What's Missing At Common?

If you've been around in the Standard Pauper community long enough, you are probably acquainted with joekewwl. While he's a tireless champion for the format, he is best known for his ongoing involvement in the Magic Online Beta team as well as being a member of the 2011 Community Cup Team. Incidentally, he also controls the Prize Pool for MPDC, which means he's the guy to see to pick up any cards from our Prize Pool as well as the tickets for Top 8 finishers.

Due to his long involvement with the Magic Online Beta and his relationships with Wizards of the Coast staff from the Community Cup, joekewwl gets the opportunity to sometimes communicate directly with the company regarding what he's hearing in the Pauper community. As such, he recently posted at pdcmagic.com in the Standard forums that he has been approached by one of the developers asking for feedback about what's missing at the Common slot in recent sets. Specifically, he's looking for ideas about what should or could appear in future new releases.

So I encourage you to head over to this thread and make your opinion heard. But as you do so, it will help to keep a few things in  mind:

• Commons have an important role to play in Limited, so future cards will have to function well in that environment.
• Mark Rosewater has outlined some strict complexity guidelines regarding Commons that play a major role in what can and cannot be printed. While I have argued that recent sets have been pushing the boundaries of these constraints, these are still something you should keep in mind when making suggestions.
• Even designers struggle to come up with appropriate Commons. Rosewater has stated that Commons are the toughest cards to get right. Take a moment and consider whether what you are suggesting is really appropriate for a Common.

Nonetheless, this is a great opportunity. There's been some discussion thus far, but I'd love to see more people make their opinions known. So what are you waiting for?