Reducing Homogeneity in EDH/Commander

[DubDub]

With the release of the Commander Pre-Cons I now have five Commander decks.  I've changed the General of my RWU deck (formerly Numot) to Ruhan of the Fomori, and I've added a Riku of Two Reflections deck to my stable.  I know many new players are getting into Commander through these decks, and existing Commander players may also be adding new decks to their stables.

One issue that concerns me is that each of my decks, and each deck of my various opponents may become more similar to each other over time.  As we know from comparing Vintage and Legacy, the more 'powerful cards' that are legal, the fewer 'less powerful cards' that are viable.  I have some small fear that with the greater attention paid to Commander in the future thanks to the influx of new players and generally increasing visibility of the format that decks (even decks with different colors) will become increasingly homogeneous.

Certainly the poster children for this concern are Sol Ring and Sensei's Divining Top, although the newly printed Command Tower will immediately join them, card availability aside.  Artifacts like Sol Ring and Top, as well as Solemn Simulacrum and Duplicant are so good that usually you need a good reason not to play them in your deck.

Green mana fixing spells like Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, and Explosive Vegetation are so good that any green deck is probably better for playing them.  There are many examples from other colors as well.

To combat this I plan for my current decks, and as I add decks in the future, to limit myself to putting any unique non-land card into at most two decks.  Additionally, I plan to go further with Planeswalkers, putting any unique Planeswalker card into only at most one deck.  (Note, I will be treating each 'version' of a Planeswalker as separate.  I.E. Jace, the Mind Sculptor will only be in my Wydwen deck, while Jace Beleren will only be in my Ruhan deck.)  I think taking this additional action with the Planeswalkers also contributes some nice flavor, that at each stage in the Planeswalkers' development they are only allied with one of my Commanders.

I don't expect to extend this plan to lands, since I play the format for fun, and potentially color-screwing myself doesn't seem fun.

I hope that this plan separates my decks so that they feel more different from one another.  Let me know if you think this is a good/bad idea, whether you already do something similar.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Easy way to explode the amount of heterogeneity in your group: start a decklist with Armageddon, Ravages of War, and Cataclysm.

Yes, the high CMC bombs make up a limiting pool of "good cards" that everything else gets compared to, but once you have the capacity to remove those from contention and punish tempo wasted on mana ramp, people will vary their strategies more.

[DubDub]

To codify the rules a bit more (and because I've added a few more):

1.  If multiple rules apply to a card the most restrictive rule wins.
2.  No more than two copies of a unique non-land card between all my Commander decks.
3.  No more than one copy of any unique Planeswalker card between all my Commander decks.*
4.  No more than one card with a given Planeswalker type in the same deck.**
5.  No more than one copy of any unique Legendary non-land card between all my Commander decks.***
6.  No more than one copy of any unique 'Global Enchantment' card between all my Commander decks.****

*Distinct Planeswalker cards sharing a type are not limited by this rule.  For example I can have Ajani Goldmane in Ghave and Ajani Vengeant in Ruhan, but not Ajani Goldmane in both.
**The example here being that I can't have both Goldmane and Vengeant in Ruhan, since they share a Planeswalker type (Ajani).  This is to setup each of my Commanders only knowing certain Planeswalkers at certain times in their development.
***Can only have Jitte in one deck.  Can only have Jaya Ballard in one deck, etc.
****Pretty sure this only applies to The Abyss among my current decks, but it seems like a good rule to have on the books, and in keeping with some of the others.

Additional rules I'm considering:

- No more than two copies of any unique Legendary Land card between all my Commander decks.  I'm looking at you, Gaea's Cradle.
- No more than one copy of any unique non-land card that searches a library between all my Commander decks.  (Or should this be limited to repeatably searches?  I.e. Survival is extra limited but Demonic Tutor is not.)
- Sensei's Divining Top is limited to one copy, or maybe, is banned.
- Cards whose name directly reference a Planeswalker (or Legendary Creature?) can only appear in decks which contain a Planeswalker card with that type.  I.e. Jace's Ingenuity can go in Wydwen, which contains Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

I had a hard time removing Sol Ring from... all but two of the decks I had (although, I have one FTV one and one DCI one, so the two that are left in my six decks are sweet), and similarly for Armillary Sphere, but I think it will ultimately prove for the best (in terms of my enjoyment).  I can also justify it coming out of Ruhan because he only has one colorless in his manacost (although Sol Ring would help with the equipment theme I'm adding in), and out of Riku because it doesn't help pay for either copy effect.

Top is just such a time sink that I don't favor it, although it's obviously enormously powerful in the format.  Are there other significant time sinks I should address individually?

[Norm4eva]

I was a little saddened to find out that this format was also subject to the same scrutiny and attempts to break and abuse all manner of power card.  My first couple forays into the format were pretty Timmy in nature, I bought a precon not really knowing what it did, and found out that, yeah, Kaalia's really good.  From there I decided to just show up and be the little kid with the precon at the next EDH day at my local house of cards.  Turns out, even this format is chock full of mana accelerators, tutors, format staples which transcend the decks they're in and just get played 'because they're good', etc.  It's a little bit of a bummer to know that no format is safe, I guess.

My lousy two cents - I think the format would do well to maintain its stated intention by axing a number of efficient tutor spells.  Any deck that plays Black instantly has like 3 - 7 different staples, depending on manabase flexibility, to tutor up a one-of, meaning they aren't really playing the same kind of Highlander everyone else is.  It's a shame, really.  I'd almost just as soon say something like, "No tutor spells with CMC 3 or less", but I think that's probably an undereducated number on my part, probably leaves a number of 'fair' spells out to dry.

[DubDub]

Another thing I was thinking was that given the ubiquity of the protection swords I would try to limit myself to only copies in a deck that protect from colors not in that deck.  Unfortunately I think this is overly limiting.  For my current decks the only swords I would be allowed to have would be:

Wydwen - War and Peace
Ghave - Fire and Ice
Ruhan - Feast and Famine
Damia - War and Peace
Riku - Light and Shadow

Note: no Body and Mind, because all of my decks have either Blue or Green in them.

Perhaps instead I'll add a pro-sword specific rule that limits to one copy for each unique sword among all six decks.  Most of them then will be in Radha and Ruhan as the most Voltroon-y decks.  Wydwen only runs a handful of creatures, and is getting Batterskull instead, so she wouldn't benefit from a pro-sword anyway, Damia is going to have a poison subtheme so Grafted Exoskeleton will be the featured Equipment there, etc.  In that case it would be:

Body and Mind - Radha (makes a green wolf token, so can't go in Ruhan)
Fire and Ice - Radha (Radha needs card draw more)
Light and Shadow - Radha (Radha has more creatures to recur)
Feast and Famine - Radha (maybe it's obvious that I like Radha better)
War and Peace - Ruhan

Keep in mind, Ruhan is imposing to begin with, so he has things that give him Haste, Shroud, Hexproof, Unblockable and Double Strike, doesn't need the pro-swords as much.