"Commander Lite"? Pfft, please. This is a novelty concept at best, aimed at enticing the standard players into committing to a commander deck without having to buy a full commander deck, and to entice commander players into buying packs to play this new half format with others at an LGS. It's a cash grab by WotC, tbh.
Standard commander is a novellty, in some sets it can work out and be fun (like, say, RTR-THS season) but overall I have no interest in buying cards for an unsanctioned yet rotating format. You'd be better off roping me into Modern Commander, that's where the real money is at...
Well, Dominaria and its chock full o legends theme is the absolute best time to try this, especially since its coming off a tribal block with tribal commanders which are popular (though Wizards using them as examples for why its sixty card, claiming that there aren't enough creatures to make a theme deck in 100 card singleton while commander players have already built Gishnath and Admiral Brass, is amusing). Down the line though, unless they are going to drastically increase the average legend count, I see it becoming increasingly less diverse after Dominaria rotates. But that's a couple years off, so it'll probably be dead by then without a concerted effort by Wizards to support it.
Even with dominaria legends, I see this format being largely solved into one or two viable decks two weeks after rotation. You could argue that you should approach brawl casually, but why, when you can approach EDH casually and have a much more fun and varied experience? Just because edh decks can be phenomenally expensive doesn't mean they have to be.
Absolutely not. A huge part of the fun for me with EDH is the huge card pool. Taking that away by making it standard only restricts me to the worst cards in magic. I'd probably have more fun if they made it Homelands only at this point, with how bad standard has been the last few years. At least if it was homelands only the format wouldn't rotate.
Panharmonicon is going to be complained about a lot between now and a year's time. All the high-tier-players will dismiss the comments saying it's a casual-only card, while on mid-tier tables this thing dominates in decks like Brago, Derevi and various others. Now where have we seen that before?
I feel the big difference here is that PoK would shift the game without an on-turn response, thanks to being able to protect itself. Panharmonicon either requires someone to have 10-12 mana (why weren't they winning anyway), or rely on getting around the table tapped out while they're the archenemy (with a fragile artifact to boot). PoK demanding an instant-speed answer on a 5-drop is really awkward when most tables only react to cards they already see on the table (let's ignore the guy who Demonic Tutored syndrome).
You've named one difference, but you've forgotten another: Panharmonicon is colorless. It's going to be a damage doubler in Purphoros. A chaos doubler in Norin, a card doubler in Zegana and Momir Vig (and just as annoying in Ezuri, Claw of Progress). I'll get to steal twice the cards with Gonti, double up on everything with brago. I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.
This card does annoying things in every color, it will be widely played by casuals, despite not being very good. It dying to removal isn't relevant IMO, because that isn't a line of thinking the players running it will have. The card will still be overplayed, and turn otherwise fun games annoying. So it's exactly the type of trap card that we've seen the RC ban in the past.
Gonti, Lord of Luxury has the potential to drag me back to this format after a couple years of not caring. That card does everything I want in a commander, all in my favorite color combination.
The Gitrog Monster seems cool. With Dakmor Salvage in the deck, and all the discard outlets you have, including Borborgymos Enraged, he's functionally another Griselbrand (though not as good as the big guy). He also has the nice property of being green, letting you feed Nourishing Shoals. My only experience with this deck was testing it out a bit and then angrily quitting due to a lack of consistency. When I saw The Gitrog Monster, one of my first thoughts was this deck, thinking it might solve some of the consistency issues it had.
test new tech for effectiveness on any of the free testing programs. Cockatrice for example. If it works good for you, bring it in as a foil into the real thing.
Also the point of Recurring Nightmare is that it never targets. So answers like Scavenging Ooze and Swords to Plowshares are only as good as their ability to keep the RN player's graveyard/battlefield completely empty. Not saying it's impossible or unlikely, but this is also a consideration.
So Cryo, all those points of how "Competent players will build around abusing RN", how is that argument any different for Ad Nauseam, Hermit Druid and Doomsday? Each of those can be used fairly, and so can Recurring Nightmare.
Or if they can't be played fairly they are ignored. No one is playing Stasis fairly and I don't see it on the banlist.
I wouldn't mind banning stasis for the art alone. But sadly, I doubt my "only beautiful cards allowed" vision for the format would ever take off.
There are two glaring flaws with the Commander decks.
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
It's funny that you mention Modern Masters in your post without actually dealing with the fact that modern masters is how the hypothetical commander booster would work in reality. Two things would happen:
1. Wizards would limit the most desirable reprints to mythic. You can see this with Tarmogoyf's status in Modern Masters. This serves too purposes: It drives sales, and it keeps the set from negatively affecting prices too much, which seems to be a high concern for wizards.
2. Resellers would sell packs at many times the recommended sale price, because the expected value of the packs would be many times any reasonable price.
A Commander Masters would not succeed in lowering prices given wizard's current price maintaining priority and scummy reseller behavior.
Those cards read... "Are you playing blue?, if not you lose", tooth 'n nail still needs creatures to win, those can be interacted with by other colours.
You'd force every deck to run warping wail.
Turbo ramping isn't even difficult.
There are plenty of non blue answers to Biorhythm.
There's more I'm sure, I got to the "I"s before I noticed a really great synergy that gave me the itch to brew something myself. Intruder Alarm and Torpor Orb. For some reason that combo is just extremely funny to me. Oh, and Guardian Of Tazeeem is an interesting backup plan/superior main plan. With any moonfolk, amulet of vigor, and Patron, you can tap everything down.
I prefer Meloku in this scenario, because generating tokens is extremely relevant for blue's tutor options. Patron of the Moon is but a Mass Polymorph away!
The question is how to abuse a particular land with an etb in mono-U. That means it needs to flicker or be bounced and replayed. Without Patron, your options for getting more than one use a turn are very limited. You're basically looking at Storm Cauldron, Walking Atlas, some kind of loop with Ghostly Flicker or Wormfang Newt/Wormfang Turtle, or something convoluted with Druidic Satchel/Explorer's Scope. Bouncing a land back to hand is much easier. You have all of the moonfolk, a number of enchantments that have the side effect of disrupting your opponents, and anything that bounces permanents or permanents you own. Using Patron as a general gives you easy access to the effect that's harder to find, and you can load the deck down with bounce and disruption that also lets you pick up your land to replay it. That's a lot less convoluted than having to find and cast Mass Polymorph with enough tokens to guarantee that you hit half of your engine.
Don't get me wrong, Meloku is a great card. He's a solid general, but Patron is the clear winner for the very narrow case of trying to abuse an etb land in mono-U.
I disagree, because Meloku lets you find all the combo pieces easier. With patron, you get guaranteed access to one combo piece, and nothing to facilitate getting the other pieces. With meloku, you can abuse polymorph effects as a semi tutor to get easy access to all your combo pieces. If you're trying to assemble an engine in blue, there's no question: Meloku is better.
I would go for Patron of the Moon over Meloku. You can more reliably freeze multiple creatures a turn, as long as you have some way to bounce lands.
I prefer Meloku in this scenario, because generating tokens is extremely relevant for blue's tutor options. Patron of the Moon is but a Mass Polymorph away!
Biorhythm, Worldfire, and Sway of the Stars are primarily banned not because of any format interactions (although Worldfire and Sway letting you float mana for your commander IS a factor), but because they invalidate the game up to the point where they are cast. They set life totals for all players at a near-lethal number and destroy all permanents, for two of them, and one resolving after the board gets wiped and you play your commander wins you the game. For a format that is as much about the experience of playing and the journey of working your way through these games to a win or an epic finish, they are cards that are anti-climactic and make everything you did up to that point completely inconsequential and meaningless. In a social format (NOT a competitive or a casual one), the type of games that you have are just as important to the spirit of the format as anything else. Their being banned furthers the format's vision and I have no issue with that. They can stay gone.
I believe it, but I think people who hold this view are missing some key facts about the games they're playing.
Worldfire, Biorhythm, Sway of the Stars, and Apocalypse to some extent all have high mana costs. In a lot of games, being able to cast them is an epic feat in and of itself, and the tale of the player who survived long enough, through his opponents' disruption efforts is quite the fun journey. I find that in interactive games, cards and combos that would otherwise result in a disappointing win for most people are actually quite satisfying to lose to. I think the same is probably true of all of these types of cards: in highly interactive games, they pose no problem. They only invalidate the boardstate if getting to the point where you could cast them is assured, and not a feat in and of itself.
I understand though that that level of interactivity is not something that is desired by the majority of EDH players, or the RC either. To a certain extent, EDH has become about building towers of cards in relative isolation from your opponents, and then throwing haymaker after haymaker at each other. In that environment, Biorhythm, Worldfire, and Sway of the Stars probably are problems.
Epic feat? Tell that to an elf deck that ramps into Biorhythm.
I think you misunderstood. I'm talking about interactive metas, not the standard EDH one where an elf deck is free to play their entire hand and then combo off.
Even with dominaria legends, I see this format being largely solved into one or two viable decks two weeks after rotation. You could argue that you should approach brawl casually, but why, when you can approach EDH casually and have a much more fun and varied experience? Just because edh decks can be phenomenally expensive doesn't mean they have to be.
So I don't really get who this is made for.
You've named one difference, but you've forgotten another: Panharmonicon is colorless. It's going to be a damage doubler in Purphoros. A chaos doubler in Norin, a card doubler in Zegana and Momir Vig (and just as annoying in Ezuri, Claw of Progress). I'll get to steal twice the cards with Gonti, double up on everything with brago. I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.
This card does annoying things in every color, it will be widely played by casuals, despite not being very good. It dying to removal isn't relevant IMO, because that isn't a line of thinking the players running it will have. The card will still be overplayed, and turn otherwise fun games annoying. So it's exactly the type of trap card that we've seen the RC ban in the past.
EDIT: also mono black isn't much of a combination you're right, but it's by far the most fun color identity I've played.
Thoughts from the more experienced players?
RN does target. You can ooze the target.
I wouldn't mind banning stasis for the art alone. But sadly, I doubt my "only beautiful cards allowed" vision for the format would ever take off.
It's funny that you mention Modern Masters in your post without actually dealing with the fact that modern masters is how the hypothetical commander booster would work in reality. Two things would happen:
1. Wizards would limit the most desirable reprints to mythic. You can see this with Tarmogoyf's status in Modern Masters. This serves too purposes: It drives sales, and it keeps the set from negatively affecting prices too much, which seems to be a high concern for wizards.
2. Resellers would sell packs at many times the recommended sale price, because the expected value of the packs would be many times any reasonable price.
A Commander Masters would not succeed in lowering prices given wizard's current price maintaining priority and scummy reseller behavior.
There are plenty of non blue answers to Biorhythm.
Slaughter Pact their creature
Rout their creatures.
Cast your quick creatures.
Make some tokens
There's more I'm sure, I got to the "I"s before I noticed a really great synergy that gave me the itch to brew something myself. Intruder Alarm and Torpor Orb. For some reason that combo is just extremely funny to me. Oh, and Guardian Of Tazeeem is an interesting backup plan/superior main plan. With any moonfolk, amulet of vigor, and Patron, you can tap everything down.
I disagree, because Meloku lets you find all the combo pieces easier. With patron, you get guaranteed access to one combo piece, and nothing to facilitate getting the other pieces. With meloku, you can abuse polymorph effects as a semi tutor to get easy access to all your combo pieces. If you're trying to assemble an engine in blue, there's no question: Meloku is better.
I prefer Meloku in this scenario, because generating tokens is extremely relevant for blue's tutor options. Patron of the Moon is but a Mass Polymorph away!
I think you misunderstood. I'm talking about interactive metas, not the standard EDH one where an elf deck is free to play their entire hand and then combo off.