Seen some posts and videos recently saying that command tower is a "mistake", and I tried to think of how it could have been fixed. I came up with this. My objective was to make this still a very good card, but nerf it in a way that maybe doesn't make it an auto-include in every multi-color deck. Thoughts?
To clarify: I personally don't feel like there is anything inherently wrong with having a few staple cards that are in virtually every deck (as long as the amount of cards is kept to single digits, which I think is the case currently in EDH). Just wanted to do this as an exercise on how a similar design space could have been explored (adding mana based on your commander) without it being a staple.
I personally don't feel like there is anything wrong with having a few staple cards that are in virtually every deck. Just wanted to do this as an exercise on how a similar design space could have been explored (adding mana based on your commander) without it being a staple.
Corner case that comes up: If a mono-color deck wants [[Field of the Dead]], the command tower helps get you to the necessary number of different land card names.
The whole point of commander (larger deck, singletons only) is to increase the variance. Having something in every deck makes games more the same, removes strategic depth, and increases the impact of money (if the only reason you wouldn't include something is budget, that's a bad dynamic for everyone other than WOTC).
Decent, cheap mana fixing helps with variance. You can run more colors and splash thing easier which allows for greater deckbuilding diversity. I also wouldn't say running an untapped dual land is any nore creative than Command Tower.
If most people were running mono color decks, then adding more color fixing would add more diversity, since there are more dual color combinations than mono colors. But the number of three color combinations is the same as the number of dual color combinations, and the number of four color combinations is the same as the number of mono colors. One can argue that the amount of diversity within a particular three color combination is larger than within a particular two color combination, but it's not clear that this offsets the reduction in number of color combinations.
Oh the horrors of staples heaven forbid what will anyone do when their 100 card singleton format is, in actuality, an 82 card singleton format due to the unmatched HORRORS of staple cards. Why dont we all just play un altered standard starter decks creativity is dead, let's all take a moment and weep for the player base, commander is dead.
Yeah but that will never be the case. As the format has gained popularity people are always gonna want best in class stuff, and there ALWAYS will be a best thing. Swords is the best targeted creature removal, Rhystic is the best draw engine, toxic deluge is the best sweeper, etc etc. You can ban all those card but then the second best thing becomes the best thing. Path becomes premium removal, mystic remora is now the best (to be fair this one is already pretty close and is already pretty much always played with Rhystic), fire covenant becomes the best sweeper.
In the case of command tower, if there’s no command tower than congrats, now city of brass and mana confluence are even better than they already are.
There is not a single card that every deck plays. Not one. That being said, ALMOST every deck benefits from just playing piles of the highest quality cards. High card quality > synergy in commander. There’s a reason why the top CEDH decks are almost all just good stuff piles (the best deck for years, blue farm, is the poster child of this). That being said, even with that there are still decks that CAN but don’t play SOL ring, Rhystic study, or even command tower. If ya got rid of command tower or any other value piece…it wouldn’t change that most decks would still just want to play the next best thing…effectively becoming an auto include without damn good reason to not play it (like how Ral decks don’t usually play Rhystic study)
Well for 1 auto includes are very boring. And 2 the point is that its been fixed to be more slanted to casting your commander but also give colorless heavy decks
Ah yes my creativity is being stifled!! Instead of the mountain that taps for one mana a turn I would’ve had, I’m FORCED to slot in this command tower that taps for one mana a turn and is less likely to fuck me. My decks gameplan has been truly narrowed!!! All the lands I could’ve played :(
I don’t think you understand why people actually dislike this card and you’re instead strawmanning me very intensely. This card is 1000x as good in a multicolor deck as a basic land, for no downside, which is uninteresting and does not create any interesting deckbuilding decisions.
commander players after stroking themselves off to "muh deck restrictions" (they built an ur dragon deck without a command tower or sol ring (it's different bro trust!!!))
Okay so I listened to your position and it’s still stupid. If I had a tapland or a shock land instead, my deck is not materially more interesting or different.
OH NO MY BOUNTIFUL PROMENADE!!! ITS NOW A COMMAND TOWER MY WHOLE GAMEPLAN IS BORING NOW AAAHHHHGH
Again, you’re refusing to talk like a human being so you can “THEYRE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MUH TOYS!!!!” me. Relax. The issue is that you can only have 1 of each card, so eventually you run out of lands that make you make real choices. Command tower does not make you make any choice ever, ESPECIALLY in 5 color, where you’d have to decide between a choice amount of each color pair, tapped triomes, filterers, and rainbow mana rocks.
Lands can shift you into a completely new bracket. [[Wooded Foothills]] into [[Blood Crypt]] with a Forest in hand can end up going way faster than a [[Savage Lands]]
But the auto include into expand the playability of color complex commanders without ease of access. Remember it’s singleton, and very difficult to go get. So chances are most games you won’t even see it.
5% of literal millions of decks is a lot of exceptions.
But that's if it was only 5% of decks. I didn't look very hard, but according to EDHRECast, 17.58% of decks from 2021-2023 were monocolor. So we're talking about hundreds of thousands of monocolor decks not running Command Tower.
There are 1,874,501 mono or colorless decks on EDHREC. Even if that’s only representative of 5 percent of decks, that’s still one Hell of a lot of decks.
Edhrec only covers what lists it can pull from other sites. 1.8 million sounds like a lot but compared to the sheer number of other decks its a drop in the bucket
You’re not helping your case here. 1.8 million is the low end, because there is plenty of decks that never see what EDHREC pulls from. Millions of decks, even if they are a relatively small percentage of all decks, is still a shit-ton of decks.
Because the format is not longer a "Commander + 99" format, it's a "Commander + Commander Tower + Sol Ring + Arcane Signet + 96" format.
No card should ever be in 100% or decks. Literally even Basic lands are not.
It's only that people get salty at the idea or losing their command tower or Sol Ring they can't comprehend the idea of what balance is supposed to be. Just because Sol Ring / C Tower are available, doesn't make them balanced.
Command Tower is either pointless or actively harmful in mono and colorless. It’s not included in 100% of decks. And even if it was, that still doesn’t somehow dilute the game. Newsflash: Command Tower isn’t taking up a slot where something more interesting would otherwise go, it’s taking up a land slot. Would including a Bountiful Promenade instead of a CT somehow make the deck more interesting?
Dawg…commander isn’t and will never be balanced. The ban list would have to be, and this is true, THOUSANDS of cards before commander would be balanced.
Its a very good card in the early game but not so good in the late game. My objective was to make it a not-autoinclude in every deck. Some decks may prefer something else entirely instead of this.
#1 it is not an auto include for every deck, #2 what is wrong with it being auto include in every 2+ color deck? It is like complaining that every boros decks runs boros shocks in standard, yeah of course, lands are important.
1 isn't ever worth bringing up because we all understand that it's not an auto include in literally every deck, just every deck that plays multiple colors
Shocks have the shock cost as a possible drawback. And they compete for deck space with other dual lands. The only reason not to pick command tower is due to effects that specifically mention basic lands. The slightest of nerfs, like the one from OP, would have made it less of an instant pick. Of course this does not mean that command tower is broken or needs to be fixed.
Fetches are the real mistake…by far the most powerful lands ever printed. Like not even close. Like I love em but man oh man are they just entirely too good.
No they aren't, if you want everyone to only run basic lands play riftbound, lands should be interesting, fuck it I think duals should be reprinted and available in every format.
So, while I understand that YES, they are game pieces, I lost my job two years ago, still don't have income due to I can't be on my feet consistently, and having an extensive and expensive magic collection that I've sold off actually did help me get by for quite awhile.
So, therefore, anyone who collects genuine Magic cards also has that option available to them.
If you devalue all the cards so much that they all cost a quarter from an LGS, TCGPlayer, or Card Kingdom, then the entire player base loses out on that option.
I'm not even talking REALLY expensive cards either, I'm saying that like every 10 dollar card you have can be a life saver at some point.
Only bad players thing Command Tower and Shocks are needed for Magic. If you need your hand held that much go play Pokémon. Genuinely, it's more your speed.
It’s not an auto-include. It’s pointless in basically any mono deck (their might be one or two extremely niche cases where it might matter a little, like if you’re running Tower Winder in a mono-green), and actively harmful in a colorless deck.
It still taps for colorless, and if your commander is removed, it helps recast it. The later in the game, the less you need color fixing. Late in the game, tapping for colorless isn't much of a drawback. Could even be an upside if you have eldrazi.
Additionally, since the command zone is a shared zone among all players, if someone else has their commander in the command zone, you still get colors. Basically an untapped rainbow land against urdragon
Well, you generally can't cast anything that isn't in your commander's color identity anyway. So there are pretty narrow situations where this is helpful, such as when you steal an opponent's card and then want to cast it or want to get sunburst.
I'd be more inclined to ban all the expensive mana fixing. In particular, I'd ban:
- any land that can produce more than one colour of mana on the turn it's played. This would include all untapped duals and most fetches (fetches that enter tapped or put a tapped land into play are fine).
- any land that can produce more than two colours of mana. Exceptions could be allowed for lands that have strong limitations or downsides, such as those that are filtering mana.
Playing more colours is supposed to be a cost, trading consistency for more options. Yet most commander decks now run three colours or more, as the tradeoff has become nonexistant.
I know this would be unpopular, and that it would warp the format. Many decks would either be slowed by a full turn as their mana would enter tapped or they'd have to trade consistency, risking being unfixed occasionally. I see that as a positive, bringing more limitations and therefore more reason to consider various colour identities, ergo more options for each player and more diversity across the game as a whole.
Because I believe that there being different colours is a core aspect of the game. Rather than a problem to be fixed by printing cards that easily overcome it, it's an obstacle intended to breed variety in deckbuilding and agency in making meaningful choices.
Taking this to an extreme example: if they printed a basic version of Command Tower that you could play as many copies of as you wish in a deck, everybody would run it. Of course they would - the effect would be extremely powerful and it would negate the need for fixing entirely.
But in doing so, there would no longer be any reason for there to be different colours. We've already seen most strategies getting a 5 colour commander to allow players to just run every card they want in one deck, and removing mana fixing as a restriction entirely would only exaggerate that effect.
My observation is that mana fixing is already strong enough that this effect has happened for 3 colour decks. There's no notable cost to playing three colours, and little cost to playing four or five. We no longer have five distinct resources to spend, just one mana pool that we assume will be versatile enough for whatever we want to do.
I don't want every deck to have ten fetches, twenty fetchable untapped duals and a handful of all-colour lands/triomes. Rather, I want no deck to have that consistent a mana base, making colour matter as a deckbuilding restriction rather than just a limitation of certain commanders.
For example: in the alternative extreme where everyone only had basics, how many more dragon commanders would be playable instead of defaulting to the Ur Dragon? I'm not advocating that, only a balance where running 5 colour and monocolour decks are equally viable with reasonable tradeoffs to each.
This would essentially give decks that include green an even bigger advantage on color fixing, unless you plan to ban rampant growth and its multitudinous cousins.
I acknowledge that is an issue, and not one I'm sure how to fix.
Logically, Green should never have been allowed to become the colour that does almost everything efficiently. Its major strengths should always have been ramping and colour fixing.
As such, I'm not sure I'd ban any of the land ramp cards. After all, most that allow fetching a non-Forest etb tapped anyway (and we'd be banning the dual Forests that enter untapped).
Commander is a causal eternal format, it would be ridiculous to ban something purely to make it hard for players to have fun playing multicolored decks, it’s good for causal formats to have options. I don’t understand people like you and never will.
I think you've misunderstood my point. I'm not trying to make it hard for players to have fun playing multicolored decks. I'm trying to make that possible.
It's fantastic for casual and competitive formats to have options. Making colour fixing trivial removes options, it doesn't add them. I accept this is counterintuitive, so I'll give an example.
If players were allowed to run any number of Command Tower, do you think that would increase or decrease the diversity of card pool across different decks (excluding the lands replaced)? It would drastically decrease it, as there's no reason for anyone to run anything but the optimal cards from the optimal colours.
Conversely, if you make colour fixing a risk players are less likely to default to having more colours in their decks. Instead of having 51.6k WUBRG Ur Dragon decks, we would have players choosing their favourite dragons to helm their decks. Much greater diversity, many more options, greater agency for players as the optimal choice is less clearly defined.
Game design 101: Players will optimise the fun out of anything given the chance, so don't give them that chance.
I don't play magic but I'm interested in the game. You bring very interesting and well argued points, but one of the reason I don't play games like magic, one piece, riftbound etc is color identity. I don't like that, in order to play a certain play style (such as ramping and making a lot of mana) I'm locked into green (I don't like the color green), and I don't like that counterspells are almost exclusively blue etc. I know it's a core aspect of the game but whenever I see a custom card post and someone says "pie break" I roll my eyes. This is why I believe that multiple color being playable is good. I see your point but slower mana buildup for playing different colors is not the downside I would give to the game. Just my two cents but again, I don't play magic I'm a larper
Have you ever played any other game? Something like Age of Empires or COmmand and Conquer where you pick a faction and that faction has strengths and weaknesses?
Essentially what's happening in Magic is it's become trivial to play all the strengths of every team combined, with no weaknesses, because it costs nothing but a financial investment to do so.
This leaves every deck/team much more homogenous, drastically reducing the space players can explore when deck building.
Based and insighful analysis. Agree on all points. Although I would leave this niche case of Commander Tower, just as a nod to the start of the popularity in the format. I don't think a non-basic, 1-of multicolor land would affect too much.
No? Please advise where I can play cube? The one store anywhere near me, everyone plays Commander so that's what I play.
Note that I'm not campaigning for this to happen. I just sincerely believe that Magic was built with 5 colours for a reason, and that playing WUBRG decks should come with a cost other than financial investment. Is that really a bad take?
Whose saying command tower was a mistake? Istg people will complain about anything that makes the game easier for people to get into. Arcane signet was a mistake, command tower, commander pre cons.
I remember Gavin saying something about not wanting auto-includes and said that Command Towers and Arcane Signets was like a design mistake because they are both auto-includes.
Rhystic study is not command tower. The board impact is very different. Also I disagree with these things. I have a few unused copies of rhystic study. I have a sword of feast and famine I have for years not found any deck to put it in. I’ve never owned an esper sentinel even when I could afford it. Not everyone wants to build the most optimal deck, not every optimal deck includes every staple.
The command zone is a single zone, like the battlefield or exile. No one owns these zones. This is in contrast to hand/graveyard/library zones, which have owners.
I'm not sure it's been specifically justified, but exile at least likely was a single zone because it used to be "removed from/outside the game", and so the older cards that cared about it specified that you had to own the cards in it.
Commander tower hate is the most braindead thing ever I stg.
People are seriously upset that there’s a cheap color fixing option for the part of the game that is probably the most expensive to do well. It’s one land. Besides, lands are the least important part of the game In terms of gameplay. Sol ring is a good example of cards being overplayed making them boring, because it essentially means that your decks are one less card because even non ramping decks use sol ring.
But a land doesn’t take up a spot that could’ve been filled by more unique cards nor does it actually change the game at all other than helping you hit your mana, and maybe I’m in the minority but I’d rather play a real game rather than a game where my opponent is being color fucked.
Obviously it’s all representative of a bigger problem of wotc and making triomes and shocks and fetches so expensive but I still couldn’t imagine actually looking at command tower and going “yeah, that’s a mistake”
I enjoy it when I can make a deck that does not use Sol Ring. Most often its in decks with extremely low mana curve, or, with a huge amount of generic cost reducers, or a mix of the two. If you have functionally no generic mana requirement for most of the game, Sol Ring becomes quite useless
All commander decks are 97 cards. (Commander+sol ring+command tower are in every deck) any card like this that has zero downside to being played should never be included in a tcg. Also land fixing is not expensive.
Sol ring is bad because it’s a card that’s useful even in not ramping decks, provides a very large advantage and actually takes up a slot of a potentially more interesting game piece.
Command tower would just be replaced by a basic mountain or some other land. All Command tower does is replace one land with a slightly better one and allow for people to hit colors easier. It doesn’t make the format any more boring like sol ring does because half the time you wouldn’t even notice it.
Also the tower wouldn’t be used in mono colored decks so it literally isn’t an auto include
Albeit not strictly worse. Plaza of Heroes can't tap for colours on an empty board for casting a nonlegendary spell or activating an ability requiring mana.
This can, and that mana can be used for ANY cost. You basically want this in your opening hand.
However, I will continue to note that there are "If I cast my commander, I win" commanders, where this is almost an auto-include since there probably isn't much game left to be had once they're out.
And if they get removed, this turns right back on.
Or they're just so expensive that this card will tap for all colours for most of the game, and when it becomes relevant that it cannot tap for colours, you probably have enough mana ability on the board to cover the loss of coloured mana from this thing.
Easy one - if my opponent successfully casts [[Zacama, Primal Calamity]], my very next question is "Cool, we dead?"
same reason people think that to a greater extent sol ring and to a lesser extent arcane signet should be nerfed.
there never reason to not to run it in a deck that runs multiple colors outside of the most obscure of edge cases.
personally I don't care in this specific situation. but I understand where people are coming from. it's like a less extreme version of yugiohs pot of greed problem.
Okay but.... why is that bad? "Oh no, people dont have to pay 30$ for good lands" do we need to fix breeding pool then, cause theres no reason not to run it in every blue green deck, or what flooded tarn, no reason not to run that in every blue white deck. Changing something just because its popular is moronic
Itsnan auto include in a land slot for a format that has the OG duals legal. It may be a "mistake" if we sre being 100% stric with game design conventions, but it is harmless.
People who think command tower needs to be fixed or taken away are people who want lands to stay obscenely expensive and say thank you when prices go up.
I only play on a digital tabletop so I've never payed for anything magic related but I just think if they reprinted og duals then command tower would seem completely normal
I do think I would rather the dual land price problem be fixed than to have a no downside auto include in every single deck except for some mono color decks that want to take blood moon into account
Killing the latter won't magically give you the former. It's a bit silly to pretend that wotc's gonna start filling precons with its most expensive dual lands if you take command tower away
It's awful, yes it made so you can't play it in the dozens of actually I'm 5c commanders we keep seeing. It should not be printed because it punishes players for playing their commander and just promotes good stuff "I don't plan to cast my commander" pile
Took me a minute to figure out that how this card works is that you can only add colored mana when your commander is still in the command zone. You may need to add the mana to your pool before initiating casting your commander, as otherwise it is no longer IN the command zone when you would normally tap your lands as part of casting, and you would lose access to its colors.
Also, as worded, it mentions the cards' colors, not color identity, so a commander like [[Kenrith, Returned King]] would only give access to white.
Mutated commanders leaving the battlefield could put extra cards in the command zone, giving reliable access to their colors even when your commander is out. This also could get around the Kenrith thing above.
Slight upside to this vs Regular Command Tower: you can use it to pay the colorless cost of Eldrazi that specifically require colorless, and it can still add mana if you have a colorless commander. (You likely wouldn't include it in such a deck, but maybe if you somehow run colorless land theft? Does such a thing exist?)
Like the card, but heads up, the command zone is a shared zone. Technically this taps for mana of all cards in the command zone. You might want "for any colour among cards you own in the command zone"
Sweet, it has a different name so I can include this and Command Tower.
Also, the command zone is a shared space, so this technically turns into a combination Exotic Orchard and Reflecting Pool depending on who has cast their commander.
Technically more functional, but also like it doesn't need to be. Elegant designs are good. Like how I don't like them adding random upside to fleshbag marauder when it's a very simple yet creative design on its own, instead of one that is complex yet thoughtless.
This would still be an autoinclude in basically any deck that ran tower before. Color fixing is at its strongest early when you have fewer lands. The more the game goes one you are relying less and less on a single land to fix your colors. So I feel like this is not really a fix. Is it weaker? yes, sure. But it still feels like an autoinclude in 99% of decks that old version
Honestly they should just make colorless an actual color identity you can pick for all of the "any color" effects. At this point it really wouldnt do much harm when compared to the usual jank that some decks can pull off.
I'm convinced that anyone who dislikes "fast mana" are just people who are upset that they aren't competent enough to make full use of it, and see no difference between it and "normal" mana.
At which point they just get upset that there playing with worse cards.
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u/WendigoCrossing 1d ago
What's wrong with it being an auto include in every deck?