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Thread: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

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    Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/...on-information

    Finally, I guess? It was bound to happen eventually.

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    I'm actually not sure how I feel about this.

    On one hand, I agree that it was a matter of time until this happened. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there slinging one Nephalim or another and hoping for this day. On the other hand, I'm a bit skeptical of how 4 color decks would work. How do you make 4 color no white.dec or whatever more interesting than just 5 color goodstuff? At what point does it become "worth it" to leave your white staples in your binder, and why would I choose that over say jund, or sultai, to make my mana more consistent and my deck more focused?

    Maybe this product just isn't for me, and that's OK.

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Yeah, I'm on the fence about this too. There isn't really enough overlap of 4 colors to give the combination an identity. You'd almost have to work in the opposite direction and give the color combos an identity based on which color is missing, and that feels wrong...

    I guess we'll see a cycle of CitP tapped quad-lands.

    This product also isn't for me. I will buy 1 or 2 singles, but no sealed product.
    It also seems impossible for any of the new legends to be playable in Legacy, unless they use hybrid mana.

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew View Post
    Yeah, I'm on the fence about this too. There isn't really enough overlap of 4 colors to give the combination an identity. You'd almost have to work in the opposite direction and give the color combos an identity based on which color is missing, and that feels wrong...

    I guess we'll see a cycle of CitP tapped quad-lands.

    This product also isn't for me. I will buy 1 or 2 singles, but no sealed product.
    It also seems impossible for any of the new legends to be playable in Legacy, unless they use hybrid mana.
    I'm not sure "quad lands" will be a thing. I expect our annual Command Tower reprint, and then probably chaff like Unknown Shores, and 4x on color Vivid lands. Maybe they'll also include the on color tri-lands since they all exist now after Kahns block. Might get lucky and see Exotic Orchard in like the non-green deck, maybe Forbidden Orchard in one of them too. Then you'll have Commander's Sphere and maybe like Fellwar Stone or something, plus our annual Sol Ring reprint.

    Maybe they'll do something like a not-white Shapeshifter general just to make my dreams of playing Progenitor Mimic/Altered Ego, Evil Twin, and Dack's Duplicate in the same deck come true. Otherwise, since my main deck is mono-red I don't expect there will be much in here for me. Here's hoping for something sweet in Conspiracy 2 I guess...

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    At first I was nervous but like -- I dunno. They've spent a lot of effort in establishing identities for color pairs and color trios over the last few years, it wouldn't surprise me to see like... two- or three-color commanders with two- or three-color abilities. Like, to make an extreme point of it, we see cards like a Selesnya-ish legendary with an Izzet-like activated ability, with a common theme running through the card that and arguably could share, like... caring about number of cards in hand or whatever. Something like P/T = cards in hand, and some ability that either draws/discards cards, or lets it deal damage or whatever equal to cards in hand. Or something.

    I'd be surprised if they didn't do something like that, because the last thing they'd want to do is push a series of decks with spells you can't cast because there's too many colors. I mean hybrid mana is a thing, but if they do it all in hybrid mana then it's going to feel like a lazy effort, right - like if a legendary ends up costing then you just go "...so this costs right?" and build a Gruul deck with draw spells and Geddons. Which sounds awesome, I guess, except it begs a few questions (most notably, are you really getting a better deck by not just swapping your commander for Karona).

    I think it runs the risk of feeling like it's just two Ravnica guilds mushed together. Which is maybe just fine, because it answers a lot of questions about the design approach from the beginning rather than leaving it nebulous on how to define a four-color commander (and its thematically apropos deck) besides "it isn't Black".
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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Quote Originally Posted by TsumiBand View Post
    I think it runs the risk of feeling like it's just two Ravnica guilds mushed together. Which is maybe just fine, because it answers a lot of questions about the design approach from the beginning rather than leaving it nebulous on how to define a four-color commander (and its thematically apropos deck) besides "it isn't Black".
    Or even worse, four guilds mushed together.

    I could see them going in the direction of General Tazri. Or even a mono color card with Cromat-style abilities that define it as 4 colored.

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew View Post
    Or even worse, four guilds mushed together.

    I could see them going in the direction of General Tazri. Or even a mono color card with Cromat-style abilities that define it as 4 colored.
    I think mono-color generals is probably one of the lazy solves, right - like you just take a Red creature and give it ": Do a Bant thing, but Redly" and you pat yourself on the back for solving the 4 color wedge problem. Maybe those would make fun alt-legends for the precons. I dunno. There's a bunch of ways this could get ham-fisted. Guess we'll just have to see.

    I mean I think it's easy to at least break out a 4 color in groups of two colors, it makes giving them an identity much simpler. Like a thing COULD do a lot of stuff just looking at its mana symbols without actually having a card or a character, but what if instead you look at it as -- now imho it's easier to assign it traits because we have Orzhov and Izzet isolated. It's a ghost that likes draw spells; it's an evil priest that's chaotic/uncontrollable; a zombie with a penchant for fire and ice. I'm not a designer but if I were I'd prefer this approach over just staring at four colors and going "well fuck, this COULD do just about anything, couldn't it". Like that's how the Nephilim feel to me, like someone didn't really know what to do with them because four colors is a lot of real estate, whereas two guilds demands more refinement and appeal to identity.
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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Quote Originally Posted by Davran View Post
    How do you make 4 color no white.dec or whatever more interesting than just 5 color goodstuff? At what point does it become "worth it" to leave your white staples in your binder, and why would I choose that over say jund, or sultai, to make my mana more consistent and my deck more focused?
    Presumably by giving them interesting build-around abilities so that you're incentivized to not just make another 85% Staples, 15% other cards deck again.

    Because if that's your approach to EDH, then yeah, they're probably worse than five-color or three-color commanders.

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Hybrid mana or off-color activation costs to make sense of the color combination is one thing - boring, but workable.

    However, what we should not forget is that newer Commander sets now have "gimmicks" for their main commander, e.g. Planeswalker commanders or experience counters.

    Thus, my money is on flip commanders. E.g. you could make one side a Human Wizard and the flipside a Werewolf. Bam, WURG commander as far as color identity is concerned. You can cast either side from your command zone. Maybe they have an activation cost/condition to flip the other side.

    Now you have clear, defined roles for both color combinations of the card. It also offers the benefit of having a "2-color" commanders that can expand into different colors where necessary. Or just having the flexiblity of being able to have two commanders in one.

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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    Thinking on this some more, I'm doubting hybrid or transform will be the solution... This is an 'intro-level' product, right?

    I'm going to put my money on a cycle following this template:


    Four Color Horror

    Creature - Horror
    : Ability 1
    : Ability 2
    */*

  11. #11
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    Re: Commander 2016 - Four Color Commanders

    If Four Color Commanders were kept more in a tribal theme, like having an ability that benefits 'Spirits' or 'Zombies' etc. that would be interesting to me. It's part of what makes Commanders like Reaper King, Horde of Notions, and Scion interesting because they're more themed, compared to someone who might play Child and have it be 95% goodstuff.dec.

    If the Four Color Commanders are just some generic power-creep cards like Thrax then that's disappointing. If a Grixis player switches to a 4-color just because he can splash green for ramp now... that'd be lame.
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