January 2016 Rules Announcement

[CaptainTwiddle]

I'm actually completely supportive of the adoption of the Vancouver mulligan, the banning of Prophet of Kruphix, and deleting "rule 4."

RE: Mulligan rule - I think it just makes the game simpler if all the formats use a similar mulligan rule. More importantly though, using the same mulligan rule requires players to apply the same deckbuilding fundamentals to all the formats. With partial Paris, you could cheat on lands and the rule favored combo.

RE: Prophet banning - Prophet was similar to Primeval Titan in that it immediately became the sole focus of the game when it hit the table. The more players involved, the more powerful Prophet became. In the way that extra turn effects essentially read as "each other player skips a turn," Prophet basically did this every round. In my mind, it's was basically all the problems associated with Sensei's Divining Top compounded by each additional player and scaling as the game progressed.

RE: Rule 4 - I think color identity defining what cards you can include in your deck still maintains the original spirit of the format. The real reason this rule changed was because of the implementation of specifically colorless costs in Oath of the Gatewatch. It's a total flavor foul and conflict with traditional Magic rules to be able to use a Birds of Paradise to cast Kozilek, the Great Distortion or use you Vesuva to copy a basic land from outside of your deck to now generate colorless mana when it should be producing a given color.

General rant about the pitfalls of Commander:

While Commander is a format that I have enjoyed immensely, the format has built-in flaws. The idea of having a "casual format" is problematic, simply because "casual" does not have a universal definition. To some, it means they get to play some of those cards that are otherwise relegated only to Vintage. For others, it means decks should just contain fun cards without being laser focused. For some, it's purely about building a deck based on flavor.

A sentiment that is fairly common is that combo decks, by which I mean decks that assemble a combo which allows them to defeat all opponents in a single critical turn, are against the spirit of the format. In my opinion, if you don't want people to play combo, don't encourage multiplayer games and don't have players start with twice as much life. Everything in Magic is a potential resource (hands, libraries, graveyards, exiled cards, life totals...everything) and cards are generally designed with the normal constructed formats in mind. For example, any card that allows you to pay life to draw cards is inherently more powerful in Commander than in other formats. The double life totals also make creatures much less effective in terms of utilizing their power in combat. Most of the creatures that see play in Commander are essentially spells (e.g. powerful ETB or static effects). Additionally, having a "commander" further nudges players toward combo strategies, as you have ready access to a least one specific card every game. If you're even remotely concerned with winning, as every player should be (otherwise the game is no longer a game), you need a really compelling reason not to build you deck to make use of your commander in a highly synergistic way.

My last issue with Commander is that, by virtue of utilizing the entirety of Magic as the card pool, you inherently create a format where players' respective "casualness" is going to differ drastically. Having access to things like dual lands make a really big difference when playing against people who don't. Of course, part of the appeal of Commander is that you can play random old cards that no one knows/remembers, which may not be overtly powerful. Of course, allowing in those cards also allows in the powerful ones, unless you create a ridiculous banned list.

An experiment I'd love to try:

While I think there are a lot of ways you could adjust Commander to be more consistently fun, an idea that I've really been interested in is limiting the card pool to Modern legal sets. By doing that, you eliminate many of the most degenerate combos. The main problems with this are that a) it doesn't appease the "casual = random old cards" crowd, and b) the printing of the Commander products is out of step with this idea; granted you could create an exception to allow cards that were printed only in the Commander products in addition to those from Modern legal sets (this would allow play of something like Kaalia of the Vast, but not Sol Ring, even though both are contained in the same Commander product).

TL;DR on the rant: The main problem with Commander, or any casual format, is that its level of enjoyment for any player is based largely on being part of a playgroup who share similar ideals for what the format should be. That is fine and well for many of us, but for the person that doesn't have a group of friends to get together with and relies on meeting people at an LGS, it leads to awkward games where they are either dramatically over or under powered compared to who they are playing with, or they need to have multiple decks built at varying levels of power to account for the variance in opponents.

[Aggro_zombies]

Deleting rule 4 is exactly the same as deleting mana burn: both rules existed to disincentivize players from doing something they generally didn't want to do anyway.

Put another way: if I play a GW deck, there's basically no reason for me to want to tap a Command Tower for black. Allowing players to "filter" black into colorless didn't - until recently - accomplish anything, so players just wouldn't do it. The only time it did matter was the cited copy-and-steal strategy, which players already liked because it let them be greedy. This makes that strategy mildly better, but a large percentage of the creatures in EDH are either ETB/"dies" value dorks or guys you're playing for static abilities (ie, Avacyn), so this isn't representing some huge improvement.

I think this is a flavor fail in the same way one can argue off-color fetches are a flavor fail.

The rest of the changes are good. Prophet was degenerate in mid-tier groups, full stop. It needed to go. Every game where a Prophet hit the table instantly came down to who could out-Prophet every other player, and that got stale quickly. It was one of those weird exceptions to the rule for mature groups that self-police where the card was busted but not obviously busted in the same way a turn one Sol Ring is busted, so people still played it a lot.

[Ace/Homebrew]

They NEED to split Commander into 2x different formats.

Isn't that why there is French EDH?

I'm pretty sure EDH is a casual format by definition. And French EDH is a competitive format by definition.




Edit:
The emphasis is mine.

In this casual, multiplayer format, you start with a life total of 40 (rather than the usual 20) and choose a legendary creature to serve as your Commander. You then choose cards to match your Commander’s color identity to build your deck. A card's color identity is any mana symbol appearing on that card.

Source

[Alexorrr]

After a long time, I'd stopped playing EDH altogether about half a year ago 'cause of the same bullshit you guys are talking about. Here's my honest opinion though:


They NEED to split Commander into 2x different formats. That's the only way I see it. You basically have two different sides that see this format differently: The Casuals vs the Spikes. The Spikes want to play this as a singleton vintage and use the maximize every card outside the banlist and decklists to the full potential, the casuals have their own conception outside of the ban of what is/isn't fair and the "kind of magic game" they want to play. The issue isn't about one side being more right about "what makes a great game of Commander" over the other, it's the fact that the format is just so massive and not very defined that it opens players up to their own interpretation of "what it means to be fair".

If they had two separate Commander formats, they could then have a "Casual EDH" with its own rules committee, the format would have very aggressive ban list trying to crack down on combos, degenerate cards, sol rings, tutors or w/e, and try to make it more of a Creature vs Creature format again. Then have "Constructed EDH" which actually unbans more shit, like PTitan and Prophet are fair game, let the Spike players play Constructed EDH format and that way ppl can ask "are you doing Constructed edh?" or something like that, so they know not to bring their Timmy flavorful deck to a wolf fight.

Right now they're trying to do this thing where they shoot for the middle ground, catering to both casual AND competetive players, and it just doesn't work. THey just end up pissing them both off 'cause then neither side is completely getting the type of game they want. Word

MJ

Isn't what you're describing as a secondary "spikier" format basically highlander? It's essentially the same open deck building concept (minus commander limitations), and is way less regulated by an official governing body (in that it has a set rulebook and doesn't have an RC changing things). Maybe I'm way off on what Highlander is, but it seems like the vintage crazy combo brewer's paradise.

I don't like the rule 4 change, and their reasoning for it seems kind of flaky. Just as with the tuck rule though, if you don't like it in your play group, don't use it.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[CaptainTwiddle]

I'm really surprised by the amount of opposition to the removal of "rule 4." One of the primary reasons that was cited for the removal was that the rule would allow the new colorless-specific costs to be paid using sources which don't actually produce colorless mana (or a clunky rule would need to be added to prohibit this). While this is speculation on my part, I think it's a pretty safe assumption to make that Wizards is going to make use of the colorless costs going forward, though likely not in such high representation in most sets compared to Oath of the Gatewatch. One of the things the new colorless symbol allows that we haven't seen implemented yet is a way to create powerful, colorless artifacts. Previously, the only real way to keep powerful artifacts fair was to add to their mana cost. Now, powerful cards can be printed at lower CMCs but with a colorless requirement, thereby putting deckbuilding constraints on their use. If Wizards does in fact make use of this design space, the existence of rule 4 would make for undesirable interactions down the road, as the deckbuilding cost for those cards would not apply, provided your deck contains cards like like Birds of Paradise or Mana Confluence, which under rule 4 effectively tap for an additional color.

[Mystical_Jackass]

Isn't that why there is French EDH?

I'm pretty sure EDH is a casual format by definition. And French EDH is a competitive format by definition.

But what if players want to play an "actual" 4 player Commander game competetively? Not just a singleton Legacy Match vs another 3cmc General.

The way I see it you have two groups of people, one group that takes the ban list very literally building the best possible decks and not hesitant to Cataclysm or Combo out on the board to win, the other half of players constantly coming up with their own definition of "what it means to be fair" since the format is extremely large and filled with broken to screw your opponent over, the only thing stopping you from crafting a Grixis "time walk" deck is free will-- I've done it, people rage and don't want to play, so I come back with a friendly G/W, then someone else brings a combo and goes infinite while you watch. So instead of just branching into 2 formats for EDH, the rules committee has to cater to these two parties of brats that are forced to coexist.

Isn't what you're describing as a secondary "spikier" format basically highlander? It's essentially the same open deck building concept (minus commander limitations), and is way less regulated by an official governing body (in that it has a set rulebook and doesn't have an RC changing things). Maybe I'm way off on what Highlander is, but it seems like the vintage crazy combo brewer's paradise.

True, I started out Highlander, let's be honest though nobody really plays it. "Commander" is Wizard's sponsored game, you've got boxes getting sold at every Walmart and Target in the country. For the sake of balance though, this Casual Commander that we're playing needs to heavily crack down on the Ban List and create an independent Commander for competetive players who want to use Time Warp, Mana Crypt, and Storm shit... I have each of these cards and have used them over the years, but for balance you can't have so many ways to "oops-kill" your opponent in one turn, if you really wanted to. Perfect example, almost any time when I had Recruiter in my hand and 14 mana (4 red) I could get Kiki/Pester and win the game if they didn't have an answer... yes, if they DIDNT have an answer is the key, but something THAT out of the blue I can nearly always time it when someone taps out and just win the game. According to the rules that's perfectly legal, but this whole "spirit of the game" is made-up for those that don't want to deal with Cataclysm+Ghostaway shennanigans while everyone not playing "fair" is doing it.

[TsumiBand]

I think the reason for the "spirit of the format" ultimately arises from the apparent ease of sticking a game-ending 2 card combo in a multiplayer format. I mean if every stupid podunk Voltron gets banhammered to shit from the top down, then we're suddenly playing Modern Highlander with a command zone. Fuck that.

So instead you have a ban list that allegedly handles the game ruining garbage, and you leave it to your group to decide if anyone's impressed or interested in watching Sedris Long.dec run the table.

I think it's a flawed approach, if only for the decisions that come down the pike. The sheer amount of busted Blue shit that's legal compared to the durdly Green beaters that get banned is testament to that. But admittedly, *if* one were adhering to the so-called spirit, then the 2 card jank is implicitly handled in the usual way that comrades moderate each other; ridicule and ostracism, followed by eventual compliance.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

The sheer amount of busted Blue shit that's legal compared to the durdly Green beaters that get banned is testament to that.

That's pretty much spot on.

[Davran]

I think the reason for the "spirit of the format" ultimately arises from the apparent ease of sticking a game-ending 2 card combo in a multiplayer format. I mean if every stupid podunk Voltron gets banhammered to shit from the top down, then we're suddenly playing Modern Highlander with a command zone. Fuck that.

So instead you have a ban list that allegedly handles the game ruining garbage, and you leave it to your group to decide if anyone's impressed or interested in watching Sedris Long.dec run the table.

I think it's a flawed approach, if only for the decisions that come down the pike. The sheer amount of busted Blue shit that's legal compared to the durdly Green beaters that get banned is testament to that. But admittedly, *if* one were adhering to the so-called spirit, then the 2 card jank is implicitly handled in the usual way that comrades moderate each other; ridicule and ostracism, followed by eventual compliance.

Ultimately what constitutes "game ruining garbage" is somewhat subjective. That's why there's so much digital ink being spilled about how the RC was dumb enough to ban card X when card Y is still legal.

The biggest problem is that the decision to ban or unban a card or cards is based on a limited set of data gathered somewhat empirically by a small number of people. "Format warping" is really code for something they see a lot of at their respective local shops that they've gone ahead and assumed equates to some sort of mass presence in the meta at large. Compare that to a legacy banlist decision that's based on several large tournaments worth of data, and it's easy to see why some folks feel the RC has their head up their collective ass. I mean, no one in my meta is currently playing Consecrated Sphinx.dec, so that card is totally fine by me...but the people at the table next to me during GenCon who lost handily to one that was cast on turn 2 of their game might feel a little differently.

At the end of the day, some cards are just better than others. That is a fact. As a result, it's not all that far fetched for the "better" cards to show up in a larger percentage of decks than some other card that is "worse". The real question that seems to leave everyone scratching their head is where exactly the tipping point is between "better" and "banned", as it seems to be a somewhat moving target.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

The obvious and simplest solution to the rule 4/colourless problem was to restate rule 4 in terms of generic mana, not colourless mana. The justification given for not doing that makes no sense to me:

We could paper over it (both "mana generated from off-color sources can only pay generic costs" and "you can't pay a cost outside your color identity" were considered), but a lot of the flavor would be lost in the transition, defeating the purpose. Without the resonant flavor, Rule 4 was increasingly looking like mana burn - a rule that didn't come up enough to justify it's existence.

The actual solution that was implemented is being criticized primarily on the grounds of loss of flavour. And the fact that it helps the bribery-style decks a fair bit is an indication that it will come up more often than the mana burn rule, which only came really came up with specific cards (e.g. Omnath), not whole strategies.

Suppose you buy the argument that when a rule loses its flavour and almost never comes up, it ought to be deleted. Suppose you concede that rule 4 seldom came up (which isn't true in my experience, but whatever). The operative question becomes: did it lose its flavour? My answer: I just don't see how revising to "generic" rather than "colourless" would have entailed a loss of flavour. What does entail a loss of flavour is its outright deletion.



Oh, and I prefer the partial Paris mulligan. I think it does a decent job of evening out the playing field (although a statistical analysis may well show that's a mistaken intuition).

[TsumiBand]

The obvious and simplest solution to the rule 4/colourless problem was to restate rule 4 in terms of generic mana, not colourless mana. The justification given for not doing that makes no sense to me:



The actual solution that was implemented is being criticized primarily on the grounds of loss of flavour. And the fact that it helps the bribery-style decks a fair bit is an indication that it will come up more often than the mana burn rule, which only came really came up with specific cards (e.g. Omnath), not whole strategies.

Suppose you buy the argument that when a rule loses its flavour and almost never comes up, it ought to be deleted. Suppose you concede that rule 4 seldom came up (which isn't true in my experience, but whatever). The operative question becomes: did it lose its flavour? My answer: I just don't see how revising to "generic" rather than "colourless" would have entailed a loss of flavour. What does entail a loss of flavour is its outright deletion.



Oh, and I prefer the partial Paris mulligan. I think it does a decent job of evening out the playing field (although a statistical analysis may well show that's a mistaken intuition).

This makes a lot of sense.

A rule like "mana outside tour commander's color identity can only be used to pay generic costs" is actually deceptively clever, since at first read it sounds redundant until you consider mono-Red stealing something like Nantuko Shade, or maindecking Sunburst cards or something bad like that.

The relative strength of those plays is not the sticking point so much as the loss of flavor. EDH is a format defined by exclusion, and weakening those exclusionary rules just makes EDH look and play less like itself. When that happens you get things like Extended, which died a horrifying death after being a *killer* constructed format. That rules change was way, way beyond Rule 4 in terms of its scope and impact, but the lesson remains intact - screwing with the soul of the format is a bad idea.

[kombatkiwi]

But what if players want to play an "actual" 4 player Commander game competetively? Not just a singleton Legacy Match vs another 3cmc General.

The way I see it you have two groups of people, one group that takes the ban list very literally building the best possible decks and not hesitant to Cataclysm or Combo out on the board to win, the other half of players constantly coming up with their own definition of "what it means to be fair" since the format is extremely large and filled with broken to screw your opponent over, the only thing stopping you from crafting a Grixis "time walk" deck is free will-- I've done it, people rage and don't want to play, so I come back with a friendly G/W, then someone else brings a combo and goes infinite while you watch. So instead of just branching into 2 formats for EDH, the rules committee has to cater to these two parties of brats that are forced to coexist.



True, I started out Highlander, let's be honest though nobody really plays it. "Commander" is Wizard's sponsored game, you've got boxes getting sold at every Walmart and Target in the country. For the sake of balance though, this Casual Commander that we're playing needs to heavily crack down on the Ban List and create an independent Commander for competetive players who want to use Time Warp, Mana Crypt, and Storm shit... I have each of these cards and have used them over the years, but for balance you can't have so many ways to "oops-kill" your opponent in one turn, if you really wanted to. Perfect example, almost any time when I had Recruiter in my hand and 14 mana (4 red) I could get Kiki/Pester and win the game if they didn't have an answer... yes, if they DIDNT have an answer is the key, but something THAT out of the blue I can nearly always time it when someone taps out and just win the game. According to the rules that's perfectly legal, but this whole "spirit of the game" is made-up for those that don't want to deal with Cataclysm+Ghostaway shennanigans while everyone not playing "fair" is doing it.

If you want to play a 4-man competitive commander game you can do that with the existing list already. If you're saying that the vintage artifact mana is too powerful (along with certain cards such as Hermit Druid or whatever else rustles your jimmies) and they need to be banned in multiplayer then you basically just end up with singleton legacy decks anyway so I'm not sure what your proposed solution is.

If you have somehow assembled 14 mana then you deserve to win the game with one card (c.f. Emrakul). Likewise having a bunch of creatures + 7 mana + cataclysm + ghostway is a pretty impressive achievement and probably shouldn't be on anyone's list of broken things. I don't deny that Cataclysm on its own is a powerful card but this post is a perfect illustration of how metagames get really inbred when scrubby social pressure pushes the focus towards 'winning a certain way' rather than just 'winning'.

[apple713]

An experiment I'd love to try:

While I think there are a lot of ways you could adjust Commander to be more consistently fun, an idea that I've really been interested in is limiting the card pool to Modern legal sets. By doing that, you eliminate many of the most degenerate combos. The main problems with this are that a) it doesn't appease the "casual = random old cards" crowd, and b) the printing of the Commander products is out of step with this idea; granted you could create an exception to allow cards that were printed only in the Commander products in addition to those from Modern legal sets (this would allow play of something like Kaalia of the Vast, but not Sol Ring, even though both are contained in the same Commander product).

TL;DR on the rant: The main problem with Commander, or any casual format, is that its level of enjoyment for any player is based largely on being part of a playgroup who share similar ideals for what the format should be. That is fine and well for many of us, but for the person that doesn't have a group of friends to get together with and relies on meeting people at an LGS, it leads to awkward games where they are either dramatically over or under powered compared to who they are playing with, or they need to have multiple decks built at varying levels of power to account for the variance in opponents.

You are either playing competitive EDH or casual EDH. Sounds like you want a casual EDH which can be achieved by selecting the appropriate play group. If you want to play in a tournament its going to be competitive. There is no reason to impose more restrictions on a format to make it more casual friendly, that just doesn't make sense.

Someone also mentioned a French EDH banned / restricted list which is something i would suggest you look into because its more casual friendly. I have the luxury of having many decks at varying power levels. When i sit down at a tournament i play Hermit druid because its awesome. The downside of playing hermit druid is the first round is an easy win but the second round is a 3v1 which is still winnable but its not great. So competitive decks like that are kept in check. In 1v1 its probably the most broken deck available but thats not really EDH in my opinion. When I am not playing in a tournament i play something fun. I play cards i don't normally get to play such as gauntlet of might.

Unfortunately, your rant will not change anything with the format and it is incredibly unlikely that competitive EDH will undergo and major changes in the future. What you suggest is more easily accomplished by communicating with your playgroup about a "different" set of rules. Since players want so many "different" versions of rules I'm certain wizards feels its best to leave the format with fewer restrictions and let players add them individually according to their playgroups.

[phonics]

I wish there was a highlander format that played more like 94/95. Right now there are so many broken things to do that games are just people throwing broken things at each other and everything getting swept each turn cycle until something isn't answered and they win. Unless you have a playgroup with its own rules (well then who cares) you just sit there at the table and do nothing unless you bring a degenerate deck as well.

[Davran]

I wish there was a highlander format that played more like 94/95. Right now there are so many broken things to do that games are just people throwing broken things at each other and everything getting swept each turn cycle until something isn't answered and they win. Unless you have a playgroup with its own rules (well then who cares) you just sit there at the table and do nothing unless you bring a degenerate deck as well.

This hasn't been my experience with EDH at all...so maybe it's not so much the format as it is the people you're trying to play it with? It's certainly easy to build some kind of degenerate deck if that's what makes you happy, but that's far from the only thing you can do.

[3drinks]

The fact of the matter is...

If you want to play Commander, you're best suited to Duel-Commander. The format is still young, and the governing body is only slowly working to ultimate balance - but I feel this is the most fun I've had in years. And I've played Commander from the days when Rend Flesh was the premiere spot removal of the format, the three months Griselbrand was legal in my Kaalia, and through the release of the C14 decks and the monstrosity known as Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. That format I'm done with, the politics of multiplayer, the RC-instituted "ban list" (note the air quotes), and I only tolerate it on MODO b/c that doesn't support DC.

Duel-Commander is love. Duel-Commander is the format for we, whom want to play competitively, to "go hard or go home".

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I understand the consternation with the official EDH banlist — it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Stuff like Painter's Servant is banned for having too much combo potential, but Tooth and Nail is legal along with an entire Vintage-calibre tutor suite. PrimeTime and Prophet of Kruphix got the axe for being too centralizing, but Consecrated Sphinx, DEN, and others roam free. Upheavel and lots of other board sweepers are banned because they undo game-states, yet Cyclonic Rift is allowed. Stupid cards like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Hermit Druid, and Necropotence are allowed. There's just not a whole lot of consistency to be observed.

Well, at least Griselbrand is banned in one format...*grumble grumble*

That said, I can't really jump on the Duel Commander or any other uber-Spikey train. EDH is the last real avenue for my Johnny-ish impulses, now that 60-card casual is KIA, where I can play "bad" decks and still have some expectation of an enjoyable gameplay experience. Most of this is due to the multiplayer nature of EDH, where weak decks can fly under the radar and broken piles quickly make things into into an impromptu game of Archenemy; the political aspects of 3+ player games serve as a great way of self-regulating the format. But the "spirit of EDH"/"build casually, play competitively" mantra also plays a part. Sure, it's woefully ambiguous and causes a heap ton of confusion (as discussed above), but at least it points players in a different direction than "singleton broken stuff + critter in the command zone". I appreciate that, at least.

[Baumeister]

Stuff like Painter's Servant is banned for having too much combo potential, but Tooth and Nail is legal along with an entire Vintage-calibre tutor suite. PrimeTime and Prophet of Kruphix got the axe for being too centralizing, but Consecrated Sphinx, DEN, and others roam free. Upheavel and lots of other board sweepers are banned because they undo game-states, yet Cyclonic Rift is allowed. Stupid cards like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Hermit Druid, and Necropotence are allowed. There's just not a whole lot of consistency to be observed.

Painter's Servant is banned because, before the recent rules change, it could prevent people from playing their deck for an absurdly low upfront cost. Furthermore, this is a casual format and the ban list must be targeted towards the middle of the pack. I would suggest setting guidelines with a group of friends on how you want to play EDH and if a game store is silly enough to have EDH events with prize money, play all the Hermit Druid garbage you want until nobody wants to play anymore.

I wouldn't expect anybody to take EDH/Commander seriously until we see Pro Tours. It's a casual format. That's really all there is.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Woke up today to discover that in French:

Tasigur, the Golden Fang is now banned as a commander only.
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard is now banned as a commander only.
Gaea’s Cradle is now banned.

-----

Marath, Will of the Wild is added to the watchlist.
Animar, Soul of Elements is added to the watchlist.
Narset, Enlightened Master is added to the watchlist.
Jenara, Asura of War is added to the watchlist.
Cataclysm is removed from the watchlist.

Cradle is banned now? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Double-posting to add: where's the hate for Deadeye Navigator and Palinchron? Seriously...