Hello folks! I hope you are having an awesome day today!

Today I want to make the case for why Commander power creep has allowed a lot of Commanders that create unfair interactions into the format and often bring the format to a less interactive gamestate.

Let's begin by showing the most recent example of how I think power creep for potential Commanders has gone astray. This is Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, from the most recent set. When Golos arrives to the battlefield from your Command Zone, he brings a land from the library to the battlefield tapped. He can bring in any land, so something like Command Tower, or any other land that will make all colors of mana, and lands such as Academy Ruins and Volrath's Stronghold, or Strip Mine and Wasteland.

Then, on the next turn, you can use the land you just brought out and the mana you already have naturally built up to activate him the following turn and get three cards played for free from your deck. And those can be anything: Lands, big giant spells, and fat Eldrazi-sized creatures. Things that win the game quickly. And because Golos has a color identity of all five colors, anything is eligible, so long as it's legal for the format. Time Stretch for two turns is just one obvious example.

The worst-case scenario for Golos is that you'll have it out on turn five, and then go off on turn six. It's very easy to get it to go off faster than that.

Because Golos costs colorless mana to play, there are no traditional weaknesses. Most five color Commanders would require you to assemble all five colors before playing them, although since General Tazri a few years ago, that has been becoming a less common restriction (and also serves as a good example of Commander Creep). Thus, it doesn't matter which colors of mana I have in my opening hand. I can drop Golos, and get the colors I need. Note that you could have printed Golos getting the land, but only when played from the hand, or just getting a basic land into your hand, rather than ramping any land onto the battlefield. You could have built-in some restrictions that would require the builder to establish, thus creating points at which an opponent could disrupt them from going off. But here? Everything is in the Commander. Golos provides his own mana-fetching, and combo kill. Kill or counter Golos, and it'll just get recast, and even the Commander tax isn't much of a counter if they are getting a land each time.

Golos is a perfect example of what I consider to be over-the-line Commander design that has drifted past Commander Creep. We'll look at others later, and then I'll also show you some recently printed options that I think are fine as well, so show where you can go. (Please note that I am not casting aspersions on you. If you love Golos and are looking forward to playing him as your leader, then that's fine. In fact, later I will recommend that you do just that.)

Let's take a step back and review some of the key points I want to consider:

Imagine that you are designers for Magic. Because of some recent ban feelings over bans, you have been told that moving forward, Wizards will not make any more bans for Standard. The cards printed must stand on their own. Do you see that as changing how some cards are released? Do you think a card like Nexus of Fate would have sniffed the light of day as is if they knew that it couldn't be banned?

I suspect that some of the cards printed might wind up a little weaker, and some of the answers would be more commonly available and powerful as well. Something like The Elderspell in the same set that pushed planeswalkers is a good example of what you may see more of moving forward.

What is Commander? And more importantly, what is it supposed to be?

This is how Wizards introduces the format: "Commander is an exciting, unique way to play Magic that is all about awesome legendary creatures, big plays, and battling your friends in epic multiplayer games!"¹ But how do the people who created it describe it? "Commander is a Magic: The Gathering format which emphasizes [sic] multiplayer play, social interactions, interesting games, and creative deck-building."²

What does that mean? Consider the concept of big plays and epic multiplayer games, social interactions and creative deck-building. I do think that the traditional sort of Commander idea is for these four sets of things to interact with each other.

I've discussed in previous articles how we are really living in an era of two Commanders, not one. We have people that emphasize effects for social interaction and fun multiplayer craziness and shenanigans. They are not about using the quirks of the format's rules to create a game-winning combo by turn four or five.

Adherents of the older Commander style continue to see the game as an older school concept. They see the format as a fun way to express themselves and have big swings and big games, with lots of interactions. They are happy to see one player cast Insurrection to grab all of the creatures and swing and kill everyone at once, only to have one of their foes cast Rout as an instant and kill the creatures instead. That is a fun give-and-take that I think most people whom prefer the initial style of Commander would prefer. To be fair and open, I consider myself one of those players.

But there are many folks that play the format with the idea of eliminating interaction and winning quickly. I suspect this group is increasing in number. I have traveled all over and played games in many pick-up stores around the country. In the last five years, I have played Commander games in Alabama and Ohio, West Virginia and Massachusetts, Michigan and Virginia, Arizona and Nevada. The only region of America where I have not played pickup Commander games at the local card store is on the west coast. And yet, even though I have played in hundreds of pickup games at local card stores, I have run into the 2nd win-at-all-costs style of the format, every, single, time. I have not run into a more relaxed, traditional, style of playing the format. I'm not sure who still does play that format anymore.

And there are obvious reasons for that. If your decks cut off avenues of interaction, then you are much more likely to win, because your foes' may have few or no options to stop you from going off.

As Ross Merriam stated succinctly when discussing Modern's new bogeyman that uses Altar of Dementia, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, and such, "If the format's broke, don't try to fix it."³ In a similar way, Emma Handy stated recently in a Modern article about the new deck, "Speaking from experience, the people who didn't play Eldrazi during Eldrazi Winter didn't feel smart and didn't look smart. There aren't any extra match points given to people who win tournaments on hard mode. There's a clear, defined, boogeyman of the format. Just take your free wins where you can."⁴

Lots of people who play are, I am sure, in a similar situation. Let's discuss another top card for our Commander Power Creep conversation:

This is Meren of Clan Nel Toth. As I discussed a few weeks ago when I named her the leader of my most recent edition of the most be-hated commanders, not only is she one of the most played Commanders of all time, but she's very hard to interact with.⁵ You rack up experience counters as creatures die, so even if Meren of Clan Nel Toth is sent back to the Command Zone, she will come back just as powerful as when she left. Also, note that her ability triggers at the end of the turn, thus removing sorcery-speed answers that could stop her from triggering. You must deal with the experience counters and her as well, at instant speed. On her own, she creates a nasty engine that both hard to interact with and wins powerfully. She is an example of a Commander that appeals to the latter type of player.

And there's nothing wrong with that. For example, Kya Vess of EDHREC will discuss in her own Meren article just a few months ago, that has this fun line - "I personally prefer her far more then Karador, Ghost Chieftain. Having to pay the mana cost to summon something from my graveyard? Uh, no. Meren has spoiled me far too much to pay for my creatures like some commoner"⁶

Exactly! Kya gets it. She is in the Ross camp. If you preferred Commander prior to when the Merens and the Goloses arrived on the scene with their difficult to interact with natures and easy ability to overtake the game, then it doesn't matter. It's not the player's job to fix a format like that, and return to the roots of big plays, and such. Commander has creeped past the part of just having some1-drop the cost, and you are now getting things free.

Commanders like Meren and Golos break the rules of the game. Free spells, creatures, and more? This should always be a danger sign. You should never be able to drop things, for free, recur things for free, or tutor from your deck, and such, without a big, giant brake on them.

And this is a more recent occurrence. While there were some exceptions out there most of the earlier stuff created for Commander was quite flexible, and interactive. Cards like Riku of Two Reflections and Ghave, Guru of Spores are both powerful, and yet also easily answerable. They are strong, yet do so without breaking the game or being a one-card win condition like Golos.

And while experience counters as designed were not a strong idea (at least put them on the creature...), at least Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas was designed in such as way that our good Giant Soldier is easy to disrupt. All I have to do is use one of my many anti-creature tools like Maze of Ith or removal of things like Whispersilk Cloak in case things get out of hand. Kalemne doesn't get anything out for free, so I have multiple ways to shut down Kalemne... but Mizzix of the Izmagnus is almost as bad, although a little harder to get the counters, and is the 2nd most played Izzet colored leader ever, beating out every Niv-Mizzet as well as both Jhoiras. He is the ideal sorcery/instants matter leader.

To be perfectly open, I do have a real life Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck although he's a placeholder for my Prodigal Sorcerer + Fungusaur build and thus isn't the main feature of the deck.

One of the ways left to players to interact and push back is to deny them the ability to cast their spells in the first place. I talked earlier about Golos's Commander Tax not mattering as much because each time you kill him, he brought a new land to the party, so the additional tax is reduced. Well, the main weapon left in Commander players' arsenal is tempo-ish in nature.

And I suspect that's the key weapon that the tempo-based Commander decks lean on. They run cards that you would never have seen in casual Magic for decades like Nether Void, Stasis, Winter Orb, Static Orb, and Rising Waters. Why? In order to stop Meren and similar Commander Creep leaders from going off. She's only a problem if your foe can actually cast her. And if you run enough counters and hard tempo cards, then they are not going to be able to cast their machines of death. The best answer to Golos? Cards like these.

Take Meren. If you kill her, then she can come back just as powerful as ever, as discussed before. That gives you a few options:

And that? That's pretty much it. But the number of actual answers for Meren and other folks that aren't in the tempo box is very, very small. This has created a Spike-infused format where you are running powerhouse that wins on its own and is hard to interact with, or you are running a tempo-based answer that keeps them from ever casting their spells. Or you are sitting on the sidelines watching and not doing anything because you brought a fair deck to the table.

I know that there are kitchen tables out there where most folks playing are running the first style of Commander play, and leaders and fun ideas are embraced. These are the ones who saw Morophon and were happy that they could now have a leader for their Ape or Hound Puppy deck. Awesome!

And then adherents of the new format saw that Morophon reduces the casting cost. They built nasty engines of death where every creature type named by Morophon is free and they vomit their deck in a few turns, using the normal modern Commander accelerants like Ancient Tomb, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Mana Vault to force Morophon out quickly. They'll even use Morophon for tribes that already have strong leaders, such as Slivers. Why? Because all the five-color Slivers like Sliver Hivelord, Sliver Queen, and such are all free to drop. The Overlord is broken nasty when it's free, and all of the Slivers that don't have colorless mana costs, like Crystalline Sliver, are now free to drop. Humans and Slivers are both now vicious engine game winners under Morophon. And Slivers were already a rough ask in their normal form.

And much like Golos, I think WOTC certainly could have given casual players a one-size fits all tribal lord without the massive casting cost reduction part of this card while still keepings it's five color identity.

Here, let me give you two examples I brainstormed just now:

: Search your library for a creature card of the named type. Shuffle. Place it on top of your library.

: Put target named creature type card from your graveyard on top of your library.

Neither of these are mass card advantage or break the game. But either would give you a fun bonus beyond +1/+1 to your type. I prefer the first as a repeatable Worldly Tutor for five mana, no one will likely get too broke. But as it's a repeatable search effect, it may take too long, so you may prefer the latter. Either (and many others I'm sure you could think of too) would give you five colors of mana and be flexible for any creature type without breaking the game.

As players? You know, it's not our job to fix it. I am sad that I don't have the ability to easily play Commander with some of the older ideas of big plays, swingy effects, and playful interaction. But I can't flip over my Vhati il-Dal leader or my Surrak Dragonclaw Beasts deck if I want to have a chance of being in the game at all. That's why I have a recent deck that runs cards like Overburden and such and tosses them into play with Zur the Enchanter. ⁷

I think there are a few ways that this could be addressed, if anyone wants to:

Wizards

Should Wizards care too, they could print more obvious, evident, and powerful answers. They could print more ways to shut down graveyard-based decks better than just the two or three mass hosers (like Leyline of the Void) that are out there right now.

I also think that Wizards should take more care with the potential Commanders they print to ensure that you have to either work for a game-winning condition or have multiple avenues of attack. I think the experience counter was a bad idea from the start as one of the key avenues for interaction with a Commander - killing it and forcing its stuff to be reset, is no longer an option. A potential leader like Golos or Morophon could have been designed to do what they needed to do, without singlehandedly creating powerful game-winning situations all on their own.

But, the issue is that Wizards doesn't control the format. That's why I talked about what it would be like if they had an edict that they couldn't ban any cards in Standard from above. Well it's the same thing here. They cannot do anything other than print answers to the problems they printed. I'm not sure that they are that invested in it anyway. It sells. It's the dominant way the format seems to be played now. They've learned the trick of having some strong Commander cards in most sets to help sell those sets.

To give credit to the company, there are a few Commanders recently made that were warmly received and didn't break anything either.

Here's a great example. Feather feels fair. There's only a smaller number of instants and sorceries that you can toss into your deck that Feather will work with. They require you to spend the mana. They come back at the end of the turn rather than immediately. Feather also has a lot of vectors for interaction. One can answer Feather, her spells, or her targets. Y'all can use discard to force them from the hand or run some fun and clever ways that will also answer other self-targeting fun times as well - such as Dismiss into Dream. Feather has enough dials on her that she's fair, fun, and does interesting things. I'd love more Feathers and fewer Merens.

But they are already out there, and they just keep coming. My hope is that Wizards has learned that they cannot print a card in Commander that hurts the format, and then just ban it (or change the rules to neuter it).

Rules Committee

Much like Wizards of the Coast, this may not even be something that bothers the Rules Committee. They may prefer the status quo or may deem any potential changes as worse than the infection.

For example, one strong way to end this power creep and interactivity would be to ban all of the Merens and similar cards like Zur the Enchanter. You could bring back the "Banned as a Commander" list as that requires a deck designed to abuse them, and for the experience counterage of Meren. I suspect that would be enough. But if you consider, say, 5 of the 15 most played Commanders according to EDHREC.com as problematic, are you willing to ban them and potentially lose many players in one fell swoop? I doubt it.

One of the lessons that Commander has tried to learn from the mostly defunct Five Color was not to have too big of a banned and restricted list. Would you be willing to ban every card like Ad Nauseam, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, Stasis, and similar cards instead? Or some combination thereof? You would have to swell the ranks of the banned list to its current size of around 40 cards to around 80 or 90 easily.

The problem with Commander is that it's been solved as a format. Folks now know how to build nasty decks that speed up and punch and fight. We know the metagame backwards and forwards. Why is Mox Pearl banned but not Mana Crypt which gives two mana for no mana investment? Are you willing to off one of the sacred cows of the format - Sol Ring to give it more variance and reduce the reliable on a solved format? I doubt it. This has become the standard way of playing in every place I've encountered. If nothing has been pushed back yet, then I feel we have safely pushed past the point of no return.

For example, when the committee banned Channel, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, and Tolarian Academy, they said: "The watchword of the Rule's Committee's vision of the format is 'interactive.' We'd like to foster an environment where ridiculous things happen but that everyone playing has a chance to do them. Early reliable hyper-production of mana often leads to a single player playing by himself and others watching and that's not what we want for EDH."⁸

Isn't that where we are at now with these fast mana cards? They may not be the only issue with modern Commander creep, but it's clearly one of them.

For these reasons, I don't see the RC Coming in and banning a bunch more cards. They have enforced this idea of the social contract, and if your playgroup wants to Spike it up, then they can, and if they want to Timmy is up, they can, and if they want to Johnny it up, they can. Whatever your group wants, your group can do, independent of the rest of the format. That's their goal of the format.⁹

There are some other changes they could make:

I doubt that we'll see anything different. Commander is incredibly popular right now, and many players only have tournament or Commander decks built - gone are the days of other casual formats and 60 card casual brews. I haven't played those in real life in ages. The way that Commander was sold (it's a retreat to go to get away from the pace of life in the tournament circuit, embracing consideration for others, and not being a d***) just isn't the case anymore. I am dying to an Ad Nauseam Tendrils deck on the 3rd turn in pickup games at card stores, where there is no ability to say, "Hey, we aren't going to play with you again if you bring that."Just change the way you sell it, so that it represents the modern nature of where the format is now.

And that's it. Those are my quick thoughts about the power creep with format and the ongoing embracing of the Spikier, win-at-all-costs side of things. We looked at potential ways for folks in the decision-making places that might make changes, as well as some leaders that have elements of interactively and fun attached to them that we could see emphasized. What did you think? Anything I missed? I'd love to talk with you more and have a great day!

¹ https://magic.wizards.com/en/content/commander-format

² http://www.mtgcommander.net/rules.php

³ http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38766_5-Burning-Questions-Facing-Modern-Before-SCG-Pittsburgh.html

⁴ http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38797_Is-Playing-Anything-Other-Than-Hogaak-Bridgevine-At-SCG-Pittsburgh-Possibly-Correct.html

⁵ https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/abesargent-05032019-top-ten-be-hated-commanders-redux

⁶ https://articles.edhrec.com/bringing-magic-to-life-unburying-the-dead/

⁷ https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/abesargent-10022018-zurs-overburdening-commander-deck

⁸ www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/19638_Embracing_the_Chaos_Vision_for_the_Format_and_Previews.html

⁹ http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/multiplayer/18307_Embracing_The_Chaos_The_Social_Contract.html