Why Are We Blaming Commander? 

I miss the days when "it's probably good in Commander" was a polite way of saying "this card is ass."

Commander isn't to blame. Wizards of the coast trying to milk comander dry is to blame.

They thought the flash ability was too strong, so not only are they designing for commander, they're not very good at it.

I think Commander is an easy thing to blame when "eleventh hour untested design changes" has been a problem for ages and gave us, among other cards, Skullclamp. The issue is they're not learning from their mistakes.

I love commander, but I wish they would stop designing specific cards for it. Commander was more fun when you found the hidden gems from the new sets. Now the format is becoming more and more stale with these overpowered monstrosities.

As a person who started playing highlander and then switched to EDH before it became commander, i think that catering for commander players is stifling creativity and is very damaging in the long run. I miss the old days where you had to actually do your best to find the perfect card. These days the only thing holding you back is the card prices and thats Just sad. It makes it a case of coloring instead of drawing.

Olivia from CAH said it best “design magic cards, we’ll figure it out in commander”

I mean, you said it yourself. From the article, "We didn't playtest with Nadu's final iteration, as we were too far along in the process, and it shipped as-is." "I missed the interaction with zero-mana abilities that are so problematic. The last round of folks who were shown the card in the building missed it too." Nevermind the fact that they somehow missed the abundance of 0-cost abilities. That they didn't even bother TESTING just shows how much of a joke of a company it is. Commander is an easy thing to blame, but the overemphasis on EDH is a smaller thing compared to the complete lack of actual testing with the FIRE-based bullshit they vomit out.

During yesterday's daily MTG stream, Carmen brought up the point that we, as players, don't see the successful last minute changes. However, the example she brought up were things like how originally the MDFC lands only cost 2 life and they changed it to three at the last second and that was probably a good thing. But the difference here is that that was basically a know that they adjusted and I am pretty confident that the game designers can intuit tweaking values like that without testing, the problem we get is when they basically change how a card functions at the last minute without testing. IDK, it seems like once they are past the point of play testing, the abilities of cards should be locked and the only freedom they have is to tweak numbers here and there. In software development, there is this thing called a "feature freeze" where developers on the team are not allowed to make and major additions to the code base and focus on refinement and bug fixing for the target version release. its crazy that they don't have something like that during development of sets

As a former CCG designer, the way they fumbled Nadu so badly at several stages is such an amateurish clown show of terrible design practice. Skipping the playtest part by making a last second change before sending something to print is the biggest dumb mistake, compounded with two separate concepts that always causes problems: allowing for disproportionate amount of trigger targets, and balancing free things (usability/consistency). Everything about it screams "massive fuckup" (saying "mistake" is underselling it) and what REALLY pisses me off was the designer mentioning how playtest didn't catch it when later on he admits IT DIDN'T SEE TESTING at the revamped text. That group of testers should be rightfully pissed off.

WOTC can design with commander in mind; they can make sure effects work in multiplayer as well as in two-player formats. They shouldn't design with commander being the target.

ever since Arena came out, you're the tester!

Card designed for commander put into main set when they were releasing a Simic landfall commander deck

Saw someone make a comment the other day that said something along the lines of "it used to be that you played commander with magic cards, but now it feels like we are stuck playing magic with commander cards" and boy did i feel that

Self regulated casual commander is dead, it's well past the time of an official Canadian Highlander type point system.

Every commander player I talk to (and myself) all say the same thing: commander was more fun BEFORE they started designing stuff "for commander." Wizards, please STOP. We don't need you to design for it, and we don't WANT you to design for it

Being designed for EDH is so annoying. It seemed neat at first. "Oh hey! This card says CoMmAnDeR on it!!!" You find out pretty quickly that all it does is lead to power creep and limiting deck creativity if you don't want to build jank. I've been a solely commander player for over a decade, and I desperately miss the days of playing something that was designed specifically for standard like everything else was and having to figure out how to make it work rather than being force fed ideal strategies. EDIT: Also, enough with the Horizons. Bring back Masters.

If they want to design SPECIFICALLY for commander inside a set than put the commander set symbol on in.

I'm still confused how anyone thought that original version of Nadu would have broken commander... I mean flash is a nice ability and the targeting protection is nice but hardly broken.

fuck corporate greed and fuck capitalism

When commander is designed for: Commander is terrible and 60 card constructed falls apart. When 60 card constructed is designed for: Commander is great and 60 card constructed is healthy. Commander should never have been the commercial focus. It is like turning the dessert dish into the main course.

i miss the EDH of ten years ago.... i guess i kinda miss the whole of Magic from ten years ago? we didn't have this constant barrage of stuff you need to buy or you miss out on everything that's good and card prices were reasonable (i remember buying doubling season for 8€ and an Italian All Hallows' Eve for like, 12€ or something) and like, you had to look for the good stuff? try and find what could work in your decks and what might be an interesting new thing, and if they had any cool cards that could work as your commander etc. i remember fondly when we talked about Alesha Who Smiles At Death with a friend and how you could utilize it and what sort of stuff you could put in a deck. Fate Reforged had what, ten legendary creatures? and not all of them super viable commanders, and that was fine! it was very much fine, and fun to brew and think and see if you actually COULD make them work somehow. now it feels every legendary has a strategy built in and there is really only one way to properly build the deck, and that makes me a bit sad honestly

I have an interesting redesign to the initial form of Nadu. Delete the flash all the time and give it "landfall- you may cast creatures as though they have flash till end of turn"

My biggest issue upon reading the article was: Ignoring all other context, the post is a "lessons learned" post-incident report, something that all companies do after something goes wrong. And in no company, under ANY circumstances, should "We made sweeping changes after testing AND THEN DID NOT TEST THE NEW CHANGES" ever, ever, EVER end up on a Lessons Learned whiteboard.

Ah yes, nadu, a notorious card in commander, beloved by all. A perfectly made card for commander… that everyone but the menaces to society hates always and just leads to extremely boring games wether it’s the nadu player playing the entire game as if it’s solitaire or “I attempt to cast nadu. Any responses?” “Yes I cast pyroblast, counterspell, force of will, and red elemental blast!” Having fun yet?!?! **** Nadu

Ideal: "Everyone will self regulate." Reality: My buddy buys 6 $30-50 cards every couple months. I have Counterspells. He runs Mana Drains. He has 5 tutors. I have maybe a Demonic, but usually not even that. He only plays with me and his son, neither of us can drop anything like the money he does to the point where we stopped trying completely.

The original design was unfun for commander. Uhhhh, and the version we got was supposed to be fun? Their excuse is BS.

In response to the "we never asked for this", I never asked for Birds murdering formats, I asked for Anime girls being in all 100 slots of my commander deck.

It's baffling that they completely missed how this would interact with 0-cost abilities, considering, you know, one of the most played commander cards, one that goes in pretty much every single deck, is an artifact with a 0 cost equip ability.

Every product: "If you aren't a commander player, this product isn't for you"

Commander isn't to blame, a last second change that wasn't tested is to blame.

Edh is fun because it uses cards not made for it, it forced us to get creative. Making cards specific for edh just feels like it's begging for power creep

Commander is not to blame. Incompetence is. I appreciate that Magic, with all the different formats and metas is a complex system to put cards into. But Nadu's text is so obviously broken that they should have realized it just just looking at it. They should have realized it while typing it out.

Designed for Commander? But it is super miserable in Commander, like, what do you mean? Why it needed to be so pushed? I mean, EDH is the most casual and jankiest format, you could have made Nadu a 6 mana with only one per turn clause, and people would still love it and played it. Like... How can be the designers so disconnected from the format and the game? Its play pattern even mirrors the same issues of Paradox Engine, a banned card. You can tell it just by reading it, no playtesting needed, regardless of the 0-mana equip combos.

lol they laid off ppl off then experienced low quality. not a shock

All the "casual commander" players pretending that they don't play a turn-2 format will always be wild to me. Like, ok. YOU don't play the two-card-infinite-win-immediately cards, but you could if you wanted to. The ACTUAL commander format, what's legal, what's not legal, is the most powerful format. WotC's choice to consider the most powerful format when making ALL of their new cards is the reason we are seeing the monumental spike in how power crept cards have become. Imagine turning up to a Vintage event, and pulling out cat tribal. That's Commander. Everyone could play Jewel Shops if they wanted, they choose not to. Problem is WotC needs to still consider the fact that Jewel Shops exists. So all new cards need to be balanced for a turn-2 format. More playtesting would probably have helped the Nadu situation. But I believe there is a fundamental flaw in designing your entire game around it's most powerful iteration.

Since the fire design philosophy is catering towards commander, then it's only right if the commander complacency committee needs to be more proactive. The ones in charge of the duel commander ban list are more proactive than the edh rules committee and the "advisory group".

The answer is yes, asterisk. The asterisk is the intense focus on Commander by WotC is to blame.

Is it just me or did that article say they "didn't want Nadu to be a card no one thought was interesting enough to build around" rather than they "didn't want it to be too strong for Commander?"

Commander isn’t to blame, the way wotc handled the shift in focus to commander is why shit sucks now. No one forced them to make cards the way they decide to print them.

Of course it was designed for Commander. The 3000 legendary creatures per set are always designed for Commander.

Commander broke Modern, which broke itself trying to turn back into Standard with the Horizons sets because Modern players were bored with cards having to filter through Standard in order to make it to the format and now we are here. Support Standard and this happens less.

I hate how the rules committee uses rule 0 to do nothing. The rules committee should set the standards for playing at commander events and in stores. That is how we get stuff like dockside and Armageddon hellscape

If Nadu's ability only worked off of other birds you control it would have been nowhere near as much of a problem, but it wouldn't have been the MH3 moneybomb WotC were hoping it would be

I think you are overemphasizing the "made for commander" aspect here, the real problem with Nadu isn't that they changed the design due to commander concerns, its the lack of playtesting. I mean, thats how we got skullclamp and the mind sculptor as well (as you mention in the video) Basically i think the real problem isn't designing for commander, its changing things when its too late to playtest

PK: Is Commander to Blame for Nadu's 'Design Mistake'? Me, observing the Nadu report(AKA: The Smoking Gun): Every single Yes Ever.

Yes of course "commander is to blame". But all this really means is Wizards is incentivized to make as much money as possible and commander has the most players. So of course they make commander cards in every set The real problem is making them legal in other formats, please just make them straight to commander and put them in special guest or list slots

Stop designing for commander in non commander product... make neat legendary creatures and we will figure it how to use it. Don't shoehorn that into everything... and don't make commander specific products a premium.

So if the main issue is that commander designed cards are dangerous when in the same product as modern and standard cards, maybe the answer is that we need less tent pole sets and more stuff like the DND sets and commander masters that is intended to be drafted for commander? That would allow for less commander cards in each set while retaining a commander focus

I am doing my part by voting with my wallet. I haven't bought cards since MH2. I miss what magic was, but don't miss what it is.

Weird perspective, but I often wonder how the artists of banned cards feel. Like if they feel disappointed, or they find it funny, or they find it exciting kinda thing.

Its like they try to catch the commander design mistakes in developement because they know the RC won't do jack all about it. The ultimate irony being that Nadu turned out to be a problem in commander anyways

Not to assign blame in any way, but maybe if the people responsible for commander had a firmer grasp on the health of the format, these types of cards would've been turned down a long time ago.

I only play commander, and I don't think cards should be specifically designed for commander.

As I'm primarily a Commander player nowadays, I can say that I liked it better when they weren't designing things specifically for Commander. If they just stuck to designing things for Standard, we wouldn't have the ridiculous power creep that we see nowadays. Granted, you can do some very specific things to help the commander experience (such as having certain effects affect "all opponents" versus just "target opponent" and making sure that legendary commanders exist for various color combinations and/or mechanics), but loading creature after creature with 3+ abilities that go infinite at the drop of a hat isn't healthy for any format. This applies to designing directly for Modern as well. The silliest thing about Nadu is that even if it was supposed to be designed specifically for Commander, the card is broken in that format as well. Their supposed fixes to the "original" card (which was also stupidly broken in Commander) just made it worse.

I’ve listened a lot of discussions on the BnR, and hadn’t heard anyone compare Modern to a drowning baby until today. This is why I watch your content! 💀

My frustration with the article was that they modified it for commander appeal and sent it off without playtest. They ended up with a card in a modern set that is banned in a modern format

I think content creators have a big part in everything that goes wrong. They never call out wizards

I play with 2 playgroups, and in one of them I made the motion to collectively say we will not play Nadu as a group for a couple of reasons. 1) we play on cockatrice and with how clunky cockatrice can be it just leads to hour long turns 2) The playgroup we do play in with Nadu banned doesn’t really have any restrictions in terms of strength in general, but we do typically end up just not playing decks that don’t mesh well with that group. Like my Tivit deck is really strong, I love playing it, but it’s full of bullshit that playgroup doesn’t enjoy playing into and overall I think that deck lost focus from my initial thought of making a funny vote deck to let’s make this deck PUSHED, which is fun for high power, but not for casual commander. 3) The first group is newer to Magic and doesn’t know what the “best cards” are yet. Sure they know about some of the big ones like doubling season, Rhystic study, and it feels like everyone found smothering tithe really fast, but they don’t know beyond the staples. The other group is a group of power gamers who aren’t quite CeDH level but pretty close. Tivit is my only deck that can compete there because the other decks were not PUSHED like Tivit was. There’s fun to be had when everyone’s deck is just super pushed and threats are showing up all the time, but the guy sitting in the corner drawing cards is the biggest threat because he’s playing combo Tameshi and will just play Solitaire on his turn until we’re dead.

I think the problem is that they tried to create a powerful card without testing - who they were designing for is much less important.

Putting on the cowboy boots and pushing a card without testing seems like a wild thing to admit to. The vibe I got from the article was that the lessons learned from all this weren't "don't ever release a card that hasn't been play tested", they were "make the untested changes less good" and "change the ban dates and carry on" which only guarantees that this will happen over and over again.

God. As a 10 year EDH player, I’m pissed they are messing up constructed formats the way they have been for the past 4 years. It’s aggravating that they cannot separate design and then leads to problematic designs warping commander, but more importantly, competitive magic at large. Without competitive magic, the casual crowd would stagnate and die.

The card designers are to blame because they feel the need to design commander cards outside of the precon decks to get more product to be sold by targeting a larger audience. That's bad for commander and every other format that sets are printed for.

Honestly, i don't believe this story. they didn't "accidentally" push this card, they did it in full knowledge to push it beyond any reason so they could sell packs. People already pointed that out when it was spoiled how dumb that design is, so i have a hard time that a company of the size and experience like WotC wouldn't know better, so they did that deliberately

I'd rather they kept the original printing of Nadu. Sure, there wouldn't be a cap to the Thrasios ability and you could flash in perms, but at least it relied on the OTHER players.

The one small cavoite about them designing for commander is that I remember the days in which a new set would come out and you would only see like 1-3 legends in the whole set. While there was a lot more attention on them because we got less legends I think getting an increased number of legends is good but I think the push for power in command zone and the format as a whole is bad.

Yes.

The charm of commander was that most legends used to just have sort of vaguely synergistic effects and the challenge was to try and find a way to somehow build a deck around something that never intended to be the focal point of a deck. Only a handful of top tier commanders from the 2010s just so happened to be S tier commanders because they coincidentally had effects conducive to focusing a deck around. Now days almost every other legend is printed with an effect that blatantly screams "HEY YOU, BUILD AROUND ME!" As if every legend now has to be what an S tier commander would've been 10 years ago. The charm of the jankyness of trying to force a deck to work around a clunky effect is almost entirely gone now. Short of coming to a mutual understanding within a play group that you all agree to avoid these blatant build around me commanders.

I'm interested in hearing your feelings/take on PreDH. It was one of Sheldon's favorite variations for a lot of the reasons you talk about here

Skullclamp 2: simic bird boogaloo

It's apparently important for them to design cards in a way that every one of those will find a home. Wood Elemental says hello.

When i first started commander 2.5 years ago my LGS JUST OPENED and the meta was amazing. It was ... Commander. It was very battlecruiser and "lets all just do our own thing." Now the meta is insanely powerful... Gone are the days of casual play

I really wish they’d stop printing commander cards (either dedicated commander cards or cards designed for commander) in normal sets

I buy high end proxies now (flat $3 a card and you cant tell the difference), its too expensive to keep up with Magic since they made all formats rotate

I came back to Magic in 2020. I found about Commander and it really peaked my interest. It let me play my old cards and build interesting decks. However, I soon realized that part of what made it so good was WotC stayed out of it and that it was not a competitive thing. However, you could immediately tell that WOTC made money on sets that created Commander cards and since then they have been hellbent on making sure they got the money instead of the secondary market. Now WotC is creating singleton cards in formats where you can have play sets without having a restricted list for those formats, because they need you to burn wild cards so you open more packs on Arena.

All they needed to do was add "This card cannot be put into your Command Zone" to the original and it now is harder to get going. The lije "This card cannot be put in your Command Zone" should always be an option for any Legendary card to counter potential Commander issues.

Thing is, IF Nadu was commander focused, his color and original ability would match the Tricky Terrain all too well, did they swap Omo in for nostalgia bait?

I wouldn't say Commander is to blame even as someone who never really cared for the topic, if only because nothing forced WotC (and Hasbro) to focus on it. Same with pooping out nonstop product. It's more the fault of greed and an intentional lack of playtesting--but I repeat myself--than the intentional if always paradoxical focus on making things explicitly for Commander. Greedy people have never cared about the long-term health of anything they ring money out of even if they destroy it in the process. There's true here too.

Wait, why did I hear the Mesa Falcon noise at the start if CGB didn't say it

I don't like the idea of splitting commander up between Casual and CEDH from a broad perspective because it literally just feels like "Playing Commander and "What if we played commander but we made up a random collection of rules that changed from play group to play group based on pre existing biases". Very great points across the point about the systemic issues that the format, and game as a whole faces. Brava.

I think firing a boatload of employees at the end of last year while having the suits demand the line go up is a major issue, as it means that small staff is even smaller, and like you said, the release schedule is putting a toll on development.

Highly relevant video. At my last EDH game day with friends, we were all talking about making at least one deck only with cards made prior to the first commander product released in 2011. Just to get that original feel of the format back.

The most fun commander game i had was when we decided to make $75 decks, i was running a 5 colour devoid eldrazi deck, and another guy had a kamigawa spirits deck.

We’ve been playing Commander the Gathering for years. They’re finally just admitting it. Why the hell does a set that’s supposedly specifically designed for modern even need 4 commander decks to begin with?

I want the times back where there was one commander precon set per year and nothing else, not 90 legends per set designed for commander etc

Modern horizons designers: "Let's make a fun card for commander, Hogaak." "Oh no, this is a problem." Modern horizons 3 designers: "Let's make a card fun for commander, Nadu." "Oh no, this is a problem."

Commander was meant to cobble together wacky interactions with cards that were never designed with it in mind. Making cards specifically for commander and then releasing them to other formats is going in the exact opposite direction.

As a commander only player, I couldn't agree more. Bring back making cards for every other format outside of commander. If a card is good in other formats it will most likely be good in one way or another in commander

They rotated modern and ruined modern by sacrificing modern meta to save commander meta IN A MODERN PRODUCT. They betrayed modern live in front of everyones eyes and their only explaination is we did it for our true love, commander. A format they dont even manage or do banlists for. 😂

Designing for commander and/or modern is everything wrong with mtg in the last 7 years, at a minimum.

All i have to say is that commander makes so much money that this "made for commander" idealology wont change. HOWEVER. we get 16-24 precons a year. SAVE THOSE CARDS FOR THE FKN PRECONS. MAKE CARDS FOR COMMANDER IN COMMANDER PRECONS ONLY

Bitter ordeal is one of my wincons in my glarb deck

I, a guy who only plays commander casually with his friends, don't think they should prioritize making cards good in commander outside of commander sets

I love commander but tbh, the experience of being 3 turns or 4 turns in and someone just says I win out of the blue has been pretty miserable

the worst part for me really is the "my intention was to design a play around card for commander". WHY?!? this set is called MODERN horizons, why is the focus commander?!? it's so fucking stupid.

I only play commander, I built a Nadu deck, and I think that the blame is the commander-centric design. The most ironic thing about this fiasco is that for the first time the cart didn’t shoot up to insane prices because of how obvious it was that ban. Now a conspiracy moment: was this a misdirection to draw the attention away from the one ring?

No? The problem is 100% on the designers and by their own admitance by literally saying they didn't test the last, printed iteration.

That wasn't a change, that was effectively a brand new card. To replace a card that would have been fine in Commander. If anything, it would have been underwhelming due to how many broken UG commanders there are.

Many made-for-commander cards are my favorite cards of all time. If they didn't design for commander we wouldn't have amazing multiplayer mechancis like Monarch

We're also talking about designing cards specifically for the group of people most likely to just proxy them. 🤷‍♂