It’s been quite a while since I’ve done an Ask Me Anything, so some most excellent questions have popped up. Let’s get right to them.
First of all, how’s your health?
Thanks to everyone who led off their questions with this one. I’ll offer the shortest answer I can.
TL,DR Version: Currently decent with a guardedly positive outlook.
It’s complicated. The important part is that after my last scan, the doctors labeled the cancer “stable.” That means two things. First, there are no new growths (which is very good). Second, the nodules that are there haven’t grown (this is also very good).
The side effects from the immunotherapy treatments are manageable but not without challenges. It turns out that I’m sensitive to the particular drugs they’re giving me, which means that the side effects, mostly issues with the skin, can be strong—but not, like previous treatments, debilitating. They’re merely irritating. The good news is that they have correlative evidence that people who have shown sensitivity to the drugs demonstrate a higher positive outcome rate. The only current thing that’s bugging me is lymphedema—swelling of the lymph nodes around the original site in my throat. I’m taking that as a positive as well—if my lymphatic system is overworked, it means that my immune system is doing its job and destroying what it needs to; it’s just a little backed up in taking out the trash.
I have another scan coming up right before Christmas, so let’s hope there’s something really nice under the tree.
Now that your articles are behind a paywall, do you still intend to use SCG as a platform to spread your views as a RC member?
Absolutely. Premium members get access to articles right away, but they become freely available to everyone a week later. It’s my intention to keep you all posted via social media when they do. The other RC members and I will also be using the newly updated official Commander website once it’s done to get all the important messages out.
What was the thing that surprised you the most about the work environment at WotC?
The holistic view that my compatriots on the Vision team (Vision is the first step in the process of actually creating cards, and that’s based on a Vision design document) took on designing cards and sets. People think that designers make cards in a vacuum. That’s definitely not the case.
Designers are constantly aware of the 10,000-foot view, as it were. Not only did we capture the design elements of the particular set we were working on, but we did it with an understanding of the other sets around us (the two blocks before and two after were of particular note) so as to either not step on mechanical toes or give too much overlap.
“Is this card fun?” was the constant question from other designers. You can tell that the people making Magic cards love the game and the ones who are working on Commander love the format. Everyone was sensitive to the business concerns involved (such as “will people actually buy these cards?”) but the primary focus was on simply making cards that Magic players will love.
What do you think white needs to be better in Commander but still feel like white?
I think people undervalue white. Yes, it’s a support color in Commander as opposed to a star, but that’s not necessarily bad. The direct answer to your question is giving white a little more card draw that doesn’t violate the color pie. I’m not giving away any secrets to say that the issue came up in design meetings. Folks on Commander teams are aware of the community’s view of white as one of the weaker colors.
Have you tried the Popeye’s chicken sandwich? If so, do you think it lives up to the hype? What is your favorite fast food chicken sandwich?
I have. I don’t eat much fast food, but as it goes, Popeye’s is one that I’ll run every now and again (spicy, thanks). I prefer to go to local fast food places instead of corporate ones, so my favorite is the one made by one of my go-to spots here in Lakeland, Philly Steak & Wings.
How long until we see you working at WotC?
That’s not in the cards unless they open up a Central Florida office. I have a great life here in Lakeland and I intend to live it. I suspect that I’ll return to the building every now and again for short periods, but even a two-month contract is beyond what I’d like to spend away from home. It was a marvelous experience that I’m better off for having, but a strict repeat isn’t likely to happen unless circumstances radically change.
What are your thoughts on Happily Ever After?
It’s a fine alt-wincon card. It’s an enchantment that has a pretty specific set of circumstances, and it has to survive until your upkeep. It’s not a “counter it now or lose” card like Coalition Victory.
How many Angels/Angel support cards did you design while in Seattle?
I can’t talk about what I did or didn’t design. In a year and a half or so, I’ll be able to point to cards and go “That one’s mine!” and you can trust that I will.
As a Commander player, I often feel the fear of missing out with so many Magic products released that are relevant to my favorite format. “This product may not be for you” doesn’t work so well when almost every product could, in theory, be “for me.” Do you think this is an issue at all, and how would you advise someone who loves Commander but cannot afford to acquire everything?
I get the anxieties about product overload. Nonetheless, I’m happy about more products. Sure, it’s nearly impossible to acquire it all—but the company has moved away from that model. No one expects you to pick up everything available. This model allows them to produce more narrowly focused products that might not have the appeal required to fit into the “everybody buys everything” idea. It supports niche corners of the player base. On the whole, I see it as a major net positive for the community.
What are the odds of having a contest for player-created cards either as their own set or as add-ins to upcoming sets? I like to think I have tons of cool ideas and would love a shot at one becoming a reality.
That’s called The Great Designer Search. Just plucking cards from player ideas isn’t going to happen. There are legal concerns that go into it all. Plus, and I can tell you with extreme certainty, designing Magic cards is nowhere near as easy as people might think it is. As I said above, it might be easy in a vacuum, but that’s not how cards are made. The targets are extremely small and hard to hit.
What are your thoughts on our beloved Elk boy, Oko, Thief of Crowns?
It was justifiably banned where it was banned and is a good but not broken card in Commander.
If the RC sat down for a game of Star Commander, where each player’s colors are chosen by the rest of the RC, which monocolored commander would you vote to assign to each of your fellow RC Members? What color/commander do you think they would assign to you?
Well, we’d have to put a fifth person on the RC to do that. I’m pretty sure they see me as the most black, so we’d start there. I’d hope they’d give me Syr Konrad, the Grim, because that guy is baller. Among the rest, I’d vote to give Scott white, since he’s basically Orzhov like me, and when he was on a design team, he came up with Martyr’s Bond. He likes to slip Commander Eesha into his decks, so we could start there. Toby is the Timmiest of all of us, which means he gets green, maybe led by Questing Beast (although he does already have a Barrin, Master Wizard deck). Gavin is the most chaotic, so he’s red (even though I don’t know if I recall him with a primarily red deck). He’s definitely not a Goblin type, though, so Torbran, Thane of Red Fell might be right up his alley. That would leave blue for the hypothetical fifth member.
How many cats is the right amount of cats to own?
Trick question. No one owns cats. Cats own you. We have five, and that seems about right.
What commander have you never played or played against that you look forward to facing one day?
There are a bunch of the new ones which I haven’t yet seen, since they’re, well, new. I haven’t yet played against Kenrith, the Returned King, so I’d be looking forward to a creative build there.
What “retired” keyword ability would you bring back, if you could (even if only for a nostalgia set like Time Spiral)?
Banding. It’s all about Helm of Chatzuk.
What is the rationale for having cards such as Library of Alexandria, Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, Moxen, and the like banned, when this is supposedly an “eternal” format? Clearly there’s no issue with fast mana with the allowance of Mox Diamond, Sol Ring, Fellwar Stone, etc., but how was your line drawn between those cards and the original five Moxen?
There’s no supposedly about it, Commander is an Eternal format. When we first started, we wanted to make sure that people didn’t feel like they needed a major investment just to play. After all, nearly from the beginning, we wanted to be something different, a respite from tournament Magic. We developed the Perceived Barrier to Entry criterion to reinforce that idea that the format isn’t just Alt-Vintage.
The bottom line is that there’s no good to come from unbanning those cards. Few players have access to them, and adding them to the mix would cause way more negative experiences than positive.
Do I need to be concerned about the banning of cards like Underground Sea and Timetwister due to price?
You do not. We’ve clearly stated that we’re highly unlikely to invoke “Perceived Barrier to Entry” again—so much so that we removed it in the recent philosophy update. Keeping up with secondary market prices and banning based on them would involve a great deal of work for pretty low reward.
What’s your favorite book you’ve read in the last year or so (~even if the book was just new-to-you)?
I’ve made an effort in the second half of 2019 (after I finished my Master’s Degree and started reading for pleasure again) to read more sci-fi and fantasy by authors from traditionally marginalized groups. I devoured Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series and would highly recommend it. I just finished her Parable of the Sower and have moved on to the follow-up, Parable of the Talents.
How do you feel about the next year for Commander? Personally I look forward to it as someone who missed a few years of solid cards and no longer having most of my old collection it means I might catch a nice reprint or dozen with some new tricks.
As I said even before my contract out in Seattle, if you think Commander is in a great spot right now, hang onto your hats. After coming back, I’ll suggest you use both hands. It’s going to be the format’s best year ever.
What’s your favorite album of the year? If you don’t have one yet, check out In Cauda Venenum by Opeth. It’s a modern day prog rock masterpiece.
I’m not sure if I listened to anything new this past year, so I listened to In Cauda Venenum while writing this piece. Most folks know that I’m a giant prog rock fan. While I enjoyed the work, I found many of its structures and melodies a little simplistic for my tastes. To be fair, it didn’t have 100% of my attention, and it was good enough to go back and do a dedicated listen. I need to do what fellow metal fan and Person Who Should Be in the Magic Hall of Fame Chris Pikula does in December every year and listen to nothing but music he’s never heard before. It’s an excellent way to build your musical library and makes it easier to avoid WhamAgeddon.
Is there a theme or a commander you’ve always wanted to see constructed (well) and haven’t yet?
We’d have to agree on what well-constructed means. To some people that might mean “wins the most often.” To me, it’s “provides the most interesting game for everyone playing.” I don’t really think I have a direct answer, but stretching my imagination a little, I’d love to see STAX-ish deck that still provides players some opportunity to play the game. The good ones just lock things down and the game doesn’t become a puzzle, it becomes a drag. I’d love to see one that has a mid-game strategy than an early one, making it a puzzle that actually has a solution, not one that is inevitable from the beginning.
Of all the places you’ve visited, what was the weirdest?
I’m not sure it qualifies as the weirdest, but the one that popped to mind is Pompeii. You can walk down the streets there and visualize what life was like in AD 79 just before the volcano blew. I don’t believe in ghosts, but so much there is so perfectly preserved that you can almost feel the spirits of the people who were there one moment, gone the next. It was a fascinating and surreal experience.
I have two nested questions for you. The first is about the Commander Advisory Group (CAG). How often do you foresee the CAG expanding (or shrinking), and what goes into making that decision between the RC (and current CAG)?
The CAG will not expand all that often. There’s a number at which we feel that the individual voices would get lost. The RC’s original vision was for six to eight, and unless we get to eight and find the absolutely undeniable candidate, we’ll probably stay there. Anywhere past that and we feel that there’d be a point of diminishing returns in terms of what quality of input and feedback we’d get from them as a group. There will always be more people qualified to be on the CAG than there are available slots, and that’s a good place to be.
New people are chosen for the CAG by the RC with a review by current CAG members. Theoretically, we could appoint someone that the CAG objected to, but that’d be pretty stupid. While we want diverse voices who don’t always agree with each other, we also want a kind of working harmony among the members. We wouldn’t inject someone who would disrupt that.
Has there been consideration of adjusting the ban schedule in a meaningful way, and does the influx of voices from the CAG make it easier or more difficult to consider adjustments to the ban announcement schedule with regards to gathering and considering information on cards?
The update schedule is already pretty meaningful: quarterly, the Monday after the Prerelease. We don’t see any compelling reason to update more than four times per year, and that’s not even a logistical concern between the now-eleven members of the combined RC/CAG (which can be considerable—ever try to get eleven people to agree to meet at the same time?). Commander isn’t a format in which metagame shifts matter like they do elsewhere. We can afford to take a much more nuanced and conservative approach.
If an alternate reality where you banned antisocial cards from the beginning, such as Stasis and Armageddon, how different do you think the format would be right now? If the answer is “nonexistent,” which I suspect you’ll say, what would have been the breaking point?
Not much, since those cards don’t get played that often in the majority of Commander circles. I know that there are some people who hate the idea with a particular vehemence, but social engineering has done a pretty good job of shaping the format into what it is. Soft bans, extending from our original idea of Banned List cards serving as exemplars, have worked for the core demographic while preserving some space for folks that like outlier strategies.
If the commanders of your decks watched movies, which films would be their favorites?
Clearly, Obzedat, Ghost Council is a fan of The Godfather. Karador, Ghost Chieftain loves horror, and the best horror film of all time is Alien. Ruhan of the Fomori likes layered crime drama, so he’s all in on LA Confidential. Phelddagrif is an inveterate Coen Brothers fan, but will pick one of the not-quite-as-popular ones, like Barton Fink, as its favorite. Lord of Tresserhorn and Gisa and Geralf have an annual Dawn of the Dead festival (original George Romero 1978, not the 2004 remake). Kresh the Bloodbraided is the most operatic of my commanders, so Amadeus is his jam. Saskia the Unyielding is always about a little ultraviolence, so you can’t tear her away from A Clockwork Orange.
What do you think of tutors in Commander? Do they support or circumvent the singleton nature of Commander?
I’m pretty well on record on not liking them (at least in general terms) for the format because they circumvent the singleton nature. There’s a place for them, and if used sparingly they can be okay. Personally, I find the format better when there’s variance to games instead of repetition, and tutors definitely lead to repetitive game states.
Do you think the format is better or worse for having tuck removed? I miss it, personally.
Better. If I were a cEDH player, I might see it differently. On the whole, I (and the rest of the RC) believe that it’s been a huge net positive.
What is your opinion of taking the 100-card mandatory deck size to being a minimum instead of a mandatory number?
This question has come up once or twice. The exact 100-card deck size is a foundational piece of Commander design, and I don’t see us moving off it—but I’ll tell you that it’s come up as a topic of discussion more than once (and did when I was out at WotC, too). Philosophically, we believe that change needs good reason, and we haven’t been presented with a compelling reason yet. I don’t think that changing it would in any way break the format, but that’s not a good enough motivation by itself to change.
It’s become clear that WotC has put Wishing back on the design table. As the number of Wish cards stacks up, does the RC have plans to address this growing elephant in the room – that being an entire class of cards that are de facto banned?
This is a topic which we’ve discussed, because as you note, it’s not going away. The one problem we have with “outside the game” cards is that they break the 100-card deck size. Now you have 110 (or however many) cards effectively in your deck with more ways to tutor for them. While there might be some fun ways to leverage the space, there are going to be way more instances of people using them oppressively. Again, we haven’t seen any compelling evidence that such a change would be good for the format. I won’t speak to any other individual RC member’s opinions, but I personally see Wishes as a strong net negative (even if the 100-card deck size were to become a minimum).
What is your opinion of the partner mechanic, both in its implementation originally and its subsequent revamp in Battlebond? Has it made the format better or worse in your estimation? What would it take for the mechanic to get the axe?
Philosophically, I love the idea of partner, and believe that “partner with” is an even better implementation, since the latter limits how busted things might be. I’d say that the mechanic has tilted slightly toward the better scale, only because it’s brought a problematic few pairs. Otherwise, very cool. I’d just like to see folks use some of the less popular ones instead of just defaulting to the obvious.
As far as the mechanic going away, there is as close to 0% possibility as you can imagine. It exists, it’s on cool, recent cards, and it doesn’t by itself break anything.
How does the current state of power creep we’re being served bode in relation to the format, and what do you anticipate if the creep continues in such a way? How long at that rate would you predict before the average game inadvertently enters into the “arms race” just by sheer virtue of good cards that continue getting released?
I believe that the power creep is actually quite well-managed considering how long the game has been around. It’s inevitable, given the game’s lifespan, but designers have been pretty good at lateral development over the years.
What do you think overall was the highlight of 2019 for Commander and what needs improvement?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but me working on a design team was Deion Sanders/Dominique Wilkins-level stuff. The advent of CommandFest has been the major development for the format in 2019, and is going to pay dividends for the fans into the future. In the bigger picture, the broad acceptance and use of Rule 0 has really done my heart good, and I think bodes well for all of our tomorrows.
What is your favorite card printed this year? You only get one but you can justify it however you like.
Risen Reef. It’s putting more and more Coiling Oracles into my deck!!!
If you were going to build a theme deck around any character from a book you’ve read, who would it be and who would helm the deck?
I’d build an Arya Stark deck led by Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, reflecting her ability to change faces, especially to those of the people she’s helped lead to the Houses of the Dead. Arya, as written (less so in the HBO show) is an incredibly complex and often-irrational character, which would be loads of fun to build around.
As a fan of movies and TV shows I’m looking forward to seeing what Netflix does with the Magic the Gathering series. Is there a particular moment in Magic’s history you’d like to see or character you’d like to be referenced?
If we’re focusing on a character, I absolutely want to see the story of Alesha, Who Smiles at Death play out, with all its challenges and changes, triumphs and tragedies.
Thanks to everyone for submitting questions that were new and fresh. Most of the AMAs are fun; this one was particularly compelling.