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Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Feb. 12, 2021, 2:26 p.m. by Suspence89
I've been wanting to voice his opinion for some time now and I know what the vast majority of you already think. "The color pie is fine"... It's not because we can't even agree on it. With something so quintessential and foundational, the color pie should be of upmost importance and priority when it comes to expanding this great game we all love.
That's why I'm writing this. Because I love this game and specifically this format. I started playing EDH back in Dark Ascension so I've seen everything from, how many Primeval Titan s can you make, to Prophet of Kruphix being the single most powerful card to hit any table. Don't get me wrong I loved those periods in EDH and still have many great memories of splashy games and epic wins with friends that equally invested into our LGS's edh community. As time has gone on, my inner boomer is shaking their head as cards continually show a trend that is becoming more and more disappointing.
WotC has begun the dissolving process of the color pie!
Here are just some of my observations from my experience within my EDH community. I joined a very large EDH discord community a little over a year ago. I tend to play in the mid tier but I can hang with the high decks. I find that people really love playing in mid tier and the players at that level really want an enjoyable game without sweating over every priority pass from turn to turn. Don't get me wrong, high decks and CEDH decks are truly compelling and interesting but they're just a different environment that demands a different intensity.
During my time in online magic I've built 4 decks and really expanded my knowledge and enjoyment of the game. However, the color pie problem I've noticed is this: what color should I add to my green deck?
Its too often that spoiler season reveals the next eyerolling white cards like Reidane, God of the Worthy Flip or Starnheim Unleashed that "aRe MeAnT fOr LiMiTeD" that's just a cheap justification for neglect. Meanwhile green receives it's favorite child treatment with Esika, God of the Tree Flip and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider . Or take Tergrid, God of Fright Flip to your EDH table and watch people not even play with you. My short point is that just in Kaldheim, the trend of color favorites has been blatantly displayed. Before you say I'm beating a dead horse, take a step back and honestly look at how EDH is becoming Green + X the gathering.
Rant over.
king-saproling says... #3
Would be nice if wazards made some more white cards that are decent for Electronic Dance Hall
February 12, 2021 3:40 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #4
Not every set needs to cater to EDH or even keep that format in mind and all of the cards you listed fit into the pie perfectly. Eskia, God of the Tree is 5c - so it can do anything it wants and while vorn is cool he amounts to being a Doubling Season with legs with a few more upsides - it's a very "Green" card. Reidane, God of the Worthy Flip - is a stax piece which is very white and Starnheim Unleashed - is angel support but is an efficient token creator something white is also known for. Now as for the disparity in power that's not too much of an issue with this set in particular.
February 12, 2021 3:50 p.m.
i remember someone else complaining about a lot of the changes
saying that the changes they were pushing would be bad for edh
i'm pretty sure the members of tapped out did not really agree with his point of view
actually no body really cared at all outside of arguing his points
also if i remember correctly he was smart enough to sell off all his high dollar cards before the collection values collapsed like he predicted
i think he still comes on tapped out mostly to chat, only plays edh with his friends on saturday, and has been enjoying buying cards that he sold for $60+ for $5
February 12, 2021 4:47 p.m.
I am on the opposite side of the fence, I consider EDH a supplemental, casual, format that is fine for those with large card collections but Standard and Modern are the two formats that really carry this game competitively. I was getting really annoyed at the cards in sets clearly designed for EDH. Design cards for the money formats and let the EDH players adapt, not the other way around.
February 12, 2021 5:18 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #7
I think it’s hard for WotC to ignore EDH/Commander since it revitalized what I always considered the heart of MtG (people casually sitting around and goofing off). The downside is that when they focus on it they can make mistakes. I’m glad my paycheck isn’t riding on keeping that standard/EDH balance, because I don’t think there’s an official and good way to do it. As an Old, I can totally relate to the color pie panic, because the game used to be just a toolbox of non-character-specific items. You, as the wizard, made the deck and the story. Does the opposing wizard have a magic candelabra, possibly looted from old man Tawnos’ tomb?Maybe hit him with some psychic venom! I feel like when they introduced planeswalkers, they sort of “personed” the color pie and that made things a lot stickier. Now, instead of building weird and fun tools for people’s toolboxes, you’re trying to ALSO shoehorn some sort of big plot in along side it. The creation of “scene cards” like Heroic Intervention and Dramatic Reversal is part of what I’m talking about. Having said all of that, and attempting to curtail my rant early, it’s possible (read: likely) that my distaste for planeswalker characters is at the root of that, though. Phew- almost dipped into a DEEP rant there.
February 12, 2021 6:37 p.m.
Suspence89 says... #8
Interesting view ShiltonCDXX because WotC has admitted in multiple recent articles that EDH is the only thing carrying the market as of late.
February 12, 2021 6:39 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #9
If, with the enormous card pool of the EDH format, you can't construct a deck of the colors of your liking, without feeling the need to include (or or to a lesser extent), you might be blinded by power and lost track of the philosophy of the format.
Here's a link, for those who might be interested
Not being able to enjoy a deck without letting the splashy new "must-includes" dictate you how to build it, sounds more like a personal problem than a defect in the format to me.
Suspence89 Green has been the go-to for big splashy silly things WAY before EDH was rising up as the biggest format of them all. You can't rejoice about the old days of Prophet of Kruphix and Primeval Titan and then shake your self-proclaimed boomer head at green in its current role in EDH in the same post. If you don't like to have to include green in your deck, then don't. I'm sure there's over 15000 cards still to choose from. Hell, I've built a mono +1/+1 counter deck just to see if I could, and it turned out crazy fun. The beauty of this great game we all love is in your absolute freedom to express yourself through the cards you put in your deck. I currently have 13 decks built, not even half of them play Sol Ring . I only own 2 Arcane Signet . I have as many decks that are green (2 mono , 1 , 1 and 1 five color) as I have decks within Boros colors (2 mono, 2 mono, 1 ). There's no reason to include green in any deck you don't want to, and if you want to play green in every deck, you appear to be a green mage. Why wouldn't you feel appreciated if your color is today's special?
With the enormous amount of complaining of getting nothing and getting everything, I'm sure the paradigm will shift someday to complaining why instead of green, we need to include [insert color here] not too far in the future. Either that or we'll continue trends shown on Command Zone and EDHREC podcasts that show people already shying back from overloading their decks with green. is the 4th most represented monocolor and a shared 2nd with in two-color decks, according to EDHREC stats.
In the end, the best advice I can give is: try have more fun with the cards than with the trends, the cards will last, the trends will pass.
February 13, 2021 7:19 a.m.
DrukenReaps says... #10
What you are describing doesn't really come across as a color pie issue to me. There are certainly issues with the color pie. There was a tweet the Professor brought up in a recent-ish video where a WotC employee said something like "the players can't understand the color pie" Like seriously? I think that is the problem there. The people in WotC. Not all of them, I'm sure plenty are good people.
What you are describing comes across more as an issue with WotC R&D. Powerful cards can be made in any color with the color pie as it sits now. Serra's Sanctum is a great example of an extremely powerful white card. Iona is another that is arguably ban worthy. As it reads 'target mono-color deck can't be played' and it is banned, lmao. If a color is underperforming it is because of WotC employees.
I could sit here naming or designing plenty of strong cards in any color using color pie restrictions. Some employees at WotC just need to pull their heads out of their asses and do the same...
February 13, 2021 7:56 a.m.
A. 60 card competitive points grinding is not sustainable long term for most players. This is why so many quit the game only to return 2 or 3 years later
B. Edh is not only the preferred format for social players its also a break from the grind for the competitive players
When you consider these two factors there is no logical resoning for the directions they have been taking or the pushes they have made
You dont take the most successful format and do the same things you did in the failing formats as a recipe for success.......
February 13, 2021 9:04 a.m.
Thats what happens when WoTC tries to put their hand into a player created format.
If I remember correctly, EDH was borne out of a need for players to make use of these large collections of cards they had acquired, from playing standard, so the idea was that you now had a vast list of cards to build with, and that pool only gets bigger as more sets get released.
WoTC did not release cards specifically for the format at the time and look how it flourished.
WoTC needs to focus on making quality standard cards, bringing in new players and retaining the players they have, otherwise none of the other formats get new cards. Losing standard would be the death knell for this great game.
February 13, 2021 9:30 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #13
I think I agree with ShiltonCDXX. When WotC started making commander-specific cards, that started the slide away from what I think of when I think of EDH: semi-random cards that don’t quite break the surface for value...but are still cards that you like. Creating cards for EDH officially jumped the EDH train onto the normal min/max-optimization track that standard players ride. A lot of fun stuff has come out of the Commander decks, so I’m not disappointed, but I feel we should all try to keep at least one “old style” EDH deck handy that isn’t hyper optimized...just so we can shuffle one up for our lost homies sometimes.
February 13, 2021 10:10 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #14
EDH was created by judges, who after long days of running big tournaments, wanted to play some magic, but not the magic they had been observing and correcting all day. So they made some 3-color singleton (Highlander) decks, commanded by one of the original Shard-colored legendary Dragons from Legends: Arcades Sabboth , Chromium , Nicol Bolas , Palladia-Mors or Vaevictis Asmadi . 5 Elder Dragons, all 7 power. If you got hit 3 times by one of these, you'd lose the game, regardless of your life total. Elder Dragon Highlander, 21 commander damage is lethal.
This resulted in a casual, fun-oriented, table kitchen style of playing magic. Wizards does know that only a very tiny percentage of their player base is actually playing in sanctioned tournaments in established formats. By far the most Magic players are casual kitchen table players that play the game to have fun, beating their friends, not the world. EDH as a format will speak more to those players than to the PTQ- and pro tour-grinding players. Believe me, the top16 GP players at my LGS usually cower in fear when someone suggests to play a game of EDH.
Wizards knows all this and has been printing cards for specifically that casual multiplayer format for the past 10 years now. The first Commander (Wizards' legally safe name for exactly the same format as EDH is) Set came out in 2011 and gave us mainstay generals like Animar, Soul of Elements , Ghave, Guru of Spores , Kaalia of the Vast , Zedruu the Greathearted and The Mimeoplasm .
What has changed, is that more and more people use EDH as their main way of playing magic. Wizards is a company, to keep existing, they need to make money. So when Commander took over from Standard and Modern as the most popular to spend your Friday Night Magic, Wizards found a way to accommodate their finances accordingly. By including cards that work better for multiplayer than for competitive constructed formats in every single set, they ensure every set will be a financial success.
So the whole hipster "I liked commander before every set had specific cards for it"-attitude is understandable, but not at all useful in the world we live in. We made this format the most massively enjoyed format around the world. By making it that successful, we changed how the company makes its money. As long as those cards sell, we will get more splashy multiplayer nonsense, Arcane Signet s, Jeweled Lotus , etc. And that is why green is the kingpin of colors in multiplayer/EDH right now. Green is famously the color of ramp. The term "ramp" even originates from the green Rampant Growth . Green is also the color of big monsters. Green is the color of nature, of harmony, the color that lets you do everything you want, while generally not hurting other players' cards.
I'm going to talk in stereotypes for a bit. People think of black and see Murder , Damnation , not a friendly environment for your own stuff. Red will Vandalblast , Blasphemous Act , Jokulhaups your stuff away. White will Wrath of God , Rest in Peace , Swords to Plowshares , while Thalia, Guardian of Thraben makes it harder for you to play your game. Blue will Counterspell and Cyclonic Rift everyone out of the game. Green will just play a bigger beast ( Worldspine Wurm , Craterhoof Behemoth ). Of course I know of all the Beast Within and Krosan Grip removal green has, but you generally will think of green as the least board-controlling color of them all. It will execute its game plan without meddling with yours. Green will let everyone do broken stuff, but will be doing the most stuff itself because of its Abundance of mana and resources. That's the most friendly way to let everyone at the table have the most amount of fun without adjusting your strategy to group hug. No wonder people like playing with and against that.
When people like green, Wizards is inclined to print better green cards, which makes people want to play green more. This is a positive feedback loop that spirals out of control of you're not careful. It's also not specifically a green problem. I think people call it Power Creep. It's part of keeping a dynamic game like Magic interesting. I think a hypothetical future Standard set without any Commander playable cards in it will cause much more of an uproar in the Magic community than Kaldheim ever could. Hate it or love it, but EDH is ingrained in the fabric of magic itself now, and as long as we enjoy EDH, that will not change. I plan to have the most amount of fun with available cards, regardless of color or intended format. Your mileage may vary.
February 13, 2021 1:23 p.m.
All cards released in standard sets are playable in commander, they may not be optimized for it, ut they aren't supposed to be, optimized commander cards can stay in the commander decks.
All I was getting at personally is that the formats without rotating card pools rely on standard for new cards, standard doesn't rely on those other formats. Keep standard, standard focused and let those cards fit naturally into eternal formats, dont shoehorn them into, and dilute, the standard card pool.
If WoTC wants EDH to take over then they need to officially take control of it and promote it as the new FNM format, push tourneys and have LGS's promote it more.
February 13, 2021 1:52 p.m. Edited.
call me crazy but how does this sound....
focus only on standard - it has the most potential income for wotc
in new set releases power,mechanics, and favoritize color would be rotated based on the planes not player popularity. - everyone gets a turn
next support commander by slipping in one or two commander based cards in the every set, but then release the most powerful commander cards as a buy a box promo
everyone could have what they want, and no format would suffer, while increasing sales.
stop printing commander decks and sets
stop printing collector editions
is something isn't broke you shouldn't try to fix it.....
February 13, 2021 2:06 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #17
ShiltonCDXX The Standard card pool has never been all Standard playable cards. Competitive magic has historically only used a fraction of all available cards in the format, because most cards just aren't good enough. If the Standard card pool wasn't "diluted" with cards like Esika, God of the Tree Flip, it would be "diluted" with cards like Archangel's Light . Just as mythic, even less playable, back in the "good old days" of Standard focusing on Standard.
WotC didn't want EDH to take over, the players did. WotC tried to jump that hype train with Brawl, and when that didn't really took off, they announced 2020 to be the 'Year of Commander' because we like it that much. They're just offering supply to the demand we're showing.
Commander doesn't lend itself for organised play, it is by definition the casual format where fun overrules results and standings. When you organise an EDH tournament, you're rewarding breaking the format with degenerate, unfun and fast win conditions, and it will get stale real fast if cEDH is the main promoted way of playing Commander for the general public. Plus you'll price out new players really fast that way, chasing them out of LGSs. CommandFest areas at MagicFest tournaments was a genius move to attract more players to the big happening of Grand Prix tournaments, but making it the main event would probably be the worst possible decision, offending competitive players with a casual format as headline, while the casual crowd doesn't care at all about who's the best.
And I'm sorry, RambIe but only including the powerful cards as buy-a-box promo's and discontinuing the commander products would actually be insane. Having to buy a full box of a new Standard set, just for a chance of a limited supply promo card that you need for the biggest and most popular format in the world is almost extortion, that would drive up the price on the secondary market through the roof, the controversy would be equal to or greater than the Walking Dead Secret Lair.
The Commander precons are widely regarded as the best product line WotC releases each year. They're an excellent way for new players to step into the game, while offering plenty for experienced players to still get excited about. To stop printing them is like McDonald's to stop selling fries, because "they're just a burger restaurant right?"
And what did Collector Boosters do wrong? There's no new cards in there, only reprints that look nicer, or at least different from the regular cards in the set. That's not a "fix" for any problem, that's offering your players variety, without adding any cards to any format. Literally, a way to make sure everyone gets what they want, without any format suffering more than just releasing the main set would cause.
February 13, 2021 3:09 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #18
plakjekaas - the collector boosters effectively turned the secondary market on its' head and ruined the market for standard singles. I never in my wildest dreams thought a borderless foil planeswalker would be less than 5 dollars but here we are. Force of Will, the card game essentially did the same thing and killed their game - at least on the east coast;they started adding in multiple variations of the same card and pumped out a few sets with bad cards and the game disappeared. Magic is starting down that path but has a hard core player based made up of not only players but heavily invested collectors. It'll take longer but with this trend of pumping out premium product and catering to certain demographics the growth of the game will stagnate.
February 13, 2021 4:03 p.m.
Lol plakjekaas but by definition all cards released in standard sets are standard playable, as in legal. Just because some don't have faith in a card doesn't mean its unplayable in the format.
Some of my best decks come from cards like The Prismatic Bridge and Sanctum of All .
Maybe I just don't like the card, though I have jumped on the tibalt train myself, but cards like Tibalt's Trickery are the ones im talking about. To me this card was never designed for standard and I will not be surprised when it gets banned in standard.
February 13, 2021 4:38 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #20
ShiltonCDXX I think Tibalt's Trickery was a risky attempt, but casting spells for free has always been problematic. They could have fixed it with a simple "counter target spell you don't control" and all would be peachy and degenerate-combo-proof. Some very flashy synergy with Roiling Vortex even. But that ship has sailed with the printing as is.
But really? You make no distinction between playable and format legal? Arcane Signet and Command Tower are Standard legal due to the Eldraine Brawl decks, you consider those actually playable in the format? Is Nyxborn Courser a legacy playable card? Following that, it's impossible to shoehorn in non-standard cards with new sets, because by definition, those cards being in the set makes them Standard cards. How can a card dilute the Standard cardpool if that card by definition contributes to the Standard cardpool? It makes this discussion kind of impossible '^^
February 13, 2021 7:48 p.m.
No the big difference is that Arcane Signet and Command Tower were never released in standard legal sets (i.e as part of the standard block of sets, they only came in supplemental products. Yes some of those products are standard legal but obviously not meant for the format.
February 13, 2021 8:31 p.m.
plakjekaas :) actually what i was suggesting has already successfully been done and nobody complained. Kenrith, the Returned King
February 13, 2021 8:39 p.m.
Edit: everything i suggested has already successfully been done.
The part thats missing in the math is the decline in magic players as they destroy collection values and individualism of the format
People goto edh as a break from other formats so it only stands to reason the more you make edh like other formats the more people will leave.
wotc just focusing on standard would be the best move they could make.
February 13, 2021 8:49 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #24
I think the problems with the color pie are built into Magic from it's conception. It's really that the color pie was never balanced to begin with.
I mean, look at the boons cycle -- Recall became one of the 9 best spells of all time, Dark Ritual is one of the best mana accelerants in the game, Bolt is the best red card period, and giant growth is still relevant. Healing Salve is not playable in anything and AFAIK has never been.
White consistently gets the short end of the stick because its mechanics aren't on-par compared to the other colors. Lifegain is almost never worth the mana, unless it's incidental. Maybe Life Goes On when you can get 8 life out of it . . . but even then I'd always prefer Push over LGO.
Magic was not designed well in the first place -- and we have reasonable evidence that the MtG team is about as competent as half-roasted squirrels. But the best thing -- the massive creativity palette that the game provides -- is the reason the game is still alive.
February 16, 2021 4:34 p.m.
Suspence89 says... #25
Just wanted to say thanks for keeping the discussion really great everyone.
It's true that the trend will always change and there's always an alternative. I just find is greatly discouraging that there's nothing to get excited about with white anymore. That's the upsetting part. Every other color gets something to get excited about. White gets more 4/4 angels with keywords on them.
My problem is at the ground level and i understand that not every card can directly transfer to edh (duh). My hope is that a certain "stimulus" product can be introduced for new white cards that should already exist in edh that can really catch the color up to others.
I'm positive and hopeful about it because of Gavin's recent news video. If you haven't seen it check it out on YouTube. Patience fellow commander players and keep it spicy.
legendofa says... #2
I haven't actually sat in for an EDH match for a long time now, so I might not be the best qualified to answer. But as I remember, at least for Standard, white was getting all kinds of toys in Tarkir/Shadows over Innistrad and green was a polite suggestion, then Red was the power color around Kaladesh/Amonkhet. At that time, white still had residual power, with solid control and multiple powerful Gideons floating around. Even through Ixalan, blue/green was only interesting outside of Standard for hexproof and +1/+1 counters. Now, white has fully receded, red is on its way out, and green is peaking. I expect in the next few years, people are going to be asking why blue or black are obviously the favorite WotC colors, and why red never gets anything interesting.
As for EDH, the format started very informally, and WotC had no control, or even much interest, in the rules until they were largely codified. Even now, they (claim to) have no influence over the rules. The rules for EDH cater to the strengths of green, black, and blue, and emphasize the weaknesses of red and white. If the initial fan-created game had a different rule set, where maybe you couldn't use any cards over 3 CMC in a forty-card deck and land destruction and hard counterspells were forbidden, then white would be king and blue would be at the bottom.
Summary: the relative power of the colors are constantly ebbing and flowing, and WotC isn't really responsible for white's weakness in EDH.
February 12, 2021 3:25 p.m.