Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #711: Head-to-Head – Commander, Part 1

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

This podcast is part one of a two-part series on a Head-to-Head I did on Twitter about possible changes to the Commander format.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's podcast is based on a head-to-head that I did in December, which is recent for me, a little less recent for you guys. But it was all about possible changes to Commander. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to, I think this is going to be two podcasts. I'm going to go over the 16 different possibilities. What I want to do is I want to examine Commander from the vantage point of a game designer. And so I'm going to talk a bit about Commander. Let me make a few caveats here before I begin. But the point of today's podcast

is I'm going to go through the 16 changes that were talked about in the head-to-head and then give my opinion on them from my perspective. Okay, so a couple caveats before I begin. Number one, Wizards of the Coast does not run the commander format. There's a whole team that's in charge of the rules and the ban list and all that is not done by wizards. So first off, anything I say today is my opinion and it's me talking about my thoughts on it. It is not really going to impact anything. I have zero say on this. So first off, just because I talk about something or I recommend something or I like something

doesn't actually mean it's going to change. I have zero input on the changes. Two is I am not, I do not play a lot of Commander. I mean, I have played Commander. I do not play a lot of Commander. So a lot of this, as is true for most formats, the nature of my job, so being the fact that I have a family, when'm not at work I don't play a lot of magic my son and I play

with pre-constructed decks every once in a while but I don't play a lot of magic outside the office I play a little bit on Magic the Gathering Arena but I don't play a lot outside the office and in the office to do my job I'm doing a lot more limited seals, drafts when I do play constructed for my job

it's more we're building a deck to test out a mechanic to make sure that it works. So more pre-constructed-ish type things. You know, when I'm working on a set, I'm making the blueprint. So nothing is real yet. When I'm playing, it's more to sample things and see how mechanics work.

The cards aren't real, let alone costed. So I'm not at the point of the set, the point of the process that I work on. You know, we have a play design team. We have a set design team. We have many people that play the actual finished versions of the cards. That is just way past the point where I work on it.

So that's not the thing I do. So I don't play tons of standard. I don't play tons of pioneer. I don't play tons of standard. I don't play tons of pioneer. I don't play tons of modern. I don't play tons of commander, obviously. But it is my job to understand them because I want to make sure that I, in building the blueprints and I and my team,

that we are taking into account things that will allow the set design team, the play design team, to make crafted fun environments. So it is important that I understand the formats, even though I don't play them a tremendous amount. So when I say I don't play Commander, I don't play a lot of the constructed formats

just because of the nature of my job and my life outside of work. So I spend a lot of time listening to Commander players. So I have a lot of input. One of the reasons I did the head-to-head is I wanted time listening to Commander players. So I have a lot of input. One of the reasons I did the head-to-head is I wanted to hear from Commander players. So one of the things I'll be talking about today when I talk about changes and stuff, I will be incorporating some of the messaging I'm hearing from Commander players. And once again, my third caveat, just refresh this point. I am looking at this from a game designer perspective.

I'm not looking at it from the player perspective, meaning I am trying to talk about, like when you do whole systems from game design, there are a lot of things you're trying to do. And one of the biggest, and I'll get to this during today, is you are looking at what is best for the group rather than the individual. Very white oriented. That I'm trying to make sure when I make a game that I'm making a game that makes the vast majority of the players happy.

And as you'll see today, a lot of the excuses for whether to do or not do something can really center on, because this is how I play, I would like this. And a lot of making game design decisions is understanding all the small impacts and different ways people play, but making decisions that has the net greatest effect. So when I'm reviewing this today, I'm not talking from the vantage of a player. I'm talking from the vantage of a game designer. Because that's what I am. And I thought that would be interesting for you guys to see, to understand sort of my take on things.

Okay, so you got that? Nothing I say really matters because I'm not changing anything. This is not a format that I play a lot. Although there are a lot of R&D players that do play it and I've spent a huge amount of time talking to commander players and three, this is vantage point from a game designer I'm going to be making some

some of the decisions that I'm going to be reaching have to do with what I think is better for the overall game as you'll see this will come up in the first few of them okay, so let's start with number one. Changing the hybrid mana rules. Okay, so for those that don't play Commander,

I will assume that people listening to this might not play Commander. So I will explain each of these changes for those that aren't as familiar with Commander. So in Commander, there is what is called a color identity rule. I think it's the name of it. You have a Commander and they are certain colors. And the way the colors are defined is any mana symbols that appear anywhere on the card with the exception of rules text. I'm sorry, exception of reminder text.

So you look at the mana cost of the creature. So let's say the creature costs two mana, you know, red and green, then it's a red and green creature. But let's say it's, mana cost includes green, but it taps for red mana in its rules text. Well, there's a red mana symbol in its rules text. So if anywhere on the card, anywhere on the card, other than reminder text, if a mana symbol appears, it is that color. And then you cannot play cards that aren't of the... You can't play cards

that are not of the color of your commander. So if my commander is red-green, I'm not allowed to play any cards that are white, blue, or black. That is the color identity rule. That rule was created prior to the existence of hybrid.

Hybrid did not exist when that rule was made. And what happened was there was a rule system set in place. Hybrid came out and they said, okay, do we need to change things for hybrid? And what they said is, well, it works within our system. But the way it works within the system is if you have a hybrid card and the hybrid card is half red, half green, a hybrid symbol, they go, oh, well, that is a red and green symbol. So it is a red card and it is a green card. And in the way the game is played, a hybrid card is both colors.

It's on the battlefield. It is both colors. So a red-green hybrid card is red and is green on the battlefield. So they said, oh, well, we have a color identity rule. It has colors. Okay. So a red-green hybrid is red and green. It can only be played in a deck that is red and green. Because if you are mono-red, you're

not allowed to have green cards. If you're mono-green, you're not allowed to have red cards. The biggest problem with this is it flies in the face of what hybrid is. The whole point of hybrid is not that it's and, it's that it's or. Now, I understand that on the battlefield, I admit that it is both colors from a,

what colors is this definitional rules thing. We actually, when we were making them, talked about, did we want, like when you chose to make it red rather than make it green, when you cast it with red mana, we said, oh, maybe then it should be a red it green, when you cast it with red mana, we thought, oh, maybe then it should be a red card. And if you cast it with green mana, then it's a green card.

But it turned out the rules for that were just kind of clunky. I mean, we're just complicated for no real reason. That it was just easier to go, eh, it's red and green. And so we left that. But the fact that it is a multicolored card is very minor to a larger identity of what hybrid is. Hybrid is about or. You know, hybrid cards are designed so that the way a hybrid works is we take abilities that can be done in either color. So like, oh, if it's a

red-green card, well, mono-red could do this and Mino Green could do this. Now, when we make hybrid, we'll bend a little bit. You know, we'll definitely do things that maybe we don't always do in the Mino color, especially when we're doing a whole bunch of them as we did in Shadowmore and Eventide. The hybrid got introduced in Ravnica and then Shadowmore and Eventide blew it out. Like, half the cards were hybrid. And because the volume was so high, we did a little more bends. I will get back to that in a second. But the real issue I have with hybrid is, if you look at the way Magic is played,

one of the things that I care most about, a couple things. One is, when I look at a format, I want things to be intuitive. And part of being intuitive is, even though Magic has a lot of different formats, you want the card utilities to be the same. That if I play a card in Modern or Pioneer or Standard, I want the card to function the same. I don't want the card to be different. I don't want a format to say,

well, in this format, this card just functions differently. So of all the changes that are being proposed, this is one of the ones I actually, maybe it's the one I care the most about. Because it is changing what hybrid is doing and not just what it's doing, it is negating the whole purpose

for its existence. The reason hybrid exists is so a mono-red deck can play the red-green hybrid card or the mono-green deck can play the red-green hybrid card or a red deck that doesn't have green can play it or a green deck that doesn't have red that can play the red-green hybrid card, or the mono-green deck can play the red-green hybrid card, or a red deck that doesn't have green can play it, or a green deck that doesn't have red that can play. That is the point of its existence. And in Commander, I think there are right now only two mechanics that don't work the

way they're supposed to work. One is hybrid, and the other is wishes. Wishes are another one. We'll get to that. Wishboards are probably going to be in the next podcast. Anyway, one of the things about formats

that I think are important is I like when a format can do lots of fun things that can shake up and change how you think of cards. But what I don't like formats doing is changing the functionality of the card. Like, I wouldn't want to make a format that just says, oh, all sources are instance.

So in our format, these are instance. I think that runs into problems. And the reason is, we designed the game assuming the cards have the function they have. If your format starts changing the function of the cards, you are altering what we have set up. And one of the problems

in general with hybrid is, I wouldn't say hybrid goes beyond just being a mechanic. I think it's a tool. It is something we use all the time. And a lot of times when we balance things, we treat hybrid as if it's monocolor. As if a monocolor deck can play it. So when we balance things we treat hybrid as if it's mono color as if a mono color

deck can play it so when we're making things it isn't like we are very consciously acting in such a way that a hybrid card is an ore that that mono white and mono blue can play a white blue hybrid card or um you know whatever the hybrid is that both colors can play it that's how we design it um and so when a format changes functionality it causes problems and when they change functionality of something that is a deciduous mechanic a mechanic we use on some regularity it is just long-term asking for problems because we're going to keep making hybrid cards and we're gonna design them assuming they do what hybrid does and it's going to just I mean right now it hasn't caused and I mean the problem right now is it is treating them like their traditional gold cards when they're not that is frustrating and that

we've made them to be certain things and there and people complain all the time for example about how you know mono white or mono red needs more tools, but you're excluding all these cards that could be there, so that's a little frustrating. But nothing, I mean, for example, when we made Extort, which was the origin of mechanics in Gatecrash,

in order to use the mechanic, you have to pay a hybrid, not a hybrid man, you have to pay white or black, but you use hybrid to represent it. Whenever you cast a spell, you can cast white or black to extort when you drain one from your opponent.

We ended up keywording that. That went into the reminder text, so luckily because of the way the rules work, the reminder text didn't, you can play the mono-white cards extort in a mono-white deck. But if that hadn't been Ravnica, if that had been a place where we didn't, you can play the mono white card deck stored in a mono white deck. But if that hadn't been Ravnica, if that had been a place where we didn't quite need the keyword, it's very easy for us not to keyword that.

And all of a sudden, a mechanic that is not meant to be locked to two colors gets locked to two colors. The other thing I know is as I play around with hybrid cards in the future, as we stretch what hybrid can do, we're going to get to the problem someday where we're trying to do something and that functionality just doesn't work in Commander. So the reason I think this needs to change is

it is just not much you need to match functionality as much as possible. I get there's places where you run into trouble i just think this is the place where i mean if hybrid existed before they made the rule but if the format got created after hybrid's existence they would have incorporated hybrid into i firmly believe they would have incorporated hybrid into it i think what happened was they made a rules it would be complicated to change the rules and so they said well it works but it doesn't really work it loses the actual functionality of the card

i think that's a problem okay so the two the two uh whenever i bring this up the people that are against the change here's the two things they give um number one is oh well shadowborn eventide definitely made some cards that probably should have been traditional gold. And so if you let this, you're messing with the color pie. Okay. As the man who knows more about the color pie than anybody on the face of the earth, let me say the following. When we do a set, we will bend cards toward their theme. We're doing a graveyard set.

We'll do some things in the graveyard and colors that don't normally do much in the graveyard. We'll bend toward what those are. When we made Shattermore and Eventide, not Eventide, yeah, Eventide, Shattermore and Eventide, the bends we did were within the context of the, there are no breaks. I did the break in the color pie.

There's no breaks in the hybrid. There are definitely some bends, for sure. I'm not saying there's not. There's not even a great number of bends, comparatively. Meaning nobody's doing something that they can't do within reaching within a bend. I mean, no one is fundamentally

breaking what they're supposed to be able to do. There's no breaks in the cards. There are bends,. There's no breaks in the cards. There are bends, but there's no breaks. Meanwhile, staples of the commander format, you know, Chaos Warp and the green card

that turns everything into a 3-3, there are things that are just breaks. They're just breaks. There are staples of commanders that are breaks. Nobody is saying, let's not play with those cards. So the idea that, oh no, we can't let hybrid because, oh, that will mess with the color pie

when there's major staples that are not just bends, but actual breaks. Hybrid or bends. There's no breaks in hybrid. Maybe there's one. But I mean, there's no, pretty much hybrids were designed so they were bends. Okay? They're not messing with the color pie in a way that can't be messed with. They are cards that, they are bends. We can were bends. They're not messing with the color pie in a way that can't be messed with. They are cards that they are bends. We can do

bends. Your answer is, oh, the integrity of the color pie. Baloney. I say baloney to that. Mono card cards are way worse for breaks than a hybrid has ever been, and nobody is

questioning whether or not those breaks should be played. Many of them, like I said, are staples of the format. Number two is, but it's both colors. It is both colors. Yes, it is both colors. But if I make a green card that makes a white token, that can go in a mono green deck. I now have a green and a white card on the battlefield. I and a white card on the battlefield I have a white card on the battlefield but white's not my color identity there are cards like wild mongrel that can change their color but he's base green so he can go in a green deck

and you can make him not green there are ways within the existing system to have other colors be there that is not the whole point of the the whole entire point of a commander of color identity is so that it gives some limitation to you. Now, the third thing people say is, oh, but, you know, restrictions, recreativity, Mark, that's what you say. And my point is, yes, you want limitations, but the whole idea of a red mage is, I only do things that red mages do. I'm restricted to red magic. Hybrid is not violating that. Hybrid is saying, oh, this is for the red mage, and this

is also for the white mage, but it is not for the red and white mage. It's for the red mage. Stop for the white mage. So anyway, the recommendation I would make, which is, there's more, I have some more radical suggestions, but the simple suggestion I would make, which is, there's more, I have some more radical suggestions, but the simple suggestion I would make personally is the idea that when you talk about the color identity of hybrid cards for purposes of building your deck, just say that this card can be thought of as, let's say it's a red-white hybrid card, as a red card or a white card or a red and white card. So if you're choosing to make your deck and you're making a deck with red but not white, a hybrid card can be thought of as just red.

Essentially, the idea is, when you look at the mana symbol, since it's half red and half white, you can go, I can count it as either for my deck when building. In play, yes, it's both colors. But I don't think that is a problem. There are plenty of cards that allow you to get other colors on the battlefield. There's no problem with that. So anyway, that is my thoughts on changing hybrid rules.

Next, no Mac deck size. So the idea here is, Commander, you have 99. It's a singleton format, meaning you can only have one of every card minus basic lands. You have 99 cards plus one Commander. Commander has to be a legendary creature. The question here is, this suggestion is, well, why limit to 99?

Why not say 99 or more? And the support for this is, oh, you could play a card like Battle of Wits, which is not impossible. Battle of Wits is a card, it's an alt-win condition if you have 250 more cards. Right now, you cannot make a Battle of Wits I mean, I guess

you can play it, but you'll never win with it. You can't make a Battle of Wits deck in Commander right now. So let me get I talked about this earlier. I'll bring this back. The idea of the game designer thing is what is best for the group versus the individual. And so, one of the things about any rules change is

most rules changes will allow you to do something you can't do before. That's why it's a rule change. Yes, if we didn't cap you at 99, yeah, you can make a battle for which deck. Maybe there's other decks you can make that are just impossible to make. The real issue is

what's the cost of making the change? And that one of the nice things about Commander, and let me stress, by the way, actually, I should have said this up front. I am a big fan of Commander as a format. Me, personally, as a player, it is not something I play a lot. I'm not as much into multiplayer because it's very politics. I think that's one of the cool things about Commander is

it brings a social aspect to the game. That's great. It's a very cool thing. People love it. I'm just saying, me personally, it's not the way I most prefer to play Magic. Maybe that has to do with how I played Magic for so long. I mean, I do like politics games. Magic is not the place I like to play politics. I'll play diplomacy or something. I'm up to politics. But I, as a game designer, I'm a big fan of Commander why? it makes a lot of people happy you know I think Commander as a format does a lot of good

whether I personally like it you know what I'm saying like I said I my job is not to like everything my job is to respect and understand everything and make sure I enable the game to do that meaning I want to understand

part of the part of being a game designer is not just making what you like, it's making what the game players like. And so I have to understand what players like, and then I have to make it for them. Commander, well liked. Barring, you know, casual play with what I own cards,

there's evidence right now that Commander might be the most played format. I'm a big fan of Commander as a game designer. And part of the thing I like about it is there's a lot that's very compelling about it. And one of the things that's compelling is the deck construction is pretty simple. And that one of the things is I like the idea you got 99 cards. That's what you got. That's what you get to play with.

I think the cleanliness of it helps a little bit, and I feel like the changing the rule does not really add much to the format. Yeah, yeah, there's some decks you can play you couldn't play, you can play Battle Wits, whatever, but I think what it takes away is a nice, clean, simple, elegant structure for what you need to build. You know, it's a 100-card deck. I think it's very clean. And so I don't think I would change that rule. Next, Sol Ring Band.

So Sol Ring is a ubiquitously played card. I mean, one of the things people say is when you build your 100-card deck, well, really, it's Sol Ring plus 99 other cards is the joke. Like, why wouldn't you play a Sol Ring? A, they're not that hard to get, just because we've made a lot of Soul Rings and a lot of Commander products.

And it's just so good. My thoughts on Soul Ring is... So, Commander is... The pluses of Commander in my mind, the greatest pluses is it is a casual game, meaning it doesn't fall victim... Like, one of the problems with formats is

when it's competitive, people try to break the format. And what happens is, if it doesn't fall victim. Like, one of the problems with formats is when it's competitive, people try to break the format. And what happens is if it's imbalanced, that comes up very quickly. The nice thing about a social slash multiplayer format is there's a lot in the system that balances things if they're unbalanced. Like, if we

had a Pro Tour with Commander, like one-on-one Commander, it would break it half like i don't i don't believe commander is any less broken than other formats um i believe that there's not pressures in it to break it and even when you're playing it if i make a really dominant deck against lots of other people and i'm the threat they're all going to team up against me so between the casual nature of people going let let's have a fun time, hey, we're going to frown if you do things that aren't fun,

and then we might house band things. So meaning there's sort of a social contract to play a little nicer. And the dynamic nature of multiplayer means that if I really, if I get too scary to people,

they just team up against me. So there's strategic reasons not to sort of just make the craziest, most awful, kill youyou-quick deck that you can. Although beating you quickly is not something that Commander does particularly well. So because of that, because there's lots of pressure to keep people from winning quickly, the biggest downside to me of Commander is its playtime is long. is its playtime is long. I'm not saying that the playtime might not be a necessary evil of lots of other things.

But in general, if we can do things that don't lengthen the playing time, that's probably to the advantage. Because like I said, I think the biggest plus of Commander is the social aspect. And the biggest minus to me is one of Magic's big boons, I think, is that you can play it quickly. The fact that two people can play a game in like 15 to 20 minutes is a big part, I think, of Magic's success.

I think it is fine that there are formats that take more time. Obviously, Commander is one. fine that there are formats that take more time. Obviously, Commander is one. And I do think that social settings and the nature of how you play, okay, allows you to play a little longer. But, my point is, as somebody who,

as a game designer, I guess, if I can do things to speed up the format, I probably would. And the fast mana, eh, it's probably better for the format than bad, because it just makes games not take quite as long. It does mean one person can get ahead quicker, but the multiplayer nature of that should balance against that,

meaning if I get the Sol Ring and nobody else does, and I get out faster, I'm not a threat, and maybe I still have to be careful. In general, I think the fast mana just makes the games take less long. I think that's overall good. So I don't think I get rid of Sol Ring. I mean, there are a whole... By the way, when I say Sol Ring ban, as we put here,

there are a lot of cards that are very good. I mean, I think Sol Ring is the easiest to get. Something like Mana Crypt, I mean, you could argue is also powerful, but it's hard to get your hands on Mana Crypt. So Mana Crypt's not causing too many problems, because not every deck has a Mana Crypt, because not every deck can get their hands on Mana Crypt, where Sol Ring's a lot

easier to get your hands on. So anyway, I guess I'm not against a ban, only because I think the fast mana is actually helping you get from the early part of the game, which is not the most interesting part of Commander, to the middle part of the game, to the end of the game, which is not the most interesting part of Commander, to the middle part of the game, to the end of the game, which is

the most fun of the Commander. So kind of speeding up to get to the funner part, I think, is good. So I would say no to Sol Ring Commander, man. Non-creature legendaries as Commander. Well, non-creatures, non-Planeswalkers as Commander. Planeswalkers as Commander

comes later. So the idea is we have legendary creatures. Like I said, as commanders. Planeswalkers as commanders comes later. So the idea is we have legendary creatures. Like I said, we have legendary planeswalkers. I'll get to that in a second. But we also have legendary enchantments, legendary artifacts, legendary lands. Why can't those be commanders? The reason I think this isn't a good idea is another one of the

things that I think makes commander very compelling. Let me talk a little structure here. First off, I like the singleton. I think makes Commander very compelling I'll talk a little structure here first off, I like the singleton I think high variance is good for as you get more casual, more social. For example, you'll notice like uncards are made to have a

high variance factor on purpose because high variance leads to more fun, leads to more variety when you want the best player to win, when skill matters, variance causes you a problem. But other than that, it just makes more fun. And so I really like that it's a solitaire.

It just means, and it's also a 100-card deck. It's bigger than normal. So your play variance is very high. But that is offset by the idea, like, how do I build a deck if I don't know what I'm going to get? You know, a 100-card deck with Singleton is very hard to build around. But the genius of the format is, oh, you have your commander. And the commander,

A, allows you to have some certainty of what's going on, so that you can build your deck around something and have some consistency. And it adds a personality to your deck. I think that, I don't know how much that is appreciated, but I think it's very important. The personality is very

key. And so some of the reasons I'm not a big fan of sort of letting legendary artifacts or legendary enchantments or legendary lands, it's just like who leads your deck? This plot of land. That is not compelling. Who leads your deck? This sword. That is less compelling to me. And I think that one of the charms, one of the things you want to do when you sort of monitor a format is understand the charms of the format.

Understand the strengths and the weaknesses. You want to work to play up the strengths. You want to work to play down the weaknesses. I think that the commander being a character is a huge upside. I believe it gives a lot of flavor and identity to the format and to the decks, and I think it's a good thing. So I don't think I would not make that change.

I don't think that makes the format any better. Okay, next. No commander damage. Okay, so the way this works is, in the game of Commander, each person starts with 40 life, rather than 20, as in most other forms of magic. And you lose when you go to zero. But, there's a rule called Commander Damage, which is, if my commander does 21 points of damage to any one player, they also lose.

The reason this came about, by the way, is before it was Commander, it was originally Elder Dragon Highlander, EDH, Elder Dragon Highlander. In the very, very first version of the format, you could only choose an Elder Dragon, which there are five of them. They're from Legends. We later reprinted some of them, but at the time the format got made, there were five of them, they were from Legends. All of them were three-color cards, and all of them were 7-7s.

So the reason that Commander Damage first existed is, oh, well, if I can hit you three times with my Commander, which is a giant 7-7 dragon, I can win the game. The fact that, you know, in a four-person game, instead of tracking four numbers, I now have to track 12 numbers, and the fact that 21 is a very weird number, if you, like, without knowing the context of where it came from, without getting, oh, I hit you three times with my Elder Dragon, like, it, once removed from that, once Elder Dragons aren't what you build around, once it's not even called Elder Dragon Highlander, you know, we've really moved far away from that.

And so that number is an odd number. So like, A, it's a lot of things to track. And B, the number unto itself is not easy to understand, which just makes it

more complicated. So one of the things that I always look at as a game designer is, does, how often does something matter? Is it, so there's a thing called

cognitive load that we have to worry about. So what cognitive load says is, I want players to care about things, but their brain can only handle so much. So what I want to do is maximize making them care about things that are fun and matter, and lessen the amount of times they have to care about things that are just not going to matter most of the time.

For example, one of the reasons we tend to have you put cards on the bottom of the deck randomly is if you get to choose, like, oh, well, I should think about this, because if I ever get to the end of my deck, it might matter. But the point is, in 99% of the games, it just doesn't matter. But because it could matter, you spend time and energy thinking about it. So we're like, don't think about it. It's not going to matter most games. We'd rather you not waste the time thinking about it. Okay, we'll change it so you don't have to think about it.

So for example, when Richard first made the game, there's a game called Mana Burn, for those that may not know this. Mana Burn was a complex rule that had to do about how you took damage if you had mana in your mana pool when phases ended. It was a complex rule that had to do about how you took damage if you had mana in your mana pool when phases ended.

It was a complex thing and because it mattered in mana, you tended to kind of have to teach people it early, but it didn't come up very often. And in the end, the reason we removed it was not that it wasn't an interesting rule, not that interesting gameplay didn't come out of it,

you know, not that there wasn't any positive from it, it just it didn't an interesting rule, not that interesting gameplay didn't come out of it, you know, not that there wasn't any positive from it, it just it didn't provide enough positive for the cognitive load it had to create. And that is a big question I have with Commander Damage is, is it worth the cognitive load? Now, the people that

argue for it say, A, there's certain decks that you couldn't play without it, Voltron's the one they tend to bring up, so, oh, having it expands's certain decks that you couldn't play without it. Voltron is one they tend to bring up. So, oh, having it expands the format, allows you to play more decks. The other thing is, there's some things like life gain and that. It's an answer to this. If I gain all sorts of life, you know, because decking can take a while in the form of 100 cards, because decking is the other answer for life, it's an alternate way to do that.

So the real thing here, and I don't have the data for this, so my answer here is if I was in charge of the format, again, I'm not, I would go out and seek some data about A, how often does commander damage matter? Like, how often is the game decided because of commander damage? How often does that happen? And exactly what decks

are being opened up by it existing? To explain earlier, I'm looking at the big picture. I will always do the thing that makes the format better even if it excludes some decks. And the answer for that is, once again, every rule will add decks. Adding a deck unto itself

is not the reason to do something. It can be our reason if it's adding enough. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I went under the evidence and like, oh my goodness, like, there's a third of the decks in the format that just wouldn't work

if you got rid of this rule. Okay, that's a real issue. I don't think that's the issue. Like, when I hear people, the fact that everybody keeps bringing up the same deck as the ones that matter says to me that it's more isolated. But once again, that is anecdotal, not, you know, anecdotal data. But anyway, if we did the research and we found there

really was only one or two decks that it made happen, and the things that you're fighting against just don't happen that much, you know, meaning if it didn't come up all that often and the boogeyman's that are saying you need it aren't that prevalent, I would lean on the side of getting rid of it in that it seems to be a heavy cognitive load. Now, it's possible with the research it is worth it in that there's more than I understand about what it's doing. From the arguments I've heard from people, my gut is there's not.

Like, my gut is, if we did the research, that the cognitive load, it wouldn't be worth the cognitive load. But, once again, like, if I was in charge, I would need to do some research on that. But that is my belief on it. It's a big cognitive load concern. It's a red flag, to me, at least. Next, fourth player advantage. So fourth player advantage,

the most common way to play commanders with four players, going first, if you look at the data, the person who goes first will win more of the time, second, second most of the time, third. What order you go in does have an impact. It's not a giant impact. It's a percentage point or two.

It's not, it's something. It is not overwhelming. The point of fourth player advantage is, do you want to do something that allows players that start later to have some advantage? And my answer here is, this is not a competitive format. Like, I do think when you're talking about formats where everything's on the line that a percentage point or two really does matter. When you're talking casual, where it's more about having fun and hanging with your friends

and who wins is not quite as important. Like, in competitive, it's all about skill and all about, like, I'm proving myself and, you know, who wins is very fundamental to competitive. I'm proving myself and who wins is very fundamental to competitive. Who wins in casual social is not important. People want to win and it's fun to win. I'm not saying winning doesn't matter, but does winning 1% less matter?

2% less? You know what I'm saying? It's not that big a thing. So my big thing is if there is a clean and simple rule that can be applied at the beginning of the game in a way that would help offset the problem in a way that matches like, I would want to look at the data to figure out what are the percentages, how often does one win versus

two versus three versus four, and then look and say, what could we do and how would that offset it and where would it offset it? I would only want to make this change if A, looking at the data, it's offset by enough and the answer could write it by enough that it's worth making people learn the rule. And then, even then, I would only make the rule if it's clean and simple to understand. I wouldn't, like, if the rule is complicated or just adds a bunch to learning how to play,

like I said, it has to really do a lot to even the odds in a way that is clean and simple and grokkable, easy to understand, for me to even consider it. So my gut is to say, eh, it's not that necessary. You know, have your play group just mix up who starts. The few percentage points that might matter in a social game isn't nearly as important. So my gut is that I wouldn't

make that change, but if I was in charge of the format, I would do some research, and I would look at some stuff, and, you know, if someone came up with a very elegant solution that happened at the beginning of the game that did a clean thing of help people that came later, I would consider that. Okay, next. Poison total change.

So in the game of Commander, you have 40 life rather than 20 life, but the poison total is still 10, as it is in a normal two-player game. One of the complaints is, well, why shouldn't poison be adjusted? Like, life's adjusted, but, you know, if life is twice, shouldn't poison be twice? Why is poison less? And I'll admit, early on, I'm like, yeah, that's, like, not being a Commander player without hearing the data.

My initial response is, oh, yeah, why not? I mean, you know, like, why wouldn't you double poison your double life? Once I started sort of talking with people and hearing answers, I got a very compelling argument against it, which is aggro is very bad in commander. The fact that there's 40 life, the fact that you have multiple opponents, there's a lot really working against you playing aggro in Commander. So aggro as a format really has lots of struggles in Commander. Poison is one of the few decks that at least has some chance of trying to do some sort of aggro strategy.

And it's not particularly good you know poison decks are not causing problems so the argument against making the change is look poison is already struggling the poison decks have a giant uphill battle by the nature of the format um they're already they already have a there's already challenges playing a poison deck why make it harder you know it is not as if poison is just running over everything or causing a problem and in general i will say if i'm not against making changes unless the change there's a reason for the change if you're saying hey this exists in the format it's not causing a problem that makes me go okay

like i'm all for changing things when things need to change. I'm not against changing things when I think change will bring about something good. But I'm not for change for the sake of change. Meaning, yes, I understand on the surface level, well, if you double life, why not double poison? But if the actual answer is poison as is is functioning just fine and is allowing something that normally is already problematic to at least have some opportunity, yeah, I guess you don't mess with that. And once again, this is one of the things where I had opinions.

One of the reasons I put things out there is to hear your opinions. And in some cases, such as this, your opinions really sway. Like when I start hearing some data, it really makes me go, oh, okay, now that I understand that, that does sway my opinion. So I would now be against changing the poison total. Finally for today, the return of the tuck rule. So, there

was a, so in the game of commander, when your commander leaves the battlefield, you are allowed to choose to instead have them go to the command zone so they can cast them again. If they're in the command zone, you can cast them again. There's what's called a commander attack, so it costs two more to cast

them, but you can cast them again. So the idea gets harder and harder to cast your commander, but you are allowed to keep casting them. The reason that's important is because it's a high-variance singleton format and it really is your commander that your deck is built around, they want to make sure

you can get some access to your commander. Because you're getting more mana as the game goes along, there's attacks, so it gets a little harder to get it out. But the idea is that you can get your commander out. So there was a rule for a while that said, if it goes to any zone, you can put it in the command zone. Well, except the library. If it goes to the library, it stays in the library.

And that was what was called tucking. Now it turns out that there are certain colors that tend to put things in the library, white that was what was called tucking. Now it turns out that there are certain colors that tend to put things in the library, white and blue being the big two. And so there's this weird dynamic that certain colors could answer planeswalkers, not planeswalkers, answer commanders in a way

that like, I mean, there were answers to the answers. You could tutor and stuff. But the point is, there was a subset of things that sort of permanently got... Permanently in quotes, meaning there was ways to get it back. But got rid of commanders in a way that sort of was fundamentally against what the format was.

And it was causing weirdness on our end from a design standpoint, because we don't... If I take a card and I put it on the bottom of the library versus put it in your graveyard, there's not a lot of difference there. Yeah, in a graveyard, I mean, there's places that could matter. But one of the things we like to do is shake things up a little bit to make colors feel different. So the reason we put things on the bottom of libraries

is a lot of times is just a feel thing. And having strong structural changes in a format that's popular makes some weird pressures where we're like, oh, should we not have white put things in the bottom library, even though it's a nice clean way to make white feel different? So I was happy when the Tuck rule went away. I feel like the essence of the commander thing is get rid of my commander, I get it back. Look, there's a tax built in to keep that from getting out of hand. So I'm not a fan

of the tuck rule. I was happy when the tuck rule went away. I would not advocate bringing the tuck rule back. Okay, anyway guys, that is the first half of the changes. In my next podcast, I'll talk about the second half of the changes. Anyway, my whole point of today's podcast, the next podcast, is

I'm just trying to get you to see a vantage point of thinking of Commander in a different context. podcast, is I'm just trying to get you to see a vantage point of thinking of Commander in a different context. And that is how I look at formats is from a game designer perspective. You're listening to me because it's a game design podcast. I'm going to talk about a popular format from the vantage point of game design.

Like, if you look at the changes today, like the one I most advocate, which is changing hybrid, really causes problems from a game design standpoint. Where a lot of the other things I look at, I go, oh, well, what, like, most of these changes are more about what makes the format better or worse. And as I said in my podcast on success paralysis, you do have to be careful that just because something is successful,

not to have a critical eye toward it. You know, if we make a set that's really successful that people love, I still want to look at it and say, how could I have made that set better? How can I improve upon that? That even though magic is a wild success, I'm constantly saying,

and how can I make it better? Not, hey, magic's good. Let's just keep doing the same thing. So one of the reasons that I think it's important, and the reason I did Head to Head, and the reason I'm doing these podcasts is I do think having a critical eye and thinking about these things, even though I'm not the one making changes,

I do think having that out there, and having conversations, and having people think about the format in the context of how, as a game designer, I think it's healthy and good for the format. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this, and like I said, there'll be another podcast to come, but I

am at work, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.