In Consideration Custom Lifetotals for Freeform

[Yaloron]

The new freeform Commander option is awesome and opens up a lot of new possibilities!

Unfortunately while the deck building restrictions are very few and allow a ton of different commander sub formats to be played in theory, the fixed life totals (20 for single player/40 for multiplayer) clash with many different rules sets of commander variants played in paper. This is relevant e.g. for multiplayer Oathbreaker, Brawl or Pauper EDH.

It would be great if while creating a game there was an option to adjust the starting life totals so it's actually possible to play all our favorite commander variants like we know them from paper.

A workaround which is possibly easier to implement in the short term would be to allow Vanguards in freeform commander decks. There are both Vanguards which let you start with +5 life and with -5 life, and since all commander variants I know of use life totals that are multiples of 5, this would allow players to play with their preferred life totals by adding the appropriate number of Vanguards to their deck. (There are already so few deck building restrictions that all games rely on players not abusing the deck building part, making Vanguards legal wouldn't change much here.)

 

[todespizza]

Hi,

please consider enabling custom lifetotals/commander damage for freeform lobbies. Formats like pauper commander use 30 life and 16 commander damage but the lobby is fixed to 40 life and 21 commander damage. Could even make it exclusive to password only lobbies so it doesnt confuse random players joining games or alternatively have it displayed in the lobby screen (the one after you join before the game starts).

 

[Yaloron]

Are there any updates on this?
(Is this being considered, can we expect to get this feature anytime soon or is this not something that's likely going to happen?)

 

[MTGO_TonyM]

Could happen, not soon

 

[Neo001992]

A custom slider for life totals and commander damage when creating queues would be very welcome. A buddy and I were very surprised when we learned that 1v1 games in the lobby were set to 20 by default instead of 40.

 

[Nusakan]

Hello, I'm new to MTGO.
After learning about Freeform Commander I was disappointed to learn that there isn't a way to adjust life totals.
Pauper and Penny Dreadful are very successful formats on MTGO and it's also the best place for Commander.
I feel that not fully supporting Pauper Commander is a missed opportunity, especially with the freeform system in place already.
Just my 2 cents. I would love to see a PDH community grow on MTGO.

 

[Bryan]

It used to be possible to change starting life and hand size for any format open play games.

 

[Neo001992]

Now that Duel Commander is officially it's own format within the client, can the default life total in Freeform Commander for 1v1 be raised to the normal 40 so that regular Commander can be played with custom banned lists in a 1v1 setting? Fully custom life totals is the ultimate goal, but adjusting the default shouldn't require anything other than adjusting existing dials.

 

[OdinMagnus]

In Freeform, you should be able to customize things like life totals. I was trying to play a Pauper commander game with some friends, and Freeform starts you at 20 life each, instead of the 30 life for Pauper Commander and even 40 for regular commander. Not sure why this commander format puts you at 20 life.
Since it's freeform, other things that might be nice would be how many cards you draw per turn, or how many lands. It should be an "out of the normal" mode anyway, right?
But I made this post because my friend really likes pauper and he wanted to play pauper commander. We can't do regular commander since Pauper commander allows any creature that is uncommon, including non-legendary ones, to be the commander which normal commander won't let you do.
So please upvote this so that the devs can make freeform a bit different.
Thank you all, and happy gaming.