Rules Committee Gives Up Managing Commander
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Sept. 30, 2024, 2:21 p.m. by Nemesis
First the Link
Gist is, the RC is giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of WotC.
Notably, they're stating that they're reexamining the banlist, though won't be banning anything in the near future.
Also, they're looking at a system to more objectively break decks down into four tiers based off format staples.
DrukenReaps says... #3
I'm glad this was given its own thread since the other got so big I stopped following it and may not have known this otherwise... Sad how this came about... I like the RC folks I've met. Hope they stay connected to it all in some small way at least.
September 30, 2024 2:49 p.m.
@Crow_Umbra: Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware this discussion was happening in that thread. If a mod wants to close and delete this one, either way makes sense to me.
September 30, 2024 3:15 p.m.
While this might have arisen out of the recent bans, a topic this important deserves its own thread, rather than just being a footnote on a relatively smaller issue.
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I’ll be honest, I do not really know what to think about this change. I think it is far too early to really see what happens, and even our speculations are going to be without any real evidence to support them.
The one thing I do feel comfortable stating - the folks who drove the RC out are the absolute worst elements of our community. I had my issues with some decisions by the RC - every player does - but that doesn’t change the fact they were volunteers spending their free time trying to make the game better for everyone. They didn’t deserve to have their hobby ruined by a bunch of low-life jerks.
I hope they’re all doing okay and they are able to keep finding joy in the game, even if they are now in a different role.
And I hope Wizards is half as good of stewards of Commander as the RC was. If they can meet that threshold, I think the format will be fine.
September 30, 2024 8:49 p.m.
I think I'm ok with this. Commander wouldn't be what it is without the RC, but largely have been non-existent and irrelevant. I don't think the RC was ever equiped to deal with how large commander has become. With wotc taking over it sounds like there's going to be an effort to do a cedh, a high power, a casual and a precon like format seperation. I'm optimistically hopeful that works out.
October 1, 2024 11:33 a.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #7
It's kind of necessary? In light of recent events, I'd rather have people who can properly, legally, answer death threats and such. I'm not sure about four tiers; I could argue for two tiers, casual and cEDH, but that's just me.
October 2, 2024 10:23 a.m.
My big worry with wizards taking over and creating the bracket system is that it's going to give them free license to print strictly better cards and then just have them be higher tier than existing cards. This has already been a sticking point for me with things like, there's no reason to not play fetchlands except for their price, or when they print a commander who is so far ahead of other similar commanders, like Voja is for aggro decks, and I can see another layer of that constant upgrade effect possibly happening.
I guess my main concern is that, say you are playing a level 2 deck and then they print a commander that's strictly better, or a card that fits perfectly, but it's in level 3, then it incentivizes you to start looking at level 3 power cards and seeing how else you could upgrade. Or if someone in your group wants to play a few level 3 cards and then it opens the gates and you all end up upgrading to level 3 decks just because someone wanted to run something. I could see it creating another layer of fomo, and honestly, I'm kind of checked out on that pressure when it comes to mtg.
Maybe it's that I was already feeling pretty far away from the game, but the idea of having to brew decks inside a new system, and just how they can use this system to make more pushed cards without blinking, and how it can latch on to a player's psychology of wanting to upgrade and make small changes to decks they have, it makes me think that maybe I'm good, and maybe I'll just play the commander decks I've got, because there will always be an upgrade, there will always be something that's too good in my old deck, and maybe that's okay.
October 3, 2024 6:28 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #9
Yeah, but they've printed strictly better cards for some time. The Reserved List is the only exception, and it's more cards like Thunder Spirit that they would reprint if they could; limited could really use a 2/2 flying first striker for 3 mana.
The question I have is how to tell these tiers. Once you start getting more than two tiers, one for casual and one for cEDH, it becomes just vibes.
October 4, 2024 10:48 a.m.
hyalopterouslemur - That is twice you have noted confusion about why there would be more than two tiers. To be perfectly frank, I struggle to comprehend how this is all that difficult to grasp.
In actual play, there do tend to be about four different general groups players fall into.
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At the bottom, you have precons and other lower-level decks. These are the decks that I often see piloted by the younger folks at my game stores - they tend to have too little removal, tapped lands, high average mana values, and run suboptimal cards. These also include your ultra budget decks.
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Next you have your tuned decks that are not budget breaking. These are probably your standard deck for a casual player with a firm grasp of the game. They might not be the most efficient possible, but they are far, far better than precons and will consistently defeat them.
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Next up you have your competitive at a local gamestore level. These are decks that are not quite at cEDH level, but they are going to have a much, much higher win rate against tier 1 and 2 decks. These are designed for gamestores with a more competitive meta (or, in the alternative, are seen as "pubstomper" decks). While these decks can make high powered games against one another and will pubstomp lower level decks, they are not quite at the brutal efficiency of cEDH.
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Finally, you have cEDH decks. These decks are designed only to play against other decks of equal power. That often means tuning them for a more limited, specific meta than a general "I want to win at my store against whatever anyone happens to bring."
If you just divide this into two groups, you miss the reality of how people play. Just looking at my gamestore, we usually break into tier 2 and 3 (with some of the middle school students who show up being in turn 1, and having a hard time playing unless they make their own pod). None of these decks would fare very well in a true cEDH environment. Mixing and matching between those three levels can create an unfun game environment, and it would not be great to mix either 1 and 2 or 1, 2, and 3 into a single lump.
October 4, 2024 12:02 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #11
Okay, thanks. That makes more sense. I forgot unmodified precons. Which is funny, since I ran the unmodified The Mimeoplasm deck at the original Commander release. (The days when most precons were about Johnny.)
October 4, 2024 5:35 p.m.
I know (or assume, or hope) that these questions will be answered, but I haven't seen anything that says what tier a deck is in if it has a mix of cards from different tiers. If it has like sixty tier 2 cards, thirty-eight tier 3 cards, and two tier 4 cards, how does that compare to a deck that's only tier 3? Will the tiers be subdivided to make a more continuous spectrum (High tier 2 vs low tier 3), or is it more discrete?
Is every tier 3 card considered to be equal and superior to every tier 2 card in all circumstances, or will combos and synergy be considered?Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact are high-risk and not especially efficient tutors by themselves, but killer combo pieces with Thassa's Oracle. Can a tier 2 deck run Tainted Pact, assuming that it's a tier-4 card?
Will every card be tiered, or will each tier have a few representative cards, and the rest be assigned ad hoc? The first option would take forever and be incredibly arbitrary, while the second option doesn't resolve anything.
This, to me, is too loose and subjective to cover all but the broadest scenarios. Unfortunately, I can't say I have a better idea. Most people don't want to discuss power levels for half an hour before playing, and any discrete ranking system will necessarily be at least somewhat arbitrary and overly inclusive.
October 5, 2024 1:59 a.m.
RiotRunner789 says... #13
Guve it a couple years and Wizards will be printing 'premium' commander precons at tier two and tier three.
October 5, 2024 7:44 a.m.
RiotRunner789 - Frankly, that would probably be a good thing for the format. It would provide players an easy on-ramp to higher levels of play. Building and then purchasing a new deck is not exactly cheap or easy, and having a singular product you can obtain would help reduce one of the barriers to entry of higher tiers of play.
Further, unconstrained by the precon power level, it would provide a mechanism for reprinting powerful staples you would never see in a regular precon. After all, they are unlikely to print something like Cyclonic Rift in a standard precon; they might in a premium one. That, in turn, would increase the supply of some of the pricy staples, which could help reduce their price.
Would they also introduce broken new cards through such a product? Probably. But they also have been introducing broken new cards in all kinds of products.
I feel this is one of those product lines a lot of players would freak out about… but should probably be better for the game overall.
October 5, 2024 9:51 a.m.
RiotRunner789 says... #15
Having more products and better reprints isn't a bad thing. I would probably enjoy them myself. I'm just still a bit pessimistic/skeptical about WOTC gaining control of the RC.
Wizard's had a 1hr discussion about it posted on Daily MTG. The VP (Athony somthing?) said along the lines they don't make decisions based on profit but instead on making the player base happy. Said they make more products to be diverse and engage more players.
While I believe that is mostly true, I found them more or less dismissing the profit aspect as dubious at best which didn't sound like the truth. I get WOTC is a business but Hasbro's greed has me worried (as it did before just slightly worse).
Just gonna have to wait and see.
October 5, 2024 2:04 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #16
Didn't they already print Cyclonic Rift in a precon, though? (My tokens still hurt from that.) For WotC, precons are a perfect place to print powerful (but not broken) cards that won't see Standard again any time soon, or "good in EDH, bad elsewhere" cards.
You also get chaff with those chase cards, but that's a standard Magic hazard.
October 5, 2024 3:18 p.m.
Okay, looks like some of my questions got almost answered.
https://mtginsider.com/mtg-commander-power-bracket/
This has a link to an hour-long video I don't have the time and focus for right now, but to summarize the summary:
Not every card will be bracketed. Some cards, like Thassa's Oracle and friends, will be bracketed based on their combo power instead of face value strength. Other cards will be bracketed based on "fun-ness". Stax, prison, MLD, and similar effects will probably be in bracket 3-4. Your deck's power level is equal to the highest individual card power level. Unbanning cards is possible, but not yet confirmed. No further cards are expected to be banned.
Moving into personal opinion, cards I'd like to see unbanned that I don't think will break anything too much:
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Biorhythm (alternate win con for green, high cost, sorcery speed)
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Gifts Ungiven (although double tutor + graveyard stuff might still be too much)
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Leovold, Emissary of Trest (probably over the line, but I want Sultai Elves!)
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Panoptic Mirror (probably in higher brackets for combo potential)
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Sway of the Stars (obnoxious, but not overpowered)
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Sylvan Primordial (borderline)
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Upheaval (Cyclonic Rift gets to hang out, but this doesn't?)
October 5, 2024 4:56 p.m.
I think I see some potential for "tier-pushing" like Niko9 suggests. Print some "best at" category __ & make sure it is one tier up on the another commander that does the same thing in a lamer way. Now you are thinking, "they made my playstyle in a way better card" I want to play that card but I'm going to have to move up a tier & I better get all those associated higher tier cards. Who knows how it actually runs in practice though. They already do this with WUBRG "best of" cards each set anyway, so would it really be that different? With WUBRG "best of" they suddenly have you trying to optimize your mana base for WUBRG & all the generically best categories from 30 years of the game being around without limitation. So, I guess WUBRG "best of/at" commanders being constantly printed is still the greater evil than pushed tier-releases. Though tier-systems may be pretty funky for commander precons.
October 5, 2024 4:58 p.m.
Gleeock For sure, I guess for me it just feels like there are a lot of, "this new card is better than every old card doing something similar" and now we might be in for that, but that being printed to 4 tiers. I generally want to play with anybody, pack interaction, and figure out how to try to stop them if they have a stronger deck, and this kind of burns me on deckbuilding because if I have a tier 2 deck, the answer for playing against stronger decks will always be to buy the stronger cards they are printing into tier 3. I want to have the puzzle to solve, not to just play a deck in a tier.
Also, I'm not going to go back and tweak decks I have to fit into a tier, I'm just not.
And yep, I agree on WUBRG but to me the problem is how easy it is to build a 5color mana base, and how easy it is to mulligan into almost never getting screwed. When EDH was made, 5color had a consistency disadvantage that it just doesn't have anymore, so why not make some kind of rule to address that any WUBRG commander will be better than most commanders no matter what they do. Like, just going back to the old mulligan rules where you don't see 7 every time, that would make 5color significantly harder to run.
Also and it's probably been said to death, but WUBRG commanders that don't cost WUBRG to cast really bug me. It's definitely taking the disadvantage of 5color down even further when you can just cast your commander normally.
October 5, 2024 8:05 p.m.
A lot of completely wild speculation here that really has no grounds in reality. They always have designed the game to have different striations of play - Standard has different design than Modern, both of which have different designs than Eternal products. Even within those products, they have competitive cards, mid range cards, and draft chaff or other filler cards.
Tier systems already exist throughout the game’s design. And they have always existed in how players talk about the power of their own decks.
Wizards making a group finding system that tries to add some quantifiable data points to make games easier to find does not add a new reality to the game - it merely is Wizards acknowledging a reality that has existed for three decades.
October 5, 2024 8:33 p.m.
We can have different opinions, but the fact is, nothing has happened yet, so what has "grounds in reality"...hasn't happened yet.
And, I don't think that's a a 1:1 analogy because other formats have always been balanced for competitive while commander is being balanced for four separate forms, 3 of which are casual. This is not something they have experience with.
It's something new, and I have doubts, and you don't, and that's cool. Just, you know, lets keep arguments open rather than saying, this is the reality of something that doesn't exist yet.
October 5, 2024 9:36 p.m.
Caerwyn My take on that angle is that this is the first time when WotC has directly stated that one card may be more competitive or less fun than another. Sure, nobody's going to use Shock in a match when Lightning Bolt, Play with Fire, and so many other cards exist. And WotC has also freely said that some cards are strictly better than others. But this is the first time that direct measures and comparisons of competitiveness have been made between cards and decks.
As far as I know, WotC has never sat down with a bunch of Modern decks or whatever, ran them against each other, then specifically said that for the next six months, Boros Energy will be a high Tier 1 deck because it has Amped Raptor, Gruul Hardened Scales will be low Tier 1, Dredge is Tier 2, and Dinosaurs is Tier 3. In fact, they've kind of done the opposite with bans and counterplay tech to reduce the amount of striation. They've collected and reported tournament results, but this is the first time that they've openly planned to set a boundary between "competitive" and "casual", or "high power" and "low power" or however it's ultimately going to be broken down. Modern, Standard, Pioneer, Brawl, Vintage, none of those formats have attempted to give cards an objective score from one to four stars on competitve and fun axes. And that's what they're about to do with (how many?) cards.
At this point, I think it's at least worth trying and seeing what happens, but I think it's not entirely accurate to say that this isn't a new reality. The new reality isn't the striations themselves, it's trying to objectively rank (a few? some? lots of?) cards within those striations.
October 5, 2024 11:20 p.m.
I have as well been feeling distant towards one of my favoured games. My problem with it is I play for fun. Most precons whoop my @$$ without hope. I have a few decks I've had to put $1000 into just to bring them up past precon. The sad part? Those same decks used to be kings before the last 4 years of quite frankly, amazing precons. It is just too bad they dont build themes like I do and I dont want to play what they are selling.
I am shocked to hear the way people have behaved about this. And perhaps this is just the right time to play a different game for a bit.
October 8, 2024 3:28 a.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #24
I miss the way they did precons. In the original precons, all the psychographs were represented. (Johnny would have a field day with all but the Mardu deck.) Here's how they stacked up:
Kaalia of the Vast Timmy and Spike
Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Timmy
Basandra, Battle Seraph Spike
Riku of Two Reflections Timmy and Johnny
Animar, Soul of Elements Timmy and Spike
Edric, Spymaster of Trest Spike
Ghave, Guru of Spores All three (Johnny likes the "combos with anything" nature of Ghave; Spike likes the sac outlet and the fact that you can use any +1/+1 counter for Ghave's abilities; Timmy likes an army of mushroom people.)
Karador, Ghost Chieftain Spike
Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter Spike
Zedruu the Greathearted *f-etch* Johnny
Ruhan of the Fomori Spike
Nin, the Pain Artist Johnny and Spike
The Mimeoplasm Johnny and Spike
Damia, Sage of Stone Spike
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave Timmy and Spike
Not that it was all Timmy and Johnny; the first precons did include a reprint of Skullclamp after all.
Look at the last precons? All eight of the new legends were designed for Spike. Where's the room for creativity on the part of players?
I admit that some of the changes to EDH have been fine. (I joke that nobody used instants before 2014. Which is somewhat true, people were more concerned with card advantage with their answers than they were with actual, you know, answers.) But I would like some legends to be designed for Johnny or Timmy.
Crow_Umbra says... #2
Not to detract from your post, but wanted to give you a heads up that I imagine that one of the mods might redirect you to post on this existing thread.
September 30, 2024 2:40 p.m.