Thanks everyone for the great responses so far! I'm trying to figure out if house-ruling planeswalkers as legal commanders is safe from the standpoint of balance, and from what I can tell, only LotV could be oppressive enough for a ban.

I think you misunderstood what I meant. I don't think LotV would actually be bannably powerful, I think that if the EDH Rules Committee allowed planeswalkers, they would ban her because they hate symmetrical staxxy commanders that have access to Dark Ritual, like Braids (hashtag FreeBraids2017). I actually think that Liliana would be tier 2.5 or tier 3. As a stax commander, she's no more powerful than Alesha or Shattergang.

None of the PW's are banworthy as commanders.

Liliana of the Veil is nowhere near as powerful as Braids in the command zone. She can only make one player sac one creature every turn cycle, and she can't even keep that up indefinitely. Her +1 is in no way problematic, since it doesn't actually effect people's board investments, just cards they haven't spent mana on yet. To compare: Necrogen Mists, Oppression, Creeping Dread, Cunning Lethemancer, Stronghold Rats, and Painful Quandary are all cards already in Black's wheelhouse, and none of those are banworthy, despite the fact that you could tutor up Necrogen Mists or Oppression up every game by running Zur as your commander if you wanted to.

In contrast, Braids hits creatures, artifacts, and lands, effects everyone the turn she comes down, and requires no upkeep or extra investment, which is pretty oppressive for a single card's effect, and dominating to have in the command zone.

Ajani Vengeant's +1 doesn't effect enough of the board to really be effective as a stax commander, and ult'ing him is a pipe dream. (Actually ult'ing most any planeswalker in commander is a pipe dream. No one is going to let that happen when you can pick up free card advantage just by swinging into them. You should just ignore any PW's final ability when evaluating them for this list if you can't get it within 2 turns or you have a really worthwhile reason to tutor up Doubling Season every game.)

Sorin Markov also doesn't really do enough to be banworthy, at least from a competitive standpoint.

And I really don't see how Ashiok does anything relative to commander. There are much easier ways to steal your opponent's creatures in blue/black.

You missed Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded needs to be banned ASAP. He's just too stylish to be a commander.

Thanks for the great responses, everyone!

Out of curiosity, if it were legal, which planeswalker would you use as a commander?

Sorin Markov is stronger than I think you all are considering.

We actually did a planeswalker commander at my LGS and he just ran roughshod over the field.

Set to 10 then Exsanguinate for 10 gg.

Or just a 10/10 thing and just gib someone that way

Nantuko Husk seems good especially if you are running a Contamination package.

Food for Contam > Contam > Husk > Sorin set 10 > Die > repeat previous 2 steps.

i hate to be the one to interrupt the planeswalker train but submission/presubmission for optimized phelddagriff:

Rhabdophobia

Commander / EDH* chaosumbreon87

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Hmm, renaming the Banned catagory actually helped the layout of the tier list quite a bit. It shifted tier 4 into the 3rd column, drastically shortening the overall the length.

@hektormagee: The best build for Roon may indeed be reanimator, but the list you linked could use some work. Currently it's average CMC is extremely high, with a lot of low-impact fatty cards Acidic Slime and Body Double clogging up the curve. It's also missing a lot of key cards like Birds of Paradise and Mana Crypt. Even the landbase needs an overhaul. Things like Wastes and Boseiju, Who Shelters All have no use in the deck and would be far better as basic lands.

I have a friendly public service announcement for many of you aspiring cEDH deckbuilders. Ive noticed many of the lists posted have completely fixable flaws in them that cause awkward conversations and hurt feelings.

1) Please do not submit your "current paper lists" unless you have a $4000+ dollar budget. Your real life lists are simply not good enough because they are missing essential and irreplaceable cards. For example, An elfball deck without Gaea's Cradle cannot by definition be optimized. Same with a sharuum deck without Mishra's Workshop or a Leo deck without Timetwister.

2) Please do your research. Look at competitive examples of a deck on this website, cEDH subreddit or mtg salvation. Test those decks to see why they are good before claiming your version is the best version.

3) Do not submit a deck unless your curve is within reasonable limits. An avg cc above 3.0 is way to slow and clunky to hold its own in any competitive environment. Even a colorless deck should have a good reason to play high cc cards. A good rule of thumb is that the # of 1cc cards should be higher than 2cc card, which should be higher than 3cc cards. Anything above 3cc better be really good and anything above 5cc better be absolutely irreplaceable. Fast combo should never go above an avg cc of 2.0 and stax should never go above 2.8. This is singleton vintage. If there is a cheaper effect in your color scheme its probably going to be more effective than its more expensive and "powerful" counterpart.

I do not mean to sound condesending, these are just lessons I learned the hard way.

My only point of contention is the avg cmc. There are some (rare) exapmples of decks that break the cmc restriction just based on reanimator/etc. I've always had this issue with cEDH people saying that cmc is a hard and fast, unbreakable, rule.

A quick and dirty example is Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion for the NOoze combo. Both are 6 cmc and will bump your curve higher than they should since you are never casting them, simply using them in your grave.

Ohthenoises, I'm confused about the combo you mentioned, are you sure you meant to link Nantuko Husk? I don't see how that interacts with Contamination or Sorin.

Also keep in mind that we're talking about PW's as commanders in terms of the rankings on this list, not how they do against each other. I have no doubt that Sorin is strong in a PW-only league, but that's because most of them are hindered by mono color identities or having weak abilities in commander. Hardly any planeswalker stacks up against the commanders on even T2.5 of this list, and Sorin is pretty squarely in T3.

Lilbrudder, agreed with everything you said, although I feel your CMC restrictions might be a little too stringent. For example, there are optimized lists where CMC 2 might outweigh CMC 1, especially down in T3, but it's good as a general rule going into building a deck, and yeah, if you're including a card that CMC 5 or greater, you better have a damn good reason.

Points 1 and 2 are definitely correct though. For everyone who wants to submit a decklist, remember that it's perfectly ok to make a second copy of your paper list that has all the super expensive stuff you could never afford in real life. There's no requirement that you actually need to own the decklist you submit, so anything you can think of that would make the deck better is fair game. Go nuts.

Thats fair for that particular combo, which needs an avg cc of at least 2.3 to work, but aside from the occassional exceptions it truly is vitally important. Its remarkable how badly even a couple high cc cards will slow down your deck. I definitely should have said "almost never"

Ohthenoises the CMC restriction is more to make sure you always have spells to play in your turns. There are, of course, things that break it like Reanimator and stuff like Narset, but the idea for them is more that you should limit yourself to just the bare minimum of high cost cards you need, since they're essentially dead cards cards if you have them in your hand.

A good reanimator deck with all of its tutors only really needs a few targets to bring back. (Like, 5. Tops)

It also doesn't help that most of the commanders that were good for reanimator strategies recently got access to combo strategies that proved to be slightly more competitive, which is part of the reason there are so few of them featured here right now.

All this is especially true after the mulligan rule change, since it hurt decks that relied on high cost cards the most.

sonnet666 Contamination packages usually involve some number of Reassembling Skeletons. Nantuko Husk in conjunction with Sorin Markov can easily read "kill target player" since you can just sac the skeleton a few times for lethal damage easily.

Contamination would be the best/easiest way for a mono B deck to hate out other decks. It seems a logical direction to take it since we can't really ramp into sorin TOO fast, there are options of course but BBB is a lot of color to come up with. I suppose T2 sorin isn't outside the realm of possibility but eh.

Also, keeping in mind that setting someones life total to 10, while not outright winning the game can put a cramp on someone looking to win via ad naus/necropotence.

I'm not saying sorin is bannable but he certainly isn't garbage is the only point I was trying to make.

I'm aware cmc restriction is meant as a loose guideline but SOOOO many cEDH players take it as a solid unbreakable rule. It happens quite a lot and It's a little frustrating.

So... Solid Tier 3?

I feel like we're saying the same things just differently.

I'd say more than T3 personally just because I've actually seen it in action.

I know there's not a whole lot of more fine tuned Borborygmos Enraged deck lists out there, so I figured that I could link my deck list that includes a primer that goes over card choices and general strategy.

Huge Tracts of Lands

Commander / EDH* invigorate_berserk10

SCORE: 4 | 4 COMMENTS | 856 VIEWS

Hey all, given Lilbrudder's comment, I've thrown together a Saffi Eriksdotter lists based off my paper one but that has no budget:

Just Stay Dead: cEDH Edition

Commander / EDH* enpc

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I would be keen to get people's thoughts on it as well.

What is the major differences between a T2 and T2.5 deck? What main factors separate those?

So... How would sorin be tier2?
looks to me like
T4- Sorin, put someone at ten.
T5- bump +2
T6- Ibid
T7- put some one at ten
T8- Bump + 2
T10- put the last player at ten

All the while you need to keep Sorin Alive, figure out how to deal 30 more damage (in black) while also keeping whatever stax lock you made (T1-3) (I'm assuming that the deck is capable of 5 mana T4 which also takes away from setting up a stax lock) Additionally, Sorin's ability doesn't deal 30 damage so the Adnaus/Necro person (the people that will be hit hardest) are fine as long as they beat you to it

Not hating or anything (OK maybe that was a little vhement) But Sorin seems more like kallia and purph in that their Jerks, but that doesn't mean their good.

(All the same I like being a jerk so if someone makes a sorin list I'll probably play it, lol.

So... How would sorin be tier2?
looks to me like
T4- Sorin, put someone at ten.
T5- bump +2
T6- Ibid
T7- put some one at ten
T8- Bump + 2
T10- put the last player at ten

All the while you need to keep Sorin Alive, figure out how to deal 30 more damage (in black) while also keeping whatever stax lock you made (T1-3) (I'm assuming that the deck is capable of 5 mana T4 which also takes away from setting up a stax lock) Additionally, Sorin's ability doesn't deal 30 damage so the Adnaus/Necro person (the people that will be hit hardest) are fine as long as they beat you to it

Not hating or anything (OK maybe that was a little vhement) But Sorin seems more like kallia and purph in that their Jerks, but that doesn't mean their good.

(All the same I like being a jerk so if someone makes a sorin list I'll probably play it, lol.

freakingShane: I think the difference is that tier 2 decks can hold thier own in tier 1 environments, whereas tier 2.5 decks are missing a couple important cards needed to be relevant. For instance Food Chain Zegana is just a couple tutors away from being a viable deck.

No, the Sorin line is simple. All you need is 35 mana, Claws of Gix, Panharmonicon, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel.

Play Sorin, set opponent 1 life to 10, sac Sorin to Claws of Gix, replay Sorin, set opponent 2 life to 10, sac to Claws of Gix, replay Sorin, set opponent 3 life to 10, play Panharmonicon, play Gray Merchant, gg.

It's totally practical and not infeasible at all and you're very likely to get over 30 mana playing mono-black and this planeswalker discussion is a very good use of our time here and I'm not being sarcastic about any of this.

Gates88: You can go much more easily than that. Just play Wound Reflection, then next turn play Sorin with Rings of Brighthearth and Strionic Resonator. Set a player's life to 10, then copy it and copy the copy. Then just end the turn and they die to wound reflection. It's like you're over thinking this or something :P