WotC not taking care of 60 card competitive play makes commander a worse play experience

People being introduced to the game via commander is a good thing, but I didn’t realize until my partner and I started to break into standard recently just how barren the current landscape is for anything else.

Ten years ago, you would’ve had an LGS firing a standard FNM in podunk Wisconsin attract 20+ people, many of which would’ve driven an hour or more to get there, and now weekly standards in our metro area can barely crack five people. (Trust me, we’ve looked around. Every store has this problem.) Commander nights still garner crowds, but previously premier formats like standard & modern seem like they’re on life support.

In my opinion, this is worse for commander, as it makes everyone have a very warped perception of how Magic is to be played. Interaction & shamelessly trying to win are disproportionately frowned upon, and regular evergreen skill checks become things people never learn — in my personal experience, people are much less likely to learn from play mistakes and will instead blame their opponents for punishing them.

For some examples:

“Don’t overextend into a board wipe” gets replaced by “Don’t slow the game down” or “Let the table play.”

“Don’t mis-sequence” and “Try to bait the counterspell” instead become “Counter magic isn’t casual.”

Overall there just seems to be a much greater emphasis on socially engineering the table than there is on engineering your deck. And the refusal to learn from misplays makes the gameplay feel like a more smooth-brained experience.

Idk, I might just be boomer rambling with rose tinted glasses, but back when commander was something you did as a pickup game with your friends after competitive events, these sentiments didn’t feel as prevalent. Rant over, I guess.