¡Viva los generales!

So, here's the rub. Generals are what EDH revolves around. The general is the lynch-pin of EDH deck design. You are either looking at ways to abuse a general or the general is just along for the ride as you make a deck of your preferred colors. Either way, the general is essential. In limited EDH you have a very limited pool of generals to choose from. General selection (both the noun and the verb) is the one area that having a limited card pool really, really messes with the underlying fun of EDH. How to solve this problem (and yes, I call it a problem)? Here are the options I have brainstormed so far:

Shut up and live with it. Surely an option that has the most Limited appeal. Hey, build with what you got. Sealed luck, dude. If I were looking at this experiment primarily for it's limited nature, this would be the way to go. But I decided to try Limited EDH because I had these ULCs and THEN I got a bug for EDH. Someone put the chocolate in my peanut butter and that is why I went down the EDH road. It certainly could be done this way, but I would prefer to focus on the fun aspects of EDH, and that means having more options in the generals, especially because the pool of cards is limited.

BYOG. Just let people plumb their own collections for their general choice and use the limited pool to make it. This would certainly deal with the issue of general selection coming from a limited pool, and there are a couple of variations of this option that could allow for some great fun in deck building. Option A would be to bring a general and match up a random card pool to it and build from there. I could see a lot of people bringing five color legends to have the most flexibility, but a few might try to force an archetype or build to support their general. Option B would be to have folks bring a selection of three to five generals and then choose once the assigned ULC has been reviewed. Finally, and moving forward with the experiment, would be to bring a general after having reviewed the ULC. The only problem with this is that it will offer better options to those who have large card pools to delve in for those generals. One key part of this grand experiment is to keep folks on a level playing field. Of course, I could consider proxied generals for those who have smaller collections of their own.

Joint Chiefs. By this I mean a system of having multiple cards serve as general, hence 'joint chiefs'. Since roughly half of the available generals in the ULCs are mono-colored (yes, I have looked because I feared this issue), allowing multiple generals would allow for a greater range of colors. There would be a few additional guidelines and clarifications with this option. Such as:

You may not play a general if you have one in play.
You may have up to three generals. Reduce this number by one for each color beyond the first that a general has in its casting cost (minimum of one, of course).
Whenever you cast a general, you pay 2 for each time a general has been in play previously.

These mods should allow for some flexibility in using the generals as color-choosers. And the greatest thing that could happen would be for a general chosen for its color only becoming desirable to have in play. That would be neat.

What do you think about generals and Limited EDH? Sound off in comments. I'm open to different ideas, that's for sure.

Oh - a big shout out to Tom Gustafson of Monday Night Magic who has said he'd mention this humble project on the show. Now someone other than me might just read this!

Hasta la carne (or, until we meat again?)