Talk:Commander (designation)

Name of this article

I was thinking if "Deck Commander" would be a bit nicer name for this article. - Yandere Sliver 11:13, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I just arrived here via the link on Oathbreaker. While I expected I knew what it meant, the phrase was totally new to me, and I came to see where it was from, or if it was actually something I hadn't heard of. Did the wiki invent this phrase? Does anyone else talk about "deck commanders"? --Corveroth (talk) 02:15, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

It was my invention to be honest. Since commander can mean a format, a card in your deck, a specific product and a product series I wanted to to sort out the confusing terminology a bit. General would have been a good option, but unfortunately that is also an extremely loaded term. So I opted to add the small descriptor "deck" in front of commander, to make clear that we are talking about the commander in your deck. I am not 100% happy with that solution, since it is an invented term. But it is more or less self-explanatory and it makes things more readable. - Yandere Sliver 10:07, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I assume you considered Commander (card)? What were your feelings on that option? It's accurate because the subject of the page ("commander-ness") is a property of a physical card rather than an abstract object. There should be little confusion that it might refer to a card named Commander, partly because the wiki does not have articles for individual cards, and partly because there's approximately zero chance that Wizards would ever print such a thing. --Corveroth (talk) 16:28, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I was also thinking about Commander (card) and Commander (deck). I think it is not as clear as Commander (format) unfortunately. Previously we used Commander (General), which I thought was even worse which is why I changed it.

The reason why I think it might lead a bit to confusion is that we have some articles about specific cards like Black Lotus for example. Granted it is a very rare occurrence on this wiki, but we still do it from time to time.

But now that I am talking with you Commander (designation) might be a good choice, because the glossary about commander reads: "2. A designation given to one legendary creature card in each player’s deck in the Commander casual variant." Thoughts? - Yandere Sliver 17:33, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

General was bad (it had history on its side but is essentially obsolete). If no other pages use (card) for disambiguation, I prefer that solution. Otherwise I think Commander designation is the next least-bad option, but it is still bad - it describes the set to which this topic belongs, but it is a set containing one item (there are no other non-characteristic "designations"). However, it might be worth asking whether this article should exist independent of the format to which it's so closely tied. --Corveroth (talk) 19:05, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I think it deserves its own article since the concept of a commander transcends the original format. Brawl and Oathbreaker are both good examples for formats which use the same concept. And there are a ton of other Fan formats which never took off who were inspired by the concept of having an Commander.

I looked through the wiki we never use Title (card) or Title (designation) for anything in this wiki. So regardless for what we settle for, it would be a rather unique descriptor. You seem to have Commander (card) as preference, which I would not mind. Again I decided against it in the past, but I am not married to any of the suggestions we currently have flying around. I am just happy that it is no longer Commander (General).

Strangely enough due to Oathbreaker we have also the designation of a Signature Spell which currently has no article, but there is currently only one format which uses this concept so I think that is fine.- Yandere Sliver 20:47, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I was brainstorming with a friend a bit and we ended up with Commander (legendary) or Commander (legend) because that is a unifying characteristic of all commander. Thoughts? - Yandere Sliver 08:44, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

I prefer (designation) --Hunter (talk) 14:08, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

So... Are we ready to make a decision here? - Yandere Sliver 20:51, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Frame

Cards designated as commanders receive a special frame treatment on Arena. Maybe that could be used as an illustration on this article? —Fenhl 18:57, 27 December 2019 (UTC)