Autumn Landscape by Thomas Moran (1867). Gilder Bairn by Nils Hamm.
Kaladesh.
Aether Revolt.
Amonkhet.
Each of these new sets of Magic cards brought with them the potential for new mechanics, new cards, and even new commanders that would change the landscape of our beloved format.
Every time spoiler season hits, I find myself reading reviews of cards and wondering how these writers evaluate new cards and how accurate they are in their predictions. Evaluating cards and evaluating a new legendary creature's potential as a commander are very different things.
Today I'm going to talk about how we might be able to do just that.
The Numbers Every card has numbers we can look at and we can generalize fairly well on what is better or worse for each one. We'll tackle the simple stuff first. CMC: Converted Mana Cost is incredibly important, and of course - less is more. The cheaper a commander is, the more resilient the deck will be in the face of board wipes and removal. If you see Rhys the redeemed sent back to the command zone three or four times it's no big deal. You're in green. You're probably fine. If Borborygmos Enraged gets countered or removed four times he's going to cost a hefty 16 mana to cast. Viability in a competitive meta is important to many EDH players, even casual ones. This matters a lot. Colors: The colors in the commander's color identity also matter a lot. Do you have easy access to counter magic in blue or wraths in white? Will you be ramping with green, messing around with sacrifice effects in black or just being generally sad in red? I kid - red has direct damage spells and some good stuff, but you get my point. Your color identity dictates how flexible your deckbuilding can be and how creative you're going to have to get to overcome the intrinsic limitations that come with lacking certain colors. Power/Toughness: Most commanders have a "normal" power and toughness. Some have values that scale or change based upon other criteria. It goes without saying that higher values are generally better, with the caveat that some commanders may have abilities that affect that evaluation in some way. Keywords: The days of having a vanilla (no abilities) creature with the hilariously ironic "legendary" keyword attached to them are thankfully long gone. These days legendaries often have keywords, and those keywords are generally appropriate to their colors. Not all keywords are equal, of course, and their value will change based upon what other abilities they have. A deathtouch flier is really good, but a deathtouch creature with the ability to tap and do 1 damage to target creature would be amazing. Keyword value doesn't just scale with how many you have - it is definitely more complicated than that. Abilities: A great commander is going to bring something more than just keywords to the party. The evaluation of additional abilities is probably the most challenging part of evaluating a new commander. You wind up having to ask a lot of questions. Does it require the card to tap? Does it scale? Does it scale exponentially? Does it duplicate the effects of a powerful card or type of card, such as a tutor or a wrath? Is it repeatable or does it involve sacrificing itself? Last but not least, does the ability have synergy with the commander's keywords or other abilities? Doing the Math My first thought was that I should set up a spreadsheet to make these evaluations. You've got categories. You've got numbers. You can do math and see if any cards have a calculable advantage over other cards, right? It starts out simple. Let's go for a higher-is-better value for our output. I'll use five of my own current or retired commanders for this example and we'll see where it leads us. While some of them will present obvious challenges when evaluating them in this manner, I have played all of these as commanders so if nothing else I should be able to avoid any obvious oversights that might come from being less familiar with a card I haven't actually played.
For CMC, if you want a high number to be favorable, we'll need to subtract the card's CMC from a base number. We'll use 10 as our base so a commander that costs 6 would get a cmc score of 4. We'll give a +1 bonus to any commander with ways to make their costs more flexible and a +2 for any commander with ways to cheat their cost (I'm looking at you, Derevi).
Padeem: 10 - 4 = 6 cmc pts
Ezuri: 10 - 4 = 6 cmc pts
Narset: 10 - 6 = 4 cmc pts
Zurgo: 10 - 5 = 5 cmc pts
Reaper King: 10 - 5 + 1 (for flexible mana symbols) = 6 cmc pts
For Colors, you want to represent the flexibility of having multiple colors, but adding too many colors can make it harder on your manabase, so this isn't easy. Certain colors have easier access to certain types of spells that will lend them an advantage, so you can't weight all colors the same. I'll give each color a base weight as follows:
White - 2 pts Blue - 4 pts Black - 2 pts Red - 1 pts Green - 3 pts
When you add a color, you simply add the color weights together. You then have to account for the complexity of the manabase you need for the deck to actually run well. For a monocolored deck we'll actually GIVE you a point. For a 2 color deck, that's a trivial challenge, so there would be no penalty. for a three color deck you subtract 1. For a 4/c deck you subtract 3. For a 5/c deck you subtract 5.
Padeem (monoblue): 4 + 1 (for monocolor) = 5 color pts Ezuri (simic: blue/green): 4 + 3 = 7 color pts + 6 color points Narset (jeskai: red/white/blue): 1 + 2 + 4 - 1 (for 3 colors) = 6 color pts Zurgo (mardu: red/white/black): 1 + 2 + 2 - 1 (for 3 colors) = 4 color pts Reaper King (5/color): 2 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 3 - 5 (for 5 color) = 7 color pts
The result is a color score intended to reflect the strength of your colors and the challenge of setting up your manabase. For Power & Toughness, we'll just add them together and call it a day. Why make things more complicated than they need to be, right?
Padeem: 1 power + 4 toughness = 5 p/t points
Ezuri: 3 power + 3 toughness = 6 p/t points
Narset: 3 power + 2 toughness = 5 p/t points
Zurgo: 7 power + 2 toughness = 9 p/t/ points
Reaper King: 6 power + 6 tougness = 12 p/t points
For Keywords, we want to try to accurately reward valuable keywords. This could get much more complicated than the colors so let's find a way to keep things simple. My gut tells me that to be as accurate as possible we'd need to list out every keyword and weight them appropriately. To some extent, that way lies madness, in part because combinations of keywords would impact the score dramatically. First strike and deathtouch is amazing. First strike and lifelink is fine but you don't get much extra advantage from that keyword pairing. Let's grant 3 points for the first keyword, 2 points for the second and 1 point for each keyword after that. We'll allow points for keywords given to other creatures because not all commanders are about buffing themselves. Some serve to help your team get it done without them entering combat. We'll subtract a point if a keyword is limited to certain circumstances or situations. To represent synergies, add in a point for every pair of keywords that synergize. Add 2 points for every keyword that specifically synergizes with non-keyword abilities on the card. An example of this might be Brion Stoutarm's ability to gain life from combat or from his fling ability.
Padeem (hexproof for artifacts): 3 pts - 1 pt (only artifacts) = 2 keyword pts
Ezuri (none): 0 keyword pts
Narset (first strike, hexproof): 3 pts + 2 pts = 5 keyword pts
Zurgo (haste, indestructible): 3 pts + 2 pts - 1 pt (indestructible only on your turn) = 4 keyword pts
Reaper King (none): 0 keyword pts
For other abilities, we have no simple or good way to evaluate them so we're going to have to ask lots and lots of questions. We'll assign a point value for them so we can include them in the overall evaluation. Does the creature have non-keyword abilities?
Give 2 points for the first and 1 point for each additional ability, with additional bonuses based on what the ability actually does.
For each ability there are strengths and sometimes weaknesses. I'll assign point values, though this is the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks. I'm sure better minds than mine could improve upon this point scheme.
Does the ability produce mana or reduce casting costs? +1 pt Does the ability do direct damage to a creature? +2 pt, +3 for all/multiple targets Does the ability do direct damage to a player? +3 pts, +4 for all/multiple targets Does the ability tutor for a card? +5 pts
Does the ability provide an anthem effect or keyword to your team? +3 pts
Does the ability allow you to put +1/+1 counters on creatures? +3 pts
Does the ability draw you cards? +5 pts Does the ability work as a removal or fog? +2 pts
Does the ability scale exponentially? +3 pts
Does the ability create creature tokens? +X pts where X is the power of the token
Does the ability let you cheat casting costs for other cards? +5 pts Does the ability require the creature to tap? -2 pts Does the ability only occur at sorcery speed? -2 pts Does the ability require the payment of mana? -1 pt Does the ability require creature sacrifice? -1 pt Does the abliity require attacking? -1 pt Does the ability require combat damage to a player? -1 pt
I could keep going, but much to the credit of WotC it would take more time and space than I have available to fully categorize and evaluate every unique ability that has been placed on a legendary creature card. Let's go back to our 5 commanders and see what we can do with them.
Padeem gets card draw if you have the biggest artifact. Size matters on Kaladesh, apparently. 2 pts + 5 pts (draw) = 7 ability pts
Ezuri earns experience counters and pumps your creatures. 2 pts + 3 pts (counters) = 5 ability pts
Narset cheats casting costs like a champ. 2 pts + 5 pts (cheating costs) = 7 ability pts
Zurgo gets counters when he kills blockers. 2 pts + 3 pts = 5 ability pts
Reaper King pumps scarecrows and lets you blow stuff up. 2 pts + 1 pt + 3 pts (anthem) + 2 pts (removal) = 8 ability pts
There is no easy accounting for commander abilities that combine in devilish ways with other cards or strategies. Purphoros is strong, but when you build a deck as a token-generating machine he can be utterly backbreaking at a casual table. Prossh is a great card, but what point value do you give to adding in Food Chain? Leovold - may he rest in peace - is fine, but the addition of wheel effects and Puzzle Box and it's a whole different ballgame. The next question is whether you weight these additional synergies based upon the rarity or expense of getting these additional pieces.
Let's set up one final category to represent synergy called "BAF" points. This is a scale of 1-10 based upon how broken the card's abilities and synergies are when combined with the "right" build. It would go from 1 for not broken at all to 10 for broken as fuck. Yes. I'm creating a BAF scale. This is highly subjective - if you haven't played against a deck you might not fully appreciate how hard it can be to deal with. This is also the hardest one to apply to a brand new card that you haven't played yet and that hasn't seen much analysis by the great hive mind of EDH players on the internet.
Padeem protects your Blightsteel and gives card draw, but in terms of blowing up tables, it's not that broken. 3 baf pts.
Ezuri when combined with evasive creatures or just sage of hours can wreck a table right quick. 8 baf pts.
Narset's a peach, but apparently folks think she's strong. 9 baf pts.
Zurgo combined with worldslayer, assault suit and boardwipes is good, and 7 power + haste is good. 6 baf pts.
Reaper King can remove entire boardstates when a combo goes off. 5 baf points.
Yes. I kid about Narset. I know that Narset extra turns is brutal. I only didn't give her 10 because I figure she can't possibly be the pinnacle of brokenness - after all, she hasn't been banned yet, right? This list should be able to evaluate all commanders, including ones that have been banned. Leovold and Griselbrand might be a 10 on the BAF scale. Narset can be a 9.
So where does that leave us for our commanders?
Padeem: 6 cmc + 5 clr + 5 p/t + 2 kw + 7 ab + 3 baf = 28 total pts
Ezuri: 6 cmc + 6 clr + 6 p/t + 0 kw + 5 ab + 8 baf = 31 total pts
Narset: 4 cmc + 6 clr + 5 p/t + 5 kw + 7 ab + 9 baf = 36 total pts
Zurgo: = 5 cmc + 4 clr + 9 p/t + 4 kw + 5 ab + 6 baf = 33 total pts
Reaper King: 6 cmc + 7 clr + 12 p/t + 0 kw + 8 ab + 5 baf = 38 total pts
I hadn't expected this scheme to actually yield good results, but this admittedly small sampling shows that an analysis method like this might actually prove viable. Reaper King is obviously a bad or at least low-midrange commander, and Narset is well known to be a top tier commander, so this particular method clearly needs work. Still, as an experiment in brainstorming about how to analyze commander cards I think it was worth the effort.
At this point, I should warn you - if you hate leaks, avoid spoilers and don't want to see anything relating to the Commander 2017 decks, read no further.
Seriously. Don't want to be spoiled?
Do not scroll down because...
Here be Dragons
There have already been leaks from the 2017 commander set and we know with some confidence that we will have a 5/c dragons deck! Let's take a closer look at the spoiled legendary cards we've seen so far and see what numbers we get. These cards haven't been played yet, so this is uncharted territory for us to explore!
Yeah - these are not great images, and maybe I'm not a great person for engaging in the spreading of leaked cards but I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend these don't exist. They are out there and more than likely are real. Even if they aren't, they will provide an interesting set of legendary creatures to apply our experimental evaluation method to.
Taigam, Ojutai Master
This legendary human monk costs 2WU, is a 3/4 with no keyword abilities. Taigam makes your instant, sorcery and dragon spells uncounterable and lets you give instants and soceries cast rebound if you attacked with Taigam that turn. Nuts.
Ramos, Dragon Engine
This legendary artifact dragon costs 6 generic mana, is a 4/4 and flies, as every dragon should. When you cast a spell, you put a +1/+1 counter on Ramos for each of the spell's colors. Sadly, that means that using Ramos to head up my dream 5/c Myr EDH deck is pretty much a non-starter. You can remove five +1/+1 counters to trigger Door to Nothingess... er... I mean... to add WWUUBBRRGG to your mana pool. Yeah. What's a Door to Nothingness? I don't know what you're talking about...
O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami
This legendary dragon spirit costs 1 WUBRG to cast, is a 6/6 and has "flample" (both flying and trample). When "OK" deals combat damage to a player, if that player attacked you during his or her last turn, exile target permanent that player controls. Good with double-strike I guess, but nothing I'm going to be building the next Tier One deck around.
The Ur-Dragon
This legendary dragon avatar costs a hefty 4 WUBRG and is a 10/10 flier. Yikes. Big Ur makes your other dragon spells cost 1 less to cast, even if Ur is in the command zone. When one or more dragons attack, draw that many cards and put a permanent onto the battlefield. You read that right. Drop a bomb. If you can't find ways to abuse that ability, you haven't been playing EDH long enough.
Wasitora, Nekoru Queen
This legendary cat dragon costs 2 BRG, is a 5/4 with flample, and might just be the Jund commander I've been waiting for. Have you seen the tokens it makes??? I might just die from the cuteness. When Wasitora does combat damage to a player, that player sacrifices a creature. If they can't you get to place the cutest 3/3 cat dragon token in the whole wide world onto your battlefield.
Doing the Math, dragon style
CMC
Taigam: 10 - 4 = 6 cmc points
Ramos: 10 - 6 = 4 cmc points
O-Kagachi: 10 - 6 = 4 cmc points
The Ur-Dragon: 10 - 9 = 1 cmc point
Wasitora: 10 - 5 = 5 cmc points
Colors
Taigam (Azorious, white/blue): 2 + 4 = 6 color pts
Ramos (WUBRG): 2 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 3 - 5 (for 5/c) = 7 color pts
O-Kagachi (WUBRG): 2 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 3 - 5 (for 5/c) = 7 color pts
The Ur-Dragon (WUBRG): 2 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 3 - 5 (for 5/c) = 7 color pts
Wasitora (Jund, black/red/green): 2 + 1 + 3 - 1 (for 3/c) = 5 color pts
Power/Toughness
Taigam: 3 + 4 = 7 p/t pts
Ramos: 4 + 4 = 8 p/t pts
O-Kagachi: 6 + 6 = 12 p/t pts
The Ur-Dragon: 10 + 10 = 20 p/t pts
Wasitora: 5 + 4 = 9 p/t pts
Keywords
Taigam: Giving rebound to instants & sorceries = 3 kw pts
Ramos: Flying = 3 kw pts
O-Kagachi: Flying, Trample = 5 kw pts
The Ur-Dragon: Flying = 3 kw pts
Wasitora: Flying, Trample = 5 kw pts
Abilities
Taigam
He has one non-keyword ability (2 pts) which makes some spells uncounterable (uh... +2 bonus?) = 4 ability points.
Ramos
He has 2 abilities (2 + 1 = 3 pts) adding +1/+1 counters (+3 bonus), making mana (+1 bonus) = 7 ability points
O-Kagachi
He has 1 ability (2 pts) that functions as removal (+2 bonus) but requires attacking (-1 penalty) = 3 ability points
The Ur-Dragon
He has 3 abilities (2 + 1 + 1 = 4 pts), and this is going to get complicated...
Big Ur reduces casting costs (+1 bonus), provides card draw (+5) and cheating a casting cost (+5) but requires attacking (-1) = 14 pts
Wasitora
She has 2 abilities (2 + 1 = 3 pts) either serving as removal (+2 bonus) or giving you adorable 3/3 dragon kittens (+3 bonus) but requires attacking (-1 penalty) = 7 pts
Synergy (BAF)
Taigam has a fairly high ceiling. Having your spells be uncounterable in blue is pretty strong and I'm quite confident folks will find ways to abuse rebound. You will be stuck having to cast spells after combat but that probably won't be an issue. I'm giving this a BAF score of 6. Strong but I don't see folks talking about banning him.
Ramos has a very high ceiling for voltron builds. I suspect it will be very easy to storm into combat kills. The limitation that you can only pull counters off of him once per turn is real, but so are extra turn spells. I'm seeing serious potential for abuse here so I'm going to give Ramos a BAF score of 8. It's just a gut feeling that he's going to get broken by someone pretty nicely.
O-Kagachi may be the weakest of this group, though exiling permanents is serious business. I don't think the ceiling on abusing OK is super high, so I'm going to give him a BAF score of 5. He's strong but other than double-strike and extra combats & turns I don't see how this gets too badly abused.
The Ur-Dragon has really high ceiling. He cuts your costs even when he isn't on the field, he draws you cards AND he lets you drop bombs for nothing. I don't know if there's a single card like Food Chain with Prossh that will bust Big Ur wide open, but I think his potential is pretty good. I don't think his ceiling is as high as Ramos so I'm going to give him a BAF score of 7.
Wasitora would be way better if the sacrifice / token ability applied to any dragon you control, but this card is going to get a ton of love for the adorableness of the tokens it will create. In reality, I think it's good but not great, so I'm going to put it at a 5. I am really looking forward to building this as my first Jund deck but I have to be realistic and say that it's just not that much better than O-Kagachi.
The Grand Totals
Taigam: 6 cmc + 6 clr + 7 p/t + 3 kw + 4 ab + 6 baf = 32 total pts
Ramos: 4 cmc + 7 clr + 8 p/t + 3 kw + 7 ab + 8 baf = 37 total pts
O-Kagachi: 4 cmc + 7 clr + 12 p/t + 5 kw + 3 ab + 5 baf = 36 total pts
The Ur-Dragon: 1 cmc + 7 clr + 20 p/t + 3 kw + 14 ab + 7 baf = 52 total pts
Waistora: 5 cmc + 5 clr + 9 p/t + 5 kw + 7 ab + 5 baf = 36 total pts
So at first glance, this point scheme would suggest that all but one of the new commanders is as good or better than Narset, and we pretty much know that's not true on its face. It also suggests that The Ur-Dragon is incredibly strong, and to be honest I think Ramos might turn out to be the better commander.
So what's wrong with our method?
I'm sure a lot of things could be improved here. First off, the BAF numbers need to be more important in our calculations and an out-of-control power and toughness probably shouldn't be as impactful as it is in this version. The Ur-Dragon might be a 3-turn kill with commander damage, but so is Zurgo Helmsmasher. Narset often gets up to a one-turn kill once she gets enough stuff attached to her. Natural power and toughness matters but only so much when you consider how voltron decks are usually built.
One Last Rework
What if we CAP every category at 10 and then double the BAF score to reflect its importance? Would that give us something closer to accurate, usable results that give us a better prediction of how good a card would be?
Padeem: 6 cmc + 5 clr + 5 p/t + 2 kw + 7 ab + (6 x 2) baf = 37 total pts
Ezuri: 6 cmc + 6 clr + 6 p/t + 0 kw + 5 ab + (8 x 2) baf = 39 total pts
Narset: 4 cmc + 6 clr + 5 p/t + 5 kw + 7 ab + (9 x 2) baf = 45 total pts
Zurgo: = 5 cmc + 4 clr + 9 p/t + 4 kw + 5 ab + (6 x 2) baf = 39 total pts
Reaper King: 6 cmc + 7 clr + 10 p/t (it was 12) + 0 kw + 8 ab + (5 x 2) baf = 41 total pts
That looks better. Doubling our synergy score (BAF) and capping every base score at 10 puts Narset at the top, where she probably should be.
What happens when we use this reworked plan with our dragons?
Taigam: 6 cmc + 6 clr + 7 p/t + 3 kw + 4 ab + (6 x 2) baf = 38 total pts
Ramos: 4 cmc + 7 clr + 8 p/t + 3 kw + 7 ab + (8 x 2) baf = 45 total pts
O-Kagachi: 4 cmc + 7 clr + 10 p/t (it was 12) + 5 kw + 3 ab + (5 x 2) baf = 39 total pts
The Ur-Dragon: 1 cmc + 7 clr + 10 p/t (it was 20) + 3 kw + 10 ab (it was 14) + (7 x 2) baf = 45 total pts
Waistora: 5 cmc + 5 clr + 9 p/t + 5 kw + 7 ab + (5 x 2) baf = 41 total pts
Honestly, I think this is closer to where we want to be. Ramos & The Ur-Dragon are clearly the strongest though time will tell whether any of them are truly broken as fuck. Between the time I started writing this article and the time I am writing this final piece, someone has already figured out how to go infinite with Ramos through using Ghostly Flicker and Memnonic Wall, so there you go. It's clunky and overly complicated but it was obvious there was a way to abuse it. I'm only slightly embarrassed to not have seen the flicker potential immediately.
Final Thoughts
This has been an interesting week because last week's post saw more Reddit upvotes than any blog post I've made on r/EDH so far. Apparently my writing, or at least my topic choices, are solid enough to elicit the suggestion that if I wanted to get "picked up" by a site looking for writers devoted to EDH content, it might be worth asking around.
My goal at the start for this blog was to see if I could make it a year, producing interesting and relevant articles about EDH every single week. I'm not even halfway there, so I am going to plow ahead and try to make it to the end of 2017. Next fall, I may start looking around to see if there is any interest. My other goal was to try to inspire the creation of EDH leagues, so I may be writing about that in coming weeks.
One thing that came up in my reddit conversations - which I do treasure as a way to actually interact with readers - is that reddit is a place to post things you've read and want to share. While I may be eager to talk about my posts with readers, I'm not eager to have longtime redditors tell me they get a "bad taste in their mouth" when they see my posts because "all I do is self-promote".
That isn't true, but... well, I'll let this week's footer image (below) explain.
It will be accompanying every one of my posts from here on out. Click on it and you'll be brought to a page with JUST posts containing "commanderruminations" in the title, so you (and I) will be able to easily check for this and future posts on r/EDH.
Check first before sharing any post - I don't think there are enough readers (ruminators?) to result in us spamming r/EDH with these posts. My hope is that each week one of you will share this (with commanderruminations in the post title), not that it will be multiple times over there.
Sadly, that initial post shouldn't be by the author, but I will keep an eye out for the reader that does the first share of each week's post and will thank you and give you a shout-out in next week's post! It's not much, but your help will be very much appreciated!
Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!
