Improving random Commander decks.
Posted: 01 Feb 2015, 13:30The random commander decks are cool and fun to play around with. However, they are also, generally, quite terrible, with absolutely no synergy with the commander.
Obviously, fixing that is a difficult task, but would it be possible to give the game a general set of rules for what cards are preferred with use with each commander? It could then weight the random selections when generating decks to give commanders cards that work at least a bit better with it. Assuming it read this from a file, users here could then work together to gradually improve the list.
The list could be something along the lines of:
[Commander Name]
Rule 1
Rule 2
Rule 3
...with the rules listing types of cards to favor. Cards that match multiple criteria are rated a bit higher.
For example, Higure, the Still Wind could have:
[Higure, the Still Wind]
Subtype: Ninja
...which would tell the game to favor cards with a subtype of Ninja when building a Commander deck for him. Or Jhoira of the Ghitu could have:
[Jhoira of the Ghitu]
CMC >= 7
Cardname: Fury Charm
Cardname: Jhoira's Timebug
Cardname: Rift Elemental
Cardname: Timecrafting
...telling the game to favor expensive cards (worth playing with her ability) plus some cards that work particularly well with her (although they wouldn't be guaranteed.)
Obviously producing a list would be a community effort that could go on for a while, but it could be fun, especially if we set up a wiki page for it; and such a list of cards that work well together in machine-readable format (even if it's just commanders) could probably be useful for other things, too.
(An alternative way to find good combinations for a commander might be to parse tappedout, eg. http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/jhoira-of-the-ghitu/ -- if there's a way to regularly grab its entire list of user-submitted combos, that could possibly be used to guide AI deck-building in other parts of Forge, too, like when drafting.)
Obviously, fixing that is a difficult task, but would it be possible to give the game a general set of rules for what cards are preferred with use with each commander? It could then weight the random selections when generating decks to give commanders cards that work at least a bit better with it. Assuming it read this from a file, users here could then work together to gradually improve the list.
The list could be something along the lines of:
[Commander Name]
Rule 1
Rule 2
Rule 3
...with the rules listing types of cards to favor. Cards that match multiple criteria are rated a bit higher.
For example, Higure, the Still Wind could have:
[Higure, the Still Wind]
Subtype: Ninja
...which would tell the game to favor cards with a subtype of Ninja when building a Commander deck for him. Or Jhoira of the Ghitu could have:
[Jhoira of the Ghitu]
CMC >= 7
Cardname: Fury Charm
Cardname: Jhoira's Timebug
Cardname: Rift Elemental
Cardname: Timecrafting
...telling the game to favor expensive cards (worth playing with her ability) plus some cards that work particularly well with her (although they wouldn't be guaranteed.)
Obviously producing a list would be a community effort that could go on for a while, but it could be fun, especially if we set up a wiki page for it; and such a list of cards that work well together in machine-readable format (even if it's just commanders) could probably be useful for other things, too.
(An alternative way to find good combinations for a commander might be to parse tappedout, eg. http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/jhoira-of-the-ghitu/ -- if there's a way to regularly grab its entire list of user-submitted combos, that could possibly be used to guide AI deck-building in other parts of Forge, too, like when drafting.)