We all know these situations where a card is a perfect fit for your commander deck... if only it had the right color. To help with that and expand deckbuilding possibilities, I created these cards. The idea of these cards is that they rest in your command zone and "change" your commander to add a color to their identity, expanding deckbuilding possibilities. I dubbed them "alterations". They are like aura's that change the way a card functions in the game They use up a deck slot from your commander deck and start out in the command zone, kind of like an uncastable partner.
I'd love to hear if you guys feel these are balanced.
... the Benevolent
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional W to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by white.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, each opponent gains 10 life.
... the Ingenious
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional U to cast and is blue in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by blue.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, each opponent draws a card.
...the Malicious
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional B to cast and is black in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by black.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, choose and discard two cards.
...the Malevolent
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional R to cast and is red in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by red.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, discard a card at random.
...the Wise
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is green in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, each opponent may put a land card from his or her hand onto the battlefield.
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The "play only in your color identity" rule is a fundamental part of Commander and important to format balance. As mondu said, it definitely shouldn't be thrown away, especially not for such comparatively weak drawbacks.
The "play only in your color identity" rule is a fundamental part of Commander and important to format balance. As mondu said, it definitely shouldn't be thrown away, especially not for such comparatively weak drawbacks.
I agree that the drawbacks should not be so weak as to be considered free, but increasing the cost of your commander (slowing you down) + giving an advantage to your opponents (putting you down a card / giving them life) seemed like a tough enough condition to me? what kind of drawbacks are you thinking of then? Keeping in mind that an altered commander should still be playable?
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The drawbacks are all one-time things and are quite minor.
The 1 additional mana is vastly less of a cost than the value of gaining an additional color for your commander. Remember, you're allowing a commander to adopt a new color into it's strategy, some cards were designed to not include a desirable color in order to hold it back.
10 extra life is meaningless in almost every situation in EDH.
One extra card at the game's start is less useful than later in the game, and potentially can force your opponents to discard if they lack a 1-drop.
The black one can be turned to your own advantage very easily.
The loss of one card for the red one is quite minor in an EDH game, not all that different from being down a card from the mulligan.
Putting your opponents one turn ahead on land drops MIGHT hurt, but it's more likely to be just a minor problem.
I think you want these to be ongoing drawbacks, not one-time blips.
...the Slow
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is black in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
Lands you control enter the battlefield tapped.
I dislike it because it does nothing to make the commander feel like it belongs in those colors, and arbitrarily penalizes me even beyond that for wanting more colors in my deck when I could just run some other commander.
I would just increase the mana by one, and have an added small effect when you cast your commander.
i.e.
...the Wise
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is green in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
The altered commander gets +1/+1
When you cast the altered commander from the command zone, create a 1/1 saproling token.
The commander costing 1 more is drawback enough in my opinion. Yes, having more colors for your deck does presumably make the whole deck stronger, and you could argue that the 'whole deck' should be penalized in addition to the commander for this reason, but to that I argue that if you're going to add more than one color and therefore heavily penalize your commander, you could just be running a naturally-5-color commander instead.
If you also limit the benefits solely to your commander, then you create a cost/benefit exchange in the command zone that feels more appropriate, while having an overall deck that isn't weaker than it would be with some other commander who is naturally in those colors.
You could argue that it would enable broken combos like Maralen of the Mornsong with Mindlock Orb or Stranglehold, but frankly there is no penalty high enough to be fair in those abusive cases yet also low enough to be fair in non-abusive cases like adding white to Jedit Ojanen of Efrava for more cat tribal options.
It feels like what you really want to do is print a cycle of "Partner Up" legendary creatures:
Dude2U
Legendary Creature - Human Partner Up (If you have two commanders if one has Partner Up and one does not.)
Flying
As long as Dude is in your command zone, each opponent begins the game with an extra card and have no maximum hand size.
2/2
I don't like the concept of "Partner Up" for clear reasons; I'd much rather see more partner commanders printed.
I feel like there should be initial and ongoing penalties.
White: , Battleworn
Your starting life total is 20.
If you would gain life, gain half that much life (rounded down) instead.
Etc.
That just feels like you're assuming the most abusive possible case (that they're adding white for some abusive combo card that isn't in their normal colors) which is entirely incompatible with any casual use of the effect.
Name a single legendary creature where that would be a fair tradeoff, excluding adding an infinite combo that would normally be out of colors (or some legendary creature I don't know about that would specifically *want* your life total to start lower, in which case it's not a drawback at all).
I don't know if this is the kind of mechanic that can be balanced, really. The drawbacks to prevent people from throwing these kinds of cards into their decks willy-nilly are either going to render decks unusable or be entirely meaningless. The color identity rule keeps decks interesting and lowers the number of staples in a format that already has a number of them. There really isn't any drawback to running a commander with any colors that avoids being either completely unusable or completely broken. It would be like trying to formulate a drawback for a card that doubles a player's starting and maximum hand size.
Hence: , Battleworn
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional W to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by white.
Your starting life total is 20.
If you would gain life, gain half that much life (rounded down) instead.
, Untaught Savant
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional U to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by blue.
Your starting hand size is 5.
Your maximum hand size is 5.
, Indifferent
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional B to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by black.
At the beginning of your first upkeep, discard two cards.
At the beginning of each of your end steps, sacrifice a creature.
, Reckless
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional R to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by red.
At the beginning of your first upkeep, discard a card at random.
Whenever a creature you control attacks, it doesn't untap during your next untap step.
, Infested
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
At the beginning of your first upkeep, each opponent may put a land from their hand onto the battlefield.
At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, each opponent creates a 0/1 green Plant creature token.
What. Even.
All of those are so horrifically punishing that literally the only reason you would ever play any of those is if you're a brand new player who doesn't realize you're getting royally screwed over or if you want to abuse the drawback somehow, in which case the drawback becomes the overpowered part.
(i.e. running Rakdos Charm, Netherborn Phalanx, Repercussion with Blasphemous Act, and Stag Beetle to abuse all the 0/1 plant tokens from the green one)
Nonsense. Adding a colour to a commander deck is a massive boon, and therefore should have an equally encompassing penalty, ideally relating to the main effects added.
The nonsense is that entire post you made.
What "massive boon" are you actually getting in exchange for crippling yourself with any of these? It's not like these drawbacks are mitigating some tremendous gain in tempo or card advantage; you're not drawing two cards per turn just because you added a second color to your deck! And don't pretend like adding black and casting Phyrexian Arena or something is the same thing as drawing a second card per turn from your command zone right from the start, you have to actually find the card in your deck first, spend the mana and a card to cast it, and even then you only have it until it gets Disenchanted.
The bottom line is that if you want an extra color, you could play a different commander with that color!!! If you're going to say that playing, for example, a monocolor commander over a two-color commander could be broken because the monocolor commander's effects are stronger, then you're effectively saying the commander is too strong and the commander needs to be nerfed (by increasing their mana cost, which is huge, and possibly adding some other penalty to the commander).
If I can play a five-color deck with Atogatog as my general and then just never actually cast Atogatog, then why the FUGUE would I need to cripple the deck beyond all hope just so my commander can count as five colors?
Go ahead, try. You can't name a single legend that would actually benefit from any of the ones you've proposed, given that...
-It doesn't count if you're just abusing the drawback, like I mentioned for the plant tokens or adding blue to Hazoret the Fervent just to keep your hand size down.
-It doesn't count if you're just using it to play group hug, since that archetype actually tries to benefit from giving out free stuff like Infested does (more blockers for my Benefactor's Draught!).
-It doesn't count if the 'benefit' is running an off-color combo since, as I mentioned in my previous post, that's the absolute most competitive case and shouldn't be the standard you expect all decks to try for. Even then, I highly doubt there's anything more abusive than, say, Zur the Enchanter or Edric, Spymaster of Trest are without any of these.
Those conditions are important because these are intended to be available for *all* commanders that wish they had an extra color, not just your super-specific gimmick strategy that happens to benefit unduly from the 'drawback' or your hyper-competitive Maralen lock deck that needs the drawback to be fair.
The problem is that they will be used for incredibly degenerate combos, and thus the design needs to account for that. Making them unplayable for casual users is an unfortunate side effect of that design philosophy, but sadly unavoidable.
The original designs would get banned by the rules committee, not on their own merit, but because they would inevitably be used to create some degenerate combos with commanders that would be able to truly abuse having an extra color.
For example, I want to use Sylvan Primordial on its own merits, but other people figured out how to massively abuse it using another card, and so it got banned.
To break a commander with another color, give black to Saffi Eriksdotter, and let her play with all of the black sac outlets and cards that benefit from sacrifices.
Saffi doesn't need black to combo by a long shot. If you're going purely for the combo angle you'd be shooting yourself in the foot by making her come out a turn later, quite frankly. But hey, maybe one turn later isn't enough? Maybe add 1B instead of just B rather than screwing over the deck in some way. Hell, add 2B and give them some black-themed benefit with no added combo potential (maybe +2/+1, menace, and get a zombie when you hit a player with it now that she's CMC 5?). Now she comes out 3 turns later, drastically reducing her unfair speedy combo potential while letting casual players enjoy their decks still and not near-certainly mana screwing people for playing blue or forcing every deck with the black addition to run tokens as the only hope of keeping up with the drawback. You add onto the card in a way that isn't abusive, but charge extra mana in order to make it less ideal (i.e. slower, in any competitive circle) for the abusive part.
As for Avacyn, she now totals 6 cmc from the base text and requires some setup (she needs a token or something to die and you need a deathtouch card in hand). How much should a wrath from the command zone cost when it requires one of the four to eight additional cards from your deck that give deathtouch and when she can also be stopped from wrathing with instant-speed removal (in response to her upkeep transform trigger so that she never successfully transforms)? Reiver Demon only costs 2 more, doesn't require other cards, and is back from when creatures weren't as pushed. Granted, he's not a legend, but they aren't incomparable. Lifelink is a decent combo in white with Avacyn already, and deathtouch-until-EoT instants aren't going to push her over the brink. (neither would infect moreso than it just being a scary mechanic everywhere you see it because it only takes 10, since it's hard to come by in a form that grants it to a creature.) Yes, it's good; Avacyn definitely benefits from adding black.
But she wouldn't be broken. Yet wait! We have to treat her like she is, just in case! Now you're automatically playing tokens and lots of cards that like to be dead like Gravecrawler or Bloodghast, because you auto-lose to the drawback otherwise. Better hope you draw a nice ETB creature like Solemn Simulacrum or Rune-Scarred Demon alongside an Animate Dead or Exhume for that degenerate early game play made possible by the drawbacks, because if you don't then you're basically in topdeck mode just so you can keep enough lands to, y'know, play the game. Except you can't even play creatures now because you can't stay ahead of the sacrifice per turn.
You either ride your drawback to victory through abusive synergy with it or get trampled by it. These cards would appeal only to the sorts of people who love cards like Lich or Phyrexian Negator, which is fine and all, those are legitimately fun cards, but it shouldn't be the default. Or you could just stay away from nerfing the entire play experience and just bump her up to 8 cmc just to be sure she's fair, then give her some extra combat power just so her new CMC makes some sort of sense (a big flying beater can be good, but is definitely not abusive by its beater-ness alone).
Kaalia is definitely at the higher end of powerful commanders, but a huge part of her threat is being fast. Honestly you could probably improve her by adding the green, since she doesn't care much about the saprolings, only cares a little about the free land drop, and can probably still be down on turn 4 thanks to green ramp spells. Her core threat doesn't look much different with the green added though; there aren't many green dragons/angels/demons that are better than the mardu-colored ones, other than probably Sigarda 1.0 and some version of Dramoka.
You could try to add on blue, and that'd probably be a bit strong with just the +1 CMC since you could throw in Nicol Bolas and some card quality boosters like Impulse, but the 5-card hand size would be absolute suicide. Again though, adding more than +1 CMC and granting some non-abusive buffs would immediately lessen her threat just by making her come out later.
It just seems like the ideal solution to me: your main concern is broken synergy and combos, but the primary part of what makes a combo broken is how fast it comes out. Tooth and Nail hasn't been banned yet because it costs a hefty 9 mana, and you can't be mad if someone is playing game-winning cards at that CMC. This way you could mix'n'match up your own super general and not be locked into some specific deck archetype to try and mitigate/abuse the horrifying disadvantage which, depending on your preferences, might be a deck style you're really not fond of.
EDIT: some example alterations...
Belligerent
Alteration
Increase the altered commander's actual mana cost by 1R. This increases the casting cost and converted mana cost of the card, as well as adding red to the card's color identity.
The altered commander has bloodthirst 2.
Aflame
Increase the altered commander's actual mana cost by 2RR. This increases the casting cost and converted mana cost of the card, as well as adding red to the card's color identity.
The altered commander is an elemental in addition to its other types. When the altered commander attacks it gets +1/+1 for each card in the defending player's hand.
Mirrored
Increase the altered commander's actual mana cost by 2U. This increases the casting cost and converted mana cost of the card, as well as adding blue to the card's color identity.
When the altered commander enters the battlefield, if it was cast from your command zone, create a blue illusion creature token with power and toughness equal to the altered commander's power and toughness.
... and so on.
It does occur to me that the Commander 2013 bunch might have some troubles with these, since Derevi could just cheat into play and Marath wouldn't mind costing more. All the same, hitting people with wonky and crippling drawbacks because they want to play their favorite commander in a new color isn't justified solely for the sake of stopping not-even-that degenerate new combos. I also still feel like that green Infested example is absurdly abusable, though I get that you more or less meant it as an example than a fleshed-out concept.
It feels like what you really want to do is print a cycle of "Partner Up" legendary creatures:
Dude2U
Legendary Creature - Human Partner Up (If you have two commanders if one has Partner Up and one does not.)
Flying
As long as Dude is in your command zone, each opponent begins the game with an extra card and have no maximum hand size.
2/2
I don't like the concept of "Partner Up" for clear reasons; I'd much rather see more partner commanders printed.
This is the easiest and most clever way to accomplish your goal but as Hydra says there at the end, twould be la busted
Obviously, there will be ways to break this. As is the case with any available card pool, with or without an extra color. Lot of people here are judging this from a worst case scenario: there will be degenerate combo's available, thus it has to be neutered beyond any payability. But that does not nothing to solve the problem of degeneracy, quite the opposite exactly: either people will not play it for obvious reasons, or their combo is so degenerate that it's powerfull despite the drawbacks. The end result is that only the degenerate decks would use this, which are exactly the kind of decks it's not meant for.
The only thing to keep degeneracy in check is common sense, see also my sig. Personally, this idea came up with me because I have a Noyan Dar commander deck that just simply csnnot compete in my local meta. The primary reason I csnnot manage this imo, is that it's a deck that revolves around land animation which is a green thing and Noyan lacks green. Then I tried to make the concept a little broader so it could be generally applicable.
So to everyone in this thread:
You are severally underestimating the effect an increased casting cost has on a deck's powerlevel. There's a reason people hate playing against GAAIV and it is not the cost reduction for it's controller.
Not everyone is always trying to minmax their deck. There are other reasons for playing than winning.
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Not everyone is always trying to minmax their deck. There are other reasons for playing than winning.
But some people are minmaxing,and winning is the only goal. It's these people who would break these cards, and these people who would get them banned, so it's these people we have to think about when pitching designs. It sucks, I wish we didn't have to work around the winning-is-everything crowd and could do some fun things without them immediately being snapped up by the spikes. Dark Depths springs to mind, $1-bin card, fun Timmy card, nice flavor card; until a Spike noticed a combo and it ended up banned in modern.
For all five, remove the words 'first turn'.
For Benevolent, Wise and Ingenious replace the word 'each' with 'target'.
For 'The Benevolent' reduce the life gained from '10' to '5'.
For 'The Malicious' reduce the number of cards discarded from 'two' to 'one'.
With a more constant drawback, you can afford to not increase the commander cost. The non-cost drawback that each has needs to make it so each is not super desirable for any given deck. However it does have its niches that would make it desirable. Such as 'The Malicious' for Hazoret the Fervent.
The end result is that only the degenerate decks would use this, which are exactly the kind of decks it's not meant for.
What you meant for an what happens does are not always the same. Wizards doesn't like broken cards, either, and yet, they happen.
The only thing to keep degeneracy in check is common sense, see also my sig.
Thje opinion of people who don't break cards does not matter for the purposes of whether or not a card is breakable (And bannable).
Not everyone is always trying to minmax their deck. There are other reasons for playing than winning.
Again, the opinion of people who don't minmax or play to win does not matter for the purposes of a card being broken.
There are thousands of non broken uses for cards like flash. Doesn't matter. Because a group of people ARE willing to break it is enough to get it banned. As long as even ONE person can break a card, then it is banned (not that it will be confined to one person; deck tech spreads like wildfire).
Commander isn't comparable to modern. The format has been explicitly stated to be casual, not competitive. This means that if the spikes are using your busted cards to win the game, the spikes are wrong (unless your playgroup enjoys that sort of thing).
Why do you think the rules committee unbanned Protean Hulk? Do you think it isn't busted? No, it's because the card by itself is not inherently degenerate. Same with Derevi; Leovold is banned because he is only ever unfun to play against, with or without wheels.
But don't take my word for it. Maybe you don't buy into the whole "Commander is inherently casual" argument. If we're going to talk about card design, why not follow WotC's example? Let's just take a look at the cards they explicitly designed for comm-OOPS! There's a whole bunch of pushed and busted stuff here! How did this happen? Why would WotC print these cards for commander when they're clearly unbalanced???
How many people would have seen Skullbriar and said "no! that's ****ing busted!!!"? Hell, Taigam got leaked and he's absurdly abusable with extra turns, so if you think Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is busted, well, I guess they must not have learned their lesson the first time huh?
I don't want to hear it about how they're pushing the cards in these products just to sell them. I mean, of course they're pushing the cards to sell them, but they're not just doing that. Wizards is far more invested in the health of Magic than anyone, and they understand that as a company. They wouldn't be printing this stuff for commander if they didn't think it would be okay power-wise, and you'd be stupid to think you're better at designing cards on the whole than WotC's design team is.
Commander isn't comparable to modern. The format has been explicitly stated to be casual, not competitive. This means that if the spikes are using your busted cards to win the game, the spikes are wrong (unless your playgroup enjoys that sort of thing).
Why do you think the rules committee unbanned Protean Hulk? Do you think it isn't busted? No, it's because the card by itself is not inherently degenerate. Same with Derevi; Leovold is banned because he is only ever unfun to play against, with or without wheels.
But don't take my word for it. Maybe you don't buy into the whole "Commander is inherently casual" argument. If we're going to talk about card design, why not follow WotC's example? Let's just take a look at the cards they explicitly designed for comm-OOPS! There's a whole bunch of pushed and busted stuff here! How did this happen? Why would WotC print these cards for commander when they're clearly unbalanced???
How many people would have seen Skullbriar and said "no! that's ****ing busted!!!"? Hell, Taigam got leaked and he's absurdly abusable with extra turns, so if you think him or Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is busted, well, I guess they must not have learned their lesson huh?
I don't want to hear it about how they're pushing the cards in these products just to sell them. I mean, of course they're pushing the cards to sell them, but they're not just doing that. Wizards is far more invested in the health of Magic than anyone, and they understand that as a company. They wouldn't be printing this stuff for commander if they didn't think it would be okay power-wise, and you'd be stupid to think you're better at designing cards on the whole than WotC's design team is.
Wait, Skullbriar is considered a good card? Since when? I own one, but I've never seen it do anything useful. Also, Derevi did get the banhammer, so there is a definition of broken in the context of Commander. I'm not going to get into casual players forcing their playstyle on competitive ones or competitive players mocking the concept of casual play, since that argument has raged long enough in other corners of this website.
What I do want to say is that the fact that a 100 card singleton multiplayer format inherently weakens certain 60 card 1v1 staples is of absolutely no consequence to the need to identify what is broken in commander. Commander has a banlist, one that is concerned with more than policing unfun cards out of the format. Commander is inherently a format with the greatest level of freedom, but it takes more than just the honor system to prevent certain cards from being used.
The cards being designed here are effectively conspiracies because they are free from many of the "knobs" used to control cards at the individual level. I've said it before in this thread, and this fact has been proven many times throughout the history of the game: you can't balance a card with drawbacks alone.
Derevi is most certainly not banned, unless you're referring to 1v1, which is a different format entirely in terms of balance due to a number of factors.
And Skullbriar isn't overpowered, that's the point. People would have cried fowl and made a big deal about how overpowered he is because he breaks a rule of the game, despite the fact that he's totally fair.
Why wouldn’t you just make a singular card that punishes all colors evenly
Like...
At the start of game declare a color your commander is that color in addition to its original colors
Your commander deals damage to you equal to each devotion in the mana cost of a spell that includes the declared color, all damage is considered commander damage
Why wouldn’t you just make a singular card that punishes all colors evenly
Like...
At the start of game declare a color your commander is that color in addition to its original colors
Your commander deals damage to you equal to each devotion in the mana cost of a spell that includes the declared color, all damage is considered commander damage
As long as we’re asking questions, why would you dredge up a three and a half year old post?
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I'd love to hear if you guys feel these are balanced.
... the Benevolent
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional W to cast and is white in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by white.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, each opponent gains 10 life.
... the Ingenious
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional U to cast and is blue in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by blue.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, each opponent draws a card.
...the Malicious
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional B to cast and is black in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by black.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, choose and discard two cards.
...the Malevolent
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional R to cast and is red in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by red.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, discard a card at random.
...the Wise
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is green in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
At the beginning of your upkeep of your first turn, each opponent may put a land card from his or her hand onto the battlefield.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I̟̥͍̠ͅn̩͉̣͍̬͚ͅ ̬̬͖t̯̹̞̺͖͓̯̤h̘͍̬e͙̯͈̖̼̮ ̭̬f̺̲̲̪i͙͉̟̩̰r̪̝͚͈̝̥͍̝̲s̼̻͇̘̳͔ͅt̲̺̳̗̜̪̙ ̳̺̥̻͚̗ͅm̜̜̟̰͈͓͎͇o̝̖̮̝͇m̯̻̞̼̫̗͓̤e̩̯̬̮̩n͎̱̪̲̹͖t͇̖s̰̮ͅ,̤̲͙̻̭̻̯̹̰ ̖t̫̙̺̯͖͚̯ͅh͙̯̦̳̗̰̟e͖̪͉̼̯ ̪͕g̞̣͔a̗̦t̬̬͓͙̫̖̭̻e̩̻̯ ̜̖̦̖̤̭͙̬t̞̹̥̪͎͉ͅo͕͚͍͇̲͇͓̺ ̭̬͙͈̣̻t͈͍͙͓̫̖͙̩h̪̬̖̙e̗͈ ̗̬̟̞̺̤͉̯ͅa̦̯͚̙̜̮f͉͙̲̣̞̼t̪̤̞̣͚e̲͉̳̥r͇̪̙͚͓l̥̞̞͎̹̯̹ͅi͓̬f̮̥̬̞͈ͅe͎ ̟̩̤̳̠̯̩̯o̮̘̲p̟͚̣̞͉͓e͍̩̣n͔̼͕͚̜e̬̱d̼̘͎̖̹͍̮̠,͖̺̭̱̮ ̣̲͖̬̪̭̥a̪͚n̟̲̝̤̤̞̗d̘̱̗͇̮͕̳͕͔ ͖̞͉͎t̹̙͎h̰̱͉̗e̪̞̱̝̹̩ͅ ̠̱̩̭̦p̯̙e͓o̳͚̰̯̺̱̰͔̘p̬͎̱̣̼̩͇l̗̟̖͚̠e̱͉͔̱̦̬̟̙ ̖͚̪͔̼̦w̺̖̤̱e͖̗̻̦͓̖̘̜r̭̥e͔̹̫̱͕̦̰͕ ̗͔̠p̠̗͍͍̱̳̠r̰͔͎̰o͉̥͓̰͚̥s̟͚̹̱͔̣t͉̙̳̖͖̪̮r̥̘̥͙̹a͉̟̫̟̳̠̟̭t͈̜̰͈͎e̞̣̭̲̬ ͚̗̯̟͙i͍͖̰̘̦͖͉ṇ̮̻̯̦̲̩͍ ̦̮͚̫̤t͉͖̫͕ͅͅh͙̮̻̘̣̮̼e͕̺ ͙l͕̠͎̰̥i̲͓͉̲g̫̳̟͈͇̖h̠̦̖t͓̯͎̗ ̳̪̘̟̙̩̦o̫̲f̙͔̰̙̠ ̹̪̗͇̯t͖̼̼͉͖̬h̹͇̩e͚̖̺̤͉̹͕̪ ͚͓̭̝̺G͎̗̯̩o̫̯̮̟̮̳̘d̜̲͙̠-̩̳̯̲̗̜P̹̘̥͉̝h͍͈̗̖̝ͅa͍̗̮̼̗r̜̖͇̙̺a̭̺͔̞̳͈o̪̣͓̯̬͙̯̰̗h̖̦͈̥̯͔.͇̣̙̝
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The 1 additional mana is vastly less of a cost than the value of gaining an additional color for your commander. Remember, you're allowing a commander to adopt a new color into it's strategy, some cards were designed to not include a desirable color in order to hold it back.
10 extra life is meaningless in almost every situation in EDH.
One extra card at the game's start is less useful than later in the game, and potentially can force your opponents to discard if they lack a 1-drop.
The black one can be turned to your own advantage very easily.
The loss of one card for the red one is quite minor in an EDH game, not all that different from being down a card from the mulligan.
Putting your opponents one turn ahead on land drops MIGHT hurt, but it's more likely to be just a minor problem.
I think you want these to be ongoing drawbacks, not one-time blips.
...the Slow
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is black in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
Lands you control enter the battlefield tapped.
I would just increase the mana by one, and have an added small effect when you cast your commander.
i.e.
...the Wise
Alteration
Alter Commander
The altered commander costs an additional G to cast and is green in addition to it's other colors. It's converted mana cost is increased by 1 and it's color identity is expanded by green.
The altered commander gets +1/+1
When you cast the altered commander from the command zone, create a 1/1 saproling token.
The commander costing 1 more is drawback enough in my opinion. Yes, having more colors for your deck does presumably make the whole deck stronger, and you could argue that the 'whole deck' should be penalized in addition to the commander for this reason, but to that I argue that if you're going to add more than one color and therefore heavily penalize your commander, you could just be running a naturally-5-color commander instead.
If you also limit the benefits solely to your commander, then you create a cost/benefit exchange in the command zone that feels more appropriate, while having an overall deck that isn't weaker than it would be with some other commander who is naturally in those colors.
You could argue that it would enable broken combos like Maralen of the Mornsong with Mindlock Orb or Stranglehold, but frankly there is no penalty high enough to be fair in those abusive cases yet also low enough to be fair in non-abusive cases like adding white to Jedit Ojanen of Efrava for more cat tribal options.
- Rabid Wombat
Dude2U
Legendary Creature - Human
Partner Up (If you have two commanders if one has Partner Up and one does not.)
Flying
As long as Dude is in your command zone, each opponent begins the game with an extra card and have no maximum hand size.
2/2
I don't like the concept of "Partner Up" for clear reasons; I'd much rather see more partner commanders printed.
That just feels like you're assuming the most abusive possible case (that they're adding white for some abusive combo card that isn't in their normal colors) which is entirely incompatible with any casual use of the effect.
Name a single legendary creature where that would be a fair tradeoff, excluding adding an infinite combo that would normally be out of colors (or some legendary creature I don't know about that would specifically *want* your life total to start lower, in which case it's not a drawback at all).
- Rabid Wombat
What. Even.
All of those are so horrifically punishing that literally the only reason you would ever play any of those is if you're a brand new player who doesn't realize you're getting royally screwed over or if you want to abuse the drawback somehow, in which case the drawback becomes the overpowered part.
(i.e. running Rakdos Charm, Netherborn Phalanx, Repercussion with Blasphemous Act, and Stag Beetle to abuse all the 0/1 plant tokens from the green one)
The nonsense is that entire post you made.
What "massive boon" are you actually getting in exchange for crippling yourself with any of these? It's not like these drawbacks are mitigating some tremendous gain in tempo or card advantage; you're not drawing two cards per turn just because you added a second color to your deck! And don't pretend like adding black and casting Phyrexian Arena or something is the same thing as drawing a second card per turn from your command zone right from the start, you have to actually find the card in your deck first, spend the mana and a card to cast it, and even then you only have it until it gets Disenchanted.
The bottom line is that if you want an extra color, you could play a different commander with that color!!! If you're going to say that playing, for example, a monocolor commander over a two-color commander could be broken because the monocolor commander's effects are stronger, then you're effectively saying the commander is too strong and the commander needs to be nerfed (by increasing their mana cost, which is huge, and possibly adding some other penalty to the commander).
If I can play a five-color deck with Atogatog as my general and then just never actually cast Atogatog, then why the FUGUE would I need to cripple the deck beyond all hope just so my commander can count as five colors?
Go ahead, try. You can't name a single legend that would actually benefit from any of the ones you've proposed, given that...
-It doesn't count if you're just abusing the drawback, like I mentioned for the plant tokens or adding blue to Hazoret the Fervent just to keep your hand size down.
-It doesn't count if you're just using it to play group hug, since that archetype actually tries to benefit from giving out free stuff like Infested does (more blockers for my Benefactor's Draught!).
-It doesn't count if the 'benefit' is running an off-color combo since, as I mentioned in my previous post, that's the absolute most competitive case and shouldn't be the standard you expect all decks to try for. Even then, I highly doubt there's anything more abusive than, say, Zur the Enchanter or Edric, Spymaster of Trest are without any of these.
Those conditions are important because these are intended to be available for *all* commanders that wish they had an extra color, not just your super-specific gimmick strategy that happens to benefit unduly from the 'drawback' or your hyper-competitive Maralen lock deck that needs the drawback to be fair.
- Rabid Wombat
The original designs would get banned by the rules committee, not on their own merit, but because they would inevitably be used to create some degenerate combos with commanders that would be able to truly abuse having an extra color.
For example, I want to use Sylvan Primordial on its own merits, but other people figured out how to massively abuse it using another card, and so it got banned.
To break a commander with another color, give black to Saffi Eriksdotter, and let her play with all of the black sac outlets and cards that benefit from sacrifices.
As for Avacyn, she now totals 6 cmc from the base text and requires some setup (she needs a token or something to die and you need a deathtouch card in hand). How much should a wrath from the command zone cost when it requires one of the four to eight additional cards from your deck that give deathtouch and when she can also be stopped from wrathing with instant-speed removal (in response to her upkeep transform trigger so that she never successfully transforms)? Reiver Demon only costs 2 more, doesn't require other cards, and is back from when creatures weren't as pushed. Granted, he's not a legend, but they aren't incomparable. Lifelink is a decent combo in white with Avacyn already, and deathtouch-until-EoT instants aren't going to push her over the brink. (neither would infect moreso than it just being a scary mechanic everywhere you see it because it only takes 10, since it's hard to come by in a form that grants it to a creature.) Yes, it's good; Avacyn definitely benefits from adding black.
But she wouldn't be broken. Yet wait! We have to treat her like she is, just in case! Now you're automatically playing tokens and lots of cards that like to be dead like Gravecrawler or Bloodghast, because you auto-lose to the drawback otherwise. Better hope you draw a nice ETB creature like Solemn Simulacrum or Rune-Scarred Demon alongside an Animate Dead or Exhume for that degenerate early game play made possible by the drawbacks, because if you don't then you're basically in topdeck mode just so you can keep enough lands to, y'know, play the game. Except you can't even play creatures now because you can't stay ahead of the sacrifice per turn.
You either ride your drawback to victory through abusive synergy with it or get trampled by it. These cards would appeal only to the sorts of people who love cards like Lich or Phyrexian Negator, which is fine and all, those are legitimately fun cards, but it shouldn't be the default. Or you could just stay away from nerfing the entire play experience and just bump her up to 8 cmc just to be sure she's fair, then give her some extra combat power just so her new CMC makes some sort of sense (a big flying beater can be good, but is definitely not abusive by its beater-ness alone).
Kaalia is definitely at the higher end of powerful commanders, but a huge part of her threat is being fast. Honestly you could probably improve her by adding the green, since she doesn't care much about the saprolings, only cares a little about the free land drop, and can probably still be down on turn 4 thanks to green ramp spells. Her core threat doesn't look much different with the green added though; there aren't many green dragons/angels/demons that are better than the mardu-colored ones, other than probably Sigarda 1.0 and some version of Dramoka.
You could try to add on blue, and that'd probably be a bit strong with just the +1 CMC since you could throw in Nicol Bolas and some card quality boosters like Impulse, but the 5-card hand size would be absolute suicide. Again though, adding more than +1 CMC and granting some non-abusive buffs would immediately lessen her threat just by making her come out later.
It just seems like the ideal solution to me: your main concern is broken synergy and combos, but the primary part of what makes a combo broken is how fast it comes out. Tooth and Nail hasn't been banned yet because it costs a hefty 9 mana, and you can't be mad if someone is playing game-winning cards at that CMC. This way you could mix'n'match up your own super general and not be locked into some specific deck archetype to try and mitigate/abuse the horrifying disadvantage which, depending on your preferences, might be a deck style you're really not fond of.
EDIT: some example alterations...
Belligerent
Alteration
Increase the altered commander's actual mana cost by 1R. This increases the casting cost and converted mana cost of the card, as well as adding red to the card's color identity.
The altered commander has bloodthirst 2.
Aflame
Increase the altered commander's actual mana cost by 2RR. This increases the casting cost and converted mana cost of the card, as well as adding red to the card's color identity.
The altered commander is an elemental in addition to its other types. When the altered commander attacks it gets +1/+1 for each card in the defending player's hand.
Mirrored
Increase the altered commander's actual mana cost by 2U. This increases the casting cost and converted mana cost of the card, as well as adding blue to the card's color identity.
When the altered commander enters the battlefield, if it was cast from your command zone, create a blue illusion creature token with power and toughness equal to the altered commander's power and toughness.
... and so on.
It does occur to me that the Commander 2013 bunch might have some troubles with these, since Derevi could just cheat into play and Marath wouldn't mind costing more. All the same, hitting people with wonky and crippling drawbacks because they want to play their favorite commander in a new color isn't justified solely for the sake of stopping not-even-that degenerate new combos. I also still feel like that green Infested example is absurdly abusable, though I get that you more or less meant it as an example than a fleshed-out concept.
EDIT: (fixed mana symbols and a couple typos)
- Rabid Wombat
This is the easiest and most clever way to accomplish your goal but as Hydra says there at the end, twould be la busted
The only thing to keep degeneracy in check is common sense, see also my sig. Personally, this idea came up with me because I have a Noyan Dar commander deck that just simply csnnot compete in my local meta. The primary reason I csnnot manage this imo, is that it's a deck that revolves around land animation which is a green thing and Noyan lacks green. Then I tried to make the concept a little broader so it could be generally applicable.
So to everyone in this thread:
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
But some people are minmaxing,and winning is the only goal. It's these people who would break these cards, and these people who would get them banned, so it's these people we have to think about when pitching designs. It sucks, I wish we didn't have to work around the winning-is-everything crowd and could do some fun things without them immediately being snapped up by the spikes.
Dark Depths springs to mind, $1-bin card, fun Timmy card, nice flavor card; until a Spike noticed a combo and it ended up banned in modern.
For Benevolent, Wise and Ingenious replace the word 'each' with 'target'.
For 'The Benevolent' reduce the life gained from '10' to '5'.
For 'The Malicious' reduce the number of cards discarded from 'two' to 'one'.
With a more constant drawback, you can afford to not increase the commander cost. The non-cost drawback that each has needs to make it so each is not super desirable for any given deck. However it does have its niches that would make it desirable. Such as 'The Malicious' for Hazoret the Fervent.
What you meant for an what happens does are not always the same. Wizards doesn't like broken cards, either, and yet, they happen.
Thje opinion of people who don't break cards does not matter for the purposes of whether or not a card is breakable (And bannable).
Again, the opinion of people who don't minmax or play to win does not matter for the purposes of a card being broken.
There are thousands of non broken uses for cards like flash. Doesn't matter. Because a group of people ARE willing to break it is enough to get it banned. As long as even ONE person can break a card, then it is banned (not that it will be confined to one person; deck tech spreads like wildfire).
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Commander isn't comparable to modern. The format has been explicitly stated to be casual, not competitive. This means that if the spikes are using your busted cards to win the game, the spikes are wrong (unless your playgroup enjoys that sort of thing).
Why do you think the rules committee unbanned Protean Hulk? Do you think it isn't busted? No, it's because the card by itself is not inherently degenerate. Same with Derevi; Leovold is banned because he is only ever unfun to play against, with or without wheels.
But don't take my word for it. Maybe you don't buy into the whole "Commander is inherently casual" argument. If we're going to talk about card design, why not follow WotC's example? Let's just take a look at the cards they explicitly designed for comm-OOPS! There's a whole bunch of pushed and busted stuff here! How did this happen? Why would WotC print these cards for commander when they're clearly unbalanced???
How many people would have seen Skullbriar and said "no! that's ****ing busted!!!"? Hell, Taigam got leaked and he's absurdly abusable with extra turns, so if you think Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is busted, well, I guess they must not have learned their lesson the first time huh?
I don't want to hear it about how they're pushing the cards in these products just to sell them. I mean, of course they're pushing the cards to sell them, but they're not just doing that. Wizards is far more invested in the health of Magic than anyone, and they understand that as a company. They wouldn't be printing this stuff for commander if they didn't think it would be okay power-wise, and you'd be stupid to think you're better at designing cards on the whole than WotC's design team is.
- Rabid Wombat
Wait, Skullbriar is considered a good card? Since when? I own one, but I've never seen it do anything useful. Also, Derevi did get the banhammer, so there is a definition of broken in the context of Commander. I'm not going to get into casual players forcing their playstyle on competitive ones or competitive players mocking the concept of casual play, since that argument has raged long enough in other corners of this website.
What I do want to say is that the fact that a 100 card singleton multiplayer format inherently weakens certain 60 card 1v1 staples is of absolutely no consequence to the need to identify what is broken in commander. Commander has a banlist, one that is concerned with more than policing unfun cards out of the format. Commander is inherently a format with the greatest level of freedom, but it takes more than just the honor system to prevent certain cards from being used.
The cards being designed here are effectively conspiracies because they are free from many of the "knobs" used to control cards at the individual level. I've said it before in this thread, and this fact has been proven many times throughout the history of the game: you can't balance a card with drawbacks alone.
And Skullbriar isn't overpowered, that's the point. People would have cried fowl and made a big deal about how overpowered he is because he breaks a rule of the game, despite the fact that he's totally fair.
- Rabid Wombat
Like...
At the start of game declare a color your commander is that color in addition to its original colors
Your commander deals damage to you equal to each devotion in the mana cost of a spell that includes the declared color, all damage is considered commander damage
As long as we’re asking questions, why would you dredge up a three and a half year old post?
Make a card that reads...
At the beginning of a new game declare a color. Your commander is that color in addition to its other colors and types
Your commander gains,”for each devotion of the chosen color in a spells mana cost, your commander deals 1 damage to you”.
Your can only get so much commander damage correct