I would no longer be able to play a graveyard deck without 3 opponents bringing in 2-5 gy hate cards each. I would stop playing graveyard decks.
Same could be said for artifact decks. I admit that I stopped playing Bane of Progress, but it would be in so many sideboards, along with all the mass artifact hate.
I think sideboards would create narrower metas that are resistant to hate, in the long run.
Impossible: The original deck list that this pick-up list of sideboard cards would be used for, does it currently play large amounts of land destruction and/or stax pieces? If so, I think it is difficult to use such a list as a good judge against being for or against sideboarding as it will already skew towards cards and strategies that are questionable at best (when compared against the social philosophies the format is targeted towards).
Zygous: This sideboard list looks great, and I am sure mine would be similar-looking for each of my decks. I will try to find time to create my own mock-up sideboard list.
Dunharrow: As a counterpoint to your thought that sideboard would create stagnant (or as you said, narrower) metas, I would actually think that they would breath life into metas as decks that typically reign supreme could now be more easily reeled in more often due to tables being able to be prepared against them with any deck they want to play, rather than having to always use a different or more specific deck that may normally be an inherently bad matchup. Also, I really believe that sideboard could be used to easily swap in or out combo cards or tutors or other similar cards specifically to more easily control the power level of their decks on the fly, rather than needing a different deck for every table/group.
Impossible: The original deck list that this pick-up list of sideboard cards would be used for, does it currently play large amounts of land destruction and/or stax pieces? If so, I think it is difficult to use such a list as a good judge against being for or against sideboarding as it will already skew towards cards and strategies that are questionable at best (when compared against the social philosophies the format is targeted towards).
I don't believe I've ever posted the full list anywhere so might as well:
If you're wondering about the mix of basics and snow-basics, I couldn't bring myself to take out the Rebecca Guay lands.
So no, it doesn't play any MLD because the deck is ultimately a 'lands.dec' deck, so blowing up my own lands is counter-productive. However, with a sideboard that I can access before and during a game (via wishes) I will absolutely blow up some of my own Islands/Forests/Plains to destroy a mono-colored player's manabase, or wish for an Armageddon once I have Marit Lage in play. As for your other question, I don't know what you consider a stax piece, but the deck does already include some powerful hosers like Stony Silence and Torpor Orb, and a few Solemnity combos.
As you can see, it's not a particularly cutthroat deck. I just want to durdle behind a Glacial Chasm + Solemnity and make Marit Lages. Plural. Because you can never have enough Marit Lage. And also because people always kill the first one.
Not to suggest I'm an advocate of the pure hate sideboard being discussed here, but the perfectly reasonable sideboard of possible dead cards is the real reason why I don't like wishes in this format. Wishes aren't just tutors, they're way better than tutors in same ways.
Playing magic involves overcoming your opponents, but to do so you have to overcome variance. Basically all of the crazy, memorable plays come from one or both of these things, either an epic back and forth with an opponent or a play that needed a bunch of unlikely pieces to fall into place to happen. A narrow answer, like Molten Disaster to take an example from Zygous' hypothetical sideboard, is perfectly situated to hit both these roles. It's a big blowout when people have a creature based lock setup, and you need to have access to it at just that time. It just makes that "Ohhhhhh!" moment. Tutors already diminish the excitement, you didn't happen to mise the perfect answer, you just searched for it, but at least you're being rewarded for playing the card. Wishes go even further than that.
For example:
a) somebody plays Cultural Exchange to steal your board. You windmill slam Brand for the outrageous blowout. The crowd goes wild.
b) Somebody plays Cultural Exchange. On your turn, you Demonic Tutor for Brand for the blowout. You don't really get the excitement of the windmill slam, but people are still amazed that you had that in your deck tutor for.
c) Somebody plays Cultural Exchange. You Cunning Wish to dig through your sideboard to find the Brand that wasn't worth a deck slot, and people are probably more irritated than impressed.
Why do I think people aren't impressed? Because the Wish player took no risk. High risk/ high reward plays are exciting. Putting a narrow answer in your deck comes at the risk of it being a dead card, and that makes the reward of finding the opportunity to use it that much better. The same goes for something like an expensive threat. Playing Progenitus from your hand is mostly commendable because you had it in your deck to begin with. That risks it being a dead card, or getting Bribery'd out of your deck. You deserve that protection from everything. Wishing for cards means you only have to see them when they are powerful, which just wipes away the hardest deckbuilding decisions and sidesteps variance altogether.
People already aren't fond of Insurrection for the win as it can be 1 card out of nowhere win the game, but at least you have to put it in your deck, risk the dead card or Knowledge Exploitation, find it at the right time when your opponents have lethal board presence, generate the 8 mana to cast it, and sneak through any answers your opponents might have to it. Even if you tutored for the Insurrection, that is a well earned win that should be congratulated. Wishing for the card because it happens to win the game that turn... is a bit of a letdown.
Not to say I don't appreciate the benefits. You can certainly extend the "rewarded for including the card" effect to sideboards while playing 8-dimensional chess with your meta, and you can get really wild with what you include that way, but then people don't have to play wild thing in their main deck and that's really depressing. I could pull half a wish board worth of nonsense cards out of Zedruu and just put in Golden Wish instead, and then not have to deal with the puzzle of trying to survive my own insanity. Who wants to sit through my nonsense win conditions when I didn't even have the dignity to play them in my deck?
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My view on wishes is that they are a 'create your own' split card or charm. Even if you make all 15 (or 10) cards in your sideboard the appropriate type to be fetched with a wish, the wish can still only choose from one those cards. A tutor can choose from all the cards in my library giving it way more targets.
I know that many cards in the deck will be unintersting lands that will never be fetched with a tutor, but a single tutor nodoubt has way more quality targets in my 99 card deck then a wish does. The wish having to grab a sideboard card is kind of a weakness because any card that you can get with a wish is going to be one of the weaker versions of that effect, since you should be playing your best version of that spell in the main.
For example, Demonic Tutor can fetch my best card; the best ramp spell, the best card draw spell, the best piece of removal, or the best bomb creature to end the game with. Take that same eeck that plays Demonic Tutor also plays Burning Wish. I'm not going to be able to wish for Damnation, Toxic Deluge, or Decree of Pain since those will all be in the 99 and accessible by Demonic Tutor. So, I have to run my 4th or 5th best wrath in the sideboard, just to be able to get Black Sun's Zenith in a pinch.
Can a wish get a very narrow card that could be a blowout in a certain situation, sure; but those cards actually do cost sideboard slots so if somebody happens to have Brand in board for the blowout, then they made a metacall to put a dedicated anti-steal card in their board. Are you going to continue to keep a sideboard card in your deck game after game when it's only going to be useful or wished for in 1 game out of 100? I don't think players are going to play SUPER narrow cards and will instead opt for relatively strong cards that for some reason or another they are not maindeck worthy.
I don't think players are going to play SUPER narrow cards and will instead opt for relatively strong cards that for some reason or another they are not maindeck worthy.
That's the point of a wishboard. It's full of cards that are only good a marginal amount of the time, but when they're good they're absurdly good. Nobody in their right mind would maindeck Teferi's Response because 9 out of 10 games it will just be a dead draw. But being able to wish for it with a Terastodon trigger on the stack will be one of the best feelings in the world. That's a 6 for 1!
It makes significantly more sense to run a wishboard of silver bullets that are great at one specific thing than to run a sideboard of 15 cards that are just worse versions of cards that are already in your deck. If you're already playing a bunch of good Wrath of God effects in your deck, are you seriously going to put Kirtar's Wrath in your sideboard?
Nobody in their right mind would maindeck Teferi's Response because 9 out of 10 games it will just be a dead draw. But being able to wish for it with a Terastodon trigger on the stack will be one of the best feelings in the world. That's a 6 for 1!
So you're saying you're using 6 cards to answer 1 card of your opponent's?
I kid, but I don't see how Teferi's Response on a T-don is a 1 for 6. You use 1 card to save 3 and answer 1. It's a 1-for-1 that prevents a 1-for-3.
Nobody in their right mind would maindeck Teferi's Response because 9 out of 10 games it will just be a dead draw. But being able to wish for it with a Terastodon trigger on the stack will be one of the best feelings in the world. That's a 6 for 1!
So you're saying you're using 6 cards to answer 1 card of your opponent's?
I kid, but I don't see how Teferi's Response on a T-don is a 1 for 6. You use 1 card to save 3 and answer 1. It's a 1-for-1 that prevents a 1-for-3.
Teferi's Response has more text on it than just the counter part, it draws 2 cards as well. That card is ridiculously narrow, but it's also pretty great if you ever actually get to cast it. It's a pet card of mine if you couldn't tell. =P
Nobody in their right mind would maindeck Teferi's Response because 9 out of 10 games it will just be a dead draw. But being able to wish for it with a Terastodon trigger on the stack will be one of the best feelings in the world. That's a 6 for 1!
So you're saying you're using 6 cards to answer 1 card of your opponent's?
I kid, but I don't see how Teferi's Response on a T-don is a 1 for 6. You use 1 card to save 3 and answer 1. It's a 1-for-1 that prevents a 1-for-3.
Teferi's Response has more text on it than just the counter part, it draws 2 cards as well. That card is ridiculously narrow, but it's also pretty great if you ever actually get to cast it. It's a pet card of mine if you couldn't tell. =P
Yeah, its like a 3 for 1? You trade this and the elephant token you would have gotten for keeping your land, destroying Tdon, and drawing two cards. 4 for 2? Depends on how you count the elephant I guess, so 4 for 2 is right, but it feels more like a 3 for 1 because the real value you put out is the card in hand, and the value you get is your land, their fatty, and two cards in hand, while the 3/3 is negligible. Its an absurd amount of value for 2 mana. If its not Tdon, but something like Helldozer or returning Woodfall Primus, its a 4 for 1 straight up, since you aren't forgoing an elephant.
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Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
This is like a particularly weird thing to be caught up on considering the discussion was about sideboards/wishboards. Response kills Terastodon (1-1) then draws 2 cards (3-1). It also counters the land-destroying ability of Terastodon, 'gaining' you 3 lands you wouldn't otherwise have (6-1). It wasn't really that hard to figure out what I was talking about. The point was that Teferi's Response is emblematic of the kind of narrow but powerful cards you're likely to find in sideboards/wishboards if they were legal.
I've got my doubts about Teferi's Response being cast in any game that isn't mental magic, but if the concern is super niche cards being used to 6-for-1, then we may be able to make some modifications to the original idea.
Let's only look at this from the wish perspective, we'll fill in the other aspects of sideboards later. Right now we have wishes are legal in commander but the legal sideboard size is 0. Imagine if the RC made the sideboard size 1. Wishes are still unplayable, because you can wish only for the single card that you have sdieboarded. You're deck is just improved upon by putting that single card in the slot of the wish and not having a sideboard. Wishes don't actually get interesting until the sideboard size is more then 2 cards, but at 2 cards wishes just become a create your own split card. At 3 cards, it's a charm. At 4, a command. Heck, you can go all the way up to the maximum sideboard size is 20,000 cards, and then wishes would function according to the official rules for unsanctioned play.
Where I'm going with this is that maybe 15 cards is too large a sideboard size for EDH, because players have enough room in their board to consider slotting in some super narrow spell that will only be useful in an extremely small portion of their games. I think having a smaller sideboard, maybe 4-8 cards, would pressure extremely niche cards out of boards. The fact that you have very few cards you can move between the board and main makes you want to choose cards that will be very impactful in many types of games, rather then having a weird card or two gather dust in the sideboard until you find the one miracle moment to wish for them or side them in.
In general, sideboards are so outside of the box for normal EDH that none of us can really say what would happen if the RC made them legal. Does it make fix the format and make it the utopia of magic or does it destroy the format in the doomsday scenario? Probably neither tbh, I'd expect it to be better in some ways and worse in other ways.
I do want to add a second topic to the discussion and bring up Impossible's Solemnity deck. During spoiler season, that card was a hot topic of how it would be the new most oppressive card in EDH, but dsicussion of it died off completely after it became legal, so I'm curious as to how it performs. Can you answer some questions for me?
1. How often do you win from the Solemnity + Decree of Silence combo?
2. Has that combo ever been disrupted by an uncounterable spell or land?
3. Do players usually just fold to it or do they usually sit through it and attempt to draw go until you can really win?
4. Has another player ever used your Solemnity as a combo piece to combo out with their cards?
I've got my doubts about Teferi's Response being cast in any game that isn't mental magic
For the record, I have cast Teferi's Response in an actual game of EDH to counter a Strip Mine activation. Not the ideal use of it, but I'm just saying it happens is all. Let's not all go poo-pooing T-Response without having tried it.
I do want to add a second topic to the discussion and bring up Impossible's Solemnity deck. During spoiler season, that card was a hot topic of how it would be the new most oppressive card in EDH, but dsicussion of it died off completely after it became legal, so I'm curious as to how it performs. Can you answer some questions for me?
1. How often do you win from the Solemnity + Decree of Silence combo?
2. Has that combo ever been disrupted by an uncounterable spell or land?
3. Do players usually just fold to it or do they usually sit through it and attempt to draw go until you can really win?
4. Has another player ever used your Solemnity as a combo piece to combo out with their cards?
The Decree of Silence was a recent addition. Originally, I felt that Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis might lend itself too well to a stax-lite approach with bunch of Wildfire type effects so I tried to avoid cards I thought might be too oppressive. So Solemnity + Glacial Chasm/Dark Depths was the limit I was willing to go to initially, as it didn't actually stop the opponent from playing the game. But people at the LGS are catching on and I needed a way to just lock up a game quickly. Anyways, I've only played about 4-ish games with Decree in the deck, and of those only once have I cast it with a Solemnity in play. At that point in the game I had Marit Lage in play and a way to recur lands indefinitely (Crucible of Worlds I think) so everyone scooped.
TL:DR
1. About 25% so far
2. No
3. Usually scoop
4. No. If anything it annoys everyone else. Suck it, Avenger of Zendikar tokens. Forever 0/1s.
I feel I am not understanding the argument being presented against having sideboards because people will possibly cram narrow usage/niche powerful cards into them. Why is this an issue at all? In my opinion, this could be seen as a positive as it would add even more diversity to the number of cards seeing possible play that just don't pull their weight in a main deck. What are the downsides to this?
I feel I am not understanding the argument being presented against having sideboards because people will possibly cram narrow usage/niche powerful cards into them. Why is this an issue at all? In my opinion, this could be seen as a positive as it would add even more diversity to the number of cards seeing possible play that just don't pull their weight in a main deck. What are the downsides to this?
I feel that I have mispoken and that has cuased some confusion. When I was originally thinking about "niche" cards I was thinking of the powerful color hosers that were listed earlier as a reason not to have sideboards. Even if you're very unlikely to run into a monowhite deck and even if they are not going to lose every land they have in play to Flashfires, that card is still a very mean card to play. It's almost always going to be a huge blow to their manabase just because they happened to choose to play a monocolor general. It's still possible for them to recover and win or be so ahead that they win with cards already in play, but Flashfires will usually be the thing that takes the white deck out of the game for good.
Foruntatly, it's a seldom seen card as of now. If I look up brutal color hosers on EDHREC, they tend to be in a tiny amount of decklists. It's not an insane conclusion to assume that if they could be played in sideboards and only sided in against particular monodecks, that they would see increased play. You get all the power of an Ajani Vengeant ult for 4 mana against anyone foolish to try and make a monowhite deck.
Those are the kind of cards I think of what I said niche earlier, the hosers. There are many narrow cards that aren't as dedicatedly hateful as Flashfires that I'd love to see in sideboards, Ugin's Nexus for example.
a) The ability to play silver bullets in the sideboard and not have to worry about games where they aren't relevant allows people to hate out decks they don't like without weakening their own deck. That's where all the land hate falls, cards that might be very dead in hand but also might just win the game, you only have to see them when they matter. With the insularity of most edh groups, it's like free reign to put personal attacks in your deck without consequence.
b)Nobody would play the cards in their maindeck. In this discussion, we have at least one player that has used Teferi's Response in a maindeck, and if Cunning Wish functioned, that would never be the case.
You can argue that there would be diversity added to the card pool, but for every card people sleeve up for a sideboard that they wouldn't have otherwise, there's a card in their mainboard being moved to the sideboard because if they can wish for their niche cards they can make their maindeck more focused goodstuff. Whether to play narrow but powerful cards in your deck is a difficult personal decision that can account for a lot of the differences when when 2 people build the same deck, so secretly, adding sideboards is the path to uniformity rather than diversity.
Those are the kind of cards I think of what I said niche earlier, the hosers. There are many narrow cards that aren't as dedicatedly hateful as Flashfires that I'd love to see in sideboards, Ugin's Nexus for example.
1484 decks on edhrec have managed to use Ugin's Nexus just fine. Imagine how much less often it would see play if people didn't have to draw it when they're opponent's lack time magic.
1. How often do you win from the Solemnity + Decree of Silence combo?
2. Has that combo ever been disrupted by an uncounterable spell or land?
3. Do players usually just fold to it or do they usually sit through it and attempt to draw go until you can really win?
4. Has another player ever used your Solemnity as a combo piece to combo out with their cards?
I've only assembled Solemnity + Decree twice since adding Solemnity to my Narset pillowfort deck, but I also don't play the deck that frequently.
The first time I did it, the table scooped. The second time, I already had Solemnity + Delaying Shield (which had caused the Marchesa 1.0 player to scoop), but the Mairsil player was confident he could still combo out and win against me. And, in fact, he did combo the turn after I flipped Decree... but by that point I had Island Sanctuary and two Greater Auramancy (one was a Copy Enchantment). He couldn't resolve Cyclonic Rift through the Decree, and while he could steal all of my mana rocks and lands (infinite colored mana + Memnarch), he couldn't steal any of my pillowfort pieces. My Narset was going to die to my Pendrell Mists on my upkeep, but all I had to do was skip my draw step and pass the turn, waiting for Mairsil to deck out.
There are many narrow cards that aren't as dedicatedly hateful as Flashfires that I'd love to see in sideboards, Ugin's Nexus for example.
I happily maindeck Ugin's Nexus in my Karn deck. In fact, until I removed Mirrorworks from the list, it was part of an infinite turn combo: play Ugin's Nexus, respond to Mirrorworks trigger by animating with Karn and bouncing with Erratic Portal, create Mirrorworks token copy, sacrifice the token to something like Krark-Clan Ironworks, Phyrexia's Core, etc.
I don't see a problem with cards like Tefiri's Response, and other narrow answer cards, being moved from the few maindecks they sit in into sideboards. Overall, the number played will increase, and they don't ruin the game when played. Most of the time, they will be solid plays, occasionally big splashy plays in the right circumstances (T Response against a strip mine is solid, but T-Response against Dustbowl is :sunny:).
The issue really is with the Flashfires and Tsunamis of the world. Adding sideboards would require, imo, either banning those cards outright or banning them from sideboards, outright being more likely as its less confusing. Allowing them would introduce a toxic element to the format that reduces deck diversity and creates bad blood. At least currently sticking a Tsunami in your deck, while still a personal attack, can at least be somewhat justified in that as you are willing to risk is being a dead card if nobody plays blue or only plays a 3 color deck with few islands in order to have an answer against whatever blue deck you put it in to deal with. That deck scares you enough you are willing to generally weaken your deck to fight it, in the same way you might stick grafdigger's cage in a deck to deal with a graveyard deck. With wishboards, you could have access to all those silver bullets with absolutely no drawback, as you could devote a slot or two to whatever generally useful card you cut in favor of the wish in case any of the hate isn't relevant. Then you could just have Flashfires sitting in the board ready to make the Darien player have a bad night with absolutely no risk to yourself. Hell, you have an incentive by the 15 slots to include a wider range of hate, so while you might include Tsunami main deck to derail Azami if you get an opening to cast it, you now also get to include other powerful hosers to other strategies that would have never made your main deck because those strategies were never pressing enough threats. While you may have been able to justify setting Azami back several turns because they'd combo off otherwise, locking out Darien is just mean. Increasing the ease at which a player could just shut down single opponents would, to me, create an undesirable game state. I have no problem whatsoever with stax, mld, or the like, but I do have a problem with just screwing one person out of the game: that should only happen accidentally, such as if the table recovers more quickly than you intend from a MLD card except for one guy or a combination of cards around the table ends up locking someone out, or in rare cases if you make card selections that weaken your deck overall in order to take down the whale at the table, because that guy is basically playing archenemy every time he sits down (or girl, which is really the only time I've done this intentionally, because she chose to run tuned Nekusar every time we wanted to play casual decks. She was "that guy").
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Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Here is an interesting question: Do you view the highly degenerate cards that "elimainte one player" to just be type specific land destruction, such as Flashfires?
What do you think of cards like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Identity Crisis, Hall of Gemstone, or Iona, Shield of Emeria? These cards are more or less main deck tier cards, where the color hosers are not main deck quality cards. The listed cards aren't always as one sided as something like Flashfires, but can often result in one player (or more) being heavily hosed or out staxed so that for them to continue normal play is almost impossible.
Now, some cards do have options for countering if you know those cards exist in your meta. Blood Moon can be overcome by just adding more basics to your manabase. Hall and Iona don't really have ways you can counter them outside of having a kill spell that you can cast past them.
Here is an interesting question: Do you view the highly degenerate cards that "elimainte one player" to just be type specific land destruction, such as Flashfires?
What do you think of cards like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Identity Crisis, Hall of Gemstone, or Iona, Shield of Emeria? These cards are more or less main deck tier cards, where the color hosers are not main deck quality cards. The listed cards aren't always as one sided as something like Flashfires, but can often result in one player (or more) being heavily hosed or out staxed so that for them to continue normal play is almost impossible.
Now, some cards do have options for countering if you know those cards exist in your meta. Blood Moon can be overcome by just adding more basics to your manabase. Hall and Iona don't really have ways you can counter them outside of having a kill spell that you can cast past them.
I heard the magic word (Iona) and so I'm back. People who have seen my POV is probably sick of hearing this again, but if there's anyone new - here's the summarized version - Iona in particular is a unique combination of effects that has me personally convinced it should be banned regardless of actual usage statistics, basically being composed of "Choose a Color" allows it to be main-deckable (bypassing the currently no-sideboard state of the format) and "can't cast spells" being one of the highest orders of stax. Combined it's almost an insult to the color identity pillar of the format and being one of the highest orders of stax, it becomes even worse than "eliminate one player" - it's "inverse archenemy". Granted, actual statistics shows that usage of Iona isn't high and the possibility of the "inverse archenemy" situation is even lower as a result, the very idea the card alone is capable of invoking it to me goes against the "spirit of the format" in various ways (as I said it almost insults the color identity pillar and "inverse archenemy" is quite also pretty much one against the multiplayer pillar of the format, since multiplayer is supposed to encourage typical archenemy scenarios to counterbalance the more powerful plays available in the format). Or to be more exact, it uses one pillar (color identity) to undermine another (multiplayer) and that annoys me in theory more than most other cards.
Just to preempt the typical "counter-arguments" so this thread doesn't sidetrack to a SCD - since I view the card as offending the fundamentals of the format, mana costs don't matter (it could cost Progenitus mana and my opinion doesn't change). As mentioned earlier I don't take low usage statistics into account for such cards either (which is why I no longer counter the mana cost point with the typical reanimator strategies), but I do understand why the overall situation is why the RC doesn't want to ban the card. There's also the "silver bullets" (Scour from Existence/Spine of Ish Sah) arguments for mono-colored decks, but my view that it's more likely when "inverse archenemy" occurs, the player doesn't always have the necessary answers (or used them up, since they tend to be flexible) and is likely deprived of the means of finding them / getting them back, so I don't take the silver bullets as a natural "counter" to the "inverse archenemy" scenario when it does happen. There's a whole lot more reasoning from various parties in the SCD thread for Iona, so go there to have a look (chances are we've exhausted almost every angle from that thread anyway).
Now onto something different - non-basics have traditionally been different from other forms of streamlined hate, because there's a good chance when the hate appears it inconveniences enough players that it creates the typical "Archenemy" scenario (there's a good chance the player playing the hate got around it, although some don't mind inconveniencing themselves somewhat as a meta-play of sorts because of the very scenario I'm saying here). Even when it doesn't, it probably inconveniences everyone (or the strongest player of the meoment) enough for someone to decide to get rid of it - rarely does it successfully lock out everyone else for long and even when it does - I think most people manage to secure their victory timely enough for the others to consider it "slightly worse than abruptly combo-winning" (and a lot less frequent than combos in more competitive metas for sure). Yes, in a way it's like an infinite-turns deck, except its less likely to happen because it's not like the entire deck was built around it and it relies on getting past the many-people-inconvenienced factor, which means its unlikely the deck in question was designed to be a durdle-fest should this rare scenario happen (as opposed to a deck designed for infinite-turns being more susceptible to it).
Here is an interesting question: Do you view the highly degenerate cards that "elimainte one player" to just be type specific land destruction, such as Flashfires?
What do you think of cards like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Identity Crisis, Hall of Gemstone, or Iona, Shield of Emeria? These cards are more or less main deck tier cards, where the color hosers are not main deck quality cards. The listed cards aren't always as one sided as something like Flashfires, but can often result in one player (or more) being heavily hosed or out staxed so that for them to continue normal play is almost impossible.
Now, some cards do have options for countering if you know those cards exist in your meta. Blood Moon can be overcome by just adding more basics to your manabase. Hall and Iona don't really have ways you can counter them outside of having a kill spell that you can cast past them.
Those cards (exception Iona, she can eat a ban) can sometimes imitate Flashfires effects under the right circumstances, many cards/combos can. The key is "under the right circumstances". Flashfires et al are usually that bad, the cards you mentioned aren't. Lets look.
Non basic land hate punishes greedy mana bases the most and spares mono color and basic land heavy the most. This is reasonable: running mono color covers fewer bases and makes decks more vulnerable to things the color can't fight, while going heavy basics leaves out powerful non basics and in multicolor decks gives you a riskier mana base more prone to color screw. Flashfires effects do the opposite: they reward greedy mana bases while punishing mono color and basics. Non basic land hate punches up, Flashfires punches down. Worse yet, non basic land hate usually hits most of the table, and usually leaves the hit players still able to play unless they are running nothing but non basics (and often hits mono color decks, because there are plenty of good non basics that mono color decks run). Flashfires effects typically hit one or two players, and if they are mono color absolutely wipe them out. Non basic land hate hits more broadly, while Flashfires effects hit more narrowly, and often hit harder.
Identity Crisis doesn't even belong in this conversation. Discard plus grave hate is much easier to recover from than getting all your lands wiped. Yes, it puts one player in topdeck mode, so do many cards. But once that player draws something, they can cast it, and that's the difference. By the time you can cast it, its also not even that big a play most of the time. 6 mana targeted discard to get a few cards and wipe a graveyard? Its really only good against grave decks, at which point you'd rather have RiP or similar, and decks that sit on 17 card grips. The former will just dump cards into their yard again, the latter will refill their hand. At worst, its a significant setback but doesn't come close to shutting someone out, but usually its just not that effective.
Hall of gemstone is special because its a weaker version of NBL hate, in that even the decks most effected by it can still get rid of it on their turn. Most answers to it are mono color, and you get to choose what color is available on your turn, so you can cast them. The more colors a deck runs, the more signets and other color mana producing artifacts it tends to contain as well, so the more likely the deck will be able to cast multicolored spells and spells of different colors anyway. Even if you don't have answers, and you don't get your mana rocks, it still just slows you down by limiting what color cards you can cast each turn and stops you from getting your commander (which is fine, just like Nevermore is fine, because commanders need answers), and does so to everyone who isn't mono color, which is usually not just you. You still get to play, you still get to cast spells.
Iona is the only card you mentioned that I'd put in line with Flashfires effects, but because its maindeckable I think its worse. Iona is already as bad, if not worse, that Flashfires et al would be out of wishboards, because there is no risk in running her. She's good, she's always good, and she regularly stops people from playing and punches down by hitting mono color hardest. Flashfires et al have a place as hate cards for metas that skew to one color. When everyone is playing blue, busting out Tsunami is tech. Noticing that all your friends are playing decks with W/X and hitting Flashfires is fine. Iona never has to be a meta call, she's just always on, and always a feel bad.
Private Mod Note
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Thanks for the post Onering, it's a really great summary of how those cards are powerful but fair.
On an entirely different subject: It's been almost a year since the RC removed rule 4, which was the rule that prevented off color mana generation in decks. It took some digging to find the old school rules change that introduced solor identity as a concept. (Check it out here: http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5200&sid=43ffc6ad82c5d1e87c875a3094fb1fd7)
Some of you may remember that the rules for deck color meant that all cards had to be the same color or colors as the commander, so if you had a black commander. Only black cards, but cards were evaluated strictly based on their color. So you could play Bringer of Black Dawn in your mono black deck or Quenchable Fire in your monored deck.
It looks as if the change to color identity was primarily a way to bring cards that previously didn't work into the format. However, drawing the line at manasymbols on cards does leave some cards, like the Bringers, cards with 2 extra colors of kicker, artifacts with colored backs etc. Are just out in the cold where the rules previously used to allow for them to exist in decks that played less then all of their colors.
I'm entertaining a though experiement in which the color identity rules are reverted, but rule 4 remains gone. Basically, you could only play cards that shared a color with your commander, so that G/W cat tribal deck can now play Mtenda Lion and your mono white equipment deck can play Bringer of the White Dawn, while at the same time the very cards that the color identity rules change sought to bring into the format can still exist as playable generals, because their decks can still add the colored mana needed to activate their generals, which is going to be a burden born by the crazy amount of good manarocks and lands we've gotten since 2010.
I don't see this change being universally popular, since it would only strip extra color identities from cards, but it also doesn't add 1-4 extra color identities to cards that could be played a monocolor deck either. In theory, the majority of commander decks feel nothing based on this rule change and a few cards win while a few lose, but the losers are still legal cards and can function in games, the decks just need to be adjusted.
I'm entertaining a though experiement in which the color identity rules are reverted, but rule 4 remains gone. Basically, you could only play cards that shared a color with your commander, so that G/W cat tribal deck can now play Mtenda Lion and your mono white equipment deck can play Bringer of the White Dawn, while at the same time the very cards that the color identity rules change sought to bring into the format can still exist as playable generals, because their decks can still add the colored mana needed to activate their generals, which is going to be a burden born by the crazy amount of good manarocks and lands we've gotten since 2010.
I don't see this change being universally popular, since it would only strip extra color identities from cards, but it also doesn't add 1-4 extra color identities to cards that could be played a monocolor deck either. In theory, the majority of commander decks feel nothing based on this rule change and a few cards win while a few lose, but the losers are still legal cards and can function in games, the decks just need to be adjusted.
So legendaries like Tasigur, Alesha, ect would now be mono colored? Lol.
I'm entertaining a though experiement in which the color identity rules are reverted, but rule 4 remains gone. Basically, you could only play cards that shared a color with your commander, so that G/W cat tribal deck can now play Mtenda Lion and your mono white equipment deck can play Bringer of the White Dawn, while at the same time the very cards that the color identity rules change sought to bring into the format can still exist as playable generals, because their decks can still add the colored mana needed to activate their generals, which is going to be a burden born by the crazy amount of good manarocks and lands we've gotten since 2010.
I don't see this change being universally popular, since it would only strip extra color identities from cards, but it also doesn't add 1-4 extra color identities to cards that could be played a monocolor deck either. In theory, the majority of commander decks feel nothing based on this rule change and a few cards win while a few lose, but the losers are still legal cards and can function in games, the decks just need to be adjusted.
So legendaries like Tasigur, Alesha, ect would now be mono colored? Lol.
I think this is the biggest problem with that idea. Sure, you get some cards like the all-powerfull Mtenda Lion that every green deck wants to play, but then you make Memnarch and Bosh, Iron Golem colorless. Yes, you can still use their abilities but now your deck construction takes a hit because you can't include basics. And Alesha can't run White and Black cards. Tasigur can't run Blue and Green. So, now they can be run in any deck running red or black respectively which increases their utuility in the 99 but they lose a ton of utility as generals which probably gets them pretty close to being unplayable as generals.
I would no longer be able to play a graveyard deck without 3 opponents bringing in 2-5 gy hate cards each. I would stop playing graveyard decks.
Same could be said for artifact decks. I admit that I stopped playing Bane of Progress, but it would be in so many sideboards, along with all the mass artifact hate.
I think sideboards would create narrower metas that are resistant to hate, in the long run.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Zygous: This sideboard list looks great, and I am sure mine would be similar-looking for each of my decks. I will try to find time to create my own mock-up sideboard list.
Dunharrow: As a counterpoint to your thought that sideboard would create stagnant (or as you said, narrower) metas, I would actually think that they would breath life into metas as decks that typically reign supreme could now be more easily reeled in more often due to tables being able to be prepared against them with any deck they want to play, rather than having to always use a different or more specific deck that may normally be an inherently bad matchup. Also, I really believe that sideboard could be used to easily swap in or out combo cards or tutors or other similar cards specifically to more easily control the power level of their decks on the fly, rather than needing a different deck for every table/group.
1 Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis
Lands
1 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Krosan Verge
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
1 Breeding Pool
1 Temple Garden
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 Canopy Vista
1 Prairie Stream
1 Cinder Glade
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Frontier Bivouac
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Mystic Monastery
1 Azorius Chancery
1 Boros Garrison
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Izzet Boilerworks
2 Plains
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Forest
1 Command Tower
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Dark Depths
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Drownyard Temple
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Ramunap Excavator
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Mina and Denn, Wildborn
1 Sun Titan
1 Ulvenwald Hydra
Artifacts
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Thaumatic Compass
1 Torpor Orb
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Horn of Greed
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Ghirapur Orrery
1 Alhammarret's Archive
Enchantments
1 Exploration
1 Burgeoning
1 Stony Silence
1 Prismatic Omen
1 Solemnity
1 Delaying Shield
1 Pendrell Mists
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Zendikar Resurgent
1 Decree of Silence
Planeswalkers
1 Dack Fayden
1 Nahiri, the Harbinger
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Path to Exile
1 Teferi's Response
1 Arcane Denial
1 Realms Uncharted
1 Dismiss
1 Cyclonic Rift
Sorceries
1 Farseek
1 Life from the Loam
1 Calming Verse
1 Splendid Reclamation
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 Rout
1 Hour of Promise
1 Vandalblast
1 Seasons Past
1 Blasphemous Act
If you're wondering about the mix of basics and snow-basics, I couldn't bring myself to take out the Rebecca Guay lands.
As you can see, it's not a particularly cutthroat deck. I just want to durdle behind a Glacial Chasm + Solemnity and make Marit Lages. Plural. Because you can never have enough Marit Lage. And also because people always kill the first one.
Playing magic involves overcoming your opponents, but to do so you have to overcome variance. Basically all of the crazy, memorable plays come from one or both of these things, either an epic back and forth with an opponent or a play that needed a bunch of unlikely pieces to fall into place to happen. A narrow answer, like Molten Disaster to take an example from Zygous' hypothetical sideboard, is perfectly situated to hit both these roles. It's a big blowout when people have a creature based lock setup, and you need to have access to it at just that time. It just makes that "Ohhhhhh!" moment. Tutors already diminish the excitement, you didn't happen to mise the perfect answer, you just searched for it, but at least you're being rewarded for playing the card. Wishes go even further than that.
For example:
a) somebody plays Cultural Exchange to steal your board. You windmill slam Brand for the outrageous blowout. The crowd goes wild.
b) Somebody plays Cultural Exchange. On your turn, you Demonic Tutor for Brand for the blowout. You don't really get the excitement of the windmill slam, but people are still amazed that you had that in your deck tutor for.
c) Somebody plays Cultural Exchange. You Cunning Wish to dig through your sideboard to find the Brand that wasn't worth a deck slot, and people are probably more irritated than impressed.
Why do I think people aren't impressed? Because the Wish player took no risk. High risk/ high reward plays are exciting. Putting a narrow answer in your deck comes at the risk of it being a dead card, and that makes the reward of finding the opportunity to use it that much better. The same goes for something like an expensive threat. Playing Progenitus from your hand is mostly commendable because you had it in your deck to begin with. That risks it being a dead card, or getting Bribery'd out of your deck. You deserve that protection from everything. Wishing for cards means you only have to see them when they are powerful, which just wipes away the hardest deckbuilding decisions and sidesteps variance altogether.
People already aren't fond of Insurrection for the win as it can be 1 card out of nowhere win the game, but at least you have to put it in your deck, risk the dead card or Knowledge Exploitation, find it at the right time when your opponents have lethal board presence, generate the 8 mana to cast it, and sneak through any answers your opponents might have to it. Even if you tutored for the Insurrection, that is a well earned win that should be congratulated. Wishing for the card because it happens to win the game that turn... is a bit of a letdown.
Not to say I don't appreciate the benefits. You can certainly extend the "rewarded for including the card" effect to sideboards while playing 8-dimensional chess with your meta, and you can get really wild with what you include that way, but then people don't have to play wild thing in their main deck and that's really depressing. I could pull half a wish board worth of nonsense cards out of Zedruu and just put in Golden Wish instead, and then not have to deal with the puzzle of trying to survive my own insanity. Who wants to sit through my nonsense win conditions when I didn't even have the dignity to play them in my deck?
My view on wishes is that they are a 'create your own' split card or charm. Even if you make all 15 (or 10) cards in your sideboard the appropriate type to be fetched with a wish, the wish can still only choose from one those cards. A tutor can choose from all the cards in my library giving it way more targets.
I know that many cards in the deck will be unintersting lands that will never be fetched with a tutor, but a single tutor nodoubt has way more quality targets in my 99 card deck then a wish does. The wish having to grab a sideboard card is kind of a weakness because any card that you can get with a wish is going to be one of the weaker versions of that effect, since you should be playing your best version of that spell in the main.
For example, Demonic Tutor can fetch my best card; the best ramp spell, the best card draw spell, the best piece of removal, or the best bomb creature to end the game with. Take that same eeck that plays Demonic Tutor also plays Burning Wish. I'm not going to be able to wish for Damnation, Toxic Deluge, or Decree of Pain since those will all be in the 99 and accessible by Demonic Tutor. So, I have to run my 4th or 5th best wrath in the sideboard, just to be able to get Black Sun's Zenith in a pinch.
Can a wish get a very narrow card that could be a blowout in a certain situation, sure; but those cards actually do cost sideboard slots so if somebody happens to have Brand in board for the blowout, then they made a metacall to put a dedicated anti-steal card in their board. Are you going to continue to keep a sideboard card in your deck game after game when it's only going to be useful or wished for in 1 game out of 100? I don't think players are going to play SUPER narrow cards and will instead opt for relatively strong cards that for some reason or another they are not maindeck worthy.
It makes significantly more sense to run a wishboard of silver bullets that are great at one specific thing than to run a sideboard of 15 cards that are just worse versions of cards that are already in your deck. If you're already playing a bunch of good Wrath of God effects in your deck, are you seriously going to put Kirtar's Wrath in your sideboard?
I kid, but I don't see how Teferi's Response on a T-don is a 1 for 6. You use 1 card to save 3 and answer 1. It's a 1-for-1 that prevents a 1-for-3.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Let's only look at this from the wish perspective, we'll fill in the other aspects of sideboards later. Right now we have wishes are legal in commander but the legal sideboard size is 0. Imagine if the RC made the sideboard size 1. Wishes are still unplayable, because you can wish only for the single card that you have sdieboarded. You're deck is just improved upon by putting that single card in the slot of the wish and not having a sideboard. Wishes don't actually get interesting until the sideboard size is more then 2 cards, but at 2 cards wishes just become a create your own split card. At 3 cards, it's a charm. At 4, a command. Heck, you can go all the way up to the maximum sideboard size is 20,000 cards, and then wishes would function according to the official rules for unsanctioned play.
Where I'm going with this is that maybe 15 cards is too large a sideboard size for EDH, because players have enough room in their board to consider slotting in some super narrow spell that will only be useful in an extremely small portion of their games. I think having a smaller sideboard, maybe 4-8 cards, would pressure extremely niche cards out of boards. The fact that you have very few cards you can move between the board and main makes you want to choose cards that will be very impactful in many types of games, rather then having a weird card or two gather dust in the sideboard until you find the one miracle moment to wish for them or side them in.
In general, sideboards are so outside of the box for normal EDH that none of us can really say what would happen if the RC made them legal. Does it make fix the format and make it the utopia of magic or does it destroy the format in the doomsday scenario? Probably neither tbh, I'd expect it to be better in some ways and worse in other ways.
I do want to add a second topic to the discussion and bring up Impossible's Solemnity deck. During spoiler season, that card was a hot topic of how it would be the new most oppressive card in EDH, but dsicussion of it died off completely after it became legal, so I'm curious as to how it performs. Can you answer some questions for me?
1. How often do you win from the Solemnity + Decree of Silence combo?
2. Has that combo ever been disrupted by an uncounterable spell or land?
3. Do players usually just fold to it or do they usually sit through it and attempt to draw go until you can really win?
4. Has another player ever used your Solemnity as a combo piece to combo out with their cards?
TL:DR
1. About 25% so far
2. No
3. Usually scoop
4. No. If anything it annoys everyone else. Suck it, Avenger of Zendikar tokens. Forever 0/1s.
I feel that I have mispoken and that has cuased some confusion. When I was originally thinking about "niche" cards I was thinking of the powerful color hosers that were listed earlier as a reason not to have sideboards. Even if you're very unlikely to run into a monowhite deck and even if they are not going to lose every land they have in play to Flashfires, that card is still a very mean card to play. It's almost always going to be a huge blow to their manabase just because they happened to choose to play a monocolor general. It's still possible for them to recover and win or be so ahead that they win with cards already in play, but Flashfires will usually be the thing that takes the white deck out of the game for good.
Foruntatly, it's a seldom seen card as of now. If I look up brutal color hosers on EDHREC, they tend to be in a tiny amount of decklists. It's not an insane conclusion to assume that if they could be played in sideboards and only sided in against particular monodecks, that they would see increased play. You get all the power of an Ajani Vengeant ult for 4 mana against anyone foolish to try and make a monowhite deck.
Those are the kind of cards I think of what I said niche earlier, the hosers. There are many narrow cards that aren't as dedicatedly hateful as Flashfires that I'd love to see in sideboards, Ugin's Nexus for example.
a) The ability to play silver bullets in the sideboard and not have to worry about games where they aren't relevant allows people to hate out decks they don't like without weakening their own deck. That's where all the land hate falls, cards that might be very dead in hand but also might just win the game, you only have to see them when they matter. With the insularity of most edh groups, it's like free reign to put personal attacks in your deck without consequence.
b)Nobody would play the cards in their maindeck. In this discussion, we have at least one player that has used Teferi's Response in a maindeck, and if Cunning Wish functioned, that would never be the case.
You can argue that there would be diversity added to the card pool, but for every card people sleeve up for a sideboard that they wouldn't have otherwise, there's a card in their mainboard being moved to the sideboard because if they can wish for their niche cards they can make their maindeck more focused goodstuff. Whether to play narrow but powerful cards in your deck is a difficult personal decision that can account for a lot of the differences when when 2 people build the same deck, so secretly, adding sideboards is the path to uniformity rather than diversity.
1484 decks on edhrec have managed to use Ugin's Nexus just fine. Imagine how much less often it would see play if people didn't have to draw it when they're opponent's lack time magic.
The first time I did it, the table scooped. The second time, I already had Solemnity + Delaying Shield (which had caused the Marchesa 1.0 player to scoop), but the Mairsil player was confident he could still combo out and win against me. And, in fact, he did combo the turn after I flipped Decree... but by that point I had Island Sanctuary and two Greater Auramancy (one was a Copy Enchantment). He couldn't resolve Cyclonic Rift through the Decree, and while he could steal all of my mana rocks and lands (infinite colored mana + Memnarch), he couldn't steal any of my pillowfort pieces. My Narset was going to die to my Pendrell Mists on my upkeep, but all I had to do was skip my draw step and pass the turn, waiting for Mairsil to deck out.
I happily maindeck Ugin's Nexus in my Karn deck. In fact, until I removed Mirrorworks from the list, it was part of an infinite turn combo: play Ugin's Nexus, respond to Mirrorworks trigger by animating with Karn and bouncing with Erratic Portal, create Mirrorworks token copy, sacrifice the token to something like Krark-Clan Ironworks, Phyrexia's Core, etc.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
The issue really is with the Flashfires and Tsunamis of the world. Adding sideboards would require, imo, either banning those cards outright or banning them from sideboards, outright being more likely as its less confusing. Allowing them would introduce a toxic element to the format that reduces deck diversity and creates bad blood. At least currently sticking a Tsunami in your deck, while still a personal attack, can at least be somewhat justified in that as you are willing to risk is being a dead card if nobody plays blue or only plays a 3 color deck with few islands in order to have an answer against whatever blue deck you put it in to deal with. That deck scares you enough you are willing to generally weaken your deck to fight it, in the same way you might stick grafdigger's cage in a deck to deal with a graveyard deck. With wishboards, you could have access to all those silver bullets with absolutely no drawback, as you could devote a slot or two to whatever generally useful card you cut in favor of the wish in case any of the hate isn't relevant. Then you could just have Flashfires sitting in the board ready to make the Darien player have a bad night with absolutely no risk to yourself. Hell, you have an incentive by the 15 slots to include a wider range of hate, so while you might include Tsunami main deck to derail Azami if you get an opening to cast it, you now also get to include other powerful hosers to other strategies that would have never made your main deck because those strategies were never pressing enough threats. While you may have been able to justify setting Azami back several turns because they'd combo off otherwise, locking out Darien is just mean. Increasing the ease at which a player could just shut down single opponents would, to me, create an undesirable game state. I have no problem whatsoever with stax, mld, or the like, but I do have a problem with just screwing one person out of the game: that should only happen accidentally, such as if the table recovers more quickly than you intend from a MLD card except for one guy or a combination of cards around the table ends up locking someone out, or in rare cases if you make card selections that weaken your deck overall in order to take down the whale at the table, because that guy is basically playing archenemy every time he sits down (or girl, which is really the only time I've done this intentionally, because she chose to run tuned Nekusar every time we wanted to play casual decks. She was "that guy").
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
What do you think of cards like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Identity Crisis, Hall of Gemstone, or Iona, Shield of Emeria? These cards are more or less main deck tier cards, where the color hosers are not main deck quality cards. The listed cards aren't always as one sided as something like Flashfires, but can often result in one player (or more) being heavily hosed or out staxed so that for them to continue normal play is almost impossible.
Now, some cards do have options for countering if you know those cards exist in your meta. Blood Moon can be overcome by just adding more basics to your manabase. Hall and Iona don't really have ways you can counter them outside of having a kill spell that you can cast past them.
I heard the magic word (Iona) and so I'm back. People who have seen my POV is probably sick of hearing this again, but if there's anyone new - here's the summarized version - Iona in particular is a unique combination of effects that has me personally convinced it should be banned regardless of actual usage statistics, basically being composed of "Choose a Color" allows it to be main-deckable (bypassing the currently no-sideboard state of the format) and "can't cast spells" being one of the highest orders of stax. Combined it's almost an insult to the color identity pillar of the format and being one of the highest orders of stax, it becomes even worse than "eliminate one player" - it's "inverse archenemy". Granted, actual statistics shows that usage of Iona isn't high and the possibility of the "inverse archenemy" situation is even lower as a result, the very idea the card alone is capable of invoking it to me goes against the "spirit of the format" in various ways (as I said it almost insults the color identity pillar and "inverse archenemy" is quite also pretty much one against the multiplayer pillar of the format, since multiplayer is supposed to encourage typical archenemy scenarios to counterbalance the more powerful plays available in the format). Or to be more exact, it uses one pillar (color identity) to undermine another (multiplayer) and that annoys me in theory more than most other cards.
Just to preempt the typical "counter-arguments" so this thread doesn't sidetrack to a SCD - since I view the card as offending the fundamentals of the format, mana costs don't matter (it could cost Progenitus mana and my opinion doesn't change). As mentioned earlier I don't take low usage statistics into account for such cards either (which is why I no longer counter the mana cost point with the typical reanimator strategies), but I do understand why the overall situation is why the RC doesn't want to ban the card. There's also the "silver bullets" (Scour from Existence/Spine of Ish Sah) arguments for mono-colored decks, but my view that it's more likely when "inverse archenemy" occurs, the player doesn't always have the necessary answers (or used them up, since they tend to be flexible) and is likely deprived of the means of finding them / getting them back, so I don't take the silver bullets as a natural "counter" to the "inverse archenemy" scenario when it does happen. There's a whole lot more reasoning from various parties in the SCD thread for Iona, so go there to have a look (chances are we've exhausted almost every angle from that thread anyway).
Now onto something different - non-basics have traditionally been different from other forms of streamlined hate, because there's a good chance when the hate appears it inconveniences enough players that it creates the typical "Archenemy" scenario (there's a good chance the player playing the hate got around it, although some don't mind inconveniencing themselves somewhat as a meta-play of sorts because of the very scenario I'm saying here). Even when it doesn't, it probably inconveniences everyone (or the strongest player of the meoment) enough for someone to decide to get rid of it - rarely does it successfully lock out everyone else for long and even when it does - I think most people manage to secure their victory timely enough for the others to consider it "slightly worse than abruptly combo-winning" (and a lot less frequent than combos in more competitive metas for sure). Yes, in a way it's like an infinite-turns deck, except its less likely to happen because it's not like the entire deck was built around it and it relies on getting past the many-people-inconvenienced factor, which means its unlikely the deck in question was designed to be a durdle-fest should this rare scenario happen (as opposed to a deck designed for infinite-turns being more susceptible to it).
Those cards (exception Iona, she can eat a ban) can sometimes imitate Flashfires effects under the right circumstances, many cards/combos can. The key is "under the right circumstances". Flashfires et al are usually that bad, the cards you mentioned aren't. Lets look.
Non basic land hate punishes greedy mana bases the most and spares mono color and basic land heavy the most. This is reasonable: running mono color covers fewer bases and makes decks more vulnerable to things the color can't fight, while going heavy basics leaves out powerful non basics and in multicolor decks gives you a riskier mana base more prone to color screw. Flashfires effects do the opposite: they reward greedy mana bases while punishing mono color and basics. Non basic land hate punches up, Flashfires punches down. Worse yet, non basic land hate usually hits most of the table, and usually leaves the hit players still able to play unless they are running nothing but non basics (and often hits mono color decks, because there are plenty of good non basics that mono color decks run). Flashfires effects typically hit one or two players, and if they are mono color absolutely wipe them out. Non basic land hate hits more broadly, while Flashfires effects hit more narrowly, and often hit harder.
Identity Crisis doesn't even belong in this conversation. Discard plus grave hate is much easier to recover from than getting all your lands wiped. Yes, it puts one player in topdeck mode, so do many cards. But once that player draws something, they can cast it, and that's the difference. By the time you can cast it, its also not even that big a play most of the time. 6 mana targeted discard to get a few cards and wipe a graveyard? Its really only good against grave decks, at which point you'd rather have RiP or similar, and decks that sit on 17 card grips. The former will just dump cards into their yard again, the latter will refill their hand. At worst, its a significant setback but doesn't come close to shutting someone out, but usually its just not that effective.
Hall of gemstone is special because its a weaker version of NBL hate, in that even the decks most effected by it can still get rid of it on their turn. Most answers to it are mono color, and you get to choose what color is available on your turn, so you can cast them. The more colors a deck runs, the more signets and other color mana producing artifacts it tends to contain as well, so the more likely the deck will be able to cast multicolored spells and spells of different colors anyway. Even if you don't have answers, and you don't get your mana rocks, it still just slows you down by limiting what color cards you can cast each turn and stops you from getting your commander (which is fine, just like Nevermore is fine, because commanders need answers), and does so to everyone who isn't mono color, which is usually not just you. You still get to play, you still get to cast spells.
Iona is the only card you mentioned that I'd put in line with Flashfires effects, but because its maindeckable I think its worse. Iona is already as bad, if not worse, that Flashfires et al would be out of wishboards, because there is no risk in running her. She's good, she's always good, and she regularly stops people from playing and punches down by hitting mono color hardest. Flashfires et al have a place as hate cards for metas that skew to one color. When everyone is playing blue, busting out Tsunami is tech. Noticing that all your friends are playing decks with W/X and hitting Flashfires is fine. Iona never has to be a meta call, she's just always on, and always a feel bad.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
On an entirely different subject: It's been almost a year since the RC removed rule 4, which was the rule that prevented off color mana generation in decks. It took some digging to find the old school rules change that introduced solor identity as a concept. (Check it out here: http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5200&sid=43ffc6ad82c5d1e87c875a3094fb1fd7)
Some of you may remember that the rules for deck color meant that all cards had to be the same color or colors as the commander, so if you had a black commander. Only black cards, but cards were evaluated strictly based on their color. So you could play Bringer of Black Dawn in your mono black deck or Quenchable Fire in your monored deck.
It looks as if the change to color identity was primarily a way to bring cards that previously didn't work into the format. However, drawing the line at manasymbols on cards does leave some cards, like the Bringers, cards with 2 extra colors of kicker, artifacts with colored backs etc. Are just out in the cold where the rules previously used to allow for them to exist in decks that played less then all of their colors.
I'm entertaining a though experiement in which the color identity rules are reverted, but rule 4 remains gone. Basically, you could only play cards that shared a color with your commander, so that G/W cat tribal deck can now play Mtenda Lion and your mono white equipment deck can play Bringer of the White Dawn, while at the same time the very cards that the color identity rules change sought to bring into the format can still exist as playable generals, because their decks can still add the colored mana needed to activate their generals, which is going to be a burden born by the crazy amount of good manarocks and lands we've gotten since 2010.
I don't see this change being universally popular, since it would only strip extra color identities from cards, but it also doesn't add 1-4 extra color identities to cards that could be played a monocolor deck either. In theory, the majority of commander decks feel nothing based on this rule change and a few cards win while a few lose, but the losers are still legal cards and can function in games, the decks just need to be adjusted.
So legendaries like Tasigur, Alesha, ect would now be mono colored? Lol.