In another thread we were talking about the old days of clones and tuck and it got me thinking a little about how they have bandaged this rule a few times now. There was also the shift that allowed for commanders to die which is a mostly upgrade functionality allowing some commanders who previously didn't function to work. That said though a large part of the reason they changed the ruling back in the day to remove commander tuck was to allow more commander centric tactics to be able to function better and it did do a really good job. That said though, there are still two big outliers that this rule didn't address and that was Theft and Transform effects.Rule 7 Current wrote:"If a commander is in a graveyard or in exile and that card was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone. If a commander would be put into its owner's hand or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event."
Now, I am all for allowing counter play to commanders but I can't even tell you how many times I have seen people get completely hard locked by a transform or theft effect. I have in the last year eaten several of these effects while playing colors that don't have answers to them. I am not trying to argue that they do or don't feel bad but I am curious why we have a rule #7 that is super wordy and yet leaves out several effects that can be almost as degenerate depending on what you are playing.
I think Rule #7 could be redone as:
My point is that most of what rule #7 outlines is reloading the commander, tuck protection, and death trigger alowment. You can easily cut several of these in with less words while also giving more protection from transform and theft which my argument here is that they primarily hurt decks with less colors as decks with more colors tend to have options to get out of these issues.Proposed Change wrote:"Once a turn you move your commander from anywhere to the command zone. (updated from post 3)"
Beyond that changing the rules to allow commanders to go to the command zone at any time would open up better recursion options for commanders. As it stands right now if you have a Reanimate effect putting your commander into the graveyard and leaving them there is a risk if anyone can counterspell you as you get stuck in the graveyard. This further weakens blue which if you ask me is probably a good change on top of hitting transform and theft which blue can also use.
I wouldn't say that transform and theft are as big of a problem as tuck once was but I also don't see why they are still allowed to disrupt at the level they can. They aren't really a problem for decks in good colors but when someone transforms your commander into a land / indestructible thing in mono red it can be a huge problem. I just don't really see much of a reason not to simplify the rules in a way that probably helps mono red while removing some currently sort of toxic answers. Green white and blue are probably the colors least impacted by these effects being used on them while also being the most common to likely implement them on others. With this proposed change all of those effects can still effectively result in a commander kill the same way that the tuck rule still technically can be used on commanders I just don't see a reason not to bring them all in line together.
If I am overlooking something that would break in half with this proposed change I would love to hear about it as well as any other discussion on this topic.