like dont get me wrong i love pauper i think pauper is awesome. but i think one of the reasons commander is such a big hook for new palyers is the commanders themselves. as someone with no or little pre-existing magic knowledge it is very easy to look at something like kaalia, or gishath, or niv mizzet, and say "oh, that looks cool and exciting, i want to play with that!" and it is a lot harder until you are really deeply invested in magic's rules and systems to see the excitement in a deck based around lembas and glint hawk
there's a lot of things that work against commander as an introductory format: complicated board states, extremely deep card pool, normalized color pie breaks. but you just cannot underestimate the "stickiness" and raw appeal the game for new players gains simply from Having A Guy who's Your Guy
