I think that this picture will pretty much sum up all of the shenanigans that are Prophet of Kruphix related. I put it in a spoiler to avoid cluttering up my post.
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Trolling Magic since 2000.
I play Standard, EDH, and a very tiny bit of Modern.
Haha, so they allow decks to produce any colour of mana but still restrict the cards based on their colour identity? Instead of the other way around, i.e. allowing all cards in a deck but restricting the colours of mana you can make? Oh god, this is priceless.
You actually think the alternative you describe is preferable? You think allowing a red card in a monogreen commander deck but not letting that deck make red mana makes more sense than just getting rid of rule 4? Take a second and think on that.
Rules should not exist to prevent players from making bad game play (or in this case deckbuilding) decisions. As long as the player knows they can only generate green or colourless mana in a mono-green deck and still puts red spells in it, then it's really not the rules' fault. The rule for mana colour restriction would be crystal clear and fundamental to the game. It'd be like establishing a rule not to play <insert any bad card here> as your commander, because it would be a bad choice.
The previous incarnation, with the two rules of Mana Colour Restriction (MCR) and Card Identity Restriction (CIR), was pretty much redundant. It's almost as if the rules people were way too afraid of anything bad happening to the game. It's two rules that literally do the same thing, in effect. It made sense to remove one of these rules. So there would be two ways to do this.
Option A is to remove the MCR, which they did, so any deck can produce any mana, but you're still restricted by the types of cards you can put in your deck, based on that card's colour identity. The problem with this solution is that it arbitrarily does not allow some cards that are designed to work in mono-colour decks, most prominently hybrid cards. But it also affects other cards such as Quenchable Fire (Whether or not the card is good enough to put into a deck is irrelevant to the problem at hand.). You couldn't play Probe in a mono-blue deck, even though the kicker is optional. Try to expain to someone that even though a mechanic is optional and they wouldn't even be able to use it ever in their deck, they still can't put the card in their deck, because of some really arbitrary restriction. Same goes for Obelisk of Alara.
Option B on the other hand is to remove the CIR. Now people would be able to put any and every card in their decks. While this sounds like a huge change in theory, in practise it will have merely negligible effects, save for -a rather large- subset of cards that was designed to work in mono-coloured decks despite their technically multi-coloured behaviour. (Hybrids have to be multi-colour by execution, not by design.) Of course this change would also allow some people to play cards that seem to be "cheating" the system, such as Loam Lion in a mono-white deck or using an off-colour instant with Isochron Scepter. These cheats however require the deck-building to include cards in a deck that are next to useless unless they draw the one card in their 99 card library to make these cheats barely useful. It remains doubtful such a change would break the format.
The only things option B shuts down, that are currently possible with Option A, are mechanics like Sunburst and Converge. However, I fail to see the big issue here. These mechanics are basically "soft multicolour" mechanics. Just how you get rewarded with a bigger pool of cards to work with when you have a multicolour deck, you also get more value out of these cards. Saying that it's "odd" that you can't get full value out of multi-colour mechanics in a mono-colour deck is... mindboggling.
So basically, what they did is:
Prevent cards that are specifically designed to be used in mono-coloured decks to be used by mono-coloured decks.
Enable cards that are specifically designed to be used in multi-coloured decks to be used in mono-coloured decks.
Actually, the hybrid cards may indeed be castable in mono-color decks, but that wasn't the point. They were made to be "easier to case", but they are and always have multicolor cards. Mistmeadow Witch is always both U and W. It's never only one or the other. Regardless of the method or mana used to cast it--it's possible to cast it without paying its cost at all--it is always both U and W. So that's why it's not usable in a Commander deck without both colors in its Color Identity.
Cheating cards in (ie paying for cards without paying their mana cost somehow) isn't the fundamental form of deckbuilding. While you can cheat stuff out, Magic is, at its core, about playing lands, with which you gain mana to cast creatures and spells. (It's not that there's no room for the more "cheaty" interactions, they're just crust to the pie.)
Hybrid is supposed to work in this very fundamental way. What you outline is really the rules about hybrid in Commander. You fail to explain why it is a good idea that it's done as such. The point of hybrid is that it can be played in any deck using either color - it is not to make a card that's multicolored for no reason. They don't begin with a card and then see if they can make it multicolored, because that's unnecessary complexity. They begin with a color-overlapping effect and design the card from there, because at its heart, that what hybrid is all about.
Personally, I don't think color pie breaks nor æsthetics are good reasons to maintain the current color identity rules, because there are a plethora of those issues even when color identity is taken into account.
Rules clarity however, tha'ts a good reason. And now they're done with Rule 4, we have a very clear and easily understandable deckbuilding ruleset.
But I've always heard that MaRo dislikes Commander and doesn't play it. I actually quite like MaRo, but I take with a grain of salt anything he says concerning Commander.
Talking about color identity has nothing to do with playing the format. It's no different than considering whether mana burn pulled its weight due to legacy cards like Tolarian Academy (I know it's banned) or Mana Drain actually making enough mana to be a risk. You don't need to know all that much about legacy to be able to effectively decide on that either. Those are general game things, unlike, say, whether Lightning Bolt is actually good in commander which is format specific. The purpose of Lightning Bolt is perfectly consistent in every format just like the purpose of hybrid cards even if the power level of cards fluctuates between formats.
But I've always heard that MaRo dislikes Commander and doesn't play it. I actually quite like MaRo, but I take with a grain of salt anything he says concerning Commander.
He said so himself, that he should be taken with a grain of salt, no worries Still hybrid is his design so his intent with it is a good source for what it's supposed to do.
I view Commander as primarily a social game and I think Prophet of Kruphix violates that pretty glaringly. The banning makes sense even though it can be played around, or stopped by the rest of the table marshaling their resources against that player. A lot of powerful cards do that, but not many cards allow their caster to play four times as much Magic as everyone else.
As mentioned above, it's the two powerful abilities in tandem that makes PoK so obnoxious. If I play Vedalken Orrery, I'm basically just moving my turn to the end step of the person on my right. It's an advantage as I have more opportunities to interact with people and can play spells more safely, but I'm not really casting more spells, just casting them at a different time. Add "you untap during each player's untap to that" all of a sudden I'm taking a turn during my turn, during player 2's turn, player 3's turn, player 4's turn, etc (my group typically has games of about 3-5 people). The only thing stopping me is if I run out of cards or get my stuff countered/removed, but hey, I'm playing blue and regularly untapping. It's pretty much Easy Street in the right deck. And any experienced player playing the card is going to have the deck to exploit it. What I frequently saw at my table was "hang on, during your end step..." multiple times around the table until either the PoK was removed or the player won the game. This can really bog a game down and, personally, this is the same reason I try not to build decks with a bunch of extra turn effects, or decks that durdle with a million trivial actions while everyone else waits on me. I guess a lot of that comes down to play style, but it seems to go against the concept of a social/casual game to include a card that gives one person so much control over the flow of the game.
Not that the card itself isn't powerful for obvious reasons, but to me it's the way that power manifested in the game that took away from the "spirit of EDH" (if there is enough of a consensus that we can talk about such a thing).
Totally agree with the maddsurgeon and couldn't have said it better. What made POK so offensive is the multiple turns aspect, which is probably the most annoying thing to have to sit through in a 4+ multi game. Cards like time stretch just make everyone except the caster want to quit right there, and POK is actually much better than that. I would rather have all my lands armageddoned away then sit through multi POK turns.
Rules clarity however, tha'ts a good reason. And now they're done with Rule 4, we have a very clear and easily understandable deckbuilding ruleset.
Deck construction rules are pretty central to the format. If my color identity has W and not B I shouldn't be able to run a (W/B) card because the card is both W and B. That is the whole point of color identity. It is quite clear the intention of how hybrid cards are supposed to played with either types of mana, but Commander rules are quite clear on what cards can be played. I am not a detractor of Rosewater in general, but in this case he's wrong.
I don't have real problem with rule 4 going away. I can see the comparison to the baggage of mana burn. My only concern is that it opens the door for people wanting to run Bringer of the Green Dawn in a mono G deck.
I don't have real problem with rule 4 going away. I can see the comparison to the baggage of mana burn. My only concern is that it opens the door for people wanting to run Bringer of the Green Dawn in a mono G deck.
...Except they can't, because it still has WUBRG in its color identity.
Rules clarity however, tha'ts a good reason. And now they're done with Rule 4, we have a very clear and easily understandable deckbuilding ruleset.
Deck construction rules are pretty central to the format. If my color identity has W and not B I shouldn't be able to run a (W/B) card because the it is both W and B. That is the whole point of color identity. It is quite clear the intention of how hybrid cards are supposed to played with either types of mana, but Commander rules are quite clear on what cards can be played. I am not a detractor of Rosewater in general, but in this case he's wrong.
So what about Exploit? By a rules technicality Exploit cards are allowed in monowhite or monoblack decks because the hybrid symbol appears in reminder text and not rules text even though reminder text, with a few exceptions, reads exactly like how the rules text would if the ability was written out.
Hybrid symbols by their nature are different than regular monocolor symbols, including when two or more of the latter symbols are combined to create gold cards. Why not create a rules exception for hybrid mana specifically, where the hybrid symbol may be treated as though it were a symbol of just one color provided that doing so allows the card to remain within the scope of color identity? Then can be treated as though it was just or as opposed to and .
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Rules clarity however, tha'ts a good reason. And now they're done with Rule 4, we have a very clear and easily understandable deckbuilding ruleset.
Deck construction rules are pretty central to the format. If my color identity has W and not B I shouldn't be able to run a (W/B) card because the it is both W and B. That is the whole point of color identity. It is quite clear the intention of how hybrid cards are supposed to played with either types of mana, but Commander rules are quite clear on what cards can be played. I am not a detractor of Rosewater in general, but in this case he's wrong.
So what about Exploit? By a rules technicality Exploit cards are allowed in monowhite or monoblack decks because the hybrid symbol appears in reminder text and not rules text even though reminder text, with a few exceptions, reads exactly like how the rules text would if the ability was written out.
Hybrid symbols by their nature are different than regular monocolor symbols, including when two or more of the latter symbols are combined to create gold cards. Why not create a rules exception for hybrid mana specifically, where the hybrid symbol may be treated as though it were a symbol of just one color provided that doing so allows the card to remain within the scope of color identity? Then can be treated as though it was just or as opposed to and .
Hybrid symbols by their nature are different than regular monocolor symbols, including when two or more of the latter symbols are combined to create gold cards. Why not create a rules exception for hybrid mana specifically, where the hybrid symbol may be treated as though it were a symbol of just one color provided that doing so allows the card to remain within the scope of color identity? Then can be treated as though it was just or as opposed to and .
But Color (not Color Identity) doesn't follow that ruling. Magic's rules determine that a card's color is always all the colors of it casting cost (barring direct exclusions like Devoid and the Pacts) and that it is all colors of Hybrid Mana Symbols as well. This has implications on gameplay, which is why Color Identity is first based on the card's original colors, then adding mana symbols to determine its identity. Changing how Hybrid Mana Symbols work doesn't change the color of the card, which in turn, doesn't change the Color Identity.
Making Hybrid cards to be truly either "Color A or Color B" is a ruling that needs to be changed by Wizards, not by the EDH Committee, because it impacts the gameplay of all formats. Supposedly we could bend it solely for deckbuilding purposes, but it feels rather awkward to have the ruling apply in deckbuilding and not in gameplay (plus, it's a step backwards in a sense that it's extra text to make EDH function like other formats in terms of deckbuilding, which is EDH's biggest difference).
EDIT: Rule 4, however was a gameplay restriction and was an additional layer added on without reliance of the "base" of a Magic Rule, which is why it could be removed without much game-shifting effects. Flavor doesn't matter in these cases, because it can be used to justify anything.
Making Hybrid cards to be truly either "Color A or Color B" is a ruling that needs to be changed by Wizards, not by the EDH Committee.
I'm not sure about this. What I'm sure, is that WotC created magic, and hired designers to created stuff like Hybrid. The rules created by the RC came after Hybrid's inception, who I suspect did not foresee Hybrid as an evergreen design. Back then we only had the Ravnica hybrids to reference. If anything, it's the RC that needs to update and keep in touch with Magic. Not the other way round.
I'm not sure about this. What I'm sure, is that WotC created magic, and hired designers to created stuff like Hybrid. The rules created by the RC came after Hybrid's inception, who I suspect did not foresee Hybrid as an evergreen design. Back then we only had the Ravnica hybrids to reference. If anything, it's the RC that needs to update and keep in touch with Magic. Not the other way round.
I don't think we're going to agree on this topic, but here goes:
The RC keeps up with the functionality of the cards. It's true the creators of Hybrid could not have seen EDH, a format revolving around Color Identity, existing in the future, but fact remains the "Spirit of Hybrid design" and its actual execution were not in line (likely due to complications in rules).
The RC is not obliged to keep with the "Spirit of Design", because at the core, the format is about rules, so it has to put the "Law of the Rules" in front. Divinity of Pride is always going be immune to Doom Blade even if WWWWW was spent to cast it, be it in Legacy or EDH. The intention behind the deckbuilding restrictions is to prevent people from putting cards not of their Commander's Color Identity into the deck, no matter whether the deck is capable of casting it or not. Archive Trap can be cast by any deck for free potentially and it is still restricted to U decks because it is a Blue card.
Well, it's true that RC can change it that EDH is the only format where Divinity of Pride can be destroyed by Doom Blade if WWWWW was spent to cast it and it was cast by a Mono-W deck, which means the RC "updated and keeps in touch with the Spirit of Design of Magic", but it will create a very obvious gameplay discrepancy between EDH and all other formats. Personally, I actually don't mind if that happened (EDH already requires lots of attention, so some more memory work shouldn't be a problem), but I doubt the RC wants to create this discrepancy, since the other formats themselves have not updated and kept in touch with the "Spirit of Hybrid Design" and the RC cannot possibly update that.
Doh! Quite right. The "Ex" part threw me. That, and the similarly criminal-sounding names.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Rules should not exist to prevent players from making bad game play (or in this case deckbuilding) decisions. As long as the player knows they can only generate green or colourless mana in a mono-green deck and still puts red spells in it, then it's really not the rules' fault. The rule for mana colour restriction would be crystal clear and fundamental to the game. It'd be like establishing a rule not to play <insert any bad card here> as your commander, because it would be a bad choice.
Simple rule: You can't play cards with mana symbols on them if those mana symbols aren't somewhere on your commander. It's a crystal clear rule and fundamental to commander, and you think it should go before rule 4? [edit: by "go before rule 4" I mean "be cut from commander's rules before/instead of rule 4"]
The previous incarnation, with the two rules of Mana Colour Restriction (MCR) and Card Identity Restriction (CIR), was pretty much redundant. It's almost as if the rules people were way too afraid of anything bad happening to the game. It's two rules that literally do the same thing, in effect. It made sense to remove one of these rules. So there would be two ways to do this.
Option A is to remove the MCR, which they did, so any deck can produce any mana, but you're still restricted by the types of cards you can put in your deck, based on that card's colour identity. The problem with this solution is that it arbitrarily does not allow some cards that are designed to work in mono-colour decks, most prominently hybrid cards. But it also affects other cards such as Quenchable Fire (Whether or not the card is good enough to put into a deck is irrelevant to the problem at hand.). You couldn't play Probe in a mono-blue deck, even though the kicker is optional. Try to expain to someone that even though a mechanic is optional and they wouldn't even be able to use it ever in their deck, they still can't put the card in their deck, because of some really arbitrary restriction. Same goes for Obelisk of Alara.
Option B on the other hand is to remove the CIR. Now people would be able to put any and every card in their decks. While this sounds like a huge change in theory, in practise it will have merely negligible effects, save for -a rather large- subset of cards that was designed to work in mono-coloured decks despite their technically multi-coloured behaviour. (Hybrids have to be multi-colour by execution, not by design.) Of course this change would also allow some people to play cards that seem to be "cheating" the system, such as Loam Lion in a mono-white deck or using an off-colour instant with Isochron Scepter. These cheats however require the deck-building to include cards in a deck that are next to useless unless they draw the one card in their 99 card library to make these cheats barely useful. It remains doubtful such a change would break the format.
You say the two rules are pretty much the same and then illustrate how they very much are not. And I think a card's playability actually does matter here, though not quite in the way you dismiss. While Probe's kicker is optional and in a standard magic duel it would be playable in a mono-blue deck, it is clearly designed to be played in a deck that can pay its kicker (and any player would interpret it as such). So not letting Probe be played in a commander deck with a mono blue commander isn't reducing the realistic number of playable cards, because you aren't playing probe in mono blue. The loss of realistic playable cards from the CIR comes from not allowing hybrids, which is all this debate is really about. Some players think hybrids should be allowed in mono color commander decks and others don't.
The only things option B shuts down, that are currently possible with Option A, are mechanics like Sunburst and Converge. However, I fail to see the big issue here. These mechanics are basically "soft multicolour" mechanics. Just how you get rewarded with a bigger pool of cards to work with when you have a multicolour deck, you also get more value out of these cards. Saying that it's "odd" that you can't get full value out of multi-colour mechanics in a mono-colour deck is... mind boggling.
No disagreement from me here on the fact that not having sunburst and converge in mono color decks isn't a big deal. But you seem to be assuming that we should be striving to allow more cards to be playable in commander decks (that is, comparing what options A and B "shut down" vs "allow"). Commander is defined by restrictions, though. Not saying that we need to add more restrictions, just that, y'know, it isn't necessarily the point to tear them down either.
So basically, what they did is:
Prevent cards that are specifically designed to be used in mono-coloured decks to be used by mono-coloured decks.
Enable cards that are specifically designed to be used in multi-coloured decks to be used in mono-coloured decks.
Take a second and think about that.
Yeah, I thought about it… and it's a bit misleading. Hybrid cards were designed to be playable in mono or multi decks in a standard duel game of magic. They weren't designed with commander in mind. But anyway, the rules committee didn't change the rules on hybrids! They aren't preventing any new cards from being played. That was an existing rule. They just got rid of a rule that happens to now allow sunburst in monoblack - that wasn't the purpose of the change and will have essentially no effect on the game. This wasn't intended to be a big rule change and I don't understand the invitation to compare it to a world without the commander identity rule.
...Except they can't, because it still has WUBRG in its color identity.
I'm not sure how my post would lead you to believe that I had any misunderstanding of color identity. Previously it was impossible for you to generate mana for any abilities/alt costs that were outside the color identity. Now that you can, people will want the rules to change even more.
So what about Exploit? By a rules technicality Exploit cards are allowed in monowhite or monoblack decks because the hybrid symbol appears in reminder text and not rules text even though reminder text, with a few exceptions, reads exactly like how the rules text would if the ability was written out.
It's not a technicality, it just might be a little confusing at first. The rules text is the rules text. If they did put (W/B) in the rules text for extort it couldn't be in mono W or B.
Why not create a rules exception for hybrid mana specifically, where the hybrid symbol may be treated as though it were a symbol of just one color provided that doing so allows the card to remain within the scope of color identity?
Because you can't run multicolored cards in a monocolor EDH deck. Honestly, there a quite a few SHA/EVE hybrid cards that really should have been gold cards.
I'm not sure about this. What I'm sure, is that WotC created magic, and hired designers to created stuff like Hybrid. The rules created by the RC came after Hybrid's inception, who I suspect did not foresee Hybrid as an evergreen design. Back then we only had the Ravnica hybrids to reference. If anything, it's the RC that needs to update and keep in touch with Magic. Not the other way round.
I don't think we're going to agree on this topic, but here goes:
The RC keeps up with the functionality of the cards. It's true the creators of Hybrid could not have seen EDH, a format revolving around Color Identity, existing in the future, but fact remains the "Spirit of Hybrid design" and its actual execution were not in line (likely due to complications in rules).
The RC is not obliged to keep with the "Spirit of Design", because at the core, the format is about rules, so it has to put the "Law of the Rules" in front. Divinity of Pride is always going be immune to Doom Blade even if WWWWW was spent to cast it, be it in Legacy or EDH. The intention behind the deckbuilding restrictions is to prevent people from putting cards not of their Commander's Color Identity into the deck, no matter whether the deck is capable of casting it or not. Archive Trap can be cast by any deck for free potentially and it is still restricted to U decks because it is a Blue card.
Well, it's true that RC can change it that EDH is the only format where Divinity of Pride can be destroyed by Doom Blade if WWWWW was spent to cast it and it was cast by a Mono-W deck, which means the RC "updated and keeps in touch with the Spirit of Design of Magic", but it will create a very obvious gameplay discrepancy between EDH and all other formats. Personally, I actually don't mind if that happened (EDH already requires lots of attention, so some more memory work shouldn't be a problem), but I doubt the RC wants to create this discrepancy, since the other formats themselves have not updated and kept in touch with the "Spirit of Hybrid Design" and the RC cannot possibly update that.
This argument against Hybrid infuriates me for reasons that I have difficulty articulating. I do not understand why those opposed to Hybrid are so insistent on using the "I should be able to Doom BladeDivinity of Pride if my opponent spends five White mana on it in a Mono-W deck!" or similar arguments. You might as well be saying "Crusade should give my Eldrazi Displacer +1/+1 because I had to spend White mana to cast it!"
Running hybrid cards in mono coloured decks bothers me just as much as someone running bojuka bog in a non-black deck. You shouldn't be getting the advantages of other colours when you select a monocoloured general. You need to live with the fact that mono colour means you will have a much more stable manabase, at the cost of the diversity that other colours offer you. Hybrid cards are multicolour and you should have to be both colours to get the advantage of them. The fact that you can cast them off of just one of the 2 colours is irrelevant and should only be considered as a bonus to help the 2 colour decks that run them to cast them easier. They are still multicolour cards regardless.
I don't think we're going to agree on this topic, but here goes:
The RC keeps up with the functionality of the cards. It's true the creators of Hybrid could not have seen EDH, a format revolving around Color Identity, existing in the future, but fact remains the "Spirit of Hybrid design" and its actual execution were not in line (likely due to complications in rules).
The RC is not obliged to keep with the "Spirit of Design", because at the core, the format is about rules, so it has to put the "Law of the Rules" in front. Divinity of Pride is always going be immune to Doom Blade even if WWWWW was spent to cast it, be it in Legacy or EDH. The intention behind the deckbuilding restrictions is to prevent people from putting cards not of their Commander's Color Identity into the deck, no matter whether the deck is capable of casting it or not. Archive Trap can be cast by any deck for free potentially and it is still restricted to U decks because it is a Blue card.
Well, it's true that RC can change it that EDH is the only format where Divinity of Pride can be destroyed by Doom Blade if WWWWW was spent to cast it and it was cast by a Mono-W deck, which means the RC "updated and keeps in touch with the Spirit of Design of Magic", but it will create a very obvious gameplay discrepancy between EDH and all other formats. Personally, I actually don't mind if that happened (EDH already requires lots of attention, so some more memory work shouldn't be a problem), but I doubt the RC wants to create this discrepancy, since the other formats themselves have not updated and kept in touch with the "Spirit of Hybrid Design" and the RC cannot possibly update that.
This argument against Hybrid infuriates me for reasons that I have difficulty articulating. I do not understand why those opposed to Hybrid are so insistent on using the "I should be able to Doom BladeDivinity of Pride if my opponent spends five White mana on it in a Mono-W deck!" or similar arguments. You might as well be saying "Crusade should give my Eldrazi Displacer +1/+1 because I had to spend White mana to cast it!"
At its core, Color Identity is first based on a card's Color Indicator, followed by adding (but not removing) any Mana Symbols that appear on the card. Divinity of Pride's Color Indicator is always WB, having Hybrid Mana Symbol on its casting cost changes nothing. Eldrazi Displacer's Color Identity is Colorless, but the W Symbol is added on to change its Color Identity to White.
This "insistence" is simply mirroring those who insist that Hybrid cards should be permitted just because (W/B) is in Divinity of Pride's mana cost. "Hybrid Cards" are no more than "Gold cards with an "easier" casting cost (like Transguild Courier)". They might as well be saying "Transguild Courier/Archive Trap should be permitted in Mono-B decks because the deck can cast it."
There is simply no reason for allowing Hybrid Cards (note this doesn't include non-Hybrid cards with Hybrid Mana Symbols elsewhere, like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death) to be put into decks that only share one color with the card. No more reason than allowing Gold Cards for the same reason.
So, Color Indicator is all that matters for interaction - Crusade doesn't give Eldrazi Displacer +1/+1 because its Color Indicator is Colorless - it's Color Identity additional requirements that restricts it to W decks. Divinity of Pride being immune to Doom Blade and Sunlance is because it is a WB card and hence by it's "base colors" it can only be put into WB decks.
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Rules should not exist to prevent players from making bad game play (or in this case deckbuilding) decisions. As long as the player knows they can only generate green or colourless mana in a mono-green deck and still puts red spells in it, then it's really not the rules' fault. The rule for mana colour restriction would be crystal clear and fundamental to the game. It'd be like establishing a rule not to play <insert any bad card here> as your commander, because it would be a bad choice.
The previous incarnation, with the two rules of Mana Colour Restriction (MCR) and Card Identity Restriction (CIR), was pretty much redundant. It's almost as if the rules people were way too afraid of anything bad happening to the game. It's two rules that literally do the same thing, in effect. It made sense to remove one of these rules. So there would be two ways to do this.
Option A is to remove the MCR, which they did, so any deck can produce any mana, but you're still restricted by the types of cards you can put in your deck, based on that card's colour identity. The problem with this solution is that it arbitrarily does not allow some cards that are designed to work in mono-colour decks, most prominently hybrid cards. But it also affects other cards such as Quenchable Fire (Whether or not the card is good enough to put into a deck is irrelevant to the problem at hand.). You couldn't play Probe in a mono-blue deck, even though the kicker is optional. Try to expain to someone that even though a mechanic is optional and they wouldn't even be able to use it ever in their deck, they still can't put the card in their deck, because of some really arbitrary restriction. Same goes for Obelisk of Alara.
Option B on the other hand is to remove the CIR. Now people would be able to put any and every card in their decks. While this sounds like a huge change in theory, in practise it will have merely negligible effects, save for -a rather large- subset of cards that was designed to work in mono-coloured decks despite their technically multi-coloured behaviour. (Hybrids have to be multi-colour by execution, not by design.) Of course this change would also allow some people to play cards that seem to be "cheating" the system, such as Loam Lion in a mono-white deck or using an off-colour instant with Isochron Scepter. These cheats however require the deck-building to include cards in a deck that are next to useless unless they draw the one card in their 99 card library to make these cheats barely useful. It remains doubtful such a change would break the format.
The only things option B shuts down, that are currently possible with Option A, are mechanics like Sunburst and Converge. However, I fail to see the big issue here. These mechanics are basically "soft multicolour" mechanics. Just how you get rewarded with a bigger pool of cards to work with when you have a multicolour deck, you also get more value out of these cards. Saying that it's "odd" that you can't get full value out of multi-colour mechanics in a mono-colour deck is... mindboggling.
So basically, what they did is:
Take a second and think about that.
... You're right. It totally makes sense to frame it that way. That's a weird nook of the new rules.
In case it looks like it, no, I'm not being sarcastic here.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/108321196928/the-problem-with-hybrid-mana-is-that-even-if-a
Cheating cards in (ie paying for cards without paying their mana cost somehow) isn't the fundamental form of deckbuilding. While you can cheat stuff out, Magic is, at its core, about playing lands, with which you gain mana to cast creatures and spells. (It's not that there's no room for the more "cheaty" interactions, they're just crust to the pie.)
Hybrid is supposed to work in this very fundamental way. What you outline is really the rules about hybrid in Commander. You fail to explain why it is a good idea that it's done as such. The point of hybrid is that it can be played in any deck using either color - it is not to make a card that's multicolored for no reason. They don't begin with a card and then see if they can make it multicolored, because that's unnecessary complexity. They begin with a color-overlapping effect and design the card from there, because at its heart, that what hybrid is all about.
Personally, I don't think color pie breaks nor æsthetics are good reasons to maintain the current color identity rules, because there are a plethora of those issues even when color identity is taken into account.
Rules clarity however, tha'ts a good reason. And now they're done with Rule 4, we have a very clear and easily understandable deckbuilding ruleset.
But I've always heard that MaRo dislikes Commander and doesn't play it. I actually quite like MaRo, but I take with a grain of salt anything he says concerning Commander.
He said so himself, that he should be taken with a grain of salt, no worries Still hybrid is his design so his intent with it is a good source for what it's supposed to do.
As mentioned above, it's the two powerful abilities in tandem that makes PoK so obnoxious. If I play Vedalken Orrery, I'm basically just moving my turn to the end step of the person on my right. It's an advantage as I have more opportunities to interact with people and can play spells more safely, but I'm not really casting more spells, just casting them at a different time. Add "you untap during each player's untap to that" all of a sudden I'm taking a turn during my turn, during player 2's turn, player 3's turn, player 4's turn, etc (my group typically has games of about 3-5 people). The only thing stopping me is if I run out of cards or get my stuff countered/removed, but hey, I'm playing blue and regularly untapping. It's pretty much Easy Street in the right deck. And any experienced player playing the card is going to have the deck to exploit it. What I frequently saw at my table was "hang on, during your end step..." multiple times around the table until either the PoK was removed or the player won the game. This can really bog a game down and, personally, this is the same reason I try not to build decks with a bunch of extra turn effects, or decks that durdle with a million trivial actions while everyone else waits on me. I guess a lot of that comes down to play style, but it seems to go against the concept of a social/casual game to include a card that gives one person so much control over the flow of the game.
Not that the card itself isn't powerful for obvious reasons, but to me it's the way that power manifested in the game that took away from the "spirit of EDH" (if there is enough of a consensus that we can talk about such a thing).
Deck construction rules are pretty central to the format. If my color identity has W and not B I shouldn't be able to run a (W/B) card because the card is both W and B. That is the whole point of color identity. It is quite clear the intention of how hybrid cards are supposed to played with either types of mana, but Commander rules are quite clear on what cards can be played. I am not a detractor of Rosewater in general, but in this case he's wrong.
I don't have real problem with rule 4 going away. I can see the comparison to the baggage of mana burn. My only concern is that it opens the door for people wanting to run Bringer of the Green Dawn in a mono G deck.
...Except they can't, because it still has WUBRG in its color identity.
So what about Exploit? By a rules technicality Exploit cards are allowed in monowhite or monoblack decks because the hybrid symbol appears in reminder text and not rules text even though reminder text, with a few exceptions, reads exactly like how the rules text would if the ability was written out.
Hybrid symbols by their nature are different than regular monocolor symbols, including when two or more of the latter symbols are combined to create gold cards. Why not create a rules exception for hybrid mana specifically, where the hybrid symbol may be treated as though it were a symbol of just one color provided that doing so allows the card to remain within the scope of color identity? Then can be treated as though it was just or as opposed to and .
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Divinity of pride doesn't die to doom blade.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
But Color (not Color Identity) doesn't follow that ruling. Magic's rules determine that a card's color is always all the colors of it casting cost (barring direct exclusions like Devoid and the Pacts) and that it is all colors of Hybrid Mana Symbols as well. This has implications on gameplay, which is why Color Identity is first based on the card's original colors, then adding mana symbols to determine its identity. Changing how Hybrid Mana Symbols work doesn't change the color of the card, which in turn, doesn't change the Color Identity.
Making Hybrid cards to be truly either "Color A or Color B" is a ruling that needs to be changed by Wizards, not by the EDH Committee, because it impacts the gameplay of all formats. Supposedly we could bend it solely for deckbuilding purposes, but it feels rather awkward to have the ruling apply in deckbuilding and not in gameplay (plus, it's a step backwards in a sense that it's extra text to make EDH function like other formats in terms of deckbuilding, which is EDH's biggest difference).
EDIT: Rule 4, however was a gameplay restriction and was an additional layer added on without reliance of the "base" of a Magic Rule, which is why it could be removed without much game-shifting effects. Flavor doesn't matter in these cases, because it can be used to justify anything.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
I don't think we're going to agree on this topic, but here goes:
The RC keeps up with the functionality of the cards. It's true the creators of Hybrid could not have seen EDH, a format revolving around Color Identity, existing in the future, but fact remains the "Spirit of Hybrid design" and its actual execution were not in line (likely due to complications in rules).
The RC is not obliged to keep with the "Spirit of Design", because at the core, the format is about rules, so it has to put the "Law of the Rules" in front. Divinity of Pride is always going be immune to Doom Blade even if WWWWW was spent to cast it, be it in Legacy or EDH. The intention behind the deckbuilding restrictions is to prevent people from putting cards not of their Commander's Color Identity into the deck, no matter whether the deck is capable of casting it or not. Archive Trap can be cast by any deck for free potentially and it is still restricted to U decks because it is a Blue card.
Well, it's true that RC can change it that EDH is the only format where Divinity of Pride can be destroyed by Doom Blade if WWWWW was spent to cast it and it was cast by a Mono-W deck, which means the RC "updated and keeps in touch with the Spirit of Design of Magic", but it will create a very obvious gameplay discrepancy between EDH and all other formats. Personally, I actually don't mind if that happened (EDH already requires lots of attention, so some more memory work shouldn't be a problem), but I doubt the RC wants to create this discrepancy, since the other formats themselves have not updated and kept in touch with the "Spirit of Hybrid Design" and the RC cannot possibly update that.
Doh! Quite right. The "Ex" part threw me. That, and the similarly criminal-sounding names.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Simple rule: You can't play cards with mana symbols on them if those mana symbols aren't somewhere on your commander. It's a crystal clear rule and fundamental to commander, and you think it should go before rule 4? [edit: by "go before rule 4" I mean "be cut from commander's rules before/instead of rule 4"]
You say the two rules are pretty much the same and then illustrate how they very much are not. And I think a card's playability actually does matter here, though not quite in the way you dismiss. While Probe's kicker is optional and in a standard magic duel it would be playable in a mono-blue deck, it is clearly designed to be played in a deck that can pay its kicker (and any player would interpret it as such). So not letting Probe be played in a commander deck with a mono blue commander isn't reducing the realistic number of playable cards, because you aren't playing probe in mono blue. The loss of realistic playable cards from the CIR comes from not allowing hybrids, which is all this debate is really about. Some players think hybrids should be allowed in mono color commander decks and others don't.
No disagreement from me here on the fact that not having sunburst and converge in mono color decks isn't a big deal. But you seem to be assuming that we should be striving to allow more cards to be playable in commander decks (that is, comparing what options A and B "shut down" vs "allow"). Commander is defined by restrictions, though. Not saying that we need to add more restrictions, just that, y'know, it isn't necessarily the point to tear them down either.
Yeah, I thought about it… and it's a bit misleading. Hybrid cards were designed to be playable in mono or multi decks in a standard duel game of magic. They weren't designed with commander in mind. But anyway, the rules committee didn't change the rules on hybrids! They aren't preventing any new cards from being played. That was an existing rule. They just got rid of a rule that happens to now allow sunburst in monoblack - that wasn't the purpose of the change and will have essentially no effect on the game. This wasn't intended to be a big rule change and I don't understand the invitation to compare it to a world without the commander identity rule.
I'm not sure how my post would lead you to believe that I had any misunderstanding of color identity. Previously it was impossible for you to generate mana for any abilities/alt costs that were outside the color identity. Now that you can, people will want the rules to change even more.
It's not a technicality, it just might be a little confusing at first. The rules text is the rules text. If they did put (W/B) in the rules text for extort it couldn't be in mono W or B.
Because you can't run multicolored cards in a monocolor EDH deck. Honestly, there a quite a few SHA/EVE hybrid cards that really should have been gold cards.
This argument against Hybrid infuriates me for reasons that I have difficulty articulating. I do not understand why those opposed to Hybrid are so insistent on using the "I should be able to Doom Blade Divinity of Pride if my opponent spends five White mana on it in a Mono-W deck!" or similar arguments. You might as well be saying "Crusade should give my Eldrazi Displacer +1/+1 because I had to spend White mana to cast it!"
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At its core, Color Identity is first based on a card's Color Indicator, followed by adding (but not removing) any Mana Symbols that appear on the card. Divinity of Pride's Color Indicator is always WB, having Hybrid Mana Symbol on its casting cost changes nothing. Eldrazi Displacer's Color Identity is Colorless, but the W Symbol is added on to change its Color Identity to White.
This "insistence" is simply mirroring those who insist that Hybrid cards should be permitted just because (W/B) is in Divinity of Pride's mana cost. "Hybrid Cards" are no more than "Gold cards with an "easier" casting cost (like Transguild Courier)". They might as well be saying "Transguild Courier/Archive Trap should be permitted in Mono-B decks because the deck can cast it."
There is simply no reason for allowing Hybrid Cards (note this doesn't include non-Hybrid cards with Hybrid Mana Symbols elsewhere, like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death) to be put into decks that only share one color with the card. No more reason than allowing Gold Cards for the same reason.
So, Color Indicator is all that matters for interaction - Crusade doesn't give Eldrazi Displacer +1/+1 because its Color Indicator is Colorless - it's Color Identity additional requirements that restricts it to W decks. Divinity of Pride being immune to Doom Blade and Sunlance is because it is a WB card and hence by it's "base colors" it can only be put into WB decks.