Wizards of the Coast has good reasons to design lots of new Magic: The Gathering cards for Commander players, and find as many slots as possible in as many MTG products as possible to slide in new Elder Dragon Highlander designs. But is it really necessary? And more importantly, does it harm other parts of the game?
Alongside the recent Nadu ban on August 26, came a shocking admission. This Modern Horizons 3 card, which everyone quickly concluded needed to be thrown on the MTG banlist ASAP, was never playtested in its final form. Furthermore, it was changed last minute – nerfed, and then warped and significantly buffed – to try and salvage its status as a powerful Simic commander.
This provided fuel for an argument a lot of players have been making for years. The focus on Commander above all else hurts Magic. For a long time this has been easy to dismiss as resentful, low-level grumbling, but now there is a clear case study, a demonstrable example of how shoving Commander designs into non-Commander products can damage different MTG formats like Modern.
Compared to most ways of playing Magic: The Gathering, Commander is an oddball. A four-player, singleton, 40-life format plays very differently to 60-card constructed. These playstyles benefit from very different strategies, so a card that is extremely good in Commander like Rhystic Study will often be just plain bad in other formats, and vice versa.
(It also means that while it’s hard to spot when something in a Standard MTG set is a plant for formats like Modern or Pauper, Commander-centric design is often easily identified.)
As Commander has grown in popularity, becoming the dominant way Magic: The Gathering is played, Wizards naturally wants to provide exciting EDH cards in every set. Since it’s a non-rotating format, the only way to do this (aside from constantly finding exhilarating new design space to explore) is to make Commander cards that are more powerful than anything printed in the past.
YouTuber The Trinket Mage has a great video that looks at how Commander has warped Magic’s design philosophy, prompting Wizards of the Coast to create more and more overtuned value engines. They point to Field of the Dead, Nadu, and the One Ring as examples of cards that were most likely designed as powerful new Commander pieces, but ended up having unintended consequences. Up the Beanstalk is another good example.
Because Commander often has such different needs to other formats, Wizards is probably in the habit of thinking of it very separately. In the past, it’s been safe to print pushed Commander cards in non-Commander products, and these cards haven’t had an impact on any format except EDH. The designers likely don’t consider many of their Commander-focused designs as potential threats to other parts of the game – at least as much as they should.
That’s the only way I can understand what happened with Nadu. It was always conceived as an EDH value card, and those don’t tend to be a problem in other formats, so Wizards missed the consequences of the changes that were made to it.
The trouble is, we’ve now reached the point where Commander cards are not just having an impact, they’re starting to take over other formats. As always, power creep is ultimately to blame.
It’s worth remembering that Commander would work perfectly well without Wizards designing new cards for it with every set. We know that because it worked perfectly well as an unofficial format, before there was a single MTG commander designed to lead a deck.
While often dismissed as hipsters, there are plenty of older EDH players who miss those days of lower powered, unofficial Commander – of searching through another fan’s trash for your hidden treasure. Some feel Commander has lost its identity now that most popular new cards were deliberately made to be played in the format.
To an extent I agree that the prevalence of Commander-centric design (combined with EDHREC, which I should say is a great tool I use often) has increased the homogeneity of Commander, sucking creativity out of the format just as the MTG Arena economy has done for Standard.
So should Wizards of the Coast stop designing cards for Commander? Well if that includes Commander sets, products, and Commander precon decks, then obviously no. Whether or not this would make any part of Magic better in a fictional version of reality where there are no economic concerns, it would be silly to suggest that Wizards actually take this approach.
It would probably be bad for the format as a whole, anyway, as some really interesting designs would never have shown up without Wizards supporting the format. Monarch, planeswalker commanders, voting, and more, would not be in the game if Wizards didn’t make Commander cards.
But we could definitely do without such Commander-focused design. I wish Wizards would design more sets the way they used to, and simply cater to Commander players by acknowledging the possibility of multiplayer games (like regularly writing ‘each opponent’).
Make Standard sets for Standard players. Make Modern sets for Modern players. Commander fans will find cards to get excited over anyway, just as they have always done.
For more content, check out our cEDH tier list or our guide to the MTG release schedule.
Source: Wargamer
