Greetings PDH friends! Big News!
Tl;dr:
- Uncommon Planeswalkers will be temporarily legal PDH commanders, exclusively January 2025!
- In February they’ll go back to being illegal, but we encourage you to still experiment with them in rule-zero games with your group and in online communities.
- We want you to play around with this and see how it goes, and let us know how it goes. How well do planeswalker commanders play with normal Rules-As-Written (RAW) commanders? Share your experiences!
- No one on the RC is considering a permanent Rules Change. We’re just trying to have fun, and to compile information on common rule-breaks for our FAQs while we’re at it.
- Tournament Organizers set their own rules for their own events. They can choose to allow Planeswalkers in the CZ this January, or they can choose not to. Check with them before you sign up for an event.
Long Version:
We on the Rules Committee are all sick and tired of the peaceful drama-free existence we’ve all been enjoying. No one’s attacking us, no one’s making bizarre demands that we change the format to suit their house-rules, no one’s shouting about bans. We’re communicating often, effectively, and respectfully; with one another, with the Advisory Group, and with the community we serve. There’s a conspicuous lack of yelling. Obviously we’re doing something wrong. So we talked, and we decided that more people should be breaking our rules.
Our format is fundamentally a fan-format, and the reason we place rule zero first and above the other rules is that we want everyone to engage with PDH in the way that brings them and their playgroup the most joy. Lots of folks use our rules as a guideline with some modifications (e.g., different life totals or expanded commander options). We feel like it’s time to more actively encourage that.
We’re starting a program of chronically (but temporarily!) breaking the rules for a month at a time. Right now we’re calling this project Break-the-Rules-Month because for all our good ideas, we lack nominal creativity. But the idea is simple. Every time we do this (probably twice a year?), we’ll decide on what rule to break and when to break it, and we’ll let you (and tournament organizers) know well in advance, so everyone has time to prepare. Then, for that month and that month only, we’ll all pretend that the month’s rule-break is actually the official rules, for the sake of playing around and having a good time.
We’ve got a handful of pretty clever ideas that we may or may not experiment with, including
- Uncommon planeswalkers in the Command Zone: Coming this January, 2025!
- Other non-creatures in the Command Zone, like vehicles or sagas that flip into creatures
- Every Dungeon is the Tomb of Annihilation
- The Initiative sends you to The Baldur’s Gate Wilderness instead of The Undercity
- Starting life is 40 and commander damage is 21 (Pals Rules)
- Ninjutsu works from the Command Zone (but costs Commander Tax as if it were cast)
- Cycling and maybe plot/suspend/foretell work from the Command Zone (but cost commander tax as if they were cast).
- Silver Bordered and/or Acorn commons legal (at appropriate rarities)
- Mix-and-match Partners with Backgrounds
- Color words count towards commander’s color identity (e.g., Mad Ratter is Rakdos, Gremlin Tamer is Jeskai)
- etc.
Do YOU have an idea for an interesting, engaging rule-break that would open up new avenues of exploration in PDH? Let us know what it is! We’ll add it to the list of possibilities.
There are a few critically important things we want to make abundantly, aggressively clear as we pioneer these break-the-rules-months:
- Tournament Organizers set their own rules. They can opt into the rule break or opt out of it, at their discretion. CHECK WITH THEM. Check with them BEFORE you make assumptions about what’s legal at their events, and follow their rules at their events. Whatever their decision is, don’t grief them about it.
- In fact, even if you’re not going to an event, check with your playgroup before you start a break-the-rules-game during Break-the-Rules-Month. If your group is against a thing, don’t do that thing.
- We on the RC are NOT interested in changing the official rules long-term. This isn’t a trial run that we’re experimenting with to solicit feedback because we want the official rules to be different. None of us want that. This is just for fun.
- We’re not changing any rules, but we are soliciting feedback. We on the RC get a lot of questions, and having real data about, for example, how Planeswalker-decks play with RAW decks, will help us answer those rule-zero questions moving forward. We want to be able to say “people have experimented with Uncommon Planeswalkers in the Command Zone and the power level was in line with traditional decks, and folks had fun with it, you should talk to your playgroup about trying it for yourself.” Or maybe we’ll say “people have experimented with partnering any uncommon creature with any uncommon enchantment in the CZ, and it was vastly overpowered compared to RAW decks, which created really un-fun play experiences for everyone and we don’t recommend it.” Or maybe it’s vice versa, maybe planeswalkers are OP and partnering with uncommon enchantments is fine. I don’t know. You tell me. After you do science about it. In January.
That’s the deal! You’ve got months to plan for this: design a Planeswalker deck, build a Planeswalker deck, and play some games against Planeswalker decks in the name of Science. If you want to experiment before or after January: awesome! Do it, just get your playgroup’s permission first. If you wanna experiment during January: even better! Get your playgroup’s permission first, but tell them Alk said it was OK. (That always works.) Then let me know how it goes.
And, assuming all of this goes well, look forward to more of these in the future, where we break the rules in different, new, and exciting ways!
The Pauper Duel Commander RC decided not to participate in this rule break month due to the more strictly-competitive and less rule-zero-oriented nature of the 1v1 format.
Cheers,
-dave