An Open Response to the Commander RC

Pandora's Deckbox

Epochalyptik

26 March 2015

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Introduction

As I'm sure many of you know, I'm an avid fan of Commander. When I get a chance to play, I normally play Commander. I've also dedicated several articles to explaining the theory of Commander deckbuilding as well as the format's identity as a social format (and not, as many would argue a casual or competitive format).

I've also been fairly vocal about past RC decisions, so it should come as no surprise to you that I've been following the most recent change to come down the pike. I've been following it, and I can't say that I like it. At all.

The Change

The RC has recently decided to eliminate "tucking," or putting commander cards into libraries, from the format. The replacement effect that allows a player to return his or her commander card to the command zone if it would go to exile or to a graveyard has been expanded to cover the hand and library as well. Four reasons were given for this decision, and we'll examine them all below.

Reason #1: Player experience

This point is fair; players do often get upset if they indefinitely lose access to their commander card. However, the counterargument to this is that tucking is (or was, at this point) a legitimate answer to commander cards. It's true that tucking may feel like quite a loss for the receiving player, but it's not radically different from having your commander destroyed when you're thin on resources or having someone else gain control of your commander. If you're relying on your commander to help make a difference in the game, any threat to or loss of that commander is going to be an issue. Perhaps tucking, as a more permanent solution, walks a bit closer to the edge than other removal options, but the stance thus far has been that it's a legitimate form of removal for commanders. Those who believe otherwise have been free to institute house rules against tucking.

Reason #2: Tutor representation

This reason may have some grain of truth buried within it, but it's largely divorced from the reality of the format. Players run tutor effects to find any of a number of significant staples or combo pieces in the format. Some tutors are also able to find a commander card should that card be tucked, but that's a secondary use; unless you know that someone in your playgroup is going to try to tuck your commander, you generally don't include a tutor for the express purpose of finding your commander. This reason reads more like a "correlation equals causation" than a legitimate assessment of the format.

Further, what's the issue with tutors? The RC claims to be against the "over-representation" of tutors (this is something that will be addressed later in an article by Sheldon Menery), but why is it bad to include cards that help you find answers or staples in a 99-card singleton deck?

Reason #3: Color representation

Once again, the RC's assessment of the format misses the mark. Players are, by and large, not forced to play blue or white in order to use tuck effects. While it may be true that most good tuck effects are in these colors, correlation still does not equal causation. The impetus for playing blue is typically the superior card advantage, countermagic, and artifact interaction it offers. Blue is a utility color, through and through. It also comes with a number of tuck effects, but the tuck effects alone are not enough to make blue worth including. White, on the other hand, is famous for its cheap and efficient removal effects. These effects, however, are not limited to Oblation; if asked to name white's best removal, most players would immediately reply with Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Oblivion Ring, and other exile effects that don't beat the original command zone replacement effect. Now, that's not to say that Oblation wasn't played or that it wasn't good. Rather, the point is that Oblation is not the be-all end-all of white removal; it's one weapon in a fairly extensive arsenal.

The reality of white and blue inclusion in Commander decks is something that is perhaps best summarized by quoting the RC themselves: "None of them individually was the silver bullet; the combination of factors got us to where we ended up." The same logic used to support the change is easily used to oppose it.

And (I'd have liked to have ended on the above quote if only for the literarian in me, but alas) what's said of red? Nothing, in this case. Red is that awkward cousin at the Commander pool party. Compared to the other colors, it lacks a lot of utility. It's widely considered to be the worst color in the format because its greatest strengths in the color pie, namely direct damage and efficient aggro, are ineffective in the battlecruiser style of game the RC wants so badly to promote. Red's removal is, to put it bluntly, quite bad. Lightning Bolt and other burn spells offer some solace against smaller utility creatures and small-frame commanders, but the number of commander-playable red removal spells is dwarfed by the number of commander-playable white and black removal spells. Green is in the same situation as red as far as removal goes, but its extraordinary creature- and land-oriented utility make it a very viable color. Blue has countermagic to make up for a relative lack of permanent removal, but it still has bounce-based sweepers for tight situations.

My intent here is not to make red players sad. It's to point out that red is in a very precarious position concerning its ability to deal with incoming threats. Chaos Warp, perhaps one of the best red cards in EDH, was red's enduring answer to commander cards. It bought red decks some time against powerful commanders and helped to even the playing field somewhat. That's no longer an option. It may still work as advertised against other cards, but against commanders it's now just a less permanent Murder with a dangerous downside.

Reason #4: Rules complexity

I find this to be the least convincing of any of the arguments advanced by the RC. First, I'd like to know why tucking is such an issue if a commander is "highly unlikely to actually end up there." But putting that aside for a moment, the gist of this reason is that the players can't be trusted to deal with the rules of the game. And this change only shortly after "banned as a commander" was thought to be too confusing a concept! If you'll forgive me some slightly acidic language there, you'll see the point. What the RC calls "rules awkwardness" is actually quite routine and quite simple for Commander players; the format is nothing if not brimming with weird and exciting interactions, complex board states, and crazy plays. Players have dealt with all of that quite well. As for the "awkwardness" of having to explain the rules regarding knowing commander location, there's not much of it. The RC summarized everything quite nicely in three short sentences on their rules page:

"Being a Commander is not a characteristic [MTG CR109.3], it is a property of the card and tied directly to the physical card. As such, "Commander-ness" cannot be copied or overwritten by continuous effects. The card retains it's commanderness through any status changes, and is still a commander even when controlled by another player."

Because the physical card is always a commander, and because a commander's location is always public knowledge, players must know where any commander is in any zone at any time. And what do we need to do in order to put this rule into practice? Use a different colored sleeve for your commander. That's it. That's all you need to do. One sleeve and your commander is instantly identifiable in the library, in your hand, or in whatever other zone enters. And many players already use a unique sleeve to help prevent them from shuffling their commander into their deck when the game is done. Awkward? Hardly.

First responses

Given that these four reasons were all that was originally offered in defense of the change, the RC can hardly be surprised about the backlash. They did expect some resistance, but the Magic community has been aggressively polarized over the issue. Ultimately what we have here is one "legitimate" observation and three phoned-in reasons that smell of confirmation bias. And the applicability of the first reason is subject to debate. Yes, it is true that tucking is often a low point in the game for the receiving player, but the RC must be cautious about legislating on a format level just to preserve a feel-good atmosphere. I'll discuss this later in more detail.

The Follow-Up

Today (26 March), Sheldon Menery published an article on StarCityGames.com with the intent to shed more light on the decision and its impact. As before, we'll examine the arguments advanced by the RC in defense of their decision.

Reason #1: Player experience

This is mostly a rehash of Reason #1's original wording. It's fair to say that commanders should play an important role in the actual game and not just in deck composition, but we have to be careful about that argument here. Tucking is an answer to commanders, and there will always be answers in any game. Tucking doesn't obliterate a commander's function within the game. It may make the commander unavailable, but it doesn't reduce the significance of the commander card in deckbuilding and game theory. Learning how to play around answers is a fundamental component of Magic's complexity. I realize that this counterargument is not the definitive conversation-ender when it comes to improving the health or balance of any format, but it's a legitimate observation and it needs to be taken seriously. There will always be an answer somewhere, if not by virtue of a card or strategy's inherent weaknesses then by virtue of the metagame and other players' desire to mitigate the threat you pose. You can't create a healthy format by banning or rendering obsolete all answers to commander cards.

Reason #2: Tutor representation

I will be the first to say that I see where Sheldon and the RC are coming from on this matter. But I will also be the first to say that this is the worst precedent on which to manage your format.

The RC is completely aware, I would assume, that Commander is built on player experience and promoting the enjoyment of the game regardless of how it is played. They often reiterate this sentiment on their rules resources and in their posts. However, they then take an action that is completely counterproductive to this goal: they legislate for the entire format based on how they think the format ought to be enjoyed. To some extent, their vision for the Commander is the driving force for the format's development. I don't begrudge them that, and it's good to have a strong driving force encouraging format development. What isn't good is claiming to prioritize player experience and format diversity and then turning around and saying "by the way, your experience isn't allowed to include this."

Yes, I know that they didn't ban tutors, but to even suggest that the representation of tutors in the format is legitimate grounds for a rules change that tangentially impacts the viability of tutors is hogwash. The fact of the matter is that some players enjoy playing commander more competitively than other players, and that some players like to build decks around certain combos, interactions, or cards. Tutoring allows that to be viable despite the 100-card singleton rules. Many players certainly do like an higher degree of uncertainty or randomness to the game, and that's good for them. Others don't. To effectively say to your constituents, "Look, I know that tutoring helps you put together these interactions and find good cards, but we don't like it because it doesn't fall within our definition of 'fun,'" is a little more than vaguely elitist.

Reason #3: Color representation

I have two main issues with this selection.

First, this is a rehash of the same piffle that players feel compelled to play blue and white in order to gain access to tuck. The reality is that no one feature of a color is that "silver bullet," as the RC is fond of saying about their own logic. I've covered this topic above, so I'll spend less time on it here, but the idea that you're compelled to play a color just to gain access to a small subset of removal spells out of all of the utility offered by that color is nonsense, and it's a discredit to the deckbuilding sensibility of the players.

Second, it seems that the RC are less concerned about the other repercussions of the change. It's fine to say that you'll watch the format for unhealthy changes; we expect you to do that. But it seems like much more thought could have been given to the negative outcomes of the change and too much thought has been given to the "positives." I worry that the decision was more tunnel vision than cost vs. benefits. And, in general, it's better to make few changes to the format. There's a possibility now that one change in the way you can interact with generals will mean that several generals have to be watched and potentially banned. It's an overly complicated "solution" to something that was arguably not a problem.

Further, players building new and more oppressive decks is only part of the concern. What happens to the commander-centric decks that were already very good and don't even need to change in order to become oppressive? Tuck effects were a critical answer to voltron and commander-combo decks and forced players to think of backup plans in order to round out their decks. Without the threat of enduring removal, there's little incentive remaining for these decks to include those backup plans. Their resources can now be wholly dedicated to a "protect the president" style of play, and there's not as much to be done in response to that kind of focus.

Reason #4: Rules complexity

This is the first time it was thought to mention consistency with the existing rules (I'd have thought that would be a more attractive reason than the one originally given in the change announcement). Consistency is fine. Consistency is good. However, consistency also poses problems once you allow the format to develop around a certain set of interactions. To use a simple analogy, this is much like building a cake with layers of different thickness and then going back after the decoration to replace some of them.

That's not to imply that players won't be able to adjust or that the game isn't allowed to change; rather, it's an observation that a great deal of careful thought is due prior to enacting such a change. In this case, we have two observations that should weigh on the decision.

First, the original situation was not wholly inconsistent. If we look at how the zones were divided (graveyard and exile versus hand and library), we'll see that the command zone replacement effect applied only to zones from which it could be reasonably expected that you'd be unable to recover your commander. Not every deck plays a graveyard recursion effect (indeed, some decks just lack access to them at all), and there are very few cards that even interact with exiled cards, but every deck gets a draw step, and a card in your hand is obviously still available. Because of the prevalence of draw, shuffle, and tutor effects, it can be said that fatesealing doesn't even necessarily mean you need to deck out before reaccessing your commander. (Of course, this sort of logic also applies to recursion effects and the yard, but the basic distinction between "generally still available" and "generally no longer available" still holds.)

Second, the inconsistency (to the degree that it was considered one) was not extraordinarily difficult to explain. It's no less obvious than, say, the idea of a card that can always be around. And preserving the idea of "commanderness" being inherent and unalterable is sensible because there are still situations in which a commander may end up in another zone or may lose its original characteristics, but it doesn't at all speak to the original articulation of this reason, which was that it may be confusing that a commander is always a commander in all zones and at all times. Argumentative consistency is just as important as rules consistency, Sheldon.

Second responses

The SCG article goes on to catalog most of the top tuck effects in the format in order to set up for the summation, "My main point here is that this rules change impacts a small percentage of cards which actually get played with any frequency, and it doesn't ruin the playability of any of them." The reality is that most rules changes, including bans, directly concern a small percentage of cards, but they impact a great deal more. This change will affect tuck effects, commanders, decks, playgroups, and the Commander meta as a whole. It's not a matter of reducing the effectiveness of a small subset of cards. There's a ripple effect.

Further, the playability of tuck effects has certainly been impacted. Whether or not they've been completely ruined (they haven't) is less relevant than how exactly they've changed. You can technically play any legal card you want to play, but that doesn't mean they're equally viable. Tuck effects were used primarily to deal with problematic and oppressive commanders, and they could also be used on other permanents. Now, we've lost the primary functionality of tuck effects and the only one that consistently impacted the game. You can still tuck a combo piece or a threat, but that card will either be retutored or replaced. You're still buying time, but you can no longer do that with commanders, which are now instantly reavailable and at little additional cost. Tucking was the bridge between no removal and too much removal. The graveyard/exile formulation of the replacement effect is a fair and legitimate rule because it helps to mitigate loss from the most common removal effects. It also applied to the two zones from which you were least likely to recover your commander; a commander in a library or your hand is still available, whether immediately so or not. Tucking helped red and blue cope with permanents in a limited, yet efficient way. Red simply doesn't have the removal economy to deal with commanders all the time; at least black and white have enough good removal to hit most threats even if they're recurred.

And I don't think the assumption should be made that a general must always be always available. While that's true for the most part, answers still need to exist, and I don't find that tucking was as oppressive as the RC seems to believe. Yes, it's more indefinite than allowing someone to pay 2 and recast, but it's not insurmountable, and it's not something that was destroying the format before.

A Reflection

Overall, I'm simply disappointed with the RC's reasoning behind the change and with the change itself. I'm not irate. I'm not threatening to build the ultimate, unanswerable deck to demonstrate the error of the RC's ways. I'm not calling for the RC to be sacrificed to a murder of Storm Crows. I'm disappointed. Commander is an amazingly open format in both depth and breadth, and there are a number of interactions and reactions for most things. But I view this most recent change as a step toward a padded playpen environment rather than the multiverse-trekking battlecruiser Magic I fell in love with.

There's an answer for everything. That's a fundamental reality of Magic, and a large part of your skill as a deckbuilder and a player is tested by how well you understand the need for flexibility and resilience in your deck. Once we start removing the need for or effectiveness of answers, we trend toward that padded playpen model I mentioned. We're put into an environment where we're protected, unnecessarily, against anything that might prevent us from experiencing the preferred way to play the game. Everyone's given the same toys and anyone who wants Timmy to put his dinosaur away so he can't bludgeon anyone with it is sternly reminded that it's Timmy's toy and you can't tell him not to.

That model's not meant to demonize the Timmies of the Magic world, but it seems like where we're headed. Feel-good legislation is simply not a format-level concern. I've talked extensively in other posts and articles about how Commander is, first and foremost, a social format. The playgroup is the first and most intimate level of regulation. If the intent of the format is to allow everyone to experience the format in a fun and exciting way, why not emphasize the role of the playgroup and propose that house rules be instituted in order to help players get the most out of their Commander experience? I don't mind if other people want to institute a house rule against tucking (many already did if they found it that troublesome), but I'd like for those players not to tell me I can't tuck a commander because me not dying to a 15/15 voltron makes them sad. Given the strength (or rather, the weakness) of the arguments adduced by the RC for their recent decision, I can't help but think that this is that kind of feel-good ruling being perpetuated at a format level such that it affects all players. And yes, the competitive playgroups can pass house rules to ignore the change. But that doesn't alter the fact that the format rules are what tend to govern games outside of your typical playgroup, and it certainly doesn't alter the precedent being set by the RC. It shouldn't be the burden of the players to repair the format.

I don't know what the RC's prevailing stance on overturning previous changes is, or what their timetable for considering such overturns is, but I urge them to reconsider what they've done before we head too far down the path. Let the playgroups handle the interactions, and let the RC ban only the most egregious threats to format health.

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