Disclaimer: I’m not advocating that people play anything that sounds unfun to them. If you like casual play, consider giving this a try.
Stage 1: The Problem
I listen to way too much Commander content. From The Mind Sculptors to The Command Zone, to more niche ones like Uncommon Commander or the Turn One Scoop, even some German podcasts like Der Commander Kompass. I don’t spend any time on Facebook, but instead, the EDH subreddit is where I’ve found my home… and there’s a sentiment I’ve heard echoed, not necessarily in every single source, but by several sources. That sentiment? Commander has been getting faster and that’s not necessarily a good thing, especially for players who liked how Commander was and fell in love with it for its slow, durdley nature. The source of the problem is multifaceted. As cards are printed, the card pool increases and people have more good cards to choose from. As the format has more players, information travels faster and more brains solve more parts of the format. The format will get faster and more streamlined to some extent and some amount of this is still always going to be “old man yells at cloud.”
Still, many have called upon the RC to make changes and the RC has responded with a resounding “no.” Still, I’ve seen many try their hands at making some sort of changes to solve the issue - to various levels of success - and I figured I’d try my hand.
The RC re-iterates that this is a social problem and that it needs to be solved socially, so I considered that part of the problem is rule 0 based. Players are bad at communicating (hey, I am too, and I have the audacity to take my poor communication skills to pen and paper to write on Substack). Wouldn’t it be easier if things were more defined? The problem is then, perhaps, in a player’s ability to “pick a lane.” Picking “cEDH” is easy because it’s well defined. Picking “casual” is hard because everyone defines it differently (e.g. my definition is “the willingness and desire to let opponents play a bit, accomplish some of their game plans, etc before they (hopefully) lose to you.” You may have heard this definition in my previous article, but your definition may be different).
So I took my construction gear to the bowling alley and decided to try to construct a new lane with some bumpers up to gear us towards “casual” play.
Stage 2: The Solution
Enter: Humble Beginnings Commander
The target is game speed. The things that make games unfair are when the game ends earlier than expected, or when people threaten to win before other decks can set up. By reducing the speed of the game, but not necessarily slowing down removal spells, we can make it more likely that players will have responses to things when they happen… which should, in turn, put things on a more even footing.
So how do we slow down game speed? In my opinion, we have to target two main things: speed of ramp, and speed of library access.
Speed of ramp: The solution to this one is simple, we ban cheap rocks and mana ramp, making it harder to stack ramp effects back to back and also making it harder to accelerate faster than others.
Speed of library access: As a game progresses, we have a normal, “expected” access to a number of cards, calculatable by a HGDC. By finding specific cards, we “cheat” the chances of getting specific cards, and gain access to them way faster than we’d normally have access to them.
This resulted in a simple statement: “You can’t play any non-land card if it has a mana ability or searches your library AND costs 2 or less mana.” Later, to try to play better with normal EDH decks, the ending part of that statement was changed to 1 or less mana.
The statement itself was quite robust: Most people argue that banning fast mana makes green too good at ramp, and gives it too much of an advantage… but since Rampant Growth gets banned by the search clause, it solves that issue. By relegating green ramp to Cultivates, it still has the best ramp of all colors but isn’t as hyper-fast in the early game. Further, the question of “how do we get all those cool 3 MV rocks that Wizards keeps designing to finally see play” was finally answered.
There are more philosophies and steps listed in the document, so click the link above if the sound of that interests you.
Stage 3: Testing
After a few weeks of talking the playgroup came to do a test run. There was chatting, some debates, and a name change (the old name “UCC” or “Uber Casual Commander” was found to be misleading, since the format is more focused on addressing speed issues than becoming casual, particularly around the topic of combo). Eventually, several spirited people got together for a few playtests.
First, observations from tests with 2MV and below banned:
Games progressed as normal, but there were no lopsided “sol ring starts”
The games took about the same amount of time
The decks designed with 2MV or less banned struggled against normal decks
More competitive decks were still more competitive, but other decks were more online when they went off
Observations with only 1MV or less banned:
The decks had plenty of access to good 2MV rocks and had “fast but fair” starts
Demonic Tutor feels extra strong
Fine for playing with normal decks, but results in feeling like you’re “wasting effort/time” for not just playing Sol Ring
Stage 4: Conclusion
Ultimately this idea may work for some people. It did not particularly work for me. I can certainly imagine playing with the 2MV or under version in a regular playgroup that agrees to do that, but it’s hard to get people to opt-in (especially if they want to play elves)… There’s an old adage in medicine that says “any medicine that’s worth taking has side effects. If it doesn’t have side effects, it’s probably not actually doing anything” Playing the “2MV or under is banned” version has the side effect of putting too much of a disadvantage in normal pods; it’s great if everyone agrees, but it can be a tough pill to swallow. The 1MV or under version, by comparison, doesn’t feel like it does enough in your average “casual” pod to slow it down - if has no side effects and very small effect.
I highly encourage you to give either a try if you and your playgroup seem to like it.
But, I think this experiment may be useful (especially to newer players) to start rule 0 with an already casual-minded group. The conversation about fast mana and tutors, and potential extra rules such as starting with the monarchy in the middle, is an important one to have in any dedicated playgroup, and if this idea helps you start that conversation that’s a good thing.
As for me, I think I’m back to just good old fashion talking to people.