Hey mark, long time reader, also long time asker. I like a challenge when deckbuilding. When I first found out about your psychographics, I thought “woah! it even have the same name as me!” (John). Commander helps tickle that itch for me, because I can start off with a dumb premise and try to make that concept as best I can, and since it’s not a competitive format, I know that there will always be SOMEONE with a deck on a similar power level, however bad that terrible deck idea ends up being.This brings me to a qualm that I personally have, and have seen purely anecdotal evidence that other people have too.It feels kinda lame when you guys make a commander that’s just “this is the best commander for X”. More and more we’re getting legends where they’re just the *correct* choice. If I want to build a sultai graveyard deck, Muldrotha is the answer. Nothing tops it, and I doubt anything every will top it. And that’s just one archetype. 5 color sagas? Bombadil. Snow? Jorn and Isu. Flash tribal? Nymris. Sure there are other cards that can be the commander, but you can say that about anything. Sure, I COULD make a Rakdos exile deck with Pavel Maliki in the command zone, but that’s just objectively wrong. The commander is always gonna be prosper. My point is that it’s getting harder and harder to say “how do I make this work” when you’re just handing us the blueprints and all the parts with a step by step instruction booklet on what to do.To be fair, many archetypes have so much innate complexity to them and have reached a critical mass of options where it’s impossible to tell what the “best” option is, as there are so many different facets and roads to go down. Orzhov aristocrats and mono-green stompy are easy examples.But the fact that it isn’t always the case doesn’t change the fact that happens a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way, but I’m also sure that if it was a majority opinion in the community y’all wouldn’t be doing it this much. I just want to know if you have anything to say about this perception that I and many others hold. Thank you for all you do in magic, I hope you respond.

One of the most common requests I get here on the blog is “make this color combination Commander for this particular theme”. Eventually, for some of them, we find an opportunity to make it. We don’t know when that opportunity will arise again. We shouldn’t try to make the best Commander we can for that slot? If it’s too weak, players will just complain and ask we make another one. The reality is a lot of players want prescriptive answers, and there’s no way to make them for the players that want them and not for the players that don’t. The idea is that players who want to do something different have access to the history of Magic to find less obvious answers.

If/when make things that exile cards temporarily put them into the command zone instead so that exile can become like the “removed forever” zone it was.

If. “Exile <blah>” is both less wordy than “put <blah> into the command zone” and more intuitive language-wise.

Regarding the ask about interacting with the command zone outside commander: Emblems and Dungeons exist in the command zone, so any card that creates an emblem or ventures into the dungeon interacts with the command zone regardless of format.

Good point.

"Rules are not my forte. If emblem’s weren’t permanents before I posted that, nothing has changed."They are indeed not permanents. They are objects that exist in the command zone.

FYI

If/When: Partner-like mechanic that lets you have more than two things in the command zone

If. Two’s troublesome enough.

When if: a commander that allows a nonlegendary creature in the command zone

If. It’s hard to get by the bouncer. (“Let me see your type line, please.”)

Hi Mark! Two UNF questions.1) Do stickers stay on in the command zone too?2) If Magar animates a Very Cryptic Command, can you choose any of the six VCCs to copy, or does it have to be the same one you animated?

1) Yes, it’s a public zone. 2) Since you’re playing Very Cryptic Command, you’re in acorn territory, so I can answer this. It cares about the specific one you have. Silver-Border/Acorn have a meta-rule that you care about the actual card you’re playing. It’s how we can care about things like watermarks.

I think the partner with + meld asker wanted to have both halves in the command zone together. Could that work if there was an additional hoop to meld them? (And honestly, getting both your commanders out is a little hoop in itself.)

If that was the goal of the design, I’m sure there are answers.

Would the rules have a way to shuffle morphs that were facedown on the battlefield? Say a commander that when you cast it from the command zone facedown caused you to shuffle your morphs so your opponents wouldn't know which one is the commander? Or a creature that could morph itself facedown and then shuffle once again to hide info. Or is that something too wierd for the rules? Or is that just something wizards would avoid due to the importance of knowing when morphs we're cast and the integrity that brings to the game?

Morphs stop being facedown when they leave the battlefield. Cards always enter a new zone as a “fresh” version of the card.EDIT: What order morphs entered the battlefield is not information that can be hidden by actions of cards.

FYI Emblems were added in the July 2010 update bulletin, just before Elspeth vs Tezzeret came out with her ultimate rewritten to be an emblem. The Command zone already existed in the rules, since September 2009 with the release of Planechase

FYI