Commander: Should the "Tuck" Rule Return?

Hello and welcome back. Can you believe there is another week without spoilers (at the time of writing)!? Well, that just means we can talk about other things related to commander again, but this time we’re going back a bit to some of the old EDH rules.

Nowadays when a commander would be put somewhere besides the command zone, you can move it back to the command zone as state based action (you still get dies and leaves triggers if applicable). This wasn’t always the case. When the format was still called EDH and a little bit into its transformation into Commander, the legend that led your decks didn’t have that much protection and could be “tucked” into your deck in an effort to get rid of it in a semi-permanent way.

This was and is called the “Tuck Rule”. Your legendary creature that led your deck could be put into or shuffled into the deck itself as a form of removal.

TUCK ‘EM IN

You can see the intent and use of the rule in cards like Unexpectedly Absent, Spell Crumple and Oblation, of which Absent was first printed in a commander preconstructed deck. In the early days of Commander, this card could target a commander, and send it into the deck under X cards, where X is what you paid into it with mana. Also back then, it could be argued that your commander wasn’t as important and central to decks as they are today.

However, it could still be a big hit to a strategy to have a key piece of it put into the deck, especially if you forgot about it and shuffled your commander away. Outside of the potential bad feelings about it, some players liked keeping their commanders in sleeves with different art or in top loaders and so created some extra problems even though they came later after the rule had been around a while.

TAKE ‘EM OUT

Today, the tuck rule isn’t around to muck about with our commanders thanks to a rules change via the Rules Committee that allows us to move our commander to the command zone if that were to happen. It can still affect other things in the game, but our commanders are safe from not being available to us via this rule.

This has probably had an effect on the format over time that might not be easily undone if we need it to be. As I mentioned earlier, Unexpectedly Absent was printed in a commander preconstructed deck, specifically one from Commander 2013. I don’t think an effect like that would be printed in a preconstructed deck today, though this specific card did get a reprint in Commander 2020.

The simple reason that it likely won’t come back is that it feels bad to lose access to your commander, the very flagship, signpost, banner and anthem by which your deck was designed around (usually). Besides, we have many more options for removal now than we did back when the tuck rule was a part of the commander experience. Commanders that are removed enough are essentially gone for good anyway in a lot of circumstances.

INTO LEGEND

However, as power creep tends to do, new threats present themselves on the horizon. The tuck rule would better help deal with some of these threats, not to mention have other cards like Dramatic Accusation become somewhat useful outside niche builds.

Recent examples where this might be more useful to get rid of commanders would be Voja, Jaws of the Conclave and Nadu. While there would be the normal hoops to jump through to get these legends off the board, cards that tuck things away like this would deal with them much more efficiently. Why not Chaos Warp or Bant Charm away a problem like that? Well, the bad feelings apply again.

Another reason is that cards have become a lot more powerful and therefore there may be other problems on board you need to take care of. This isn’t the tucking days of early 2000’s EDH after all. What defines a powerful card has come a long way and added many more words of value. Likewise card draw or card access itself has greatly increased in all colors, so tucking something away might not be the end all be all to defeat newer threats.

LEGENDS NEVER DIE

All said, some of these effects, like Chaos Warp, do see play. It’s not that tucking something isn’t still a viable removal piece, even for a commander. It’s that for commanders specifically it was nerfed to encourage people to build around their legend more as the format evolved.

I know from when the rule changed that I made a few changes to my Feldon of the Third Path deck at the time to take more advantage of my commander since I wouldn’t lose him to a tuck card. That holds true today. While Feather is always in danger I needn’t worry about losing it to shuffling the angel into my deck. This allows decks like Feather and Nadu to exist in the format and prosper while still allowing them to “be removed” via cards like Void Stalker.

What say you though, planeswalker? Prefer Voja get lost in the woods instead? Maybe Nadu Na-didn’t? Let me know in the comments below.

Until next time, when defeat is near and guidance is scarce, you need only look to the command zone.