Pattern Recognition #171 - Bring a Friend to Commander

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

8 October 2020

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series as written by myself, berryjon. I am something of an Old Fogey who has been around the block quite a few times where Magic is concerned, as as such, I use this series to talk about the various aspects of this game, be it deck design, card construction, mechanics chat, in-universe characters and history. Or whatever happens to cross my mind this week. Please, feel free to dissent in the comments below the article, add suggestions or just plain correct me! I am something of a Smart Ass, so I can take it.

And so, many weeks ago, one of my questions about how in Urza's name were you supposed to be able to draft Commander in Commander Legends got answered. You see, I was worried how in all that was good and right with the game were you going to draft when you had to deal with the color limitations of your commander - for good or for ill.

Well, the answer was something that I seriously should have seen coming, and it elegantly solves my one major problem with the concept of the set. For you see, we're getting Partner back. And in just a month! Well, a little more, but it's the thought that counts.

Here, allow me to show off the four (as of this writing) cards that have this mechanic on it - Alena, Kessig Trapper, Halana, Kessig Ranger, Sengir, the Dark Baron, and The Prismatic Piper.

THE BARON'S BACK, BABY!

ahem Sorry. Just a little excited. I've been a fan of Baron Sengir since he was a creature, and he's been a popular request for a Commander-level reprint or variation for many, many years now. So we're finally getting him! WOO!!!!!

So, Partner. As a mechanic, Partner was introduced in Commander 2016, it was an interesting solution to the question of how the theme of that Commander set - Four Coloured Decks - would work in the face of, well, needing four colours for your Commander.

Personally, my bet was on Hybrid mana in the theme of Alara Reborn, where you could have a creature with a casting cost of, say... for four colours in their identity, but you would only need three to cast. But that was not what we got. Instead, we got these fifteen Legndary Commanders, three in each deck, but not equal in terms of colour representation. There is, for example, only one Partner Commander in Commander 2016 - the uh.... quite unimpressive Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa. But there are two in , being Thrasios, Triton Hero and Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix.

Partner allows you to have two Commanders, each counting against the total 100 cards in the deck, as long as both creature had the Partner Keyword attached to it, and it was an otherwise legal Commander. You know, in case something got banned for being broken. Which hasn't happened yet! So, you could choose Commanders with the same colour pairing, such as Akiri, Line-Slinger and Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder to create a deck with two semi-complimentary Commanders that share a single color with Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist partnered up with Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker for a deck in Jeskai Colours. Or even pair up two Commanders with no shared colours to create a deck that is four colours!

Partner allowed for an unprecedented degree of flexibility, with ... let's see here... 15 potential Commanders, multiply by 14 potential partners - 210 possible Commander combinations of sorts. Now, obviously some of these were better than others, as the combination of and symbol:UG that makes the Thousand Year Aurora Deck so powerful.

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Now, each Partner in your deck had separate tracking of its relevant Commander Tax, and each Commander was tracked separately when it came to dealing out Commander Damage. Otherwise, all relevant rules and cards still applied.

Partner as a mechanic, was deemed to be a success both for Wizards and for the community, and both looked forward to when it would come back.

And it did come back with the Battlebond set. Now, while Battlebond was aimed at promoting Two-Headed Giant as a format, which meant that there was a theme of 'two' and doubling to go into it - and still a better "double" set than Double Masters, that's for sure.

But Battlebond tweaked the Partner mechanic by introducing the "Partner With" subset. With this change, the mechanic allowed for Legendary Creatures with the Partner With keyword can be the joint Commander as long as it's just with the named Commander. Like Gorm the Great when paired with Virtus the Veiled could be your commander. But Ley Weaver and Lore Weaver could not as they were not Legendary.

Partner With however, had an additional caveat for the non-Commander format of 2-Headed Giant. If you cast a creature with Partner With... fro the hand or the graveyard or what have you, you can then (or rather, target player, such as your teammate) can search their library and put the partner of the creature you cased into their hand. Of course, as has been pointed out to me, this is still a search effect rather than a literal reading of the cards where it simply says to "Put" the relevant creature into the hand, and thus has all the regular limitations of searching your library, including being made a mess of by Aven Mindcensor or Shadow of Doubt. This was something that didn't really affect Commander players in so much as it allowed these thematically paired creatures (or in one case (pair) - Planeswalkers) to show up one right after the other in non-Commander formats, like 2 Headed Giant.

Partner With allowed Wizards to more tightly coordinate the two halves of the Partner pair as they could better directly benefit the other while not being part and parcel of cards that just search up other named cards - or even the same card. Alpine Houndmaster is a recent example, while Avarax is a bit older, and I don't even remember that one. Weird.

Regardless, the idea behind Partner With was a neat variation on the base mechanic, one that, again, actually worked out pretty well both in and out of Commander. It was another success in the general successfulness that was Battlebond.

Enough so that in Commander 2020, Ikoria edition, it got brought back! As each deck had four commanders in it, but of those four, two were a Partner With pair, consisting of one in a single colour and one in two colours to make for a three color deck rather than just two colours with the other Parther With combinations. And I can tell you, I am going to have so much fun with Brallin, Skyshark Riderr and his partner, Shabraz, the Skyshark  ^Flip when the Slow Grow Tournament starts up next year. I mean, seriously, who doesn't want to ride into battle on a flying shark?

People who are WRONG, that's who.

Anyway, with the mechanic back and still proving that it's not a bad one, Wizards turned their attention to Commander Legends. Or perhaps still had their eye on the product because of the way the time frame for set design works. But regardless, a toe-dipping from Commander Ikoria meant that there was still a positive result for Partner, which meant that it was a full GO! for Partner in Commander Legends.

The first thing about these Partners that I applaud is that they are appearing at all rarities - (Mythic) Rare, Uncommon and Common. In fact, The Prismatic Piper is the first Common Legendary Creature since Legends and Homelands. No, seriously, Joven is a Legendary Creature at Common! Anyway, By putting that creature in that slot, and more importantly, giving it the ability to choose its own colour, means that it is the card meant to be drafted later in the pod - or even just put straight into your deck during the deck building process as though it were a basic land - in order to give you a wider choice about which colour you want to play if you haven't drafted a relevant Commander already. It's a fixer, but it's also a 3/3 for and now I think Wizards must have considered making it a Changeling too so that it could literally go into any colour and any tribe as a Commander, but chose not to for whatever reason. Sad. Or it would be a pauper version of Morophon, the Boundless.

I'm also hoping we'll see Planeswalkers with Partner, but that is something that we'll have to wait for spoiler season to begin in order to see.

Now, Partner isn't a perfect mechanic. Just mostly. Due to its modal nature where anyone can pair up with anyone, Partner Commanders tend toward either the hyper-specialized or the more generic. It's hard to make mostly viable Parters as you have to, from the design perspective, consider how this Commander will work with any other Partner out there. An advantage to Partner With for sure, as you can dictate how the two creatures work, but every new Partner Commander is an exponential growth in interactions in the Command Zone. The four new Partners raised the potential combinations from 210 to 342. And we're looking at - according to Wizards - Fourty Partner Commanders in Commander Legends. That means 1560 potential combinations of Commanders just from that set. Or 2970 combinations with the 15 from Commander 2016.

Yeah, it gets big, really quick.

Another drawback to Partner that for the most part, you're not always getting what you want in terms of colour combinations. Rather, because you are limited to only two creatures with partner in total in your Command Zone, and that can limit the colours you can have. Even in the initial core set of Partners from 2016, you were limited to four colours in your deck, and more likely you would wind up with a three colour or even a two colour deck. Especially with the plethora of mono-colored Partner Commanders I am seeing so far.

Yes, I know, four examples aren't much of a sampling to go on, but I think that we're going to be seeing a lot of single colour Partners in Commander Legends, and the multi-color ones will be at higher rarities, and certainly won't be innate powerhouses for the most part. Sure, there will be good Commanders and bad Commanders, but the ability to mix and match with Partner will be a whole new world that should make the draft format interesting to watch and hilarious to build in Commander.

I like Partner. I like seeing it, and I look forward to seeing more. Just as long as we accept that the combinations will be more than just colours and we're going to have interesting times ahead.

Just remember to bring a friend to Commander, and I think you'll have more fun that just being by yourself.

So, join me next week then I talk about something new. What, I don't know yet. But until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!