Commander State Of The Format 2021

Commander is in the healthiest place it’s ever been. We weathered the Year of Commander that never quite got off the ground due to the global pandemic and were stronger for it. Online communities around the world exploded with the wealth of opportunities via webcam games. We may not have done it in person, but many of us got to see more of a wider selection of people. There are also even more high-quality content creators, streaming and writing about the format with the kind of passion that the Commander fan base is known for. If you love Commander content, you’re not going to run out of options anytime soon.

We remain committed to Commander being a bastion of stability in a sometimes-tumultuous Magic world. Our updates will still come quarterly, on the Monday before the Prerelease. We’re also keenly aware of Commander as an Eternal format. Players have invested significant energy, time, and resources into their Commander decks with an expectation of some security. We’ll certainly address cards (even those which have been around for a while) which become problematic in the format, but we’re of the mind that Commander is not in need of any tectonic shifts.

The casual versus competitive divide which has so often torn at us in the past seems to have reached a détente. The community has come to a broad realization that, regardless of how we like to play, there’s no need to villainize those who enjoy things differently. It’s a result of talking to each other more often and clearly about our expectations before we ever sit down to a game. While there’s no absolute and completely accurate power level scale, the existence of multiple attempts to craft them demonstrates that folks in the community are making the effort to help us all find our comfort zones.

The Commander Advisory Group (CAG) expansion has already paid dividends. Adding Jim LaPage, Rachel Weeks, DeQuan Watson, and Greg Sablan to the group of Olivia Gobert-Hicks, Charlotte Sable, Rachel Agnes, Adam Styborski, Josh Lee Kwai, and Shivam Bhatt further broadened the horizons towards which we can reach, adding more strong voices to our ever-growing chorus.

The value that the individuals on the CAG add to both the RC and the community is immeasurable, from being advocates for certain styles of play and strategies to helping amplify your voices.  As we said in the announcement back in January, there’s still room for a few more seats at the CAG table as we reach out to underserved demographics and geographic areas. Commander is a global format, full of diversity of background, thought, and opinion; we’d like to reflect that as much as we can.

The recent past hasn’t been without its controversies, with many fans dubious over products like Secret Lair x The Walking Dead and the recently-announced Universes Beyond, and removing cards for their depictions of racism. Secret Lair x The Walking Dead was an incredibly emotional issue and some in the community wanted us to “make a statement” by banning the cards, which we didn’t feel was a necessary or appropriate action. For one thing, we don’t believe banning them would have the effect those supporting a ban hoped it would. For another, banning them wouldn’t have been consistent with our philosophy document.

One of the simple truths of this complex situation is that we’re not in the business of telling Wizards of the Coast (WotC) their business, as it were. We will continue to advise and suggest on community-level issues where we can (as we did in the wake of Secret Lair x The Walking Dead). We support them printing what they see fit to be a tournament-legal card. If we feel that individual cards are unhealthy for Commander, that’s when we’ll take action.

We’re on board with the broadening landscape of future Magic sets.  Whether it’s an onramp to Commander for fans of other properties or a way for invested players to explore new horizons, there’s room in our community for a vast range of experiences.  One of the great parts of the format is that you don’t need access to every card ever printed to have a great deal of fun playing.  Each of us gets to choose which experiences resonate with us individually, and we have a great number of options in finding our comfort zones. 

Another of the community’s anxieties comes from power creep and pushed card designs. The folks in design and development loop us in during the process and we have several opportunities to offer suggestions on Commander product along the way, giving us more input and access than we’ve ever had.  We can help alleviate some of those anxieties by supporting cards that are clever and interesting, that deckbuilders must do a little work to turn into stars, as opposed to cards that simply end up as staples due to their increased power or decreased costs.  The game needs to evolve in order to stay fresh and relevant, but we can help point that evolution in a productive direction. 

Creation of the RC Discord server has given us opportunity to be more directly involved with more of the community than ever before.  It’s a safe space in which you can interact on multiple topics with one or more RC and CAG members nearly every day of the week.  We remain committed to keeping open lines of communication with the player base, hearing and addressing your concerns as well as we possibly can.

In resounding terms, players have made Commander the most popular format in Magic.  Even in times when we can’t get together physically, you’ve made it all about The Gathering.  We look forward to the coming time when we join back together in person to enjoy each other’s company and play the best format in Magic history.  When the State of the Format comes around in 2022, we hope to give you the same message:  Commander is in the best place it’s ever been. 

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Here’s where the address would end if you were watching it on TV. What follows is more like the analysis afterwards. I thought it would be compelling to hear what some other folks have to say, and then offer some additional commentary. I reached out to a few big names in the community for some thoughts.

Gavin Duggan

First, let’s look at what fellow Rules Committee founder Gavin Duggan listed last year, three challenges for the format in 2020.

1. Two-Directional Visibility

The data Gavin was talking about here isn’t the same kind of data that tournament formats might gather, such as which decks, strategies, and cards are tilting the environment in an unhealthy direction. The data that’s useful to us is more experientially based. How do particular elements (to be fair, mostly cards) impact the people playing the format? What can the collected experiences of players tell us about how we might resolve the challenges they have? In the past — and hopefully in the near future — some of this data was (will be) collected in person once we’re capable again of large gatherings.

Unlike competitive formats, what we do with this data is different as well. They seek to find a competitive balance. We’re not interested in balance at all — we want to tilt the field in the direction of good times for as many people as possible. While that might lead to nerfing some particular card, deck, or strategy (a great deal of sameness can pretty boring after all), the goal is still radically different.

Focus on the Philosophy

The philosophy document is still our guiding light. It’s not a checklist and it’s definitely not science. It’s about helping create an environment that promotes those resonant experiences which have made the format what it is.  Although we have a direction that we think is best for the broadest audience, we also want to balance that with the fact that there are many different ways to play and enjoy the format, all of them perfectly valid.  We’ve intentionally left things pretty wide open in order to accommodate them. 

Shake Things Up

Gavin’s thoughts here might seem contrary to the earlier message of stability, but they aren’t.  What he’s talking about here isn’t about changing the foundation of the building, but maybe knocking down a few walls and doing some room makeovers. Commander is still going to be its best self on its own terms, but that doesn’t mean it needs to suffer from inertia.  We’ll continue to seek ways to keep things fresh moving into the future and are happy to hear ideas on how to do so.  There’s nearly always a lively chat going on in the format-philosophy channel on the RC Discord server. 

The Professor

One of the folks I reached out to is The Professor from Tolarian Community College.  Here’s what he had to say:

Prof’s concerns echo those of many folks in the community.  I’ve already noted that we on the RC can nudge design and development along the way and our next respondent will have something to say along those lines.  We’ve already offered the feedback to stop stapling additional broad abilities onto commanders (and cards in general), instead giving them a narrower focus that you might have to work a little harder to get value from.  They’ve told us that they’ve heard and understood. 

What else we can do is to continue to reinforce the message that I offered earlier:  to a large extent, you get to sculpt your own Commander experience and there’s no such thing as a “must play” card.  The more we can get people talking and considering the experiences of the people they’re sitting down with, the better we all are for it.  As much as possible, we don’t just want folks to play games, we want them to feel invested in the whole experience.   

Gavin Verhey

I also asked Senior Designer and Commander Architect Gavin Verhey for a few sentences, and true to form, he over-delivered. 

You can see that Gavin and the RC are on much of the same page.  One slight difference is his note about staples, but there he’s coming at it from a business sense, and we approach from an aesthetic one.  The two can often pull in different directions.  Otherwise, we seem to have our fingers on the same pulse. 

We look forward to continuing to have a honest, fruitful, and productive relationship with Gavin and the folks from WotC.  Our strategic partnership with them will be able to keep the format steaming on, even in the roughest of seas.