New Partner Mechanic
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Oct. 29, 2016, 10:06 a.m. by enpc
Hi All,
With the new partner mechanic out, I know a lot of people are keen to start building new decks. While people may have picked this up already, the new rules for mechanic have been posted by WotC here:
702.123. Partner
702.123a Partner is an ability that modifies the rules for deck construction in the Commander format (see rule 903), and it functions before the game begins. Rather than a single legendary creature card, you may designate two legendary creature cards as your commander if each has partner.
702.123b Your deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including its two commanders. Both commanders begin the game in the command zone.
702.123c A rule or effect that refers to your commanders color identity refers to the combined color identities of your two commanders. See rule 903.4.
702.123d Except for determining the color identity of your deck, the two commanders function independently. When casting a commander with partner, ignore how many times your other commander has been cast. When determining whether a player has been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander, consider damage from each of your two commanders separately. See rule 903.11a.
702.123e If an effect refers to your commander while you have two commanders, it refers to either one. If an effect causes you to perform an action on your commander and it could affect both, you choose which it refers to at the time the effect is applied.
This means that if you're going to run two commanders in your deck, you can only have 98 other cards in the deck, not the typically 99.
Just thought I would put it in writing.
Cheers.
The partners are rather vanilla. I doubt they're going to make a huge impact on the format.
October 29, 2016 12:58 p.m.
DeathChant17 says... #4
Yeah, I was super excited for the four color set to hit. Not so much now.
October 29, 2016 10:33 p.m.
I am a bit upset about wotc influence on the commander format. I personally don't want my opponent to have two commanders available and avoid commander tax... On the other hand they are not as strong as other commanders
October 30, 2016 7:25 a.m.
Personally, I think the partner mechanic was a bad idea. Having two commanders is inherently powerful, so they needed to balance it out by making every partner commander mediocre, while also being careful to avoid any meaningful or useful synergy between commander combinations. It would have been better to just print more 4-color commanders instead of going for a weak cop out like this.
Infinimage007 says... #2
I wonder how much an advantage it is to have one less card in the deck. How much more consistent is 98 than 99?
Also, I'm not sure I like the mechanic. It feels less genuine than a single 3- or 4-color commander.
October 29, 2016 10:30 a.m.