So today, in partnership with members of the existing Rules Committee, we are announcing that the Rules Committee is giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of Wizards of the Coast.
This is clearly because of the earth shaking bans in commander (clearly because it hit the investors/Cedh players very very hard)
but another important note
While ownership of the format may be changing, members of the Rules Committee and others in the community will continue to be involved, and the vision for a social format will not change. We've had some preliminary conversations already about what we would like to accomplish and have some ideas we will be rolling out together in the months to come.
so it’s not like we’re gonna get a avalanche of unbans and bans
Wtf... this is gonna ruin the format... wotc has no clue about commander
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
WotC have proven themselves entirely capable of ruining the format without the powers of bans/unbans. Let them cook. At least there is a chance they will eventually fix the hybrid color identity rules and other shenanigans. This is not worse for the format than the creation of Commander to begin with.
No one can blame anyone for being unwilling to put up with the toxic part of the community. It seems though that this change of management is not quite as spontaneous or surprising as they might make it look. Honestly, I'm more bothered by the circumstances of this change than the change itself.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
This is clearly because of the earth shaking bans in commander (clearly because it hit the investors/Cedh players very very hard)
Eh, the RC's been pretty clear that it was voluntarily done because they were getting threatened. If I had people threatening to kill me over a job I was doing for free in my spare time, I'd be out too.
Well, crap. I've been playing EDH/Commander for over 15 years, and this is the last thing I wanted.
You know, 15 years ago, Standard was the most played format and was the largest factor when it came to card prices. There were several times that I would deliberately wait two years for a card to rotate out of Standard just to pick it up at a more affordable price post-rotation for an EDH/Commander deck. But then through bad management and printing way too many cards that had to be banned from their intended format, WOTC drove Standard into the ground to the point that I don't even know anyone who plays Standard anymore, and it rarely affects card prices. And Commander, the one format they didn't control, was the only one to escape becoming a dumpster-fire.
I don't trust WOTC to keep the format healthy, especially when they've repeatedly shown in recent years that short-term cash grabs matter more to them than common sense, player loyalty, or format health.
And I don't like having to memorize what cards belong in what bracket. Plus, I think four brackets is too many - three would have been fine: casual, high-power, and competetive.
At least there is a chance they will eventually fix the hybrid color identity rules and other shenanigans.
There's nothing to fix. Hybrid has always meant "AND" in the rules, not "OR". Ashiok, Dream Render will always be both blue and black and can always be hit by Red Elemental Blast, even if you cast it for BBB. Lurrus of the Dream-Den will always be white and black, and is always immune to Doom Blade, even if you cast it for WWW.
Given that the rules say they are always "AND," why should the one format with color identity treat them otherwise? Commander treats Damn as WB despite being castable in either, and Avacyn's Pilgrim's identity is GW, noy monogreen.
Anyone arguing for a change to hybrid identity may as well ask for monoblack reanimator to be allowed to run any fatties it wants because they could be discarded and reanimated - while this works in formats without color identity, it flies in the face of the format we love and enjoy.
Here's hoping the RC steps away completely before too much longer, they've been screwing up in blatant and confusing ways since they stole the format from the people who created it. Would much rather have paid professionals who are at least somewhat involved in making the game in charge.
At least there is a chance they will eventually fix the hybrid color identity rules and other shenanigans.
There's nothing to fix. Hybrid has always meant "AND" in the rules, not "OR".
Strong "There's nothing to fix. Parents have always been hitting kids."-vibes
Also while you are not lying you are also putting forward an extremely dishonest position since there was a also a time before out current understanding/application of color identity where it's "always" been the case that Thelon of Havenwood was not a legal general/commander because you weren't allowed to have a black activation cost in a deck led by a mono-green card.
Thelon of Havenwood will always be nonblack and yet the rules have been changed so that not the color identity now determines what colors can go into the deck rather than just the color.
The rules have been altered before.
Given that the rules say they are always "AND," why should the one format with color identity treat them otherwise?
You use that word "color identity" there, but you know what? That term only was introduced to the rules when EDH became Commander and part of the rules and the above mentioned changes were made. There was a decision by WotC when they adopted the format to change how deck legality works.
And at the beginning was the idea that something about how color identity works did not feel right and could be changed. And then they changed something that had always been true.
And you know what? Changing the deck construction rules doesn't even need to change how any of the other examples work, because they are not about a card's color identity at all, they are about a card's color.
Commander treats Damn as WB despite being castable in either, and Avacyn's Pilgrim's identity is GW, noy monogreen.
When talking about future rules changes, it is always nice to be aware of the current state. But the nature of change is that things before and after a different.
Anyone arguing for a change to hybrid identity may as well ask for monoblack reanimator to be allowed to run any fatties it wants because they could be discarded and reanimated - while this works in formats without color identity, it flies in the face of the format we love and enjoy.
Do you actually believe that slippery-slope argument? It's a lot of effort to explain, so do you honestly think that the people who want to play Leyline of the Guildpact with a green-blue CI commander are also necessarily arguing that you should be able to play Worldspine Wurm with a mono-black CI commander? Or do you think they would suggest a different sort of change?
Do you think that allowing Alesha, Who Smiles at Death to be legal in their own deck necessarily means the people who brought on that change also want that deck to be able to play Harrow? Or do you understand that moving the line is not the same as removing the line?
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
There's nothing to fix. Hybrid has always meant "AND" in the rules, not "OR". Ashiok, Dream Render will always be both blue and black and can always be hit by Red Elemental Blast, even if you cast it for BBB. Lurrus of the Dream-Den will always be white and black, and is always immune to Doom Blade, even if you cast it for WWW.
Given that the rules say they are always "AND," why should the one format with color identity treat them otherwise? Commander treats Damn as WB despite being castable in either, and Avacyn's Pilgrim's identity is GW, noy monogreen.
Anyone arguing for a change to hybrid identity may as well ask for monoblack reanimator to be allowed to run any fatties it wants because they could be discarded and reanimated - while this works in formats without color identity, it flies in the face of the format we love and enjoy.
While SI defended the position well, there's one further thing. According to the rules and how it was created, hybrid has been "OR" for everything but color identity (202.2d). When paying a cost, you pay one OR the other(107.4e). When adding mana based on a hybrid cost (106.8), you add one OR the other. Cost reduction applies to one half OR the other (118.7e).
I hope this is finally the chance they get rid of the commander damages and make all planeswalkers commanders. And unban a bunch of things that never made sense to be in the ban list in the first place.
Here's hoping the RC steps away completely before too much longer, they've been screwing up in blatant and confusing ways since they stole the format from the people who created it. Would much rather have paid professionals who are at least somewhat involved in making the game in charge.
Yes, the paid professionals have certainly never screwed up in blatant and confusing ways./s The RC has been the only speed-bump between WOTC and turning this format into the raging dumpster fire that is all other WOTC-managed formats. You would think that the folks involved in making the game could maybe playtest cards and not pump out crap that destroys formats before inevitably getting the ban-hammer once they've moved on to selling other packs.
According to the rules and how it was created, hybrid has been "OR" for everything but color identity (202.2d). When paying a cost, you pay one OR the other(107.4e). When adding mana based on a hybrid cost (106.8), you add one OR the other. Cost reduction applies to one half OR the other (118.7e).
Being payable with white OR black does not stop a hybrid card from being both white AND black - in every zone and at all times. This is according to the rules and how hybrid was created.
202.2d An object with one or more hybrid mana symbols and/or Phyrexian mana symbols in its mana cost is all of the colors of those mana symbols, in addition to any other colors the object might be.
107.4e A hybrid mana symbol is also a colored mana symbol, even if one of its components is
colorless. Each one represents a cost that can be paid in one of two ways, as represented by the two halves of the symbol. A hybrid symbol such as {W/U} can be paid with either white or blue mana, and a monocolored hybrid symbol such as {2/B} can be paid with either one black mana or two mana of any type. A hybrid mana symbol is all of its component colors.
I'm confused why you used these rules to try to refute my statement when they fully support and reinforce my argument. Hybrid is AND not only for color identity but also for color. Lurrus does not merely identify and white and black - it literally is both white and black, as stated in the rules you referenced. Flexibility of payment does not change the actual color of the card in hand/library, the spell on the stack, or the creature in play.
I hope this is finally the chance they get rid of the commander damages and make all planeswalkers commanders. And unban a bunch of things that never made sense to be in the ban list in the first place.
Please god no, leave commander damage as it is. Otherwise lifegain decks will be even more insufferable.
WotC has not even /started/ to mismanage the format that people are clamoring for their pet-peeve change to be made. With all the typical snarly but-of-course-I'm-obviously-right rhetorical style. I mean, Wizards has a long-standing habit of *not* banning the new hot card to avoid hurting sale of recent sets. Only the most obviously egregious broken ones get banned, and only after the set has been allowed to sizzle enough money in their piggy bank. Why do you think it will be different with Commander?
Not that commander needs frequent ban, but if the RC allowed themselves (in many people's opinion) to trample collectors' investment, I don't think WotC would, because it is a whale-driven corp, catering to those who spend the most. Pretty sure the announced tiers of Commander will lead to reverting these recent bans.
Do you actually believe that slippery-slope argument? It's a lot of effort to explain, so do you honestly think that the people who want to play Leyline of the Guildpact with a green-blue CI commander are also necessarily arguing that you should be able to play Worldspine Wurm with a mono-black CI commander? Or do you think they would suggest a different sort of change?
How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
With Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro now in full control of EDH / Commander I'd really like to see them use the format in a way that gets more foot traffic at Local Game Stores (LGSs) instead of secluding it to just Conventions like CommandFest. You know, something that would draw players to play at their LGS more, maybe not prize support but something rewarding to players at least. The Rules Committee never really cared about this aspect at all because they only wanted to leave rewards and prize support at LGSs for the Competitive formats like Standard, Modern, Pioneer when there's hardly any interest for those formats at least in-person anyway. cEDH tournaments have proven to work in the past yet it doesn't have the same appeal as 60 card non-Singleton Competitive formats in North America and Canada.
Perhaps Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could learn from the Smogon Tier System within the Mainline Pokémon video games for handling the Power Level of cards in EDH / Commander. It would be used to rank specific cards based on their perceived power and usage in the format. These tiers dictate which cards can be used in the various metagames of the format. Each metagame encompasses different cards, and therefore each one is unique in it's style of play. The standards set by this perceived Tier System seek to help balance the format in a way, ensuring that no card is too powerful or over-centralizes the metagame that it appears in. What If the EDH / Commander Banned List functioned similar to how it works in Yu-Gi-Oh! where whenever they ban a card they unban another? Just some ideas.
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Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Do you actually believe that slippery-slope argument? It's a lot of effort to explain, so do you honestly think that the people who want to play Leyline of the Guildpact with a green-blue CI commander are also necessarily arguing that you should be able to play Worldspine Wurm with a mono-black CI commander? Or do you think they would suggest a different sort of change?
What indeed? For a post starting with "I mean" you left it quite open what you mean. I replied to an argument about playing off-color fatties with a paragraph mentioning off-color fatties and you are talking about what exactly?
To be fourth-coming where you are vague: If WotC creates a card that can be cast for 6, then it better not be an effect they are uncomfortable being played in a colorless deck - or a green deck etc.
If WotC fails to meet this not particularly high bar, then that's an issue with an individual card design. You won't find me telling people that Phyrexian mana hasn't made off-color effects available to decks that should not have them. Dismember is a mistake.
Ask MaRo what he thinks about Chaos Warp and Harmonize being played in red decks and green decks respectively. Those aren't stopped by the color identity rules.
I'm not saying that it's a good idea to add a creature option to Sculpting Steel for a bit of life, but I expect most people wouldn't bat an eye if they designed Hulking Metamorph with a colorless color identity and put it in the next set.
What If the EDH / Commander Banned List functioned similar to how it works in Yu-Gi-Oh! where whenever they ban a card they unban another? Just some ideas.
There's nothing to fix. Hybrid has always meant "AND" in the rules, not "OR". Ashiok, Dream Render will always be both blue and black and can always be hit by Red Elemental Blast, even if you cast it for BBB. Lurrus of the Dream-Den will always be white and black, and is always immune to Doom Blade, even if you cast it for WWW.
Given that the rules say they are always "AND," why should the one format with color identity treat them otherwise? Commander treats Damn as WB despite being castable in either, and Avacyn's Pilgrim's identity is GW, noy monogreen.
Anyone arguing for a change to hybrid identity may as well ask for monoblack reanimator to be allowed to run any fatties it wants because they could be discarded and reanimated - while this works in formats without color identity, it flies in the face of the format we love and enjoy.
It's funny whenever people bring up this argument because it shows they understand neither hybrid nor the color identity rule of commander.
The CI rule was a rule made to preserve the spirit of commander by providing a hard rule about what can and cannot be in any given deck. It's done to prevent players from picking a mono-B commander and then playing 4-color good-stuff or whatever. The whole idea of commander is that you pick one legend and build your deck around it. The rule is a letter-of-the-law to support the spirit-of-the-law.
And then people bring up the letter of the law to argue against hybrid cards being used in commander the way they were intended and designed, arguing both against the spirit of the CI rule and of the hybrid design intention. Hybrid has always been an "OR", that was quite literally the spark of the whole mechanic. And yes, a hybrid card is technically both colors, but that's because magic cards aren't quantum particles. They need to have one single state at any given time.
As for cards being immune to Doom Blade. So what??? Lots of cards are arbitrarily immune against certain kill spells. How does anyone think this is remotely an argument against hybrid, in a world where protection, ward, shroud and hexproof exists?
And even if it was, we're trashing an entire mechanic just to make a couple dozen cards marginally better???
What baffles me is how insistent people are on this topic, defending the status quo. Is change really that scary, even when the effects are miniscule?
I really hope WOTC doesn't fundamentally change the format. I've seen a lot of bad suggestions for removing this, adding that, and/or changing something else. The format flourished without that heavy-handedness, and I'd really like them to keep it close to the format I've enjoyed for 15+ years.
It's funny whenever people bring up this argument because it shows they understand neither hybrid nor the color identity rule of commander... Is change really that scary, even when the effects are miniscule?
That's quite the strawman you've constructed. Because, of course, anyone who disagrees with you doesn't understand and is scared of change. It couldn't possibly be that they understand quite well both the intention behind the design and the realities of the actual execution, not to mention the differences between these two. For them to have a well-reasoned, structured argument for liking the current rule is so unthinkable as to border on arrogance; surely, they must be scared and unwilling to admit it.
Hybrid has always been an "OR", that was quite literally the spark of the whole mechanic. And yes, a hybrid card is technically both colors
Hybrid was designed around the idea "what if a card could be played for red or white?" but it never, in any iteration that reached the printer and the hands of the players, was ever OR. Hybrid was flexible to cast but the realities of the game determined they had to be both colors (AND), not either/or. And so intention (or the "spirit-of-the-law" as you call it) doesn't matter - it was a great starting point but proved inadequate for the real world. Only the reality of what we were given matters - hybrid is and always has been, at all times and in all zones, AND.
Beyond that, most formats don't care about color identity, and players are free to cram cards in any deck, even one incapable of producing the required mana. But Commander is different - the only format (or family of formats, if you want to count Tiny Leaders, Brawl, and Oathbreaker) that cares about color identity. And yes, I've been there for all of the changes to color identity. But I like the current iteration the most (see? a change I wasn't scared of).
Additionally, hybrid cards were supposed to be printable in either color. But honestly, can you say that Waves of Aggression is in any way a white card? Extra combats belong to mono-red or Boros but has never, ever been printed at mono-white.
And even if it was, we're trashing an entire mechanic just to make a couple dozen cards marginally better???
Nobody has trashed any mechanic here. All I've argued is that we treat the cards exactly as the rules do - they are both colors. And therefore, they do not fit the color identity of only one color or the other.
Let me turn your question back around to you - why should we trash the entire concept of color identity just to make a couple dozen cards marginally more playable?
What If the EDH / Commander Banned List functioned similar to how it works in Yu-Gi-Oh! where whenever they ban a card they unban another? Just some ideas.
That's the world I would want to live in, not because it's a good idea, but because it's very, very funny.
What I meant to add was to unban cards that wouldn't be as broken in the current metagame that were broken when they last got banned. Leovold, Emissary of Trest would stay banned but unbanning a card that wouldn't be a threat as it was in the past is what would be unbanned. Unfortunately there aren't any cards on the current EDH / Commander Banned List that would be safe to unban barring maybe Coalition Victory.
If you watched The Command Zone's response to the recent Commander Bans on YouTube, Josh Lee Kwai even mentioned "rotating" cards instead of rotating sets as something that the Rules Committee could've done with the format before they decided to hand it over to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro. It's hard to rotate out and rotate in cards in EDH / Commander unless whatever is getting rotated in is not as broken as it was in the past.
Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Unfortunately there aren't any cards on the current EDH / Commander Banned List that would be safe to unban barring maybe Coalition Victory.
Which is my point though I used an especially silly example. The Commander ban list is quite short. In a way the idea of "rotating" the format requires you to be more heavy-handed with banning, so you build up a reserve of cards you can safely unban. In my experience, that's the opposite of what the community wants.
As has been pointed out as criticism to the tier system WotC has put forward for discussion, there is a point of concern with anything beyond a simple mostly static ban list, where more minutiae and more change (e. g. through "rotation") also creates barriers of knowledge and being up-to-date. People flock to Modern etc. from Standard because of the lack of rotation, because they can keep playing their cards.
Using bans to create an artificial rotation in a format that is very much about being able to "keep playing your cards" will not go over well. You are basically creating an incentive for the authority to announce unpopular bans more often with the intent to roll them back for a new rotation.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
I hope this is finally the chance they get rid of the commander damages and make all planeswalkers commanders. And unban a bunch of things that never made sense to be in the ban list in the first place.
Please god no, leave commander damage as it is. Otherwise lifegain decks will be even more insufferable.
Oh please life gain decks never did a sh*t in this format. There's just so many ways you can wreck a lifegain deck (multiple cards that literally gives opponent pseudoemblems that can't gain life for rest of game, cards that put opponents at 10 lifes, random annihilator X to deny resources to opponents, mill, poison, any "I win the game" condition, any "target player lose the game" card, and I could go on until forever).
What is more harmful for the gameplay of the format is that every single player in a 4 player pod are forced to track 4 different sources of damages (making virtually up to 16 different trackings) with a totally arbitrary number of 21 that most of the times won't even matter of the already extremely convoluted board states commander games can get and the less rules baggage he have, the better. Not a single card in existence mention commander damage, so likewise the mana burn would be a rule change that would affect exactly zero errata to any card.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/on-the-future-of-commander
This is clearly because of the earth shaking bans in commander (clearly because it hit the investors/Cedh players very very hard)
but another important note
so it’s not like we’re gonna get a avalanche of unbans and bans
again I mentioned the RC and other community will still be involved so likely WOTC will be mentored by them
so It’s not like we’re gonna get a tidal wave of bans/unbans/rules changes
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StaffNo one can blame anyone for being unwilling to put up with the toxic part of the community. It seems though that this change of management is not quite as spontaneous or surprising as they might make it look. Honestly, I'm more bothered by the circumstances of this change than the change itself.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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https://x.com/JimTSF/status/1840783966926000255
Eh, the RC's been pretty clear that it was voluntarily done because they were getting threatened. If I had people threatening to kill me over a job I was doing for free in my spare time, I'd be out too.
You know, 15 years ago, Standard was the most played format and was the largest factor when it came to card prices. There were several times that I would deliberately wait two years for a card to rotate out of Standard just to pick it up at a more affordable price post-rotation for an EDH/Commander deck. But then through bad management and printing way too many cards that had to be banned from their intended format, WOTC drove Standard into the ground to the point that I don't even know anyone who plays Standard anymore, and it rarely affects card prices. And Commander, the one format they didn't control, was the only one to escape becoming a dumpster-fire.
I don't trust WOTC to keep the format healthy, especially when they've repeatedly shown in recent years that short-term cash grabs matter more to them than common sense, player loyalty, or format health.
And I don't like having to memorize what cards belong in what bracket. Plus, I think four brackets is too many - three would have been fine: casual, high-power, and competetive.There's nothing to fix. Hybrid has always meant "AND" in the rules, not "OR".
Ashiok, Dream Render will always be both blue and black and can always be hit by Red Elemental Blast, even if you cast it for BBB.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den will always be white and black, and is always immune to Doom Blade, even if you cast it for WWW.
Given that the rules say they are always "AND," why should the one format with color identity treat them otherwise? Commander treats Damn as WB despite being castable in either, and Avacyn's Pilgrim's identity is GW, noy monogreen.
Anyone arguing for a change to hybrid identity may as well ask for monoblack reanimator to be allowed to run any fatties it wants because they could be discarded and reanimated - while this works in formats without color identity, it flies in the face of the format we love and enjoy.
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Strong "There's nothing to fix. Parents have always been hitting kids."-vibes
Also while you are not lying you are also putting forward an extremely dishonest position since there was a also a time before out current understanding/application of color identity where it's "always" been the case that Thelon of Havenwood was not a legal general/commander because you weren't allowed to have a black activation cost in a deck led by a mono-green card.
Thelon of Havenwood will always be nonblack and yet the rules have been changed so that not the color identity now determines what colors can go into the deck rather than just the color.
The rules have been altered before.
You use that word "color identity" there, but you know what? That term only was introduced to the rules when EDH became Commander and part of the rules and the above mentioned changes were made. There was a decision by WotC when they adopted the format to change how deck legality works.
And at the beginning was the idea that something about how color identity works did not feel right and could be changed. And then they changed something that had always been true.
And you know what? Changing the deck construction rules doesn't even need to change how any of the other examples work, because they are not about a card's color identity at all, they are about a card's color.
When talking about future rules changes, it is always nice to be aware of the current state. But the nature of change is that things before and after a different.
Do you actually believe that slippery-slope argument? It's a lot of effort to explain, so do you honestly think that the people who want to play Leyline of the Guildpact with a green-blue CI commander are also necessarily arguing that you should be able to play Worldspine Wurm with a mono-black CI commander? Or do you think they would suggest a different sort of change?
Do you think that allowing Alesha, Who Smiles at Death to be legal in their own deck necessarily means the people who brought on that change also want that deck to be able to play Harrow? Or do you understand that moving the line is not the same as removing the line?
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
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While SI defended the position well, there's one further thing. According to the rules and how it was created, hybrid has been "OR" for everything but color identity (202.2d). When paying a cost, you pay one OR the other(107.4e). When adding mana based on a hybrid cost (106.8), you add one OR the other. Cost reduction applies to one half OR the other (118.7e).
I'm confused why you used these rules to try to refute my statement when they fully support and reinforce my argument. Hybrid is AND not only for color identity but also for color. Lurrus does not merely identify and white and black - it literally is both white and black, as stated in the rules you referenced. Flexibility of payment does not change the actual color of the card in hand/library, the spell on the stack, or the creature in play.
Not that we should divert this entire thread into a debate over hybrid - that has been debated for ages. But the RC had the correct stand on the issue - it's not truly a monowhite deck if you run Shield of the Oversoul, Steel of the Godhead, Waves of Aggression, Privileged Position, Zirda, the Dawnwaker, and Divinity of Pride.
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Please god no, leave commander damage as it is. Otherwise lifegain decks will be even more insufferable.
WotC has not even /started/ to mismanage the format that people are clamoring for their pet-peeve change to be made. With all the typical snarly but-of-course-I'm-obviously-right rhetorical style. I mean, Wizards has a long-standing habit of *not* banning the new hot card to avoid hurting sale of recent sets. Only the most obviously egregious broken ones get banned, and only after the set has been allowed to sizzle enough money in their piggy bank. Why do you think it will be different with Commander?
Not that commander needs frequent ban, but if the RC allowed themselves (in many people's opinion) to trample collectors' investment, I don't think WotC would, because it is a whale-driven corp, catering to those who spend the most. Pretty sure the announced tiers of Commander will lead to reverting these recent bans.
I mean, what would stop me from playing phyrexian metamorph or beseech the queen in any deck?
Perhaps Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could learn from the Smogon Tier System within the Mainline Pokémon video games for handling the Power Level of cards in EDH / Commander. It would be used to rank specific cards based on their perceived power and usage in the format. These tiers dictate which cards can be used in the various metagames of the format. Each metagame encompasses different cards, and therefore each one is unique in it's style of play. The standards set by this perceived Tier System seek to help balance the format in a way, ensuring that no card is too powerful or over-centralizes the metagame that it appears in. What If the EDH / Commander Banned List functioned similar to how it works in Yu-Gi-Oh! where whenever they ban a card they unban another? Just some ideas.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
What indeed? For a post starting with "I mean" you left it quite open what you mean. I replied to an argument about playing off-color fatties with a paragraph mentioning off-color fatties and you are talking about what exactly?
To be fourth-coming where you are vague: If WotC creates a card that can be cast for 6, then it better not be an effect they are uncomfortable being played in a colorless deck - or a green deck etc.
If WotC fails to meet this not particularly high bar, then that's an issue with an individual card design. You won't find me telling people that Phyrexian mana hasn't made off-color effects available to decks that should not have them. Dismember is a mistake.
Ask MaRo what he thinks about Chaos Warp and Harmonize being played in red decks and green decks respectively. Those aren't stopped by the color identity rules.
I'm not saying that it's a good idea to add a creature option to Sculpting Steel for a bit of life, but I expect most people wouldn't bat an eye if they designed Hulking Metamorph with a colorless color identity and put it in the next set.
Planar Portal, Ring of Three Wishes and Tamiyo's Journal exist. If Beseech the Queen is an issue, then that's not down to the effect not being available for generic mana.
What is currently stopping a player from playing a whole bunch of off-color mistakes? What indeed?
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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"We banned Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Welcome back, Leovold. Emissary of Trest!"
That's the world I would want to live in, not because it's a good idea, but because it's very, very funny.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
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Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
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It's funny whenever people bring up this argument because it shows they understand neither hybrid nor the color identity rule of commander.
The CI rule was a rule made to preserve the spirit of commander by providing a hard rule about what can and cannot be in any given deck. It's done to prevent players from picking a mono-B commander and then playing 4-color good-stuff or whatever. The whole idea of commander is that you pick one legend and build your deck around it. The rule is a letter-of-the-law to support the spirit-of-the-law.
And then people bring up the letter of the law to argue against hybrid cards being used in commander the way they were intended and designed, arguing both against the spirit of the CI rule and of the hybrid design intention. Hybrid has always been an "OR", that was quite literally the spark of the whole mechanic. And yes, a hybrid card is technically both colors, but that's because magic cards aren't quantum particles. They need to have one single state at any given time.
As for cards being immune to Doom Blade. So what??? Lots of cards are arbitrarily immune against certain kill spells. How does anyone think this is remotely an argument against hybrid, in a world where protection, ward, shroud and hexproof exists?
And even if it was, we're trashing an entire mechanic just to make a couple dozen cards marginally better???
What baffles me is how insistent people are on this topic, defending the status quo. Is change really that scary, even when the effects are miniscule?
That's quite the strawman you've constructed. Because, of course, anyone who disagrees with you doesn't understand and is scared of change. It couldn't possibly be that they understand quite well both the intention behind the design and the realities of the actual execution, not to mention the differences between these two. For them to have a well-reasoned, structured argument for liking the current rule is so unthinkable as to border on arrogance; surely, they must be scared and unwilling to admit it.
Hybrid was designed around the idea "what if a card could be played for red or white?" but it never, in any iteration that reached the printer and the hands of the players, was ever OR. Hybrid was flexible to cast but the realities of the game determined they had to be both colors (AND), not either/or. And so intention (or the "spirit-of-the-law" as you call it) doesn't matter - it was a great starting point but proved inadequate for the real world. Only the reality of what we were given matters - hybrid is and always has been, at all times and in all zones, AND.
Beyond that, most formats don't care about color identity, and players are free to cram cards in any deck, even one incapable of producing the required mana. But Commander is different - the only format (or family of formats, if you want to count Tiny Leaders, Brawl, and Oathbreaker) that cares about color identity. And yes, I've been there for all of the changes to color identity. But I like the current iteration the most (see? a change I wasn't scared of).
Additionally, hybrid cards were supposed to be printable in either color. But honestly, can you say that Waves of Aggression is in any way a white card? Extra combats belong to mono-red or Boros but has never, ever been printed at mono-white.Nobody has trashed any mechanic here. All I've argued is that we treat the cards exactly as the rules do - they are both colors. And therefore, they do not fit the color identity of only one color or the other.
Let me turn your question back around to you - why should we trash the entire concept of color identity just to make a couple dozen cards marginally more playable?
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If you watched The Command Zone's response to the recent Commander Bans on YouTube, Josh Lee Kwai even mentioned "rotating" cards instead of rotating sets as something that the Rules Committee could've done with the format before they decided to hand it over to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro. It's hard to rotate out and rotate in cards in EDH / Commander unless whatever is getting rotated in is not as broken as it was in the past.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Which is my point though I used an especially silly example. The Commander ban list is quite short. In a way the idea of "rotating" the format requires you to be more heavy-handed with banning, so you build up a reserve of cards you can safely unban. In my experience, that's the opposite of what the community wants.
As has been pointed out as criticism to the tier system WotC has put forward for discussion, there is a point of concern with anything beyond a simple mostly static ban list, where more minutiae and more change (e. g. through "rotation") also creates barriers of knowledge and being up-to-date. People flock to Modern etc. from Standard because of the lack of rotation, because they can keep playing their cards.
Using bans to create an artificial rotation in a format that is very much about being able to "keep playing your cards" will not go over well. You are basically creating an incentive for the authority to announce unpopular bans more often with the intent to roll them back for a new rotation.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Oh please life gain decks never did a sh*t in this format. There's just so many ways you can wreck a lifegain deck (multiple cards that literally gives opponent pseudoemblems that can't gain life for rest of game, cards that put opponents at 10 lifes, random annihilator X to deny resources to opponents, mill, poison, any "I win the game" condition, any "target player lose the game" card, and I could go on until forever).
What is more harmful for the gameplay of the format is that every single player in a 4 player pod are forced to track 4 different sources of damages (making virtually up to 16 different trackings) with a totally arbitrary number of 21 that most of the times won't even matter of the already extremely convoluted board states commander games can get and the less rules baggage he have, the better. Not a single card in existence mention commander damage, so likewise the mana burn would be a rule change that would affect exactly zero errata to any card.