronger deck, but they do so by facilitating earlier plays and more perfect color production. That is not to say, however, that cards that search for lands cannot count toward the six-card threshold. My Multrotha deck, for example, can sacrifice Expedition Map to search for color fixing and ramp, but can also search for card selection, combo pieces, removal, protection for the commander, and pillow fort pieces, as well.

This example is just one case which illustrates a broader principle for this point: general tutors like Demonic Tutor always count toward this point, but you will need to use some judgment to determine which of your narrow tutors have enough cards falling under their search conditions to count toward your six-card count. In general, a tutor which can search for mana development, a way to prevent you from losing, and a way to contribute to your deck’s win-plan is sufficiently diverse to count as one of your six tutors. If your tutor needs to find a second tutor to get to what you need, that is probably fine to count, too. If those lines are common, the mana inefficiency of such plays is accounted for in other locations on this list.

Under these criteria, tutors like Green Sun’s Zenith and Fabricate will count in most decks that are running them. Open the Armory and Trinket Mage, on the other hand, will require you to build your deck in such a way that there are searchable cards for a variety of situations. Ultimately, whether a card is a tutor will require you to appeal to your played experience.

Finally, Commanders which are tutors themselves will earn this point automatically, as long as your search targets make a diverse toolbox, as discussed above. The chance of “drawing” your commander is one hundred percent, which puts you in an even better position than six slots in the ninety-nine.

My partner’s Oona, Queen of the Fae deck is packed with conventional tutors, cards with Transmute, and narrow tutors with manicured toolboxes. It’s stuffed to the gills with cards that find other cards, and uses those other cards to ramp, control the board, and combo off. It earns this point to excess. In a less extreme example, my Kruphix, God of Horizons deck utilizes a number of tutors for colorless spells, creatures, Eldrazi, and so on. These tutor targets are the win conditions, interaction, and combo pieces of the list. The tutors make sure I always have the right haymaker for the job. It earns this point.

My Ghave, Guru of Spores deck is in a color identity which could run many, many tutors. It runs none. Because so many cards I enjoy playing with work so well with Ghave, I built the deck to force me to fit the square peg of any given hand into the round hole of the game I happen to be in. For that reason, the deck does not earn this point.

11. Is your deck a cEDH deck?

It’s no secret that there are folks attempting to “solve” Commander—and they’re doing a pretty good job of it. Anyone with an interest in doing so can find threads, primers, decklists, and videos highlighting the most efficient, effective strategies for taking down pods. (12) This subculture has considered every angle on every commander, has agonized over every card in the ninety-nine, and has honed the most lethal options to a razor’s edge. The most aggressive of these decks will consistently end the game before most decks finish ramping, and the control decks will unload streams of the game’s most efficient removal and Stax pieces as they march inexorably toward their combo finish. This approach to Commander is known as cEDH.

Any of these titans of the format will earn each of the first ten points, or will have a very, very compelling reason for not doing so. Since these scale-busting decks are exceptional, so too is this point. If your deck is, in significant portion, a known cEDH deck, your deck is an eleven-point deck, regardless of how many points it has earned up to now. Since playing a cEDH deck at a typical, non-competitive pod is considered bad form (unless everyone involved knowingly consents to a game of Archenemy), you must have a conversation about your deck’s power level with the table, even if you have made a few personal tweaks to the list or are saving up for one or two of the hundred dollar singles.

If you are at a table of similarly high-powered decks, the previous ten metrics will not help you distinguish between them. If you don’t already know how powerful your cEDH deck is when compared to its peers, you will need to consult a cEDH tier list as opined by one of the gurus of that well-defined metagame. I can be of little help, as none of my decks are even remotely in this stratum.

 Having gone through all eleven points, I urge you to bear in mind that this scale’s intended use is diagnostic. It is not intended to convey any value judgments about a deck. It is merely to facilitate meaningful pre-game conversation.

 For those curious, my decks rank as follows using this scale:

Ghave, Guru of Spores: 7

Patron of the Moon: 6

Kruphix, God of Horizons: 7

Muldrotha, the Gravetide: 8

Feather, the Redeemed: 6

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician: 6

 My partner’s decks rank as follows:

Ezuri, Claw of Progress: 5

Surrak Dragonclaw: 4

Oona, Queen of the Fae: 7

Eight-and-a-Half-Tails: 4

Jodah, Archmage Eternal: 7.

 It is noteworthy that many of the decks still fall into the six to eight range. This is because many of them have lost points in the tutor, ramp, and mana categories either by design or because of budget constraints—comparable decks without these factors could approach a nine or ten. More importantly, the scale offers concrete guidance into why the deck is only a six or only an eight. Because this scale has prompted me, I am aware of the fact that my Ghave deck is weaker for not having ramp or tutors. It can get early combo wins, but it requires its draw engines to find them, and it won’t stop you from stopping it. This qualitative description can temper opponents’ expectations before a game begins and provide some context when my deck that’s a “7” goes infinite on turn four.

(1) See https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/the-philosophy-of-commander/; see https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/809264-april-2019-banlist-rules-updates, but compare https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/rules/

(2) https://open.spotify.com/episode/6KmCuH6mvYpdF24dKxbqU0

(3) See https://edhrec.com/top/salt

(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au2FR_q6fh8

(5) https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-academy/managing-mana-screw-2007-04-28

(6) See https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells-a-guilds-of-ravnica-update/

(7) https://open.spotify.com/episode/4fTdxRRLTpzqVnXDBr26rU

(8) E.g. https://aetherhub.com/Apps/HyperGeometric

(9) https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/lo/basics-card-advantage-2014-08-25

(10) See generally https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/shaman-you-2008-03-24

(11) See https://commandertheory.com/post/188329252907/quantifying-color-power-rankings

(12) E.g. https://cedh-decklist-database.xyz/primary.html

Originally Posted April 12, 2020

[commandermanifesto]

Commander: A Multiplayer Experience

I take as a premise that Commander is a multiplayer format. Multiple signals suggest that the stewards of the format have been operating under this assumption for many years. For instance, Commander traces its roots back to a prototype in which a duel, wherein each player would have a starting life total of 100, would be all but unplayable. (1) One key game which shaped the banlist still defining the format included ten players. (1) The lessons taught by that game are, apparently, still front-of-mind to the Rules Committee presently, when cards such as Balance and the moxen are still forbidden entry into the format. (2) This would not be the case if the Rules Committee did not believe that present-day Commander and the EDH of 2004 are substantially similar formats, with one major assumption of that early format being its high player count.

For further evidence that the Rules Committee views the format over which they preside as a multiplayer one, let us briefly examine the format known as Duel Commander. Duel Commander has been cultivated by a community of players, primarily in Europe, who play “Commander” using slightly modified rules and utilizing their own unique banlist. (3) The governing body of this offshoot would, in no uncertain terms, be a direct competitor to the authority of the Rules Committee on banning decisions—yet it has received little publicized attention from either the Rules Committee or Commander Advisory Group. This informs us that those bodies do not view this organization as a competitor at all, but rather as an entity which governs a format made entirely distinct by way of its one-on-one emphasis.

Wizards of the Coast also views Commander as an intrinsically multiplayer format. This can be readily seen in past Commander product offerings. To date, no Commander product released has featured fewer than four decks. (4) They facilitate a four- to five-player experience. The upcoming exceptions, the Zendikar Rising and Commander Legends Commander Decks, have been identified by Gavin Verhey as being “similar in philosophy” to one another. (5) That philosophy compels Verhey to describe the decks as “on-ramps to Commander”, something to check out should a player wish to “join Commander six months after the traditional preconstructed decks release.” (5) What obvious inference can be drawn from this description? Although the decks could certainly be played in a duel, they are intended instead to join—that is, to be integrated into—the broader multiplayer ecosystem. Indeed, in the very same article, Verhey recognizes that Commander is “great for teaching in many respects because it’s multiplayer and totally casual.” (5, emphasis added)

Furthermore, it is all but dispositive that Wizards of the Coast curates 1v1 Commander as a distinct format on Magic Online. (6) The name alone speaks volumes, but it is also telling that in the article describing the original 1v1 Commander banlist, Brian Hawley denoted only five cards, out of a total of fifty-four banned cards, which received their ban because of their poor interaction with a multiplayer environment. (7) Hawley also took care to distinguish this format and its emphasis from the multiplayer format of the analogue world, with 1v1 Commander deferring to the Rules Committee outside the context of Magic Online and adopting a key feature from Brawl. (8) This feature, a lowered starting life total in duels, demonstrates that quicker two-player games are well within the contemplated norm of 1v1 Commander on a format-wide level, much as they are in Brawl. (7)

While I find it unlikely, there may be readers among you who reject this premise as I have advanced it. To those readers, I offer the following observation: although you may not agree that Commander is, in fact, a multiplayer format, you would be well served by recognizing that the decisionmakers shepherding Commander think of it as one. The writing is very much on the wall on this point. As such, any conclusions which rely on a premise inconsistent with the one presented here are, in my view, doomed to failure in the wider marketplace of ideas regarding our format.

This premise outlined in this passage might seem so obvious as to merit no conversation, but we will find it useful to be able to gloss over this point in a number of conclusions which are to follow. As such, I feel it is imperative to pin down minor moving parts such as this at this early stage. In the future, this premise will be critical in a number of discussions. Namely, conversations surrounding table self-regulation, the pregame conversation, the one-to-ten power scale, and ideal pod size will all receive pressures from this premise either implicitly or explicitly.

(1)   See https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ways-play/godfathers-casual-2016-02-23

(2)   See http://mtgcommander.net/rules.php

(3)   http://www.duelcommander.com/

(4)   https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Commander_series

(5)   https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/big-things-are-coming-commander-2020-2019-10-30

(6)   https://mtg.gamepedia.com/1v1_Commander

(7)   See https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online/1v1-commander-banned-list

(8)   See Rule 103.3d of the Comprehensive Rules, available at https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules

Originally posted November 11, 2019

[commandermanifesto]

The Birth of Commander and the Death of Casual Vintage

Commander has a long and storied past. Its resonant core appeal and the changing landscape of Magic has propelled it to a position of preeminence among casual formats. In order to understand how this has occurred, we must look at the road we have taken to get here.

Elder Dragon Highlander, as Commander was formerly known, began as a mutation of Highlander. Highlander was an eternal singleton format which derived its name from the tagline of the eponymous 1986 film, “there can be only one”. The defining feature of Highlander was an eternal card pool combined with a singleton deckbuilding restriction. Speaking from personal experience, Highlander, in one form or another, had an audience as early as the first few years of the new millennium. The variety of play offered by the deckbuilding restriction carried as much appeal for players then as it does for us today, and another popular offshoot of this venerable format can be seen in Canadian Highlander, which is still relatively popular today. (1)

Many years ago, according to popular wisdom, a group of entrenched Magic players in Alaska developed a personalized take on Highlander. (2) The format this playgroup developed had many features we would recognize today: a one hundred card singleton deck featuring a “general”, or commander; a heightened starting life total; and the implementation of the twenty-one Commander damage rule. (2) At first, the Elder Dragons from Legends were the only generals which were used. (2) Eventually, the format expanded, players began experimenting with other legendary creatures, and sometime around 2004 the format received a surge of interest from a broader player base. (2) Recognizing the popularity of the format, in 2011, Wizards of the Coast released the first in the series of Commander preconstructed products. (2)

Commander is far and away the most popular casual format in Magic’s history. The casual contemporaries of the first few games of Elder Dragon Highlander, formats like Vanguard and Prismatic, are essentially consigned to footnotes, buried in archives of old articles. (3) Commander is enshrined in the comprehensive rulebook alongside the likes of Conspiracy, Emperor, Archenemy, Two-Headed Giant, and Planechase. (4) It has four times the product support of any of these aforementioned formats. (1) It has spawned a number of popular spinoff formats, such as Tiny Leaders and Oathbreaker. (5) One of these variants, Brawl, is the flagship casual format for new players, the onramp into casual Magic, and one of a small number of formats which has been incorporated into Magic: the Gathering Arena to be enjoyed by a generation of digital Magic players.

In the early 2000s, casual Magic was widely understood to play by the banned and restricted list of Vintage (then called “Type 1”). Articles which appeared on the mothership site would frequently post decklists for casual games and multiplayer formats, such as Emperor, which utilized cards from throughout Magic’s then-short history. (6) Pickup games at local game stores, in playgrounds, and at kitchen tables would pit Standard decks from seasons past against Extended and Legacy brews. If you were not playing Magic in a tournament setting, you were probably playing Vintage, whether you were aware of that reality or not.

The casual landscape looks very different today, at least among those members of our community who engage with players beyond the kitchen table. If you were to approach someone at your local game store seeking a “casual” game, you would discuss the format beforehand. Chances are, you would land on Commander. The reasons are manifold. As mentioned above, Wizards has released a Commander preconstructed product nearly annually for the last eight years. (1) As a result, many players are introduced to Magic through the format. Furthermore, most new players who spend any time at their local game store quickly become aware of the choice that awaits them upon the rotation of their first Standard deck: move on to a tournament format with a longer memory, like Modern or Legacy, or retire to the multiplayer, “there can be only one” elephant graveyard that is Commander. The format has become part of the culture of Magic, and indeed definitional of what it means to play the game for a great many players.

The vast array of new cards Magic has seen in the past twenty years have only augmented this transition. Since Commander’s inception, the number of printed cards has more than tripled. (7) The selection of legendary creatures has increased in both depth of design and sheer volume. Strategies which formerly required a playset of a particular card have largely seen enough redundant effects printed to populate a library twice the size while maintaining an equal proportion. Those strategies which have not had the benefit of redundancy, but which are still compelling, have slowly but surely been supplied the legendary creatures they need to make the transition to Commander.

Going forward, I will take it as a premise that the confluence of a resonant format premise, changing LGS culture, and an evolving card pool have all but slain casual Vintage as a way of playing Magic. The market appears simply unable to sustain the bandwidth for a contender, let alone a contender without Commander’s compelling hook.

This reality is a mixed blessing, to be sure, but it is no less a reality for that fact. In the future, I will explore the tremendous repercussions this has for those cards which do not have a home in our format, and the incredibly weighty responsibilities it places on the voices which dominate the conversation.

(1)   https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Commander_series

(2)   https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ways-play/godfathers-casual-2016-02-23

(3)   See, e.g., https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/serious-fun/bands-lieutenants-2003-12-02

(4)   See Rule 903 of the Comprehensive Rules, available at https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules

(5)   See https://oathbreaker.edhrec.com/

(6)   See https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/serious-fun/exactly-whos-charge-here-2003-09-09

(7)   See generally https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Originally posted on November 5, 2019

[commandermanifesto]

About the Blog

Welcome to the Commander Manifesto. In this blog, you will find recorded my thoughts on Commander at a format-wide level. As this blog matures, I hope to develop a number of arguments for positive changes in our favorite multiplayer Magic: the Gathering format. As I believe spoiler season is well and adequately covered by other content creators, this blog will not review new cards and sets. Likewise, this blog will not involve “deck-techs”. Instead, I will be focusing on more timeless conversations surrounding the format. Capitalizing on the timelessness of the subject matter, I do not expect this blog to develop a regular update cycle.

I will attempt to lay foundational principles which will inform my perspectives going forward. These posts will be marked with #Premise to delineate that I am unlikely to alter my perspective on that issue. However, nothing is impossible, and I may update those foundational principles periodically as my sensibilities evolve over time. The blog will then move on to an attempt to explore both sides of controversies within the format. On particular topics, you can expect to see arguments developed which I do not personally support. Where my own expertise is lacking, I hope to more fully develop those arguments with the aid of feedback from the community. I predict that I will retread old conversations in light of that discourse. Ultimately, however, this blog will be normative in tone. I intend to support partisan conclusions and to issue a call to action on many topics. Posts containing such content will me marked with #Conclusion and #Call to Action, as appropriate.

With that said, I recognize that my opinion is not superior to any other, nor is it immutable. I wholeheartedly invite principled discourse built on the texts which appear above. I also invite direct criticism, constructive or otherwise, so long as it is civil.

I offer the disclaimer that a number of arguments I make will be inconsistent with one another. I am aware of this at the outset. There are several contentious issues facing Commander wherein the number of defensible positions is greater than two. I predict that I will endorse many of those positions in the alternative. As implied by the name “Commander Manifesto”, there are things I wish to see changed about the format and the surrounding conversation, and there are some topics where, in my view, any of several changes is preferable to the current state of affairs.

With that said, I’d like to personally thank you for reading this blog. This is truly a project of passion, and I look forward to meditating together upon this thing which is so dear to all of us.

Avatar by Zoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai

Header by Scott M. Fischer

Originally posted November 4, 2019

[commandermanifesto]

About the Author

This blog is authored by a longtime Magic: the Gathering player. I learned to play in 1997 with the Portal expansion, and played casually until my introduction to the tournament scene around the release of Eighth Edition in 2003. At that time, I began to follow set releases and design and development articles, a habit I have admittedly fallen out of in recent years.

In 2007, around the release of the Lorwyn block, my LGS lost its tournament sanctioning. Over the next several years, the players that continued to traffic the shop began to play Vintage multiplayer almost exclusively. These games often included as many as ten people, and would pit decks of incredibly disparate power levels against each other. It was in this context that I had the opportunity to play with and against many of the cards which populate the Commander banlist. During this period, I became a certified Rules Advisor, to better serve as the present individual with some authority to resolve the many rules disputes which arose.

I became aware of Commander, then called Elder Dragon Highlander, around the release of Worldwake in 2010. I built my first EDH deck shortly thereafter. During the past nine years, the overwhelming majority of games of Magic I have played have been games of Commander.

I identify very deeply with Magic: the Gathering. In the two decades that I have played Magic: the Gathering, I have introduced the game to nearly a dozen people. I have participated in no fewer than nine wholly distinct metagames. I have played hundreds of games of commander, and thousands of games of Magic. I care deeply about Commander as a format.

At the time of writing, I have six customized Commander decks built. They are: Ghave, Guru of Spores; Patron of the Moon; Kruphix, God of Horizons; Muldrotha, the Gravetide; Feather, the Redeemed; and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. I often play my partner’s five decks, as well. Those are: Ezuri, Claw of Progress; Surrak Dragonclaw; Oona, Queen of the Fae; Eight-and-a-Half-Tails; and Jodah, Archmage Eternal. I have formerly built Braids, Conjurer Adept; Mayael the Anima; Experiment Kraj; Cromat; and Wort, Boggart Auntie.

Originally posted November 4, 2019

Updated April 12, 2020