The "Queen" Problem: Why Wizards NEEDS to print more monocolor support
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2024
- Multicolor has dominated Commander for too long!
Apologies for the general audio quality and dry mouth near the end of the video. (Gotta stay more hydrated). I gotta start recording at a more reasonable hour to improve quality.
5 color Eldrazi is beyond obscene
Obscene? Maybe. Unprecedented? No... Color pips make up a pretty sizable chunk of the tribe.
Yeah, wizards needs to stop giving in to the players that demand these kinds of cards. The fastest way to tank a game is giving the players everything they want
I love it
@@jhicks1289then you are the problem 😂
Honestly I really hope they just play into devotion more like imagine if Dockside was 2 red pips or something
Ya they really need to make more powerful cards only monocolors can go, or require a more one sided mana base.
Dockside should have cost 1RR
@@franslair2199 keeping Dockside mono-colored doesn't fix it, regardless of how far you increase the mana cost, as it just becomes the follow up to a Jeska's Will. Adding another colored pip, and/or making it count either enchantments or artifacts...
@@andrewamann2821or making a devotion-based Dockside
I think the biggest problem with mono colored decks is that it's far too easy for multi color decks to cast the most powerful mono colored spells. A keyword like monochromatic that increases costs based on the amount of colors in a commanders identity could allow the printing of powerful mono cards without them going straight into 3+ color decks.
That’s a cool idea
Devotion reqards players for running a single color
@@7fatrats Gray merchant and plenty of other devotion cards I've put in decks that are multicolored but still get good benefits. Ie a jund deck that is mostly black getting a gary or a deck that is mostly green playing Karametra's acolyte. 2 and 3 color decks can very easily fit devotion payoffs if they want them
I feel like an easy solution would be to reprint mono color payoffs a lot more. Pricetags do affect casual commander usage rates, and things like nykthos not being $35 might help spike monocolor usage a bit.
One of my favorite cards design wise is war room. I wonder if the design space could head in that direction. Maybe make some cards with cycling x, where x is the number of colors in your commanders identity.
I think more 3-4 pip cards are the way to go. Treasures make it a lot harder to just rely on pips though and it would need some additional support. Maybe more 'Mytic Sanctuary' type effects that only work when you have a certain amount of 1 land type, or cards that do more if you only pay 1 colour of mana into them?
I've been talking about heavier pip requirements for years. I love Tempest Djinn, for example. Hullbreacher costing UUU would have made it so much more fair of a card.
The fixing is incredible in commander. More pips just doesn't matter in a lot of decks hell even my 3 color decks can run cards like Scourge of Valkas Tribute to the World Tree and Farewell
Hell there was even a notable 5 color standard deck that used cruel ultimatum and Cloud Thresher. Fetch lands are just that good
@jmanwild87 Flashing in an Opposition agent with a mana crypt and a swamp on T1 to screw over another player's T1 fetch is an example of more pips helping stop that.
My favourite "new" mono-colour commanders were the commanders from the Strixhaven precons (not the covers). They all did something unique that isn't nessecarily what the colour is built to do, which makes it so fun. I have a Rionya deck that is a HOUSE when it goes off, and creature-storm is a really interesting design space. I also want to build the mono-green bear that cares about creatures with no abilities, because it just seems COOL, and I absolutely think that the mono decks need help and support, because its a really cool space to brew in.
i honestly expected it to be lower because by the commander rules being mono colored limits your options so much. hence why 2+ color commanders are so much more plentiful. you're inherently taking a handicap playing mono colored and expecting an even distribution is kinda dumb. if the mono colored support is incredibly strong you can just run them in decks that are mostly 1 color and benefit from them regardless, if i'm mostly blue i can still play spectral deluge and get the benefit with a slightly lower ceiling or gray merchant has seen play in 3 color decks because if you're mostly black you still get a big benefit. like the issue with mono color support is, what's stopping me from just playing them in decks that are mostly 1 color?
Maybe impose handicaps that are the opposite of domain.
“This card costs 4 less if your lands produce [only one color]” or “ …[only X color]”
Edit: I’m dumb the easy wording is “this card costs 2 more for each color your lands can produce”
@shnorkeythefourth4572 i find it funny that technically speaking the best way to encourage mono colored deck building at least in formats with deep enough card pools isn't to benefit people to play monocolor but to punish playing multicolor
Agree, to encourage mono color I think we need more monocolor legendaries that are very good to built around instead of just being part of the 99, and good bunch of cards in the chosen color tu support the strategy.
The good part about going monocolor is that the manabase can become a lot more cheaper and you have to worry less about not having the colors you need in your opening hand.
@@jmanwild87 I can’t think of a way to encourage mono color besides devotion. It’s inherently a good thing to expand your toolset in a deck by using other colors because of the way the color identity system is balanced
I think if you play a deck that is mostly one color, you deserve the monocolor payoff to work mostly the same as if you ran it in a deck that was forced to be one color. That just seems reasonable to me.
The thing is, it’s far too easy to make 5 colour decks function nowadays. Triomes and Surveil lands boost up the fetch-shock-duals mana base, and Commander centric design wants to incorporate more and more colours so you can player a wider range of cards.
Some decks like Ulalek, Ur-Dragon, Edgar Markov and Morophon are the best in their respective classes to the point of “why limit myself when I can play the best of the best?”
The game would be so much healthier if Smothering Tithe was 4 white pips and Rystic Study were 3 blue pips.
With standard and supplemental sets favoring two or more colors, mono color or basic matters seems like a after thought with current design.
{b} Edgy Artifact - exile a Swamp from your hand: add {b}{b}{b}{b}. I think the new card consuming corruption in MH3 is the bees knees.
{3} generically good artifact when you cast generically good artifact choose a color. Whenever you cast a monocolored spell of the chosen color, put a counter on generically good artifact. Whenever you cast a spell of any other color remove a counter for each color of that spell cast. If there are no counters on generically good artifact exile it. {t}, remove one counter from generically good artifact: add 2 mana of the chosen color. {t},sacrifice generically good artifact: draw X+4 cards where X is the number of counters on generically good artifact.
If the eldrazi Commander had: “Eminence: You cant cast colored spells” it would make more sense and maybe also: “lands you control also have: add {c}” or something like that
Eminence as a downside rather than an upside is actually a SUUUPER interesting design space. Really neat.
I think it would be easier to say "basics matter" than different land types. cabal coffers wants basic swamps, which is a big reason why monoblack works.
what I'm suggesting is reverse blood moon. something that makes you want to play basics, but the alternative isn't "you can't play anything". it's cheaper to print one thing that cares for basics, rather than 5 for each type.
I think it’s a huge mistake on your part to assume that all color combination should be played equally, it’s not surprise that a lot of commander players, whose decks are restricted to the colors of their commander, would run multicolored commanders. However, I do agree that mono colored strategies are underexplored design space and deserves more attention from wizards
A lot of mono-colored commanders feel very narrow (although they have been TRYING with mono-white)--and all for good reason...
But I can't run jank nearly as well in mono-color. All the fun crazy synergies just...aren't there as much.
I personally think another planar chaos-type set would help as well. Something that re-imagine what mono-colored can do.
NOT TO MENTION that they BARELY print mono-colored precons! Our last two were the colorless Zhulodok deck and the black Necron deck! Over the course of, like, two years!
@@thomaspetrucka9173 I mean, they should be narrow as they are only one color.
Standard has had a 5 colour deck for the last 5 years 😂
Honestly one of the biggest reasons the queens problem is such a thing is most decks have access to near perfect mana easily, so there’s really no worries about the color of a card so you might as well play 5 color slop
High density pip costs with huge benefits is something I like for mono colored decks. Like the new green charm.
One of the coolest design spaces I’ve seen for a mono blue commander is Ormos, Archive Keeper. The goal is to deck yourself out as quickly as possible so Ormos can get really big and fly into your opponents, but it comes with the problem that Thassas Oracle among a few other cards just makes it irrelevant. Why would you ever spend turns getting it big and risk it dying to a doomblade when you could just win the game on the spot.
Part of me wonders if cards like those should be banned, so we can get cooler lower power decks trying to do the same thing.
i wish that card had any sort of failsafe to make sure you don't just loose on your upkeep when it dies. not a huge one. just like. being able to put a card or two from your hand on top of your deck. given that it's trying to compete with Thassa's Oracle i feel like at least a bit of safety is justifed
@@nathaniel1940 Yeah I agree, it’s such a cool idea for a blue aggro deck but trips at the finish line
Then rule zero ban it for yourself. The Banlist is for events.
@@Bladezeromus Don’t get me wrong, if I played this deck I wouldn’t include those cards, but I’m saying this is such a cool design space, it’s a shame it cannot exist in magic as it is today outside of a standard format becuase of the busted self mill win cons. And that the only way it really could is a banlist.
@@Unknown-qj9sm
And I'm telling you that the answer isn't a wide-sweeping banlist. The official banlist should be for events where everyone is there to win. In casual, players should talk about what they want from a game. The design space is fine, and it can exist perfectly fine as well. Everyone isnt running Thoracle or Labman combos. The Market self corrects and the playspace self polices. If there's more demand for a type of play, they make the cards; if you tolerate a certain type of wincon, people will play it.
Mono color support has an issue though, a lot of the cards also support dual color decks. Unnatural Growth has 4 green pips, but thats really easy to get in dual color? Lets say you're in gruul, you have 6 lands, 2 mountains, 2 forests, and 2 dual lands. You can now cast Unnatural Growth. The barrier of entry is laughable!! Double so with the green Urborg floating around. Blood moon can be slotted into any dual color deck that includes red, because . . just make all your basics non-red, and all your mountains into dual color lands that tap for red, so when moon hits its just 50/50. The brunt of 'back to basics' can be avoided this way too, both hate cards and support cards can be taken advantage of by dual color decks SUPER easily.
Honestly I think mass non-basic hate is the direction we should be headed in. Push the meta towards running as many basics as you can manage so you don't get blown out-put the fear of bloodmoon and runination back into commander players. This would make those things with 3 pips actually a consideration. Do I run more non-basics to hit it consistently? or do I run more basics to not get blown out by bloodmoon? Bloodmoon punishes greed, punishing greed is good and healthy for the format
Blood moon leads to some of the worst non-games in magic and worst play patterns and really shouldn't be something encouraged in casual settings. It really doesn't punish greed it just punishes budget mana bases that don't have the money for fetches. If your pod has the power that blood moon is something reasonable to be played around then go crazy, knock yourself out but don't bring that to some random table. I think we can play other removal, politics with other players or something else before we move straight into lock pieces and stax.
One of the issues is non basic lands providing too good mana fixing for years. The mana cost pips are balanced around limited.
To make cards hard to cast in multicolor in constructed, they need to be costed like Cryptic Command or Phyrexian Obliterator.
Green also has Bristly Bill for a powerful stompy landfall deck
Gotta charge people those fetch lands and shock somehow
I totally agree. I have a mono green Gargos deck and a mono black Imotekh deck cause those are my fav colors. However as soon as i wanted to build a mono red Solphim deck i noticed how red has literally no draw spells. At this point i am heavily discouraged from playing mono red cause im afraid to be stuck at a low amount of cards in hand, especially if you keep in mind how fast paced red is.
I wanted to make a devotion deck for EDH and I realised that only really blue and black have good devotion payouts. There is interesting value for devotion but little else. Why can’t I spawn angels if I have enough devotion to white? Why not gain trample or vigilance for my devotion to green. Why not ping for my devotion to red?
I think 𝒮𝒸𝑒𝓅𝓉𝓇𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝐸𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝓎 from the Nekron precon does a good job at being pushed mostly for monocolored decks, with the "Activate only if you control three or more lands with the same name" condition.
They gave mono-green better Lotus Cobra in the command zone, idk why no one else is playing Nissa Resurgent Animist.
I don't think there is a way to support mono color without fundamentally changing the game at this point. If you punish multicolor, you lose the ability to use those cards effectively in draft. If you increase the pip counts, you still aren't really impacting commander with the prevalence of fetches and dual lands. Even cards that call out basic land types are going to get more multicolor support than not with the amount of typed duals released.
There are two things I can see helping: cards that specifically rely on basic lands to impact their effective output, and going back to color hosers. If you have more cards like red elemental blast in the commander format you start creating an incenctive to play less colors, since you're less likely to get hit by one of those.
You can't forget to mention that EVERY SET is built around the ten 2-color pairs nowadays. And EVERY COLOR PAIR gets a namesake commander for its archetype. A lot more multi-colored legends are being printed as opposed to yesteryear.
I feel like the crystals should have at least one colour pip in them to avoid being thrown into artifact pile decks, but besides that I like their designs!
The key to Kosei is using as many Aura and Equipment that give you counters, their's a surprising number of relevant ones. It's not an 'incredible' deck, but the payoff is pretty strong if your pod has a deck that's bad at protecting itself.
I also feel like mono-colour needs more support, I started out building mono-colour decks, and it is sad that their aren't many cards that make them 'go off'. High devotion cars is an interesting solution for sure, the game shouldn't be encouraging us to run 5 colour decks this much.
I have 3 mono red decks, by far my favourite way to play. I've played around with each, mono colour and the one have found the hardest to stick is green. Just get bored of the decks really quickly.
Seeing that there are only 8 monocolor precons in MTG's history, 5 being Planeswalkers from 2014, one being a Universes Beyond Precon (Necrons from 40k), one being colorless, and one being a Secret Lair drop for like $500, it's not unfair to say that WotC/Hasbro doesn't support it enough. But that mainly stems from Devotion being like the only mechanic that supports monocolor (and you can still get good benefits from it in Multicolor decks) and if you have good stuff in one color, why not combine it with good stuff from another color?
Better Monocolor support benefits everyone, but it would still benefit the multicolor players arguably more than the monocolor ones.
I have a lot of affection for Lier, Disciple of the Drowned. I have a spellslinger deck with him at the helm, but I've been considering making a second Lier deck that takes the self-mill direction. I like being able to take advantage of cards like Extraplanar Lens, Sapphire Medallion, Sceptre of Eternal Glory and Throne of Eldraine to accelerate mana production way before a blue deck reasonably should be able to because the amount of value in the command zone can use the mana so well. Lier also eases peoples anxieties about counterspells while not totally locking you out of stack interaction.
Having all the room in the world for as many utility lands as you want is cool, too.
Extraplanar lens can be a good mono color pay off in commander
That blows my mind. Of course rarity does not matter for TCG games anymore as the singles market is so expansive there is no real meaning to rarity other than as pricing guides.
This is why I asbolutely despise 5 Color commanders, especially the newer ones. Wizards just keeps printing insane Value Machines, thinking them being 5c is enough justification and hoops to jump through - while casting 5C commanders has never been easier in this day and age with the amount of ramp and fixing.
Playing 5C is all reward, no drawback.
as someone with 80% mono colored commander decks I would like to see benefits for stuff my color usually dosent do, but with a restriction, a cost or maybe a twist to it so it stays true to the color identity
in mono green i recommend Yedora, such a fun commander to build around!
Edit: Thanks to the comments I know have like 3 new commanders i want to build fricking hell lol
Yes give white some reliable card draw finally. Give blue creatures that don’t cost ten mana for a 4/4. Give green some creature killing power that isn’t through “fight” effects. Give black some fight effects so they can make use of their lifelink and deathtouch effects and some artifact and enchantment hate. Give red some protection since I think it would be silly to see.
My first 3 big decks were mono colored (one of them being mono white, strong but expensive to build if you want usable stuff)
I haven't really thought much about it, but would giving mono colored cards good eminence effects be broken?
Eminence is strong but I think mono color commanders may need it. Being able to pull from very small card lists can be very difficult. Though, I wouldn’t give eminence to mono blue or black since those guys have some great power behind them already. White and red would probably need them the most since they are the most painful to build mono colored.
I run over 20 different commander decks and intentionally run 1 of each mono color. It can be done powerfully, but i agree that there does need to be more mono support.
i agree, the more colors a commander option has available to it the less "capable" or the more difficult it needs to be to actually work. i'd like to think that WotC is thinking about standard first, and in standard the more colors something is the more difficult it is to do something with. But they've been focusing on commander. Gave us "Companion." Tangle Golem is the only card that has Affinity for Forests and is the only one of it's cycle that sees play because of commanders like Ghalta. Have seven forests? have a free five power creature.
Agreed, we need more mono colored cards with a hi PIP count. Otherwise cards become too homogeneous.
very nice wrap up video, gotta agree on so many points, I'm a monocolor enjoyer and really like the necron scepter they dropped in the precon for each mono color deck.
biggest issue on monocolor is the question: why play monocolor, in most cases youre just limiting yourself and have too few payoffs compared to multicolor.
I just want mono color fetch lands so when I play mono color decks it doesn’t look so awkward with the multicolor fetch lands.
I love mono colored decks! I especially love red which has in my opinion some of the most unique and understated commander decks!
I love my Ashling the Pilgrim deck.
Eldrazi are not all colorless, its been annoying. The titans yes, the monstrosities yes, but there was more too them, than even the devoid once in the return to Zendikar. They had a host of eldrazi drones that would simulate the population of a local species to slowly corrupt the local fauna. These non devoid non colorless eldrazi haven't had a way to play with the other eldrazi until now, without doing something weird with child of alara.
Is there a list for your delney deck online. I’m always looking for new cards that might make my deck able to close a game better
To me, (biased because i have a preston deck) mono white is the only deck that I’ve played with that feels fully “there”. Like if we could get red/green/slightly black to where mono white feels right now, I think its doable.
The issue is that with mono white it can get really expensive to build so better cost options I would definitely want.
It's way too easy to fix mana.
You can see how MTG is balanced in limited: two colors for stability, three colors for more power/versatility but with an actual risk of color screw.
And 4-5 colors as splashes, with great fixing.
In Commander not only there is no cost for playing many colors because constructed fixing is so good, but you get rewarded for it because of Commander rules for color identity.
I say we need more nonbasic land hate.
I dont think that "the queen problem" is a synonym for "no mono color commanders". Even if everyone was playing 5 color commanders there would still be incentives to play some cards over others in different decks, dragons with ur dragon, eldrazi with the new 5 color eldrazi, etc.
So you just play the best removal/interaction.. as it already happens.
but it defeats the purpose of the color pie
@@jojojo9240 that ship has sailed like 15 years ago my man
@@ich3730 what do you mean
Need more WWWW and UUUUUU casting cost cards, really not sure why they have not done stuff like that. Make 3 colorless artifact cycle that adds like.... 3 of a single color if your commander identiy is single color.
What I would’ve loved is for it to be solely colourless mana and have “colourless cards are within you colour identity regardless of their mana symbols”
I think an ability (maybe eminence) that says you can't cast spells that are one or more colors so you can play devoid cards without the issues that this one has
You can't fix metagames by printing cards, because those cards can only meaningfully impact the game in matches they're actually played. You can't diminish the power of multicolour money piles by printing monocolour support, only by banning multicolour support.
My takeaway: Triples is best
One of many reasons that commander is totally cooked.
Joever
I have Naban on my simic deck, with arcane adaptation to make my merfolk explorers into wizards. A mono blue wizards and entryeffects could be cool.
I feel like more Mono-Support for Red will break EDH. Mono-Red is already one of the best mono-colors to run if you’re playing in a CEDH setting with things like Magda, Krenko, Slicer, and many others, their decks will just take off with more cards that easily fit into their play styles. However, I definitely agree for colors like White or Green who could probably use some more support.
Edh is already broken though. You can't look at EDH related content for ten minutes without being suggested a video about 'rule zero', because as an eternal format it's inherently going to be busted.
I love me some Slicer ☺️
your rocks would do really well in a domain deck. :) Leyline of the guildpact ftw.
My honest answer, and maybe its losing the plot a little from the “this aint the mtg i grew up with when i was a kid!” Crowd, is we need to start making more universal support. Ask any mono black player how they deal with that one destroy-or-die enchantment and the well dries up pretty quick. The fact that in the year of our lord 2024 were getting a colorless counterspell in MH3 is kind of insane. Its no longer a question of “does this break the color pie” but it needs to be “how does this color do this” otherwise mono color decks are always going to be on the backfoot.
Mono colored decks run best if the vast majority of cards supporting your commander are restricted to being used to one or two colors at best. Elf decks are mono colored because the vast majority of them use green. Goblins and red because most of them only use red or generic to play. It's still 1 dimensional with no gameplay variance nor access to counterplay, and Commander encourages people to play multicolored with how lenient they are with rainbow lands. Playing 2 or more colors gives you access to mechanics that one or more colors are missing. Monocolored for Commander doesn't need any support, cause the format inherently discourages it from the beginning.
Multi-color isn't a problem. Mono blue says hello.
I don't understand how mono blue gives you anything other then Back to basics. What makes mono blue better then blue/x?
@@Pandaman64 I run a Jin-Gitaxis/The Great Synthesis that is filthy. Imagine controlling the board where no one can play anything when you have infinite mana, infinite recursion, infinite counter magic. By turn 3 I usually can control the entire board, and then just fuck around.
Probably more likely to be a difference in powerlevel between the decks.
I think 2 or 3 colors are the best. All my decks coincidentally are all 2 colors so I really want to build a 3 color deck but I haavent found the right commander. Don’t have the money or want to build a 5 color deck.
Mono color seems pretty bland to me. I only have 1 colorless deck with grass but I rarly play it
With any deck you need to accomplish certain things, card draw, ramp, and other gameplay. Mono color decks usually check of most of them but struggle in certain areas. They also are usually forced to be more monolith as the commander has to make up for this lack of deck quality. Two and up colors usually is enough cards to cover most of the decks needs. When you get above 3 you start getting into the play where unless you spend a lot of money your mana base sucks and if you spend a lot of money usually it’s just a bunch of staple cards that 1 or 2 is ok more causes the problem of homogeneity and lack of identity for the deck
With any deck you need to accomplish certain things, card draw, ramp, and other gameplay. Mono color decks usually check of most of them but struggle in certain areas. They also are usually forced to be more monolith as the commander has to make up for this lack of deck quality. Two and up colors usually is enough cards to cover most of the decks needs. When you get above 3 you start getting into the play where unless you spend a lot of money your mana base sucks and if you spend a lot of money usually it’s just a bunch of staple cards that 1 or 2 is ok more causes the problem of homogeneity and lack of identity for the deck. Mono color also has this identity problem just because thier at less cards to pull from.
nykthos shrine to nyx is a bit much but yea more mono color better :)
As a 5 color fan a 5 color eldrazi commander is what ive been waiting for to build an eldrazi deck.
the colorless problem is that colorless decks tend to be basically combo decks that build the combo with classic stax artifacts. The last cascade eldrazi commander deck was too weak on responses caused by the lacking of instant spot removal spells or protecion spells, even with cards like warping wail or not of this world the deck can build up mana to cast all the eldrazi spells but you always end up being board controlled by 1 or 2 cost removal spells and you never get the chance to build up some advantage on your opponents. I'm aware that the 5 color eldrazi choice is really risky but I think that was the only way to bring eldrazi commander on a decent playable level.
Ulalek is such a lazily designed card.
That’s literally the laziest tribal pay of ever
Blame commander if you don’t like multi color card it’s commander’s fault for doing it. As a Modern player I’m tiered of hearing commander players complain. Just play multi color hate pieces and play them! Other formats are tiered of commander players saying white isn’t powerful! When white was one of more powerful colors in older formats.
Commander players are not the only format. Stop ruining it for the other formats