I hate to say this, but I'm at a bit of a Magic: The Gathering crossroads of two distinct problems going on with the game and life in general. The first and much greater source of turmoil is the game itself, which will lead into the second, but obviously I'll get there in due time. Basically, my time and money vested into this game stems 90% from the Commander format; it's all I play in paper and all I buy for when it comes to purchases cards as well. I have dabbled into Arena a bit, mainly due to the pandemic and my finding time during furlough/unemployment to give streaming via Twitch a try and it's... fine. It is what it is, and that's Magic in a way that incentivizes you to spend money for digital goods. As a device for Magic in that format, it's perfectly good as a program that lets you play Magic in that way, but when I spend money on hobbies I prefer to have something in return, which is why I prefer paper and which is why I hands down prefer Commander because of its longevity as the hands-down most popular format in Magic and how well the staple cards that define it retain their value. The downside to all of that, though, is with the popularity and money that Commander, well, commands, has placed the format in a position where Wizards of the Coast (who publish the game) focus so hard on it now as a money-maker, that the cards they design with the format in mind have kind of gotten me to the point that I honestly don't know how much I enjoy playing it anymore.
A lot of this newfound disdain for that game isn't particularly all that "new" but it's been the slippery scale of what I call "The Oloro Effect" that has been going on since I basically got back into the game way back around the Commander 2013/Return to Ravnica era. Oloro, Agless Ascetic on its face isn't exactly the most offensive card but it - and honestly Commander 2013 in general - was kind of the start of a trend in design that really started to permeate into the game bad design. Oloro gaining you two life just by being your general is somewhat innocuous, but it fundamentally warps the game around it regardless. Since a game of Commander is typically a slow-burn of players doing mostly setup for the first handful of turns, Oloro just by sitting there in his big comfy chair, moments away from doing an Al Bundy "hand in the pants" recline, in netting you probably ten points of life which is a leverageable resource and a not insignificant thing. It's ten more life you can use to wipe the board with a Toxic Deluge, it can put you right on the path to winning with a Felidar Sovereign the turn after you put it on the table, it's a free, non-interactible way to slowly drain the table with Sanguine Bond type effects. It does so much and you don't even have to cast it, and that's just from a little thing like life gain, one of the most looked down upon as "filthy casual" archetypes of deck design. Oloro was probably the biggest example of how things could be "pushed" when the design teams that create Magic: the Gathering cards really focus on the cards that serve as the backbones and thematic focuses of a Commander deck: The General
As offensive as Oloro was, it was kind of a different thing back then when it was about a dozen generals being designed specifically for the format and once a year. Like, lets be honest, something aound half the generals from Commander 2013 alone were problematic in how they warped the game around them by providing rolling or even cascading benefits just for existing. You had Prossh, Skyraider of Kher whose nature of making more tokens the more you cast it lead to engines with sacrifice effects that looped the game into oblivion. Derevi, Empyrial Tactician and the ability to just ignore the damn casting cost and whatever "Commander taxes" may be applicable to the card was just as format warping then as it is now. The problem, aka "The Oloro Effect", that has happened repeatedly since then is that not only have designs like this become a thing we've all come to expect year-in, year-out with annual Commander preconstructed decks and that do continue to be norm ever since that 2013 batch, powerful abilities that are generically good have been showing up on Legend after Legend after Legend card in just every single set release for several years now to the point that I think the game has just devolved to a point where invariably every time you sit down for a game of Commander now, there's a deck at the table that, whether or not someone is planning to be malicious with what their deck is doing, it's inanely powerful merely due to the existence of a General that does broken things that could even be disguised as "fun."
I sit down with my normal group of Commander playing nerds. We all pull out our decks from varying degrees of "fun" to "I think this if fun but it ends up being really not" to "specifically not fun." Whatever, the variety of Magic is the spice of life or some "sew it on a throw pillow" type saying. Teysa Karlov hits the table and then the game is basically over because that's how it works. Teysa, thanks to her doubling on death triggers basically means nothing good is happening when she is successfully cast, because even if you are playing a bunch of cards that are individually not very exciting by themselves in a deck she commands, whenever Teysa shows up to the party they immediately are hopped to the gils on PCP. Hell, those decks are usually just a buttload of commons and uncommons like Doomed Traveler and many cards of that ilk; but even something like that turns into a board shattering terror because then it may as well read "when this card dies, get two bodies, that will then be sacrificed to this other effect, which will net the controller more bodies or mana or cards" and on and on and on into oblivion. Teysa can hit the board and immediately be met with a Swords to Plowshares or whatever but she will still completely shift things because inevitably some critters will be thrown on the value pile of sac effects Commander games are rife with and put that player in a position where, yeah, sure, Teysa costs two mana more now due to Commander Tax, but they probably refilled their hand and either have a plethora of blockers now or forced the other players to burn through their own boards with a Grave Pact. The text on her card is that generically powerful that even her death basically means nothing unless it happens so repeatedly as to make her uncastable and is also accompanied by multiple effects that wipe multiple permanents from play because so many can be an engine with her. And that's exactly how that game went and we gave it hell and then yeah.
Okay, so that game is a wrap but whatever, at least a Massacre Wurm did something cool during. Let's shuffle up, let's try that again. What's that? Oh, a Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow deck now. Cool. So now what happens here is literally even the cheapest and most generic of creatures becomes a potential game ending threat. No one at the table can let a single 1/1 creature get through because what happens then is what happens every game you don't dare to kill relatively inane creatures in a Yuriko deck; Yuriko fucking Batman smoke bombs her way onto the board and then starts being simultaneously a kill condition and a card advantage engine thanks to her reveal mechanic. And that's pretty much it, because the design is so "good" on Yuriko you can never truly kill her because Ninjustu lets her cheat costs, once the deck gets rolling your opponent is just going to have counter magic to save her Ninja minions from Wrath of God sweepers, and just a simple unblocked Ninja could flip a, like, Treachery and effectively mean Yuriko by simply existing is dealing as much as fifteen damage to your average Commander table. So, effectively, you only put the deck in its place by killing every single generic (and usually unblockable) creature the deck puts into play which, again, no one will do because no one wants to waste spot removal on a goddamn 2/2 with no real abilities, and then hope they haven't maxed out their hand on counter magic to effectively neuter the one real threat to the deck and that's sweepers. Oh, and that's also assuming part of her reveals aren't any of a half dozen extra turn spells that essentially means she'll just kill the board at once. Yuriko is fun y'all. No, really she's a blast.
Y'know what is the sad part of that last bit of sass, though? Yuriko SHOULD be fun. Ninjas, as a matter of proven scientific fact, are cool. Ninjutsu as a mechanic is cool and one of the few good things to come from Kamigawa block as a whole. But because of course every Legend card in the game of Magic these days needs to come with at least three different mechanics on it to potentially be the lynchpin of a deck, something as simple as "the Ninja Commander" becomes one of the most frustrating experiences playing the game can hand a table.
Whatever though, shake that one off, guess it's time to power up my own general a little bit and go less "universal fun" leaning and more toward something efficient. So I pull out good old Lord Windgrace and decide to go some "lands matter" on everyone's asses. And things are going good for roughly five turns. I got my usual bit of ramp onto the table thanks to the dumb stupid dumb engine Windgrace himself is, I've stockpiled a decent graveyard to help churn lands and card advantage, and I just hit the biggest threats on the board with a very thematic Windgrace's Judgment and a Beast Within and am ready to drop a butt-ton of threats down with the Landfall mechanic staple, Rampaging Baloth. It's how I like to play Magic, just some value churn, some big dumb beefy boy Beasts to stomp the table aaaaaaand, oh. The mono-blue player drew a Power Artifact, so his Urza, Lord High Artificer, which is several engines in and of himself, instantly gives his deck an infinite loop because the Power Artifact combined with the Basalt Monolith on the table gives him the mana to do so and yay, there goes that game. Infinite mana is obviously the bigger problem but it having an always accessible outlet because of the deck General is just backbreaking.
It's kind of tiring, is what it is. And I know that the Magic community in general is in kind of a "power creep" fatigue when it comes to how cards have been designed in recent years, which is why half of the Magic posting you see on social media was so bitter and gripe-filled that Wizards of the Coast had to emergency ban essentially the best decks in multiple formats. The reason I love Commander so much is that thanks to its "mostly casual" nature and the longevity of games kind of cuts some of the "raw power" out of the equation, but when the power is inherent to the card the entire deck is based around, well, that's when the game loses its luster. I don't blame someone for wanting to play a Yuriko deck because, again, Ninjas are cool. Batman is a ninja for shit's sake, and Batman is the coolest (like in that new "The Batman" trailer). But Yuriko literally turns generic creatures into game breaking threats. I don't blame someone for wanting to play a mono-blue artifact deck, that's a combination as old as Magic, but it's already a generically powerful one and the last thing it needed is a general that just wins basically on the spot when he hits the table given the advantages of blue spells and the junk blue mages have laying around. And triggers are fun! I play Panharmonicon in as many decks as I can justify and it's just pure fun, so in that regard I'm not about to get in that Teysa player's grill or anything, but having doubling effects like hers, or, ugh, Yarok, the Desecrated attached to a creature you have access to any time you want is just so generically powerful, it skews anything "fun" you may have been planning with those abilities.
And there's just so many, many more offenders of this and they are, unsurprisingly, some of the most popular Commanders being registered on the Internet at EDHREC. Korvold, Fae-Cursed King is just an insane value engine the can kill you in a singular attack and will mow through a game as soon as it hits. Muldroth, the Gravetide is also in that vein of being "mayonnaise in cardboard form" for its generic ability to just be inane card advantage just by being played and there being a graveyard full of toys waiting for him. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is literally designed to just be a one-card machine by giving you up to three free plays for as long as you have the mana to activate him. Fun fact, I myself have a deck that Golos heads up; it's a deck that actually features pretty much every card that has a "you win the game" condition on it. The deck is terrible. It's just a bunch of clunky enchantments that need to hit several milestones to trigger, and even then they usual do so on an upkeep so the table has plenty of time to deal with your board, especially as they can see everything coming. But, Golos is just so stupidly, generically powerful that sometimes you play him, get a handful of free cards, and unless you get wiped multiple times he just pieces together a fistful of things that work together at once and that's that. Even a deck full of Mayael's Aria and the like can be broken when it's Golos yeeting them onto the table.
It's tiring because so many times it boils a game down to someone already having a piece on the board and the simple matter of playing a card that always hovers off to the side of the game waiting for their chance to dominate it because there wasn't a Counterspell at the table. Or because the spot removal isn't good enough because the ability is just THAT GOOD that even answers are resolved into another handful of problems compounded by the inevitable return of the general two extra generic mana later. The games become so linear. Formulaic. Anti-climatic. For every game that "feels like Commander" to me where the board advantage rotates several times, the graveyard player survives a couple clearings of that zone, the token player rebuilds from not one, not two, but three board wipes and you get an hour-plus of just battlecruiser Magic, there's a half dozen games where a everything comes to a big "crescendo" of asking "do you have the other piece?" when some general with a dumb ability comes crashing down and essentially ends the contest. I've enjoyed like twenty percent of the Commander bouts I've participated in this year and the vast bulk of them usually boil down to "well, screw that General" because they ended the game in the most predictable way ever and there was nothing to really stop them or they warped the games around them because the dedication to making sure they don't do what they do simply by existing gave the game to the person who wasted no resources contributing to the problem at hand.
And with that out there, with the format that brought me hardcore back into the game after a decade-long absence and with a pandemic enveloping this country and, sadly, leaving many unemployed in its wake, myself included, I'm not sure I get enough out of it to keep participating. Having extra time on your hands to reevaluate, well, pretty much everything in your life leads you to some pretty easy revelations, especially when there's things like a, y'know, mortgage on the line, and two of those linear lines of thought like "I need to pay these bills" and "these valuable game pieces I own are quickly losing their engagement value" become easy combo together into "maybe it's time to sell (most of) them out." With several years of The Oloro Effect in place and domino after domino falling into place to create more and more just broadly powerful and non-interactive Commanders becoming so overwhelming because of set after set after set creating dozens more of them, it becomes a little harder to hold on when every game falls into the same trap in their wake.
I don't want to think like this but it's kind of just the way it is. I see the hype train building for Commander Legends come this October and I don't think "man, more cards to build into/around all these decks!!" I think "man, a whole set dedicated to probably making the same mistakes that haunt the game every new release." I don't want the cynicism to be there but when you have to make decisions like the one I'm leaning towards - and I will say here, I'm not looking for pity, in fact I find myself very lucky I'm in the position I am to (hopefully) live through this clusterfuck of a situation by liquidating pieces of a "kids game" - but when the enjoyment is collapsing game session after game session because the cards that serve as the fundamental pillar of the format I love keep leading to uninspired game after predictable game, its easy to see cynicism for realistic courses of action. I do hope I'm wrong. Maybe this stretch has just been the product of a playgroup that has gone stale. Maybe in a world where virus that has killed hundreds of thousands is taken seriously and people can start playing Magic with each other in convention halls and more regularly in gaming shops, some idealistic Magic nerd is going to be all "here's my Shattergang Brothers deck; it's as unassuming and durdly as Gomer Pyle. PS: Screw Korvold" and warm the cockles of my black heart. But, until then, this seems to be the path both the game and my own personal self are on unless something shifts in both the world of the game and the world that we play it in, and I feel like both are very much victims of "it didn't have to be this way."
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