Was "Freerunning" a MISTAKE?

Here I muse over the new Assassin's Creed mechanic "Freerunning," as well as other commander-centric mechanics.
Apologies again for the gap between videos! I'm running into a few snags while learning how to make thumbnails and edit.

[@nickd6303]

Free running feels mostly fair in commander when compared past spells that want your commander out.

[@NightOfCrystals]

I think that the need to deal combat damage, combined with the free running costs not being so low, is what balances these out. They aren’t broken or too powerful in my opinion.

[@malmasterson3890]

In certain decks they will be broken, but that's just how it should be.

[@granite_4576]

I think this set will be like Baldur's Gate, no one bothers with it at the time and in a year people will come back and realise it's full of good commander cards. Or more likely after another 20 sets everyone is just too product fatigued and stops caring.

[@arrowodd7695]

Saffron Olive is just following the controversy train to generate interaction.

[@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299]

If WOTC was a Gardener and EDH was a Garden than the gardener has basically been drowning their plants in water and too much ''care''; as Eric Clapton said, ''Let it grow, let it blossom, let it flow'', basically leave it alone, let it do it's thing. It's a funny paradox when a company neglects it's own official formats for a love affair with an unofficial format not unlike the movie Fatal Attraction, they need to end it for the health of the game and go back to just making those odd ball cards that a player can puzzle over and have a Eureka! moment when it fits perfectly into this or that deck. That is the true ''Magic'' of MTG and EDH deck building to me. This Safron line: ''Cards that go into every deck diminish the variance that makes commander fun.'' That is what I realized years ago when I played CEDH, a few hundred cards in thousands that are actually viable for the scrutiny of CEDH players resulting in the same cards showing up time and again: yawn. I have always thought I have the best, funniest games in lower powered pods because it encourages more experiments and variance, you don't feel as punished for playing ''sub-optimal'' cards and most of all you don't get comments like ''Maybe I just make better decks than you...'' When in actuality they just went out and bought all the high costing staples because they can afford them followed up with a healthy does of Net decking= How original! How Unique! How bloody droll! LOL The only problem I see in MTG ATM is cards that ignore the resource gathering aspect of MTG, ex: The Flare cycle, More Cascade/Discover cards, free spells as they break the fundamentals of the game and especially in a format that can use basically any card in MTG history makes it easier to reach a peak point where you can put a bunch of these free spells in a deck and completely neglect the need for lands/resource gathering and management, a cornerstone of how this game works :P

[@BlobThoughtsMTG]

Well said!

[@ya64]

The "or commander" feels like an afterthought, just to cater to the commander audience. In the end, it all depends how powerful those spells are.

[@malmasterson3890]

Not really no, it depends on how often an average deck is gonna be able to cast them for their freerunning cost. Some of these cards are straight up busted at their freerun cost, but if most commanders aren't reliably getting in for damage then it's not really a factor.

[@BigPogger]

I'm not a fan of this set, universes beyond or designing for commander in general, but without the "or commander" line these cards would work only within the set itself, assassin is not a popular typing

[@thebigsquig]

I guess what really bugs me about all these cards is that mtg is no longer universally one game.

[@devan9197]

Dealing combat damage with your commander isn't always easy. I think that a buff to combat damage commanders and assassin's is a good thing.

[@AtlasAdvice254]

In fairness, if they only put "assassin" in the freerunning slot, people would still complain that it's a set dedicated to 1 creature type and a bunch of people would skip out on engaging with the set entirely because there wouldn't be enough interest in it for them. Which, contradicts the entire point of universes beyond products. To get more people into Magic the gathering.

[@scribdfukkyu9630]

it seems that Freerunning is just a worse/weaker version of Spectacle

[@archieb303]

This is exactly what i was thinking

[@BlobThoughtsMTG]

Great point! I don't know how I missed Spectacle 😬

[@BokuAMite]

saffron olive is saying that it is egregious because the set is legal for modern and it has “commander” cards legal in it

[@oldbordergeek]

My cedh commander flies. I gotta get the 1u ancestrall recall

[@MageSkeleton]

the only thing i'd like to see "Freerunning" be changed is that the CMC of the spell is reduced by X where X is the combat damage you did but otherwise i don't hate what they did with the new keyword, i do hate that they're going to attach the keyword to "Counter target spell." Though i still have a problem with Nadu.

[@Attivian]

Free running is just kicker bro.

[@RoachDoggggJR]

I honestly love this mechanic. I play with so many people who want to just sit around & pillow fort up, till they can combo kill you, I'm always happy to see mechanics that encourage actually using your combat step

[@ericyang8474]

The cards that break the game more than anything are 0 cost cards or stupid flashy no drawback design cards like Dockside Extortionist. At the very least you have to build around these cards, making them more mechanically interesting to play against. They also can't be cast on the precombat main, which makes these cards a bit more tricky to set up rather than a strictly better deck-specific staple. The Commander part also opens up the cards beyond just the few sets that have Assassins, so it doesn't end up like the Energy counters that were the dud cards in MH3. I could see decks like Yuriko running a bunch of these Freerunning cards, and any green deck that is stompy or big in nature would benefit off of Viewpoint Synchronization.

[@TheUltimateRey]

I think any kind of mana reduction printed on legendary creatures or any way it skirts commander tax is detrimental to the format but they’ll continue to do it

[@dbldekr]

I feel like sneaking one in with Azusa Lost But Seeking won't be that tough.

[@oscarshedwick4862]

Freerunning is not too powerful. But it's concerning trend that universe beyond products going into modern seeen to have "or commander" stapled on to increase sales rather then to make the formats more fun. All it will take is one card to be good in both commander and modern formitnto become a very expensive thorn in wizards side

[@andytheindividual3862]

if Freerunning is broken, what is ninjutsu?

[@anhvu6824]

Was excited for the assassin expansion. I do think free running kinda made it lame. I was waiting all year for an assassin focus set for commander just because etrata was so fun. I wanted an assassin focus. This feels like you could slap this into any Voltron commander and it just felt like a flavor lost.

[@vulcanh254]

I kinda disagree with Seth. I don't think this is a huge deal because like Kibler said, only cheap aggressive commanders would be able to take advantage of freerunning tempo. So it's not a case of freerunning being good everywhere. Plus it would be very silly if it was exclusive to assassins because then the set would only appeal to the 5% of players who want to build assassin decks. So Seth is right that it's to sell more packs, but like, the entire set would be worthless to most people if it was exclusively for assassin players.

[@DiLamez]

The mechanic isn't broken moreso that it's just uninspired. All it does is make overcosted spells efficient and with how close assassins are to rogues in function, it makes even less sense to dedicate a ''new'' mechanic when Prowl is a thing though I bet that even WOTC forgot that Prowl even exists... No one asked for more Prowl cards or for the mechanic to be revisited. WOTC is serving us polished shit from 2008 by adding the buzzword commander but it's still the same shit.

[@arturstasienko2234]

View point sync. is a terrible card! I have difficulty putting in a single basic in any deck. All those cards are bad at base case. The free ones are playable, and only 2/3 of them, rest are bad. Jeweled lotus allows high costs commanders to be playable.

[@Balileart]

How do you live knowing you're always 1 price of progress away from losing the game at any moment?

[@lenajohnson6179]

The second one - Wizards should stop printing cards specifically for Commander, it's WARPING the game, and trying to print cards to be powerful and 'value' in a 1v3 format is completely unhealthy in the 1v1 sphere. I wish there was no Commander period, cause it's so stupidly popular how can Wizards NOT design for it... but it's absolutely demolishing the game I grew up with and loved and overriding it with this weird abomination of a format.

[@konata8657]

it shouldnt have that added line of "or a commander" freerunning should just have been an assassin tribal ability. theres no need to include commander here. as a mostly edh player not every set needs to cater to edh. stop this wotc

[@malmasterson3890]

Tbf, this set wouldn't sell at all if it didn't cater to commander. The cards are very low power overall save 1 or 2 cards.

[@aklepatzky]

Join edh or cry alone

[@konata8657]

@aklepatzky brother I've been playing edh for longer than precons were a thing. there's more to magic than edh

[@konata8657]

@@malmasterson3890 then this set should not exist.

[@aklepatzky]

@@konata8657 theres not actually. Name a format that isnt edh or legacy and try to make a case for it.

[@germsage6726]

Butt feeling that Ezio is the problem with Freerunning. Massive discount for big assassins that won't otherwise hit the battlefield until turn 4/5. Feels like cheating a big creature into play.