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Thread: Partner

  1. #1
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    Partner

    C16 is here and with it we have another play on Commander (General) rules...

    Partner (You can have two commanders if both have Partner.)

    Additional text from the Mothership: Combat damage dealt by each commander is similarly tracked individually. If either commander can deal 21 or more combat damage to a single player over the course of the game, that player loses. But you have to get all the way there with Silas Renn, or you have to get all the way there with Bruse Tarl.
    Source

    The 2nd Commander replaces the 99th card in your deck, so if you have 2 Commanders with Partner your pile is only 98 cards deep.



    It looks like WotC purposefully underpowered the cards with Partner to make up for the built-in advantage of having 2 creatures you can always cast.
    The mechanic was made for this set to cheat at letting players make 4-color decks without printing a bunch of legitimately 4-color legendary creatures. However there isn't any rule stating your partners cannot share one, or both, colors...

    I'm curious if this mechanic has anyone inspired to make a deck, and whether people are more likely to partner for 4, 3, or 2 color decks.

  2. #2
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    Re: Partner

    Interesting options to further inspire discussion:

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  3. #3
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    Re: Partner

    I really like the idea of Partner, but the execution has been a bit lack-luster, even considering that the power level should be relatively low for each, in trade for the flexibility.

    For example, Reyhan is really interesting but Ishai is rather over-costed and lack-luster to me. Indeed, they would "work well" together, but still, what makes Ishai UW besides the fact that she flies?
    "The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
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    Re: Partner

    I'm not a fan of partner, or more accurately the implementation of partner. I think it's a lazy solution to whatever problem R&D has with making cards that are not [insert color here], but are everything else. Rather than actually sit down and try to figure that out, they decided to make a whole pack of mediocre "also ran" legendary creatures that you can mix and match in an effort to make the thing that they could not.

    Some of the partners are interesting on their own, but others are just so meh. A RG guy with trample that makes some tokens...man, never seen that before. Oh look, a boros guy that gives you some benefit for attacking. Wow, innovative. I don't even know what to think about Ishai other than it is pretty bad.

    Then you've got Ludvic. Lore wise, the dude stitched a werewolf to a mech suit, which is pretty awesome. Apparently that somehow meshes with letting your opponents draw cards if they don't attack you.

    Reyhan and Tymna are pretty cool, but honestly I would have preferred that sort of thing out of the enemy color decks they did last time around instead of yet another BG reanimation thing and whatever the hell Daxos the Returned is supposed to be.

    Who knows, maybe there's some really sweet partners still waiting to be spoiled...but as it stands right now I'm not excited to sleeve any of them up. That seems pretty sad when this product is supposed to appeal to primarily commander players like me.

  5. #5

    Re: Partner

    @Davran: I agree with everything you said and nearly posted the same thing this morning but I felt it made me sound too bitter, haha. I will say that partner is a brilliant mechanic in the fact that it allows Wizards to print a large number of "commanders" on a small quantity of cards. This set will be financially successful based solely on the premise of 4-color legendaries and partner commanders.

    It seems like Wizards is afraid to print slick, powerful cards. All the spoilers I've seen point to a set that is full of expensive, splashy cards that really don't do as much as they should. Letting your opponents draw cards is terrible, so the benefit better be amazing but those cards are lackluster. Sun Titan is already a card that exists - why would I want to play the six-drop you printed when that's the benchmark for 6 CMC creatures? This format is already rife with some absurdly powerful cards and these sets don't affect Standard or Modern. Give us some solid cards in the same line as Solemn Simulacrum, Hull Breach, and Fact or Fiction.

    Maybe this is more a rant about the direction of the design from the past few sets, but it's just been lazy. I feel like they have some good ideas but the overarching theme is that it's easier to overcost things for fear of something being broken than to actually create a card that's elegantly balanced. That guy who costs 8 that gives your creatures indestructible and trample when they attack? Craterhoof Behemoth literally ends games for the same cost.

    I really can't see myself buying any of this product besides an outside chase rare that pops up.

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    Re: Partner

    Quote Originally Posted by Baumeister View Post
    It seems like Wizards is afraid to print slick, powerful cards. All the spoilers I've seen point to a set that is full of expensive, splashy cards that really don't do as much as they should.
    This is the crux of the thing for me. On one hand, it's EDH - a casual format I play with some friends. In that sense, not every single card in my 100 card pile needs to be bleeding edge competitive like it does when I sit down to jam some other constructed format. On the other, the whole point of the thing is to have an interesting and inspiring legendary creature that makes me want to find 99 (or 98 I guess) other cards that work together to do something cool.

    Lately it seems that legendary creatures are in two camps: the slightly different but still mostly the same as every other option in those colors (see every Boros legend), or the so completely obvious that the deck builds itself. Every once in a while they hit on something actually interesting like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim that lends itself to more than one strategy, but even then she's just another BW lifegain option.

    It's like they can either go too far or not far enough when they design these things. There's no middle ground anymore.

  7. #7
    Hamburglar Hlelpler
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    Re: Partner

    For a minute I thought maybe they were printing non-battlecruiser Legendaries with Partner for the sake of other EDH variants like French or Tiny Leaders. But they kind of skip all over the place and some of them are just cat-ass bad. Like, nice 2/2 for 5 Orzhov, we already knew you were the do-nothing color combo in Commander, better prove it with an understatted 5-drop

    Like, even if the pairings in the new decks are really fantastic out of the box (as in, no need to mix and match to get great synergies between the partners), casting both partners on the same turn doesn't even feel all that busted for most of the likely combinations. Those dudes are just going to get flattened by all the behemoths in play.

    Like if they'd really wanted to break the idea open, they wouldn't have forced the other commander to also have Partner. I realize this just leads Spikes to play 98-card 5-color decks, but they are going to do that anyway. At least let us partner Reyhan with Skullbriar, or or Tymna with Kaalia (god forbid), or...

    Finally -- Sidar Kondo is just a bundle of random words, right? Is it just me? Like I had to read the card 5 times to understand that there was nothing I wasn't getting, it was just a goofy card that does a lot of nothing for no reason.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dissection View Post
    Creature type - 'Fuck you mooooooom'
    Quote Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee View Post
    EDIT: Tsumi, you are silly.

  8. #8
    Hamburglar Hlelpler
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    Re: Partner

    Also Bruse Tarl is just Shirtless Mario, nobody wants Shirtless Mario
    Quote Originally Posted by Dissection View Post
    Creature type - 'Fuck you mooooooom'
    Quote Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee View Post
    EDIT: Tsumi, you are silly.

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    Re: Partner

    Quote Originally Posted by TsumiBand View Post
    Finally -- Sidar Kondo is just a bundle of random words, right? Is it just me? Like I had to read the card 5 times to understand that there was nothing I wasn't getting, it was just a goofy card that does a lot of nothing for no reason.
    Sidar is sweet, and also terrible. Let's review:

    1. Character mentioned somewhere in Mirage (probably) which appeals to old dudes like me who play commander so they can beat newer players with cards that were printed before they were born.

    2. Holy crap flanking! Loved that mechanic when I was a kid, so lots of nostalgia there.

    3. Creatures without flying or reach my opponents control can't block creatures with power 2 or less, which is like all of the flanking guys! Wait though...flanking happens on block...so don't I want them to block my guys for some sweet flanking action?

    4. If I need to do 120 damage to win the game, I'm definitely going to need to pump my creatures up...which means their power will be more than 2 and my commander now does nothing. Awesome.

    If they wanted Sidar to be interesting they should have replaced his stupid blocking ability with something like Sublime Archangel, only for flanking. Then the other cards in the deck could be stuff like Cavalry Master and Knight of Valor so that GW might finally have an interesting option for the command zone.

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