The Year of Commander has come to an end and we are left with a huge influx of new Commander possibilities in the range of hundreds, many supporting strategies that have never had strong figurehead before. Examples of this include the likes of Anowon, the Ruin Thief and Yurlok of Scorch Thrash. These types of new commanders open doors to fun strategies and interesting archetypes that simply couldn’t exist in a relatively high-powered pod.
However, for each of these opportunity creating commanders that are printed, there are two or three of what I refer to as “Designed to be Popular” commanders. A clear cut and dry example of this is Tatyova, Benthic Druid.Commanders like this are never game breaking or pod spoiling by design. Instead, I feel they exist as a way to ensure whatever set they are within gets the representation within the format necessary to sell the set.
Tatyova is just one example of these “Popular” commanders and there are plenty more. Remember Korvold, Fae-Cursed King? What about Alela, Artful Provocateur? No? How about Chulane, Teller of Tales? Notice a theme with each of these commanders? Do something that everyone does several times during the course of the game and get rewarded with a fresh card off the top. For many of these examples, the action is very easy to build around and is often tied to one of several popular archetypes or strategies.
It has been a while since one of this commanders was printed so maybe it was just a phase of teen angst that WotC went through right?
Oops….
What makes these commanders so popular and keeps them near the top of EDHREC’s charts?
When building a new deck, one of the biggest factors to success is a card advantage or value generating engine. Often the best decks will have this engine be synergistic with the primary strategy of the deck. When presented with a commander that can be a bridge for both of these aspects of a deck, there is nowhere to go but up! It also makes it very welcoming for a newer player as they have to worry less about consistency when their card advantage is stapled to a creature that they are definitely going to be casting each game!
My issue with these commanders is the popularity and the lack of variety. Before COVID shut down FNM at my local game store, I saw more of the commanders I listed above than any other. Heck, even I have a Tatyova landfall deck because I love to draw cards and her threshold to do so is one of the lowest around! With many of these commanders, if you have played against one, odds are the next time you play a deck with the same commander, it will feel tiresomely familiar. With such a streamline and synergistic design, it becomes very hard to stray from the direction that each of these commanders point in. Because of the synergistic nature of these commanders, it makes it very difficult to pick a different Simic landfall matters commander instead of Tatyova or Aesi. That hurts the variety of decks that can be seen when outside of your normal pod, like at an FNM. Playing against the same several commanders over and over again can often make game night feel taxing and may even dissuade a player from attending.
Now I’m not going to say that these “Designed to be Popular” commanders are bad for the format, I actually feel the opposite! They allow players to enter the format with accessible commanders that promote synergy and card advantage while promoting popular strategies. As long as we still see regular printings of new and limit pushing commanders that touch new strategies, these “Popular” commanders do more good than harm. The balance is in making sure that they do not squeeze other options for the same strategy out of the format.
What is your opinion on seeing commanders designed to be popular? Am I completely off base or do you agree? Are there any commanders that I missed which follow the same template? If so, share them below!
White Border Gaming 