To expand a bit: X is only a copiable value for an object on the stack (706.2). Panharmonicon and Naban work because they are copying an effect on the stack, not Gadwick himself.
When Gadwick enters the battlefield, he puts a triggered effect on the stack: "Draw X cards." Once created, that effect keeps track of its own value of X and doesn't rely on Gadwick to remember what X was. And since it's on the stack, X is copiable. Copy the triggered effect and you get double draw. That's what Panharmonicon and Naban do.
I believe you can also get double draw if you find a way to copy Gadwick while he's on the stack. For example, if you put [[Reflections of Littjara]] out naming wizards, and then cast Gadwick, Reflections copies the creature spell while it's on the stack. The copy includes the value of X, and you'll draw X cards.
But once Gadwick hits the battlefield, he's not on the stack and X is no longer copiable.
If you regard your cards as an investment, what the hell are you doing playing with them in decks? Use proxies if it's that big a deal. I sleeve my cards (singly) because I don't want them totally wrecked and I play with transform, but if I want to keep a card in really pristine mint condition, it stays in the box inside a hard case.
A big change which forces everyone to redesign their decks needs to provide big benefits to justify it. My own pet issue is cutting life totals to 30. That would rebalance the format, giving aggro a desperately needed boost, forcing combo to watch its back, and speeding up games considerably. Even so, it would be a huge change, not to be made lightly or without careful testing.
Making it possible for people with expensive cards to double-sleeve and still shuffle easily is... not in the "big benefits" category.
I played Commander for years when tuck was a thing. I included tuck cards, and anti-tuck defenses, in my decks, because that was what you had to do. I was happy when it left and I don't want to see it return.
The new rule is simpler and cleaner: Any time your commander is kicked off the battlefield, you can pull it back to the command zone. Magic is a super-complex game and Commander adds another layer on top of that. Anything that adds further complexity has a high bar to meet to justify its inclusion, and "I hate dealing with other people's powerful commanders" does not come close to meeting it IMO.
The people who run Problem Commanders and do so in a problematic way are the sort of people who had no trouble playing around the tuck rule. It's the casual player whose deck collapses when the commander gets blown out. Tuck just makes life harder for the casual player and puts another weapon in the hands of the pubstomper.
I like the thrust of this. Commander is lots of fun, but it requires a massive investment of both time and money, even for those of us who bought dual lands back when they were $10 apiece. You can't sit down and shuffle up for a quick game of Commander. You need at least an hour, and it can stretch well beyond that. Especially when people keep having to pause the game to read the card that just got played.
60-card decks, a far smaller cardpool, 30 life instead of 40, all point to a game that would be much easier on pocketbook, schedule, and brain. And planeswalkers as commanders is a very nice touch.
Rotation is a problem, though. I don't like having my decks evaporate out from under me. My interest in Magic waxes and wanes, year by year. If I have to build all-new decks to jump back into the game, that's a significant barrier. Not sure how to reconcile that with the need to limit the size of the cardpool, but... it's an issue.
1. There are a heap of great elemental cards. It's an enormous tribe, big enough that you have the luxury of picking and choosing between good tribe members instead of scraping for the dregs. I would suggest starting with your choice of commander. Here, too, you have options. Marath, Will of the Wild; Horde of Notions; Animar, Soul of Elements; Omnath, Locus of Mana; Omnath, Locus of Rage; and Maelstrom Wanderer are all powerhouse elemental commanders. Decide which one appeals to you. Then choose your creatures on that basis.
2. Agreed on land ramp. Green's land ramp spells come in two main flavors: Spells that fetch basics, and spells that fetch forests. Normally I prefer to fetch forests, because that allows me to fetch shocks and duals, but you say you're on a budget, so you may be better off with basics. My go-to green land ramp spells:
Search for Tomorrow (suspend it on turn 1, and it gives you mana starting on turn 3)
Sakura-Tribe Elder (can be used as a chump blocker and sacrifice for the land at instant speed; also easy to recur from the graveyard)
Nature's Lore (the land comes in untapped!)
Cultivate, Kodama's Reach (ramp for one and ensure you hit the next land drop)
Skyshroud Claim (the lands come in untapped)
Hour of Promise (if you have nonbasic utility lands that make your deck sing)
3. Naya is better for a "nature" theme, but Temur is better for an "elemental" theme. The two are different in Magic; elementals can embody abstract concepts as well as physical forces, and are much more common in blue than in white.
Toxic Deluge in all black decks. It is the bomb. 3CMC wrath that kills indestructible, prevents regen, and can be tailored to spare your giant beaters while sweeping away the chump blockers that could stop them. The life cost is well worth it.
Bojuka Bog in all black decks. The graveyard is *my* turf. I get to play there. Nobody else does.
Beseech the Queen in all black decks. It's not the equal of Demonic Tutor, but it's relatively cheap and the limitation rarely comes into play.
Bitter Ordeal in graveyard-intensive decks. Because sometimes other people have Bojuka Bogs.
Sakura-Tribe Elder in all green decks. Generates mana like Rampant Growth, but also triggers all of green's "creatures matter" cards, easily recurred from the graveyard, and can serve as a chump blocker in the late game when Rampant Growth would be a dead draw.
Eternal Witness in all green decks. The combination of recurring any card with a creature body is just too good to turn down.
Austere Command in all white decks. The ultimate in versatile wrath effects. Kill the stuff you really need gone, while leaving your board state at least semi-intact.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin in all two- or one-color white decks. It won't always turn on, but it's incredible when it does. (Not included in decks with 3+ colors, since they generally don't have enough Plains... although maybe with Celestial Dawn... hmmm...)
Cyclonic Rift in all blue decks. Gotta love a one-sided wrath, even a temporary one.
Paradox Engine in any deck that runs a lot of mana rocks. It. Is. Insane. Once you try it, you'll never go back.
Hall of the Bandit Lord in Voltron decks (if the commander doesn't have built-in haste).
Plus a smattering of the usual suspects--Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, Coffers/Urborg, shocklands, fetchlands, dual lands, et cetera.
D'oh, you're right. Don't know how I missed that. I swear I looked at it carefully to check that very thing... somehow my eye just skated over "combat" like it wasn't there.
The latest spoilers have a couple of awesome new pirates to go with Madam Admiral. Beckett Brass triggers if three Pirates have dealt damage to a player... it doesn't matter *how* they dealt damage to the player. Oh, hi there, Lightning-Rig Crew.
And then there's Captivating Crew. Treason on a stick? Hmm, not too bad. I could maybe slot that in somewhere. Like every red deck I own.
Seconded on Blowfly Infestation. If you have two snakes out and put a -1/-1 counter on one of them, Blowfly Infestation gives you infinite death triggers.
Also, Hapatra loves persist. Woodfall Primus is a good card already; with Hapatra it's a no-brainer.
So building a Modern or Commander deck around this lady. There is so much potential for shenanigans here. Blowfly Infestation + Hapatra = infinite death triggers, and I'll bet that's just the tip of the iceberg.
What I'm thinking: Sac outlets and treason effects.
What you do is:
1. With Marchesa and a sac outlet in play, cast Treason (or any of its zillions of cheap red variants). Steal an enemy creature till end of turn.
2. That creature has haste. Swing at whichever opponent has the most life. It gets a +1/+1 counter as soon as you declare the attack (whether it connects or not).
3. If the creature dies in combat, fine. If it doesn't, feed it to the sac outlet. If you want to be nice to the opponent in question, or simply preserve his or her life total so you can keep pulling this trick, feed it to the sac outlet before damage is dealt.
4. At end of turn, Marchesa brings the creature back under your control... permanently.
Of course, if you are the player with the most life, this doesn't work. If only we were playing a color stuffed with ways to burn its own life total for cards and other benefits! Oh, wait. We are.
SORCERIES
3x Mortify
4x Hour of Reckoning
2x Day of Judgment
3x Moan of the Unhallowed
ENCHANTMENTS
4x Ghostly Prison
3x Necromancer's Covenant
4x Endless Ranks of the Dead
LANDS
12x Plains
4x Swamp
4x Marsh Flats
The strategy is to slow the enemy down with defensive white weenies, Ghostly Prison to choke off small creature aggro, and Mortify to kill fatties, until you can cast Hour of Reckoning or Day of Judgment. Then pull out a Necromancer's Covenant, power it up with Moan of the Unhallowed and Endless Ranks of the Dead, and start spawning zombies.
Haven't yet had a chance to test this against an actual person, but trial runs against a couple of my other decks did pretty well. I toyed with zombie boosters like Intangible Virtue, but in the end I don't think the deck needs them; it's not hard to overrun somebody with a pile of 2/2s if you just blew up the board. The challenge is surviving long enough to get the zombie machine going, and all of the deck's cards need to be focused on that. (Pyroclasm could be a problem, though.)
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Deep-Slumber Titan yet. For 4 mana you get a 7/7 Nin-target with quasi-vigilance (you can attack on your turn, then ping with Nin afterward to untap, and it starts the enemy turn untapped and ready to block).
(Ah, never mind, I see it came up after all. Search fail.)
When Gadwick enters the battlefield, he puts a triggered effect on the stack: "Draw X cards." Once created, that effect keeps track of its own value of X and doesn't rely on Gadwick to remember what X was. And since it's on the stack, X is copiable. Copy the triggered effect and you get double draw. That's what Panharmonicon and Naban do.
I believe you can also get double draw if you find a way to copy Gadwick while he's on the stack. For example, if you put [[Reflections of Littjara]] out naming wizards, and then cast Gadwick, Reflections copies the creature spell while it's on the stack. The copy includes the value of X, and you'll draw X cards.
But once Gadwick hits the battlefield, he's not on the stack and X is no longer copiable.
A big change which forces everyone to redesign their decks needs to provide big benefits to justify it. My own pet issue is cutting life totals to 30. That would rebalance the format, giving aggro a desperately needed boost, forcing combo to watch its back, and speeding up games considerably. Even so, it would be a huge change, not to be made lightly or without careful testing.
Making it possible for people with expensive cards to double-sleeve and still shuffle easily is... not in the "big benefits" category.
The new rule is simpler and cleaner: Any time your commander is kicked off the battlefield, you can pull it back to the command zone. Magic is a super-complex game and Commander adds another layer on top of that. Anything that adds further complexity has a high bar to meet to justify its inclusion, and "I hate dealing with other people's powerful commanders" does not come close to meeting it IMO.
The people who run Problem Commanders and do so in a problematic way are the sort of people who had no trouble playing around the tuck rule. It's the casual player whose deck collapses when the commander gets blown out. Tuck just makes life harder for the casual player and puts another weapon in the hands of the pubstomper.
60-card decks, a far smaller cardpool, 30 life instead of 40, all point to a game that would be much easier on pocketbook, schedule, and brain. And planeswalkers as commanders is a very nice touch.
Rotation is a problem, though. I don't like having my decks evaporate out from under me. My interest in Magic waxes and wanes, year by year. If I have to build all-new decks to jump back into the game, that's a significant barrier. Not sure how to reconcile that with the need to limit the size of the cardpool, but... it's an issue.
2. Agreed on land ramp. Green's land ramp spells come in two main flavors: Spells that fetch basics, and spells that fetch forests. Normally I prefer to fetch forests, because that allows me to fetch shocks and duals, but you say you're on a budget, so you may be better off with basics. My go-to green land ramp spells:
Search for Tomorrow (suspend it on turn 1, and it gives you mana starting on turn 3)
Sakura-Tribe Elder (can be used as a chump blocker and sacrifice for the land at instant speed; also easy to recur from the graveyard)
Nature's Lore (the land comes in untapped!)
Cultivate, Kodama's Reach (ramp for one and ensure you hit the next land drop)
Skyshroud Claim (the lands come in untapped)
Hour of Promise (if you have nonbasic utility lands that make your deck sing)
3. Naya is better for a "nature" theme, but Temur is better for an "elemental" theme. The two are different in Magic; elementals can embody abstract concepts as well as physical forces, and are much more common in blue than in white.
Bojuka Bog in all black decks. The graveyard is *my* turf. I get to play there. Nobody else does.
Beseech the Queen in all black decks. It's not the equal of Demonic Tutor, but it's relatively cheap and the limitation rarely comes into play.
Bitter Ordeal in graveyard-intensive decks. Because sometimes other people have Bojuka Bogs.
Sakura-Tribe Elder in all green decks. Generates mana like Rampant Growth, but also triggers all of green's "creatures matter" cards, easily recurred from the graveyard, and can serve as a chump blocker in the late game when Rampant Growth would be a dead draw.
Eternal Witness in all green decks. The combination of recurring any card with a creature body is just too good to turn down.
Austere Command in all white decks. The ultimate in versatile wrath effects. Kill the stuff you really need gone, while leaving your board state at least semi-intact.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin in all two- or one-color white decks. It won't always turn on, but it's incredible when it does. (Not included in decks with 3+ colors, since they generally don't have enough Plains... although maybe with Celestial Dawn... hmmm...)
Cyclonic Rift in all blue decks. Gotta love a one-sided wrath, even a temporary one.
Paradox Engine in any deck that runs a lot of mana rocks. It. Is. Insane. Once you try it, you'll never go back.
Hall of the Bandit Lord in Voltron decks (if the commander doesn't have built-in haste).
Plus a smattering of the usual suspects--Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, Coffers/Urborg, shocklands, fetchlands, dual lands, et cetera.
And then there's Captivating Crew. Treason on a stick? Hmm, not too bad. I could maybe slot that in somewhere. Like every red deck I own.
Also, Hapatra loves persist. Woodfall Primus is a good card already; with Hapatra it's a no-brainer.
What you do is:
1. With Marchesa and a sac outlet in play, cast Treason (or any of its zillions of cheap red variants). Steal an enemy creature till end of turn.
2. That creature has haste. Swing at whichever opponent has the most life. It gets a +1/+1 counter as soon as you declare the attack (whether it connects or not).
3. If the creature dies in combat, fine. If it doesn't, feed it to the sac outlet. If you want to be nice to the opponent in question, or simply preserve his or her life total so you can keep pulling this trick, feed it to the sac outlet before damage is dealt.
4. At end of turn, Marchesa brings the creature back under your control... permanently.
Of course, if you are the player with the most life, this doesn't work. If only we were playing a color stuffed with ways to burn its own life total for cards and other benefits! Oh, wait. We are.
CREATURES
3x Perimeter Captain
4x Loyal Sentry
2x Tidehollow Sculler
ARTIFACTS
4x Orzhov Signet
SORCERIES
3x Mortify
4x Hour of Reckoning
2x Day of Judgment
3x Moan of the Unhallowed
ENCHANTMENTS
4x Ghostly Prison
3x Necromancer's Covenant
4x Endless Ranks of the Dead
LANDS
12x Plains
4x Swamp
4x Marsh Flats
The strategy is to slow the enemy down with defensive white weenies, Ghostly Prison to choke off small creature aggro, and Mortify to kill fatties, until you can cast Hour of Reckoning or Day of Judgment. Then pull out a Necromancer's Covenant, power it up with Moan of the Unhallowed and Endless Ranks of the Dead, and start spawning zombies.
Haven't yet had a chance to test this against an actual person, but trial runs against a couple of my other decks did pretty well. I toyed with zombie boosters like Intangible Virtue, but in the end I don't think the deck needs them; it's not hard to overrun somebody with a pile of 2/2s if you just blew up the board. The challenge is surviving long enough to get the zombie machine going, and all of the deck's cards need to be focused on that. (Pyroclasm could be a problem, though.)
(Ah, never mind, I see it came up after all. Search fail.)