I reckon the actual color doesn't matter as long as it's blue-ish. There are no branding guidelines or anything. Even the size of the circle is unspecified, which IMO is a feature, not a bug. It's accessible :)
EDIT: I'm incorrect, there is a spec. Whelp! I still like my imagined more-flexible version of the flag.
My own lil custom 40 card format is actually explicitly designed to be backwards compatible with any existing commander deck! You can just take a deck, draft from it (or just split it down the middle after a good shuffle), give one of the decks to a friend, and start playing!
Agreed. Playing the same pair of decks with a friend over and over is so fun -- you really start to learn the decks, and the early game becomes extremely tactical.
This is cool. 40 card decks are great! In addition to being physically ergonomic, I find 40 cards to be a fun deck-building size. With about 17 lands, you get 23 choices to make of what to include outside of that, which feels like a sweet spot between deck-building expressiveness and decision fatigue.
As an aside, I'm convinced that a big reason WotC (and FLGS) are pushing commander so hard is because 100 card decks means you get to sell more cards.
It's interesting that you frame building bike lanes and reducing car speeds as "punishing drivers", seemingly ignoring that such changes enable micro-mobility users to commute to work safely.
I reckon the actual color doesn't matter as long as it's blue-ish. There are no branding guidelines or anything. Even the size of the circle is unspecified, which IMO is a feature, not a bug. It's accessible :)
EDIT: I'm incorrect, there is a spec. Whelp! I still like my imagined more-flexible version of the flag.