Hello and welcome back! My main focus in all of my articles is Commander, whether reviewing cards, picking what I think are the best from the set and saying why, or the rarer comments about the format itself and social interaction.
Today while we have a break from new cards to check out in the seemingly endless parade of spoilers, I want to talk more about how Commander has influenced the design of cards, specifically the words, from the very obvious to the less obvious. I say that since it doesn’t take a deep dive to see how Commander has changed things over the years, but outside of when that actually happens, it all becomes background noise because it has become normal.
As you will see below, a sizable portion of the changes and additions from Commander are specifically for multiplayer formats, but some scale to the number of players, some help players catch up a little, and some are literally just word changes to accommodate multiple formats.
Time to get wordy.
MYRIAD
Introduced in Commander 2015, Myriad is a way to put pressure on every opponent in the game and help move things along via aggression. The original cycle of creatures wasn’t much to speak about, so the mechanic remained somewhat contained. However, Blade of Selves is another story entirely, enabling more than a few shenanigans.
Myriad is a very Commander-centric mechanic, being created for a Commander set and all. However, it is an ability we’ve been seeing here and there over the years, with the last use being as recent as Modern Horizons 3. While it has largely stayed printed into Commander products, it does scale with the number of players in a game. It could be used in 1v1 formats to create a single token, but is perhaps a little too complicated for a main set printing.
INITIATIVE
Moving from most focused to least, we next cover Initiative. Introduced in the (in)famous Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, it gave different advantages to the player that had initiative and could be taken from the player via combat damage or an ability that grants it, similar to Monarch. However, unlike Monarch you progressed through a series of advantages you could choose from by going through a specific dungeon called The Undercity.
In this way, it also promoted a game that progressed by giving a small advantage to the player with initiative and incentive for other players to take it. There is definitely a pattern to some of these abilities we’ll be talking about, and that is the promotion of aggressive play so players sit around and spin their wheels.
MONARCH
Unlike Initiative, Monarch only gives a single advantage, and one some would argue is the biggest you can get in a game of Magic: drawing a card. Introduced in Conspiracy: Take the Crown, which is NOT a Commander-centric set, it helped provide, along with other mechanics in the set specifically geared towards a draft experience, a unique play pattern and environment for the draft. Getting the ability to draw an extra card at the end of your turn could really put you ahead in such an environment, and people could also take it away via combat or an ability that grants Monarch.
In Commander the mechanic has a good chance at changing the flow of a game. It creates an advantage everyone wants, promotes attacks, possibly creates political alliances, and you can use the Monarchy against the player who has it.
No main line sets have seen Monarch as a mechanic, and it is easy to speculate why. A whole tournament season could resolve around the mechanic if printed on a good card, and some cards would get even better with it and push them over the edge even more, like Sheoldred the Apocalypse. However, in specialty sets we’ve often seen one or two cards have it return every so often, and in my opinion it’s always a welcome addition in those small amounts.
GOAD
Also introduced in Conspiracy: Take the Crown, Goad is another ability that promotes attacking but works best in a multiplayer setting, though it does have 1v1 implications. There have been similar abilities in the past on cards like Siren’s Call and Fumiko the Lowblood. However, Goad also protects the user by having a creature affected by the ability attack someone else instead of anyone.
This really only works if you have two or more opponents though, and then is just as effective as the older cards I mentioned above. There are ways to prepare against Goad in a1v1 scenario though, either with fog effects or cards like Settle the Wreckage, Inkshield or Comeuppance.
This mechanic has become an evergreen mechanic. This means we’ll likely see it again from time to time in many kinds of sets, though so far only specialty sets have seen it printed. As I said above in 1v1 Goad can be dealt with but it would likely be too hard to balance to both include with purpose and have answers to.
EACH
For each opponent, at each end step or upkeep, or each player. Unlike the specific mechanics above, this little word is on many, many cards and in many sets. As Commander became the most popular format Wizards changed the wording on many cards to include this one to help scale cards to however many players may be playing the game at one time. This included some errata changes to older cards, Mystic Remora being clarified for a multiplayer game as an example.
The change can’t be understated. This meant that Commander players got more viable cards for the format while preserving the cards for 1v1 formats. Each is an inclusive term as far as the game goes and the simple change makes the game better for everyone.
ONCE PER TURN
This one is probably less a Commander specific game adaption than the others above, but it does allow more powerful effects and those effects to be reined in with a timing restriction. While there are those that complain about the restriction sometimes, myself included, by and large the cards that have this phrase on them are played often and effective for what they do. A specific ability that comes to mind is Morbid, where it gives a one time bonus if a creature died during that turn.
It also scales with the number of turns that game has. Commander has 4 turns per rotation of the table, whereas a 1v1 has 2 turns per cycle. So it acts as a way to also pace the game and scale power, as I alluded to earlier. The new mechanic Flurry from Tarkir: Dragonstorm is another good example. If you can manage it, Cori-Steel Cutter gives you up to 2 tokens in 1v1 and up to 4 in a traditional pod of Commander players.
WISE WORDS
Something that has always impressed me about Magic and also something I find personally enjoyable on a conscious level are the words and language used to create cards and tell us how they function. While mistakes are made, largely the game is well designed language wise, with the same structures over thousands of cards so you can infer with relative certainty what is happening, supposed to happen, or what something means.
That said, the words have changed a bit over time. It has been interesting to me to see those words revolve more around and for Commander as much as then bridging the gap between formats for functionality across as many as possible.
As far as Commander though, are there some phrases or words I missed that have maybe impacted how cards function or are used? Let me know below.
Until next time, take a nap each day, once per day. It’s always your turn.
