I'm not that surprised tbh, I mean it was a discussion more or less justifying everything they do without really presenting any strong contra points. That isn't to say they are the villains by any means, but I feel like there was a more interesting conversation to be had here.
I'm interested in a combined commander damage total from all sources being set at 25? That way you don't have to keep track of 12 different numbers in a 4 player game just for commander dmg
@@Proudfootzorz I think many older casual players would frown on that, mostly because they see EDH as a board game more than a normal game of MTG. Lowering life totals could shorten games to a point where it looses that long form charm many players are used to.
Spoiler Alert: Death triggers were fixed! Turns out, many Magic: The Gathering players didn't even know to ask the question: Do Commanders die? Even members of the Rules Comittee played death triggers incorrectly! It was a legitimately confusing rule, and was adjusted. Elenda now works, and I am very happy with her! (Was thinking about her and adjustments I could make during other podcasts on this channel, in fact.)
I believe with Hybrid we've heard from designers (Most likely Maro) that when designing a Hybrid card it had to make sense as a mono-colored card of both colours. It's a card where the colours overlap as opposed to multicolour cards where the colours combine to do things you couldn't do in a single colour. This has led to people questioning why they can't be run in EDH from the single colour as opposed to both. I'm not sure I like the idea of hybrids being an either/or kind of deal but I understand the reason people think it's correct. Tangent thought: Would Reaper King be 5 colours or could you just use the generic costs and claim it has a colorless identity if the rule changed?
Personally I agree with MaRo about Hybrid Mana though (it's how R&D balances the Colors, so why complain about Colors being imbalanced when you don't ALLOW the fix to be legal??)
@@Sheriff_K dude, spamming the same comment doesn't make it correct. If that's his actual reasoning, then that's just lazy design. A card that's hybrid izzet is blue and red, always. It is never only one. This is very straightforward. The further you have to reach for an explanation/defense of your stance, the closer you come to needing to rethink that stance.
I feel like they completely missed this point, given how much time they spent saying "color targeting effects work on them, that doesn't make sense to have in a mono color deck!" So they think Transguild Courier should only be playable in a five color deck? The also completely messed up how the suggestion works with your Commander. Rhys would still be a Green-White Commander. The only point where it gets tricky are the ones with Hybrid-colorless cards, but that could also be easily addressed.
@@firstandlast.1254 A mono red deck with only mountains can run a hybrid izzet card in every other format. A mono blue deck with only islands can run the same card in every other format. By their vary nature they are cards both blue and red can do by themselves so should be able to be run in mono colored decks
Not that I particularly disagree with any stance presented here, but I do feel like stronger cases could be made, especially for hybrid mana. And, while she seems very genuine, Olivia stronger takes were only "dont change anything ever" and "I don't know", which makes for a not so great discussion. I feel that we learned very little about her thoughts in the end.
Yeah, doesn't help any of the issues people have with the committee atm with how it feels like they are fine ignoring the community and dont care what arguments they have, with them simply making changes when they personally dont like something
@@aidanquiett668 But in the case of the flash argument Olivia specifically went around to cEDH players and went out of her way to understand the problems people in cEDH were having with FlashHulk because she didnt understand it. I dont think they are "ignoring the community" so much as they have to take into serious consideration and are taking their time with their decisions.
@@Lashkor Rule 0 basically justifies keeping Sheldon's house-rules as the norm. My two cents: we need a blank slate, not a slate warped by four players' idiosyncratic experiences.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos What you are asking for is a slate with no bias, which is philosophically impossible. By playing commander and enjoying it, and by having opinions you will in turn form bias which dictates your decision making. This is an inescapable fact of not just commander but reality itself. Biases exist, youre gonna have to accept that. This also means that you do not want to make too many changes too quickly otherwise the format itself will die, which is why you see that the Rules committee rarely adjusts things without extremely serious consideration and information. The rules and by extension the banlist NEED to exist. For the same reasons as all the complaining about the banlist existing, the same can be said for the rules in general: The rules/banlist cut down on the extreme amount of discussion that would occur in mass playgroups like a Local Game Store where you dont play with the same people every single time you go. At no point does a player want to have to spend an hour discussing philosophy of what they deem to be "fun" or "enjoyable" with not just one but 3 other people and hope that their opinions just happen to sync up or that just takes up even more time instead of just playing a game of commander. The basic rules and banlist allows a shortcut that everyone is informed about and if you ask your group if you can tweak the rules that everyone would agree is "fun" or "enjoyable" then there is no reason you cant do that yourself. Remember that commander is a casual format, not a competitive one and the rules can be bent so long as the group is okay with it.
I really loved two points that were made in this episode: At 25:35 Prof talks about how many Magic: the Gathering players care more about the apparent logical inconsistency than the actual problem presented by Infect working the way it currently works. I think this is absolutely the case with respect to infect. That's a really deep rabbit hole to go down, though - if Lightning Bolt does 15% of the damage you need to win the game in 1v1, should it do 18 damage in EDH? At 45:10 Olivia points out that one of the big draws to commander is its stability. You don't have to F5 on Twitter on B&R day like people did this morning to see if they have to go back to the drawing board before next weekend's major organized event. I've been one of the people who talks about the cEDH changes that are discussed at one point in this episode, but I'll tell you I do appreciate how high the bar is for movement, even if it means not getting my way on some things.
@@MeriadocMyr Usually I take the same line Olivia took in this episode - some things work differently in Commander (extort, as a great example). If we start pulling the thread of what needs to be balanced, we end up "fixing" a lot of stuff that isn't broken.
@@MeriadocMyr my general response to this issue is that combat damage is literally the weakest win-con in EDH; the ONLY reason infect and Voltron have such a high 'threat' reputation is because of the capability to knock out a single player quickly. This is frightening to a lot of deck and rightfully so, but you alomst NEVER win games by showing the rest of the table that you can one-shot a player. HOWEVER, the reason Voltron (Commander Damage) and Infect exist is as a direct counter to combo decks with little interaction.
@@MeriadocMyr show them a Marsh Viper or a Swamp Mosquito. Those cards specifically say if a person has ten or more poison counters they lose the game.
The proposed change would be changing commander zone change rule " its owner may put it into the command zone instead." by removing the instead and making it a state-based action rather than a replacement effect. No need to change the rules for dies since that is shared across formats.
@@joystickgenie yeah I know. In the video they both say they don't know what the exact rules wording is regarding "dies" I was simply providing the actual rule that covers this for anyone else who happened to venture down into the comments hoping to find a clarification on that.
@@joystickgenie I would probably give commanders a trigger, since that feels a little cleaner to me personally. I would phrase it like this: 'Whenever -this- changes zones from any zone in the game to another visible zone other than the battlefield, you may put it into the command zone' This triggers from the new zone, therefore allowing Death triggers and such. Although this might confuse more casual players since not many abilities directly reference zones as such. All this being said, I'm not sure change is needed.
Also leyline of the void has creatures exiled instead of going to the grave, and is ruled as having them not die, which text wise makes the rule make sense, if you replace the word "exiled" to "returns to the command zone" it reads the same and is therefore ruled consistently
I hope they realize that rule 0 doesnt WORK EVERYWHERE. It's not a catch all rule. It still depends if the play group allows it. Which the entire reason why people are asking for changes
"Don't like how we are messing up your beloved format? Make your own then!" That's effectively what they are saying every time they say we should just rule 0 it
It's a super annoying cop out that they pretend is somehow more important in edh than it is in other games. It's not. You could always just decide to play differently, and it will never be a reasonable response to actual issues in the game.
9:13 - "That's part of the restriction, that's part of the deck-building process and it's like okay, that's just what it is in this format! I take it from there; it's like these are my parameters and now I have to figure out how to fit best within them. I'm open to hearing more about it why it should or shouldn't." I was kind of hoping that's exactly what this video would be - hearing more about why it should or shouldn't. We know that "That's part of the restriction etc.," - the question on the table is SHOULD it be part of the restriction, rather than affirmation that it is.
It should because a hybrid card IS both colors, it's not one or the other. Boros Reckoner isn't just a white card, it's also a red card. The design of these things is meant to reflect a combination of both colors, not one or the other. Their example of Hydroblast is spot on. That's a card designed to counter RED spells, and yet if this rule were changed, it would work against a monoWhite player's creature? That makes no sense. Color identity is integral to how deck construction works in this format. You can't have a card that is BOTH colors unless your commander is also those colors. I can Green Sun's for a Rhys because he's a GREEN creature, right? Well if I put him in a monoWhite deck, he doesn't suddenly stop being green, does he? It just doesn't make sense that you could include a green card in a monoWhite deck...
@@solidmasterdante The reason that you're wrong, dead wrong, is that this thing you think is so important (the card being two colours on the stack and battlefield) was an afterthought for hybrid mana. They wanted it to remember how you cast it, but that was too complicated for players. Hybrid cards are designed in the intersections of the colour pie. They were designed from the ground up to work in mono decks. The inventor of the mechanic says EDH is doing it wrong. Think of it this way. Now, there's no difference between hybrid mana and gold cards. This rule literally means EDH doesn't have that whole mechanic. That's crazy. No other mechanic Is just accidentally banned.
@@solidmasterdante "That a card designed to counter red spells works against a monowhite player." Wow, never thought I'd hear somebody argue that Chaoslace is destroying the EDH format :P
@@solidmasterdante Hydroblast already counters a Simic deck's Transguild Courier and destroys Reckless Brute and Wild Mongrel. What's so wrong about that?
I know this probably isn't still being monitored, but the one rule that I'd like to see rationalised is how EDH treats implied mana symbols. It feels bizarre to me that if I have a G/W deck, I can play Birds of Paradise (which can produce any colour of mana, but doesn't have the symbol on the card) but I can't play a Noble Hierarch, (which can produce three colours of mana, but lists them). (I have similar feelings about being allowed to play Extort cards in a R/W deck. It just feels wrong, but it's allowed since the hybrid symbol is only in the reminder text)
What if the death trigger issue gets solved with: "When a commander enters another zone you can then redirect it" That way it touches the graveyard THEN moves to the command zone Is that going to cause a weird interaction that's a bit too op?
It feels like there is some inconsistency with the death triggers. For example, Elenda won't give you tokens and Roalesk won't proliferate if you put them on the Command Zone But if your Commander gets Curse of the Swine'd and you put them on the Command Zone, you still get a pig.
@Najawin well I mean the triggers for tucking the commander would be "shuffle into library, once it hits library you can put it in the command zone, then shuffle the library" Or, you could just shortcut it to "put it in command zone then shuffle the library"
@@J03Y42NA That's not how triggers work, "putting into the library" and "shuffling it into the library" are the same thing mechanically, chaos warp would trigger, you shuffle it in, then priority is passed and you have the chance to bring it to the command zone, but can't because it's in your library. Even if commander worked like tokens, only the get put into the command zone instead of ceasing to exist, they would still get shuffled into your deck. Commander death triggers can be made to fit in commander, but with the caveat that chaos warp/totally lost effects are permanent, the commander has to be drawn before they can be played again.
@@bunnyben5607 I understand that, but what I'm saying is that we add the "once it's in the library\exile\graveyard THEN you get to move it." so you could then shortcut to what we already have now of just putting it in the command zone and shuffling your library. Nothing would be changed really with the chaos warp stuff, just the death triggers would work now.
My thing about infect is that it’s one of the few viable Aggro strategies in the format. Since the life total for each player is 40, traditional aggressive decks really aren’t valid. Voltron and infect, thusly, are the decks you have to play if you want to play aggressively and win through combat. Unless they change the life total to 30, I don’t think infect should be changed, as if they do, it further pushes an already difficult strategy further into the realm of not being viable. Commander is about playing cool decks you like to play, and i think that as is, Aggro Players already have a hard time and they’d just be more ostracized by changing the infect rule.
To add to your point, people also seem to forget that a Infect win in commander is already 30 life. Because if you one shot a player for 10 and the other 2 don't kill you then it's there fault not yours. Also, at our table decks with known Infect get taken out first. So, it's really it's own drawback.
You know, Infect never felt right to me in commander, but thinking of it as viable aggro really frames infect in a new light for me. You make an amazing point.
I feel that WotC just needs to print more direct aggro commanders. Commanders that like to go wide (Green/White primarily) work just fine, but scale better if you can get access to Red for haste or repeatable damage triggers, Infect is primarily a black/green thing but works well with other colors as support, and Voltron is all over the color pie. Mono Blue and Colorless commanders are the ones I struggle to think of good examples for but the closest potential commanders in both would be Sai and Hope of Ghirapur, both playing artifact aggro synergies with some stax or combo elements.
Is it though?? Is it that hard?? With Yawgmoth and Atraxa it is pretty easy to infect everyone at the same time without using too much of an aggro strategy too. And I have seen excellent aggro decks (Krenko, Slivers, etc) that are really viable in the format.
Goddamn this was surprisingly fucking infuriating to watch. Between that stuff along the lines of "Should we raise the starting life to 41?" "HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK LOL, DOES EVERYONE JUST START WITH A 10 CARD HAND AND 6 LANDS ON THE BATTLEFIELD?"
I have yet to hear a decent argument in favor of any of these proposals though. I thought Olivia was going to lay out some example cases but clearly no one has any. Why should a Commander that gets replacement effected into the Command Zone count for a death trigger? Why should Commander damage not be a rule? Why should Poison be double?
@@trident042 Thank you for so perfectly illustrating exactly why willfully ignorant, borderline mean-spirit videos like this one are a problem (especially when figures considered to have some authority are involved). There were plenty of arguments outlined in the comments you passed over to get here, but TLDR (well, relatively, like I said there are a lot of points and a lot of solid arguments for them) Hybrid: The entire point of hybrid is that it's OR, not AND, the rules only treat them as multicolored because the other way would be a nightmare to track (try an Eventide draft with a houserule that hybrid spells/cards in play are only the colors used to cast them, see how that goes :P), and EDH ALREADY has a rule that exists for the SOLE PURPOSE of redefining certain cards colors to something other than what they would be in game (Like, why can Kenrith, a monowhite card, run Cemetery Puca, a U/B card, but the monoblue Sakashima can't?). Infect: EDH is generally a slower format, hence the 40 life and prevalence of higher CMC cards. Infect circumvents this by already being aggro focused, like just watch the Command Zone games where somebody dies to Infect, it's always like turn 4 right after they cast their first creature. Or imagine if WotC lowered the life totals in regular Magic to 10. You'd be like "That's dumb, Monored aggro burn is just gonna blitz it's way through everybody now. They should raise that number." Commander Damage: It's several extra numbers that often don't matter but you HAVE to track them just in case they do. Which certainly by themselves isn't hard to do, but it's about overall load, 3 pennies aren't hard to carry but if you've got a jar of 2,000 pennies and I'm like "lemme add three more to that..." Additionally it's not a question of if it's hard, it's not hard to say "That's a Whoppah!" every time a creature gets it's power increased, the question is is the rule actually pulling its weight enough relative to it's cognitive burden? Commander death: It's unintuitive and weird that if I wrath the board this one card doesn't die. With stuff like Leylineof the Void, you have a blanket effect over everything, on it's own it can be hard to remember. Like one example somebody gave where they wiped the board with 10 creatures and Revel in Riches except "OOPS ONE OF THEM WAS A COMMANDER FUCK YOU YOU ONLY GET 9 TREASURE" That's a rough summary, personally I think most of them should stay the same aside from the current hybrid rules which are objectively wrong, but there ya go.
I feel frustrated by this discussion because everyone is just saying "I don't know, I don't want to answer that and have no opinion" over and over again.
With cards like Elenda, changing the rules so she gets the death trigger going to the command zone pleases the people who want her to work that way but subsequently takes away from people who like her not quite working and having to build around that. I doubt as many people would find Phage so cool if you didn't have to jump through hoops to make her work. So I think there needs to be stuff that doesn't quite work so people who love janky stuff like that can try it because there are definitely a large enough number of people who get a lot of joy from that.
I think Olivia and Prof were both great in this (both giving their genuine, honest opinion), but both of them agreeing on everything was not interesting to watch. The video could've been summed up almost entirely with: "Should the commander/edh rules change? No." And just roll credits.
The thing with hybrid mana is that it works how R&D says it works. Any disagreement is fundamentally wrong on its face. With your Mono-White example, yes you could be running a Wubrg deck. The question is, however, why would you unless you have a Commander that synergizes with all of those cards? Also, yes, using cards like that opens yourself up to color hosing that your deck normally wouldn't be vulnerable to, but that's an interesting deck building constraint. Also, I would question whether a Blue player would suddenly sub out two cards for Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast just because the White deck is running Boros Reckoner. As a Blue player in all formats, I would say no, unless my play group had a profusion of Red to begin with. A Red deck should absolutely be running Pyroblast and REB because Blue is so common in eternal formats, but that's with or without the hybrid mana rules change.
The situation with poison counters is really interesting honestly because it's an example of magic acting like an ecosystem where deck strategies are traits being selected on for their fitness and following some well established rules of natural selection. Poison will never be a format consuming problem because its strength as a win con lies in the generally absence of the best, more narrow answers to it. It's why it's always been hard to deal with in casual since long before EDH but never really has been a format warping T1 deck in most formats; they more its played, the more slotting in super powerful but narrow hate against it becomes a good idea and the more it suffers from its own ubiquity. There's an inherent negative feedback loop inherent in strategies that are very powerful and have powerful but narrow counter acting strategies. It's basically exactly the phenomenon of negative frequency selection seen in trait fitness in natural selection models (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-dependent_selection). Poison is good in open, meta-less casual play with large variance in deck strategies seen game to game because you have no idea when or how often it will show up. Because the strongest hate against poison counters tends to very narrow and poison counters are a rarity among games as a whole it makes the best counters to the win con dead cards in most games and therefore bad choices for deck builders who want to have answers to common problems in most games...so long as the strategy remains rare it's better to play flexible answers and just try to lean on your creature removal options when it does show up as you main solution. The moment poison becomes a common occurrence within a group it becomes worth it from a cost/benefit analysis for players to slot in poison counter and infect hate cards and poison centric decks crumple.
I actually think most of the rules as they are now are pretty good and could be optimal with minor tweaks. That said, changes I'd make if I were suddenly benevolent dictator of EDH rules: First the simple, easy stuff * Starting life 30 * Commander Damage is a single pool a player has that all commander damage received adds to (reduces complexity, the main coherent complaint of merit I ever hear about it). Alternatively the number could be reduced from 21 but I think a pool is better idea. * Poison = 12 counters to a kill * Default mulligan for casual settings is the GIS mulligan, default for tournaments is GSS mulligan; if everyone is clear it's a game of cEDH use London mulligan rules. Games starting quickly and everyone being a participant in those games is more important than most anything else in casual play. I want to have fun with my friends and that is what most facilitates that. * There should probably be some sort of benefit given to the player that goes last in multiplayer but I haven't really figured out what is enough but not to much. This is more of a multiplayer things in general than just EDH but since EDH is largely only multiplayer I'd want it to be part of the format rules. * I think that cards that state you can play any number of copies of them should be ignored by the EDH format or just banned. I think they ignore the entire point of playing a singleton format and always invoke this reaction of 'why are you playing EDH? You played a singleton format just so you could player a deck with 20 copies of a card?'. * I personally liked the banned as commander distinction because there as just cards that are too good as commanders that are acceptable in the 99, but I'm also not sure if would be a great idea to go back on that at this point. * For a spicier idea (an this might be irrelevant if you change the starting life total to 30, but...) I'd either ban several cards that were never balanced around 40 starting life and are broken because of it for the same reasons that Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned and weirdly they aren't (looking at you Ad Nauseum). That or an errata that makes statements about static life totals into ones relative to starting life total. WotC made this change in their card rules text was them admitting they hadn't taken EDH life totals into account with prior designs that were balanced around 20 starting life and didn't take other options into account (Test of Endurance is the best example because it's a clear one: it should read that you win the game if you have 30 more life than your starting life total give the new paradigm that WotC writes these effects out as, this is still very achievable in EDH, just not laughably easy). * And my most controversial opinion: Ban all the fast mana rocks that are as good or better than Sol Ring (so I'd argue just start with Sol Ring and Mana Crypt and then wait and see), or, alternatively a format level errata that they can't be played on T1 as that's really the only time they change relative mana availability so much they are broken beyond reason. These honestly just aren't ever synergistic adds, they are ramp auto includes, like say Arcane Signet is, but just give you too much for too little and too fast when they come down T1 (and are still pretty game altering played T2, just maybe not quite as far over the line of what is reasonable). They don't really act as synergies for specific decks, they just randomly catapult any deck strategy forward a minimum of 2 turns; while I'm all for keeping magic a game of skill and chance, I like that it is still skill dominant and these generally just seem to be too strong an effect to randomly dole out to a player. I also think that EDH as a format has enough variance game to game to allow for the random happenings that add spice to games over the long term with one of those things that can chance occur being: "well player A when first and dropped a Sol Ring so unless his deck is dead in the water after that they are just going to be starting T4 when everyone else just wrapped up their T1", because it doesn't reward are specific deck or specific strategy synergies, it just lets a player start their mid game plays on T2 and makes it their game to lose from there on out. A screed on people trying to shoe horn Hybrid mana in as a single color: Hybrid mana cards are multicolor cards in every single way that matters, they just have a more flexible casting cost. That's all people should see them as: muticolor cards made to with a more flexible casting cost. This whole argument to make them either/or has always reeked of 'but I WANT TO!' from people who argue it because it never really has any good rational backing it, it's always just something people want to do because they want to play a powerful card or more specifically a powerful effect outside of their colors. 'Because I want to' isn't a good enough argument to change a major defining rule for a format, it just isn't. As to 'why restrict my deck building?'...well because you're making the choice to play a format that has restrictions, I will never comprehend people that decide to pick up a format but them complain about key thematic parts of said format and say they need to not exist when they just play another format to experience that other style of magic and deck building. Instead, people weirdly think 'we should just strip away what makes this format unique' rather than 'oh, hey, maybe I should also play 60 card casual because there are clearly other aspects of deck building and play that I want to experience'. It seems to come from the same people and corners that argue to get rid of other aspects of the format that are *core critical thematic pieces of the format* like commander damage or color identity requirements and generally just feels like people wanted to strip out all the actually unique parts of the format that restrict them in any way. I often have the reaction of 'well do you even actually like commander?' in the same way that I would react to people suggesting we play Color Star or Emperor, but then house ruling most of the unique aspects of those game formats away so it was barely different from normal free for all with 'how is this different? I don't think you actually like these special game styles because you want to get rid of almost all their rules'. It's like someone saying 'I like modern but it would be cool if I wasn't restricted in my deck building to only new border cards, I think the format would be better if we could use old border cards too', without realizing they could play Legacy and that trying changing a defining quality of Modern is trying to make the heavy lift of trying to have a single format be everything you want out of magic when that's not the point of formats. I think the only place there is any wiggle room on losing color identity rules is on split cards where one half is within the color identity and one is not; with a restriction on only being able to cast the half that is within the color identity. It's still not a strong case, but it's strong that arguing for hybrid cards are 'the mono color' of your choice. As to 100 card limit, I think that simply put the best argument is that most formats only have a minimum and that's fine; usually people stick to it anyway and it doesn't really ever cause problems to not have a upper limit. That said it's not a very strong argument and I'd say the argument towards format identity for keeping it 99 only for official play is a stronger one, with the understanding that people be lax about enforcement with people tuning new decks that are having issues cutting the last couple cards and what to playtest the deck to figure it out. Arguing the limit needs to go away *just* so people can play battle of wits is about the weakest argument you could ever make ("Please change a core rule of this format for one car so I don't understand why that's the one people are latching on to honestly.
"If you want to make a minor change to the format than you hate it, all of your arguments for hybrid Mana are terrible and making 99 only a minimum would fundamentally hurt the format somehow by making a single card playable at all."
1. Hybrid: I could go either way on hybrid. I really want to play Enchanted Evening in my Karametra Enchantress deck. In general I don't think it would cause problems which is why I lean towards allowing it. 2. Deck size restriction: No other format needs a maximum deck size, and it causes no problems anywhere. Mill is already a bad strategy so I don't think that's a valid argument. So if I want to run a 103 card deck because I don't want to look for a cut today, I don't think it would cause harm to the format. 3. Infect: I like infect where it is. It gives another out to infinite life/huge life gain decks. 4. Death triggers: You would be amazed at the number of times commanders not "dieing" has been relevant in our play group. Kokusho doesn't work as a a commander, you don't get skullclamp triggers, Blood artist doesn't work. It is definitely a thing. 5. The reason people want to get rid of commander damage is because it's annoying to track and very rarely relevant. It's like mana burn in that respect. That being said, keep commander damage. We just have the person dealing the commander damage be responsible for tracking it. If you don't feel it's relevant, don't track it. X. I don't think "ask your friends if this is ok" is ever an acceptable answer on why something should or should not be done. Many people don't play with a consistent group and there does need to be consistent rules for everyone.
I understand people would want to build new and interesting deck, or include sweet hybrid cards that are currently not includable, but I think it works fine for now, and that changing it is likely to create more problems than it fixes. Battle of wits is something most people have wanted to be able to try in commander, but there is so many problems attached to this. FIrst there is the size of the deck and time spent shuffling and searching (bound to play heaps of tutors). Secondly a lot of commander decks have mill strategies, and allowing more than 100 cards would skewer the balance of mill-decks. As for infect, the card pool supporting it is relatively limited. If it gets a lot of future support in form of infect or combo cards for infect there might be a discussion for making infect 20points, but for now I think 10 is just fine. As for the death trigger, I do believe these worked until they revised commander rules, making command zone return a REPLACEMENT effect, so it REPLACES the death/exile/tuck etc. I might be mistaken, but I seem I seem to remember that in earlier rules iteration of commander it died/exiled etc and you could pull your commander from GY or exile at any time (but not from your deck if put in it) . Another commander that would be really strong if you changed this would be Child of Alara Commander damage in a lot of games are never even tracked, and it does get a little problematic to keep proper track of as it makes for 5 life totals for each player in a 4 player game (3 commander life and infect), for a total of 20 life totals! However a lot of decks are build on commander damage, and it would be bad to "ban" these decks because of a little book-keeping.
@@djcochrane it's nice to know people with the power to make changes are listening to feedback and admitting when they don't know something, but it really makes you curious about what kind of people they chose for a body like the CAG for her to be able to sit down for an interview about the format like this and admit she doesn't know what's going on with a bunch of these hotly discussed issues
@@tylerespinoza1282 It's not nice if the answers are "I don't know, I personally don't find that a problem, I couldn't say if it would be better if we change or not, so I would just keep it as it is"
I’m at work so I didn’t listen super super close, but they tended to agree. Maybe there should have been another guest with a different opinion? sure! That could have only made things more interesting. But the only case she said she knew nada on was FlashHulk and she asked people about it. It’s different to say hybrid mana, for example, isn’t really an issue she or her group has. 🤷🏻♂️
Rule zero shouldn't be used to defend or justify arbitrary decisions affecting everyone who plays the format. It's not a good way to """balance""" the format and too often in these podcasts we can see that people use the rule zero argument as a way to avoid giving a real answer. I have a regular CASUAL playgroup and we don't use rule zero because we like to play according to the format's rules, expecting that the people in charge of said format can maintain it in a proper state. Also rule zero doesn't really work if you are someone that plays only at your lgs and doesn't have a regular playgroup, a proper and formal rule system guarantees that people have the same means and restrictions to play edh. Why have a banlist at all if we are going to rule zero everything? Why have rules and restrictions at all? You can't have it both ways... if it's true that restrictions breed creativity then rule zero shouldn't exist, if rule zero is allowed to exist then we shouldn't have deckbuilding restrictions (including bans).
I think it varies. "Talk to your play group" is a valid response to rules changes that will allow one or two highly experimental decks at the expense of a significant change to overall play. Rather than upsetting the format, all 5 people who want to run 200 card decks can shoulder the burden of convincing someone to let them play it rather than making the whole of the community adjust to a new rule about deck sizes.
@@Vote4Drizzt Yeah, there is a difference between wanting to run a 200 card deck and wanting to be able to cast a hybrid card in a 1 color deck, like you can in every other format, but I dont think the committee thinks there is one, considering they apparently see any change as massive and not worth doing unless everyone there is fully on board
@@Vote4Drizzt I fail to see how letting players play more than 100 cards would make the community adjust in any way. Unless you are playing battle of wits, you stay at 100 cards which means the only people affected by this rule change are the 5 people who wanted to play battle of wits in the first place. I just fail to see any real argument in favor of saying "Players should not be permitted to play 250 card decks."
Alternative ways to solve the issues discussed in this video: 1. Hybrid mana- ask your play group if they're fine with it. 2. Poison counter threshold- ask your play group if they're fine with it. 3. Commander "dies" rule- ask your play group if they're ok with it. Commander started as an informal format where players decide to put their own rules into play that should still stand if you're only playing casually.
Re: Hybrid > The point is that it's functionally two monocolored cards mashed together. For example, if Nature's Chant was printed first, we probably would have never seen Naturalize and Disenchant. > Flavorfully it's supposed to be an OR, they just have both because it takes like one line of rules text vs 30 and surely nobody would invent some dumb rules that make Noble Hierarch count as a 3 color card. > Even your example isn't quite accurate, Azorious Guildmage is still a UW card because it has solid colors in its text box. > You can ALREADY do most of the things you're worried about. Maybe not Hydroblast, but you could say use Scuttlemutt to turn on Kederekt Parasite in a monoblack deck. > The entire point of color identity is fixing the problems caused by using the default colors (Like before it was introduced, Bosh couldn't really work because he couldn't produce red mana, hence why color identity exists in the first place). Basically either Cemetary Puca is playable in monoblack or new Sisay can't run nonwhiye cards, pick one. The only remotely good argument I've heard is the point about hybrid Commanders, but that's pretty easy. My proposal would just be you can count each hybrid mana symbol as either or both of its symbols for the purpose of color identity during deck construction. That way hybrid commanders can still use their full suite, hybrid cards work the way they're supposed to, and stops people from running Beseech the Queen in monowhite if you consider that an issue.
FYI, Hydroblast already destroys a Simic deck's Transguild Courier, Homicidal Brute and Wild Mongrel. So even that example isn't as crazy as they think.
@@fernandobanda5734 Transguild Courier actually can't be put in anything other than a 5 color deck as it is all 5 colors at all times. But yeah, it was not a great example, and they definitely didn't do any research on why this conversation waseven happening
I think the best comment I've seen so far for why hybrid works in every other format, is that every other format doesn't CARE about COLOUR IDENTITY. That is the one major difference between the formats; EDH CARES about COLOUR IDENTITY. It is a specific deckbuilding restriction to add variance and fun to the format. If you want to break the rules of colour identity, why not break a few more rules while you're at it? Why have colour identity at all? Just run whatever cards you want with whatever commander you want. You can do that in any other format, and we should be just like every other format, right? If you want to run that blue card in your mono-red deck because "technically the lands in the deck can cast it because it's blue-red hybrid", then can I run literally anything in my mono-black deck because "the city of brass-type lands in my deck can technically cast them"?
It hurts that this discussion always ends with people simply reiterating their opinions instead of arguing logically. 3:30 - Treating the argument as if it makes no sense, or trying to make it seem like chaos. "What happens if you want to play Boros Reckoner in that deck? Can you now?" Yes "Can you play cards that are Boros?" Hybrid sure, gold no. "I can have access to basically three? Or I can bring in white black? I can make it a five-color deck?" No. You don't have access to cards with other color identities unless they happen to be hybrid green or hybrid white. "...Because I'm using the white that they all have in common?" Yes, that's the point. You can already do this in a green-white deck outside Commander. "There's a weirdness too to the idea that someone can respond with Hydroblast." But there's not. They can already do that to your Transguild Courier, Reckless Brute and Wild Mongrel.
5:11 "I would also offer that restrictions can breed creativity" 9:10 "That's part of the restriction, that's part of the deck-building process" Yeah, cool, but nothing is said about hybrid in particular. I could also say that you can only use cards whose letters in the title is contained in the Commander's name and it will end up leading to diverse decks. People don't have a problem with restrictions, they have a problem with *those* restrictions and with *why* they're there. It's very disingenuous to not address this at all. You might as well be saying that the current rules are good because they are the current rules.
I'm so glad people like you are speaking out. Prof doesn't understand how far he is from people who truly care for the format. He's basically listening and agreeing with like-minded people.
Honestly, a few minutes in and I hate this guest. She doesn't use logic or even really support her arguments, she just tries to make her opponents in this argument sound dumb and hope they give up
And honestly I don't think this change would be a big of a deal... What are the "worst" color pie breaks the hybrid cards get??? The only mind-boggling for me are the ones that are hybrid with generic (2)... But my feeling is that these are just nos hybrid at all... Right?
Nice - I'm personally against changing this rule, but could very well be swayed by a more nuanced discussion. What if hybrid cards in a mono-colored Commander deck were considered to ONLY have the color identity of the Commander running the deck? So for example, a Rhys in a mono-white deck could only be hit by cards that target white even if someone else at the table is running a Rhys in a green/white deck, and the Rhys in the GW deck can be considered to have both colors! This makes the most sense to me now that I'm thinking more about it.
I have two issues with your (Prof and Olivia's) discussion: 1. Absolving the Rules Committee of their function a-la telling playgroups to "make their own rules"; I once again ask the Rules Committee and Olivia in earnest, "WHY DO THEY EXIST?"; if your primary function is to moderate the rules of a format and you actively tell people to make their own house rules for issues, then you simply are not doing the job, period. You should be making rules the same way ANY sport or gaming committee does: for the most competitive community of players. Others can make the rules MORE LAX if needed for their experience, but I cannot go to a store and insist on making the rules MORE RESTRICTIVE. One serves the entire community, the other only absolves the Rules Committee of their obligations. 2. Using the same criteria to judge Commander as you do with 60-card formats: "Does it warp the format?" - This has a myriad of issues, the first and biggest being you're moderating a format which exists in microcosms; your experience will NEVER be the same as mine because the group(s) I play with are varied. The second issue is that the Rules Committee actively IGNORES the input of communities which exist in more public spaces, which aren't as isolated as the 'silent masses' they tout as 90% of the community (without evidence to back up such numbers). EDH doesn't have a pro tour, events or tournaments with the exception of cEDH, which is paradoxically far more organized as a community than the greater EDH playerbase, and their 'problems' are going to be unique to a cEDH play experience. For example, in the case of Infect damage, combat is one of the weakest win-cons available to EDH players, so cEDH rarely relies on it and would not encounter Infect simply because it is not powerful enough. And really, what does 'format warping' mean to a BROKEN format?
I'm inclined to have the default be set with low restrictions and Rule 0 upward toward more restriction, but I agree that Rule 0 allows the RC and CAG to abdicate their responsibilities with next to no consequences.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos my point is that if the expectation is that 'house rules' be the norm for playgroups, then building the rules and ban-list with groups who do NOT have the luxury of doing so in mind makes more sense; those of us who play in stores or at events cannot impose special rules and expectations on those we might encounter, while those in a private play-group (like those 90% the RC claims exist) can far more easily make such modifications. The Rules Committee's insistence that the players 'make their own rules' would be like the NBA or NFL designing rules with pick-up groups in mind and ignoring the professional players who tell them that they need rules to be more restrictive. If they are not willing to do the job of moderating the format, they need to STEP ASIDE.
@@MadMage86 That's fair. I lean toward "ban less, not more", since bans focused on cEDH will really perplex little Bobby LGS and might make his deck whoops not legal, but banning for cEDH is certainly better than the dartboard banlist we have now
@@MusicalBoarder how many people play football professionally in the NFL versus, say, in Grade Schools, Colleges or smaller Leagues? How many just play with friends? Does this mean the NFL should make rules for the much larger percentage of players? The logic of 'targeting the larger group' is a MARKETING mentality, and it does not work for rules in any setting, be it real life or games - 99% of people aren't murderers, but we don't make the rules less strict because they don't 'matter' to most people.
Hybrid creatures eg boros reckoner are red OR white OR both flavourly so it makes sense that mono white commanders and/or planeswalkers can summon them because that card id hybrid in its flavour
Hey, I'm clearly late to the party, but as this response misrepresents one of the original arguments (which MaRo tried quite hard to lay out in detail on his podcast exactly to avoid this kind of accidental strawmaning), I've gotta speak up: So the pitch is hybrid cards in the 99 should count as either or both of their colors to the advantage of the Commander deckbuilder. The logic is that hybrid cards represent an OR operator rather than an AND. They are not the confluence of two colors but the expression of an idea roughly equally represented by both. These are effects which either color should reasonably be able to produce, and while I don't know what specific problems Mark sees with the future of the mechanic, Commander is in many ways a no-win situation for a designer. A wildly popular format over which the product creators have no control but must also accommodate lest the crowds inundate them with complaints, Wizards is trying to be proactive AND hands-off, an uneasy position. Many other companies (for good reason) would co-opt the trappings of the fan creation and then either hire them (bringing the format under their control) or cast the OG contributions aside entirely. Wizards is trying for a long game, playing nice with the community in the hope of maintaining a healthy physical presence through the format which sells more paper than any other, but y'all want it both ways. When white can't pull its own against 3 opponents because it plays just fine in standard without card draw, you're more than happy to minge, but when the people who spend all day contemplating Magic tell you that the answer to certain problems might lie in a rules change, one that would allow them to pursue options they haven't been able to for fear of making waves in this community favorite, suddenly the line is "stick to standard, boys, we'll figure it out." Do you trust the designers to continue making this game (and hence, when they say a rule of the format is particularly disruptive to their job you give them the benefit of the doubt), or should they pack it in and let someone else take over, since they clearly don't have sights set beyond rotation? I would like MaRo to clarify what some of these problems are (at least to the rules committee) so that an agreement can be reached, but I also believe him when he says "this, more than any other, is the change I would make if I could."
Idk why people so are against hybrid mana. Boros Reckoner can be fully utilized in a mono-deck. Alesha who smiles can be fully utilized by boros and rakdos decks. But Deathrite Shaman has black and green symbols, so it can only be full utilized by BG+ decks. So simple lol
i don't agree with Hybrid mana cards being allowed to be played in either color alone, and it's as simple as what color identity represents, which is how the card works. A card, like Rhys, has G/W hybrid mana as it's cost because it has functions that combine green and white principles. In function, it's not a green card or a white card depending on what you pay, it's always a Green-White card. Out of all of these, the only rule I think should be changed is that if a commander is moved to the command zone because it would have died, death triggers should trigger. I feel like Death triggers are a broad enough issue, and this interaction is so nitpicky that changing it would be a large benefit. I think if a commander is in the situation where a card says "Destroy target creature" and it resolves, or if it would be killed in combat, it should trigger. I think not allowing legendary creatures with death triggers to function if they're your commander stifles creativity and variety in deck building rather than encourages it, while not preventing any sort of great negative impact on the format if that would be allowed.
I would argue that the card is perfectly in-pie for both monogreen and monowhite and that the color it itself has in the game means nothing. Otherwise, Transguild Courier or a transformed Reckless Brute would be banned in monoblue, too. "Combining green and white principles" is incredibly subjective, but, like I said, card would work fine as a monowhite card.
A thought on the death trigger issue, what if instead of being "instead of changing zones" that it be "after changing zones" when you choose to put your commander back. In this way, you still get exile and death triggers but you also get your commander safe. This would actually make the game interactions more simple than currently because all those interactions with the commander work the same as any other creature in any format. For example, Elendra dies, trigger goes on the stack to get the vampires, and then the commander can be moved to the command zone as a state-based effect since it changed zones. Decree of Pain is another example where the current rule adds complexity. If the board has 10 creatures when the spell is cast, then 10 creatures die and 10 cards should be drawn. But if 3 of those creatures are commanders, then somehow I only draw 7 even though I killed 10 creatures? This is not intuitive and the added complexity of remembering "how many things that died didn't actually die". So even if the rule change affected zero commanders, I would still say it's a good change because it makes these interactions behave the way most players would anticipate and expect them to work. We don't need this extra complexity just for complexity's sake.
Your suggestion has an unintended impact. Shuffle effects (like chaos warp) will require you to shuffle your commander in your deck, reveal the top (because that's what chaos warp does), and when you are done resolving chaos warp, you need to go back to your library and find your commander again. Also, if you want a flavor justification as to why your commander didn't die because of Decree of pain, I've always seen it as "It (the commander) got too injured and had to retreat".
@@Registeel1234 Except I already clarified that that it's after it changes zones...so yes you still shuffle but no, you don't put your commander in the deck.
Probably my least favorite interview so far. I actually agree with most of your points, but I felt like the opposing arguments you used were pretty strawmanned. I take issue with is your talk on Hybrid mana and the Card limits. Maro has said that Hybrid Cards are designed to be either or. I do think that it might be a hard rule to implement, and I'm not saying it really NEEDS to change, but there's a lot of good reasons that design-wise it should. for the Battle of Wits one, you ignore that many people don't have a steady play group, they play at Stores and GP events where you might not know everyone you play with. Asking strangers to bend the rules isn't really a good option, so why would you build a deck like that when it's likely you'll be told you can't play it? Anyway, I agree with Infect, Commander Damage and even the Card limit, in the end, but I really felt like this discussion was dismissive rather than, well, discussive of the situation.
this is my second video i have seen on this topic thus far, and my main question is "so what if someone Hydroblasts a card from your mono white deck?" you scrunch your faces and shrug your shoulders saying it feels weird, well having a pirate ship being crewed by a sport scar feels weird too, but here we are. allowing the hybrid cost change actually validates many card choices, as things like Hydroblast may be a bad inclusion in most groups, because you are betting on weather someone will play a red commander, but opening up this avenue makes it almost a statistical probability that someone will slide in a red hybrid. and in many ways, will help white with their little card advantage problem.
You know what feels weird? Casting Invert the Skies in a mono green deck by paying U for it. Things that feel *this* weird are called "color pie breaks". Making mana that isn't in your color identity has been allowed for a while and this would absolutely break it. Here's the full cycle scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=%28oracle%3Aif+oracle%3Aspent%29+block%3Ashm
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos i would say it primarily helps mono-colored decks. but it adds some fun interactions all over. i mean immagine dropping a Biomantic Mastery in a Niv-Mizzet, Parun deck....
@@florianw116 Invert the Skies would still be UG because it has a blue mana symbol in the text box. Also Akroma's Memorial can also give your field flying in monogreen (Or Predator, Flagship on a case by case basis), so.
I like the "OR" Rule. The whole thing about magic is that wording is key. if the Legendary is G or W. I can have Green or white, but if it should want to be added into a deck it can fit a Green or white deck too. It may seem too radical right now but it should be worth a try.
The problem with saying "Is this a pervasive problem in the format" when it comes to Elenda is the fact she and other death trigger commanders haven't had a chance to prove weather its a problem or not. These triggers should be allowed until they prove broken, just like every other effect and ability. If there is some valid reason why not other then just a silly quirk of the format then a good compromise in my eyes would the commander would need to be destroyed by damage or card effect, bouncing and exile wouldn't count toward the death triggers. Thus slowing down or mildly stunting the amount of ways to abuse that kind of death trigger.
I think the thing that annoys me most about people always citing Elenda as why commanders should die is that she's in black/white which has amazing recursion is it so hard to let it die and then get it back?
Going to the graveyard is part of what triggers "dying". Even tokens trigger this before disappearing. Rerouting to the command zone is saving your commander from "dying". Also, is the graveyard even really a draw back anymore?
An important thing to note is this would affect a lot more than JUST commanders with death triggers. It also affects every deck running any creature, artifact, or enchantment that has a "when a creature dies" trigger.
You don't need to. Child of Alara would be the singularly most oppressive commander with this change. They're a repeatable 5(+) CMC non-land permanent boardwipe that just needs to ramp far enough ahead of the commander tax to interact a bit then get Cabal Coffers + Urborg + one of the 'sac a creature' lands out to force players into an unfun situation instead of requiring the use of Moorland Haunt or any of the various creature recursion effects to get around the zone change rule. Recursion adds both a deckbuilding restriction and an additional mana tax to these cards that is inherently valuable in slowing them down before they get rolling, and once established they are often more efficient than having to deal with the commander tax when it comes to comboing off anyways. The way I see it, at best this rule change lowers the barrier to exploiting only a few commanders in the short term without really giving you anything else to consider that you wouldn't be doing anyways in those decks, and at worst enables degenerate gameplay because the downsides to using those commanders suddenly isn't a downside anymore. Either way, why would we change it? To me, having them as a commander already guarantees you have access to the card when you want it, and that is more than sufficient. This additional rule doesn't add enough for it to be worth changing to me.
This has been said before, but the talk about Hybrid mana seems to just ignore the conversation where it came from. It has been stated several times, but the argument felt very disingenuous because it felt like it straw manning the opposed argument. I don't have much of a position either way but I do see both sides. If I can interact with a card that affects that color that card is inherently that color. (Ie countering a hybrid white/blue with puroblast). The opposed thought seems goes along the lines of I can only spend white mana to do this hybrid card so I should get to use it in mono white or white / x (non blue). The reasoning for not changing interaction based on mana spent on the spell was done to simplify the way the cards work and it feels like a reasonable downside/trade off to get the ability use those cards for whatever advantage they bring. However this doesnt mean you could bring a gold white blue card into a deck with missing a blue because that blue is a hard part of the inherent cost.
I don't think people are ignorant of where the desire to change the rule comes from, nor are they creating strawman arguments. If you propose a rules change, people will argue back based on the rules. Proponents of the change rarely (though sometimes) are citing rules in favor of their position, and are usually (again, generally speaking) speaking more towards some notion of intent or design. So when people respond to a rules suggestion with rules speak, and "ignore" the design/intent argument, it's not disingenuous, or strawmanning, they just don't feel it's relevant.
@@loganl8440 I stated it was disingenuous and straw manning as it was extrapolated that if you change the hybrid identity suddenly you can use any card you want in any deck (the all 5 colors comment). That is clearly not what is being asked to change, just that those cards that have hybrid costs can be run in decks with access to either color. Which sure in an edge could mean a mono white deck could run hybrid white blue, white black, white red and white green. But the thing is any non commander mono white deck could already run all of those cards so it's not really a 5 color deck.
@@jamesloucka1952 Ah, I see. That wasn't mentioned in your original comment. But I also don't think that's what the argument was. They were saying, correctly, that if you include a W/X hybrid card for every color combination in your mono white deck, you would have technically created a 5 color deck, even though it's supposed to be mono colored, and that is weird.
@@loganl8440 I didn't go into as much detail as I perhaps should have. I dont want to dog pile. However, I think it is fair to say that many have felt the way the hybrid mana cost change was present was done unfairly and perhaps in a way that denigrates or ridicules those who think it should change. It is also a bit silly to call a deck running a hand full of hybrid cards a 5 color deck in my opinion.
Wouldn't want to complicate the board state. Also, dont forget about PW Narset's static ability or your arcane denial triggers. Those are easy to keep track of in comparison to commander damage for sure -.-
When I first started playing, I thought it was an interesting concept and didn't have anything against it. It wouldn't really bother me if they got rid of it.
The point is that it's tracking something that often doesn't matter. Like, in a 4 player game, I might need to track my life total, my poison counters, and three separate commander damage totals, shit wait is the 8 from Rakdos or Borborygmos? I'm not necessarily saying I think it should be removed but the point is it's often a lot of bookkeeping for something that doesn't end up mattering.
@@dapperghastmeowregard We just put a different die for each commander on the board if necessary, hardly an issue imo. Commander damage is a pretty good thing to combat the absurd amounts of life you can gain without it being combo and helps shorten the game duration.
If you want to build a fun Atraxa, use energy. Combined with proliferate, energy has become an absolute blast, and probably one of my favorite commander decks to pilot.
I have a really fun Atraxa deck that tries to get as many different kinds of counters out that it can. It has energy counters, depletion counters, fade counters, study, hour, fate, brick, winch, tower, level, study, and about fifteen more. It was a blast to build, fun to play, and, most importantly, the only thing it doesn't have are loyalty counters.
My thoughts. The only time I see infect in my playgroup is my Ruric thar deck with Grafted Exoskeleton. With my win record, I think I've only gotten the infect win a couple of times? I think changing the die trigger is a good idea. I get the current ruling and itd OK, but I think this is a good example of expanding the playability of EDH without changing how EDH works, like with hybrid mana. I did mean that hybrid mana should not be considered as a mono color. EDH is very color Identity centric, and cards with hybrid costs should maintain their two color stqtus. Getting rid of commander damage gets rid of the main non combo way of winning a game, and that can only hurt the format. I dont see why the desire to "simplify"what isnt a difficult concept should annihilate an entire playstyle. So after this video, the only thing I'd change is the die trigger. Everything else is fine.
I agree pretty much exactly. I think the for the dies trigger they should just add a rule that says "if you would place your commander into the graveyard and instead place it into the command zone, any death trigger still occurs" The thing that kinda got me on hybrid Mana was you could run Reaper King in any deck and since you are still able to produce Mana of any color (from stuff such as manalith) then you could hypothetically cast him for his colored Mana cost which doesn't seem intuitive. I also like the points about the hybrid cards technically having a color identity and being able to be targeted for the other color.
@@Carrtoondragon exactly. Have some condition to where if a Commander would die and is instead put in the command zone, it still triggers. On a side note, I think changing the death rule makes it easier on new players. It's hard explain why your child of alara wont trigger even when she "dies."
@@GreenestTrampler You are very correct about each topic. But I think commander damage can be simplified and strengthened at the same time by just unifying the damage to a player by all commanders. No more "if you take 21 from my commander, you lose" and instead "if you take 21 from your opponents' commanders, you lose".
@@florianw116 that would definitely make for some more combat heavy games! Haha I've done that a few times in my playgroups, and it was hit and miss (having a Multani and Sigarda at the table made for quick Cmdr damage). I personally would rather keep it per commander, but I'd be fine switching it to cumulative Commander damage.
I remember hearing a really elegant solution for the dies-trigger issue: Change the command zone replacement effect with a triggered ability. "When your commander leaves the battlefield, you may search [zones] for it and put it in the command zone. If you search your library this way, shuffle it." While it adds a slight wrinkle where tuck effects now shuffle, it also fixes another oddity where Banishing Light can return a commander that replaced its exile.
@@AvalonisHere Kit only wrote "When your commander leaves the battlefield". So you can't actually replace exile from the graveyard with put in the command zone.
"Is it that pervasive a problem?" No....... because it's illegal? No, there aren't a lot of death trigger commanders, they don't work. No, a lot of people don't play infect, because at 10 counters it's too cheap. Maybe there would be more infect decks if it didn't feel really easy to swing with blight steel and win. You changed my mind on hybrid mana, "It's both these colors of a card." Oh yah, good point. But a lot of these arguments where "That's just the way it is" is SO demeaning to the other side.
"Talk with your playgroup" is such a cop-out, and defeats the point of having any rules. The rules let players that aren't always playing together have a baseline to play together without taking forever to agree on everything.
She means that for the situations where the format would be far too chaotic with strangers. People want to change the rules all together when they could simply apply their individual exception to a personal play group.
@@VexylObby then she should say that. House rules have always been a thing for games, why the need for rule zero when its best case scenario is that it's redundant?
@@gamerharris512 Those cases are pretty extreme though. Imagine having to run into Paradox Engine in a casual pod every FNM. You might not have. But the reality is that the card was resolving in casual pods left and right, resulting in 30 minute turns that eventually just end the game. If the case in not comparable, then you have nothing to worry about.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. If anything that example you gave illustrates the need for actual rules which is the point I was trying to make.
@@gamerharris512 I thought the point you were trying to make was that "talk to your playgroup" shouldn't be used in place of rules. When there are just some things that would only likely be brought up through playgroups. I agree that some rules should be put into place to protect the fun environment for strangers and the format at large. But she didn't suggest that as an excuse for everything. I would think she is more in agreement with you and I. Rules to keep the game balanced, but house rules for those niche situations that might harm the format at large is put into place. Her example for house rules was "some cards require larger than 100 card decks, so maybe ask your friends if they want to play against that". But luckily she knows that if the rule itself was changed, the format would be chaotic. She didn't say simply use house rules for everything.
I don't think it'd be hard to integrate a rule for hybrid cards if they wanted to, idc either way on this stance. I actually am kind of against the death trigger on commanders happening as like said they don't actually die. They are essential saved from death and for Elenda as an undead creature it would make sense reanimation is a thing in the deck for her. Getting rid of commander damage is just bad. It get's rid of many decks and strategies against many decks and is a nice alt win con for long games. Poison counters are fine as infect is not that strong anyways and trying to get 30 counters total is actually pretty hard to do already.
They should change the command zone/died trigger and make the command zone a "special" graveyard for commanders...is not like it's gonna warp the format to let some commanders get the trigger...
In regards to Elenda, this is just my personal take but I don't interpret the commander going back to the command zone as them dying. I also saw that as them using plot armor to escape a situation and live to fight another day. I also feel like she still works as a commander even if you choose to send her to the graveyard, recursion from the graveyard and tutoring are LITERALLY blacks thing. I'm pretty sure Yawgmoth has a patent on both those effects in his name and WOTC has to pay him every time they print a card with the effects on them.
If were gonna talk about hybrid mana lets just talk about card color identity. Its a classification specifically for commander. Should we get rid of that or accept that this is our format, and we live within these rules?
As a cedh player flash has been a problem for a while. It limits the creative aspect as well as the diversity aspect. About 7 out of 10 times a cedh table will have a flash hulk deck. It has forced me to play a deck that directly plays off of how every flash hulk deck plays and doesnt allow me to play other interesting and cohesive decks in cedh.
Death&Taxes Or 2 How does asking if the table would like a no flash hulk game usually work out? I get decks may be partially geared to try to counter flash hulk, but I’m curious.
@@djcochrane those aren't cEDH conversations, the points to play the strongest deck you can and make the best plays you can within the rules of commander
Death&Taxes or 2: Cedh plays with the more optimal decks. You guys wanted the most optimal and now you do. But flash isn’t a problem for anyone who doesn’t play Cedh. Honestly Imo Cedh and edh should split. That way Cedh can have their own banlist. Cause most problems for Cedh players have zero problems in edh. My group told me to play the flash hulk combo. Cause at first I thought they may frown at it. But they said go for it, it’s not like it’s a broken combo in our format. While I haven’t gotten yet, because money is tight for me. I probably will because we don’t have a issue with it.
Interesting question: how do you guys feel about Flip Avacyn? If we change the hybrid mana rule, do we allow her in non-red decks? I will say that’s a potentially slippery slope of “well it’s color identity is TECHNICALLY x” rules work
You two have great synergy (don't worry Pleasant Kanobi we still love you) I very much felt what stance Olivia was taking as far as "some stuff doesn't work and that's ok". Not everything has to be perfect ideal world for our format, and the flaws help give commander it's personality
Sorry if somebody else has said this, but I'm not seeing it in a quick scan... Olivia is right. "Dies" in MTG rules means specifically 'a creature leaves the battlefield and goes directly to the graveyard'. It doesn't just mean dead or killed or sent to the yard. Making it work for Commander would probably adding a triggered ability for going back to the CZ that checks after the replacement ability. So it's possible, just a little clunky.
Most hybrid mana cards to me feel like they contain aspects of both colors and thats why they are a hybrid card in the first place so if you treat them as a mono colored card your mono color deck is suddenly bleeding into the other color which is kind of counter to what commander is trying to do. Having said that, one of the most egregious instances of where hybrid mana did seem to be an issue is the card Privileged Position. That card makes sense as an independently green card or as an independently white card, both colors have enchantment synergies and both colors would make sense to have and want to use that card. And it's always seemed annoying to me that mono green enchantment strategies and mono white enchantment strategies, both of which exist, couldn't use that card. The most annoying part about it is Privileged Position could have a functional reprint tomorrow with all of its hybrid mana removed, and replaced as just a mono green card or a mono white card and it would make sense as either color, and wouldn't break or even bend the color pie. But instead of living in a world where we have a mono white Privileged Position and a color shifted green one available for both decks, instead we have the hybrid mana one available to neither.
The commander death trigger feels unintuitive. I was using revel in riches which creates treasures when creatures die. I wiped the board and destroyed 10 of my opponents creatures but only got 9 treasures because I forgot about the commander not triggering ANY death triggers. I don't think it would be very format breaking if they just triggered death events before they were sent to the command zone.
It seems to me that just a tweak in the tuck rules could solve this. Instead of being a substitution effect could be a special commander trigger like: "whenever ~ changes zones you may put it into the CZ. " How bad could this be??
Let me preface this with I am not attacking just informing. When it comes to commander death triggers, the way it works is that the moving to the command zone is a replacement effect. This is the same as Anafenza, the Foremost (“if a nontoken creature would die... exile it instead”) with this ruling you also don’t get the death trigger. The only way you could fix this is if the commander rules were changed from a replacement effect to a triggered effect for example, after Elenda dies you get her trigger then put another trigger on the stack saying “you may move your commander to your command zone”. This can also create a problem with effects like stifle that can counter an ability which prevents your commander from going to the command zone.
"Since it's never been a stumbling block for me, I've never seen why it should change," is seriously bad reasoning. It's just, "this doesn't affect me so why should it change, " reasoning with a shoddy coat of paint on it. It's terrible psuedo-logic.
Sometimes I feel like people of authority sit on really high chairs. Influencers like them don't understand how much power they hold. This is why I want Wotc to take over EDH. And that's coming from a casual player.
One of the ways we could solve the commander "death" trigger is to treat them like tokens, so that they die, hit the graveyard, and then are moved to the command zone when state based actions are checked. This keeps it intuitive with how cards were written.
@@BretHall I don't think an optional state based effect/action is really something that works well with the rules. It would trap the game in a loop of perpetually asking the player if they want to move the commander from the graveyard to the command zone.
"yeah, that makes perfect sense to change" "Nah, there would be no problem caused by changing it" "Nah, don't change it because idk" Wow, great conversation. Really insightful as to why commander is never gonna get better.
Instead of having moving the commander to the command zone being a replacement effect as it is currently it could be a state based action when a commander enters any zone other then the battlefield, command zone or stack. So your commander dies, hits the graveyard and then before anything else you make the choice on if to allow it to remain in that zone or move it to the command zone. As a state based action, it would prevent a player interacting with it until after the choice is made. You couldn't allow you commander to die, hit the graveyard and then target it with something like survival of the fittest before sending it to the command zone as you have to do the state base action first, and any triggered abilities would only be added to the stack after the choice is made. However this would reintroduce awkwardness around effects that tuck the commander. Chaos warp come to mind
I think changing hybrid would make for weird cases too often like split cards like response/resurgence where one side is hybrid but the other is just boros.
I love the fact that Olivia is touching upon the Law of Best Intentions, as applied to Magic. Bravo -- and another reason why she is an awesome human, and out of all well-known Magic players who are female, why Olivia is my favorite female player. (Yes, I have a crush on her -- but then again, who doesn't? Lol)
@4:30 I really dislike these "this interaction doesn't fit the flavor" arguments like Hydroblast vs a hybrid card, because they're one step away from saying "Oh you shouldn't be able to use Walk the Plank on a spirit". Weird interactions have always been a part of Magic.
As long as going to the command zone instead of exile or the graveyard is a replacement effect and doesn't use the stack, death triggers on commanders that aren't going to the graveyard will never work. Dying means that the card goes to the graveyard and there are numerous other cards that stop death triggers by preventing things from going to the graveyard in the first place. Those cards are important to some strategies. I'll have to agree that not every card is designed for Commander and I don't think that rules need to change for corner cases that will allow cards to work in a way that they currently do not work.
It's also ridiculous to remove commander damage because aggro decks that use combat are already less efficient than decks that win with combos, so it would just weaken the pool of viable options.
Me: How do y'all feel about Planeswalker Commanders? The Table: They're fine. The recent Precons were alright, I guess. Me: 'Kay. Thanks. *pulls out my Jace, Cunning Castaway deck* The Table: Wait... Me: You said they were fine!
I think hybrid mana cards should be allowed as long as they don't REQUIRE a color (either for casting or an ability) outside of your color identity. If anything it will just add more diversity to the format.
Infect is kind of cut and dry, which is that the only cards you're really stopping are Skittles, Blightsteel, and Triumph of the Hordes. Most of the rest of the infect creatures are pretty poor. It's like you're playing all bad creatures, but your opponents have 10 life.
ye infect in EDH has the problem that the mechanic itself is seen as a boogeyman. The actual cards with infect are medium to bad creatures, shitty combat tricks and a couple of lords.
The commander hybrid rule has always been a problem for me and in my LGS, specially when new players put them in their mono decks and we have to explain to them that it doesn't work like in "normal magic" smh
I feel they were simplifying the commander damage too much. Yes, it tends to be fairly easy. It's not just tracking it that is hard, though. It is tracking the commander damage from possibly 3 or more commanders, how you can be dealt commander damage by your own commander if it's stolen, and so on. Although I do not think Commander damage should go away, I do think it should be changed to some degree. Probably like a combined commander damage total from all commanders (with the number going up from 21). Again, just a thought. Overall, I feel this video is fine. Nothing against Olivia, but I feel too many conversations were "Eh. No real opinion" which is fine but makes for a conversation like this video not as interesting.
I've found myself liking the idea of replacing the current commander damage rule with "commanders deal 2x combat damage to players." Seems a lot simpler, keeps commanders feeling special, makes damage from commanders much more relevant in typical games, preserves voltron as a strategy while allowing it to be less linear. Only thing we would lose is safety valve against life gain that the current commander damage rule acts as. I question how important this safety valve is though.
We always question the need for safety valves when they are working because the problem isn't present. We regularly have to track up to five colors of floating mana. We have tokens and dice and a card pool that is 27000 cards large. I have never run into a person in magic unable to track four more numbers if you hand them a life dice and tell them they die if it goes past 20.
@Ryu the Human How would you feel about folding commander damage into normal damage with my proposed rule replacement? Basically, remove the current commander damage rule and replace it with... "If a commander would deal combat damage to a player, it deals double that much damage instead."
@Ryu the Human And I would say keeping it at 21 would make it too good. There are certain commanders that can easily 1 shot someone on their own like Feather, Greven, and Sigarda. Definitely should not make the number too high as to keep it still special.
I feel like a lot of these defenses are missing the point of the changes. A lot of these proposed changes aren’t because of power level or causing game imbalance but problems of adoption of the format or the rules making sense to players. 100 cards hard number is reversed on logic for the change. All other formats it is a bottom floor not a top limit as well. The current rule for commander is the corner case not making a corner case for its change. The rule on poison counters is a question for consistency with other formats not a question of power level. 2 headed giant has a limit of 15 poison (starting life of 30). Commander being 10 (starting at 40) is an inconsistency. Whether it is causing problems in-game balance isn’t the real question being asked with the potential rules change. This is a lot closer to the rules change on mana burn or the dropping of regenerate for the use of indestructible than it is whether X card should be banned.
Would it be that bad to change the commander zone change rule to be "immediately after changing zones"? Kind of like how the God Eternals work but universal?
It would lead to other unintuitive interactions such as being able to reanimate your opponents commander and prevent them from sending it to the command zone, but yes, you could switch from replacement effects (current implementation) to triggers (your proposed implimentation)
The problem comes with effects like "shuffle target creature into its owners library" and commanders. Logically, if commanders give death triggers then they have to be put in the graveyard, then the effect comes in and you can choose to put it into the command zone, it's no longer a replacement effect. With the shuffling thing, logically you would shuffle the commander into your deck, then get the choice to return it to the command zone, which of course breaks the rules, as you can't just fish it out of your deck. i.e. an effect of allowing death triggers would make "shuffle target creature into its owners library" or "put target creature on the bottom of its owner's library" permanent answers to commanders, players would no longer be able to cast their commander until they draw/tutor it, which is unfun. Of course, I'd be all for that, it'd give WU a significant boost in power, essentially ensuring that it's the only two colors with permanent commander removal, beyond certain enchantments like darksteel mutation. EDIT: The commander would still get shuffled into the deck, even if the command zone rule was state-based.
@@michelleslay2701 True, you could use an SBA. The wording would be something like "A commander that moves to a zone other than the battlefield or the stack may be moved to the command zone by its owner. This is a state-based action; see rule 704."
If anything commander damage doesn't go far enough. I think having commander damage not being tied to the individual commanders. Have it be where it's still 21 damage but doesn't have to be from only one opponents commander. Then maybe aggro commanders might be viable. As it is commander is just a " I go infinite and win, I combo I win". Commander is boring.
@@ZombieSexmachine : Part of the problem is, to spite having three opponents instead of 1, people don't hold removal long enough. I would argue that it's not the format, it's people using play styles from other formats that have allowed combo and infinite loops to happen, especially if those pieces are either a creature or artifact. Even with more players, the board changes, usually, faster than people can respond -- and this is largely due to a lot of non-blue, non-black cards being sorcery-speed (notwithstanding cards like Vedalken Orrery). This is an issue, particularly where three of five colors don't draw at instant speed, unless the spell has a cantrip attached (Acrobatic Manuvers, for instance, or Crimson Wisps). This is partly why I think that White suffers -- because White has little to no card draw, which would allow White to keep up as a removal color, since Blue is a color that both draws a lot of cards, AND can counter spells. In a word, there are some balance issues in the color pie that need addressed. Having said that, I completely agree with your statement about Commander damage being collective, rather than being individual.
I Love my voltron decks, Sram and Syr Elenora! Commander damage has been and still is relevant, yet in many games, it's not even a threat to players. Don't change it, it's not hard to keep track of.
I would support the hybrid mana change, and I would add a rule for comander damage, instead of a fix number (21battle damage), it should respect the original idea that EDH had which it was: if you get hit 3 times by the commander, that opponent is dead, no matter thier life points. that would promote a lot more interaction (like the monarch emblem does), and it would stop autopilot-exodia-ish kind of decks.
Unfortunately that would make Hope of Ghirapur and Isamaru Hound of Konda into super aggressive try to kill you on turn 3 (using some form of double strike) commanders
When Hapatra throws herself in front of a Gigantosaurus, yeah, they may be something that'd kill a normal creature, but like Olivia said, she's the commander. She's special; she takes the wound, goes to the medical tent, and comes back out expecting extra pay. That's why instead of saying "Hapatra dies," we say "Hapatra retreats to the Command Zone," and that clears up rules confusions and flavor mishaps.
Maybe because she had no problem with the format at all, like she said not everything is gonna work and that's fine. More recently I've seen Brian going on about it with Kenobi (and liked very much) that EDH is a format that all players at the table agree of an illusion, that the format works and therefore have their fun. If one person at the table breaks that illusion then the format dies. We pretend it works but it's actually a bizarre format where bizarre things can and will occur, and the moment you cease having fun, the illusion is gone, and the format is dead.
I cant help but think that having an advisor who is unwilling to put forward any opinions or have a good understanding of the rules aint a great thing.
I love how one of my favorite commanders, Rhys was used to kick off the discussion. I have never met or heard anyone in my circles claim they want the hybrid mana cards in their respective mono color decks. Personally I don't get it. Wasn't the whole point of edh to pick ur commander and you were locked into its colors as a restriction to give your deck an identity? If you want to play the Boros Reckoner which is obviously a Boros card (literally in the name) then you pick a commander with a red and white color identity. If you chose to play mono red or white then you also chose that restriction for your deck.
Personally I agree with MaRo about Hybrid Mana though (it's how R&D balances the Colors, so why complain about Colors being imbalanced when you don't ALLOW the fix to be legal??)
@Regvlasrex what are you getting at? Both of the cards you mention are white; only white. Do you mention them because they have boros in the name? Every single reason, between the ones mentioned here and those mentioned in the video, that supports changing the rule is incredibly weak. The original comment in this thread explains it pretty nicely.
"I have never met anyone..." Anecdotical evidence is weak evidence. "Wasn't the whole point to be locked in colors?" Yes. People don't want to break the entire color identity system. They are just opposed to corner cases working like they do. Honestly, the only weak arguments I see is opposing hybrid in monocolor without even referring to hybrid at all. Yes, restrictions are good. But would any arbitrary restriction placed be good? Of course not. People are arguing *why* that particular thing works the way it is. Allowing hybrid in monocolor still maintains restrictions. "Because things are already like that" is not a good argument either.
@@fernandobanda5734 decks can play cards with a color identity that is less than or equal to their commander's identity. Hybrid cards fail that test. That's all.
I don't know why there is a discussion about commander death triggers. Just read Magic the Gathering RULES. It's plainly written there what counts as dying. And being destroyed doesn't actually. Dying in Magic occurs when a permanent on the battlefield is moved into the graveyard. Literally. In whatever way it did do that. That's why destroy is dying, sacrifice is dying, moving into graveyard from the battlefield is dying too. But it counts as that permanent enters the graveyard. So unless you want to change fundamental rules of the game for the format, it should stay the way it is.
“The idea that it’s(commander damage) too confusing feels like an insult to anyone who plays commander or is interested in the format. “ Well said ma’am, well said.
No one is saying that it's too difficult to track if you're not a math professor. But it is a significant addition to the mental load of a commander game for small gain. It has to be tracked but is rarely relevant. The game naturally gets harder every year, so making it a bit simpler is necessary. Either commander damage should be removed or it should count damage from all commanders combined, not separately.
@@florianw116 combined commander damage is my preferred change. It still allows Voltron as a strategy and might even open up new possibilities for politics when one person has become the arch-enemy.
@@florianw116 if it is not relevant you don't need to track it. Iit is pretty obvious which commanders will be trying to deal commanders damage and which won't.
@@psy_p You say that, but then you bop somebody with some Mayael a few times early game, then on turn 14 some shenanigans happen and she's the only card on board with like 15 +1/+1 counters and then you're like "Shit, does anybody remember how much damage Mayael did to Kevin an hour and a half ago?"
I think people who need cards outside their commander's color identity in their decks are people who are not really suited to the Commander format. There are plenty of formats that allow you to put whatever colors you want in your deck. Play those. Part of the fun of Commander is being restricted in a way that makes you build decks creatively.
W/B is already the best at reanimating creatures, I think that the player being able to choose to let Elenda die is a valuable choice to make. If someone tries to exile elenda with scavenging ooze or something, you can always just put her back in the command zone. If you let elenda die, you can get her back at a much less expensive rate than the commander tax.
The difference between milling 100 and most any reasonable number above that is marginal at best. The average phenax build wins either by freezing the board state and wearing away or via effects like sphinxs tutelage/mill til land effects.
about the death triggers: (not a judge or an expert) the death of a creature is when it goes from the battlefield to the graveyeard. A new rule may be added that reads "if the creature is the commander, it will trigger any efect of any card in play regarding this creature dying, even if the owner of the card puts it in the command zone " And it will be written in this way because if the card goes to the GY and then to de CZ, may trigger effects like sir conrad the grim (and some others I think)
Loving the theory-craft! Decisions like this are always a wonderful way to keep an open mind towards the format. Rule Zero is always an option for your playgroup which is so cool.
I don't understand what's the confusion with regards to opening up hybrid rules. Can't you just say a hybrid mana counts as both colors for a commander's color identity, but can be chosen for either color identity when not run as a commander? Doesn't that just fix everything?
"I don't understand what's the confusion with regards to opening up hybrid rules. ... ... Doesn't that just fix everything?" It's *not* a matter of confusion, it's a matter of refuting that there is a need for anything to be fixed. The central premise of our discussion is coming from an opposing viewpoint to that of the masses: it doesn't need to be changed. We are in the minority, but nonetheless this is a dissent from the main narrative.
@@TolarianCommunityCollege Then I don't understand what the supposed refutation is supposed to be. Hybrid is designed in such a way that the card could be printed as mono-colored in both of its original colors if they wanted to, so you aren't breaking the intent of color identity in the first place by opening up hybrid. And there's also an argument about "the format has always been that way" which just seems like saying that it's too much trouble, which doesn't seem to be the case? The restriction = creativity argument is a point that I can see (that I personally disagree with, but I can understand where it comes from), but the way you talked about it, it doesn't seem like the main point. Like, I'm otherwise genuinely confused what the argument is supposed to be against opening up hybrid in this case then otherwise. I thought the confusion aspect was the main argument because you spend so much time of the intro going into that with the Rhys and Boros Reckoner examples.
The whole part about hybrid mana is asinine. You already CAN play Rhys as a mono green or mono white commander by not including cards outside of the color you choose. His color identity as a commander wouldn't change with any of the changes to hybrid I've seen proposed. What would change is the ability to include hybrid cards in decks of either color and yes you could under these changes play Boros Reckoner in Rhys and yes he could be Hydroblasted because yes he is still a red card nothing about the discussed change would alter that. People seem to forget that "color identity" is a concept that came in with EDH not a all encompassing rule of the game. Yes limitations breed creativity but the question is if this particular limitation is necessary and if it would support greater creativity if it didn't exist. Honestly I am not 100% in the hybrid for commander change but this just wasn't a productive discussion on why not to do it. There are plenty of cards that don't feel out of place in decks containing only one half the hybrid mana in their costs and there are quite a few that feel like nothing short of full color pie breaks that should be where the conversation starts on if hybrid rules should be changed... but we already have loads of color breaks in commander that are staples so I tend to lean towards changing it.
Yeah. I was really confused when the Professor brought up Hydroblast. Like, yes, if you include a card that is red, it can be effected by cards that effect red. What's your point? What does that have to do with the discussion on whether the hybrid rules should be changed? Yes, if you bring only white-identity cards to a game you won't be effected by Hydroblast. If you do bring them, you may be effected by that card. It's entirely down to what cards you include in your deck. That has nothing to do with "should you be allowed to include hybrid cards in commander". Which is a discussion I think that should involve a lot more talk of how that could effect balance and gameplay, rather than "does this make sense ~thematically~?" because at the end of the day I'm gonna be honest; I don't give a fig about theme, I care about whether the gameplay is good.
Right but I can't run Rhys is my Ezuuri deck, when it would definitely be good enough to cut something for. That's the argument. (Which I don't agree with necessarily)
@@FluffyFractalshard So is any non-Eldrazi or Phyrexian commander having Eldrazi or Phyrexian cards in their decks. And yet that is legal. Flavor is not what should determine rules.
@@FluffyFractalshard The whole odea of color identity is LITERALLY addressing situations where a card's "flavor" colors don't match its actual colors. Like under the old rules, Kenrith would only be allowed to use white cards and couldn't even use most of his abilities since you couldn't make mana outside your commander's colors (it became colorless). But then they were like "That's dumb and unintuitive and often disappointing, so they came up with the color identity rule so that cards could be treated as colors other than their literal in-game colors to better align with the "intended" colors of the card.
@@FluffyFractalshard No, it belongs in monowhite (or at least should be allowed) EXPLICITLY BECAUSE of flavor (There are other reasons as well, but saying it undermines color identity is like blaming vaccines for the resurgence of Polio). A mage who spent their entire lives in some kind of hyper-Alara where they don't know and literally cannot understand the very concept of any color of mana other than white can summon a Boros Reckoner.
I agree with Prof 100% about white. It is one of my favorite colors, it is a solid main or off color. Best removal. Good synergies with artifacts, enchantments, graveyard, tokens. White can make almost anything you're trying to do better.
So let's say I were to be able to get Sheldon from the full on Rules Committee on... twitter.com/SheldonMenery/status/1237104519030493184?s=20
I'm not that surprised tbh, I mean it was a discussion more or less justifying everything they do without really presenting any strong contra points. That isn't to say they are the villains by any means, but I feel like there was a more interesting conversation to be had here.
I’m curious on people’s thought ab changing the life total to 30.
I'm interested in a combined commander damage total from all sources being set at 25? That way you don't have to keep track of 12 different numbers in a 4 player game just for commander dmg
Proudfootzor i like this idea
@@Proudfootzorz I think many older casual players would frown on that, mostly because they see EDH as a board game more than a normal game of MTG. Lowering life totals could shorten games to a point where it looses that long form charm many players are used to.
"Commander doesn't always need to be designed for."
Truly spoken like a green player :D
The decks of hers I've seen have been jeskai and nongreen. Like breya
Spoiler Alert: Death triggers were fixed!
Turns out, many Magic: The Gathering players didn't even know to ask the question: Do Commanders die? Even members of the Rules Comittee played death triggers incorrectly! It was a legitimately confusing rule, and was adjusted. Elenda now works, and I am very happy with her! (Was thinking about her and adjustments I could make during other podcasts on this channel, in fact.)
I believe with Hybrid we've heard from designers (Most likely Maro) that when designing a Hybrid card it had to make sense as a mono-colored card of both colours. It's a card where the colours overlap as opposed to multicolour cards where the colours combine to do things you couldn't do in a single colour.
This has led to people questioning why they can't be run in EDH from the single colour as opposed to both.
I'm not sure I like the idea of hybrids being an either/or kind of deal but I understand the reason people think it's correct.
Tangent thought: Would Reaper King be 5 colours or could you just use the generic costs and claim it has a colorless identity if the rule changed?
I mean, to be fair, he is a scarecrow.. and those are usually Colorless. :P
Personally I agree with MaRo about Hybrid Mana though (it's how R&D balances the Colors, so why complain about Colors being imbalanced when you don't ALLOW the fix to be legal??)
@@Sheriff_K dude, spamming the same comment doesn't make it correct. If that's his actual reasoning, then that's just lazy design. A card that's hybrid izzet is blue and red, always. It is never only one. This is very straightforward. The further you have to reach for an explanation/defense of your stance, the closer you come to needing to rethink that stance.
I feel like they completely missed this point, given how much time they spent saying "color targeting effects work on them, that doesn't make sense to have in a mono color deck!" So they think Transguild Courier should only be playable in a five color deck? The also completely messed up how the suggestion works with your Commander. Rhys would still be a Green-White Commander.
The only point where it gets tricky are the ones with Hybrid-colorless cards, but that could also be easily addressed.
@@firstandlast.1254 A mono red deck with only mountains can run a hybrid izzet card in every other format. A mono blue deck with only islands can run the same card in every other format. By their vary nature they are cards both blue and red can do by themselves so should be able to be run in mono colored decks
Not that I particularly disagree with any stance presented here, but I do feel like stronger cases could be made, especially for hybrid mana. And, while she seems very genuine, Olivia stronger takes were only "dont change anything ever" and "I don't know", which makes for a not so great discussion. I feel that we learned very little about her thoughts in the end.
Yeah, doesn't help any of the issues people have with the committee atm with how it feels like they are fine ignoring the community and dont care what arguments they have, with them simply making changes when they personally dont like something
@@aidanquiett668 But in the case of the flash argument Olivia specifically went around to cEDH players and went out of her way to understand the problems people in cEDH were having with FlashHulk because she didnt understand it. I dont think they are "ignoring the community" so much as they have to take into serious consideration and are taking their time with their decisions.
I really didn't like her lack of arguments. Everything was an appeal to tradition or an, "if you want to change it, discuss it with your playgroup."
@@Lashkor Rule 0 basically justifies keeping Sheldon's house-rules as the norm.
My two cents: we need a blank slate, not a slate warped by four players' idiosyncratic experiences.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos What you are asking for is a slate with no bias, which is philosophically impossible. By playing commander and enjoying it, and by having opinions you will in turn form bias which dictates your decision making. This is an inescapable fact of not just commander but reality itself. Biases exist, youre gonna have to accept that.
This also means that you do not want to make too many changes too quickly otherwise the format itself will die, which is why you see that the Rules committee rarely adjusts things without extremely serious consideration and information.
The rules and by extension the banlist NEED to exist. For the same reasons as all the complaining about the banlist existing, the same can be said for the rules in general: The rules/banlist cut down on the extreme amount of discussion that would occur in mass playgroups like a Local Game Store where you dont play with the same people every single time you go. At no point does a player want to have to spend an hour discussing philosophy of what they deem to be "fun" or "enjoyable" with not just one but 3 other people and hope that their opinions just happen to sync up or that just takes up even more time instead of just playing a game of commander. The basic rules and banlist allows a shortcut that everyone is informed about and if you ask your group if you can tweak the rules that everyone would agree is "fun" or "enjoyable" then there is no reason you cant do that yourself.
Remember that commander is a casual format, not a competitive one and the rules can be bent so long as the group is okay with it.
I really loved two points that were made in this episode:
At 25:35 Prof talks about how many Magic: the Gathering players care more about the apparent logical inconsistency than the actual problem presented by Infect working the way it currently works. I think this is absolutely the case with respect to infect. That's a really deep rabbit hole to go down, though - if Lightning Bolt does 15% of the damage you need to win the game in 1v1, should it do 18 damage in EDH?
At 45:10 Olivia points out that one of the big draws to commander is its stability. You don't have to F5 on Twitter on B&R day like people did this morning to see if they have to go back to the drawing board before next weekend's major organized event. I've been one of the people who talks about the cEDH changes that are discussed at one point in this episode, but I'll tell you I do appreciate how high the bar is for movement, even if it means not getting my way on some things.
Cheers man!
Thank you, now i just need to convince the group at my lgs that there is no reason for infect to be at 20.
@@MeriadocMyr Usually I take the same line Olivia took in this episode - some things work differently in Commander (extort, as a great example). If we start pulling the thread of what needs to be balanced, we end up "fixing" a lot of stuff that isn't broken.
@@MeriadocMyr my general response to this issue is that combat damage is literally the weakest win-con in EDH; the ONLY reason infect and Voltron have such a high 'threat' reputation is because of the capability to knock out a single player quickly. This is frightening to a lot of deck and rightfully so, but you alomst NEVER win games by showing the rest of the table that you can one-shot a player.
HOWEVER, the reason Voltron (Commander Damage) and Infect exist is as a direct counter to combo decks with little interaction.
@@MeriadocMyr show them a Marsh Viper or a Swamp Mosquito. Those cards specifically say if a person has ten or more poison counters they lose the game.
42:00 (-ish) You speek about an App tracking infect, commander damage, etc. Would be nice if you could make a video about useful MTG apps.
MTG Familiar, on android.
I second MtG: Familiar. It is an easy-to-understand app.
I would love that video. Especially from prof.
@@phforNZ i thought it was LifeTotal, you got the separate numbers with infect, energy, commander etc
I went looking for better apps because I'm hosting a huge Commander day at my house next weekend and CounterSpell is my frontrunner by far.
700.4: The term dies means "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield."
The proposed change would be changing commander zone change rule " its owner may put it into the command zone instead." by removing the instead and making it a state-based action rather than a replacement effect. No need to change the rules for dies since that is shared across formats.
@@joystickgenie yeah I know. In the video they both say they don't know what the exact rules wording is regarding "dies" I was simply providing the actual rule that covers this for anyone else who happened to venture down into the comments hoping to find a clarification on that.
@@joystickgenie I suppose you were intending to do a similar thing, and I appreciate that! Thank you!
@@joystickgenie I would probably give commanders a trigger, since that feels a little cleaner to me personally. I would phrase it like this: 'Whenever -this- changes zones from any zone in the game to another visible zone other than the battlefield, you may put it into the command zone'
This triggers from the new zone, therefore allowing Death triggers and such.
Although this might confuse more casual players since not many abilities directly reference zones as such.
All this being said, I'm not sure change is needed.
Also leyline of the void has creatures exiled instead of going to the grave, and is ruled as having them not die, which text wise makes the rule make sense, if you replace the word "exiled" to "returns to the command zone" it reads the same and is therefore ruled consistently
I hope they realize that rule 0 doesnt WORK EVERYWHERE. It's not a catch all rule. It still depends if the play group allows it. Which the entire reason why people are asking for changes
"Don't like how we are messing up your beloved format? Make your own then!"
That's effectively what they are saying every time they say we should just rule 0 it
I'm baffled that they don't see the irony in managing a proper banlist and encouraging people to use rule zero AT THE SAME TIME.
I want to buy a bunch of Booster Tutor and Summon the Pack cards for any deck with black in it. “Hey, is it fine if I....”
It's a super annoying cop out that they pretend is somehow more important in edh than it is in other games. It's not. You could always just decide to play differently, and it will never be a reasonable response to actual issues in the game.
Yes its one of the msny glaring flaws of sheldon and company. The game shouldn't have issues that warp it to the point it gets to at times.
9:13 - "That's part of the restriction, that's part of the deck-building process and it's like okay, that's just what it is in this format! I take it from there; it's like these are my parameters and now I have to figure out how to fit best within them. I'm open to hearing more about it why it should or shouldn't."
I was kind of hoping that's exactly what this video would be - hearing more about why it should or shouldn't. We know that "That's part of the restriction etc.," - the question on the table is SHOULD it be part of the restriction, rather than affirmation that it is.
It should because a hybrid card IS both colors, it's not one or the other. Boros Reckoner isn't just a white card, it's also a red card. The design of these things is meant to reflect a combination of both colors, not one or the other. Their example of Hydroblast is spot on. That's a card designed to counter RED spells, and yet if this rule were changed, it would work against a monoWhite player's creature? That makes no sense.
Color identity is integral to how deck construction works in this format. You can't have a card that is BOTH colors unless your commander is also those colors. I can Green Sun's for a Rhys because he's a GREEN creature, right? Well if I put him in a monoWhite deck, he doesn't suddenly stop being green, does he? It just doesn't make sense that you could include a green card in a monoWhite deck...
@@solidmasterdante The reason that you're wrong, dead wrong, is that this thing you think is so important (the card being two colours on the stack and battlefield) was an afterthought for hybrid mana. They wanted it to remember how you cast it, but that was too complicated for players.
Hybrid cards are designed in the intersections of the colour pie. They were designed from the ground up to work in mono decks. The inventor of the mechanic says EDH is doing it wrong.
Think of it this way. Now, there's no difference between hybrid mana and gold cards. This rule literally means EDH doesn't have that whole mechanic. That's crazy. No other mechanic Is just accidentally banned.
@@solidmasterdante "That a card designed to counter red spells works against a monowhite player."
Wow, never thought I'd hear somebody argue that Chaoslace is destroying the EDH format :P
@@solidmasterdante Hydroblast already counters a Simic deck's Transguild Courier and destroys Reckless Brute and Wild Mongrel. What's so wrong about that?
That's emblematic of this entire series. They never really talk about anything of substance in a way that's helpful or informative.
I know this probably isn't still being monitored, but the one rule that I'd like to see rationalised is how EDH treats implied mana symbols.
It feels bizarre to me that if I have a G/W deck, I can play Birds of Paradise (which can produce any colour of mana, but doesn't have the symbol on the card) but I can't play a Noble Hierarch, (which can produce three colours of mana, but lists them).
(I have similar feelings about being allowed to play Extort cards in a R/W deck. It just feels wrong, but it's allowed since the hybrid symbol is only in the reminder text)
What if the death trigger issue gets solved with:
"When a commander enters another zone you can then redirect it"
That way it touches the graveyard THEN moves to the command zone
Is that going to cause a weird interaction that's a bit too op?
It feels like there is some inconsistency with the death triggers.
For example, Elenda won't give you tokens and Roalesk won't proliferate if you put them on the Command Zone
But if your Commander gets Curse of the Swine'd and you put them on the Command Zone, you still get a pig.
@Najawin well I mean the triggers for tucking the commander would be "shuffle into library, once it hits library you can put it in the command zone, then shuffle the library"
Or, you could just shortcut it to "put it in command zone then shuffle the library"
@@bernardowermuth369 One is trigger. One isn't. No inconsistency there.
@@J03Y42NA That's not how triggers work, "putting into the library" and "shuffling it into the library" are the same thing mechanically, chaos warp would trigger, you shuffle it in, then priority is passed and you have the chance to bring it to the command zone, but can't because it's in your library. Even if commander worked like tokens, only the get put into the command zone instead of ceasing to exist, they would still get shuffled into your deck.
Commander death triggers can be made to fit in commander, but with the caveat that chaos warp/totally lost effects are permanent, the commander has to be drawn before they can be played again.
@@bunnyben5607 I understand that, but what I'm saying is that we add the "once it's in the library\exile\graveyard THEN you get to move it." so you could then shortcut to what we already have now of just putting it in the command zone and shuffling your library. Nothing would be changed really with the chaos warp stuff, just the death triggers would work now.
My thing about infect is that it’s one of the few viable Aggro strategies in the format. Since the life total for each player is 40, traditional aggressive decks really aren’t valid. Voltron and infect, thusly, are the decks you have to play if you want to play aggressively and win through combat. Unless they change the life total to 30, I don’t think infect should be changed, as if they do, it further pushes an already difficult strategy further into the realm of not being viable. Commander is about playing cool decks you like to play, and i think that as is, Aggro Players already have a hard time and they’d just be more ostracized by changing the infect rule.
To add to your point, people also seem to forget that a Infect win in commander is already 30 life. Because if you one shot a player for 10 and the other 2 don't kill you then it's there fault not yours. Also, at our table decks with known Infect get taken out first. So, it's really it's own drawback.
You know, Infect never felt right to me in commander, but thinking of it as viable aggro really frames infect in a new light for me. You make an amazing point.
Mono red aggro just do not have enough fire power to finish their exponents.
I feel that WotC just needs to print more direct aggro commanders. Commanders that like to go wide (Green/White primarily) work just fine, but scale better if you can get access to Red for haste or repeatable damage triggers, Infect is primarily a black/green thing but works well with other colors as support, and Voltron is all over the color pie. Mono Blue and Colorless commanders are the ones I struggle to think of good examples for but the closest potential commanders in both would be Sai and Hope of Ghirapur, both playing artifact aggro synergies with some stax or combo elements.
Is it though?? Is it that hard?? With Yawgmoth and Atraxa it is pretty easy to infect everyone at the same time without using too much of an aggro strategy too. And I have seen excellent aggro decks (Krenko, Slivers, etc) that are really viable in the format.
"What do you think of this proposal?"
"Haha, lol idk? Why would you do that"
"I agree, next question."
Goddamn this was surprisingly fucking infuriating to watch.
Between that stuff along the lines of "Should we raise the starting life to 41?" "HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK LOL, DOES EVERYONE JUST START WITH A 10 CARD HAND AND 6 LANDS ON THE BATTLEFIELD?"
Accurate summary of the video. "I don't understand the argument, therefore it's fine. Next."
I have yet to hear a decent argument in favor of any of these proposals though. I thought Olivia was going to lay out some example cases but clearly no one has any.
Why should a Commander that gets replacement effected into the Command Zone count for a death trigger? Why should Commander damage not be a rule? Why should Poison be double?
@@trident042 Thank you for so perfectly illustrating exactly why willfully ignorant, borderline mean-spirit videos like this one are a problem (especially when figures considered to have some authority are involved).
There were plenty of arguments outlined in the comments you passed over to get here, but TLDR (well, relatively, like I said there are a lot of points and a lot of solid arguments for them)
Hybrid: The entire point of hybrid is that it's OR, not AND, the rules only treat them as multicolored because the other way would be a nightmare to track (try an Eventide draft with a houserule that hybrid spells/cards in play are only the colors used to cast them, see how that goes :P), and EDH ALREADY has a rule that exists for the SOLE PURPOSE of redefining certain cards colors to something other than what they would be in game (Like, why can Kenrith, a monowhite card, run Cemetery Puca, a U/B card, but the monoblue Sakashima can't?).
Infect: EDH is generally a slower format, hence the 40 life and prevalence of higher CMC cards. Infect circumvents this by already being aggro focused, like just watch the Command Zone games where somebody dies to Infect, it's always like turn 4 right after they cast their first creature. Or imagine if WotC lowered the life totals in regular Magic to 10. You'd be like "That's dumb, Monored aggro burn is just gonna blitz it's way through everybody now. They should raise that number."
Commander Damage: It's several extra numbers that often don't matter but you HAVE to track them just in case they do. Which certainly by themselves isn't hard to do, but it's about overall load, 3 pennies aren't hard to carry but if you've got a jar of 2,000 pennies and I'm like "lemme add three more to that..." Additionally it's not a question of if it's hard, it's not hard to say "That's a Whoppah!" every time a creature gets it's power increased, the question is is the rule actually pulling its weight enough relative to it's cognitive burden?
Commander death: It's unintuitive and weird that if I wrath the board this one card doesn't die. With stuff like Leylineof the Void, you have a blanket effect over everything, on it's own it can be hard to remember. Like one example somebody gave where they wiped the board with 10 creatures and Revel in Riches except "OOPS ONE OF THEM WAS A COMMANDER FUCK YOU YOU ONLY GET 9 TREASURE"
That's a rough summary, personally I think most of them should stay the same aside from the current hybrid rules which are objectively wrong, but there ya go.
@@dapperghastmeowregard How is the hybrid thing "objectively" wrong?
I feel frustrated by this discussion because everyone is just saying "I don't know, I don't want to answer that and have no opinion" over and over again.
And that's okay!
haha, i don't know!
With cards like Elenda, changing the rules so she gets the death trigger going to the command zone pleases the people who want her to work that way but subsequently takes away from people who like her not quite working and having to build around that. I doubt as many people would find Phage so cool if you didn't have to jump through hoops to make her work. So I think there needs to be stuff that doesn't quite work so people who love janky stuff like that can try it because there are definitely a large enough number of people who get a lot of joy from that.
That is an opinion I like but don't agree. Nice =)
I think Olivia and Prof were both great in this (both giving their genuine, honest opinion), but both of them agreeing on everything was not interesting to watch. The video could've been summed up almost entirely with: "Should the commander/edh rules change? No." And just roll credits.
That could easily saved us 47mins LOL
Getting some Michael Scott vibes here: "You're an adviser, TO the rules committee."
xxcloud417xx Quiet, you
You have been admitted to the council but that does not give you the rank of master.
Why is someone who doesn't know what "dies" means an adviser to the rules committee?
HAHAHA Accurate
The thing with hybrid mana is that it works how R&D says it works. Any disagreement is fundamentally wrong on its face.
With your Mono-White example, yes you could be running a Wubrg deck. The question is, however, why would you unless you have a Commander that synergizes with all of those cards? Also, yes, using cards like that opens yourself up to color hosing that your deck normally wouldn't be vulnerable to, but that's an interesting deck building constraint. Also, I would question whether a Blue player would suddenly sub out two cards for Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast just because the White deck is running Boros Reckoner. As a Blue player in all formats, I would say no, unless my play group had a profusion of Red to begin with. A Red deck should absolutely be running Pyroblast and REB because Blue is so common in eternal formats, but that's with or without the hybrid mana rules change.
The situation with poison counters is really interesting honestly because it's an example of magic acting like an ecosystem where deck strategies are traits being selected on for their fitness and following some well established rules of natural selection.
Poison will never be a format consuming problem because its strength as a win con lies in the generally absence of the best, more narrow answers to it. It's why it's always been hard to deal with in casual since long before EDH but never really has been a format warping T1 deck in most formats; they more its played, the more slotting in super powerful but narrow hate against it becomes a good idea and the more it suffers from its own ubiquity. There's an inherent negative feedback loop inherent in strategies that are very powerful and have powerful but narrow counter acting strategies.
It's basically exactly the phenomenon of negative frequency selection seen in trait fitness in natural selection models (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-dependent_selection). Poison is good in open, meta-less casual play with large variance in deck strategies seen game to game because you have no idea when or how often it will show up. Because the strongest hate against poison counters tends to very narrow and poison counters are a rarity among games as a whole it makes the best counters to the win con dead cards in most games and therefore bad choices for deck builders who want to have answers to common problems in most games...so long as the strategy remains rare it's better to play flexible answers and just try to lean on your creature removal options when it does show up as you main solution.
The moment poison becomes a common occurrence within a group it becomes worth it from a cost/benefit analysis for players to slot in poison counter and infect hate cards and poison centric decks crumple.
I actually think most of the rules as they are now are pretty good and could be optimal with minor tweaks. That said, changes I'd make if I were suddenly benevolent dictator of EDH rules:
First the simple, easy stuff
* Starting life 30
* Commander Damage is a single pool a player has that all commander damage received adds to (reduces complexity, the main coherent complaint of merit I ever hear about it). Alternatively the number could be reduced from 21 but I think a pool is better idea.
* Poison = 12 counters to a kill
* Default mulligan for casual settings is the GIS mulligan, default for tournaments is GSS mulligan; if everyone is clear it's a game of cEDH use London mulligan rules. Games starting quickly and everyone being a participant in those games is more important than most anything else in casual play. I want to have fun with my friends and that is what most facilitates that.
* There should probably be some sort of benefit given to the player that goes last in multiplayer but I haven't really figured out what is enough but not to much. This is more of a multiplayer things in general than just EDH but since EDH is largely only multiplayer I'd want it to be part of the format rules.
* I think that cards that state you can play any number of copies of them should be ignored by the EDH format or just banned. I think they ignore the entire point of playing a singleton format and always invoke this reaction of 'why are you playing EDH? You played a singleton format just so you could player a deck with 20 copies of a card?'.
* I personally liked the banned as commander distinction because there as just cards that are too good as commanders that are acceptable in the 99, but I'm also not sure if would be a great idea to go back on that at this point.
* For a spicier idea (an this might be irrelevant if you change the starting life total to 30, but...) I'd either ban several cards that were never balanced around 40 starting life and are broken because of it for the same reasons that Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned and weirdly they aren't (looking at you Ad Nauseum). That or an errata that makes statements about static life totals into ones relative to starting life total. WotC made this change in their card rules text was them admitting they hadn't taken EDH life totals into account with prior designs that were balanced around 20 starting life and didn't take other options into account (Test of Endurance is the best example because it's a clear one: it should read that you win the game if you have 30 more life than your starting life total give the new paradigm that WotC writes these effects out as, this is still very achievable in EDH, just not laughably easy).
* And my most controversial opinion: Ban all the fast mana rocks that are as good or better than Sol Ring (so I'd argue just start with Sol Ring and Mana Crypt and then wait and see), or, alternatively a format level errata that they can't be played on T1 as that's really the only time they change relative mana availability so much they are broken beyond reason. These honestly just aren't ever synergistic adds, they are ramp auto includes, like say Arcane Signet is, but just give you too much for too little and too fast when they come down T1 (and are still pretty game altering played T2, just maybe not quite as far over the line of what is reasonable). They don't really act as synergies for specific decks, they just randomly catapult any deck strategy forward a minimum of 2 turns; while I'm all for keeping magic a game of skill and chance, I like that it is still skill dominant and these generally just seem to be too strong an effect to randomly dole out to a player. I also think that EDH as a format has enough variance game to game to allow for the random happenings that add spice to games over the long term with one of those things that can chance occur being: "well player A when first and dropped a Sol Ring so unless his deck is dead in the water after that they are just going to be starting T4 when everyone else just wrapped up their T1", because it doesn't reward are specific deck or specific strategy synergies, it just lets a player start their mid game plays on T2 and makes it their game to lose from there on out.
A screed on people trying to shoe horn Hybrid mana in as a single color:
Hybrid mana cards are multicolor cards in every single way that matters, they just have a more flexible casting cost. That's all people should see them as: muticolor cards made to with a more flexible casting cost. This whole argument to make them either/or has always reeked of 'but I WANT TO!' from people who argue it because it never really has any good rational backing it, it's always just something people want to do because they want to play a powerful card or more specifically a powerful effect outside of their colors. 'Because I want to' isn't a good enough argument to change a major defining rule for a format, it just isn't. As to 'why restrict my deck building?'...well because you're making the choice to play a format that has restrictions, I will never comprehend people that decide to pick up a format but them complain about key thematic parts of said format and say they need to not exist when they just play another format to experience that other style of magic and deck building. Instead, people weirdly think 'we should just strip away what makes this format unique' rather than 'oh, hey, maybe I should also play 60 card casual because there are clearly other aspects of deck building and play that I want to experience'. It seems to come from the same people and corners that argue to get rid of other aspects of the format that are *core critical thematic pieces of the format* like commander damage or color identity requirements and generally just feels like people wanted to strip out all the actually unique parts of the format that restrict them in any way. I often have the reaction of 'well do you even actually like commander?' in the same way that I would react to people suggesting we play Color Star or Emperor, but then house ruling most of the unique aspects of those game formats away so it was barely different from normal free for all with 'how is this different? I don't think you actually like these special game styles because you want to get rid of almost all their rules'. It's like someone saying 'I like modern but it would be cool if I wasn't restricted in my deck building to only new border cards, I think the format would be better if we could use old border cards too', without realizing they could play Legacy and that trying changing a defining quality of Modern is trying to make the heavy lift of trying to have a single format be everything you want out of magic when that's not the point of formats.
I think the only place there is any wiggle room on losing color identity rules is on split cards where one half is within the color identity and one is not; with a restriction on only being able to cast the half that is within the color identity. It's still not a strong case, but it's strong that arguing for hybrid cards are 'the mono color' of your choice.
As to 100 card limit, I think that simply put the best argument is that most formats only have a minimum and that's fine; usually people stick to it anyway and it doesn't really ever cause problems to not have a upper limit. That said it's not a very strong argument and I'd say the argument towards format identity for keeping it 99 only for official play is a stronger one, with the understanding that people be lax about enforcement with people tuning new decks that are having issues cutting the last couple cards and what to playtest the deck to figure it out. Arguing the limit needs to go away *just* so people can play battle of wits is about the weakest argument you could ever make ("Please change a core rule of this format for one car so I don't understand why that's the one people are latching on to honestly.
"If you want to make a minor change to the format than you hate it, all of your arguments for hybrid Mana are terrible and making 99 only a minimum would fundamentally hurt the format somehow by making a single card playable at all."
1. Hybrid: I could go either way on hybrid. I really want to play Enchanted Evening in my Karametra Enchantress deck. In general I don't think it would cause problems which is why I lean towards allowing it.
2. Deck size restriction: No other format needs a maximum deck size, and it causes no problems anywhere. Mill is already a bad strategy so I don't think that's a valid argument. So if I want to run a 103 card deck because I don't want to look for a cut today, I don't think it would cause harm to the format.
3. Infect: I like infect where it is. It gives another out to infinite life/huge life gain decks.
4. Death triggers: You would be amazed at the number of times commanders not "dieing" has been relevant in our play group. Kokusho doesn't work as a a commander, you don't get skullclamp triggers, Blood artist doesn't work. It is definitely a thing.
5. The reason people want to get rid of commander damage is because it's annoying to track and very rarely relevant. It's like mana burn in that respect. That being said, keep commander damage. We just have the person dealing the commander damage be responsible for tracking it. If you don't feel it's relevant, don't track it.
X. I don't think "ask your friends if this is ok" is ever an acceptable answer on why something should or should not be done. Many people don't play with a consistent group and there does need to be consistent rules for everyone.
I understand people would want to build new and interesting deck, or include sweet hybrid cards that are currently not includable, but I think it works fine for now, and that changing it is likely to create more problems than it fixes.
Battle of wits is something most people have wanted to be able to try in commander, but there is so many problems attached to this. FIrst there is the size of the deck and time spent shuffling and searching (bound to play heaps of tutors). Secondly a lot of commander decks have mill strategies, and allowing more than 100 cards would skewer the balance of mill-decks.
As for infect, the card pool supporting it is relatively limited. If it gets a lot of future support in form of infect or combo cards for infect there might be a discussion for making infect 20points, but for now I think 10 is just fine.
As for the death trigger, I do believe these worked until they revised commander rules, making command zone return a REPLACEMENT effect, so it REPLACES the death/exile/tuck etc. I might be mistaken, but I seem I seem to remember that in earlier rules iteration of commander it died/exiled etc and you could pull your commander from GY or exile at any time (but not from your deck if put in it) . Another commander that would be really strong if you changed this would be Child of Alara
Commander damage in a lot of games are never even tracked, and it does get a little problematic to keep proper track of as it makes for 5 life totals for each player in a 4 player game (3 commander life and infect), for a total of 20 life totals! However a lot of decks are build on commander damage, and it would be bad to "ban" these decks because of a little book-keeping.
"and you only play it on wednesdays."
"Can you stop?!"
NO! XD
WAY TO GO PROF!!!
I always like hearing Olivia's take but I feel like she's the wrong guest for this topic, too much of her response was basically "hmmm I dunno"
I found it be quite refreshing.
@@djcochrane it's nice to know people with the power to make changes are listening to feedback and admitting when they don't know something, but it really makes you curious about what kind of people they chose for a body like the CAG for her to be able to sit down for an interview about the format like this and admit she doesn't know what's going on with a bunch of these hotly discussed issues
At least she's aware of her own ignorance. Better than the professor just pushing his ignorance over and over without realising how stupid he is.
@@tylerespinoza1282 It's not nice if the answers are "I don't know, I personally don't find that a problem, I couldn't say if it would be better if we change or not, so I would just keep it as it is"
I’m at work so I didn’t listen super super close, but they tended to agree. Maybe there should have been another guest with a different opinion? sure! That could have only made things more interesting. But the only case she said she knew nada on was FlashHulk and she asked people about it. It’s different to say hybrid mana, for example, isn’t really an issue she or her group has. 🤷🏻♂️
Rule zero shouldn't be used to defend or justify arbitrary decisions affecting everyone who plays the format. It's not a good way to """balance""" the format and too often in these podcasts we can see that people use the rule zero argument as a way to avoid giving a real answer. I have a regular CASUAL playgroup and we don't use rule zero because we like to play according to the format's rules, expecting that the people in charge of said format can maintain it in a proper state. Also rule zero doesn't really work if you are someone that plays only at your lgs and doesn't have a regular playgroup, a proper and formal rule system guarantees that people have the same means and restrictions to play edh.
Why have a banlist at all if we are going to rule zero everything? Why have rules and restrictions at all? You can't have it both ways... if it's true that restrictions breed creativity then rule zero shouldn't exist,
if rule zero is allowed to exist then we shouldn't have deckbuilding restrictions (including bans).
They are essentially telling us that it doesnt matter if EDH has issues because we can make our own formats if we dont like it
I think it varies. "Talk to your play group" is a valid response to rules changes that will allow one or two highly experimental decks at the expense of a significant change to overall play. Rather than upsetting the format, all 5 people who want to run 200 card decks can shoulder the burden of convincing someone to let them play it rather than making the whole of the community adjust to a new rule about deck sizes.
@@Vote4Drizzt Yeah, there is a difference between wanting to run a 200 card deck and wanting to be able to cast a hybrid card in a 1 color deck, like you can in every other format, but I dont think the committee thinks there is one, considering they apparently see any change as massive and not worth doing unless everyone there is fully on board
Finally someone that is making freakin’ logical sense. Thank you man. I totally agree.
@@Vote4Drizzt I fail to see how letting players play more than 100 cards would make the community adjust in any way. Unless you are playing battle of wits, you stay at 100 cards which means the only people affected by this rule change are the 5 people who wanted to play battle of wits in the first place.
I just fail to see any real argument in favor of saying "Players should not be permitted to play 250 card decks."
Alternative ways to solve the issues discussed in this video:
1. Hybrid mana- ask your play group if they're fine with it.
2. Poison counter threshold- ask your play group if they're fine with it.
3. Commander "dies" rule- ask your play group if they're ok with it.
Commander started as an informal format where players decide to put their own rules into play that should still stand if you're only playing casually.
Those were discussed and if those solved the issue people wouldn't even need the rules committee.
Re: Hybrid
> The point is that it's functionally two monocolored cards mashed together. For example, if Nature's Chant was printed first, we probably would have never seen Naturalize and Disenchant.
> Flavorfully it's supposed to be an OR, they just have both because it takes like one line of rules text vs 30 and surely nobody would invent some dumb rules that make Noble Hierarch count as a 3 color card.
> Even your example isn't quite accurate, Azorious Guildmage is still a UW card because it has solid colors in its text box.
> You can ALREADY do most of the things you're worried about. Maybe not Hydroblast, but you could say use Scuttlemutt to turn on Kederekt Parasite in a monoblack deck.
> The entire point of color identity is fixing the problems caused by using the default colors (Like before it was introduced, Bosh couldn't really work because he couldn't produce red mana, hence why color identity exists in the first place). Basically either Cemetary Puca is playable in monoblack or new Sisay can't run nonwhiye cards, pick one.
The only remotely good argument I've heard is the point about hybrid Commanders, but that's pretty easy. My proposal would just be you can count each hybrid mana symbol as either or both of its symbols for the purpose of color identity during deck construction. That way hybrid commanders can still use their full suite, hybrid cards work the way they're supposed to, and stops people from running Beseech the Queen in monowhite if you consider that an issue.
FYI, Hydroblast already destroys a Simic deck's Transguild Courier, Homicidal Brute and Wild Mongrel. So even that example isn't as crazy as they think.
@@fernandobanda5734 Transguild Courier actually can't be put in anything other than a 5 color deck as it is all 5 colors at all times. But yeah, it was not a great example, and they definitely didn't do any research on why this conversation waseven happening
I think the best comment I've seen so far for why hybrid works in every other format, is that every other format doesn't CARE about COLOUR IDENTITY. That is the one major difference between the formats; EDH CARES about COLOUR IDENTITY. It is a specific deckbuilding restriction to add variance and fun to the format. If you want to break the rules of colour identity, why not break a few more rules while you're at it? Why have colour identity at all? Just run whatever cards you want with whatever commander you want. You can do that in any other format, and we should be just like every other format, right? If you want to run that blue card in your mono-red deck because "technically the lands in the deck can cast it because it's blue-red hybrid", then can I run literally anything in my mono-black deck because "the city of brass-type lands in my deck can technically cast them"?
It hurts that this discussion always ends with people simply reiterating their opinions instead of arguing logically.
3:30 - Treating the argument as if it makes no sense, or trying to make it seem like chaos.
"What happens if you want to play Boros Reckoner in that deck? Can you now?"
Yes
"Can you play cards that are Boros?"
Hybrid sure, gold no.
"I can have access to basically three? Or I can bring in white black? I can make it a five-color deck?"
No. You don't have access to cards with other color identities unless they happen to be hybrid green or hybrid white.
"...Because I'm using the white that they all have in common?"
Yes, that's the point. You can already do this in a green-white deck outside Commander.
"There's a weirdness too to the idea that someone can respond with Hydroblast."
But there's not. They can already do that to your Transguild Courier, Reckless Brute and Wild Mongrel.
5:11 "I would also offer that restrictions can breed creativity" 9:10 "That's part of the restriction, that's part of the deck-building process" Yeah, cool, but nothing is said about hybrid in particular. I could also say that you can only use cards whose letters in the title is contained in the Commander's name and it will end up leading to diverse decks. People don't have a problem with restrictions, they have a problem with *those* restrictions and with *why* they're there. It's very disingenuous to not address this at all. You might as well be saying that the current rules are good because they are the current rules.
I'm so glad people like you are speaking out.
Prof doesn't understand how far he is from people who truly care for the format.
He's basically listening and agreeing with like-minded people.
Honestly, a few minutes in and I hate this guest. She doesn't use logic or even really support her arguments, she just tries to make her opponents in this argument sound dumb and hope they give up
And honestly I don't think this change would be a big of a deal... What are the "worst" color pie breaks the hybrid cards get???
The only mind-boggling for me are the ones that are hybrid with generic (2)... But my feeling is that these are just nos hybrid at all... Right?
Nice - I'm personally against changing this rule, but could very well be swayed by a more nuanced discussion. What if hybrid cards in a mono-colored Commander deck were considered to ONLY have the color identity of the Commander running the deck? So for example, a Rhys in a mono-white deck could only be hit by cards that target white even if someone else at the table is running a Rhys in a green/white deck, and the Rhys in the GW deck can be considered to have both colors! This makes the most sense to me now that I'm thinking more about it.
loved the old tuck rule, memory lapsing a commander and then hitting em with thouht scour or jester's cap. Mwah! chef's kiss.
I have two issues with your (Prof and Olivia's) discussion:
1. Absolving the Rules Committee of their function a-la telling playgroups to "make their own rules"; I once again ask the Rules Committee and Olivia in earnest, "WHY DO THEY EXIST?"; if your primary function is to moderate the rules of a format and you actively tell people to make their own house rules for issues, then you simply are not doing the job, period. You should be making rules the same way ANY sport or gaming committee does: for the most competitive community of players. Others can make the rules MORE LAX if needed for their experience, but I cannot go to a store and insist on making the rules MORE RESTRICTIVE. One serves the entire community, the other only absolves the Rules Committee of their obligations.
2. Using the same criteria to judge Commander as you do with 60-card formats: "Does it warp the format?" - This has a myriad of issues, the first and biggest being you're moderating a format which exists in microcosms; your experience will NEVER be the same as mine because the group(s) I play with are varied. The second issue is that the Rules Committee actively IGNORES the input of communities which exist in more public spaces, which aren't as isolated as the 'silent masses' they tout as 90% of the community (without evidence to back up such numbers). EDH doesn't have a pro tour, events or tournaments with the exception of cEDH, which is paradoxically far more organized as a community than the greater EDH playerbase, and their 'problems' are going to be unique to a cEDH play experience. For example, in the case of Infect damage, combat is one of the weakest win-cons available to EDH players, so cEDH rarely relies on it and would not encounter Infect simply because it is not powerful enough. And really, what does 'format warping' mean to a BROKEN format?
I'm inclined to have the default be set with low restrictions and Rule 0 upward toward more restriction, but I agree that Rule 0 allows the RC and CAG to abdicate their responsibilities with next to no consequences.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos my point is that if the expectation is that 'house rules' be the norm for playgroups, then building the rules and ban-list with groups who do NOT have the luxury of doing so in mind makes more sense; those of us who play in stores or at events cannot impose special rules and expectations on those we might encounter, while those in a private play-group (like those 90% the RC claims exist) can far more easily make such modifications.
The Rules Committee's insistence that the players 'make their own rules' would be like the NBA or NFL designing rules with pick-up groups in mind and ignoring the professional players who tell them that they need rules to be more restrictive. If they are not willing to do the job of moderating the format, they need to STEP ASIDE.
@@MadMage86 That's fair. I lean toward "ban less, not more", since bans focused on cEDH will really perplex little Bobby LGS and might make his deck whoops not legal, but banning for cEDH is certainly better than the dartboard banlist we have now
making rules for the minority of competitive players in mtg is the wrong thing. when 99% of your customers are casual play, you make rules for them.
@@MusicalBoarder how many people play football professionally in the NFL versus, say, in Grade Schools, Colleges or smaller Leagues? How many just play with friends? Does this mean the NFL should make rules for the much larger percentage of players?
The logic of 'targeting the larger group' is a MARKETING mentality, and it does not work for rules in any setting, be it real life or games - 99% of people aren't murderers, but we don't make the rules less strict because they don't 'matter' to most people.
Hybrid creatures eg boros reckoner are red OR white OR both flavourly so it makes sense that mono white commanders and/or planeswalkers can summon them because that card id hybrid in its flavour
Hey, I'm clearly late to the party, but as this response misrepresents one of the original arguments (which MaRo tried quite hard to lay out in detail on his podcast exactly to avoid this kind of accidental strawmaning), I've gotta speak up:
So the pitch is hybrid cards in the 99 should count as either or both of their colors to the advantage of the Commander deckbuilder. The logic is that hybrid cards represent an OR operator rather than an AND. They are not the confluence of two colors but the expression of an idea roughly equally represented by both. These are effects which either color should reasonably be able to produce, and while I don't know what specific problems Mark sees with the future of the mechanic, Commander is in many ways a no-win situation for a designer.
A wildly popular format over which the product creators have no control but must also accommodate lest the crowds inundate them with complaints, Wizards is trying to be proactive AND hands-off, an uneasy position. Many other companies (for good reason) would co-opt the trappings of the fan creation and then either hire them (bringing the format under their control) or cast the OG contributions aside entirely. Wizards is trying for a long game, playing nice with the community in the hope of maintaining a healthy physical presence through the format which sells more paper than any other, but y'all want it both ways. When white can't pull its own against 3 opponents because it plays just fine in standard without card draw, you're more than happy to minge, but when the people who spend all day contemplating Magic tell you that the answer to certain problems might lie in a rules change, one that would allow them to pursue options they haven't been able to for fear of making waves in this community favorite, suddenly the line is "stick to standard, boys, we'll figure it out."
Do you trust the designers to continue making this game (and hence, when they say a rule of the format is particularly disruptive to their job you give them the benefit of the doubt), or should they pack it in and let someone else take over, since they clearly don't have sights set beyond rotation? I would like MaRo to clarify what some of these problems are (at least to the rules committee) so that an agreement can be reached, but I also believe him when he says "this, more than any other, is the change I would make if I could."
Idk why people so are against hybrid mana. Boros Reckoner can be fully utilized in a mono-deck. Alesha who smiles can be fully utilized by boros and rakdos decks. But Deathrite Shaman has black and green symbols, so it can only be full utilized by BG+ decks. So simple lol
i don't agree with Hybrid mana cards being allowed to be played in either color alone, and it's as simple as what color identity represents, which is how the card works. A card, like Rhys, has G/W hybrid mana as it's cost because it has functions that combine green and white principles. In function, it's not a green card or a white card depending on what you pay, it's always a Green-White card.
Out of all of these, the only rule I think should be changed is that if a commander is moved to the command zone because it would have died, death triggers should trigger. I feel like Death triggers are a broad enough issue, and this interaction is so nitpicky that changing it would be a large benefit. I think if a commander is in the situation where a card says "Destroy target creature" and it resolves, or if it would be killed in combat, it should trigger. I think not allowing legendary creatures with death triggers to function if they're your commander stifles creativity and variety in deck building rather than encourages it, while not preventing any sort of great negative impact on the format if that would be allowed.
I would argue that the card is perfectly in-pie for both monogreen and monowhite and that the color it itself has in the game means nothing. Otherwise, Transguild Courier or a transformed Reckless Brute would be banned in monoblue, too. "Combining green and white principles" is incredibly subjective, but, like I said, card would work fine as a monowhite card.
A thought on the death trigger issue, what if instead of being "instead of changing zones" that it be "after changing zones" when you choose to put your commander back. In this way, you still get exile and death triggers but you also get your commander safe. This would actually make the game interactions more simple than currently because all those interactions with the commander work the same as any other creature in any format.
For example, Elendra dies, trigger goes on the stack to get the vampires, and then the commander can be moved to the command zone as a state-based effect since it changed zones.
Decree of Pain is another example where the current rule adds complexity. If the board has 10 creatures when the spell is cast, then 10 creatures die and 10 cards should be drawn. But if 3 of those creatures are commanders, then somehow I only draw 7 even though I killed 10 creatures? This is not intuitive and the added complexity of remembering "how many things that died didn't actually die".
So even if the rule change affected zero commanders, I would still say it's a good change because it makes these interactions behave the way most players would anticipate and expect them to work. We don't need this extra complexity just for complexity's sake.
Your suggestion has an unintended impact. Shuffle effects (like chaos warp) will require you to shuffle your commander in your deck, reveal the top (because that's what chaos warp does), and when you are done resolving chaos warp, you need to go back to your library and find your commander again.
Also, if you want a flavor justification as to why your commander didn't die because of Decree of pain, I've always seen it as "It (the commander) got too injured and had to retreat".
@@Registeel1234 Exactly. Dont know whats so hard to understand about "this creature is the commander, it retreats to the zone when it would die"
@@Registeel1234 Except I already clarified that that it's after it changes zones...so yes you still shuffle but no, you don't put your commander in the deck.
Probably my least favorite interview so far. I actually agree with most of your points, but I felt like the opposing arguments you used were pretty strawmanned.
I take issue with is your talk on Hybrid mana and the Card limits.
Maro has said that Hybrid Cards are designed to be either or. I do think that it might be a hard rule to implement, and I'm not saying it really NEEDS to change, but there's a lot of good reasons that design-wise it should.
for the Battle of Wits one, you ignore that many people don't have a steady play group, they play at Stores and GP events where you might not know everyone you play with. Asking strangers to bend the rules isn't really a good option, so why would you build a deck like that when it's likely you'll be told you can't play it?
Anyway, I agree with Infect, Commander Damage and even the Card limit, in the end, but I really felt like this discussion was dismissive rather than, well, discussive of the situation.
this is my second video i have seen on this topic thus far, and my main question is "so what if someone Hydroblasts a card from your mono white deck?" you scrunch your faces and shrug your shoulders saying it feels weird, well having a pirate ship being crewed by a sport scar feels weird too, but here we are. allowing the hybrid cost change actually validates many card choices, as things like Hydroblast may be a bad inclusion in most groups, because you are betting on weather someone will play a red commander, but opening up this avenue makes it almost a statistical probability that someone will slide in a red hybrid. and in many ways, will help white with their little card advantage problem.
It basically only helps mono-color decks. For that reason alone, it's probably a good change.
You know what feels weird? Casting Invert the Skies in a mono green deck by paying U for it. Things that feel *this* weird are called "color pie breaks".
Making mana that isn't in your color identity has been allowed for a while and this would absolutely break it. Here's the full cycle scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=%28oracle%3Aif+oracle%3Aspent%29+block%3Ashm
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos i would say it primarily helps mono-colored decks. but it adds some fun interactions all over. i mean immagine dropping a Biomantic Mastery in a Niv-Mizzet, Parun deck....
@@florianw116 Invert the Skies would still be UG because it has a blue mana symbol in the text box.
Also Akroma's Memorial can also give your field flying in monogreen (Or Predator, Flagship on a case by case basis), so.
@Najawin Haha, true. But sushi hulk is so marginal that it should not direct the conversation.
I like the "OR" Rule. The whole thing about magic is that wording is key. if the Legendary is G or W. I can have Green or white, but if it should want to be added into a deck it can fit a Green or white deck too. It may seem too radical right now but it should be worth a try.
The problem with saying "Is this a pervasive problem in the format" when it comes to Elenda is the fact she and other death trigger commanders haven't had a chance to prove weather its a problem or not. These triggers should be allowed until they prove broken, just like every other effect and ability. If there is some valid reason why not other then just a silly quirk of the format then a good compromise in my eyes would the commander would need to be destroyed by damage or card effect, bouncing and exile wouldn't count toward the death triggers. Thus slowing down or mildly stunting the amount of ways to abuse that kind of death trigger.
I think the thing that annoys me most about people always citing Elenda as why commanders should die is that she's in black/white which has amazing recursion is it so hard to let it die and then get it back?
Going to the graveyard is part of what triggers "dying". Even tokens trigger this before disappearing. Rerouting to the command zone is saving your commander from "dying". Also, is the graveyard even really a draw back anymore?
An important thing to note is this would affect a lot more than JUST commanders with death triggers. It also affects every deck running any creature, artifact, or enchantment that has a "when a creature dies" trigger.
You don't need to. Child of Alara would be the singularly most oppressive commander with this change. They're a repeatable 5(+) CMC non-land permanent boardwipe that just needs to ramp far enough ahead of the commander tax to interact a bit then get Cabal Coffers + Urborg + one of the 'sac a creature' lands out to force players into an unfun situation instead of requiring the use of Moorland Haunt or any of the various creature recursion effects to get around the zone change rule. Recursion adds both a deckbuilding restriction and an additional mana tax to these cards that is inherently valuable in slowing them down before they get rolling, and once established they are often more efficient than having to deal with the commander tax when it comes to comboing off anyways. The way I see it, at best this rule change lowers the barrier to exploiting only a few commanders in the short term without really giving you anything else to consider that you wouldn't be doing anyways in those decks, and at worst enables degenerate gameplay because the downsides to using those commanders suddenly isn't a downside anymore. Either way, why would we change it? To me, having them as a commander already guarantees you have access to the card when you want it, and that is more than sufficient. This additional rule doesn't add enough for it to be worth changing to me.
@@GrimoireM totally agree. Tagged it (?) in the main thread.
This has been said before, but the talk about Hybrid mana seems to just ignore the conversation where it came from.
It has been stated several times, but the argument felt very disingenuous because it felt like it straw manning the opposed argument.
I don't have much of a position either way but I do see both sides.
If I can interact with a card that affects that color that card is inherently that color. (Ie countering a hybrid white/blue with puroblast).
The opposed thought seems goes along the lines of I can only spend white mana to do this hybrid card so I should get to use it in mono white or white / x (non blue). The reasoning for not changing interaction based on mana spent on the spell was done to simplify the way the cards work and it feels like a reasonable downside/trade off to get the ability use those cards for whatever advantage they bring.
However this doesnt mean you could bring a gold white blue card into a deck with missing a blue because that blue is a hard part of the inherent cost.
I don't think people are ignorant of where the desire to change the rule comes from, nor are they creating strawman arguments. If you propose a rules change, people will argue back based on the rules. Proponents of the change rarely (though sometimes) are citing rules in favor of their position, and are usually (again, generally speaking) speaking more towards some notion of intent or design. So when people respond to a rules suggestion with rules speak, and "ignore" the design/intent argument, it's not disingenuous, or strawmanning, they just don't feel it's relevant.
@@loganl8440 I stated it was disingenuous and straw manning as it was extrapolated that if you change the hybrid identity suddenly you can use any card you want in any deck (the all 5 colors comment). That is clearly not what is being asked to change, just that those cards that have hybrid costs can be run in decks with access to either color. Which sure in an edge could mean a mono white deck could run hybrid white blue, white black, white red and white green. But the thing is any non commander mono white deck could already run all of those cards so it's not really a 5 color deck.
@@jamesloucka1952 Ah, I see. That wasn't mentioned in your original comment. But I also don't think that's what the argument was. They were saying, correctly, that if you include a W/X hybrid card for every color combination in your mono white deck, you would have technically created a 5 color deck, even though it's supposed to be mono colored, and that is weird.
@@loganl8440 I didn't go into as much detail as I perhaps should have. I dont want to dog pile. However, I think it is fair to say that many have felt the way the hybrid mana cost change was present was done unfairly and perhaps in a way that denigrates or ridicules those who think it should change.
It is also a bit silly to call a deck running a hand full of hybrid cards a 5 color deck in my opinion.
can i now run beseech the queen in every deck i play?
Commander damage is too complicated to keep track of, unlike simple things like combo decks, storm decks, and the stack.
Wouldn't want to complicate the board state. Also, dont forget about PW Narset's static ability or your arcane denial triggers. Those are easy to keep track of in comparison to commander damage for sure -.-
When I first started playing, I thought it was an interesting concept and didn't have anything against it. It wouldn't really bother me if they got rid of it.
The point is that it's tracking something that often doesn't matter. Like, in a 4 player game, I might need to track my life total, my poison counters, and three separate commander damage totals, shit wait is the 8 from Rakdos or Borborygmos?
I'm not necessarily saying I think it should be removed but the point is it's often a lot of bookkeeping for something that doesn't end up mattering.
Bad argument. Bad you.
@@dapperghastmeowregard We just put a different die for each commander on the board if necessary, hardly an issue imo.
Commander damage is a pretty good thing to combat the absurd amounts of life you can gain without it being combo and helps shorten the game duration.
If you want to build a fun Atraxa, use energy. Combined with proliferate, energy has become an absolute blast, and probably one of my favorite commander decks to pilot.
Any chance you can post your decklist?
I have a really fun Atraxa deck that tries to get as many different kinds of counters out that it can. It has energy counters, depletion counters, fade counters, study, hour, fate, brick, winch, tower, level, study, and about fifteen more. It was a blast to build, fun to play, and, most importantly, the only thing it doesn't have are loyalty counters.
My thoughts.
The only time I see infect in my playgroup is my Ruric thar deck with Grafted Exoskeleton. With my win record, I think I've only gotten the infect win a couple of times?
I think changing the die trigger is a good idea. I get the current ruling and itd OK, but I think this is a good example of expanding the playability of EDH without changing how EDH works, like with hybrid mana.
I did mean that hybrid mana should not be considered as a mono color. EDH is very color Identity centric, and cards with hybrid costs should maintain their two color stqtus.
Getting rid of commander damage gets rid of the main non combo way of winning a game, and that can only hurt the format. I dont see why the desire to "simplify"what isnt a difficult concept should annihilate an entire playstyle.
So after this video, the only thing I'd change is the die trigger. Everything else is fine.
I agree pretty much exactly.
I think the for the dies trigger they should just add a rule that says "if you would place your commander into the graveyard and instead place it into the command zone, any death trigger still occurs"
The thing that kinda got me on hybrid Mana was you could run Reaper King in any deck and since you are still able to produce Mana of any color (from stuff such as manalith) then you could hypothetically cast him for his colored Mana cost which doesn't seem intuitive. I also like the points about the hybrid cards technically having a color identity and being able to be targeted for the other color.
@@Carrtoondragon exactly. Have some condition to where if a Commander would die and is instead put in the command zone, it still triggers.
On a side note, I think changing the death rule makes it easier on new players. It's hard explain why your child of alara wont trigger even when she "dies."
@@GreenestTrampler You are very correct about each topic. But I think commander damage can be simplified and strengthened at the same time by just unifying the damage to a player by all commanders. No more "if you take 21 from my commander, you lose" and instead "if you take 21 from your opponents' commanders, you lose".
@@florianw116 that would definitely make for some more combat heavy games! Haha I've done that a few times in my playgroups, and it was hit and miss (having a Multani and Sigarda at the table made for quick Cmdr damage). I personally would rather keep it per commander, but I'd be fine switching it to cumulative Commander damage.
I remember hearing a really elegant solution for the dies-trigger issue: Change the command zone replacement effect with a triggered ability. "When your commander leaves the battlefield, you may search [zones] for it and put it in the command zone. If you search your library this way, shuffle it." While it adds a slight wrinkle where tuck effects now shuffle, it also fixes another oddity where Banishing Light can return a commander that replaced its exile.
Now you can exile the commander from the graveyard in response to the trigger.
@@florianw116 So? It gets exiled, you put it in the command zone. Big whoop.
@@AvalonisHere Kit only wrote "When your commander leaves the battlefield". So you can't actually replace exile from the graveyard with put in the command zone.
@@florianw116 Whoops! Silly me. You're spot on.
"Is it that pervasive a problem?" No....... because it's illegal? No, there aren't a lot of death trigger commanders, they don't work. No, a lot of people don't play infect, because at 10 counters it's too cheap. Maybe there would be more infect decks if it didn't feel really easy to swing with blight steel and win. You changed my mind on hybrid mana, "It's both these colors of a card." Oh yah, good point. But a lot of these arguments where "That's just the way it is" is SO demeaning to the other side.
Yeah, that's exactly why this is being criticized so much.
"Talk with your playgroup" is such a cop-out, and defeats the point of having any rules. The rules let players that aren't always playing together have a baseline to play together without taking forever to agree on everything.
She means that for the situations where the format would be far too chaotic with strangers. People want to change the rules all together when they could simply apply their individual exception to a personal play group.
@@VexylObby then she should say that. House rules have always been a thing for games, why the need for rule zero when its best case scenario is that it's redundant?
@@gamerharris512 Those cases are pretty extreme though. Imagine having to run into Paradox Engine in a casual pod every FNM. You might not have. But the reality is that the card was resolving in casual pods left and right, resulting in 30 minute turns that eventually just end the game.
If the case in not comparable, then you have nothing to worry about.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. If anything that example you gave illustrates the need for actual rules which is the point I was trying to make.
@@gamerharris512 I thought the point you were trying to make was that "talk to your playgroup" shouldn't be used in place of rules. When there are just some things that would only likely be brought up through playgroups. I agree that some rules should be put into place to protect the fun environment for strangers and the format at large. But she didn't suggest that as an excuse for everything. I would think she is more in agreement with you and I. Rules to keep the game balanced, but house rules for those niche situations that might harm the format at large is put into place.
Her example for house rules was "some cards require larger than 100 card decks, so maybe ask your friends if they want to play against that". But luckily she knows that if the rule itself was changed, the format would be chaotic. She didn't say simply use house rules for everything.
I don't think it'd be hard to integrate a rule for hybrid cards if they wanted to, idc either way on this stance. I actually am kind of against the death trigger on commanders happening as like said they don't actually die. They are essential saved from death and for Elenda as an undead creature it would make sense reanimation is a thing in the deck for her. Getting rid of commander damage is just bad. It get's rid of many decks and strategies against many decks and is a nice alt win con for long games. Poison counters are fine as infect is not that strong anyways and trying to get 30 counters total is actually pretty hard to do already.
They should change the command zone/died trigger and make the command zone a "special" graveyard for commanders...is not like it's gonna warp the format to let some commanders get the trigger...
In regards to Elenda, this is just my personal take but I don't interpret the commander going back to the command zone as them dying. I also saw that as them using plot armor to escape a situation and live to fight another day. I also feel like she still works as a commander even if you choose to send her to the graveyard, recursion from the graveyard and tutoring are LITERALLY blacks thing. I'm pretty sure Yawgmoth has a patent on both those effects in his name and WOTC has to pay him every time they print a card with the effects on them.
If were gonna talk about hybrid mana lets just talk about card color identity. Its a classification specifically for commander. Should we get rid of that or accept that this is our format, and we live within these rules?
Watching this over a year later, and knowing the “Die” rule for EDH has been changed already, the Elenda discussion was funny. XD
As a cedh player flash has been a problem for a while. It limits the creative aspect as well as the diversity aspect. About 7 out of 10 times a cedh table will have a flash hulk deck. It has forced me to play a deck that directly plays off of how every flash hulk deck plays and doesnt allow me to play other interesting and cohesive decks in cedh.
Death&Taxes Or 2 How does asking if the table would like a no flash hulk game usually work out? I get decks may be partially geared to try to counter flash hulk, but I’m curious.
@@djcochrane those aren't cEDH conversations, the points to play the strongest deck you can and make the best plays you can within the rules of commander
Shea Jones Oh yeah. I forgot that was the big thing I took away from the other vid.
Death&Taxes or 2: Cedh plays with the more optimal decks. You guys wanted the most optimal and now you do. But flash isn’t a problem for anyone who doesn’t play Cedh. Honestly Imo Cedh and edh should split. That way Cedh can have their own banlist. Cause most problems for Cedh players have zero problems in edh. My group told me to play the flash hulk combo. Cause at first I thought they may frown at it. But they said go for it, it’s not like it’s a broken combo in our format. While I haven’t gotten yet, because money is tight for me. I probably will because we don’t have a issue with it.
@@jaredwallick509 splitting the format would kill cEDH. It's still edh, that's why they call it such
Lol! "Red mage emotional" totally describes me when I was just starting and didn't understand how much fun mid-range and control strategies could be 🤫
Interesting question: how do you guys feel about Flip Avacyn? If we change the hybrid mana rule, do we allow her in non-red decks? I will say that’s a potentially slippery slope of “well it’s color identity is TECHNICALLY x” rules work
I would, by the same reason you can expect a monowhite deck to play her everywhere else.
Yet if you look at Devotion, You would only count Rhys as 1 for White OR 1 for Green. It would not give two devotion for Karametra.
But it’s still a white and green card if you’re dealing with protection from either of those. There’s a dozen ways to look at this that’s for sure.
But it would give 1 devotion to Heliod and 1 devotion to Nylea at the same time...
You two have great synergy (don't worry Pleasant Kanobi we still love you)
I very much felt what stance Olivia was taking as far as "some stuff doesn't work and that's ok". Not everything has to be perfect ideal world for our format, and the flaws help give commander it's personality
Commander can change zones AFTER the effect that would make it change zones is resolved. Put the zone change on the stack.
Sorry if somebody else has said this, but I'm not seeing it in a quick scan...
Olivia is right. "Dies" in MTG rules means specifically 'a creature leaves the battlefield and goes directly to the graveyard'. It doesn't just mean dead or killed or sent to the yard.
Making it work for Commander would probably adding a triggered ability for going back to the CZ that checks after the replacement ability. So it's possible, just a little clunky.
"CAN YOU STOP" haha, very funny!
Nope. It's Monday.
Most hybrid mana cards to me feel like they contain aspects of both colors and thats why they are a hybrid card in the first place so if you treat them as a mono colored card your mono color deck is suddenly bleeding into the other color which is kind of counter to what commander is trying to do. Having said that, one of the most egregious instances of where hybrid mana did seem to be an issue is the card Privileged Position. That card makes sense as an independently green card or as an independently white card, both colors have enchantment synergies and both colors would make sense to have and want to use that card. And it's always seemed annoying to me that mono green enchantment strategies and mono white enchantment strategies, both of which exist, couldn't use that card. The most annoying part about it is Privileged Position could have a functional reprint tomorrow with all of its hybrid mana removed, and replaced as just a mono green card or a mono white card and it would make sense as either color, and wouldn't break or even bend the color pie. But instead of living in a world where we have a mono white Privileged Position and a color shifted green one available for both decks, instead we have the hybrid mana one available to neither.
The commander death trigger feels unintuitive. I was using revel in riches which creates treasures when creatures die. I wiped the board and destroyed 10 of my opponents creatures but only got 9 treasures because I forgot about the commander not triggering ANY death triggers. I don't think it would be very format breaking if they just triggered death events before they were sent to the command zone.
So should exile cause death triggers? Cause commander's dont die when they're sent to the command zone
You could have let your commander die instead of go to the command zone for the win, it's a choice where they go.
@@waaurufu hes saying the other player chose to send their commander to the command zone instead of letting it die and he wants his death triggers
It seems to me that just a tweak in the tuck rules could solve this. Instead of being a substitution effect could be a special commander trigger like: "whenever ~ changes zones you may put it into the CZ. "
How bad could this be??
@@joshuanolte9126 Ohhh that makes more sense
Let me preface this with I am not attacking just informing. When it comes to commander death triggers, the way it works is that the moving to the command zone is a replacement effect. This is the same as Anafenza, the Foremost (“if a nontoken creature would die... exile it instead”) with this ruling you also don’t get the death trigger. The only way you could fix this is if the commander rules were changed from a replacement effect to a triggered effect for example, after Elenda dies you get her trigger then put another trigger on the stack saying “you may move your commander to your command zone”. This can also create a problem with effects like stifle that can counter an ability which prevents your commander from going to the command zone.
"Since it's never been a stumbling block for me, I've never seen why it should change," is seriously bad reasoning. It's just, "this doesn't affect me so why should it change, " reasoning with a shoddy coat of paint on it. It's terrible psuedo-logic.
At 36:26 she straight up admits that she's apathetic to the topic.
Sometimes I feel like people of authority sit on really high chairs.
Influencers like them don't understand how much power they hold.
This is why I want Wotc to take over EDH. And that's coming from a casual player.
One of the ways we could solve the commander "death" trigger is to treat them like tokens, so that they die, hit the graveyard, and then are moved to the command zone when state based actions are checked. This keeps it intuitive with how cards were written.
That eliminates any strategy built around reanimation of your commander, though.
...Not that I know if that's relevant.
@@JediMB You could still make it optional, you're just changing it from an optional replacement effect to an optional SBA.
@@BretHall I don't think an optional state based effect/action is really something that works well with the rules. It would trap the game in a loop of perpetually asking the player if they want to move the commander from the graveyard to the command zone.
"yeah, that makes perfect sense to change"
"Nah, there would be no problem caused by changing it"
"Nah, don't change it because idk"
Wow, great conversation. Really insightful as to why commander is never gonna get better.
Do you realize how many mouth breathers would be jumping down her throat if she came out with super definitive statements? Think for a second will ya.
@@MrGorillafist Then what is the point of this discussion? If someone can't give an opinion, then there's no point to asking them anything.
Instead of having moving the commander to the command zone being a replacement effect as it is currently it could be a state based action when a commander enters any zone other then the battlefield, command zone or stack. So your commander dies, hits the graveyard and then before anything else you make the choice on if to allow it to remain in that zone or move it to the command zone.
As a state based action, it would prevent a player interacting with it until after the choice is made. You couldn't allow you commander to die, hit the graveyard and then target it with something like survival of the fittest before sending it to the command zone as you have to do the state base action first, and any triggered abilities would only be added to the stack after the choice is made. However this would reintroduce awkwardness around effects that tuck the commander. Chaos warp come to mind
I think changing hybrid would make for weird cases too often like split cards like response/resurgence where one side is hybrid but the other is just boros.
I love the fact that Olivia is touching upon the Law of Best Intentions, as applied to Magic.
Bravo -- and another reason why she is an awesome human, and out of all well-known Magic players who are female, why Olivia is my favorite female player.
(Yes, I have a crush on her -- but then again, who doesn't? Lol)
@4:30 I really dislike these "this interaction doesn't fit the flavor" arguments like Hydroblast vs a hybrid card, because they're one step away from saying "Oh you shouldn't be able to use Walk the Plank on a spirit". Weird interactions have always been a part of Magic.
As long as going to the command zone instead of exile or the graveyard is a replacement effect and doesn't use the stack, death triggers on commanders that aren't going to the graveyard will never work. Dying means that the card goes to the graveyard and there are numerous other cards that stop death triggers by preventing things from going to the graveyard in the first place. Those cards are important to some strategies.
I'll have to agree that not every card is designed for Commander and I don't think that rules need to change for corner cases that will allow cards to work in a way that they currently do not work.
It's also ridiculous to remove commander damage because aggro decks that use combat are already less efficient than decks that win with combos, so it would just weaken the pool of viable options.
Me: How do y'all feel about Planeswalker Commanders?
The Table: They're fine. The recent Precons were alright, I guess.
Me: 'Kay. Thanks. *pulls out my Jace, Cunning Castaway deck*
The Table: Wait...
Me: You said they were fine!
Why not just play Oathbreaker then?
Actually lethal vapors/teferis protection doesn't work. Each opponent can respond just as many times. Does work with grand abolisher though :^)
That is why Olivia mentioned City of Solitude. It prevents your opponents from responding.
I think hybrid mana cards should be allowed as long as they don't REQUIRE a color (either for casting or an ability) outside of your color identity. If anything it will just add more diversity to the format.
Infect is kind of cut and dry, which is that the only cards you're really stopping are Skittles, Blightsteel, and Triumph of the Hordes. Most of the rest of the infect creatures are pretty poor. It's like you're playing all bad creatures, but your opponents have 10 life.
ye infect in EDH has the problem that the mechanic itself is seen as a boogeyman. The actual cards with infect are medium to bad creatures, shitty combat tricks and a couple of lords.
The commander hybrid rule has always been a problem for me and in my LGS, specially when new players put them in their mono decks and we have to explain to them that it doesn't work like in "normal magic" smh
2 words...mana symbols
3 years down the line
"color identity"
I agree it's a separate rules but also as someone who had commander as my first format a simple rule
I feel they were simplifying the commander damage too much. Yes, it tends to be fairly easy. It's not just tracking it that is hard, though. It is tracking the commander damage from possibly 3 or more commanders, how you can be dealt commander damage by your own commander if it's stolen, and so on. Although I do not think Commander damage should go away, I do think it should be changed to some degree. Probably like a combined commander damage total from all commanders (with the number going up from 21). Again, just a thought. Overall, I feel this video is fine. Nothing against Olivia, but I feel too many conversations were "Eh. No real opinion" which is fine but makes for a conversation like this video not as interesting.
I've found myself liking the idea of replacing the current commander damage rule with "commanders deal 2x combat damage to players." Seems a lot simpler, keeps commanders feeling special, makes damage from commanders much more relevant in typical games, preserves voltron as a strategy while allowing it to be less linear. Only thing we would lose is safety valve against life gain that the current commander damage rule acts as. I question how important this safety valve is though.
We always question the need for safety valves when they are working because the problem isn't present.
We regularly have to track up to five colors of floating mana.
We have tokens and dice and a card pool that is 27000 cards large.
I have never run into a person in magic unable to track four more numbers if you hand them a life dice and tell them they die if it goes past 20.
@Ryu the Human How would you feel about folding commander damage into normal damage with my proposed rule replacement? Basically, remove the current commander damage rule and replace it with... "If a commander would deal combat damage to a player, it deals double that much damage instead."
@@nolanhartwick7184 That doesn't deal with the fact of dealing with extremely high life totals.
@Ryu the Human And I would say keeping it at 21 would make it too good. There are certain commanders that can easily 1 shot someone on their own like Feather, Greven, and Sigarda. Definitely should not make the number too high as to keep it still special.
I feel like a lot of these defenses are missing the point of the changes.
A lot of these proposed changes aren’t because of power level or causing game imbalance but problems of adoption of the format or the rules making sense to players.
100 cards hard number is reversed on logic for the change. All other formats it is a bottom floor not a top limit as well. The current rule for commander is the corner case not making a corner case for its change.
The rule on poison counters is a question for consistency with other formats not a question of power level. 2 headed giant has a limit of 15 poison (starting life of 30). Commander being 10 (starting at 40) is an inconsistency.
Whether it is causing problems in-game balance isn’t the real question being asked with the potential rules change. This is a lot closer to the rules change on mana burn or the dropping of regenerate for the use of indestructible than it is whether X card should be banned.
Would it be that bad to change the commander zone change rule to be "immediately after changing zones"? Kind of like how the God Eternals work but universal?
It would lead to other unintuitive interactions such as being able to reanimate your opponents commander and prevent them from sending it to the command zone, but yes, you could switch from replacement effects (current implementation) to triggers (your proposed implimentation)
The problem comes with effects like "shuffle target creature into its owners library" and commanders. Logically, if commanders give death triggers then they have to be put in the graveyard, then the effect comes in and you can choose to put it into the command zone, it's no longer a replacement effect. With the shuffling thing, logically you would shuffle the commander into your deck, then get the choice to return it to the command zone, which of course breaks the rules, as you can't just fish it out of your deck.
i.e. an effect of allowing death triggers would make "shuffle target creature into its owners library" or "put target creature on the bottom of its owner's library" permanent answers to commanders, players would no longer be able to cast their commander until they draw/tutor it, which is unfun. Of course, I'd be all for that, it'd give WU a significant boost in power, essentially ensuring that it's the only two colors with permanent commander removal, beyond certain enchantments like darksteel mutation.
EDIT: The commander would still get shuffled into the deck, even if the command zone rule was state-based.
@@nolanhartwick7184 if it works like Tokens do that effect can't be responded to since it wouldn't use the stack
@@michelleslay2701 True, you could use an SBA. The wording would be something like "A commander that moves to a zone other than the battlefield or the stack may be moved to the command zone by its owner. This is a state-based action; see rule 704."
Why do they want to remove commander dmg? because of Josh Lee Kwai.
Fair reason, actually ;p
Removing Commander damage nerfs Feather and Voltron builds.
'Nuff said.
If anything commander damage doesn't go far enough. I think having commander damage not being tied to the individual commanders. Have it be where it's still 21 damage but doesn't have to be from only one opponents commander. Then maybe aggro commanders might be viable. As it is commander is just a " I go infinite and win, I combo I win". Commander is boring.
@@ZombieSexmachine : Part of the problem is, to spite having three opponents instead of 1, people don't hold removal long enough. I would argue that it's not the format, it's people using play styles from other formats that have allowed combo and infinite loops to happen, especially if those pieces are either a creature or artifact.
Even with more players, the board changes, usually, faster than people can respond -- and this is largely due to a lot of non-blue, non-black cards being sorcery-speed (notwithstanding cards like Vedalken Orrery). This is an issue, particularly where three of five colors don't draw at instant speed, unless the spell has a cantrip attached (Acrobatic Manuvers, for instance, or Crimson Wisps).
This is partly why I think that White suffers -- because White has little to no card draw, which would allow White to keep up as a removal color, since Blue is a color that both draws a lot of cards, AND can counter spells. In a word, there are some balance issues in the color pie that need addressed.
Having said that, I completely agree with your statement about Commander damage being collective, rather than being individual.
@@ZombieSexmachine Nm, you would honostely need to consider blocking that early 2/2 comander.
I Love my voltron decks, Sram and Syr Elenora! Commander damage has been and still is relevant, yet in many games, it's not even a threat to players. Don't change it, it's not hard to keep track of.
not to mention it provides a possible win condition against infinite life gain decks and platinum emperion decks
@@ww11gunny Yes that is an important quality as well. No amount of life gain can save you from commander damage!
I would support the hybrid mana change, and I would add a rule for comander damage, instead of a fix number (21battle damage), it should respect the original idea that EDH had which it was: if you get hit 3 times by the commander, that opponent is dead, no matter thier life points. that would promote a lot more interaction (like the monarch emblem does), and it would stop autopilot-exodia-ish kind of decks.
Unfortunately that would make Hope of Ghirapur and Isamaru Hound of Konda into super aggressive try to kill you on turn 3 (using some form of double strike) commanders
What's battle damage?
When Hapatra throws herself in front of a Gigantosaurus, yeah, they may be something that'd kill a normal creature, but like Olivia said, she's the commander. She's special; she takes the wound, goes to the medical tent, and comes back out expecting extra pay.
That's why instead of saying "Hapatra dies," we say "Hapatra retreats to the Command Zone," and that clears up rules confusions and flavor mishaps.
I feel like the Professor is talking to himself in this discussion..
Yeah, feels like she doesn’t wanna discuss any rules at all.
@@GhostGK21 Probably cause she's not part of the rules committee?
Maybe because she had no problem with the format at all, like she said not everything is gonna work and that's fine.
More recently I've seen Brian going on about it with Kenobi (and liked very much) that EDH is a format that all players at the table agree of an illusion, that the format works and therefore have their fun. If one person at the table breaks that illusion then the format dies.
We pretend it works but it's actually a bizarre format where bizarre things can and will occur, and the moment you cease having fun, the illusion is gone, and the format is dead.
I cant help but think that having an advisor who is unwilling to put forward any opinions or have a good understanding of the rules aint a great thing.
I love how one of my favorite commanders, Rhys was used to kick off the discussion.
I have never met or heard anyone in my circles claim they want the hybrid mana cards in their respective mono color decks.
Personally I don't get it. Wasn't the whole point of edh to pick ur commander and you were locked into its colors as a restriction to give your deck an identity?
If you want to play the Boros Reckoner which is obviously a Boros card (literally in the name) then you pick a commander with a red and white color identity.
If you chose to play mono red or white then you also chose that restriction for your deck.
Personally I agree with MaRo about Hybrid Mana though (it's how R&D balances the Colors, so why complain about Colors being imbalanced when you don't ALLOW the fix to be legal??)
@Regvlasrex what are you getting at? Both of the cards you mention are white; only white. Do you mention them because they have boros in the name? Every single reason, between the ones mentioned here and those mentioned in the video, that supports changing the rule is incredibly weak. The original comment in this thread explains it pretty nicely.
"I have never met anyone..."
Anecdotical evidence is weak evidence.
"Wasn't the whole point to be locked in colors?"
Yes. People don't want to break the entire color identity system. They are just opposed to corner cases working like they do.
Honestly, the only weak arguments I see is opposing hybrid in monocolor without even referring to hybrid at all. Yes, restrictions are good. But would any arbitrary restriction placed be good? Of course not. People are arguing *why* that particular thing works the way it is. Allowing hybrid in monocolor still maintains restrictions. "Because things are already like that" is not a good argument either.
@@fernandobanda5734 decks can play cards with a color identity that is less than or equal to their commander's identity. Hybrid cards fail that test. That's all.
@@firstandlast.1254 We are not talking about how the rules works but about how they should.
I don't know why there is a discussion about commander death triggers. Just read Magic the Gathering RULES. It's plainly written there what counts as dying. And being destroyed doesn't actually. Dying in Magic occurs when a permanent on the battlefield is moved into the graveyard. Literally. In whatever way it did do that. That's why destroy is dying, sacrifice is dying, moving into graveyard from the battlefield is dying too. But it counts as that permanent enters the graveyard. So unless you want to change fundamental rules of the game for the format, it should stay the way it is.
“The idea that it’s(commander damage) too confusing feels like an insult to anyone who plays commander or is interested in the format. “
Well said ma’am, well said.
No one is saying that it's too difficult to track if you're not a math professor.
But it is a significant addition to the mental load of a commander game for small gain. It has to be tracked but is rarely relevant.
The game naturally gets harder every year, so making it a bit simpler is necessary. Either commander damage should be removed or it should count damage from all commanders combined, not separately.
@@florianw116 combined commander damage is my preferred change. It still allows Voltron as a strategy and might even open up new possibilities for politics when one person has become the arch-enemy.
@@florianw116 if it is not relevant you don't need to track it. Iit is pretty obvious which commanders will be trying to deal commanders damage and which won't.
@@florianw116 stop shilling for MaRo
@@psy_p You say that, but then you bop somebody with some Mayael a few times early game, then on turn 14 some shenanigans happen and she's the only card on board with like 15 +1/+1 counters and then you're like "Shit, does anybody remember how much damage Mayael did to Kevin an hour and a half ago?"
I think people who need cards outside their commander's color identity in their decks are people who are not really suited to the Commander format. There are plenty of formats that allow you to put whatever colors you want in your deck. Play those. Part of the fun of Commander is being restricted in a way that makes you build decks creatively.
I love the response to "What do you think about removing the 100 card limit?", "Why?". 🤣
It's odd how commander requires top down rules when its a house game. Can play groups not just apply their own bans?
Not everyone plays with their friends and not all friends agree to the same, giving much less authority to something not official.
The professor: Bans are devestating to the player base.
Me as a Magic/Yugioh hybrid player: You get used to it.
W/B is already the best at reanimating creatures, I think that the player being able to choose to let Elenda die is a valuable choice to make.
If someone tries to exile elenda with scavenging ooze or something, you can always just put her back in the command zone.
If you let elenda die, you can get her back at a much less expensive rate than the commander tax.
Me: pulls out 250 card deck.
Opponent: sighs and puts away Phenax
I'd still try to mill you out.
The difference between milling 100 and most any reasonable number above that is marginal at best. The average phenax build wins either by freezing the board state and wearing away or via effects like sphinxs tutelage/mill til land effects.
"cast fraying sanity", "Cast traumatize targeting you"
about the death triggers: (not a judge or an expert) the death of a creature is when it goes from the battlefield to the graveyeard. A new rule may be added that reads "if the creature is the commander, it will trigger any efect of any card in play regarding this creature dying, even if the owner of the card puts it in the command zone "
And it will be written in this way because if the card goes to the GY and then to de CZ, may trigger effects like sir conrad the grim (and some others I think)
Loving the theory-craft! Decisions like this are always a wonderful way to keep an open mind towards the format. Rule Zero is always an option for your playgroup which is so cool.
I don't understand what's the confusion with regards to opening up hybrid rules. Can't you just say a hybrid mana counts as both colors for a commander's color identity, but can be chosen for either color identity when not run as a commander? Doesn't that just fix everything?
"I don't understand what's the confusion with regards to opening up hybrid rules. ... ... Doesn't that just fix everything?"
It's *not* a matter of confusion, it's a matter of refuting that there is a need for anything to be fixed. The central premise of our discussion is coming from an opposing viewpoint to that of the masses: it doesn't need to be changed. We are in the minority, but nonetheless this is a dissent from the main narrative.
@@TolarianCommunityCollege Then I don't understand what the supposed refutation is supposed to be. Hybrid is designed in such a way that the card could be printed as mono-colored in both of its original colors if they wanted to, so you aren't breaking the intent of color identity in the first place by opening up hybrid. And there's also an argument about "the format has always been that way" which just seems like saying that it's too much trouble, which doesn't seem to be the case? The restriction = creativity argument is a point that I can see (that I personally disagree with, but I can understand where it comes from), but the way you talked about it, it doesn't seem like the main point.
Like, I'm otherwise genuinely confused what the argument is supposed to be against opening up hybrid in this case then otherwise. I thought the confusion aspect was the main argument because you spend so much time of the intro going into that with the Rhys and Boros Reckoner examples.
The whole part about hybrid mana is asinine. You already CAN play Rhys as a mono green or mono white commander by not including cards outside of the color you choose. His color identity as a commander wouldn't change with any of the changes to hybrid I've seen proposed. What would change is the ability to include hybrid cards in decks of either color and yes you could under these changes play Boros Reckoner in Rhys and yes he could be Hydroblasted because yes he is still a red card nothing about the discussed change would alter that. People seem to forget that "color identity" is a concept that came in with EDH not a all encompassing rule of the game. Yes limitations breed creativity but the question is if this particular limitation is necessary and if it would support greater creativity if it didn't exist. Honestly I am not 100% in the hybrid for commander change but this just wasn't a productive discussion on why not to do it. There are plenty of cards that don't feel out of place in decks containing only one half the hybrid mana in their costs and there are quite a few that feel like nothing short of full color pie breaks that should be where the conversation starts on if hybrid rules should be changed... but we already have loads of color breaks in commander that are staples so I tend to lean towards changing it.
Yeah. I was really confused when the Professor brought up Hydroblast. Like, yes, if you include a card that is red, it can be effected by cards that effect red. What's your point? What does that have to do with the discussion on whether the hybrid rules should be changed? Yes, if you bring only white-identity cards to a game you won't be effected by Hydroblast. If you do bring them, you may be effected by that card. It's entirely down to what cards you include in your deck. That has nothing to do with "should you be allowed to include hybrid cards in commander". Which is a discussion I think that should involve a lot more talk of how that could effect balance and gameplay, rather than "does this make sense ~thematically~?" because at the end of the day I'm gonna be honest; I don't give a fig about theme, I care about whether the gameplay is good.
Right but I can't run Rhys is my Ezuuri deck, when it would definitely be good enough to cut something for. That's the argument. (Which I don't agree with necessarily)
@@FluffyFractalshard So is any non-Eldrazi or Phyrexian commander having Eldrazi or Phyrexian cards in their decks. And yet that is legal. Flavor is not what should determine rules.
@@FluffyFractalshard The whole odea of color identity is LITERALLY addressing situations where a card's "flavor" colors don't match its actual colors. Like under the old rules, Kenrith would only be allowed to use white cards and couldn't even use most of his abilities since you couldn't make mana outside your commander's colors (it became colorless). But then they were like "That's dumb and unintuitive and often disappointing, so they came up with the color identity rule so that cards could be treated as colors other than their literal in-game colors to better align with the "intended" colors of the card.
@@FluffyFractalshard No, it belongs in monowhite (or at least should be allowed) EXPLICITLY BECAUSE of flavor (There are other reasons as well, but saying it undermines color identity is like blaming vaccines for the resurgence of Polio). A mage who spent their entire lives in some kind of hyper-Alara where they don't know and literally cannot understand the very concept of any color of mana other than white can summon a Boros Reckoner.
I agree with Prof 100% about white. It is one of my favorite colors, it is a solid main or off color. Best removal. Good synergies with artifacts, enchantments, graveyard, tokens. White can make almost anything you're trying to do better.