Why are Commander cards being printed in sets now that aren't in the precons?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Feb. 22, 2022, 3:03 a.m. by TypicalTimmy
I noticed this first with Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor in Midnight Hunt, because with being Grixis, she couldn't have been in the Dimir or Selesnya decks.
I'm not sure if the trend continued since, but within Neon Dynasty, Myojin of Grim Betrayal and a few others are printed as Commander cards. However, ND doesn't have a black deck? It has Gruul and Azorius.
So why are cards being printed within the "Commander" set that aren't within the colors of their respective decks, and furthermore if these decks can't have these cards, where are the cards being opened from?
fadelightningmm says... #3
Wotc likes money is the reason why. They see commander as the cash cow format and can drive players to buy other products by putting cards for their format in those products
February 22, 2022 9:23 a.m.
Logistically they need to use a different symbol than the set, otherwise it would seem to be a Standard-legal card. Rather than utilize a third symbol, they are just using the Commander-Neon Dynasty symbol to effectively mean "All Non-Standard Neon Dynasty Cards".
February 22, 2022 1:59 p.m.
I think that also commander has now grown to be the largest format by a long shot, and it's growing so fast that trying to support it is challenging. A couple of years ago they were printing one commander set a year, and at that rate no one would be able to afford precons due to demand alone, and there could be a risk of there not being enough diversity among commanders and strategies. As such they are using regular sets to put out more stuff. Of course, they have been designing commander-intended cards in standard sets for awhile, the difference being that those were also standard legal. This came back to bite them though with cards like Omnath, Locus of Creation, which definitely fit in the Zendikar revival thematically, but which they didn't build a precon around and was standard legal. This broke standard and they kept having to ban stuff. So now they can just print those things in regular sets but make them not standard legal. Of course, some cards like Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor were never going to break standard, but this also frees up a standard legal mythic rare slot for a card that could have more impact on the format. It is very weird and could be potentially confusing to newer players to standard, but given the explosive growth of commander I understand it.
plakjekaas says... #2
Set and collector boosters
February 22, 2022 3:54 a.m.