The Future of Commander is Now
(Future Sight || Art by Dan Scott)
The End of an Era is Also a Beginning
With Wizards of the Coast taking over managing Commander from the Commander Rules Committee (RC), it's a sad end to an era.
It's massively disappointing that there's a loud and angry subset of this community that feels comfortable and justified in spewing toxic hate and threats at the volunteers who have skillfully and lovingly cultivated and grown EDH/Commander into the massive fan favorite it's become, driving the RC to fell compelled to hand it over to WotC for their own safety.
I hope there are consequences coming for those hateful people, swiftly and decisively. There is no room in our game for that.
But it is also a new beginning for Commander, and new beginnings bring the opportunity for positive change. It sounds like WotC plans to be very slow and deliberate before implementing any changes, and that's a wise approach to take. In the Weekly MTG stream with Gavin Verhey and Aaron Forsythe talking about the move, they mentioned a reason for the success of Commander is its stability: it's not a format that dramatically changes over time.
And yet it has dramatically changed in recent years, and those changes seem to have directly led to the shocking bannings announced in September that started this whole sad chain reaction.
Mana Crypt has always been overly powerful in the format, as have the more recently designed Dockside Extortionist and Jeweled Lotus. But what has changed is the volume of extremely powerful commanders printed in recent years that can completely take over the game when powered way too early with fast mana.
It's one thing to use Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus to help cast - and recast - your goofy seven-mana-value commander a few turns early, but when you use it to cast your busted four- or five-mana commander on turn two, it puts massive early game pressure on your opponents to have immediate answers, and sometimes answers don't even matter if the commander generates immediate resource advantage.
Rethink "Commander First" Magic Design & Products for Format Stability
WotC is a business, and it quite logically responded to the giant growth in popularity of Commander by focusing a bunch of manpower towards designing cards and products specifically for Commander. Each set now comes with four new Commander precon decks attached, along with a dozen or more brand new legendary creatures in the main set, many of which get pushed for competitive play and can end up being busted sitting in the command zone.
But if one of the reasons for the success of Commander is its stability, then the current design philosophy of "Commander First" is in direct conflict with that.
It seems to me that this might be an excellent opportunity to seriously rethink that philosophy. EDH grew like gangbusters before there was an official Commander format and new cards designed for it; you'd simply use cards you never played in tournament Magic, or favorite cards that had rotated out of being relevant. I'm not saying we need to go back to the days before Commander precon decks, but I think there can be a better balance.
For one thing, pull way back on the number of Commander precon decks made each year. I personally think it should be a once yearly special product, with print runs lasting until the next year's offering so that players and new fans can always snag one or two of them throughout the year.
And let's make legendary creatures more interesting and special by making a lot less of them! I'm obviously a longtime megafan of Commander, but these days the sheer volume of so many new legendary creatures causes my eyes to glaze over, and only occasionally does something summon a spark of interest.
I have no idea what the correct volume of new legends should be, but I am certain the current volume is way, way too much. Just take a look at brand new commanders designed grouped by release year (with 2024 totals as of Duskmourn: House of Horror's release):
WotC can design with Commander in mind rather than design specifically for Commander. I remember in the early days when "each opponent" started showing up on cards rather than "target opponent" or just "opponent."
Dialing back from the Commander First approach should make it easier to manage the format, and I actually think will bring more fan excitement back to the format too. Less is more applies here.
Power Levels
Like many others in the community, the initial four bracket system they mentioned as a way to handle power levels raised some warning bells with me, too. The old 1-10 Power Level scale never really worked, and reducing it down to four brackets simplifies the scenario, but it has its own problems, and I really don't like the idea that having one card that's bracket four in your deck makes your deck a bracket four deck.
Individual card power level evaluation is going to be tricky, and I think it gives too much weight to what strikes me as the least important factor in finding a compatible play experience for a Commander pod. Here's how WotC described the initial idea:
Here's the idea: There are four power brackets, and every Commander deck can be placed in one of those brackets by examining the cards and combinations in your deck and comparing them to lists we'll need community help to create. You can imagine bracket one is the baseline of an average preconstructed deck or below and bracket four is high power. For the lower tiers, we may lean on a mixture of cards and a description of how the deck functions, and the higher tiers are likely defined by more explicit lists of cards.
For example, you could imagine bracket one has cards that easily can go in any deck, like Swords to Plowshares, Grave Titan, and Cultivate, whereas bracket four would have cards like Vampiric Tutor, Armageddon, and Grim Monolith, cards that make games too much more consistent, lopsided, or fast than the average deck can engage with.
In this system, your deck would be defined by its highest-bracket card or cards. This makes it clear what cards go where and what kinds of cards you can expect people to be playing. For example, if Ancient Tomb is a bracket-four card, your deck would generally be considered a four. But if it's part of a Tomb-themed deck, the conversation may be "My deck is a four with Ancient Tomb but a two without it. Is that okay with everyone?"1
I really don't like the idea that a single card in your deck immediately throws your entire deck into bracket four. In the example they provide, a single Ancient Tomb in your Tomb-themed deck means your deck is automatically a four, and then you have to explain to your pod that while it's technically a four it's not really a four.
Individually powerful cards don't immediately power up your deck; it's more a matter of volume, how many individually powerful cards you have in your deck, and what your intention for them is. If your Ancient Tomb is just a fun flavor include for your Tomb deck, it's vastly different than if you've got Ancient Tomb in your deck alongside Mana Vault, Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves to consistently have a lot of mana available to you on Turn 2 or Turn 3.
That's not to say categorizing cards into brackets isn't useful: I think it could be a nice tool to help players think about the cards they are putting into decks. If your deck has one or two bracket four cards in the deck, that tells you something much different than if your deck has ten or twelve bracket four cards, and that's information you can share during your pregame discussions in Commander pods.
Of course a big question is how do you group the vast number of Magic cards available in Commander into brackets? EDHREC has a "salt score" they compile using community feedback, and I think that model could be implemented here, giving the wider Commander community the chance for input on the monumental task of assessing a massive number of cards.
Putting Intention into Deck Evaluation
Four years ago, longtime multiplayer Magic pioneer and advocate Anthony Alongi and some other thinkers developed a 2x2 grid they called a "CARS Quadrant Model" that I always thought was a much better way to help describe the sort of Commander play experience you're looking for. I did an interview with Anthony called "A Better Way to Find Your Tribe in Commander" and this is how they described it:
Imagine an event organizer splits a large (50+) group of Commander players into four areas. Players self-select each game into their most compatible area by answering two questions:
"How much do I want to win?"
"How good is the deck I'm using?"
Based on your answers (which can change each game), you are likely to fit best into one of these quadrants:
COMPETITIVE (robust, intense): your deck is built to win at any cost, and everyone knows and expects it.
ASPIRATIONAL (irregular, intense): you're trying out a new, quirky idea and going hard at the prize.
RECREATIONAL (irregular, relaxed): you're engaging on a purely social basis, with winning an afterthought.
SELF-RESTRAINED (robust, relaxed): your deck is strong, but there's no rush to win this particular game.
I asked Anthony questions about it at the time, and here's one quote I think offers some great insight into this whole debate:
In addition to additional descriptive power, the addition of the "intent" axis represents something fundamental to Commander. The founders of this format have been saying it all along - for example, Toby Eliot's statement that the secret to Commander is in not breaking it. No other major, widely recognized Magic format works this way. "I'm going to build a deck, and I'm going to de-power it, so it doesn't optimize." Okay, but what if you're still the most powerful deck at a table of strangers? "Oh, I'll just hold back and let others play out their stuff." That's intent. It happens in thousands of games played every day at local gaming stores, kitchen tables, and side events. All. The. Time. We've got to recognize that. And we can do that without demeaning more competitive players - in fact, I believe the addition of this axis honors them, and helps them find a firmer place within the broader community.
The Big Idea: Format Add-Ons!
Obviously any playgroup can just decide to unban cards for their own Commander game experiences, but things get tricky when you bring that deck to an environment where you are looking to play with people you don't know, so let's consider having official Commander format "Add-Ons!" These are groupings of banned cards that can be considered unbanned if everyone at the table agrees to the Add-On.
Here are two Add-Ons I could see featuring currently banned in Commander cards:
Fast Mana Add-On
Jeweled Lotus
Mana Crypt
Dockside Extortionist
Primeval Titan
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
High Power Add-On
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
Hullbreacher
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
Prophet of Kruphix
Lutri, the Spellchaser
Sundering Titan
Biorhythm
Coalition Victory
Now, I am far from experienced playing high-powered Commander or cEDH, so more knowledgeable folks should think about and cultivate these unban Add-Ons. For instance, I took a look at Fastbond and Channel for the Fast Mana Add-On, but my gut feeling is those cards are just not good for Commander even at the highest power levels. However, people who do play a lot at that level might disagree due to their actual play experience and data.
I do think less is more applies here, too. We wouldn't want too many different Add-Ons to confuse things, and I think just having two or maybe three Add-Ons like this would be a very useful tool for the Commander fandom.
Now, I can easily imagine going to Magic conventions and having designated play areas that include:
Commander: The format we all know and love as it currently stands
Commander + Fast Mana Add-On: You want to run Jeweled Lotus so you can feasibly cast your eight mana commander, or have the mana to cast your nine or ten mana spell
Commander + High Power Add-On: You want to play hard but not necessarily fast
Commander + Fast Mana & High Power Add-Ons: You want to play hard and fast, cEDH-style
Players would have easy access to what the Add-Ons mean regarding legal cards, and they can build their decks accordingly and meet up with others who are looking for the same sort of experience.
Having official Add-Ons gives easy vocabulary for building your decks and for being able to find people who want to play a similar game of Commander as you do. Plus, it provides an excellent alternative from complete banning of a new card from the entire format when design mistakes occur.
What Does "Do the Thing" Mean?
I often describe the sort of games I look for as everyone has the time for their deck to "do the thing" before eventually someone wins. Of course the problem with this idea is each player might have vastly different ideas of what "doing the thing" means. Does it mean you:
- Win the game immediately?
- Accelerate the timeline for winning the game?
- Set your opponents back on winning the game?
- Have one or more "mini-quests" built into the deck that don't win the game but that do something cool that makes you happy?
Better describing what "thing" you want your deck to do would be another very useful tool in finding the sort of game experience you want.
A Time for Change
What do you think of these ideas? What would you like to see done with Commander going forward?
