@@yty-p9kin the grand scheme of things commander existed for a decade before they acknowledged it but only in the last 5 years have they made it their focus and we got horrific additions to the format like smothering tithe, dockside,0 cost counters, and worst the all in one commander legendaries made to be legendaries by making sure you can't fuck up with them by giving you card advantage and a combo and a startup to the combo
The worst part about this in Magic is that they've done it multiple times. Stealing EDH AND Pauper has really changed what were the two best casual constructed formats. Granted, Pauper always had a competitive scene and I still like it, but you can't deny that the barrier to entry into that format has changed radically since WotC started watching it more actively. That's not to mention at least two occasions where a common was legal for a long time, only to be banned later for doing most of what another banned card did.
@@yty-p9kit isn't sustainable. You see the people coming into the game. You don't seem to even think about the people, like me, who have LEFT the game. I've been playing this game off and on for 27 years. I always LOVED it. I ALWAYS had a reason to come back, whenever I left, whether it be for other games, wanting to spend money on pricey hobbies like motorcycles, or just wanting to take a break in general from the game, I ALWAYS came back. Now, I've just moved on. I've invested heavily into Lorcana over the last six months. I've finally found some One Piece and have spend a couple hundred dollars on it in over the last month, and will continue to invest into it. I found an LGS that has tourneys for both of these games. It used to be that I'd spend a lot of money on Modern. I'd even play Standard if I liked the design of the current cards and had some extra cash to burn. I enjoyed drafting and sealed and played them at least once a month, on average. I even got into Commander using my old jank cards that didn't have anywhere else to be used. It was enjoyable to just play with cards that sucked, but were still cool cards. Now that is gone. My daughter left the game. Her boyfriend left the game. A lot of people have left the game. The new customers might stick around for a while. They might disappear after they grow tired of the new, current trend and their preferred IP not being focused on anymore. Players like me ALWAYS came back. Now, that isn't as likely. This is short-term profit over long-term sustainability.
Magic Arcanum talks about this in one of his videos. He calls it the "ugly sweater problem." EDH used to be a grassroots format where unplayable jank could be played. This is like that person that wore an ugly sweater his grandma made him. But then, just like EDH, ugly sweaters became popular. So now all the big fast fashion chains and corporations mass produce sweaters that are intentionally ugly. Everyone wears them during the holidays now. The original ugly sweater has lost it's essence.
Yeah, I loved sifting through new sets for hidden gems and finding the one or two cards that sounded like cool additions to some of my decks. Nowadays there are multiple cards that could go in any given deck every set.
@@connortodd4538they should make augment a blackborder uncommon mechanic, it has so much potential and it's leaps and bounds better then mutate which does basically the same thing but has no outside synergy except confusing rules ones that make the game worst
@feritperliare2890 that certainly is a take. Augment is literally as parasitic of a mechanic as you can get. You need two specific types of cards for it to even function. Mutate let's you do wierd things like make something not legendary or copy a huge stack of mutate cards. Definately more mechanically interesting than "staple head of cat on body of stegasaurus"
Losing standard as the premier format really messed up power balancing for every format. Back when every card had to go through standard we rarely saw these problems, standard power level kept other formats in check. Every once in a while a card would find itself making waves or a deck would hit a critical mass of hits and become meta. Now with cards needing to be powerful enough to make waves in commander or modern it feels like power creep is the goal not something to be avoided. Constant commander decks and horizons sets have created an unsustainable level of power creep across all formats.
TBH we saw a bit of this problem when they decided for a time that they were _only_ going to design for standard and ignore the implications for other formats, which lead to some serious broken stuff being let out in Vintage and Extended at the time. Granted those formats don't exist anymore in any official capacity, but the same concept still applies. When they hyperfocus on one format instead of looking at the overall health of the formats that they have, they end up screwing everything up.
They nearly went bankrupt twice trying to start power creep, with Urzas and Mirrodin block, but they got away with MH, and they havnt looked back since. A rapidly obsoleted meta ships cardboard. MTG will be lile YGO in another 5 years, and the idiots will lap it all up.
I would argue commanders shifting of MTG's design has been a fundamentally negative one for two reasons: Firstly it affects all the other formats who had cards made for them, it makes them neglected IMO and i personally believe the game was healthier overall when 60 card formats were the focus. And secondly EDH was all about playing with cards never intended to be played in the formats context, so designing for it IMO is antithetical to it's original goals.
EDH being a primary product driver means the only way to get people to buy cards is to make new cards better than old cards, so you wind up with Yugioh levels of powercreep where each new set totally warps the format, rather than just injecting a couple of new cards into a few decks.
SO TRUE!!! literally yugioh levels of powercreep relative to magic because it’s literally an eternal format!!! why are they constantly making product for an eternal format!!!!
And 60-card will *never again* be the primary focus of the *playerbase* while buying boxes remains synonymous with setting your money on fire, and singles prices remain obscene. EDH is popular in large part because of its singleton nature. Unless WotC wants to fundamentally retool the EV of Sealed, and take additional steps to bring Singles prices down to something like the Garfield Standard of No Cards Over 20$ *EVER* there is literally *no* hope of getting large numbers of players to commit to formats dominated by enfranchised players that don’t blink at Step .1 of New Deck Construction being, “Pay 360-400$ for a playset of One Rings.” You can feel however you want about it, but top-flight decks will either become constructable for 400-500$ *absolute maximum* (by people with established collections to draw on), or accept that 99.98% of the people who have never played anything but EDH will never for an instant look at 60-card formats. It’s not an option. The world we live in contains less and less people both willing and *able* to spend 2,500 to 3,000$ on a deck. Out of that limited # of people interested in CCGs, you can then minus all those who chose something other than MtG, hoping it will be the new King of CCGs. The current price points to seriously engage with nearly all 60-card formats is just out of reach of many of the people who’d otherwise be game to dive in. I just built pretty much an optimal Lathiel list for 570$, w/ a little help from EBay letting me score *a* Teferi’s Protection for 23$, *an* Archangel of Thune for 25$, etc. That deck is doing great among the 8s/8.5s at the LGS on Friday. Beyond even cost. You’re facing a near-insurmountable culture barrier, to try and get players habituated to Commander’s Play What You Want design-space to sign on for, “Oh, did we mention our Format has 3-5 decks you can play at any one point, and trying to play anything that is not a workable variant of the 3-5 is synonymous with getting your cheeks clapped?”
Just another example is the sticker goblin in legacy, the only reason any of those cards were black boarder was for commander, and they somewhat warped legacy in a way that didn't feel competitive
Commander has become like that one 4-panel comic where the people are wearing pineapples on their heads, having a good time, til the brand shows up with pineapples on their heads and everyone abandons the pineapples.
I started playing EDH because it was slower. Magic the Gathering, in my opinion, should be a relatively slow game. The once-per-turn land drops, resource system, summoning sickness, etc all scream that Magic shouldn't be a fast game. However, all of the highest power decks and high value engines find ways around the mana system. If I wanted to win on turn 2, I'd play Yu-Gi-Oh.
Free spells in MTG to me are actually insane. Like, isn't that what the mana system was supposed to design against? Everything costs resources, so you have to ration everything in a strategic way. Maybe the moxen were a way to "get around" that early in the game's history, but those things don't impact the game all that much when the other cards were... Well not great a lot of the time. 6 mana for a vanilla 4/4 was not uncommon, so getting an extra pip was a decent advantage, but not a game-alterijf effect. Now, you play a sol ring for a 4-drop on turn 2 and the game is basically over because every 4 drop now is a 4/4 with 10 lines of text
Y’all are crazy, the first few years had the most nuts cards. Have you ever seen what alpha magic looks like? It’s just black lotus time twisters extra turns.
@@Tspang42 Those cards are nuts now, but the ceiling back then was a lot lower. Lots of vanilla creatures, you weren't getting a 4/4 with 20 lines of text for 3 mana back in Alpha.
@@Tspang42 I am aware of the power 9, but they would be seen as design missteps if they were released even now. However, they made more sense before magic got its footing and when a 6/6 flyer cost 8 mana.
As a commander only player, honestly, I'd prefer the returned to developing for other formats first. Finding cards from way back that work well with a commander is a lot more interesting than situations like the assassin's Creed set's give all creature type a boost. And it makes games more varied and fun if it's not a card that just does everything for you in the command zone
1000%. That was the fun of commander was brewing a deck, and using your favorite unplayable pet cards. With WOTC designing for Commander, it's like HERE! Staples in every color Combo, but especially UG! I don't feel like I'm brewing, more like assembling IKEA furniture.
One of my favorite blocks of all time is Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, and that one introduced tribal as an official keyword. But it was designed as a 'normal' block first with standard as it's default. That being said though, the 40K and Fallout commander precons are what dragged me back into the game after over 15 years out of it.
@@tempestandacomputer6951 Of course. The other way is to vomit out a board full of stax pieces turn one and watch the opponent cry. Fossil Dyna my beloved ❤
I’ve been saying this sort of thing about aggro for a while now, in my own playgroup and others like at local game stores people tend to shy away from attacking early into people who don’t have a board yet because they’re setting up, because they’re afraid it’s too “mean” and it starts to pull heat onto your head because you’re the first person to start getting aggressive. Consequently, direct life loss effects and aristocrat strategies and combos have become very very powerful and often win games because of that.
This reminds me of a video Distraction Makers made about pretty much the same topic, regarding of how EDH breaks the rock-paper-scissors relationship between strategies in Magic, but slightly more in the abstract since this is something that can be applies to a lot of games. In games like Magic, or a lot of strategy games for that matter, you often have this circle between playing offensive, defensive, and economically. Offensive beats economic strategies due to lack of defense, economic strategies beat defensive strategies due to accumulated value, and defensive beats aggressive due to being able to hold off the attacker. But since EDH inherently nerfs aggressive strategies, they can be pretty much discounted. This means we only have defensive and economic strategies left. And economic strategies win out against defense. And this is pretty much why a lot of commander, especially nowadays, breaks down to just building an engine to generate value and then win through some combo or big spell
I liked at 17:28 when you explained how removal and protection are more important than ever nowadays; for taking out their powerful value engines or protecting your own so you can go over the top. I think lots of people may not realize that someone's large graveyard or Smothering Tithe may need to be dealt with ASAP over a scary looking 7/7 trampler. You probably wouldn't build a deck without any targeted creature removal. But lots of people skip on graveyard exile when it's such a common threat!
I feel like WotC are painting themselves into a corner business wise. EDH got popular as everyone's side format. Got spare time during a draft or after an event? Shuffle up and play some commander. Trying to funnel people into commander as their starting point is putting the cart before the horse as far as I'm concerned. WotC designing for the format is just compounding the issues, breaking people's first formats, and given the sheer volume of producing coming out these days they're making more design mistakes because of the tempo. The old commander precons were pretty fine because they were once a year, a little nod to the side format and tossing some new and silly things into the mix. But now that everything is commander it's lost what made it what it was. WotC's shifting of focus away from Standard is leading them to take formats that had previously been very stable like modern and forcing rotation into them with power creep in order to keep the revenue going, and I don't see a way out for them because they gotta keep the line going up.
I think Commander is a terrible format for beginners. Singleton, 100 card decks which are hard to shuffle, advertising your deck with a commander, multiplayer which raises the complexity, and eternal format which means all the busted cards of all time. 60 card, one on one, kitchen table magic with a knowledgeable friend is the best on-boarding anyone can get.
@@shorewall Commander is a wonderful format for a group that is growing their collection and isn't priced out of buying packs. Like the whole point of the format to begin with is to throw the filler jank that we inevitably got chasing the things we were really after into a deck and to smash those jank decks together. No needing 4 copies of like 5-7 sets of $50-$100 cards to be competitive, and since there's 4 people it's not as cutthroat as a 1v1 format. It's not great to learn the basics but once you have that, it's a great format to just jank around in. And then people inevitably got competitive with it, while WotC noticed that it became the most popular format. So the decks became more optimized to win while WotC printed cards people would want in their decks.
@@shorewallI LOVE this topic. You're right and wrong. Commander is an absolute migraine of a format for new players to play in. All cards ever printed with INSANE interactions is a certifiably psychotic way to introduce players to your game. New players should not have to figure out how Urborg and Blood Moon work together. However, Commander is a great way to teach new players the game because it is low pressure and social. You're talking with friends and since most of the people at the table are gonna lose, losing doesn't feel so bad.
Commander is sometimes the only format people can even consider playing MTG. Pauper is not for the poor people despite the name, since some decks gravely excees the entry point.
There is a mechanic you ommitted, commander damage! To me Fast Voltron commanders are closest to aggro the format has, you need to fight the Voltron decks if they choose you as the target which for me is a similar dynamic in aggro matchups in 60 card formats. Great video tho!
you can work in voltron into a slicer deck, now you have forced combat every turn, a beefed up commander with way too many swords, plus if you choose the right equipment, combat only benefits you
One of my main decks is exactly this! When I roll up with an 8 drop Paladia Mors Classic and describe myself as a commander forcused stompy deck, people wonder what I'm trying to hide. Until they get eaten by Doubled damage, Doublestrike 7/7 Flying Trample Commander for 28 commander damage. On turn 7. (having board wiped on turn 5 with an empty field) It got even better when Paladia Mors, Ruiner came out.
This tbh. People often seem to think commander damage only exists to keep lifegain decks in check... but combo can do that too. Commander damage uniquely enables aggressive voltron decks. I love the sudden dread on people's faces when on turn 3 I swing at them with a 9/3 Wyll, Blade of Frontiers equipped with Strength-Testing Hammer.
This is a conclusion I cam to about 3 years ago, and since then I have stopped purchasing magic products and have swapped to playing proxy competitive formats (CAD lander, CEDH Modern etc.). I'm not good at it yet, but I'm having more fun
I play Netrunner now. The warping of Modern and Legacy sucked all the excitement I had for Magic. Maybe one day things will be good. Until then, I have to figure out if I should sell my Underground Seas.
It feels like the only format that doesn't get screwed over by this focus on Commander is Pauper, mostly because commons are designed for 1v1 drafts and aren't really powercrept in the same way. The way I always put it is whenever a new Modern Horizons comes out it completely warps modern and legacy and commander, whenever a new Modern Horizons comes out some Pauper decks get a few new cards
This is a great point. Pauper might be the best format right now. WotC has basically no way to milk the format. It can only make sets kind of exciting. I kind of want to try Pauper now.
Pauper is freaking great, and the fact that it is one of, if not the only official format that does not have products or cards specifically designed for it is certainly worth noting
Nicely summarized. I’ve recently started playing a lot of 3-for-1 edict effects like Soul Shatter, Sheoldred’s Edict, and Vona’s Hunger for some of the reasons you outlined. Not always as effective as spot removal but it’s been a nice addition
I think that if you want to play aggro in EDH, you play voltron. But it is kinda silly that the best way to play aggro is focus on a strategy that reduces the total life to 63.
@@shorewallthat's why I kinda like the Brawl format with less life. On Arena, I have a pretty high tier, super aggro deck with Reyav, Master Smith as a commander that wouldn't be remotely viable in EDH
I play two aggro decks in edh... It's karumonix toxic/infect with loads of proliferate. (Reduces to 30 life) Or Mowu +1/+1 deck which is actually my "play nice" battlecruiser deck and it can easily one tap the table with 3 creatures trampling
@@marcoottina654 Yeah, it was MEANT to make aggro worse. This is not an accident. "But it makes aggro bad!" is not a problem to be fixed, it's a deliberate upside meant for people who don't think their games against high-speed aggro decks are fun.
This was kind of the thoughts I had when building and writing a primer for my Lotho deck. Super consistent, super reliable and resilient, super value focused. Slips under the radar most of the time even when the table has played against it multiple times.
Commander players should actually start ignoring the "Commander" keyword on cards because "WoTC's 'Commander' can't be the same thing as our custom-rules commander".
A big problem with aggro is the “social contract” of EDH, where you’re playing with friends or strangers who are all meant to enjoy the game for as long as possible. Aggro works in commander but you don’t get a lot of brownie points at the table for focusing down the one player who can’t stop your early game until they’re eliminated and then moving on to the next target. One person just sits out 80% of the game.
For me and my favorite playgroup, we've pretty much avoided a lot of this by putting a good power cap on our decks and rarely updating them. Plus, for the most part, all of our commanders are around the #500 or lower mark on EDHRec.
THIS! I always check the ranking in EDHRec before making a deck, and I love to play unusual commanders and unusual archetypes. I don't check the cards for them tho, mostly because I already have a "build" in mind and I take pride in brewing my own decks using only Scryfall
The power creep of cards today is absolutely necessary, in that Wizards needs it so we all keep buying lots of new cards. Power creep is the natural way to go for Wizards when the most popular formats are eternal (don’t rotate).
Many EDH players dont even want an "interactive" game, they just want to play their goldfish game with 4 players, as they barely understand their own deck, and just see what happens. The moment it does get more competitive, the bridge to actual cEDH is slim, as you need to have at least some form of "metagame" to properly prepare your deck against your opponents. The format with its legal banned list is not balanced at all, its basically not functional, people just decide what they want to play against and what not. Some people get frustrated with just 1 mass removal and would rather scoop and start a new game instead ... so whats the point ? Highly interactive games are pure card-advantage battles, whoever gets to stick their engine or pulls a combo out wins. Then there are the no-tutor people, if they just randomly get their combo they win out of nowhere, or they do nothing and just die. Its a format of extremes.
I think this is a large part of why I like Pauper, so few commander designed cards have the possibility of existing in it. It's not perfect, we still have our format warp around monarch, initiative, Basilisk gate, etc. but for the most part it's old school 60 card constructed
Great video as always, I agree with most if not all of your points. I think Oko was designed to be a walker powerful enough for commander, which obviously made him problematic in 60 card. Walkers famously get attacked and die in commander and I think Oko really has enough loyalty to survive some tables.
@@thetrinketmage Yeah, of course I don't know shit. I just know that Korvold, Chulane, Alela, Gwynn are goated commanders and already are mainstays in the format. It seems like the set design of Throne was exactly what commander design looks like
@@Jundsac the only thing I've ever heard about oko is that it was just supposed to be a support piece for food decks, and they didn't playtest it right. The card doesn't really scream commander.
@@danielsniff6405 I think it has for-commander mechanics on it at least to a small degree. It steals creatures and erases abilities, which are the two best ways to remove commanders edit: For the record I think all good cards in all sets are designed for commander. I just don't know when that policy started
I have a friend who built a Valduk, Keeper of the Flame aggro EDH deck that he eventually took apart because he was consistently winning the early game.
Yeah, this comment is exactly what I described in the comment I just made, too. If an aggro deck wins, they're the only ones that got to play... Because that's what they're designed to do.
@@Sweetguy1821clearly you were not letting everyone else play similar powered decks. That is what you found boring. If you played against other decks that went for a win on turn 3 you might find it a bit more fun.
I also have an aggro deck that can consistently kill one player around turn 3 or 4. But I don't play it often because once i kill one person, it will get bored wiped or disrupted by the other 2. and that one person i killed now has to sit and watch for way too long, and i just feel bad. I think that's why mid-range is the most common type, because it lets everyone play, and its more fun that way. I usually build my decks in a way that if i kill one person i should be able to kill the rest soon after. I also avoid long combo value decks because i spend too much time on my turn, which does not feel fun to play against.
I wanted to bring up a separate point as well for why I am also getting a bit fatigued. I started off with constructed formats and returned to the game after 3 years to commander. Commander was really interesting when I first started as there were seemingly infinite possibilities but for me now it has become extreme work to develop and design a new EDH deck it takes a lot to find the right pieces, balance well and then I realize I’ve designed the same thing as a previous deck but slightly different. I recently found myself coming up with ideas to design decks for constructed formats. I might be alone in this view but I find jank easier and more fun to build in 60 card and I have far more options on how I build a deck only having to think about a specific one game plan and how one opponent could react. I am not sure, I could be coming at EDH view wrong but that’s kind of just my feelings on it. (Been playing EDH for 4-5ish years so I might have also become beyond product fatigued and just want something different as a play experience.)
Thanks dunkey - commander is probably the cheapest and most friendly format (note that i didnt say easiest to learn, but i dont feel that matters) for people to get into magic with. You can play with your friends and have a strong cohesive deck for 15-20 dollars while other formats go into the triples/quadruples in price. Itd make sense for wotc as a business to rake in as much money as possible in this area that the secondary market dominates. A video about the economies of magic would be interesting!
Alexios & Slicer owe their existence to Tangrath, the gruul Minotaur. Respect the OG who started rotating around to deal out quadruple fistings every rotation.
@thetrinketmage it's cool; he was the first thing I spun off into his own bit from Ghired and now he's the ace of Baeloth w/ Raised by Giants. He's gotten more swole than the elf himself some matches, not that that stopped him from swinging.
@@chumbogrosso5133 For real, I say a reverse Modern type of Commander, where only sets before a certain cutoff are legal. I tend to see Magic Origins as a shift in MTG Design. I think the added emphasis on story led to them overpowering story relevant cards and characters, and then now we have power creep for sales in general.
I've personally stepped away from actively playing for a while now, but what has worked well for me as an "aggro" deck in commander is Commissar Severina Raine. I've built her to go wide very quickly, and can easily start taking out huge chunks of life from everyone by turn 5/6.
ive personally only built phyrexian tribal decks for the past year using cards tied to phyrexian lore and its been a blast. none of them go infinite, but they all have access to Realmbreaker the Invasion Tree. as a result my Ovika deck for example can for 10 generic mana fetch every jin gytaxias and urabrask out of my deck onto the battlefield. a lot of people get upset by that but i always remind them its one of my win conditions in the deck. instead of going infinite with say exquisite blood + sanguine bond, or any number of kiki jikki combos, i have left you with an outable board state, that is heavily taxing on your hand and creatures. at least there is a chance to recover from it.
I've seriously considered rebuilding a grindy Esper deck for EDH purely to get people in my group to play interaction. Everyone just wants to sit in their corner and build up stuff and feels averse to actually winning the game.
I really do think commders that use goad neeeeed to be printed more because quite frankly needed reasons to engage with your opponent is a really good thing for casual a lot of the time as a joke I say my green aggro deck commander has goad when he doesn't
I would make the argument that aggro does show up in commander but only in its most scalable forms and takes more time. Elfball is pretty potent in commander, voltron is basically just Bogles, and I have built a few white weenies decks with good results in my pods. Aggro outside of commander will forego things like card advantage because the goal is to have you dead before that matters. In EDH, you need card advantage because it takes more resources to win. This naturally shifts the focus away from aggro and favors combo because you can accomplish a win with less spent resources. My tips for building an aggro deck: Keep ramp under 2 mana at all times Play pieces that generate a ton of value that serve multiple purposes Ensure you play scalable threats. +1+1 counters are heavily favored.
This video makes me more proud of my playgroup’s deck lineup. We have Delina, Wild Mage aggro; Skrelv, Defector Mite aggro; Rakdos, the Showstopper steal your opponents creatures and sac them; Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder + Akroma, Vision of Ixidor thicc creature town; and Gut, True Soul Zealot + Agent of the Iron Throne which is pretty self explanatory.
Im glad you brought up Slicer. As someone that loves aggro, Ive ran into similar issues trying to make it work in edh and felt like slicer was the only way to really feel like Im playing aggro. Unfortunately, edh players really seem to dislike playing against him, which makes me sad :( Any other aggro deck Ive tried just runs out of steam and gets focussed down by 3 players because Im playing offensive cards before turn3. And I either have to just pick 1 player and take them out before they could play a single card and then die, leaving us to watch a 1h 1v1 game, or die by the time I managed to get the table down to 25~ life. Would hobestly love ot if aggro was actually playable in edh, but idk what thatd actually look like (besides exactly the two examples youve given)
Oh I'd love playing against Slicer. Sac it in Wilhelt or Teysa, blink it to make all the equipments fall off in Aminatou, furthering my own gameplan in N'ghathrod with Maskwood Nexus (making you my main target because I want to keep the person I'm stealing from the most alive)... if your deck can't exploit getting slicer, what are you even playing?
This is why i usually like playing slower decks that combo win on turn 6 ish if uninterrupted, but also have a backup plan if something goes south. Blue white blink my beloved 💛
Smothering Tithe was originally printed in a commander esque type product called brawl decks it was basically Wizard's spin on Commander Commander that to my knowledge never caught on in popularity.
11:10 not sure if you find this information relevant, but i am someone that will pause the video and read whatever text has been presented to me. Your extra effort to provide context does not go unnoticed 🤘🍻
@@thetrinketmage I can see that and I do share it Seeing the same play patterns over and over, every single game feels worse than it is in the old days of 60-cards format, because the availability of 4-copies is a double-edged sword (i.e, drawing too many copies of the same stuff could choke you) that kinda counterbalance the absence of a reliable, always ready card, that is the Commander. Tutors, drawing 3-4 cards a turn *bare minimum*, playing 2345676 lands a turn, etc really do kill the "diversity" of the gameplay.
I always got the impression the rock paper scissors was kind of that in reverse. Aggro kills the combo player before they can get the combo pieces, combo obliterates the control's accumulated value in one fell sudden swoop and control has the tools to fend off aggro assault until it runs out of steam.
Though aggro can beat combo in that way you gotta remember that 60 card formats have sideboards. Post board combo can just play life gain effects and stave off aggro so well it’s really hard for them to win. Also if your combo deck can’t out pace an aggro pile with no disruption it’s likely too slow to be viable
I played aggro during RTR Standard and this feels correct to me. It didn't matter how fast I went becausr Supreme Verdict would 6-for1 me and then they'd Sphinx's Rev back all the life they lost.
I’ve been binging your content the past week. This was such a pleasant surprise to see in my subs today!!! Keep up the amazing work, I recommend your channel to everyone I play with.
I don't think Nadu was intentional. It's play pattern is terrible, even wizards can see that (even if they couldn't at the time). The design team expressed some regret making it. It's the same situation as Oko, it wasn't playtested right. It just slipped through the cracks.
I think that pro players getting contracted on the design team to either play test or just give once-overs would be so good for the development of the game. Design teams for games often do not understand the highest levels of play.
Stax players are just lonely people who want everyone to stick around longer, so it seems like they have friends. Stax players are usually garbage too and hand the win to someone else more than half the time and that’s backed up with stats in our own playgroup and more. My Yuriko and Shorikai deck spit on “Stax decks”
@@v2blackcat See, that's funny cuz my playgroup wouldn't ever talk like that about people. Not just cuz they're inclusive, but because they're actually nice people. Lol
While aggro is hard to make work in general in Commander but it is definitely possible. Fynn is a great example. Reducing your opponents' combined life total from 120 to effectively 15 (or even less with proliferate) allows you to play the standard aggro mini-game of kill them before you get out-valued. I avoided putting any infect+pump shenanigans in my Fynn deck to reduce friction with random groups but he does feel a little mean.
my favorite type of deck is hybrid "midrange" decks which can be played as either tempo, combo or generate value and go toe to toe with control for a while.
Out of all the many of you tubers who do magic you are the only one who has a brain. I wish I could meet you in real life because you sound like a person I can have conversations with for hours.
Appreciate the kind words. I’m going to try and go to some Magic cons and maybe one day we can get a game in! Otherwise I do have a patreon discord if you want to say hi. I’m there often answering questions and giving deck advice
My personal favorite deck that I've made that's GOOD (also I suck at going at 60 cards so I usually just make 80 card decks so I often just make a lower power Commander deck) is a hapatra deck that I call Poisonous Food which has nothing to do with poison counters but is a -1/-1 counter and food deck that's honestly pretty fun
Regarding the erosion of 60 card decks, I stopped playing Modern when they kept banning archetypes. It was such a financial investment and to see a pro top-8 was a death sentence.
I don't know. Personally for me without Commander my friends wouldn't have gotten into magic. Being able to play with 3 other friends really adds to the fun of the format for me, which is why I love Commander. I definitely get and agree that Standard and Modern have some glaring issues as a result of this, but I personally don't find standard quite as fun of a format. Being able to play janky decks, wild synergies, politics, and whatnot really makes Magic shine for me. Another big thing that gets overlooked at least for casual commander is that every game you play plays wildly differently. With Highlander and 4 players every game always turns out vastly differently, compared to modern or standard where you put 4 cards of each type into your deck to make it as consistent as possible. There still is some variance but nothing like casual commander. That variety really draws me into the format and I think its the reason commander is seen as much more new player friendly. I also realize I'm more of an anomaly compared to most magic players where I have a stable group with a relatively set power level of deck, and one who doesn't really the play the format outside of physical games. Power creep will always be an issue, and it will most definitely become an issue for commander in the future unless some changes are made to help combat the creep in both Modern, standard, and commander.
I think it was LSv that said that all Limited decks are midrange decks; because you usually can’t draft enough truly aggro cards and also sometimes you’re going to need that ability to top deck well. Commander is just like this but due to life totals. It’s safe early game to invest in later turns because people can’t win through combat in turns 1-5. Combo is so streamlined that you can win which combined with the slower combat decks further incentivises aggro stax that races to close the ability to win t1-3 opening up to a midrange game in turns 3-6. Aggro still exists but it also has to have the ability to grind. What can’t be built is the Mono U tempo style decks because outside of cyclonic rift you just can’t punish card advantage via tempo.
You make a lot of awesome points and follow interesting development over time! "Playing more board wipes" is definitely the vogue advice, but I have been bucking that and only putting in 1-2 wipes, even taking them out of decks. I put in more protection for my board, since others do like to play board wipes. In my experience, most board wipes primary effect is making the game take FOREVER. Only sometimes do they change the outcome. I would much rather play 2 games 45 minutes each than one game that's almost 2 hours because nobody can win. The effect? not only have I had more fun just watching some commanders pop off, moving on to game 2, but I am actually winning more and more games by focusing on defeating my opponents by pushing through damage, overwhelming value, and protecting my board, rather than stopping them from winning. I play commander primarily to see some crazy effects, socialize with other MTG-minded folks, and if I win, that's a nice prize. So I am sure that informs my take on this a lot!
I think that's a really good point. Commander is really not based around winning, and it is that arms race, power creep that is most in danger of ruining the Commander Experience. But I think adding board wipes is generically good advice, especially if you are losing too much. If you are good without, then that's even better.
If you have a consistent group, limiting deck cost is usually a good way to help. No one I play with buys $20 cards, if they have them they got them from a pack. This means new players can still do well with precons and the rest of us can play well without dumping over $100 into a single deck
I personally love edh. I dabble with other formats (pauper, modern, and vintage online) but I mostly stick with commander. Magics format system is something unique to it and why I love the game. There's no different way to play yu-gi-oh or the pokemon tcg. Depending on how I'm feeling, I can play different formats with different cards and lists and bans. But wizards edh design issue has caused a lot of formats to bleed together, and the ones that don't just end up falling out of paper, like standard and pioneer
@@tertmemelur1880 Looking at damage per mana ratio, assuming nobody's life total has changed before activating his ability, 60 damage for 5 mana equals five 12 damage lightning bolts. Of course, he also damages yourself... but that's nothing a Basilisk Collar or Loxodon Warhammer can't fix.
It's true that in casual everyone is playing simply good value piles, I made a Gargos deck where the focus isn't on hidras but on targetting my creatures to fight against the enemy creatures and it destroys casual decks, it wasn't fun to deny everyone else to play so I stopped playing it, but relaying so much on good value creatures is something that people should look as not a good thing
I was thinking of making my Gargos deck like this. My other idea was Maskwood Nexus and then just standard big boys. But then I figured I'd do the hydra tribal and it's a ton of fun to get the big guys out. They usually don't make it around a turn cycle because everyone has a secret path to exile in their hand every time.
I have an Adeline deck that I really like because I built her as a true aggro deck. It scales really fast and she can kill a player by herself. Of course I had to tweak it a bit to be able to rebuild and draw cards but it's a fair anthems/tokens deck. I really think that Wizards is bursting all they have and will kill the fun of the format as they will make everything so flexible and consistent
6:30 You say here that Blue farm is the fastest and the most grindy deck, but that's just miles away from being true: any turbo AN deck is way faster, and the turbo combo hand in blue farm is gonna be 1 in 40 games. That said, you then go on into a little bit more detail about CEDH meta (stax, combo, control) so I'm willing to bet it was just a slip worth of clarification for anyone outside Cedh. Neat video!
It’s more like my script is poorly worded. I mean to say it’s possible for blue farm to win on turn 1 but also it’s very grindy. Even though on average it’s slower than RogSai.
I have a tormod/thras deck as well! One card, though, that I absolutely adore is titan's nest. It's a way to make a shit ton of zombies as it exiles cards one at a time for free
I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one who thinks Alexios is good for the game. He's scary, don't get me wrong, but as an Infect & Sliver enjoyer, I think people need to be reminded they have opponents and this isn't a game of solitaire. People sending all the trample damage at the blocker and not getting in at their opponents are either cowards, or think they can beat you without someone else's commander chipping in...
regarding not finishing off low health players, my favorite games are the ones where the the game has a winner within two turn rotations after the first player loses. i've seen too many games where a player loses out ten or fifteen turns before a winner is declared and they just gotta sit there and i hate seeing that. one of my most memorable games recently was when a Karlach player killed two players in one turn, played Final Fortune, and then was hit with a Swords to Plowshares at the beginning of combat. epic all around and with no downtime for the rest of the pod.
I run two board while some people run four, I run a elf ramp deck, I love it it’s crazy how the cards have become overall, I played since innistrad and avacyn
Standard & 60 card formats are very much the easiest way to get a new player to understand the ins and outs of magic. Went to a vintage proxy tournament and had to show veteran players how to sideboard and it was embarrassing. Players of 4+ years that only play cedh / EDH
I think "not hitting someone in a bad position" is also good sportsmanship, if you're playing with friends, eliminating someone early can be unfun while they wait 30 minutes for the game to end. to this purpose I think rule 0-ing some sort of instant death/points mechanic that triggers when someone is eliminated might be interesting (maybe every player gets an emblem with forced cumulative upkeep 2 life per eliminated player?)
I think I definitely agree, I'm just now coming back to commander after like 10 years of not playing anywhere other than the comfort of my house. All my decks are old, I'm fuzzy on the rules... And coming back commander feels like a different game and sure it's still fun, but maybe it's the nostalgia, maybe it's power creep, but I miss the way it used to feel, playing my janky old decks. Or maybe I miss my God awful Niv-Mizzet the Firemind EDH deck was that I built when I was 12. It was my first EDH deck, it barely functioned, but I loved it, I hate that I deconstructed it
Imagine if power creep makes it to power and toughness and decades from now magic creatures have attack and defense values that look like yugioh monsters
I liked scouring sets for occasional cards to add to my commander piles. Nowadays you just go online and find that they've printed three new EDH staples this set. As far as my own decks though, one of my favorites is Grand Warlord Radha. Ramp powered by aggro is great.
10:35 In a recent article titled "ON BANNING NADU, WINGED WISDOM IN MODERN" Wizards confirmed that Nadu was a design mistake in the first line, plain as day. I expect this design mistake carries over to other formats, because the original version seems much more toned down but still powerful. The FIRE philosophy and time crunch are what made this card what it is.
Nice video!☺️ I think jeska’s will is also one of them crazy commanders cards too! It can just go in any deck and never go wrong! Costs a few mana and you get back mana for the highest hand count, which is usually like minimum 7 red man in commander🤦🏼♂️😂 worst case, it’s a card that can give you like 90 red mana lol
I think the value engine era we are in has stifled creativity in deck building. It encourages the format to deckbuild more like modern and legacy where efficiency and being low to the ground are king. Super efficient card draw, ramp, and removal are what made this possible. Back in the day you had to wait a few turns to try to get your commander out that was 4+ mana so your deck could come online. People werent threatening a win until turn 6-10. Now the commanders are often less than 4 mana, come out on turn 2, and give you tons of value so you snowball out by turn 3-5. The invention of cedh is proof that whats possible in the format is drastically different. Since theres no actual rules or guidelines on what is cedh versus casual, casual players have been getting wrecked by cedh trickling into their metas, motivated by trying to win the prizes at LGS events. People at my game store told me, well if you put the money down to build a cedh deck then eventually you make the money back in prizes. This mentality is stomping casual edh out of LGS play. Lastly, wotc isnt just printing for commander theyre printing for cedh too. They just believe that players should rule 0 away from the degeneracy theyre printing in casual games, but as stated, that aint happening when a prize is on the line.
There are commanders that can play aggro - Fynn the fangbearer probably being the best example. Issue with those is that the play pattern of it is "knock one player out early, then hope for a plan B" Side issue is that the more "viable" "aggro" decks such as krenko just tend to boil down to turbo combo instead of conventional aggro. Yes, it is technically burn, but it just tries to go infinite ASAP and kill the table
I have a weird apathy to 60 card mtg formats. Like im at the point that if ima play a 1v1 format, ima just learn another game like flesh and blood. 1v1 magic to me just isnt very interesting. The reason i love commander is because it is so different than any other card game available, being a lot about player politics as well as wacky deck choices. In cedh, the game is about fighting through so much interaction to claw out wins. Multiplayer makes the game so interesting. Losing that in 60 card to me loses a lot of the “magic” i think magic has
Don't disagree with the video, but one thing I like a lot about commander is that with the right group (which I realise can be a big if) a lot of the problems balance themselves out. That one person with a lot of value engines has 3 other players which also have more powerful value engines available to deal with them, and the abundance of high priority threats means you often have no choice but to let some moderate threats live or leave them for someone else to deal with, which means people actually get to play with cards that 5 years ago would never live to see their controller's upkeep. That person left alive on 10 life? Maybe they were keeping the second most powerful player in check and the person who could've attacked and killed them was worried about losing the matchup to that player. I definitely don't think commander needs to or should be powercrept as much as it is, but there are definitely some silver linings to it that can stand to make the game more interesting.
I think the actual answer to this problem is... Stop buying product. If you think the One Ring is a problem, don't buy it and don't play it. The reality is that WotC only causes these problems when it is profitable for them. So make it not profitable. Maybe even purposefully engage in formats that are not as good, like Standard, just to boost the stats and show that it is profitable to make the format better.
The problem with more cards being bombs on average is that going 1-for-1 with spot removal becomes worse, demanding sweepers to keep up -- and then, with board wipes happening more frequently, the game experience suffers from constant resets. I think the ideal solution would be less single-card bombs & engines, but barring that, I've come to value multi-target removal and stack interaction to address threats without making games last an extra hour.
I recently got into MTG. its just interesting because I tried arena but didnt like it that much because I just think Commander is a far more fun way to play the game. Clearly the community agrees.
I recently got back into Magic and got now a cheap Commander Deck to play couple of Commander Games soon. Personally, I normally played Red Decks. My Commander Deck I chose though was a Blue/White Deck - simply because most Red+Other Colour Decks ain't for Aggro as far as I understood it now. Furthermore, I will try it out but those Commander Games go on and on and on it feels. Idk if I will like it.
While I agree with a lot of the sentiments about commander's midrange value pile problem, I think a lot of the examples of cards you pose as "designed for commander but slotted into normal sets" seem to take the cards as being designed in a vacuum. Field of the Dead, for example, was printed coming off of a Ravnica block with Shocklands and Guildgates, as well as having Scapeshift in the previous core set. It was ABSOLUTELY designed to be a win condition for a Standard Lands Deck a la Valakut the Molten Pinnacle. Same with One Ring being a dead ringer for Modern Tron, Nadu being brewed as part of Hammer/Cheerios shells during spoiler season, etc. While these cards definitely balloon out of what was likely their *intended* scope, I think a lot of players make the mistake of just assuming that all legendaries are printed for commander exclusively. In reality, R&D started using legendaries as a way to allow more complex permanent designs at lower rarities in standard sets (so many old uncommons and rares were just 3-mana 3/3's with "ETB: Set Mechanic") after Dominaria's success in 2018. While I'm all for blaming commander for a lot of magic's problems, I also think it's important to acknowledge the very few problems that aren't. One of Wotc's big issues is in assuming that players just "have/will find the tools to fight new threats", and letting these sorts of cards through on the assumption that things will sort themselves out. Nadu *theoretically* dies to most of Modern's conventional removal, but they underestimated the ability to protect it at little-to-no cost with Sylvan Safekeeper and Force.
With nihilistic look at the slow burning of the format I accept things as such, looking forward to short term excitement of new cool cards. Think there are few paths the game will take: 1) More competitive and regulated formats will be played in on-line mediums like Arena, where many things can be adjusted for the health of the game (more like alchemy/hearthstone and such) 2) Most for fun games of all kinds will be played close to todays standard of commander with every table and group doing their own thing, from close to cedh, through all other levels of power and number of players to pure roleplay and custom rules and games springing from games resembling to MTG.
WotC is printing way more product than they ever historically have. Obviously when you print this much new product you will have a few cards that are problematic. It’s commander’s fault in the sense that the format caused the demand to support this level of production. But saying Nadu and the one ring are commander’s fault is supposition. Ragavan and Oko broke formats too and they don’t fit the proposed commander model. I’d argue that Nadu is a modern card from a modern set designed for modern. It’s not like the CEDH community is buzzing about the card and it hasn’t been adopted in the 99 of many decks.
Wdym? Nadu is a top 10 played cedh deck in 2024 cedh tourneys already and has the highest conversion rate in top 10 decks. It is busted in cedh as well
The other formats broke themselves. The only way to play standard or modern is at a super-tuned, high knowledge table. What used to be “kitchen table magic”’is now commander. I’m not spending $1000 and studying for months just to sit at a table at my LCS and play modern.
Designing for commander isn't just breaking other formats, it's breaking commander too
Nuh-uh.
that's the truth
part of the fun of early edh is that cards weren't made for it 😢
But i love goad, monarch and initiative..... 😢😅
Oh god @@froghermit9852
“Player created format becomes popular so company starts designing for it to profit and ruins both it and their main formats”
Many such cases
There might even be a video in the works about that
@@yty-p9k But bigger =/= more sustainable in the long run which is the concern
@@yty-p9kin the grand scheme of things commander existed for a decade before they acknowledged it but only in the last 5 years have they made it their focus and we got horrific additions to the format like smothering tithe, dockside,0 cost counters, and worst the all in one commander legendaries made to be legendaries by making sure you can't fuck up with them by giving you card advantage and a combo and a startup to the combo
The worst part about this in Magic is that they've done it multiple times. Stealing EDH AND Pauper has really changed what were the two best casual constructed formats. Granted, Pauper always had a competitive scene and I still like it, but you can't deny that the barrier to entry into that format has changed radically since WotC started watching it more actively. That's not to mention at least two occasions where a common was legal for a long time, only to be banned later for doing most of what another banned card did.
@@yty-p9kit isn't sustainable. You see the people coming into the game. You don't seem to even think about the people, like me, who have LEFT the game.
I've been playing this game off and on for 27 years. I always LOVED it. I ALWAYS had a reason to come back, whenever I left, whether it be for other games, wanting to spend money on pricey hobbies like motorcycles, or just wanting to take a break in general from the game, I ALWAYS came back.
Now, I've just moved on. I've invested heavily into Lorcana over the last six months. I've finally found some One Piece and have spend a couple hundred dollars on it in over the last month, and will continue to invest into it. I found an LGS that has tourneys for both of these games.
It used to be that I'd spend a lot of money on Modern. I'd even play Standard if I liked the design of the current cards and had some extra cash to burn. I enjoyed drafting and sealed and played them at least once a month, on average. I even got into Commander using my old jank cards that didn't have anywhere else to be used. It was enjoyable to just play with cards that sucked, but were still cool cards. Now that is gone.
My daughter left the game. Her boyfriend left the game. A lot of people have left the game. The new customers might stick around for a while. They might disappear after they grow tired of the new, current trend and their preferred IP not being focused on anymore. Players like me ALWAYS came back. Now, that isn't as likely. This is short-term profit over long-term sustainability.
Magic Arcanum talks about this in one of his videos. He calls it the "ugly sweater problem."
EDH used to be a grassroots format where unplayable jank could be played. This is like that person that wore an ugly sweater his grandma made him.
But then, just like EDH, ugly sweaters became popular. So now all the big fast fashion chains and corporations mass produce sweaters that are intentionally ugly. Everyone wears them during the holidays now. The original ugly sweater has lost it's essence.
Wizards is really jacking commander's swag
Yeah, I loved sifting through new sets for hidden gems and finding the one or two cards that sounded like cool additions to some of my decks.
Nowadays there are multiple cards that could go in any given deck every set.
Wow, that is a perfectly illustrative name for that
They pulling that thread as I walk away!
@@sethb3090it's not even so much as they could as they must if you want to feel like you have a chance against people who play those cards
I've felt this way about Simic for a long time. Seems like they give every U/G card a boring "Draw a card, Put a land onto the battlefield." effect.
Yeah, they have no clue how to design UG.
@@shorewall they used too!!!
Mutation, transform, bioscience... the vibes for those cards offer so much cool design.
@@connortodd4538they should make augment a blackborder uncommon mechanic, it has so much potential and it's leaps and bounds better then mutate which does basically the same thing but has no outside synergy except confusing rules ones that make the game worst
@feritperliare2890 that certainly is a take. Augment is literally as parasitic of a mechanic as you can get. You need two specific types of cards for it to even function. Mutate let's you do wierd things like make something not legendary or copy a huge stack of mutate cards. Definately more mechanically interesting than "staple head of cat on body of stegasaurus"
Nothing makes me roll my eyes faster.
Losing standard as the premier format really messed up power balancing for every format. Back when every card had to go through standard we rarely saw these problems, standard power level kept other formats in check. Every once in a while a card would find itself making waves or a deck would hit a critical mass of hits and become meta. Now with cards needing to be powerful enough to make waves in commander or modern it feels like power creep is the goal not something to be avoided. Constant commander decks and horizons sets have created an unsustainable level of power creep across all formats.
Yes
Greed turns everything to shit
When a default turn 2 bear is bad, the game is too powerful
TBH we saw a bit of this problem when they decided for a time that they were _only_ going to design for standard and ignore the implications for other formats, which lead to some serious broken stuff being let out in Vintage and Extended at the time. Granted those formats don't exist anymore in any official capacity, but the same concept still applies. When they hyperfocus on one format instead of looking at the overall health of the formats that they have, they end up screwing everything up.
They nearly went bankrupt twice trying to start power creep, with Urzas and Mirrodin block, but they got away with MH, and they havnt looked back since. A rapidly obsoleted meta ships cardboard. MTG will be lile YGO in another 5 years, and the idiots will lap it all up.
I would argue commanders shifting of MTG's design has been a fundamentally negative one for two reasons:
Firstly it affects all the other formats who had cards made for them, it makes them neglected IMO and i personally believe the game was healthier overall when 60 card formats were the focus.
And secondly EDH was all about playing with cards never intended to be played in the formats context, so designing for it IMO is antithetical to it's original goals.
EDH being a primary product driver means the only way to get people to buy cards is to make new cards better than old cards, so you wind up with Yugioh levels of powercreep where each new set totally warps the format, rather than just injecting a couple of new cards into a few decks.
SO TRUE!!! literally yugioh levels of powercreep relative to magic because it’s literally an eternal format!!! why are they constantly making product for an eternal format!!!!
And 60-card will *never again* be the primary focus of the *playerbase* while buying boxes remains synonymous with setting your money on fire, and singles prices remain obscene.
EDH is popular in large part because of its singleton nature.
Unless WotC wants to fundamentally retool the EV of Sealed, and take additional steps to bring Singles prices down to something like the Garfield Standard of No Cards Over 20$ *EVER* there is literally *no* hope of getting large numbers of players to commit to formats dominated by enfranchised players that don’t blink at Step .1 of New Deck Construction being, “Pay 360-400$ for a playset of One Rings.”
You can feel however you want about it, but top-flight decks will either become constructable for 400-500$ *absolute maximum* (by people with established collections to draw on), or accept that 99.98% of the people who have never played anything but EDH will never for an instant look at 60-card formats.
It’s not an option. The world we live in contains less and less people both willing and *able* to spend 2,500 to 3,000$ on a deck.
Out of that limited # of people interested in CCGs, you can then minus all those who chose something other than MtG, hoping it will be the new King of CCGs.
The current price points to seriously engage with nearly all 60-card formats is just out of reach of many of the people who’d otherwise be game to dive in.
I just built pretty much an optimal Lathiel list for 570$, w/ a little help from EBay letting me score *a* Teferi’s Protection for 23$, *an* Archangel of Thune for 25$, etc.
That deck is doing great among the 8s/8.5s at the LGS on Friday.
Beyond even cost. You’re facing a near-insurmountable culture barrier, to try and get players habituated to Commander’s Play What You Want design-space to sign on for, “Oh, did we mention our Format has 3-5 decks you can play at any one point, and trying to play anything that is not a workable variant of the 3-5 is synonymous with getting your cheeks clapped?”
Just another example is the sticker goblin in legacy, the only reason any of those cards were black boarder was for commander, and they somewhat warped legacy in a way that didn't feel competitive
Commander has become like that one 4-panel comic where the people are wearing pineapples on their heads, having a good time, til the brand shows up with pineapples on their heads and everyone abandons the pineapples.
is that loss
Except people are adopting the pineapples even more.
I started playing EDH because it was slower. Magic the Gathering, in my opinion, should be a relatively slow game. The once-per-turn land drops, resource system, summoning sickness, etc all scream that Magic shouldn't be a fast game. However, all of the highest power decks and high value engines find ways around the mana system. If I wanted to win on turn 2, I'd play Yu-Gi-Oh.
Free spells in MTG to me are actually insane. Like, isn't that what the mana system was supposed to design against? Everything costs resources, so you have to ration everything in a strategic way.
Maybe the moxen were a way to "get around" that early in the game's history, but those things don't impact the game all that much when the other cards were... Well not great a lot of the time. 6 mana for a vanilla 4/4 was not uncommon, so getting an extra pip was a decent advantage, but not a game-alterijf effect. Now, you play a sol ring for a 4-drop on turn 2 and the game is basically over because every 4 drop now is a 4/4 with 10 lines of text
Y’all are crazy, the first few years had the most nuts cards. Have you ever seen what alpha magic looks like? It’s just black lotus time twisters extra turns.
@@Tspang42 Those cards are nuts now, but the ceiling back then was a lot lower. Lots of vanilla creatures, you weren't getting a 4/4 with 20 lines of text for 3 mana back in Alpha.
@@Tspang42 I am aware of the power 9, but they would be seen as design missteps if they were released even now. However, they made more sense before magic got its footing and when a 6/6 flyer cost 8 mana.
As a commander only player, honestly, I'd prefer the returned to developing for other formats first. Finding cards from way back that work well with a commander is a lot more interesting than situations like the assassin's Creed set's give all creature type a boost. And it makes games more varied and fun if it's not a card that just does everything for you in the command zone
1000%. That was the fun of commander was brewing a deck, and using your favorite unplayable pet cards. With WOTC designing for Commander, it's like HERE! Staples in every color Combo, but especially UG! I don't feel like I'm brewing, more like assembling IKEA furniture.
One of my favorite blocks of all time is Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, and that one introduced tribal as an official keyword. But it was designed as a 'normal' block first with standard as it's default.
That being said though, the 40K and Fallout commander precons are what dragged me back into the game after over 15 years out of it.
“If you did combo off turn one, would it be any fun?” Litteraly Yugioh
YuGiOh decks can run 0-mana Farewell and 12 copies of Force to actually interact with it.
@@engiopdf8745 you mean 18-21 copies of force, snake eye exists
@@ScallopGamingHalf decks is force, half deck is combo. Is there even any other way to play card games?
@@tempestandacomputer695143 Feral Imps
@@tempestandacomputer6951 Of course. The other way is to vomit out a board full of stax pieces turn one and watch the opponent cry.
Fossil Dyna my beloved ❤
I’ve been saying this sort of thing about aggro for a while now, in my own playgroup and others like at local game stores people tend to shy away from attacking early into people who don’t have a board yet because they’re setting up, because they’re afraid it’s too “mean” and it starts to pull heat onto your head because you’re the first person to start getting aggressive. Consequently, direct life loss effects and aristocrat strategies and combos have become very very powerful and often win games because of that.
Attacking might be its own video tbh because I see this happen so often
You're on the serious grind out here, good videos this often is nutty
Thanks! A lot of late night to stay on schedule
That's definitely Mark Rosewater using a voice changer
Uh oh… how do I delete a comment
@@thetrinketmage Play Commentatog and use its ability to sacrifice a comment on your RUclips channel.
@@laurentrobitaille2204 you have to control the comment to sacrifice it. Unfortunately, RUclips comment is not a mode on pick your poison
This reminds me of a video Distraction Makers made about pretty much the same topic, regarding of how EDH breaks the rock-paper-scissors relationship between strategies in Magic, but slightly more in the abstract since this is something that can be applies to a lot of games.
In games like Magic, or a lot of strategy games for that matter, you often have this circle between playing offensive, defensive, and economically. Offensive beats economic strategies due to lack of defense, economic strategies beat defensive strategies due to accumulated value, and defensive beats aggressive due to being able to hold off the attacker.
But since EDH inherently nerfs aggressive strategies, they can be pretty much discounted. This means we only have defensive and economic strategies left. And economic strategies win out against defense. And this is pretty much why a lot of commander, especially nowadays, breaks down to just building an engine to generate value and then win through some combo or big spell
I liked at 17:28 when you explained how removal and protection are more important than ever nowadays; for taking out their powerful value engines or protecting your own so you can go over the top. I think lots of people may not realize that someone's large graveyard or Smothering Tithe may need to be dealt with ASAP over a scary looking 7/7 trampler.
You probably wouldn't build a deck without any targeted creature removal. But lots of people skip on graveyard exile when it's such a common threat!
I feel like WotC are painting themselves into a corner business wise. EDH got popular as everyone's side format. Got spare time during a draft or after an event? Shuffle up and play some commander. Trying to funnel people into commander as their starting point is putting the cart before the horse as far as I'm concerned. WotC designing for the format is just compounding the issues, breaking people's first formats, and given the sheer volume of producing coming out these days they're making more design mistakes because of the tempo. The old commander precons were pretty fine because they were once a year, a little nod to the side format and tossing some new and silly things into the mix. But now that everything is commander it's lost what made it what it was.
WotC's shifting of focus away from Standard is leading them to take formats that had previously been very stable like modern and forcing rotation into them with power creep in order to keep the revenue going, and I don't see a way out for them because they gotta keep the line going up.
I think Commander is a terrible format for beginners. Singleton, 100 card decks which are hard to shuffle, advertising your deck with a commander, multiplayer which raises the complexity, and eternal format which means all the busted cards of all time.
60 card, one on one, kitchen table magic with a knowledgeable friend is the best on-boarding anyone can get.
@@shorewall Commander is a wonderful format for a group that is growing their collection and isn't priced out of buying packs. Like the whole point of the format to begin with is to throw the filler jank that we inevitably got chasing the things we were really after into a deck and to smash those jank decks together. No needing 4 copies of like 5-7 sets of $50-$100 cards to be competitive, and since there's 4 people it's not as cutthroat as a 1v1 format. It's not great to learn the basics but once you have that, it's a great format to just jank around in.
And then people inevitably got competitive with it, while WotC noticed that it became the most popular format. So the decks became more optimized to win while WotC printed cards people would want in their decks.
@@shorewallI LOVE this topic. You're right and wrong.
Commander is an absolute migraine of a format for new players to play in. All cards ever printed with INSANE interactions is a certifiably psychotic way to introduce players to your game. New players should not have to figure out how Urborg and Blood Moon work together.
However, Commander is a great way to teach new players the game because it is low pressure and social. You're talking with friends and since most of the people at the table are gonna lose, losing doesn't feel so bad.
commander is a weird format: agree. commander broke magic design: agree.
Commander is sometimes the only format people can even consider playing MTG. Pauper is not for the poor people despite the name, since some decks gravely excees the entry point.
Amazed how you can continuously pump out amazing high quality videos.
There is a mechanic you ommitted, commander damage! To me Fast Voltron commanders are closest to aggro the format has, you need to fight the Voltron decks if they choose you as the target which for me is a similar dynamic in aggro matchups in 60 card formats. Great video tho!
you can work in voltron into a slicer deck, now you have forced combat every turn, a beefed up commander with way too many swords, plus if you choose the right equipment, combat only benefits you
@@doctorwatermelon99 I meant voltron as an aggro archetype in commander. Its really the only one that scales
I love my Sigarda, host of the herons deck. People start paying attention when you one-shot them ;)
One of my main decks is exactly this! When I roll up with an 8 drop Paladia Mors Classic and describe myself as a commander forcused stompy deck, people wonder what I'm trying to hide. Until they get eaten by Doubled damage, Doublestrike 7/7 Flying Trample Commander for 28 commander damage. On turn 7. (having board wiped on turn 5 with an empty field)
It got even better when Paladia Mors, Ruiner came out.
This tbh. People often seem to think commander damage only exists to keep lifegain decks in check... but combo can do that too. Commander damage uniquely enables aggressive voltron decks. I love the sudden dread on people's faces when on turn 3 I swing at them with a 9/3 Wyll, Blade of Frontiers equipped with Strength-Testing Hammer.
This is a conclusion I cam to about 3 years ago, and since then I have stopped purchasing magic products and have swapped to playing proxy competitive formats (CAD lander, CEDH Modern etc.). I'm not good at it yet, but I'm having more fun
Proxies aren't a crime, they are an OBLIGATION! :D
I play Netrunner now. The warping of Modern and Legacy sucked all the excitement I had for Magic.
Maybe one day things will be good. Until then, I have to figure out if I should sell my Underground Seas.
It feels like the only format that doesn't get screwed over by this focus on Commander is Pauper, mostly because commons are designed for 1v1 drafts and aren't really powercrept in the same way.
The way I always put it is whenever a new Modern Horizons comes out it completely warps modern and legacy and commander, whenever a new Modern Horizons comes out some Pauper decks get a few new cards
This is a great point. Pauper might be the best format right now. WotC has basically no way to milk the format. It can only make sets kind of exciting.
I kind of want to try Pauper now.
Pauper is freaking great, and the fact that it is one of, if not the only official format that does not have products or cards specifically designed for it is certainly worth noting
I thought they banned a bunch of Initiative cards?
And exactly why I switched over to Pauper as a 60-card competitive player. Every other format is getting turbo-fucked by WOTC.
And pauper is 100% willing to ban out anything that's too problematic.
Nicely summarized. I’ve recently started playing a lot of 3-for-1 edict effects like Soul Shatter, Sheoldred’s Edict, and Vona’s Hunger for some of the reasons you outlined. Not always as effective as spot removal but it’s been a nice addition
I think that if you want to play aggro in EDH, you play voltron. But it is kinda silly that the best way to play aggro is focus on a strategy that reduces the total life to 63.
I kinda feel like the life totals need to come down. Does anyone really need 40 life?
@@shorewall 40 life was useful to give time to people to play slow and grindy decks
I guess
@@shorewallthat's why I kinda like the Brawl format with less life.
On Arena, I have a pretty high tier, super aggro deck with Reyav, Master Smith as a commander that wouldn't be remotely viable in EDH
I play two aggro decks in edh... It's karumonix toxic/infect with loads of proliferate. (Reduces to 30 life) Or Mowu +1/+1 deck which is actually my "play nice" battlecruiser deck and it can easily one tap the table with 3 creatures trampling
@@marcoottina654 Yeah, it was MEANT to make aggro worse. This is not an accident. "But it makes aggro bad!" is not a problem to be fixed, it's a deliberate upside meant for people who don't think their games against high-speed aggro decks are fun.
This was kind of the thoughts I had when building and writing a primer for my Lotho deck. Super consistent, super reliable and resilient, super value focused. Slips under the radar most of the time even when the table has played against it multiple times.
I always love the irony that EDH is not an official format yet WOTC wants it to be so badly considering the amount of stuff they design for it.
Commander players should actually start ignoring the "Commander" keyword on cards because "WoTC's 'Commander' can't be the same thing as our custom-rules commander".
A big problem with aggro is the “social contract” of EDH, where you’re playing with friends or strangers who are all meant to enjoy the game for as long as possible. Aggro works in commander but you don’t get a lot of brownie points at the table for focusing down the one player who can’t stop your early game until they’re eliminated and then moving on to the next target. One person just sits out 80% of the game.
They have time to modify their deck so they have some early defense.
For me and my favorite playgroup, we've pretty much avoided a lot of this by putting a good power cap on our decks and rarely updating them. Plus, for the most part, all of our commanders are around the #500 or lower mark on EDHRec.
THIS! I always check the ranking in EDHRec before making a deck, and I love to play unusual commanders and unusual archetypes. I don't check the cards for them tho, mostly because I already have a "build" in mind and I take pride in brewing my own decks using only Scryfall
I like your observation on Burn being a combo deck. I've jokingly called it "Stormless Storm" for years.
To be fair it’s something burn players said to me, not my own idea!
I only started a year ago to play magic so I have no idea how it used to be. But even I can see a decline in game designe. Thanks for the video m8
The power creep of cards today is absolutely necessary, in that Wizards needs it so we all keep buying lots of new cards. Power creep is the natural way to go for Wizards when the most popular formats are eternal (don’t rotate).
Many EDH players dont even want an "interactive" game, they just want to play their goldfish game with 4 players, as they barely understand their own deck, and just see what happens.
The moment it does get more competitive, the bridge to actual cEDH is slim, as you need to have at least some form of "metagame" to properly prepare your deck against your opponents.
The format with its legal banned list is not balanced at all, its basically not functional, people just decide what they want to play against and what not.
Some people get frustrated with just 1 mass removal and would rather scoop and start a new game instead ... so whats the point ?
Highly interactive games are pure card-advantage battles, whoever gets to stick their engine or pulls a combo out wins.
Then there are the no-tutor people, if they just randomly get their combo they win out of nowhere, or they do nothing and just die.
Its a format of extremes.
I think this is a large part of why I like Pauper, so few commander designed cards have the possibility of existing in it. It's not perfect, we still have our format warp around monarch, initiative, Basilisk gate, etc. but for the most part it's old school 60 card constructed
Great video as always, I agree with most if not all of your points.
I think Oko was designed to be a walker powerful enough for commander, which obviously made him problematic in 60 card. Walkers famously get attacked and die in commander and I think Oko really has enough loyalty to survive some tables.
I thought about mentioning Oko in this vid but I was worried it was too speculative
@@thetrinketmage Yeah, of course I don't know shit. I just know that Korvold, Chulane, Alela, Gwynn are goated commanders and already are mainstays in the format. It seems like the set design of Throne was exactly what commander design looks like
@@Jundsac the only thing I've ever heard about oko is that it was just supposed to be a support piece for food decks, and they didn't playtest it right. The card doesn't really scream commander.
@@danielsniff6405 I think it has for-commander mechanics on it at least to a small degree. It steals creatures and erases abilities, which are the two best ways to remove commanders
edit: For the record I think all good cards in all sets are designed for commander. I just don't know when that policy started
I have a friend who built a Valduk, Keeper of the Flame aggro EDH deck that he eventually took apart because he was consistently winning the early game.
Yeah, this comment is exactly what I described in the comment I just made, too. If an aggro deck wins, they're the only ones that got to play... Because that's what they're designed to do.
I took apart my Muxis aggro deck. I could consistently get muxis out, turn 2 or 3 and the game was pretty much over. Made for boring games.
If a control deck wins, then they're the only ones that got to play, bevause they're designed to do that
@@Sweetguy1821clearly you were not letting everyone else play similar powered decks. That is what you found boring. If you played against other decks that went for a win on turn 3 you might find it a bit more fun.
I also have an aggro deck that can consistently kill one player around turn 3 or 4. But I don't play it often because once i kill one person, it will get bored wiped or disrupted by the other 2. and that one person i killed now has to sit and watch for way too long, and i just feel bad. I think that's why mid-range is the most common type, because it lets everyone play, and its more fun that way. I usually build my decks in a way that if i kill one person i should be able to kill the rest soon after. I also avoid long combo value decks because i spend too much time on my turn, which does not feel fun to play against.
I wanted to bring up a separate point as well for why I am also getting a bit fatigued. I started off with constructed formats and returned to the game after 3 years to commander. Commander was really interesting when I first started as there were seemingly infinite possibilities but for me now it has become extreme work to develop and design a new EDH deck it takes a lot to find the right pieces, balance well and then I realize I’ve designed the same thing as a previous deck but slightly different. I recently found myself coming up with ideas to design decks for constructed formats. I might be alone in this view but I find jank easier and more fun to build in 60 card and I have far more options on how I build a deck only having to think about a specific one game plan and how one opponent could react. I am not sure, I could be coming at EDH view wrong but that’s kind of just my feelings on it. (Been playing EDH for 4-5ish years so I might have also become beyond product fatigued and just want something different as a play experience.)
Thanks dunkey - commander is probably the cheapest and most friendly format (note that i didnt say easiest to learn, but i dont feel that matters) for people to get into magic with. You can play with your friends and have a strong cohesive deck for 15-20 dollars while other formats go into the triples/quadruples in price. Itd make sense for wotc as a business to rake in as much money as possible in this area that the secondary market dominates. A video about the economies of magic would be interesting!
Alexios & Slicer owe their existence to Tangrath, the gruul Minotaur. Respect the OG who started rotating around to deal out quadruple fistings every rotation.
You know that’s my bad I forgot about Tangrath!
@thetrinketmage it's cool; he was the first thing I spun off into his own bit from Ghired and now he's the ace of Baeloth w/ Raised by Giants. He's gotten more swole than the elf himself some matches, not that that stopped him from swinging.
@@thetrinketmage Karona and Assault Suit say hi! But yeah, they often get dealt with by contrast.
Xancha Sleeper Agent and Kharn the Betrayed do this kind of thing too!
Edh isn't meant to be scaled for as a format.
“money tho”
-Hasbro
Need to think about that one. Curious what Trinket says about this comment (if anything).
I think he is right. Scaling up the power of the edh format is not what edh was designed for
Agreed, I feel like it would just make people want to build another new commander in the end
@@chumbogrosso5133 For real, I say a reverse Modern type of Commander, where only sets before a certain cutoff are legal. I tend to see Magic Origins as a shift in MTG Design.
I think the added emphasis on story led to them overpowering story relevant cards and characters, and then now we have power creep for sales in general.
I've personally stepped away from actively playing for a while now, but what has worked well for me as an "aggro" deck in commander is Commissar Severina Raine. I've built her to go wide very quickly, and can easily start taking out huge chunks of life from everyone by turn 5/6.
Turn 5 is when we should start a new game 😂
Doing "huge chunks" by turn five or six isn't an aggro deck. In other formats, aggro decks consistently kill on turn four.
ive personally only built phyrexian tribal decks for the past year using cards tied to phyrexian lore and its been a blast. none of them go infinite, but they all have access to Realmbreaker the Invasion Tree. as a result my Ovika deck for example can for 10 generic mana fetch every jin gytaxias and urabrask out of my deck onto the battlefield. a lot of people get upset by that but i always remind them its one of my win conditions in the deck. instead of going infinite with say exquisite blood + sanguine bond, or any number of kiki jikki combos, i have left you with an outable board state, that is heavily taxing on your hand and creatures. at least there is a chance to recover from it.
I've seriously considered rebuilding a grindy Esper deck for EDH purely to get people in my group to play interaction. Everyone just wants to sit in their corner and build up stuff and feels averse to actually winning the game.
I really do think commders that use goad neeeeed to be printed more because quite frankly needed reasons to engage with your opponent is a really good thing for casual a lot of the time as a joke I say my green aggro deck commander has goad when he doesn't
Plus its a way to play control that doesn't (usually) end up with the entire table being super butthurt.
People would kill it an make your goad deck do nothing...
One of my favorite creatures is Angler Turtle which forces combat
Power creep will always happen, but it’s happening at a record rate when they have to print new staples for commander every time a new set comes out.
I would make the argument that aggro does show up in commander but only in its most scalable forms and takes more time. Elfball is pretty potent in commander, voltron is basically just Bogles, and I have built a few white weenies decks with good results in my pods.
Aggro outside of commander will forego things like card advantage because the goal is to have you dead before that matters. In EDH, you need card advantage because it takes more resources to win. This naturally shifts the focus away from aggro and favors combo because you can accomplish a win with less spent resources.
My tips for building an aggro deck:
Keep ramp under 2 mana at all times
Play pieces that generate a ton of value that serve multiple purposes
Ensure you play scalable threats. +1+1 counters are heavily favored.
Turns out Nadu was not intencional 💀
This video makes me more proud of my playgroup’s deck lineup. We have Delina, Wild Mage aggro; Skrelv, Defector Mite aggro; Rakdos, the Showstopper steal your opponents creatures and sac them; Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder + Akroma, Vision of Ixidor thicc creature town; and Gut, True Soul Zealot + Agent of the Iron Throne which is pretty self explanatory.
Im glad you brought up Slicer.
As someone that loves aggro, Ive ran into similar issues trying to make it work in edh and felt like slicer was the only way to really feel like Im playing aggro.
Unfortunately, edh players really seem to dislike playing against him, which makes me sad :(
Any other aggro deck Ive tried just runs out of steam and gets focussed down by 3 players because Im playing offensive cards before turn3. And I either have to just pick 1 player and take them out before they could play a single card and then die, leaving us to watch a 1h 1v1 game, or die by the time I managed to get the table down to 25~ life. Would hobestly love ot if aggro was actually playable in edh, but idk what thatd actually look like (besides exactly the two examples youve given)
Oh I'd love playing against Slicer. Sac it in Wilhelt or Teysa, blink it to make all the equipments fall off in Aminatou, furthering my own gameplan in N'ghathrod with Maskwood Nexus (making you my main target because I want to keep the person I'm stealing from the most alive)... if your deck can't exploit getting slicer, what are you even playing?
This is why i usually like playing slower decks that combo win on turn 6 ish if uninterrupted, but also have a backup plan if something goes south. Blue white blink my beloved 💛
Smothering Tithe was originally printed in a commander esque type product called brawl decks it was basically Wizard's spin on Commander Commander that to my knowledge never caught on in popularity.
Havoc festival my favorite card to slap on a table saying pass and having people say "half my life? That cards bs."
11:10 not sure if you find this information relevant, but i am someone that will pause the video and read whatever text has been presented to me. Your extra effort to provide context does not go unnoticed 🤘🍻
Oh it’s a Reddit meme lol. Appreciate it though!!
@@thetrinketmage I can see that
and I do share it
Seeing the same play patterns over and over, every single game feels worse than it is in the old days of 60-cards format, because the availability of 4-copies is a double-edged sword (i.e, drawing too many copies of the same stuff could choke you) that kinda counterbalance the absence of a reliable, always ready card, that is the Commander.
Tutors, drawing 3-4 cards a turn *bare minimum*, playing 2345676 lands a turn, etc really do kill the "diversity" of the gameplay.
I always got the impression the rock paper scissors was kind of that in reverse. Aggro kills the combo player before they can get the combo pieces, combo obliterates the control's accumulated value in one fell sudden swoop and control has the tools to fend off aggro assault until it runs out of steam.
Though aggro can beat combo in that way you gotta remember that 60 card formats have sideboards. Post board combo can just play life gain effects and stave off aggro so well it’s really hard for them to win. Also if your combo deck can’t out pace an aggro pile with no disruption it’s likely too slow to be viable
I played aggro during RTR Standard and this feels correct to me. It didn't matter how fast I went becausr Supreme Verdict would 6-for1 me and then they'd Sphinx's Rev back all the life they lost.
I’ve been binging your content the past week. This was such a pleasant surprise to see in my subs today!!! Keep up the amazing work, I recommend your channel to everyone I play with.
Thank you very much! Im glad you are liking the content
I don't think Nadu was intentional. It's play pattern is terrible, even wizards can see that (even if they couldn't at the time). The design team expressed some regret making it. It's the same situation as Oko, it wasn't playtested right. It just slipped through the cracks.
They're fucking morons. Oko, Saheeli/cat combo, that pirate that combo'd with itself. They keep screwing up, and then don't act to fix it.
I think that pro players getting contracted on the design team to either play test or just give once-overs would be so good for the development of the game. Design teams for games often do not understand the highest levels of play.
Stax is love. Stax is life.
😂 I doubt many people love this opinion. Haha. No hate here, though! 🙂♥
If you aren't running a stax/annihilator deck then I don't want to play.
@@Saphire_Throated_Carpenter_Ant #facts
Stax players are just lonely people who want everyone to stick around longer, so it seems like they have friends. Stax players are usually garbage too and hand the win to someone else more than half the time and that’s backed up with stats in our own playgroup and more. My Yuriko and Shorikai deck spit on “Stax decks”
@@v2blackcat See, that's funny cuz my playgroup wouldn't ever talk like that about people. Not just cuz they're inclusive, but because they're actually nice people. Lol
While aggro is hard to make work in general in Commander but it is definitely possible. Fynn is a great example. Reducing your opponents' combined life total from 120 to effectively 15 (or even less with proliferate) allows you to play the standard aggro mini-game of kill them before you get out-valued. I avoided putting any infect+pump shenanigans in my Fynn deck to reduce friction with random groups but he does feel a little mean.
my favorite type of deck is hybrid "midrange" decks which can be played as either tempo, combo or generate value and go toe to toe with control for a while.
Out of all the many of you tubers who do magic you are the only one who has a brain. I wish I could meet you in real life because you sound like a person I can have conversations with for hours.
Appreciate the kind words. I’m going to try and go to some Magic cons and maybe one day we can get a game in! Otherwise I do have a patreon discord if you want to say hi. I’m there often answering questions and giving deck advice
It's funny you mention Dockside 2 Electric Boogaloo, because we can Demonstrate Dockside now lol
My personal favorite deck that I've made that's GOOD (also I suck at going at 60 cards so I usually just make 80 card decks so I often just make a lower power Commander deck) is a hapatra deck that I call Poisonous Food which has nothing to do with poison counters but is a -1/-1 counter and food deck that's honestly pretty fun
Anywhere there is fun to be had, a salesman sees an opportunity to make money instead.
Regarding the erosion of 60 card decks, I stopped playing Modern when they kept banning archetypes. It was such a financial investment and to see a pro top-8 was a death sentence.
I feel that… almost bought KCI until it won a big event
Great thoughts, one of your best edh videos. Lots to chew on
Thanks I also think this is one of my best written videos
I don't know. Personally for me without Commander my friends wouldn't have gotten into magic. Being able to play with 3 other friends really adds to the fun of the format for me, which is why I love Commander. I definitely get and agree that Standard and Modern have some glaring issues as a result of this, but I personally don't find standard quite as fun of a format. Being able to play janky decks, wild synergies, politics, and whatnot really makes Magic shine for me. Another big thing that gets overlooked at least for casual commander is that every game you play plays wildly differently. With Highlander and 4 players every game always turns out vastly differently, compared to modern or standard where you put 4 cards of each type into your deck to make it as consistent as possible. There still is some variance but nothing like casual commander. That variety really draws me into the format and I think its the reason commander is seen as much more new player friendly. I also realize I'm more of an anomaly compared to most magic players where I have a stable group with a relatively set power level of deck, and one who doesn't really the play the format outside of physical games.
Power creep will always be an issue, and it will most definitely become an issue for commander in the future unless some changes are made to help combat the creep in both Modern, standard, and commander.
I think it was LSv that said that all Limited decks are midrange decks; because you usually can’t draft enough truly aggro cards and also sometimes you’re going to need that ability to top deck well. Commander is just like this but due to life totals. It’s safe early game to invest in later turns because people can’t win through combat in turns 1-5. Combo is so streamlined that you can win which combined with the slower combat decks further incentivises aggro stax that races to close the ability to win t1-3 opening up to a midrange game in turns 3-6. Aggro still exists but it also has to have the ability to grind.
What can’t be built is the Mono U tempo style decks because outside of cyclonic rift you just can’t punish card advantage via tempo.
You make a lot of awesome points and follow interesting development over time!
"Playing more board wipes" is definitely the vogue advice, but I have been bucking that and only putting in 1-2 wipes, even taking them out of decks. I put in more protection for my board, since others do like to play board wipes.
In my experience, most board wipes primary effect is making the game take FOREVER. Only sometimes do they change the outcome. I would much rather play 2 games 45 minutes each than one game that's almost 2 hours because nobody can win.
The effect? not only have I had more fun just watching some commanders pop off, moving on to game 2, but I am actually winning more and more games by focusing on defeating my opponents by pushing through damage, overwhelming value, and protecting my board, rather than stopping them from winning.
I play commander primarily to see some crazy effects, socialize with other MTG-minded folks, and if I win, that's a nice prize. So I am sure that informs my take on this a lot!
I think that's a really good point. Commander is really not based around winning, and it is that arms race, power creep that is most in danger of ruining the Commander Experience. But I think adding board wipes is generically good advice, especially if you are losing too much. If you are good without, then that's even better.
If you have a consistent group, limiting deck cost is usually a good way to help. No one I play with buys $20 cards, if they have them they got them from a pack. This means new players can still do well with precons and the rest of us can play well without dumping over $100 into a single deck
I personally love edh. I dabble with other formats (pauper, modern, and vintage online) but I mostly stick with commander. Magics format system is something unique to it and why I love the game. There's no different way to play yu-gi-oh or the pokemon tcg. Depending on how I'm feeling, I can play different formats with different cards and lists and bans. But wizards edh design issue has caused a lot of formats to bleed together, and the ones that don't just end up falling out of paper, like standard and pioneer
Hidetsugu is the best mono red aggro deck in casual imo
I really love Hidetsugu
omg he literally is the 18dmg lightning bolt just on a stick :o
@@tertmemelur1880 it just needs to gain Lifelink :D
@@tertmemelur1880 lifelink or double damage at odd health is great with him
@@tertmemelur1880 Looking at damage per mana ratio, assuming nobody's life total has changed before activating his ability, 60 damage for 5 mana equals five 12 damage lightning bolts. Of course, he also damages yourself... but that's nothing a Basilisk Collar or Loxodon Warhammer can't fix.
It's true that in casual everyone is playing simply good value piles, I made a Gargos deck where the focus isn't on hidras but on targetting my creatures to fight against the enemy creatures and it destroys casual decks, it wasn't fun to deny everyone else to play so I stopped playing it, but relaying so much on good value creatures is something that people should look as not a good thing
I was thinking of making my Gargos deck like this. My other idea was Maskwood Nexus and then just standard big boys. But then I figured I'd do the hydra tribal and it's a ton of fun to get the big guys out. They usually don't make it around a turn cycle because everyone has a secret path to exile in their hand every time.
I have an Adeline deck that I really like because I built her as a true aggro deck. It scales really fast and she can kill a player by herself. Of course I had to tweak it a bit to be able to rebuild and draw cards but it's a fair anthems/tokens deck.
I really think that Wizards is bursting all they have and will kill the fun of the format as they will make everything so flexible and consistent
6:30 You say here that Blue farm is the fastest and the most grindy deck, but that's just miles away from being true: any turbo AN deck is way faster, and the turbo combo hand in blue farm is gonna be 1 in 40 games. That said, you then go on into a little bit more detail about CEDH meta (stax, combo, control) so I'm willing to bet it was just a slip worth of clarification for anyone outside Cedh. Neat video!
It’s more like my script is poorly worded. I mean to say it’s possible for blue farm to win on turn 1 but also it’s very grindy. Even though on average it’s slower than RogSai.
I have a tormod/thras deck as well! One card, though, that I absolutely adore is titan's nest. It's a way to make a shit ton of zombies as it exiles cards one at a time for free
I might need to try that in my list
I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one who thinks Alexios is good for the game. He's scary, don't get me wrong, but as an Infect & Sliver enjoyer, I think people need to be reminded they have opponents and this isn't a game of solitaire. People sending all the trample damage at the blocker and not getting in at their opponents are either cowards, or think they can beat you without someone else's commander chipping in...
regarding not finishing off low health players, my favorite games are the ones where the the game has a winner within two turn rotations after the first player loses. i've seen too many games where a player loses out ten or fifteen turns before a winner is declared and they just gotta sit there and i hate seeing that. one of my most memorable games recently was when a Karlach player killed two players in one turn, played Final Fortune, and then was hit with a Swords to Plowshares at the beginning of combat. epic all around and with no downtime for the rest of the pod.
I run two board while some people run four, I run a elf ramp deck, I love it it’s crazy how the cards have become overall, I played since innistrad and avacyn
Standard & 60 card formats are very much the easiest way to get a new player to understand the ins and outs of magic.
Went to a vintage proxy tournament and had to show veteran players how to sideboard and it was embarrassing. Players of 4+ years that only play cedh / EDH
I think "not hitting someone in a bad position" is also good sportsmanship, if you're playing with friends, eliminating someone early can be unfun while they wait 30 minutes for the game to end.
to this purpose I think rule 0-ing some sort of instant death/points mechanic that triggers when someone is eliminated might be interesting (maybe every player gets an emblem with forced cumulative upkeep 2 life per eliminated player?)
I think I definitely agree, I'm just now coming back to commander after like 10 years of not playing anywhere other than the comfort of my house. All my decks are old, I'm fuzzy on the rules... And coming back commander feels like a different game and sure it's still fun, but maybe it's the nostalgia, maybe it's power creep, but I miss the way it used to feel, playing my janky old decks. Or maybe I miss my God awful Niv-Mizzet the Firemind EDH deck was that I built when I was 12. It was my first EDH deck, it barely functioned, but I loved it, I hate that I deconstructed it
The best deck ive ever played against in casual edh is a karlach deck
Imagine if power creep makes it to power and toughness and decades from now magic creatures have attack and defense values that look like yugioh monsters
I liked scouring sets for occasional cards to add to my commander piles. Nowadays you just go online and find that they've printed three new EDH staples this set.
As far as my own decks though, one of my favorites is Grand Warlord Radha. Ramp powered by aggro is great.
10:35 In a recent article titled "ON BANNING NADU, WINGED WISDOM IN MODERN" Wizards confirmed that Nadu was a design mistake in the first line, plain as day. I expect this design mistake carries over to other formats, because the original version seems much more toned down but still powerful. The FIRE philosophy and time crunch are what made this card what it is.
Nice video!☺️ I think jeska’s will is also one of them crazy commanders cards too! It can just go in any deck and never go wrong! Costs a few mana and you get back mana for the highest hand count, which is usually like minimum 7 red man in commander🤦🏼♂️😂 worst case, it’s a card that can give you like 90 red mana lol
I think the value engine era we are in has stifled creativity in deck building. It encourages the format to deckbuild more like modern and legacy where efficiency and being low to the ground are king. Super efficient card draw, ramp, and removal are what made this possible.
Back in the day you had to wait a few turns to try to get your commander out that was 4+ mana so your deck could come online. People werent threatening a win until turn 6-10. Now the commanders are often less than 4 mana, come out on turn 2, and give you tons of value so you snowball out by turn 3-5.
The invention of cedh is proof that whats possible in the format is drastically different. Since theres no actual rules or guidelines on what is cedh versus casual, casual players have been getting wrecked by cedh trickling into their metas, motivated by trying to win the prizes at LGS events. People at my game store told me, well if you put the money down to build a cedh deck then eventually you make the money back in prizes. This mentality is stomping casual edh out of LGS play.
Lastly, wotc isnt just printing for commander theyre printing for cedh too. They just believe that players should rule 0 away from the degeneracy theyre printing in casual games, but as stated, that aint happening when a prize is on the line.
I pity people who are stuck to such terrible places that give out prizes for winning.
There are commanders that can play aggro - Fynn the fangbearer probably being the best example. Issue with those is that the play pattern of it is "knock one player out early, then hope for a plan B"
Side issue is that the more "viable" "aggro" decks such as krenko just tend to boil down to turbo combo instead of conventional aggro. Yes, it is technically burn, but it just tries to go infinite ASAP and kill the table
I have a weird apathy to 60 card mtg formats. Like im at the point that if ima play a 1v1 format, ima just learn another game like flesh and blood. 1v1 magic to me just isnt very interesting. The reason i love commander is because it is so different than any other card game available, being a lot about player politics as well as wacky deck choices. In cedh, the game is about fighting through so much interaction to claw out wins. Multiplayer makes the game so interesting. Losing that in 60 card to me loses a lot of the “magic” i think magic has
a nice casual aggro deck for edh is red terror, one of my favorite lower powered decks I own
Don't disagree with the video, but one thing I like a lot about commander is that with the right group (which I realise can be a big if) a lot of the problems balance themselves out. That one person with a lot of value engines has 3 other players which also have more powerful value engines available to deal with them, and the abundance of high priority threats means you often have no choice but to let some moderate threats live or leave them for someone else to deal with, which means people actually get to play with cards that 5 years ago would never live to see their controller's upkeep. That person left alive on 10 life? Maybe they were keeping the second most powerful player in check and the person who could've attacked and killed them was worried about losing the matchup to that player.
I definitely don't think commander needs to or should be powercrept as much as it is, but there are definitely some silver linings to it that can stand to make the game more interesting.
I think the actual answer to this problem is... Stop buying product. If you think the One Ring is a problem, don't buy it and don't play it. The reality is that WotC only causes these problems when it is profitable for them. So make it not profitable. Maybe even purposefully engage in formats that are not as good, like Standard, just to boost the stats and show that it is profitable to make the format better.
The problem with more cards being bombs on average is that going 1-for-1 with spot removal becomes worse, demanding sweepers to keep up -- and then, with board wipes happening more frequently, the game experience suffers from constant resets.
I think the ideal solution would be less single-card bombs & engines, but barring that, I've come to value multi-target removal and stack interaction to address threats without making games last an extra hour.
Royal Assassin used to be a staple to keep players from swinging in or activating tap abilities carelessly. Nowadays it works even better with goad!
I recently got into MTG. its just interesting because I tried arena but didnt like it that much because I just think Commander is a far more fun way to play the game. Clearly the community agrees.
Other formats have been on the decline for a while though I am hopeful with the new changes to standard coming
I recently got back into Magic and got now a cheap Commander Deck to play couple of Commander Games soon.
Personally, I normally played Red Decks. My Commander Deck I chose though was a Blue/White Deck - simply because most Red+Other Colour Decks ain't for Aggro as far as I understood it now. Furthermore, I will try it out but those Commander Games go on and on and on it feels.
Idk if I will like it.
While I agree with a lot of the sentiments about commander's midrange value pile problem, I think a lot of the examples of cards you pose as "designed for commander but slotted into normal sets" seem to take the cards as being designed in a vacuum. Field of the Dead, for example, was printed coming off of a Ravnica block with Shocklands and Guildgates, as well as having Scapeshift in the previous core set. It was ABSOLUTELY designed to be a win condition for a Standard Lands Deck a la Valakut the Molten Pinnacle. Same with One Ring being a dead ringer for Modern Tron, Nadu being brewed as part of Hammer/Cheerios shells during spoiler season, etc.
While these cards definitely balloon out of what was likely their *intended* scope, I think a lot of players make the mistake of just assuming that all legendaries are printed for commander exclusively. In reality, R&D started using legendaries as a way to allow more complex permanent designs at lower rarities in standard sets (so many old uncommons and rares were just 3-mana 3/3's with "ETB: Set Mechanic") after Dominaria's success in 2018.
While I'm all for blaming commander for a lot of magic's problems, I also think it's important to acknowledge the very few problems that aren't. One of Wotc's big issues is in assuming that players just "have/will find the tools to fight new threats", and letting these sorts of cards through on the assumption that things will sort themselves out. Nadu *theoretically* dies to most of Modern's conventional removal, but they underestimated the ability to protect it at little-to-no cost with Sylvan Safekeeper and Force.
With nihilistic look at the slow burning of the format I accept things as such, looking forward to short term excitement of new cool cards. Think there are few paths the game will take:
1) More competitive and regulated formats will be played in on-line mediums like Arena, where many things can be adjusted for the health of the game (more like alchemy/hearthstone and such)
2) Most for fun games of all kinds will be played close to todays standard of commander with every table and group doing their own thing, from close to cedh, through all other levels of power and number of players to pure roleplay and custom rules and games springing from games resembling to MTG.
WotC is printing way more product than they ever historically have. Obviously when you print this much new product you will have a few cards that are problematic. It’s commander’s fault in the sense that the format caused the demand to support this level of production. But saying Nadu and the one ring are commander’s fault is supposition. Ragavan and Oko broke formats too and they don’t fit the proposed commander model. I’d argue that Nadu is a modern card from a modern set designed for modern. It’s not like the CEDH community is buzzing about the card and it hasn’t been adopted in the 99 of many decks.
Wdym? Nadu is a top 10 played cedh deck in 2024 cedh tourneys already and has the highest conversion rate in top 10 decks. It is busted in cedh as well
@@muditjohar5323😂😂😂😂
Check and mate
My first rule of MTG is “never leave home without a board wipe.”
All my decks run 10-15 board wipes
blood thirster is a warhammer 40k demon from the chaos precon and is an amazing agro card
The other formats broke themselves. The only way to play standard or modern is at a super-tuned, high knowledge table. What used to be “kitchen table magic”’is now commander. I’m not spending $1000 and studying for months just to sit at a table at my LCS and play modern.