Modern Commander: New Format for Event Style Play
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Aug. 13, 2016, 9:50 p.m. by Droptimal
We've officially launched the format with: ModernCommander.com. We'll be updating more and more this week! Go to the site for newer content.
What is Modern Commander
Modern Commander is a variant of Commander that utilizes a more up to date cardpool and a few rules changes with an emphasis on built in balance. It is designed with event play, both casual and competitive, in mind.
Why A New Format?
Since becoming Commander, EDH has grown exponentially; what was once exclusively a niche whacky kitchen table game, it has become a wildly popular format with an expanding player base. With the growing number of players, we've seen increased efforts to run events, but commonly with meta specific rules/bans and sub-formats (French/Tiny Leader/Pauper). This is largely in response to the fact that the RC's ban list and philosophy is to push a concept of self-governed social contracts of balance in an embrace of "Timmy-ism" that worked very well for its humble beginnings. While that's great for many players, it doesn't fully cater to the growing diversity of players, as ideas of balance and game philosophies can differ greatly. It becomes very hard to hold events with so many different types of players in way that makes everyone happy, as self governing ideas of good play can get messy. So rather than argue the RC's rules/bans, a better solution is to simply standardize a new base format to help players find the type of game they want to play between the two.
Rule Philosophy
While Classic EDH thrives on a system of subjective social contracts to ensure fun, we want these new formats to be about players taking the card pool to the furthest creative extent without that gray area of limitation. Part of this means we are embracing EDH's more powerful synergies that are often self regulated from abuse. We're justifying it in the sense that with this expectation, players are challenged to alter deck building theory to better cope with the these types of strategies. Extensive play testing in a competitive environment has demonstrated a balance occurs when deck builds anticipate these tactics, as games rarely came down to the first attempts to win.
There of course need to be some restrictions to ensure a healthy format and 2 main points will be the center of influence for what guides rules and bans:
A healthy diversity of decks - We want to avoid saying what can and cannot exist, but if we sense that the meta becomes dominated by a narrow selection of decks we will make changes to encourage more diversity.
Rules/Bans Should Promote the Influence of In-Game Decisions - While volatility and luck are inherit in all card games, it is important to the ideals of good game design that how you play the game matters. We can't stop all the potentially wild plays possible in EDH, nor do we want to, but we value the potential of outplay rather than being victims of fate whenever possible. Part of this is a bias against cards/rules that present too much influence in dictating wins before players have a reasonable chance to interact with the game.Going forward we'll be trying to open up the rules/bans to be a bit more free and only make restrictions when we feel they are in violation of the established philosophies. The end goal being a rule/ban list that favors balance and interaction.
Format Rules
Legal Cards - Modern Commander will be composed of: Block/Core sets starting with 8th Edition till current, Conspiracy, Commander Preconstructed decks, and Commander's Arsenal (this list includes giant cards that were printed). The only banned cards are the ones listed below in the "Banned List" section, cards banned in Classic EDH and Constructed Modern are not banned.
30 life - We're going to be monitoring this change VERY closely, but there's a lot of potential positives to this change. We notice at high level, certain common archetypes are simply under powered and this will give those decks more chance to compete with the onslaught of decks that can simply ignore life loss and win. It's important that players aren't too easy to remove however, as we don't want to see established archetypes fall of the map under this change. As well this helps rounds become much quicker in events and avoid a common case of time rulings dictating an often unfair assessment on who deserves the win.
Free Partial Paris Mulligan (first is free, each there after is 1 card less. Mulliganed cards are set aside until you keep, then shuffled back in) - A major aspect of fighting quick and powerful cards is the ability for players to have early options available to deal with them. This creates a skillful and positive ability for players to ensure a more interactive game happens and you aren't at the mercy of opening hands to see if you get to play. It also plays benefit to varied decklists and multicolor that were negatively impacted in Classic EDH's rule change. THE SCRY RULE IS NOT IN EFFECT.
Commander Specific Banlist - We're starting with no bans to see what forms, but our intent is to try not to eliminate cards from the card pool if they're only broken as Commanders. So we'll be keeping this open for when the time comes and we feel a card has become a problem, but might be validated in this restriction.
Ban List
- Sol Ring
- Prophet of Kruphix
- Protean Hulk
- Tooth and Nail
- Trade Secrets
MasterofMirrodin says... #3
I think this format sounds very interesting as well. Is the format supposed to be played 1v1 like Duel Commander, or is it a multiplayer format?
August 13, 2016 10:17 p.m.
Multiplayer. I'm hoping this helps become a style pushed for event play that wizards could support since it's a break away from the kitchen table style of normal edh.
August 13, 2016 11:59 p.m.
Shane.Allen says... #5
I could see that would be very accessible, kind of like no reserved list legacy ? I still wish they would just sanction it as right now as a format.
August 14, 2016 2:26 a.m.
DeathChant17 says... #6
I like the sound of this, though I am curious what Epochalyptik thinks?
August 14, 2016 10:42 a.m.
With how many people are showing their interest in such a format, I feel obliged to show my distaste for it. I simply don't like this 'new' format whatsoever.
August 14, 2016 12:41 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #8
Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel that your proposal fulfills your reason for having a new format.
You state that you want to maximize diversity and embrace the more powerful synergies, but the shift from the Vintage card pool to the Modern one and the decision to ban cards like Tooth and Nail disproportionately hurt combo decks and make consistency comparatively difficult to achieve.
All of that, combined with the shift to 30 life, make this feel like a clumsier version of Modern invented just for the sake of having a "different" version of Commander.
August 14, 2016 3:30 p.m.
Currently in a competitive environment of EDH, there is an overwhelming dominance of certain colors and archetypes. Currently the meta is basically fast mana into early game combo. The presence of aggro, voltron, midrange, etc... are near nonexistent. While control and stax decks have a presence, the mulligan changes actually hurt their ability to thwart early wins more than it hurt the ability of those decks to still consistently win faster. Basically combo has ALWAYS been overpowered and many changes in this format give life back to other colors and archetypes. The earlist combo we've seen was turn 4 and was due to a massive player error, typically they're going off turn 7-10 now. In current EDH we had decks winning turn 1-4 with consistency, basically invalidating most of the meta.
30 life has been a surprising success as Combo decks in the past could easily ignore pressure from 3 players since combos were so fast and a few board wipes could buy you any needed time. With 30 life combo is still very much viable but must focus a bit more on interacting with the board or suffer more risk if they choose to go all in. As well GU notoriously is one of the most powerful colors combos in EDH and after the cardpool reduction we noticed that green was too strong. Blue and black take a huge nerf in tools, but were still very strong when paired with green and the meta seemed to just be GX. Taking out TandN and prophet took away one of the most troublesome "oops I win" cards and helped spread the diversity. We noticed an immediate reduction in green decks and started seeing more red and other colors.
Consistency is actually higher as we're bringing back partial paris, as it adds a skillful influence how the game plays out and helpes ensure all players have strong starts to compete. The lack of early volatility in the format means people sculpting to win early comes with more risk as players have more time to get answers and can sculpt for them.
The format oddly plays more like kitchen table, except players are trying to break it. We encouraged players to make the most broken decks they could and still we have games that are far more interactive, fun, and diverse than what we saw in our normal EDH tournament nights.
August 14, 2016 4:34 p.m.
The format was tested over 6 weeks with casual to pro players and judges with stat tracking.
August 14, 2016 4:37 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #11
This thread was moved to a more appropriate forum(auto-generated comment)
August 14, 2016 4:56 p.m.
August 14, 2016 5:58 p.m. Edited.
Shane.Allen says... #13
I will state my opinion one more time on this matter. After having carefully read everyone's comments I do agree that this "new" format is pointless, redundant and in no way qualifies the right to actually be considered. Commander/EDH is by no means a broken format. Yes, some mono-colored decks specifically one's like Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and Arcum Dagsson can combo off so fast that the game is over before it started. Likewise decks like Maelstrom Wanderer and Narset, Enlightened Master can also easily go off before turn 4. But I have also seen all four of these decks lose because of bad draws or something, or get hated right off the table. That's the game of Commander. What we do need, and we need it strongly, is for WOTC to put more investment into legitimizing Commander and sanctioning it, giving points for it, and giving it the respect it deserves, right along with Modern and Legacy. Thank you, and good night.
August 14, 2016 8:33 p.m.
A simple note on the less is more concept is that when you have such a vast array of cards is that it creates a broader range of power. Sometimes the areas that get buffed from certain effects can over shadow the validity of certain strategies as the difference is too great. Testing Modern we saw that strategies we typically deemed inferior or invalid for comp play had more presence. Namely damage oriented decks had much more going for them. I come from a hyper competitive group that was once 50+ players a night which we ran over 2 years and we saw an issue with diversity in what was winning.
A good read is the article by Wizards that explains the split of Constructed Magic to type 1 and 2. As you'll see today each constructed format plays differently by the meta and at different levels of volatility. Modern Commander is designed to lower the volatility and push the concept of wins via in game decisions making over luck/deck strength...as many competitive games in commander can be described as nongames, simply balanced by rotation of luck and chaos.
When considering this format, it is not designed to replace Commander, but as it's own format with it's own sense of play style. I urge you to test the format as MANY early opinions were proven wrong in testing. We waited 6 weeks with very aggressive testing to make sure that this format met the expectations that validated having it around next to current EDH. As well this format is an incredibly helpful tool for new players who lack the cardpool to compete with other EDG players.
There's a write up on the site that expresses it further.
August 14, 2016 10:18 p.m.
Eiti3 ...I'm not going to lie I'm very confused by your post in terms of aggression :/ You're kind of using a lot of assumed info. To put it simply, my background is from a hyper competitive meta which saw 100+ people and could hit up to 50+ a night. In the meta I was of the top players and I saw an issue with players trying various strategies that are common in EDH, simply unable to compete. I wanted to make a format that was less luck driven and brought those types of decks into a relevant power level, as those players left annoyed by with the inability to compete wanting to play their types of decks.
Modern Commander is at its core designed as a competitive version. As the slower pace strips the advantage of decks autopiloting into overpowered hands and lets the game be more dictated by proper play and decision making.
August 14, 2016 10:30 p.m.
Conspiracy 2 Approved for Play!
In regards to which and when sets are legal for Modern Commander, all block sets and Commander Precons are automatically cleared as legal upon prerelease date. Other sets will be approved individually once the spoilers are reviewed and will be legal upon prerelease date as well. Only in cases where a concerning Legacy card is present will a preemptive ban take place.
Conspiracy 2 is approved as Legal...and yes Monarch is legal as well. No preemptive bans.
August 22, 2016 2:42 p.m.
Shane.Allen says... #17
I'll still skip playing Modern Commander. I'll only play officially "sanctioned" formats from WOTC, and I will continue my quest to even more legitimize Commander/EDH as a format that should be played in tournaments and the like.
August 22, 2016 5:02 p.m.
You are entitled to your opinions on our tested format.
August 22, 2016 7:35 p.m.
Shane.Allen says... #19
You are most welcome to keep having fun with your tested format.
Shane.Allen says... #2
I think it sounds very interesting, I'm still very upset that there isn't better support from wizards in sanctioning commander, or hosting tournaments and the like. What is your opinion on that ?
August 13, 2016 10:09 p.m.