Posted in: Card Games, Games, Magic: The Gathering, Tabletop, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: cEDH, commander, EDH, magic, MTG, power creep, Sheldon Menery, speed creep, WotC

Magic: The Gathering: The Only Fix For "Speed Creep" In Commander

On March 17th, 2022, Star City Games published an article by Sheldon Menery, best known in the Magic: The Gathering community as the co-founder of Commander, the most popular organized format in the game (besides simple kitchen-table Magic, according to Head Designer Mark Rosewater). In his article, Menery addresses an ongoing issue with the format known as "speed creep". He speaks about what it is defined as, its symptoms and implications, and whether it can be solved by the community. While his article has much validity to it, we propose a different approach to solving the dilemma of speed creep.

In the article, Menery describes "speed creep" as an issue in the community where games of Commander are steadily growing faster and faster with each set and release that comes out. He delineates speed creep from "power creep" by saying that speed creep affects games as a whole while power creep affects the design process of individual cards. He goes on to say that speed creep has to do with a changing player base, some power creep, and a natural evolution of the game and metagame at large. Finally, Menery explains a few ideas he has to tackle speed creep and curb it. These solutions involve a ton of player restraint, such as putting in less-efficient mana rocks and value engines (such as the addition of a 3-mana Manalith over a 2-mana Arcane Signet, or even fewer rocks overall, for some examples).

Why This Doesn't Work

So, to go off on a very slight tangent, I'd like to discuss the Industrial Revolution.

You know, the thing that made most of the industries we have far more automated and led to various amounts of labor reform and relative ease of the creation and acquisition of commodities? Yeah, that. So, the reason I bring it up is that for a long time (and even now still!), there were a lot of countries very opposed to industrialization. Many of these nations were opposed to the end that it would upend their ways of life. However, as a consequence, nowadays those countries that didn't industrialize have to deal with other countries that have. We are talking a worse-off situation overall – drinking water either being scarce or polluted, food sources becoming fallow and gone entirely, resources, sadly, plundered. It's a terrible thing to behold in this world.

Why do I tangent to this topic? Well, speed creep in Commander is much like that. If you don't industrialize, you fall behind and die. If you don't adhere to the same degree of speed creep as the rest of your playgroup, you fall behind, and ultimately lose. And because of the nature of competition to proliferate your advancements (in the macro sense industry and in the micro sense new cards), it is inevitable that unless the meta, both actively and with full disclosure, agrees to curb speed creep in their group, someone is going to end up falling greatly behind and that just leads to feel-bad moments and at worst a dissolution of a playgroup.

An Alternative

For the Commander meta at large, we are already dealing with speed creep due to the popularized subformat of Commander known as cEDH. cEDH does not differentiate from Commander's ban list, nor does it differ from the format beyond its social contract effectively being null and void for the games. cEDH is meant to be cutthroat and end quickly and efficiently, sometimes with prizes at stake. This is not a problem for cEDH. It is, however, a massive problem for Commander, mostly because cEDH is still Commander.

As a consequence we have pubstompers in the format, and people trying so hard to keep up with these pubstompers. It unnaturally catalyzes speed creep. I know that from my perspective I have faced many pubstompers on Spelltable and lost because they don't know the effective differences between cEDH and a more casual game of Commander. One person's presumed deck power level of "7" is another person's "5" and still another's "9". There is too much ambiguity here.

My solution? Make cEDH and Commander their own distinct, individual formats. cEDH already operates under different social rules; give them a lighter ban list. Many of them want that anyway! And meanwhile make Commander's printed and regulated ban list stricter. Ban more cards in Commander, and ban fewer in cEDH. This solves more than just the absurd prices of cards on the secondary market, if done correctly.

To do this would make pubstompers have to make a decision: Do they power up their decks to play with cEDH, where they may be more accepted but run the risk of being defeated more handily? Or do they power down their decks for Commander, where they still have a great chance of winning but not quite to the degree they're likely used to? Sooner or later those pubstompers will disappear, either by being practically assimilated into one format or the other, or by leaving for a different format altogether.

The challenge I see is this: Who will spearhead this movement? Will it be Sheldon Menery, who has not taken the initiative to cater to cEDH players with his Commander ban list? I somehow doubt that. He has a lot on his plate as it is, and for that I can't blame him. Will it be someone else? If not Menery then I sure hope so. I honestly would hope it's someone in the cEDH community because they are the ones who need to take charge now, especially in the wake of the Marchesa 2022 tournament that just transpired. And if that means banning Krark, the Thumbless, then so be it.

All in all, we need this to happen if Sheldon Menery is as right about speed creep as I believe he is. But what do you think? Does Magic: The Gathering, or even just Commander, suffer from this issue? How would you solve the problem? Let us know in the comments below!

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