Platinum Angel doesn't break the rules, it sets a static effect on the board.
...which overwrites a rule. Instead of losing for having 0 or less life as a state-based action, you simply don't. So I don't really see the difference between that and a Wish, which lets you access cards you normally couldn't. Maybe Future Sight would have been a better example? There are a ton of cards that allow you to do things you otherwise wouldn't be allowed to. I don't really see why Wishes get singled out for 'breaking the rules'.
While sideboards can exist in the scenario that you mentioned, cards you mentioned could, and likely should see mainboard play (ex. Fade into Antiquity) as removal is almost always relevant when it has more than one mode.
Fade into Antiquity is a pretty mediocre card. It's good in niche situations, such as killing a God or a Darksteel Forge or something similar, but for the most part I would never maindeck it. I'd rather maindeck something like Nature's Claim because it is both cheaper and instant speed, and it also has the important upside of being able to destroy a T1 Sol Ring.
The potential for dick-ish things already exists in running cards like Choke, Tsunami, etc., but the potential to run them in a side/wishboard is literally inviting feel-bads. All it will likely take is a handful of people in a play group or LGS to do it, before it becomes commonplace to do the same thing. After all, if you're at a disadvantage to not, then you're likely to adopt what puts you on an even playing field. Some people also don't have the luxury of an LGS, or multiple potential groups to play at so switching in the event of "adapt or leave" isn't always available.
Again this just kind of feels like fear mongering. It's like saying "one person played a Tazri-Chain deck so then everyone had to build one". At what point do we start expecting the social contract to do something? If one or two players are playing decks above the curve or are otherwise playing in an antisocial way, the default response shouldn't be to match them in their antisocial-ness. It should be to say something like "hey we're not really having fun could you maybe play a weaker/more fun deck?" This idea that EDH is an arms-race is sadly one I've seen espoused before, and I simply refuse to believe it. The logical outcome it leads to is literally everyone playing cEDH decks, and I've never seen that happen.
Especially at an LGS for events - if there's a buy in and a prize is to be won, people play to win.
EDH with buy-ins and prizes is hardly EDH at all. "Commander is a Magic:The Gathering format which emphasises multiplayer play, social interactions, interesting games, and creative deckbuilding." It's literally the first line on the official site. You may notice 'winning' isn't on that list. So it would be a bit foolish to use cEDH players as a reason to not do something when they're not really the target audience to begin with.
I DO feel like cards like Shadowborn Apostle and Relentless Rats are against the flavor of the format. The fact that it's been legal for as long as it has and that some have embraced it, means that those cards have value as multiples are needed. If they were banned this far into the format's life, people would lose entire decks on the decision to ban them. It's not something that the RC would ever do.
I don't get this. Cards break the rules all the time. It's like saying Platinum Angel shouldn't prevent one from losing because it's against the rules. I understand if you thought that Wishes are ban worthy for some other reason (too powerful or too obnoxious, for example). But "against the flavor of the format" just doesn't seem like a real reason to me.
My intention isn't to be a fearmonger, but to stress that the potential for abuse is present. The potential for game length to be increased is very much present for sideboarding. Again, I will reference my previous points that cards like Sylvan Primordial and Prophet of Kruphix were banned; not for the fair play that they saw, but because of how they were abused.
But that was kind of the problem with Prime Time and Profit in that even trying to play them fairly often resulted in problematic situations. I'm not sure the same is true for Wishes. It might be, but I also think most players could use a Wishboard as a Swiss-army-knife of answers to call upon when the board gets out of control. Someone's got a Purphoros, God of the Forge that's about to kill everyone? Wish for an answer. Doubling Season make a literal bajillion dudes? Wish for an answer. A Boseiju'dGenesis Wave for 50 on the stack? Wish for a nope. If these are the kind of things people choose to do with Wishes, I'd say let them be free.
Sideboards, in general, have the potential to drag out games more than anything else, which is effectively a requirement to allow wishes to work. Deciding which card(s) out of 99 can be swapped out post game 1 or beyond depending on which decks switch and who is playing what... the odds that sideboards aren't used how they are for constructed formats is unlikely. Dragging out games at an LGS, let alone at a kitchen table, doesn't seem worth them being official.
I'll be honest, I've never actually seen anyone sideboard, even when the optional sideboard rule was around. I seriously doubt people would start boarding against specific generals pre-game (unless said general is extremely problematic in it's own right) if Wishes could be used.
I see having more than 100 cards as being a problem because the deck construction limits a deck to 100 cards, including the commander. To have wishes function serves only to circumvent that rule, after games are started.
Then do you also have a problem with Shadowborn Apostle for circumventing the singleton rule?
The choices at that point seem clear... Enable wishes and see games devolve into longer games with wish/sideboards like it is in constructed formats with silver bullets and see a newly printed, fair card be banned. (one that plenty of people will have with the new set) OR leave wishes where they are and allow individual play groups to determine what wishes mean or don't for them.
Frankly the majority of your post sounds like fearmongering to me. Someone ruining the game by Wishing for an Armageddon versus someone ruining the game by just playing Armageddon seems like a distinction without a difference. Is it possible people will only include a bunch of awful cards in their Wishboards, like Acid Rain? Sure, I guess. But making it sound like literally everyone will do that all the time seems a bit disingenuous. It would be like me warning you off of playing EDH at all because the only things that get played are hardcore combo decks that win on T4. Do some people play those decks? Yes. But it's certainly not indicative of the entire experience. We should be trying to figure out how the average player would use Wishes if they were legal worked at all.
People get access to more than 100 cards in a given game. Players are then incentivized to play wishes and to copy them to have/pull more resources than your opponents. This also means that it is possible, through multiple means, that more than 100 cards can be in the game between library, hand, board, graveyard and exile.
Two things. Why do you think having more than 100 cards is a problem? And why do you think copying Wishes is going to be incentivized? You even said yourself that "If it's not worth running the majority of the time, you shouldn't be running it." Do you honestly think copying Cunning Wish once or twice is a better use of resources than, say, simply spending all that mana drawing cards that actually made the cut in your deck? Seems pretty loose to me.
It doesn't say they do nothing, it says that you need to discuss the scope of what you can search for with the playgroup beforehand. Maybe you have a wishboard, or a stack of 150 Eldrazi for Spawnsire, or everything in your backpack, the group needs to agree to it before hand.
"Abilities which refer to other cards owned outside the game (Wishes, Spawnsire, Research, Ring of Ma'ruf) do not function in Commander[...]". As written, the default mode of Wishes is "they don't work". That's all well and good if you want to house rule them, but if you want to play EDH by the book, Wishes are legal cards that have no game text on them. Which is both confusing and extremely unnecessary.
Impossible, they do pull cards from your sideboard in Commander. It's just that Commander has no sideboards.
"Abilities which refer to other cards owned outside the game (Wishes, Spawnsire, Research, Ring of Ma'ruf) do not function in Commander without prior agreement on their scope from the playgroup."
Just make the Wishes work like they do in every other format; they pull cards from your sideboard. Or at least outright ban them. This "these cards are legal but literally do nothing" nonsense is just the worst possible way to handle this.
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were legalworked at all.No, they do actual nothing.