What's up Wizards, it's time for Rule Zero, the show that helps you prepare for the best game of commander. It is me, Sean. I am hopeful that through my decades of experience and the guests decades of experience that I bring on, that we can help you cultivate a great playgroup. Make tons of great decks or try some outside the box variants or homebrew rules for your own game of commander just to make sure that you're having the best time possible. This week what I'm excited about in the world of magic is the new commander format. It is a 17 member group that Gavin Verhey talked about on October 22nd and an article from the mothership, AKA wizards of the coast home site. Um, and you can see that on screen if you're watching on YouTube. Now, I have notes in front of me, so I may occasionally look down, but I'll try to keep it as loose as possible. I just want to make sure to cover two main facets of this whole topic. The first facet is to get it out of the way quickly and hopefully with much less time than I will spend talking about the positives. Uh, my distrust of WOTC as a corporate entity and more so Hasbro as a corporate entity, taking control of this format that I dearly love and actually spent a lot of time trying to create content or make good games out of. So we'll talk about why that is briefly. And then we'll talk more about the positives. What I would like to do is not just read through this article because there's other sites where you can find that or you can literally just read it with your own, um, two eyes, but I would like to talk with you about each of the 17 members and I thought instead of reinventing the wheel, instead of creating a very flashy graphic, um, honestly it would have taken a lot more time. And Gavin has done on this article, or at least Wizards of the Coast has done this on this article, they've created like a paragraph summary. of who these people are. Now I've talked to some of these people online in a Twitter capacity, which means not much of a capacity, not much of a capacity at all. I don't know any of them personally. Um, but I have impressions of them. And so I'll share just brief impressions of the folks that I do know. And then I've tried to look up some information on the folks that I was not aware of because in short, And we'll get to this very quickly, uh, in more detail. One of the problems with the commander rules committee, the CRC and the CAG, the commander advisory group was there was a very distinct lack of transparency in how things worked. We didn't really know what their discussions were on the inside. We didn't know sometimes even like who the member members of the CAG were, even though I think it was probably publicized at some point. It's not like it was, front and center or advertise like this sort of commander format panel is. So we didn't really know what their power was, how much advisement, uh, their thoughts were taken. Into account for like what were the votes on the inside were some of them in disagreement with each other We just don't know anything about the decisions that were being made in the commander format And though I agree with the bans that happen on a personal level. You may completely disagree I still see that there's just this distinct lack of transparency in the old system And then I hope the new system has been More of that. So that makes you think like, Hey, well, Sean's really for this commander format panel. And I am, but I do have reservations. And that first reservation comes from what is the conflict of interest with wizards of the coast running commander. I've seen enough people saying they're happy that Watsi has control. Of this format that I feel like it is a debated point. Um, and so let me make my sort of Stance clear for anybody who's watching. Um, so I believe they have a conflict of interest So what is a conflict of interest? It's when you have Two goals, sort of stated goals that almost conflict or directly kind of contradict one another. One of those goals? Well, let me just use the words from Aaron Forsyth's mouth. Aaron Forsyth is uh, I think the VP of Wizards and I should know that off the top of my head. I'm sorry that I'm not looking up live on this stream or this video, but. Anyways, he's high up and he was on the video talking about the introduction of WotC taking over the format. And he quote said, Keeping the game as fun as possible for as many people as possible is the way we're going to make our money. And by we're, he means Hasbro slash WotC. I disagree and we're going to use an example of how there is a conflict of interest how a conflict of interest in general Can be at odds like watsi wants to make a lot of money commander players might want to have a lot of fun Value the health of the format. That's what the band list is all about. That's why things like the Moxon Ancestral recall and time walk and stuff are banned and commander And those things can be at odds right fun money They don't always cross over like a bit perfect Venn diagram like Forsyth seems to represent that they will I feel like that's a dreamy sort of more capitalist perspective. And I just disagree with that. So one of the examples is front and center. We've talked about it at length on this channel and I'll post a link below as to what it is. It's not do winged wisdom. So we'll go over this very quickly and then we'll get to the positive. First of all, It's fresh in your mind, right? It was designed for commander. We know that for certain because they've talked about it at length. Watsi has, um, it was changed at the last minute from an older version, which was not as busted to make it more viable for commander or more likely to be played more exciting. And in doing so they were doing it. Well, let me step back. They were doing that because they want to sell packs. They want to sell packs to commander players. Commander players are the largest segment of the sort of magic buying population Right now. It didn't always used to be that way, but it is now. So WotC needs to sell packs to commander players So they catered a lot of Modern Horizons 3 Including releasing a bunch of commander decks with Modern Horizons 3, this premium product, to commander players So in doing so they changed Nadu. Nadu becomes the busted bird that it is. And this decision was made to sell packs. That's your conflict of interest put very starkly. You valued selling packs. over a strict testing, strict protocols to make sure that you're not releasing something into modern, a watsi controlled format that is too good. And that's the first mistake of many in this little line of things that happened with Nadu. Next, the next bad decision that Wattsy made was as soon as Modern Horizons 3 was released and packs were selling, Nadu was seen as busted. Pros knew it was busted. If you're online at all at that time, before the first pro tour, it was all that people could talk about. It created these non deterministic loops and Um, that were just abysmal to play through. It took up too much time. It was reminiscent of eggs and modern back in the 2010s. Um, it was just a bad experience for all. And WOTC didn't ban then because it wasn't the ban window. And then one week before the modern pro tour, WOTC comes out with a statement saying that they're not going to ban NADU, even though they know it's busted and they're watching it. Because they don't want to disrupt pro tour testing. I will give them a little bit of grace on that one. Um, I understand, you know pros are invested heavily and they're overseas at that point I think it's pro tour amsterdam is where it took place. Although I should know that too, but my memory's foggy. I'm old Um And so they don't want to disrupt testing. Okay, fine. We'll have modern pro tour and modern pro tour will tell us that Nadu is the best card or not. It'll confirm or deny. The rumors to be true. Well, it turns out and I'll post graphics. Hopefully on top of all this That nadu was indeed The best card in the format by a long shot. It was hyper resilient very hard to disrupt and Even with the best minds in all of magic trying to do so knowing that that it was a thing Cyborg cards didn't help five nadu decks made it into the pro tour top eight Of those five four of them made it to the top four and of course one won the entire event Nadu was everywhere at this point all of the pros including the winner of said pro tour Is saying Nadu is busted. It's going to be banned like everyone knows it to be true And that is like june 30th when that happens so We expect, hopefully, wizards will come out and do like an emergency ban, but on another stream, a weekly MTG stream, six days later or so, I think on the 6th of July, they double down. And this is what we call sunk cost fallacy. If we look at it from one perspective. So the first perspective we'll look at it is that WOTC refuses to ban because it's not within the correct ban window. Um, And the next banning was going to be like August. Um, I think I wrote it down somewhere, but it was like August 25th or something like that. So we're August 5th, I don't know, mid August or something. So basically you're going to have a whole month and a half and change of time Where if they don't emergency ban Nadu, Nadu will just linger. It'll sit around, flap its wings, and annoy everyone. Um, WOTC refuses to emergency ban. The reasons why they do this could be the sunk cost fallacy of like, well, we've instituted this idea that we're gonna have ban windows, and since we're invested in that idea, we don't wanna You know, give up on that investment or lose out on that investment and sort of do anything willy nilly But sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy for a reason Like if you just keep with the path, even though the path itself is bad And we know that in the future it's going to be more bad Then you're just continuing to do bad stuff to yourself or your fans or your audience or whatever Um, even though you know, that's the wrong thing to do And there's just sort of this inertia. Well, I've read 300 pages into a book that I don't like So i'm just gonna finish the next 300 is sunk cost fallacy Like if you don't like the book put it down. You're not gonna lose out Like if you watched Dexter season 4 and quit right there Like I did, actually. Haha, pat on the, well, pat on the head, pat on the back, whatever. Then, you thought Dexter was a great show, but if you watched seasons 5, 6, and 7, well, you quickly learned that, no, it was not a great show overall. The first four seasons were epic, and the last few were trash. Fight me. In the comments. So sunk cost fallacy puts us in these situations where we keep doing the bad thing even though we are aware that it's wrong. So wizards did this or, or the cynical part of me comes out and the cynical part in me or you or whoever might say Wizards doesn't emergency ban Nadu, because at that time, Nadu was going for anywhere between 23 to 28 dollars. It was a chase rare that had to have been, uh, bought, or, op have packs opened for, to make the best deck in modern tick. That without Nadu, four of, you were not able to play the best deck in Modern. And WotC had just released Modern Horizons 3 less than one month before this. The cynical part says WotC doesn't ban here because they need to make more money selling packs and Nadu is a chase rare. We can't confirm or deny this. We don't know the inside of WotC. We can only speculate. But I hate that that exists. And that is why, if we know that WotC is taking control of Commander and they already have, then what's to stop them from letting a bad card, a bad card design, a hyper powerful thing that everybody needs to have, a. k. a. something like a Jeweled Lotus, Um, what's to stop them from just never banning it because it's worth a lot of money and it will continue to be worth a Lot of money in future reprint sets as well, you know jeweled lotus sells packs So what's watsi gonna do with that and we don't know yet, right? so That's where my my feelings of sadness come from Uh over the idea that watsi took over and yet here we are we have to move on And the way that we're moving on is I will flip through this commander format panel. So Gavin comes out. He says that, Hey, we've been spending a lot of time. I'm just going to summarize a lot of this. We spent a lot of time trying to select people who are representative of positive forces in the commander community who come from different bases, right? Different places, play styles, um, different backgrounds. And so we think we found 17 people for the first year. Now this changes every year. Apparently there'll be folks coming in and out of this commander format panel, which I agree with. I think that's a good decision overall. It keeps things fresh. I do feel like the CRC or commander rules committee did become pretty stagnant over time. Um, And was it representative of the entire commander format as a whole? Uh, probably not, but you know, inertia sunk cost fallacy. We get stuck in ruts and we can sort of become less mobile, less agile, less able to make the right decision when we get kind of, uh, stuck in old ways. So in that way, I think CFP has some positives going for it. Um, 17 people is a lot more, so you have a lot better chance to be more representative of the format as a whole. So what's next for a commander? They say in this page, now that the panel is established, you might remember the bracket system previously mentioned in the initial initial article, we have iterated on it a lot with your feedback. They were hoping to introduce, A bracket system at Las Vegas at MagicCon, but they didn't want to rush it out. Also a good decision on their part. I would hate to see too quick of a decision being made about like this really complicated, and I'll be frank, a bracket system that I feel internally, and this is not for, you know, I'm not saying everybody feels this or maybe you don't feel this at all, but I feel like a bracket system is just not going to work. I don't think the number system works and I think that the bracket system It's got a lot of steps to take to win me over to be honest But I'm going to keep an open mind and an open heart to it so they didn't want to unveil this thing and then have it quickly flounder because not enough thought was put into it and they Haven't had a chance to really talk with the members of this panel In deep in depth about it yet. So anywho, let's meet the panel So there's 17 members. The first person attack on cardboard at attack on cards, coming in from Victoria, Australia attack on cardboard, being on the panel as to the long lineage of judges involved in working on commander judges as a whole other topic. Anyways, we don't need to get into that, but there's some, there's some issues with like the way magic views judges right now. Anyways, he's not only a judge, but strives to help people learn magic and help the rules become more accessible via his channel where he carefully breaks down card interactions and rulings. So this is a person who is able to bring a very methodical rules oriented meticulous viewpoint to commander. And I appreciate that because if we're looking for For somebody to like sort of number crunch and be very logic brained about is this card a detriment to a format These are the kind of folks I would like to hear from next we have bandit bandit mtg one Outside of europe you may not have heard of bandit before but those in france will know him. Well He's a major voice in the French Magic community, focused on Commander. His YouTube channel does everything from discussion to Commander gameplay. Gavin personally had the opportunity to chat with him at CommandFest. I'm gonna mispronounce this. I'm so sorry. I suck at French even despite being from Louisiana and a see Anichi, I don't know tell me in the comments last year He was really impressed with his breadth of commuter knowledge and ability to think about the format I'm thrilled to have him representing the French speaking community. Now. I'm not as familiar with bandit In fact, I didn't even know about bandit before this release and just had to look up information and And while he seems to be all of these things, um, the main takeaway I have here is representation. So we've got people from Europe involved in this committee because commander is worldwide. I think it's important to have those other voices. Let's move on. Benjamin Wheeler. You might've seen Canadian powerhouse Ben Wheeler anywhere from loading ready run to his podcast with Shivam, but pretty certain it's pronounced correctly. Shivam, if you see this and tell me if I got it right. Shivam and Wheeler love magic. And I've listened to some of this podcast and particularly when they talk about sets that I love, like the dark, absolutely fantastic. Ben has a, uh, a knowledge of magic that is just wide and vast. Um, that brain of his is just working over time. And in addition to his wry wit and immense knowledge of obscure magic cards, he brings a great mind for the game and building both formats and communities, skills of which are incredibly exciting to have on this team. And I will add, you may have seen Ben Wheeler tweet at, um, Who's the sports guy? I can't remember him, but I'll show a picture on the screen where he presented. uh, this sports, uh, talking head with the choice for a vintage draft. Um, Steven, a Smith, that's it. Steven a Smith with a choice for a draft about like, what do you choose? Do you choose soul ring or do you choose black Lotus? And so Steven a Smith goes off on this hilarious tangent about how soul ring takes them to another world. And black Lotus doesn't look all that imposing. Anyways, I'd say he made the right choice. Stephen Smith chose Sol Ring and the vintage pick one pack one draft. I think that's correct So thanks Ben for that hilarious gem that magic will continue to feed on for a while. We've got Charlotte Sable at Jackalite, I'm gonna go with Jackalite. That sounds right. All right, Finland based Charlotte is a longtime judge for magic knowing the game inside and out She first picked up a magic card in 19 four and has been a huge part of the magic judge community for a long time. So we've got somebody here has been here forever and knows the rules. Well, great. Love that. Um, has a longstanding Tumblr where people could ask rules questions. She has a great vantage of the format. being involved in it for so long and watching it evolve and a great knack for looking at systems. I fully expect her to put any matchmaking system through its paces and I'm glad to have her on the case. So matchmaking system leads me to believe, Hey, Charlotte here is going to be really focusing on like, how does this bracketing system work into or integrate into some kind of like app or into some kind of a play at a con or something like that. How do we get people together who will have a good time with magic? And they're going to need people to think about that because I, like I said before, I'm very skeptical of that. So Daquan Watson, Power Dragon. I used to watch a lot of Daquan's videos and now watch Daquan on Magic Mics. Um, Um, as he talks about like the news of the day, um, follow, uh, Dequan on Twitter. And so happy to have, uh, just to be totally honest and having to have some different voices here, right? We've got a black man who's been doing the content game forever. Glad to have some more representation, um, including Charlotte up above who I imagine is part of the trans community. Great. Let's get everybody in on this big tent. Um, so if you've, If you think I have worn a lot of hats in the Magic community, Daquan has me far beat. He's almost every path a Magic player can walk, store owner, competitive player, tournament organizer, formerly working at Wizards, which he's talked about on Magic Mike's a little bit, streaming, writing articles and of course Commander and much much more. The amount of perspective Daquan brings to the game is immense and thinking about all those different types is going to be so helpful for the panel. He resides in the United States. So it's clear they're focusing here on like, let's get a worldwide discourse on Commander and I do think that's valuable because different countries are gonna have different perspectives. It's gonna be interesting to see what everybody comes up with. Speaking of different perspectives, we've got Deco. I think I'm pronouncing that at Deco PDC Deco is from Brazil. I've watched Deco do a video of who they are introducing themselves in English Which is their second language, but they speak Excellent job Deco. I can't speak another language. So kudos to you because you spoke very well To select all the new members of the panel. I did a lot of research talking with other players one thing I knew I wanted with the additions. We're making sure CEDH had representation when I asked CEDH players who they would suggest one name came up over and over Deco heralding from Brazil, being a voice of the community. Deco brings, uh, the CEDH perspective, but also casual perspective as well. He's recently launched a channel focusing on everything commander from casual. Two competitive named Papo de Commander. One other thing about Deco that makes me smile is he's helped organize many large Commander events, including a budget variant with over 200 players for charity. Always love to see Magic played for a great cause. Um, Deco seems very genuine, friendly. I haven't had any interactions with him on Twitter before. Much appreciation for having a CEDH thought or perspective in the game. Greg. Gregory Sablin at Gregory Sablin originally from Guam Greg has been playing magic since 4th edition Is a US army officer of nearly 19 years currently stationed in the republic of korea You may know him as the painter's servant on twitch among many things He has a great knack for building communities online something which I know will serve us well in this group Co founded an alliance of military magic players ammp the story that always makes me smile one night I was visiting sheldon menry We were talking about the CAG and how it was great to get their input. And this is again, Gavin talking. I'm just kind of for folks listening to the podcast. If I say, I, at this section, I'm talking about Gavin saying, I, so I'll, I'll try to make it clear. One of the greatest commander minds you've probably never heard of is Greg Savlin. And that's what Sheldon's words were. So Gavin has invited him into this group. So we've got a little bit of an older player perspective again, someone who participates in magic, um, in the U S military, but also in the Republic of Korea currently who comes from Guam originally. So we've got different backgrounds here and, uh, hopefully we'll see. I don't know a lot about Greg's ideas, thoughts, but I'll, I'll trust Sheldon on this one and we'll see how it goes. Right. It take to it. I T T E T U. And that is the twitter tag as well While historically formats like standard and modern have been the largest in japan commander has been rapidly growing And it tattoo has been one of the many caught up in the rapid expansion a content creator for hara yuya I think i'm pronouncing that correctly He has done everything from creating compendium of magic staples to making videos explaining decks and strategies He's one of the main people behind hara yuya's commander summit series, which is a huge commander of the gathering You Commander gathering over there. One thing he's proud of and really caught my eye is his article about matchmaking commander games Which was so successful that it was adopted for helping find games at command fest in Japan again I think Wizards is hyper focusing on the idea of we're going to use rule zero For all of your at home games or maybe games in your store even but for big events things where strangers are coming together You it's going to be important for them to create a bracket system or a matchmaking system that pairs up folks with evenly powered decks and they're going to pull out as many big guns as they can to try and get insight and understanding into what makes that happen. One thing I will mention about, uh, the Japanese magic scene that I just sort of know offhand cause I'm not a CDH player, but apparently Japanese CDH tournaments run differently than here. And part of that is recognizing that the last player in the pod of four is often at a supreme disadvantage. So they found ways to correct for that. Um, these sort of outside the box variants and homebrew rules, as we've talked about in our intro are valuable. And I think It'll be good to get those perspectives in the future of like, what can we do to make commander the most fair and fun that it can be? Hey, look at that. It's a name that we know you may or may not love. I don't know. Uh, Josh seems nice enough to me, but obviously we've had some disagreements in the past and, um, he's a big luminary. So part of the command zone podcast game nights. One of the biggest celebrities as far as magic goes, um, at least seen the most, you know, many magic creators started from just a little podcast, but has the knowledge, uh, that LA and producing trailers, I believe is what his work used to be to, to do all the behind the scenes and make things flashy, good looking. And it's created, it sounds like a fun company to work for, um, and, and brought a lot of new faces and voices, uh, to the forefront and doing so. So Josh was on the CAG. Um, he resigned from the CAG kind of controversially a little bit and, and now he has been invited to be a part of this, um, this panel. So it'll bring good insight. I disagree with Josh on his thoughts about bannings. Um, Josh strikes me and has said things like before of like, The less bands, the better. I, I just, I don't agree. Um, so we'll see, we'll see what these decisions are and what kind of voice he brings to this panel. Um, I hope that some of these folks whether they're lesser known or more known. I hope that everyone has sort of an even voice. It might be easy for a panel, um, to have this sort of like weighted power dynamic of like, well, this person's like an absolute luminary who like 750, 000 subscribers watch. Whereas this person only has 5, 000 subscribers. Like is their opinion more or less valid? I hope that it's just even. So let's talk about the next person. Naruka, Narukami Knight. Naruk, yeah, let's go with that. Kristen, Kristen Gregory, UK based. Kristen has many pensions in the world of commander, including her bulk commander format that was adopted for use at command fest in the UK. But the one I always think of, well, after her love of Boros, is her writing. She also loves Limited, is an excellent communicator, and after many magic writing gigs, is currently the head writer over at Card Kingdom. So this is a person who I've had some minimal, sort of, Twitter interaction with, and I agree. Like, Kristen's, uh, articles on Card Kingdom, really, I resonate with them. They are always looking at, sort of like, more casual, friendly, I think, cards. And, and honestly, she, she gave love to one of my favorite cards, Windshaper Planetar, which I'll show on the screen, um, as one of the best angels in magic. And then we talked about, I shared with her some of the stories I had of that card winning me the game, or at least helping me not lose the game. Um, so I just saw an article from her today on Bolt Ben, like 10 ways that Bolt Ben saves you in a game of magic, sharing personal stories. Um, And so I got a fondness for it. I really like her work. I think her perspective, um, if anybody's going to feel sort of like the perspective that I have as a commander player, I think Kristen would be that foil. Um, so I can sort of see myself in her thoughts and decisions and articles. Um, so I'm hopeful for her perspective on this. Then we've got Louis Stardust. At Lua Stardust, um, Lua's a CEDH player and from, for a minute there was this offshoot sort of CEDH group that was, um, and I don't know if that's still happening, but Lua was a part of that. So, Gavin shares, I always come back to Lua Stardust as one of the major reasons why CEDH has grown over the past year. A champion of the format from the USA who strives to create a welcoming play environment. Um, Lua has a great perspective on all aspects of CEDH from going to play in tournaments to co running her gameplay channel, Scrybabies. And while we at Wizards had no plans nor intention to run CEDH tournaments, interesting little aside there, knowing that the community want, what the community wants and is dealing with is important for understanding how our decisions at both wizards and a format panel are going to impact set format. So this is two CDH players that I'm aware of. I might've missed. If somebody else does a lot of CDH, but two CDH players in on the panel of 17, good to have their perspective, honestly. So awesome. Having Lou in there, Olivia Gobert Hicks. We've got another person who was part of this or a person that was part of this actual commander rules committee. Um, I'm glad Olivia is part of this. I'm glad that Olivia was willing to put up with the BS to come back and see, like, I want to actually be a steward and helping voice and commander. Um, So let's talk about what Gavin says there's very little in the world i've ever seen make Olivia Happier happier than building a commander deck with a ridiculous theme and cackling as she casts each and every spell Watch her play at her play on her show commander at home. Olivia is an expert of keeping things fun light hearted And also switching on a dime to have serious conversations about the format's future and what it needs When working with her as a crc member, she always brought great honest insight And I know that's going to continue with This panel. She lives in the USA. So I think Olivia does bring a valuable perspective to the game, especially I'm happy to have former CRC members be a part of this group because, you know, they did a good job, honestly, like with, with what they had to do volunteering, trying to take care of a format. I think overall they've done a good job. Commander is the most popular it's ever been. And if you disagree with the bannings, Well, Olivia was in your corner somewhat, right? Olivia was, uh, I believe it was said that she wanted to ban Dockside, which I think most people could have agreed with and not do, but hold off on the other two Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus. So here's a voice of a measured sort of reason, right? Didn't go all out. I love the all out personally, but. I can understand the half, the halfway as well. So looking forward to have her insights fueling more decisions in the future. Then there's Rachel weeks. We've talked about Rachel before on comedy and magic. Um, I always Gavin shares. I always think of how Rachel helped coin the term lasagna tier, meaning a sort of janky deck built really with fun and story in mind. And how much that just embodies the soul of commander What that won't tell you is how fierce of a commander deck builder and player She can be when she steps out of lasagna tier Which i'm sure many of you seen on the command zone at game nights Hearing all the feedback sent to the show and being able to translate that through a language of fun Magic deck building and gameplay is something she's really shown a knack for she lives in the usa So rachel week Obviously part of the command zone excellent player like I I have I thoroughly enjoyed how much Rachel's outside the box sort of decks. She's taken them to the max on command zone and you could see almost the, the, the tide shift, the change in Jimmy and Josh where they kind of gotten stale in their ways. And this person comes in and like literally whips the pants off of them. Well, not literally, but you know, it just beats them down. And, uh, so good at commander, really funny person. Um, another female perspective on the, Format as a whole which is important We need more women in magic to like have voices and I think this this panel does a good job of that because Yeah, yeah, it's tough out there for for women in magic in a lot of places because um, yeah You know what it is, you know how the community can be at its worst, right? So glad to have her insight wisdom wit all that stuff as part of this mission Then we've got rebel lily Rebel is a real walker between worlds. Whether it's Casual Commander, CEDH, or Competitive Magic tournaments in formats like Standard and Modern, she's out there in New York playing these formats and always trying to improve. This multi format, multi play perspective is something I value highly, and that's Gavin talking, when looking at card play patterns. And Rebel and I have had many great discussions about what card play is. Gameplay is best for commander and the shape of its ban list in the past I'm glad she can bring all these thoughts to more than just our conversations Now with the whole panel this one. I'm very supportive of oh I've had some interactions with rebel online all been positive and what I will share my personal opinion here Is that? I think rebel brings to the group something that is very valuable to me and that is sort of a Philosophical sense of what commander can be should be how players should be if you've watched rebels videos Um, on trying to become better at modern. She's talked to many, many pros and these sort of coaching sessions and great, you know, interviewer, I guess in a way, even though they're talking about rebels games, um, But there's a philosophical side that I just really think is important for commander. Cause we're talking about the future of where we want a thing to go. Not just like, is this card too good? Do we need to calculate this sort of like matchmaking system, that kind of stuff. We need to know like, Is jeweled lotus good for the format? Is it good for people as a whole? Because sometimes i'll be honest the the candy Dish full of like fun treats that I can overload on sugar on is actually not that good and we need somebody with ethics And philosophy in their background and I think rebel has rebel has that in spades So good follow on twitter A lot of insightful thoughts and, and all sort of philosophical musings on Twitter as well from Rebels. Um, I think it's a, it's a joy for me at least. Scott Larrabee. Guess what? Former CRC Rules member. Instrumental member of making Commander what it is today. Not only was he one of the first Wizards to discover Commander in 2005, Um, it was one of the early CRC members and he brought it back to Wizards and ultimately helped get the first pre constructed decks created. His primary job to this day at Wizards here in Seattle is working on our professional events. He moonlights as a magic designer and has gone on to work on several design teams. I watched him design suite cards like Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle, and Nelly Borca. Well, I can tell what kind of player Scott Larrabee is. I don't love Arixmethes. I love it more than a lot of, uh, Blue Green Commanders, though. Because, a wandering isle, it doesn't get overpowered too early. Uh, I take it back. I think a Rixmethes is a fine card. Um, way better than Tatyova. Whoever designed Tatyova should not be on this committee. I'm just saying that right now. Saying it out loud. Maybe I'll take it back if I ever meet that person in real life. I don't know. Maybe I won't So let's get through it Tim Willoughby Tim's wheelbarrow Tim is always up to some kind of creative deck building shenanigans finally remember sitting him with where he lives in London shortly after Streets of New Compendium was revealed and Watching as he started to run down all the clever ways to create boundless numbers of tokens using Jenny Fay as a commander He's done everything from magic coverage, to owning a magic store, to playing competitively in his time as a competitor, and now Commander is where a lot of his focus lies. In my conversations with him, I found one of his many skills is breaking larger, complex tasks down into smaller parts, and I'm sure that's going to serve us well. I remember watching Tim Willoughby in a commentary a lot. Affable Thoughtful, and I don't know a whole lot more about him. Like I followed him a little bit on Twitter But I don't have like a important or distinct sort of impression to share I guess so more voices the better I suppose and Toby Elliot At Toby Elliot. There we go. Let's click on it. Here we go. Thank goodness. They had a picture for old Toby here Toby Ellett was on the former commander rules committee for a long time. So we've got three CRC members returning helping guide the format to where it is today Among many other great things. He's a master of precision. That's a good title, but I don't know what it means exactly He maintains the magic tournament rules quite the document. Okay, maybe that's what it means a legendary judge having judged more pro tours than anyone else in history This background will come especially handy on the CFP as we both work to communicate And uh, eventually one talk one day talk about any rules changes Toby will no doubt have great proposals and how to approach them and even tackle them within the rules He lives in the USA. So in short, these are all the folks that we have on our list that you can see on screen right now. Um, my thoughts overall, I think it's good, a good representative selection of folks in the community, much better than the former CRC was in terms of inclusivity. Let's be honest, a lot of folks that are not white, cis people play Magic and they deserve a voice, they deserve a proxy. Um, just like I think Kristen Gregory is like sort of a proxy for my sort of spirit or thoughts on what makes Commander fun. And Rebel is a proxy for sort of like, I think, what the philosophy can bring to Commander. I think everyone should have their own sort of like proxy or voice on the panel. And the more people we have on it, the better, um, without more rambling from me. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the commander format panel. Do you believe that the bracket system is going to work? Are you with me and being very skeptical that it's, it's going to be hard to pull that off? Um, what are they judging it on? I think the important part to take away from this commander format panel is that we need more transparency. And how they operate. We need to know, like, what are they talking about? What are the decisions that are coming up? Um, are they thinking about banning stuff? What's on the radar? Let's keep a document of like, how that's going. Like let's get updates on what this bracket system is and like what are the arguments behind the scenes too That's the kind of stuff that I think is important like we want to know Where these people stand or at least I do Different takes not just have the final result of like well Wizard says this is the thing and we've taken everything from the panel into account That's too vague. Commander is a community format and the community deserves to be a part of the decision making in that it just kind of needs to be able to see the thought processes of all these folks. So without further ado, in closing, Um, if you want to talk to us, you can talk to us on rule zero. That's the number zero rule zero podcast at Twitter, uh, on Twitter. You can talk to us at rule zero podcast at gmail. com. Kind of email us deck ideas, thoughts on videos. Um, things you'd like to see us cover complaints. Um, if you would leave a res, leave a review, subscribe, um, whatever you can do to help show the algorithmic gods that we exist. And, you know, if you're just now hearing us for the first time, I always end with this, but I truly believe in it. And we will do an episode again on like, what is rule zero exactly? Because it, it's controversial. Um, I honestly believe that in magic, there is no problem that a rule zero conversation cannot solve. Thanks everybody.