A Loop-de-loophole

 Opening Ceremony

Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room: there was an oversight in policy that didn't disallow changing your commander from game to game during a match, provided your deck still fit within the color identity and the event wasn't using decklists. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, I would prefer to get it perfect the first time, having to go back and make adjustments means it wasn't good enough for whatever reason; if it was I wouldn't be adjusting it. However, finding the flaws in the policy and the process used to craft it now, when the stakes are low, is about as good as it gets. Having a community involved and caring enough to shine a light on these errors is praiseworthy, and is another reason I love doing what I do with this community in particular. I hope we can continue to foster an environment that promotes positive development and feedback. 

The Long List of Reasons

A key element of the TL:R format identity is the use of commanders, and the fundamental identity of a deck is derived from its commander(s). While permitting the "swapping out" of commanders would be a new and unique gameplay and deckbuilding experience, there are several concerns that have upheld standing expectations. Foremost, it could result in increasingly homogenous decks, as incentive to be more focused on a specific commander is lessened or removed. Removing this restriction also removes rewards for having greater and more specific knowledge of the meta as the specific commander(s) becomes less relevant and diversity suffers. Third, is generally better to go with, rather than against, expectations without due cause; the overwhelming majority already play this way/ assume this is the rule because Commander is a format, and every new thing makes onboarding that much more difficult. And finally, largely because of the previous point, no one it's asking for this. As the saying goes: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The format is healthy, we're fresh off an (un)ban, why throw new ingredients into a proven recipe? The risks do not stand up the merits: A questionable gimmick with dubious benefits to player experience that no one asked for and it's unknown who would even want. Sometimes change is good, and looking at old policy to see if still stands up is how we prevent stagnation. It's also the case that sometimes somethings "always been that way" because it's just a solid rule.

It's Not Psychic Paper?

I want to briefly touch on how this happened in the first place. When originally creating the TSMCR and -MTR, my focus was on adapting existing rules as much as possible. This minimizes new information to learn, keeps the documents short and sweet, and maintains a largely similar format and syntax. What this also means is the focus was on the differed between sixty card Magic and TL:R, and not the differences between "casual" and "competitive". Put another way, the concept of Regular REL tournament logistics hadn't been considered. While drafting the documents I quickly zeroed in on the possibility of swapping, however I got tunnel vision with the solution: put it on the decklist, because every game will be played with a registered deck. The policy documents have been revisited several times, both for additions and revisions. But because no one was looking for it, no one saw the hole. Until now. 

Rules Law Degree

So we arrive at "the question", the world burning, cats and dogs getting married. The challenge now was to determine how to close the loophole in spacetime. It wasn't a simple matter of removing "with decklists" from 2.7, that section only covers deck registration, which is the root cause in the first place. But the original clause needs to stay, because it does still fill (most of) its original function. So I started exploring the rest of the MTR, looking for a home. My next stop was 3.6: Card Identification and Interpretation. Commanders need to be identified clearly, sounds like a good fit. However as I read the section to get a feel for how to write it, it became clear this was not the best fit. Maybe, but only if nothing else panned out. I very briefly considered 4.1: Player Communication, as an addition to status or free information, and quickly abandoned the idea because that doesn't work how I'd need this to work. Nothing came close to fitting even as awkwardly as 3.6, until 6.1: Deck Construction Restrictions. Chef's kiss perfection, with the inclusion of deck size requirements the supplementation basically wrote itself. And now, firmly removed from deck registration, the rules codify locked in commanders.