Sorry berryjon, bad idea. Changing the commander damage rule to any damage means Purphoros, God of the Forge and Nekusar, the Mindrazer become unstoppable behemoths (not to mention a few others...).

Tiny Leaders was a community format, just like Commander/EDH originally was. Wizards of the Coast didn't have any involvement in its creation or development and never acknowledged it as an official variant.

I agree with Guftders that changing the commander damage rule to count non-combat damage only allows for even more combo kills. It makes aggro even less of a viable option.

The Agrus Kos deck you give as an example could work out fairly well, it's just really dependent on getting him onto the battlefield and attacking. I have a Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer deck that's really fun to play, and the fact that his ability gives my creatures the bonus right away (as long as I have metalcraft) instead of having to wait another turn cycle ends up being hugely important.

One of my favorite EDH decks right now is my Boros Akiri, Line-Slinger deck. In one-on-one matches, it's usually killing the opponent by turn five or six easily.

The problem is that there are four players involved. How to aggro-race three opponents? You might knock out one opponent pretty early, but then the remaining two will team up against you. 1v1 commander formats like Duell or French is a more fertile environment for aggro strategies.

Nice article. Two things:

You never explained or supplied evidence that the format was flawed on purpose. You explained why you think it is flawed(and I agree with you btw), but never why you think the flaw was made deliberately. Also, who did it, and why?

Second, I love Boros. It always saddens me when I think of how bad it is in EDH. I just want a Boros commander that draws cards. Someday :(

I don’t think that the disparity in the strength of particular colors in Commander is intentionally designed, it’s just an unfortunate outcome of how well the strategies of particular colors translate when taken out of the 1v1 format they were designed and balanced for. Colors that can more quickly and effectively establish value engines are going to have an easier time against multiple opponents than those that can’t. Mono-white has the smallest available options for drawing additional cards, while mono-red has been receiving more options but mostly in the form of looting, which is still useful for digging for specific cards but doesn’t actually generate card advantage. Pairing White or Red with other colors to compensate for the card advantage issue can create a lot of viable deck options. Put the two together though, and you don’t resolve the biggest weakness of each when placed in a multiplayer setting.

And it’s not that aggro decks have no viability in the Commander format, they are perfectly capable of taking games at LGS tables. But if you are looking for the fastest and most competitive ways to make an opponent lose, particularly when you take it to the tournament level competitiveness seen in the cEDH community, then yes, the obstacles that an aggro deck has to overcome will leave it in the dust against the broken combos that other decks are likely to use. But in the eyes of a lot of people, cEDH is an aberration and not at all in the spirit of the format. Holding aggro decks to cEDH standards like you have by referencing that tier list you linked is not actually representative of the usual game experience that you are likely to have. As someone who primarily plays decks, and has a couple cEDH decks kicking around, I've still enjoyed and won a number of games with a Naya beatdown deck at my local LGS. I've even won a few with a Brion Stoutarm deck.

I’ve seen aggro decks swing for 120+ damage around turn 7. That’s not fast enough to compete at a cEDH table, where decks can win anywhere from turn 1 to turn 5 at the latest, but that sort of damage is generally enough to have a deck counted as a viable contender to win the game at a casual table. I won’t deny that infinite combo decks have an edge in the format, but aggro isn’t completely down and out.

Personally, I do not think that is necessarily true. Three things I want to point out:

For one, Wizards has tried to combat this by printing the strongest WR+ aggro commanders ever - Edgar Markov who literally gives you free creatures for casting creatures, and Saskia the Unyielding - literally doubling up your damage dealt, so you can deal with two opponents at once. Heck, even mono-red has a commander that easily deals with the issue of multiple people - Purphoros, God of the Forge that is a an aggro commander that does not even need to attack.

Two - the combo-control meta you mention is also not really present. Just because you have multiple opponents, counterspells are nearly eradicated from Commander. Counterspell targeting a single person leaves does nothing but help your other two opponents. The best modicum of control is coercing your opponents to direct their interactive spells towards the biggest threat.

And the third point - aggro is a bit different in commander than 60-card 1v1 constructed. Aggro threats are just further up the mana curve for every deck. Goblin Guide is not very impactful, but Goblin Rabblemaster is a legit threat.

Fourth bonus point - most metas are self-regulating in this regard. Commander is a social format, or at least marketed as such - the playgroup determines the meta. If everyone is OK with combo control decks, somebody will get fed up, bring a Stax list and Smokestack those people to death. Metas are incredibly localized and your point of observation of 1 game where everyone played the same deck is more a statistical error than the norm.

I'm going to reidorate what some others have already said here.
Your analysis of the colors and their weakness is correct, however, what your article does not account for is the community aspect of commander.
Your article appears to come from a very spike, cEDH perspective. I play total garbage decks in commander all the time, and I have a blast. Commander is much more about the game, how all players interact and pilot their decks, than about your specific deck. That is why the game you described watching is such a travesty, if people just focus on "whats good" as opposed to what's fun for them to play, commander loses its appeal. The real issue seems to be that Boros isn't viable in your meta, so maybe the question isn't how the formats flawed, but how is your meta flawed? If commander becomes unfun cause you just want to win, maybe it's not commanders fault.
Thanks for the article!

I understand that you don't play a lot of commander. I understand you don't really have any idea how and most importantly why EDH came to be. I also understand you saw a single (clearly) cEDH game with 4 copy-pasted tier 1 decks and figured "I guess that's all there is to the format I guess". What I don't understand is why you think commander needs strict metatypes like in other formats? Why do we need aggro-control-midrange-combo archetypes set in stone? What if I just want to play my arcane spirit tribal deck? What if I want to play my 10 alternate win-conditions deck? Or heck just all my favourite cards smushed together in a single deck with a random legend? If only we had a format where I could do that and not be labeled a "noob", and finish at last place at the lgs.

Oh, wait.

This is good stuff man. As a long-time commander player who primarily sticks to control and voltron, I can still understand and respect the fact that aggro has no place in the format without land destruction. And while I personally would allow MLD in my playgroups, I'm in the singleton minority there haha.

Also, kudos to you for doing something I never was truly able to do when I wrote articles for this site or had my podcast: sticking with it. I see "#80" and it makes me happy. I can't contribute financially to you but I just wanted to offer my support verbally. Keep doing you, friend.

I want to start this off by saying that I really respect your willingness to put your opinion out there like this berryjon, it's commendable, and I think a lot of people would struggle to do so, especially for as long and as consistently as you've put these articles out. I've been keeping up with them since #1, and they're fun to read!

Now this article in particular you knew was going to face some disagreement, you even acknowledge as much near the beginning.

Thing is, I tend to agree with a lot of the folks in this thread, there seems to be a lot missing from this article, like it should have been multi-part, or was intended to be longer. I'm not really seeing any explanation or justification for the idea that this was an intentional design choice. The other thing that really popped out at me was that you claim "Aggro has been written out of it as nonviable", and then proceed to explain why RDW is nonviable, not Aggro. You even listed Green, the color with big beefy facebeaters, as one of the good colors in the format. There are other styles of Aggro than RDW, and I've seen Stompy decks in EDH do fairly well for themselves.

Changing Commander Damage to work on non-combat damage is not only a demonstrably terrible idea, as has been addressed here already, it's also a step in exactly the wrong direction imo. This is going to be kind of a radical opinion that people won't agree with me on, but if anything, in my personal opinion, Commander Damage is part of the reason Aggro isn't viable. Voltron is simply better. As long as CD exists, Aggro cannot beat Voltron. Between this, and how much more ridiculously powerful creatures have grown over the past decade or so, imo 40 life isn't that much to blow through, especially in aggro, it means like one more round of attacks, tops. It's multiplayer that makes Aggro hard as hell, not Commander.

In a 1v1 game of commander, with Commander Damage, a deck will end you turn 3-4, and consistently. You say that Aggro needs consistency, you have consistency built into the format by its very namesake! Your Commander! I've watched decks knock people out turn 3-4 easy, every game.

Tier lists are for cEDH though, and I think that really gets to the heart of this issue. cEDH is really not Commander.

IMO, Aggro absolutely exists in EDH, I watch it win games weekly. The problem is that EDH Aggro isn't Modern Aggro. You can't build with Goblin Guide and expect that to be good. It's EDH, you need to think bigger. Etali, Primal Storm, Balefire Dragon, Hellkite Charger, these are what red aggro creatures look like in EDH, not Goblin Guide and Monastery Swiftspear.

What do you think of eminence effects and Edgar Markov as a new way to bring aggro back into Commander? Could decks like Hyper Markov become more common?

Decks that feature Vigo the Carpathian as their Commander are hard for me to judge. Mostly because I gave mine to my sister in as a birthday present for her to work into her Olivia deck.

I'm not a fan of Eminence in general, mostly because it's so non-interactive. Just leave your Commander in the command zone, and don't even think about casting it. Even his "When Vigo the Carpathian attacks..." ability seems a little tacked on when his primary ability is to make more tokens.

In that way, he's got a lot of Combo work work going on, getting a cast Vampire and a Token on top of that. And with White being pretty friendly to tokens, it's not a brilliant combo, but it is solid and reliable with an untouchable enabler.

So no, not Aggro as in fast and quick to the kill, but to borrow someone else's definition, it's a midrange Aggro deck.

I'm pretty sure that most aggro decks in Commander would count as midrange aggro by other formats' standards. Outside of cEDH, it's pretty standard for everyone to spend the first 2-3 turns mana ramping so that they can start casting their more expensive spells.

A voltron deck could potentially kill an opponent around turn 5, but that leaves them against two opponents that have had the time to build up their boards. Since the Voltron player has presented themselves as the immediate threat they get teamed up on until they are either dead or irrelevant, leaving the last two players to duke it out between themselves. Aggro decks can find themselves stuck in the same political dynamic if they get a fast start, which is one of the reasons that aggro decks opt for a more midrange approach. Playing carefully until you can suddenly create a board state that can take down two opponents instead of just one means that there is only one opponent left to retaliate against you instead of two.

SaberTech and berryjon have you seen Tribal creature heavy aggro decks with no mana ramp such as Hyper Markov? What are your thoughts on such an aggressive deck that aims to put out a dozen tribal creatures by turn 5 and has life loss effects if the creatures are killed? Berryjon I understand your distaste for Eminence, but if more early game aggressive bonuses are provided through eminence would it allow aggro strategies?

BigBoyBeau: I would definitely be more inclined to give your answer a serious response if you weren't pimping your own deck as some sort of fait accompli success.

@BigBoyBeau Looking at that deck my guess is that it is used more in 1v1 Commander games like on MTGO? If you are looking for commentary on the deck itself feel free to drop me a message and I'll get back to you on the deck page. It seems like you have a particular vision of what you want the deck to be though, and I usually just offer deck refinement ideas, so I'm not sure if my commentary is really what you are looking for.

In regards to tribal decks in general; elves, wizards, and goblins have well earned reputations for being threats at a table and I liked what WotC attempted with the Tribal themed preconstructed decks. I would like to see them do more every second year or so because that seems like the best way to give various tribes some tribe-focused cards that probably just wouldn't have a place in regular sets. More support for elementals, scarecrows, and ninjas are at the top of my wish list. A lot of tribes currently have issues when it comes to competing at more competitive tables.

In regards Edgar Markov in particular as a commander for an aggro deck, I've faced off against a few. His eminence is strong, considering that it gives you extra resources for free. Normally though, as opposed to really using those tokens for attacking, I see Edgar Markov decks use them to fuel cards like Grave Pact, Smokestack, and Skullclamp for value. It's a balancing act with Edgar Markov because if you go too heavy on the aggro end you wind up playing some sub-par creatures just to increase your chances of netting tokens. Even if you are playing an Aristocrats strategy, three opponents with some well-timed spot removal and wrath effects are going to make the game tough on you. With Edgar Markov there is always that question of "Should I play this underwhelming vampire card for the sake of synergy, or just run a more powerful off-tribe card in that slot instead?" I've never built a deck with that commander, so I'm sure there are other people who would have far more insightful advice regarding that question than I would.

While aggro is difficult in this format, (and I agree that commander is more combocentric) I feel that the challenge aggro has can be explained more by the multiplayer aspect. Depending on the meta, the more aggressive a player is out of the gate, the more likely others need to take them down quickly. To curtail this, the easiest method of winning with an aggro deck is to set up for a surprise Alpha Strike. While difficult, Red and White have some of the more efficient ways of setting this up. However, Aggro players are still at a disadvantage.

I am a huge lover of Combat, and a fellow red /white player like yourself! Your article is pretty good, but you appear to have a narrow focus of what Magic Commander can be. Your scenario screams of playing cEDH/EDH for Prize Support. It does not feel like your playing Table top Commander with your buddies who like to brew decks and try things, and go to the store for FNM Commander. As an Aggro player, I have 0 intent to do 120 damage to win the game. Often my games are won by doing 60/80 Damage total. I enjoy using Politics of Commander to assist me in my kills. Now, I do agree with you, playing Red/White has only been successful for me playing Biblical Gisela (https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/217022-judgment-day-gisela-blade-of-goldnight-soi-update) And I do win through a Double/Quadruple Damage dealing Gisela most of the time. Also, I don’t have much protection against combo players winning (Angel’s Grace is about it, but it’s totally stellar when it works, and Sunforger pulling it out is priceless) But at the same time, I generally make the deliberate choice to ask if people are playing combo based decks, and if they are I grab one of mine that can fight in that arena. Just like you, I am not a fan of offering counter points without Solutions, and I feel removing the combat rule of general damage does just open up more silly mechanics that multiple decks can not manage against. Instead I would like to see Wizards give red and white more tools in the direction we need to stay more competitive (artifact based card draw, or white / red search mechanics). Battle bond (Which us in Denver refer to as Commander Masters) gave out some cool cards, and hopefully The next time Wizards R&D gives up an open forum we can get them to listen to what we need to be competitive (the Minotaur Twins came a long way in the right direction) I enjoyed your article, and look forward to the next one!

Boza: Edgar Markov and Saskia the Unyielding are poor examples of how boros colors can do well. first off, they both have additional colors, which immediately writes them off from boros colors. those "free creatures" edgar gives you are 1/1's.

Madcookie: literally every deck ever built can be categorized as 1 of the 4 main archetypes (aggro, midrange, control, or combo). even your arcane/spirit tribal deck or "10 win conditions" deck. the 4 main archetypes basically boil down to a measure of how proactive or reactive your deck is.

Sarkhan420 - I have clearly described those two as WR+ commanders, that while not completely Boros colored, they are definitely aggro-oriented commanders, whose abilities are geared to deal with the whole "120 life to get through" problem.

Do not dismiss the free 1/1s as something token - they are quite the threat. Stensia Banquet, Urge to Feed, Malakir Bloodwitch, Captivating Vampire, Indulgent Aristocrat, Patron of the Vein all work super well with those free 1/1s, not to mention the traditional token buffers.

@Sarkhan420 Sure they "can" be categorized as the same archetypes, but only for the lack of a better word. Compared to modern/standard all decks in commander work differently than their similar decks types in those other formats and this was the point of my post and the point I was counter-arguing in the author's post. As JXB mentioned in aggro commander you need to make preparations for an alpha strike, 2 turn sweep kill if you like, in order to win, while the author dismissed this entirely simply because he wants Goblin Guide to be the best card in commander and deal 120 damage by turn 3 with it, disregarding both the point of this format and the multiplayer part others have mentioned thoroughly.

Madcookie: Please don't put words into my mouth like that. Goblin Guide is a horrible card in Commander but amazing in Modern and Standard when it was legal there.

And as for a three turn win? How many Commander decks out there brag about locking down the game by that point? And how many of those are Aggro decks?

The format is designed to make Aggro decks unplayable except for a narrow band of aggro style that is more Midrage than full Aggro. And your comments haven't helped your counterpoints. No format is anti-noob or anti-Fun like you think is my opinion. You must have missed where I opened up with the statement that I do like and and enjoy the format. Commander does have mechanical and social advantages, but a respect for Aggro is not one of them.

berryjon, aggro as you describe it - more midrange than full aggro - seems to be quite true for every other archetype. With 100 cards and few ways to mitigate the singleton nature of the format, every deck is forced to upscale. You cannot reliably combo off with infinite turns on turn 1 in this format, or turn 3 or 4 for that matter.

For example, an infinite turns combo deck might run combos like Panoptic Mirror + Time Warp, which would be laughed at in a modern event; but because both pieces do something on their own and it increases your consistency, you run them. Or a card like Expropriate, which is quite powerful. Sure you can play like a legacy deck and run Omniscience and Show and Tell, but you only get one copy - you have to dedicate mana, turns and deck space to cards that find those pieces.

TLDR: Not only aggro decks are more midrange.

Madcookie: no, its really not "for lack of a better word". just because a deck works differently, doesn't mean it doesn't still fit the same archetype. green stompy attacks with creatures, burn decks use burn spells, but both are aggro

I believe the sentiment of the article is correct, but I don't believe that the format was intentionally formed to be non agro. I think that its a product of the fact that creatures were bad for the first 10-15 years of magic, and spells were just stronger. Unfortunately during that time blue and black got tons of card draw and tutors, where white really only has Enlightened Tutor and equipment tutors, while red has the laughably bad Gamble. The problem now is that they refuse to print meaningful cards that would balance out the equation. I believe that these colors need 2 draw spells added and they will perform significantly better and BUG. Both colors should have a harmonize effect, which is a balanced card draw to smooth out your early and mid game, and then they should both have 1 bigger draw spell around 5 or 6 mana that checks a condition and lets you draw a number of cards on that condition. I believe that adding 2 of these to each color would significantly balance out gameplay. Also banning Cyclonic Rift would help immensely.

I do realize that they have been printing more red wheels over the past few years, as well as things like apex of power and outpost siege, but these largely don't matter because you are forced into play these cards or losing them. You cant save them for later if needed which is a big problem.

Suns_Champion & Tyrant-Thanatos: if im reading this correctly, the evidence for commander being intentionally designed to rule out aggro, is in berryjons statement that commander was meant to be a format where players can cast the big spells that they cant cast in other formats. for example, modern is usually such a fast format that anything costing 5 mana is considered "expensive" for the format. so if a player has a bunch of cards they like that cost 5 or more mana, commander gives them a format in which to play those cards.

I usually define the base deck archetypes based on their mentality towards the game, particularly regarding how much they intend to interact with the opponent's cards.

Aggro: Doesn't care that much about interacting with the opponent's cards and just aims to kill the opponent quickly. It might run a little bit of burn, protection, or removal to help its win condition stick around and get through.

Aggro decks come in a few different varieties.

1) Weenie horde decks that spam a bunch of low CMC creatures to swarm the board.

2) Mana ramp deck that look to quickly jump ahead of the opponent’s mana curve and quickly drop large creatures that outsize any creature that the opponent could play on their corresponding turn.

3) Burn decks that deal damage directly to the opponent instead of focussing on damage through creatures.

4) Voltron/Bogles style decks that cast a creature then make it bigger each turn.

Midrange: Looks to moderately interact with the opponent's cards, particularly in the early game through hand disruption and removal, but still aims to be fairly aggressive with its win condition once they’ve put the opponent a little off balance and low on resources.

Control: Plans to interact with the opponent's cards as long as needed to reduce an opponent's game-play options to as few as possible and then win in the late game with a specific win condition that the opponent no longer has the ability to stop.

Combo decks usually fall into either the aggro or control mentalities but tend win through a combination of card effects instead of incremental combat damage. As such, they are reliant on a few specific cards to win while creature decks can theoretically win through any combination of their creatures. Aggressive combo decks cut down a bit on interactive cards in favour of more card draw effects and tutors to get their combo pieces faster and more reliably, while the control based versions play more like traditional control decks.

Tempo decks kind of have an inverted midrange/control game plan, leaning more to the aggro end of the spectrum by establishing a few cheap threats early in the game then spending the rest of the game trying to protect those treats and disrupt the opponent.

So when someone says “aggro deck” I know that they are usually referring to a creature-based deck, but I think that you can have non-creature based decks that approach the game with the same sort of aggressive mentality. I don’t see much difference between casting a handful of burn spells that add up to kill an opponent and casting a handful of cards to put together a combo that deals infinite damage just as quickly. Although, I will admit that combos that can suddenly kill an opponent all in one turn may not give that same sense of game progression to the person on the other end of the table that a traditional creature-based deck does. Being able to hold your combo cards and cast them all in one turn leaves the opponent with minimal knowledge of what state the game is in and few opportunities to disrupt your game plan. It’s not a great feeling to think that you are clearly winning only to have the game swept out from under you all in one turn.

@berryjon Goblin Guide was just an example of a card, since you are after all comparing commander with modern and standard and want EDH to be more similar to them in the regard of said "aggro viability".

As for the designed to dupe aggro decks part first off I think you confuse cEDH with normal EDH. Are RW cards worse than BUG in cEDH? Certainly. But this is not true in casual EDH where the best card ever is stuff like Thieves' Auction, Sunbird's Invocation or Revel In Jank. In that sense all this mess would have been avoided if only you had titled this article "Competitive EDH's flaw".

Second the format is multiplayer and that's a very big difference from 1v1. It's not the increased life total, it's not the singleton, it's the fact that you have 3 other people who know your plan is to smack face from turn 1. I'm 99,7% sure that if you try to play aggro in a FFA multiplayer with 3 other modern/standard decks at the table, you'd end up with the same result.

@Sarkhan420 I meant for the lack of a better word" in the sense that aggro in EDH is more like combo-aggro Brudiclad/Inalla/Kiki, or set up an Alpha strike Triumph of the Hordes style rather than aggro in modern which is for the most part either turn sideways or burn spells from the start.

Imagine a low cmc boros commander with: creatures you control have myriad. Wizards pls.

EDH is not tun by wizards I see that mentioned multiple times within the article, it is run (poorly) by the rc

I think the recent rules change (not trying to derail the thread) that removed the tuck rule, and made tuck cards almost-unplayable (Not that high level Cedh decks rely on them) is a big mistake, red and white which you point out are the worst colors in EDH lost perhaps some their best cards to deal with problematic commanders

You touched on this a little bit, but I think the problem with EDH is the abundance of tutors.

The whole concept of having it be a singleton format is to encourage interesting and unique scenarios that are different every time. (Tutors work directly against this notion.)

Yes: Black and Green are much better than Red and White, and that's because of the sheer number of tutors available in each of those colors compared to the others.

Yeah, combo is largely the meta, and making aggro more attractive might even make matchups a little more interesting, but I don't think that would fix the format. I think the way to fix the format is to make combo decks slower. I'm okay with someone comboing to wrap up a game that's been going on for a few hours... but when you tutor up your combo and GO OFF ON TURN THREE, that's bad for the format because it pushes people away. Tutors are the vehicles that enable combos to be assembled at such degenerate speeds.

I'd be interested in experimenting with lower starting life totals, but I think what the format needs even more is for all tutors to be banned.

Banning the tutors would have a significant impact. The biggest problem for Red and WHite is that they cant tutor for the exact thing that they need, while the other colors can. Ever see a blue player that doesnt have cyclonic rift in their hand? Me either. As someone who plays a lot of Boros I just have to hope that I draw teferis protection to gaurd against the cyclonic rift blow out. And I highly doubt that wizards is going to be printing more efficiently costed tutors. Even something as simple as fabricate can reduce a lot of variance, they need to print this card in a red and white. Just being able to find the artifact you need would help those decks a lot.

A tutorless format would hinder the top decks significantly without much impact to lower performing decks.

In my opinion banning the fast mana rocks would also do quite a bit, and would probably elminate turn 3 or faster wins altogether. This would prevent one player from being way ahead.

Im not sure that lowering the life totals would do that much, even if each player had 20 life, thats still 60 damage you have to do. I still wouldnt want to be running goblin guide in that instance.

I think you're right in that red and white have a distinct disadvantage in the format, especially red. People will play white with the other colors for access to its cheap wraths and universal removal, but red doesn't often bring much to the table in commander games that other colors can't do better.

While I agree with other comments that adding any type of damage from a commander will make certain other commanders unintentionally powerful, Nekusar and Purphoros were mentioned, I think this potentially can be fixed by simply reducing the starting life total of all players. I've been able to play burn and aggressive strategies in casual multiplayer because I was able to reasonably rely on other players to help tick down those life totals, but the decks just kind of fizzle out in commander if you're trying to deal with twice the amount of life. Or another option, though this could be potentially more confusing, is to have a permanent Rath effect on red instants and sorceries. If Lightning Bolt and Magma Spray had their damage doubled, they'd suddenly be viable removal spells in the format, and would be able to pose more of a threat to opponent's life totals.

DespairFaction, yes, banning all tutors definitely WOULD significantly change the game for top tier builds while leaving lower tier builds relatively the same. I think that's what I would like to see for EDH: a slower, more casual environment where everyone's deck is relatively the same power. If people want to win before turn four, they should just go play Legacy.

If we don't wanna ban all tutors, then I think Wizards needs to print more tutors in Red and White (like you said) along with more cards that punish or disable tutoring.

I too have thought about banning fast mana rocks. It might make Green too powerful if other colors aren't able to ramp anymore, but it would definitely slow down the meta which I am 100% in favor of.

Frankly, I don't see a problem with the current commander rules.

1. Commander is the only format where two distinct entities of play have developed--casual and competitive. In part, this is due to how the format is set up--there isn't really a sanctioned paper commander format. This makes Commander like any other kitchen table format--you adjust the power level to befit who you play.

2. We should support both types of players. Many of the changes here might "fix" the aggro problem in cEDH, by giving aggro decks the ability to win on the same turn as a combo deck, but they'll be a nightmare in casual. After all, it's pretty easy and inexpensive to build an aggro deck or deck built around Nekusar, the Mindrazer, meaning these types of decks will overwhelm casual play, stifling the very creativity commander is designed for.

3. There's talk of banning tutors on this thread--that's absurd. Just because some colours are at a disadvantage does not mean we should drag down the rest. The banlist is a finely tuned being, and should only remove the most broken cards.

Rather than change the format or break the other colours, Red and White should be fixed. White and Red have some things going for them - Aven Mindcensor, Blood Moon, wraths, etc. There's potential for Wizards to release an absurdly powerful Boros Stax commander that could break many of the advantages BUG decks have.

The solution isn't change--it's progress, and the creation of new, exciting cards the community wants to use.

jordanalessi you, along with a couple others, suggested banning mana rocks. However, I would have to say that would likely only make the problem worse. Consider as you mentioned green can tutor up basic lands, black can make swamps tap for extra mana with things like Crypt Ghast, Nirkana Revenant, or Liliana of the Dark Realms, and blue can do the same with High Tide as well as hit its land drops with regularity with its superior card draw.

White does have a handful of of plains tutors, but both it and red require those rocks in order to simply be viable. Try to keep up in a mono red or Boros deck without rocks, and you'll see that even without your opponents playing rocks how quickly you'll be behind because of your lack of draw and lack of ramping spells.

I will agree with other statements, though, that these two colors should have more tutoring. Given how they've implemented vehicles, red has always been the color connected with them, so letting red find vehicles seems fine to me. Additionally both colors should be able to interact more with equipment.

Interestingly, have any of you seen the 1v1 banlist? The French version (or is it Canadian? I forget) bans all fast mana rocks (IE Sol Ring, but not stuff like Cluestones) and the most broken tutors (think Demonic Tutor). I think it was the same with the online ban list until recently.

Pretty sure the meta was still warped around BUG even with tutors banned.

In regard to the mono green will be too strong if no rocks bit. Everyone should be aware of the turn 1 mana crypt, forest, cultivate play. Generates you 5 mana on turn 2 if you make a land drop. You would remove that. Other green ramp takes mana and time to use. So if opponent is playing STE and rampant growth you can easily keep pace with thought vessel, mind stone, signets, and the like. If they are playing cultivate kodams and any of the 4 mana rocks, you keep pace with worn powerstone, palladium myr, hedron archive etc. The point is that green needs to spend time and mana to get their accleration going. Sure on turn 6 they may have 9 lands, but they will have had to work for it. But there is a big difference between having 4-5 mana on turn 2, vs on turn 3 or 4. If green wants to get back that explosiveness, then they would need to use mana dorks which get swept up by board wipes nicely. The problem is that there is no tempo cost associated with sol ring and mana crypt, and I believe it only allows unfair decks to get ahead further.

For a little while in July of last year, there were no mana rocks on MTGO because of the 1v1 fiasco. It was actually amazing, no one was super ahead on turn 3.

Yes there are cards that explode for mana in the later turns, but they can be removed, and more importantly they take time to get into play. When the rocks come down on turn 1 there is no time to react to them.

Also some mentioned it about RW with stax. Stax while certainly very effective, many people view as against the social contract. I think there is a time and a place for stax, but its not something I want to see in a regular 8-10 turn of game commander. I do fully support amrageddon though, ramp decks are out of control these days.

wereotter, yeah... I hear you about the mana rocks. Banning them would definitely hurt the already weaker colors the most, which is not what we want to do.

cdkime, I love your idea of progress instead of change. It would be AWESOME if they printed a baller boros stax commander. I do think they've been giving red and white more love in recent years, and it's really nice to see that.

DespairFaction, as the person who mentioned RW as potentially powerful Stax colours, I have a counterpoint to your "social contract" argument.

There exists no social contract in cEDH. In a format where games can be decided by turn 3, you have to be either brutally fast, or brutally repressive--there is no middle ground. Boros cannot be brutally fast--it would take a significant change to the card's support (ramp/card draw/tutors), which could run afoul of our current understanding of the colour pie. Thus, if we want Boros to be viable in cEDH, it must be repressive.

As I stated, R/W has within the colour pie the tools it needs - Red's slowing down of mana ramp/crippling lands, and White's ability to neuter card draw and tutoring. All it would take is a strong Stax-based commander and perhaps a few additional support cards. This is something Wizards could do fairly easily, possibly even in a standard-legal set.

Games where the social contract against Stax exists tend to be more casual and more self-regulated. Boros can already do halfway decently in those slower metas, so I really don't see much of an issue. Some further cards would certainty help the colours, but that doesn't mean they would have to be run in a casual setting. You can always adjust a deck downward to fit in with your group's taboos, and avoid table politics issues.

Sure, Competitive EDH is anything goes. STax completely fair game. In those games ill play winter orb and Armageddon for days.

However, its important to remember that Cedh is a really small part of the the edh community, probably around 10%. Which means that the social contract is going to apply around 90% of the time.

Most of the games that I play, and the groups around me (I play at 3 different shops) tend to be semi competitive with wins around turns 6-8. The decks are strong and have focused game plans, just that they aren't turns 1-3 win strong.

A RW stax commander would no doubt do really well in the Cedh scene, but I just don't think that's a game play style wotc wants to promote. Also it would be one of those things that so punishing to semi comp and casual decks that no one in those tiers would actually want to play against the deck...similar to someone grabbing their narset deck when you just want to play some regular edh, no thanks.

Main point is that Cedh is a really small part of the community, and doesn't represent the majority of commander being played. I would prefer to see some tools to level out the play experience across the board, instead of some hardcore stax commander that will be really limited use of applications. They really just need to print a red harmonize, and/or some fabricates and it will really help those colors a lot.

I think you're missing a couple key points.

1. You are only thinking about this in terms of commander. As I stated, this hypothetical stax commander does not have to be released in a commander set. Anti-tutor effects are powerful in 60-card constructed (fetch lands), and Wizards has been going heavy on producing cards to punish Tron. This hypothetical commander could easily be designed to appeal both to cEDH players and 60-card constructed players, negating your argument it would only apply to a small subsection of the community.

2. We should print cards designed for the hyper-competitive players. Even if they are in the minority, they are still part of the greater Magic community and deserve some exciting, new tools to play around with.

3. WotC should promote Stax as a gameplan. Everyone should be allowed to play with the type of deck they enjoy - this may surprise you, but there's even some of us who like the brutal slog that is a mirror-Stax match.

4. The majority of your post is simply restating what I've already said, just missing the logical inference that can be derived therefrom. As stated, I agreed such a card would be problematic for non-cEDH players. However, as I stated, semi-casual and casual metas are self-regulating. Their players talk with one another and can request certain decks, cards, or archetypes not be played. Players know their own meta, and can choose not to play these cards if it would be unpopular.

5. Even in groups where players might not communicate, casual multiplayer metas tend to self-regulate. After all, if you are hated off the board by an alliance of your opponents every time you play a certain deck, you're going to stop playing that deck or modify its power level.

6. You, yourself, brought up the fact that hyper-competitive cards exist, such as, to use your example, Narset. Do you really think we should live in a world where Narset was never printed? That's effectively what you're arguing--because Narset might have a bad influence if brought to a casual game, it should not be allowed to exist.

7. Denying players access to these cards is damaging to metas were these cards would be welcome. Its Wizards' job to give us the tools needed for any and every deck we might want to build, and to regulate their own sanctioned formats. For casual, kitchen table formats, it should be that particular group, not Wizards, deciding what is and is not allowed.

8. We can't just willy-nilly add cards to colours. The Colour Pie is what makes Magic work, and all new cards should work with our current understanding of the Colour Pie. Red and White's failings on these points is precisely why the game works--not every colour is, nor should be, good at everything. Asking to add these cards to Red and White would be like asking for reprints of Psionic Blast - they're just not something that should really exist.

There are effects, without adding to the color pie, that don't exist in the game but possibly should. For example, my meta has a LOT of graveyard strategy decks (coincidentally this is a strategy that blue, green, and black do well while white and black don't do so well) and I wanted to create effects in a deck that punish graveyard decks without shutting them down entirely.

I was disappointed that in all my searching, Ash Zealot was the only card I could find that punished my opponents for using their graveyard as a resource. So one way to make red at least more viable in commander would be to create a card that said something like "if a card would leave your opponent's graveyard, and it wasn't shuffled into his or her library, that player takes 1 damage" This is completely in flavor for red to say you can still do it, but it's going to hurt if you do while giving them a really powerful tool in commander. Ideally I would like to see this kind of graveyard hate tacked onto a Boros legendary so it can sit in the command zone and then come out once those deck types try to get that engine running.

Additionally there are effects that exist, but wizards has been reluctant to print more of, that could make the two colors more viable. Cards like Alms Collector and Land Tax in white (or really any plains tutor) and cards like Sisters of the Flame in red that could really help those colors in commander. Put them into the precons so they don't mess up standard if you have to, or into supplementary products like Battlebond. But little things like that would make a pretty big difference.