How Did Riku Lose Popularity?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Jan. 24, 2024, 9:12 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
In the early days of EDH, Riku of Two Reflections was very popular, but his popularity has declined in recent years, so I am wondering why that is, since I believe that Riku is an amazing general; I understand that there are generals who have better synergy with instants and sorceries than does Riku and that there are generals who have better synergy with creatures than does Riku, but how many generals can do both of those? Or is Riku's decline in popularity due to him not being sufficiently powerful in either area (i.e., him being a "jack of all trades, master of none")?
What does everyone else say about his? How did Riku lose popularity?
The original Commander 2011 commanders were as much defining and refining the color space for enemy trios as they were introducing a new product. The last 10+ years have seen a lot of development, and what was exploratory and experimental then is well-established now. If nothing else, there are simply a lot more options--a deck that might have been headed by Riku of Two Reflections could now be Iluna, Apex of Wishes or Xyris, the Writhing Storm or Surrak Dragonclaw. If you were playing before 2019, you had five options: Riku, Surrak, Animar, Soul of Elements, Maelstrom Wanderer, or Intet, the Dreamer. Now, there are more options, and more specialized options. The four years since then have quadrupled the lost of possible commanders for that color set.
I haven't seen a Ruhan of the Fomori or Damia, Sage of Stone deck for a very long time, but those were popular, too.
January 24, 2024 10:21 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #4
ouroborobelisk, no one at the store where I play is saying anything negative about Riku; I read this article, here, and wondered why its author was stating that Riku has declined in popularity, so your explanation makes sense.
January 24, 2024 11 p.m.
griffstick says... #5
I 100% agree with what legendofa said. Yasova Dragonclaw was around at that time too
January 25, 2024 10:34 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #6
I have spent more time trying to build him than literally any other Commander in the entire game. I've built maybe 7 decks now. Every single one of them fail to win, ever.
The issue is mana cost. The deck requires such a sink of resources between mana and lucrative draw to keep your hand going that you have limited plays when you finally do get something you can copy.
Then you need to put in some removal and counter spells otherwise the big plays you do make just evaporate.
And if you go the ultimate Timmy route of an endless army of massive creatures, you are not only the constant threat but also always subject to wraths. Even when you don't have anything out, you are treated as the threat due to the "potential to come back"
And if you go the Johnny route with slinging spells, you stretch yourself so thin that you have to cherry pick targets and spend the game doing functionally nothing.
And he's too slow to be a Spike card
So really, he just doesn't fit anywhere because he wants to do everything, inefficiently.
Tldr - he's a terrible card, in today's setting T_T
January 25, 2024 5:11 p.m.
Like it or not, Wizards has basically decided that they want Commander to rotate like other formats. Old school Commander is a largely a lost art. For Temur commanders that were out in 2011 I honestly think the only truly strong one any more is Animar, who was always kind of broken. Personally I still run an Intet deck that I built a long time ago, but I know it's not a pretty casual deck.
January 25, 2024 10:18 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #8
Semi-related to the discussion, but I just saw this EDHRec article that was published in the past couple days.
TL;DR - It's basically re-examining Riku as a commander for a Sliver typal deck.
January 26, 2024 1:34 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #9
Crow_Umbra, that is the article that inspired me to make this thread.
TypicalTimmy, I have noticed that I do often have difficulty winning when I use my Riku deck, but I like using it, because of how interesting and challenging he is.
Abaques, how will WotC make a non-rotating format rotate, and why did they decide that? What years or sets qualify as "old-school commander?"
January 26, 2024 9:37 p.m.
DemonDragonJ Since Wizards realized that Commander was their cash-cow and started designing for Commander explicitly the effectiveness of most older cards in a normal game of Commander has shrunk significantly. Sure there are certain staples that are older and go in lots of decks, but they are largely a common set of cards like Sol Ring, Swords to Plowshares or Rampant Growth that tend to fill in the gaps of a deck as opposed to being the engine that drives it.
The sheer number of new cards printed every year has more than doubled in size from what it used to be. Seriously, run this query in Scryfall:
(game:paper) legal:commander is:firstprint year=2013
then run this one:
(game:paper) legal:commander is:firstprint year=2023
and compare the number of cards returned). And the number of possible commanders has increased even more. Wizards makes money when people buy their sealed product and they think that the best way to do so is to aim at Commander players. The end result is that the Riku's and Damia's just can't compete at even lower powered tables because they were designed before the level of power creep had taken hold.
As far as "old-school commander", for me that's probably closer to what Commander was back in 2017 or so, before Wizards really committed to Commander focused design. I recognize that some others might have different definition, but that's mine.
January 26, 2024 10:45 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #11
Abaques, I am frankly very displeased with how many products WotC is printing each year, especially Commander products, because it is simply far too difficult to keep up with them, so I dearly wish that WotC would decrease the number of products that they print, each year, to allow players time to rest between each release.
Also, I especially miss when Commander products were standalone sets, and not related to the current standard set, since I feel that the current model actually restricts them and limits their freedom to explore new designs and stories.
January 26, 2024 11:02 p.m.
DemonDragonJ I also liked the standalone Commander products. As I thought about the new program, it struck me that the Commander sets are sort of filling the role of the second set from the old block pattern, which is another thing I liked better. It expands the presence of new planes and adds at least a little bit to the stories of the planes themselves--not as much as I'd really like, and definitely not as much as they deserve, but something's better than nothing in this case.
So while I don't like the huge influx of Commander-specific products or the one-and-done planes, I can at least get by on how the current system works. It's not perfect, and the old ways were much better in my opinion, but it's what we have right now.
ouroborobelisk says... #2
IMO: Commander has changed so much since 2011 when he came on the scene. Both his abilities are mana intensive & todays EDH games are much more streamlined & have a much lower mana curve in most games. As a big time Riku of Two Reflections player, I love him as a commander & I have 2 different decks with him at the helm. 1 is an OOPS, All Spells & the other is all ramp into huge creature spells. Both are fun to pilot & he still wins me games. That all said,another reason he has fallen off is that people like to play the latest, new & cool things. It's just that simple. I feel you should just play what you want to play & how you want to play, and if people at your LGS give you grief over it, just find new folks to battle with.
January 24, 2024 9:46 p.m.