Gavin Verhey and Aaron Forsythe joined Blake Rasmussen on today’s Weekly MTG stream to discuss the news of Wizards of the Coast (WotC) taking over the management of the Commander format and answer community questions from the past 24 hours since the news broke.
Verhey, a Principal Game Designer and lead of the Commander Design Team, and Forsythe, the Vice President of Game Design and Creative, spent the hour fielding questions from social media, the Twitch chat, and the new Discord channel from the official Magic Discord. Both of them made it clear that the decision for WotC to officially take over the management of the format from the Commander Rules Committee was only a few days old and it came from the deluge of threats that were directed at members of the Commander RC. About halfway through last week, WotC and the RC reached the conclusion for the RC to hand over the format due to the alarming number of problematic messages the members were receiving and the impact they were having on their lives.
Verhey made it clear it was not an easy decision to make while Forsythe said that for the longest time he and WotC didn’t need or want to take over Commander management. Forsythe said the members of the Commander RC did an excellent job and people enjoyed the format while it was in their hands. Unfortunately, the threats of violence made it to where WotC needed to take action and have the weight of the decisions to handle the format “fall on us now” and that “this was the best path forward.” Forsythe also pointed to the ways the format is tough to manage as one reason he wanted to stay with a hands-off approach to Commander as long as possible.
“Part of why this format is hard to run and why I was not chomping at the bit to do it is it’s unlike every other format we run. We don’t get tournament data and we don’t get tons of data from Magic Online. All of our other formats we manage with a mixture of data and sentiment. This one is all sentiment-driven for the most part,” Forsythe said. “Sometimes the data becomes irrefutable that a card is too good and we can do something about it. In general, are people having fun, are they adhering to the spirit of what’s going on and how do we know this? It’s such a huge disparate community that enjoys different things and we need information from as many parts of it as we can to know what we are supposed to do next. Community involvement or a format panel, whatever shape it will take, is vital.”
Verhey said that he is working on putting together a community-focused team, that could range from 10-20 people, that would work in conjunction with the Commander Design Team that consists of around a dozen people. While it is still very early, Verhey envisions it as functioning similar to the Pauper Format Panel that manages the Pauper format. This element will allow the format to still be managed with community-driven feedback while balancing that with experienced designers at WotC.
Another topic the duo talked about was the handling of the Commander ban list. Verhey noted that they will re-evaluate the ban list, but they will not be banning any cards for a while. Whether or not any cards will get unbanned is still unclear, but those decisions will have to wait to be made until the community team is finalized. He also said that the Commander B&R updates would not follow the cadence of the competitive formats like Standard, Pioneer, and Modern.
“One thing I want to stress is that Commander moves slowly,” Verhey said. “We are not looking at doing tons and tons and tons of changes. Stability is a key part of Commander.”
Verhey and Forsythe spent a lot of time extrapolating on the merits and viability of the power bracket system that was laid out in the announcement yesterday. They both mentioned how the system isn’t perfect, still requires a lot of work to flesh out, and that nothing will replace the effectiveness of having a discussion with players at your table about what kind of game you want to play. The number of brackets is still undecided, though the initial idea of four is the lens in which discussions about the power bracket system is being viewed through. In the new power bracket system, key Commander cards will be batched in buckets, with the most powerful or game-warping cards landing in Bracket 4, while core cards to the format that often appear in most precons will fall in Bracket 1. Whatever the highest bracket a card in a deck falls into would be the assumed power level of the deck.
Forsythe did point out that some of the brackets will have to be fluid, as the team doesn’t plan to list every single card playable in Commander in each bracket. He does want Bracket 4 to be concrete when it is finalized, but did mention that not every card will be put in a bracket on its raw power level alone. For example, Sol Ring will still be in Commander precons and will fall in Bracket 1 along with cards like the fetch lands despite Polluted Delta being incredibly powerful in a vacuum. He said he doesn’t want cards put in brackets based off their worst-case scenarios.
Verhey touched on another topic he considers one of the biggest dangers to Commander being ubiquity. He talked about how the Commander Design Team has learned a lot over the past few years and some of the cards that were banned last week (Dockside Extortionist and Jeweled Lotus) are not designs they want to make any longer. Making cards that need to go in every Commander deck homogenize the format and remove spots in decks to be creative.
“I would say Jeweled Lotus was a mistake, much like Arcane Signet,” Verhey said. “We would not make them today with the heuristics we know now. We want to push back against cards like Sol Ring, Command Tower, and Arcane Signet as much as possible. We are not trying to make cards like those that were banned any longer.”
Verhey and Forsythe tried to give timelines for the implementation of the new community panel and the bracket system, but it’s still too early to have anything set in stone. Verhey did say that one goal of his to shoot for was to have the power bracket system ready in some form for MagicCon: Las Vegas. He didn’t promise anything, as the team wants to take the time to do it right, but he would like to see games potentially being made based off the bracket system in Las Vegas later this month. Forsythe on the other hand, would like to get the community group solidified before making other decisions.
For players that want to submit feedback, Verhey recommended using the Discord channel, posting on Reddit, and reaching out to him on social media.
