Your Favorite Commander is Boring

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[kirnetangle]

I show up to commander night to see how many birds I can generate before the rest of the table gets concerned about it

[TheRatWzard]

I'm in the camp of where I don't care if people play the really good commanders. My only problem is if they start making a fuss about their commander getting targeted. Like who in their right mind is going to look at you cast Gishath, and just not deal with it? "Oh I require set up and mana" my brother in christ, you and me both know you just need to hit to get your dinosaurs to get your deck going.

[sereenafarren]

As much as the new Obeka is super interesting to me, I just KNOW every deck that people build with her is going to be taking 20 minute turns while they resolve 6 triggers per upkeep, 3 times per turn.

[macenanoro]

To a degree, I like seeing commanders with "Expectations". I'm newer to the game, so if I see a deck I know well/vaguely know its gameplan, I can focus on finding the "winning plays" for OTHER more fringe decks at the table. Lets me focus on learning more "new" stuff. Then again, I have shown up to an LGS and, totally by chance, ALL THREE OTHER PLAYERS PULLED OUT AN ATRAXA DECK and looked at ME expectantly while laughing about it. THAT was a wild yet awkward moment. (And 2 were infect so it was a very quick game.)

[ghaleon]

It doesn't bother me at all. I play some popular commanders and I play some not so popular commanders. One person's "boring" is another person's "fun and exciting". So no I don't sigh when I see a super popular commander on the other side of the table and I don't find it boring and start railing at the sky about the good old days. I will say I don't get to play as much as I used to so I'm just happy when anybody wants to play, no matter who they have in the command zone.

[timeparadox]

Quintorius is "Budget Friendly" until you have to spend $183.99 on a copy of Elephant Graveyard just to Regenerate Target Elephant. How else am I meant to protect my Boy

[rayrever]

I’m starting to get the feeling somebody here really likes Sunforger lol

[orpheos]

It feels like this argument is a bit all over the place. You talk about generic value commanders and then in the next breath you talk about commanders that “build themselves” because they have a very specific niche. These are completely different. It feels like you are just saying “be hipster and don’t play the stuff that you see all over the place”. That’s a perfectly fine argument, but I feel like its mixed in with a potpourri of other arguments

[moistnar]

This is all true but you fail to consider that when I resolve a Honden of Seeing Winds to draw 11 the happy chemicals in my brain enter overdrive

[andrewspears]

One could argue that any commander that _does a thing_ builds itself. Kalamax wants exactly three things, being tapped, casting instances, and getting extra copies of said instances. There is not a whole lot of leeway in what goes into a Kalamax deck. Kenrith on the other hand, can go in a whole slew of directions. Want to build a degenerative infinite combo factory? Go for it. Want to play group hug? Absolutely down for it. 5 color reanimator deck? Kenny's got you covered. Generically good commanders offer flexibility on what sort of archetypes they can cover.

[james]

While you bring up valid points, I believe they are being made from a selfish point of view.

"I'm tired of seeing X commander because I know what they are going to do. They are to common and every build is the same."

Its understandable to be frustrated at seeing common decks and "staples", but you're not the one running them. You're not the one playing them because you find it fun.

I understand the frustration of seeing commander being streamlined due to WotC is focusing on it as a format and over make products for it. But that's not what I feel is being argued here.

Gishath got a good friend of mine into Magic when Ixalan came out cause "dinosaur stompy is fun". Atrexa broke me out of my "I only do beat down" deck design when she first came out, and ultimately lead me to explore wincons outside of damage.

If you're enjoyment comes from using unique commanders and cards, more power to you. But others find enjoyment through other means, which is equally as valid as yours.

[TiltedSquare]

I'm gonna have to disagree. Popular commanders are popular because they're easy to build around since they have a linear focus. I would even argue Atraxa is a poor example because proliferate can go in so many directions. If there's a pod of Atraxa players one can do planeswalkers, one can do energy counters, one can do +1/+1, and one can do infect.

Honestly if Atraxa was printed now it would probably have another line of abilities that supports the proliferate.

I do miss old legendaries though. You had to go out of your way to find what cards worked with it and be a bit creative. New legendaries are more powerful due to powercreep and have more cards supporting it, but that's what happens when wizards releases a new set every month.

[yurisei]

This video didn't age well. "Wizards are starting to fix [the boring commander problem]". Wizards: Makes a set with 47 commanders, more than half of which primarily or exclusively draw you cards.

[ThatChrisG]

I'm gonna be honest, Atraxa is a really bad example for what you're describing. Without a board that can take advantage of her trigger, she's a 4/4 with keyword soup. While slightly broad, proliferate slots her into leading a few specific deck archetypes rather than goodstuff piles, which increases diversity in terms of one Atraxa deck versus another. She can lead either +1/+1 counters or superfriends, without outright telling the pilot to do so in her rules text. Compare this to the infamous similarity between Go-Shintai decks, a textbook case of the commander telling you exactly how to build it.

The more modern "setup and payoff" commanders like Korvold, Chulane, and Prosper are significantly more egregious due to how little they ask of their pilot and how wide of a net they cast in terms of things they synergize with.

[Badassest]

No matter the commander you are fighting my 99.

[matthewbillings]

My favorite deck is a 4th crusade themed Baird Argivian Recruiter deck, the highlight is a "quest for the holy relic" and no legal targets for it.

[hyalinecartilage]

Jokes on you, i use Grist to make bugs

[IBNSG]

The moment Wizards started printing cards and sets for commander specifically, is when the format started to have some serious ingenuity issues. The fact you see more interesting commanders these days in not an effect of them fixing anything, it's just they spam products so often now, it's more likely to cause accidental success. That said, I 'd really prefer a slower pace over product fatigue we're seeing these days.

[SaltyCrocodile]

You'll take Pantlaza from cold dead hands!

[Zouzk]

I made a Go-shintai deck, but I only run 2 shrines in it. The main idea of the deck is to use cards like "presence of the master, " "cephalid shrine" and the black 2 mana one I can't remember the name of together with "Multani's Presence" to draw cards and get enchantment into the graveyard, until I find my zombie making enchantments so it goes from a self countering enchantment deck to a zombie tribal deck where i "resurrect" the enchantments too