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It is impossible to deny the popularity of Magic: The Gathering’s Commander format. Commander has a reputation of being a more casual format that is friendly to beginners because of the widespread availability of pre-constructed Commander decks, and because Commander does not have a tournament culture around it like Standard does with the Magic Pro Tour. Speaking for myself, I enjoy playing Commander the most because the slower pace of the games gives me the chance to chitchat with my friends. 

But at the same time, getting a pod together can be tricky sometimes. Maybe folks don’t have a local gaming shop that does a Commander night, or they’re not able to attend the event for whatever reason. What if they only have one other person that they want to play Magic with, but not necessarily in the cutthroat Standard format? Or, what if someone has collected a billion copies of Pestilence Rats for their Rat Commander deck, but just found out that Commander’s rules only allow for decks to have a single copy of a non-basic card per deck, as long as that card doesn’t specify that the player can have an infinite number of it in their deck (looking at you, Rat Colony and Relentless Rats)? 

I’m paraphrasing (and maybe throwing in a bit of personal experience), but this was the gist of a question that a fan sent in for Magic’s Head Designer, Mark Rosewater on Magic’s website. In answering it, Rosewater addressed the need for card variance in Commander (which is why there’s the single card rule I mentioned earlier), as well as how that impacts the skill floor of the format, in relation to a 1v1 format like Standard. 

“A 100-card format (Commander) has proven very popular. Has that influenced us and made us rethink card limitations for two-player play? The answer is yes and no,” Rosewater wrote. He explained that the high level of variance in Commander is more fun, but it also “lowers the impact of skill in the game.” With Standard’s rules allowing for up to four copies of a non-basic card per deck, there’s less variance, and there’s more skill involved based on how the player is then required to have an advanced knowledge of strategy in order to succeed in their matches. Rosewater concluded, “Many one-on-one formats are focused on tournament play. In that venue, you want skill to matter more, so the play set limitation is important.“

But here’s the most important part. “Does all one-on-one play have to be competitive? Commander has clearly shown there's a huge audience who enjoys variance. Could we bring more variance to two-player play? Absolutely. That's a topic R&D is spending a lot of time on. Instead of asking ourselves whether we should change deck limits for existing competitive two-player formats, we are focused on whether there might be potential in making a new two-player format that's more casual in nature. We think there's room for it, but the nuances of what that format should be are complex,” Rosewater wrote. 

As a madman who has played 1v1 Commander matches with 40 life before (and loved it), the idea of a casual 1v1 format is enticing. 1v1 Commander is fun, a bit unhinged, but can also feel overly long for just two people. Magic is fun for me because I’m a deeply unserious person trying to extract himself from the ultra-competitive environment he was raised in, and I’d love for there to be a middle ground where I can assemble a horde of weird creatures to then deploy in a 1v1 match without the stakes feeling like an Olympic bronze medal match. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

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