[MCD] Wishes

Sharpened
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Post by Sharpened » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
Sharpened wrote:
2 years ago
There is sanctioned Commander.
"It's a good thing to have the base rules of Commander be consistent across all play."
As such, the base rules should be consistent with sanctioned commander.
For the record, I would suggest that "assume sanctioned" leans even more heavily on the conventions of competitive play than the idea of sideboards, and more detrimentally so to Commander's nature as a casual format, precisely because it's being treated as a baseline assumption rather than spelled out in the rules. Baseline assumptions have their components go unexamined far more easily than things that are actively asserted, and are far harder to call into question. And "assume sanctioned" does come with baggage. So no, I do not think we can safely lean on this to make the rules on "outside the game" more intuitive at all.
What baggage?
You assume it's the same as sanctioned when you assume their deck is following the color identity rules.
You assume it's the same as sanctioned when you assume their deck is following the official banlist.

Commander is an organized format with specific restrictions and rules. The casual nature of the format leads the first rule to be that you can and should modify the rules to have fun if everyone agrees. But that baseline exists, just as sanctioned (and very casual) commander games exist.

If you want to rexamine the rules around deck construction and change them to have a sideboard, that's fine. I'm not saying you shouldn't, nor am I arguing against sideboards. But without that change, wishes have nowhere to search, and as such, nothing to find. The logistical issues of not limiting wishes to sideboards are numerous, and outlined in this thread in multiple places.

And your right that we can't lean on "assume its the same as sanctioned" to say that its intuitive that wishes do nothing. That's why the rules explicitly state that wishes do nothing.

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Jemolk
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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

Sharpened wrote:
2 years ago
Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
Sharpened wrote:
2 years ago
There is sanctioned Commander.
"It's a good thing to have the base rules of Commander be consistent across all play."
As such, the base rules should be consistent with sanctioned commander.
For the record, I would suggest that "assume sanctioned" leans even more heavily on the conventions of competitive play than the idea of sideboards, and more detrimentally so to Commander's nature as a casual format, precisely because it's being treated as a baseline assumption rather than spelled out in the rules. Baseline assumptions have their components go unexamined far more easily than things that are actively asserted, and are far harder to call into question. And "assume sanctioned" does come with baggage. So no, I do not think we can safely lean on this to make the rules on "outside the game" more intuitive at all.
What baggage?
You assume it's the same as sanctioned when you assume their deck is following the color identity rules.
You assume it's the same as sanctioned when you assume their deck is following the official banlist.

Commander is an organized format with specific restrictions and rules. The casual nature of the format leads the first rule to be that you can and should modify the rules to have fun if everyone agrees. But that baseline exists, just as sanctioned (and very casual) commander games exist.

If you want to rexamine the rules around deck construction and change them to have a sideboard, that's fine. I'm not saying you shouldn't, nor am I arguing against sideboards. But without that change, wishes have nowhere to search, and as such, nothing to find. The logistical issues of not limiting wishes to sideboards are numerous, and outlined in this thread in multiple places.

And your right that we can't lean on "assume its the same as sanctioned" to say that its intuitive that wishes do nothing. That's why the rules explicitly state that wishes do nothing.
Argh, misclicked. Meant to just quote. Sorry for the mixed messages this will involve because of that.

No, I don't "assume it's the same as sanctioned" for those things at all. Sanctioned does not mean "follows established rules." Sanctioned (at least in the context of Magic games) means at a bare minimum "involves a formalized event structure," and more accurately, it means specifically WotC's tournament structure. Which means, among other things, no proxies, or as they're called in that context, playtest cards. That's not all that might get dragged along; it's just the cleanest example. Other examples of what can get dragged along when we use tournament Magic (that is, sanctioned) as a default and deviate from there is the argument, made earlier in this thread, that it's simply wrong to not run certain cards, like Sol Ring. And I do think the mindset of tournament Magic has been getting dragged into Commander somewhat, to the format's detriment, and that it's tied to people taking that as default. Also see all the people complaining about Commander ban announcements because the cards banned aren't the largest problem on strict power level. Tournament Magic has parallels to casual Magic, but we shouldn't be taking tournament Magic as the default, and that's what this line does.
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Post by Dunharrow » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
DirkGently wrote:
2 years ago

So when we need to modify the rules to let YOU play the cards YOU like, then it's a positive. But when it's cards that OTHER people want to play, now suddenly you can't see any positives.

(plus there are a whopping 4 potentially-baacable commanders on the banlist, and there are, by my count, nearly 40 cards that pull from outside the game, but having 10x the numbers is apparently irrelevant so long as they're not cards you personally want to play)

(btw, for anyone wondering how I justify being on the "free the cards!" side of this issue and the "keep them banned!" side of the BaaC argument, it's an issue of (1) rules elegance and (2) rules intuitiveness. Adding a BaaC list is pure added complexity, whereas replacing rule 11 wish a wishboard would be, imo, a lateral move in terms of complexity. And wishes just not doing anything is really clunky and weird. When someone looks at a wish and gets told "oh yeah, that just does stone nothing in commander" that seems weird and arbitrary. I know it does to me. Though I will be forthright and confess that while I have little interest in any of the banned commanders, I do have some interest in playing Cunning Wish in Phelddagrif, although that's probably the only wish I'd consider bothering with because I really don't think they're all that great and I also don't super feel like squeezing 3 more cards into my deckboxes. I don't think my slight interest in cunning wish is motivating my opinion on this issue, but it's hard to be sure.)
And now we come to the part of your post I most wanted to address. Did you go back months to cherry pick this quote of mine from another thread? How long did you search for it?
Also, you miss my point. I want BaaC to come back for 2 reasons. Sure, I want to play braids. But mainly, I want the RC to feel more at ease banning problematic commanders like Golos and Kinnan. They feel bad banning cards, and I think BaaC is a good halfway measure so that people can still play with their pet cards, just not as commanders. I know this doesn't satisfy many people, but I think it is better than having ubiquitously strong commanders.

So ya, you want to play your wishes and I don't see the relation to BaaC, except you think I want 4 cards unbanned and you want 10x more, which is not something I care about, and also a completely fundamentally different kind of argument from any of the ones I have made against wishes.
Not gonna lie, this exact claim was among the first things to come to mind while I was reading through your arguments with Dirk and catching up on the thread. And it is hypocritical. It's the same argument either way, but you're treating it as though it doesn't apply here. I found it compelling on the BaaC thread, too, which is why this stuck out to me so much -- unlike Dirk, I do think it's a decent argument, and for that precise reason, I take exception to your seeming willingness to simply not apply its logic here. If the logic functions at all, it functions everywhere. That's kinda the point of logic, no? Of course, if you've changed your mind on the argument in the mean time, that's another story, but also, if that's the case, you could have said that. And if you don't think the logic applies here, then going into why is in fact rather necessary. You could argue that you did, since you've made a few arguments as to why you think there would be notable downsides, but you also repeatedly claimed that you didn't understand how there was any gain at all, when at least one easy case for there being a gain quite neatly mirrors your own argument from elsewhere.
You have made the same assumption as Dirk, unfortunately.
I don't care about rules elegance. I am not against wishes because of the rules being too convoluted (though it would be messy).
I am against wishes because I believe it will lead to ubiquitous play. They will be played as much as any other card that has been banned.
I mention Sol Ring because it should be banned, based on ubiquity, but somehow dodges this because it is the face of the format.
But it is reprinted a few times per year, so who really cares all that much.

Unless Living Wish is in all the precons I don't want to hear about wishes. Karn can go in every deck and it's a mythic!
Wishes are strong and that is where my position lies. You would legalize them and then have to ban the good ones.

If it wasn't the case where I think they would be ubiquitous, I could not care less. I want people to play with their pet cards.
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Post by tstorm823 » 2 years ago

Legend wrote:
2 years ago
Yes, and so would my opponent. I don't play 60 card formats anymore. But when I did, and I played all of them extensively until limited became my focus, my opponent and I would always ask if we were playing with sideboards or not, which was our way of asking "sanctioned or unsanctioned?" and we would play accordingly.
It's not often that the correct answer in an argument is to call someone a liar, but I'm gonna have to call you on this one. I don't believe for a second that you (or frankly anyone) has ever built a deck capable of being played in a sanctioned event, added wishes to the deck, designed an appropriate sideboard to use those wishes, sat down to play a game in the format the deck was made for, cast a wish, and fetched a card not from the carefully planned sideboard.
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

I mean, if the table said unlimited wishing, and you had another deck in the same colors with a good card in it that worked for the moment, it could be more appropriate than what's in the sideboard. Unlikely, but not impossible. An unlimited wishing situation is strictly better for the wisher than a sideboard. You're still probably going to grab something from the sideboard, because that's your top 15 targets, but however rarely you go beyond that having the option to at no cost is still better than not having it.

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Post by onering » 2 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
2 years ago
This thread has gone on for two years and thirteen pages. Maybe it's too late to reframe the discussion, but...

Would wishes actually make the format better? Would their inclusion solve anything? Is their exclusion in and of itself the main problem?

If anyone but Legend can answer these questions, that would be great.
Unlimited wishing would make the format overall worse. It has some benefits, but it's downsides are more significant, if a bit less likely to show up in any given game.

A 3-5 card wishboard would make the format better. It would capture almost all of the benefits unlimited wishing could bring, while minimizing the potential negatives to such a degree they would be negligible. More cards work, Learn/Lesson works, wishing ends up being a fun mechanic that's usefulness varies by deck or by meta.

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Post by Impossible » 2 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
2 years ago
Would wishes actually make the format better?
I'd ask you to define "better" but ultimately I don't really think it matters. Did unbanning Protean Hulk make the format noticeably better? It's a card some people wanted to play with and despite being a fairly risky unban (seeing as how it's a combo machine) it ended up being mostly harmless. The philosophy here shouldn't be "banned until proven fun" it should be "unbanned until proven problematic". Wishes were never given a fair shot; they were banned right near the inception of the format and haven't been looked at since. I mean, we all used to think Kokusho, the Evening Star was too strong for EDH! And when was the last time you actually saw someone cast a Kokopuffs? Times have changed, and so has EDH as a format. It's past time we take a serious look at why the Wishes were originally banned and contextualize those reasons in the modern era to see if they still hold true.
RxPhantom wrote:
2 years ago
Would their inclusion solve anything?
The answer is deck space. Threat diversity has been increasing over time to the point that even decks built specifically to feature hate cards cannot possibly include enough niche answers in enough quantity to ensure they are able to deal with problematic cards. For example, how many cards does an average deck run that can deal with Purphoros, God of the Forge? Maybe 2-3, between stuff like Return to Dust or Song of the Dryads? And what are the chances of actually drawing 1 of the 2 in time to actually prevent the Purphoros deck from just burning the table out? The odds aren't great. And that's just a single niche strategy that one might come across. Trying to also include enough hate cards for artifacts, graveyards, card draw, etc. in a high enough quantity that they'll actually show up in time to be useful commits an absolutely absurd percentage of your deck to nothing but hate cards. It's simply not feasible to adequately cover a significant amount of strategies one is likely to encounter in the wild.

Enter Wishes. They allow a single card slot to provide an effective answer to a wide range of strategies. Instead of 2 each of graveyard, artifact, enchantment, creature and card draw hate (10 deck spots) it's possible to play 1 of each plus a Wish (6 deck spots) without significantly lowering the chance of drawing it when needed. This allows for 2 things. First, there is more freedom when building decks as there's more room for cards that advance the theme or gameplan of the deck. Second, it leads to generally more interaction and fewer "runaway" games that quickly snowball out of control because an early threat couldn't be answered in time. Let's be honest, most players don't run the amount of answers they actually should be running simply because it's not as fun to fill a theme deck with tons of off-theme cards. Responsible deck building tends to fall by the wayside as the first cuts to a new deck usually involve going "eh, one Relic of Progenitus is enough graveyard hate, more room for all my cool [theme] cards". Wishes allow players to still be at least moderately responsible at a minimal deckbuilding cost.
RxPhantom wrote:
2 years ago
Is their exclusion in and of itself the main problem?
I'm not sure I entirely understand the question, but I'll answer what I think it's asking: yes. By far my largest complaint is that Wishes are held in a purgatory of being legal but doing literal nothing due to format-specific errata. I've seen people say that it's not errata and instead it's simply a casualty of the format rules, similar to Battle of Wits; Wishes pull from the sideboard and EDH doesn't have a sideboard, ergo they don't work. But I'm less than convinced, as it seems like the sideboard rule exists almost entirely to prevent Wishes. EDH is a best-of-one, non-competitive format. There's no reason to explicitly announce there is no sideboard except to prevent outside the game cards from working. And it is not as though 'no sideboards' is a fundamental pillar of the format, like having a Commander or 100-card singleton is, as there was an optional sideboard rule for quite awhile. So it certainly feels like the intended purpose was to pseudo-ban Wishes.
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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
You have made the same assumption as Dirk, unfortunately.
I don't care about rules elegance. I am not against wishes because of the rules being too convoluted (though it would be messy).
I am against wishes because I believe it will lead to ubiquitous play. They will be played as much as any other card that has been banned.
I mention Sol Ring because it should be banned, based on ubiquity, but somehow dodges this because it is the face of the format.
But it is reprinted a few times per year, so who really cares all that much.

Unless Living Wish is in all the precons I don't want to hear about wishes. Karn can go in every deck and it's a mythic!
Wishes are strong and that is where my position lies. You would legalize them and then have to ban the good ones.

If it wasn't the case where I think they would be ubiquitous, I could not care less. I want people to play with their pet cards.
I don't think you do care about rules elegance. Neither do I, for the most part, actually. So long as they work well, I'm okay. A lot of more casual players would probably prefer Dirk's side of this won out, but I'm fine with rules being convoluted as all hell. I'm the guy that, when he started playing Magic, dug into the comp rules immediately just because I wanted to know the weirdness. The point there is that "it's a fun effect that people are attached to" is one reason to include something in a format, and you've argued that there was no such reason for wishes. Now, what I believe you were actually intending to argue is that none of the reasons you saw outweighed the negatives, but that wasn't what you said, so calling Dirk out for dredging an irrelevant quote out of another thread rubbed me the wrong way, because he didn't. The worst you can accuse him of is being less charitable in reading your posts than he should have been. This may seem like a nitpick, but it does somewhat contribute to the overall increasing animosity of the discussion, and it really didn't seem like Dirk's reading was even necessarily unintended.

Now, for the "they would be ubiquitous auto-include staples" argument -- I don't think they would, and I certainly don't think we have sufficient evidence to show that at this time. You're staking out an absolute position here on something that you do not actually have the ability to know at this time. It's at least possible that you're right, but "they're quite strong, therefore auto-include staples and would wreck the format" really doesn't follow here, and the latter portion of that isn't something you're actually in a position to know in the absolute sense that the argument is framed in. And while opening with a statement like that and following it with your reasoning is understandable enough as an argument format, closing with a statement like that makes it seem like you think you're just making a statement of fact. Which, to be blunt, is not a thing any of us, you included, are in a position to do here, not yet at least.
39 Commander decks and counting. I'm sure this is fine, and not at all a problem.

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Post by DirkGently » 2 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
Is the solution really that convoluted?

There are no sideboards in commander, and wish type effects therefore do not work.
Seems easy to grok.

Why is a rule about allowing a 3 card sideboard that can't be used as a sideboard but only to use for 'search outside the game' effects cleaner?
The cleanest solution would be unlimited wishing, but personally I think (especially since some people seem to think it would bring about ragnarok) that a safer approach of a limited-size wishboard would be better.

While a 3 card wishboard still requires a special rule, I think it's a lot more intuitive, and it's not as ugly as a format-specific functional errata. Those are merely opinions, you're free to disagree.

"This effect does nothing" is easy to understand what it means literally, but it's unintuitive in terms of why you'd apply errata to a subset of largely inoffensive cards. These cards haven't caused problems in other formats and don't interact particularly badly with commander in any way that I can think of, so why are we going to such strange and extreme measures?

If you were going to play a new format and they said "oh, by the way, if something says it puts +1/+1 counters on a creature...it just don't do anything instead" wouldn't you have a few questions?
Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
But those cards end up being in your deck, potential dead draws.
Everything is potentially a dead draw. But when they're not, they're significantly more efficient. Weighing efficiency vs flexibility is a common dilemma in deckbuilding. You've gotta decide for yourself when you favor one over the other.
So run them. I am not saying to put Scavenger Grounds or Relic in your sideboard. They are never dead draws. I am saying that you might want to put your narrow hate cards in the wishboard. Scavenging Ooze sucks in my opinion. It will die before it kills someone with combat damage. It is very mana-hungry and you have to leave up green mana to interact. I would much prefer to put it in my wishboard and get with living wish.
You might want to put your narrow hate cards in your wishboard, and favor flexibility over efficiency. That's fine. I think other people might decide in the other direction - after all, grave hate isn't that narrow, it's a pretty common thing to want in most games. Sometimes it's not even obvious until it's happening, and it might be too late to wish for your hate card. The number of decks I have with zero grave synergies is pretty damn small. If you're always using your wish to get scooze then you're just pissing mana away for no significant benefit, so crafting a well-balanced wishboard would be critical to justifying the inefficiency.
Depends on the deck. My RG deck has trouble tutoring for relic of progenitus. Scavenger grounds is great but single use (unless you run a bunch of deserts). I don't want to draw Scavenging ooze. Living Wish makes so much more sense.
Living wish is very difficult to hit with other tutors in a RG deck compared to a creature, so you're significantly limiting how reliably you can access your grave hate.

I also don't think I'd want to run scooze at all - even in the wishboard - if my deck didn't care at all about the body or the lifegain, as it seems like yours doesn't. You might be better served with Klothys, God of Destiny, which will more reliably give you value in other ways even if you don't need the gy hate, and is also less likely to get removed. There's a lot of factors and options to consider, I don't think it's a trivial decision the way you seem to think it is.
I just mentioned storm hate out of hand. I mean, I think if you are playing Living Wish to throw Eidolon of Rhetoric is not a bad call if you sometimes encounter storm/eggs/etc. Do you really want a card like this in your deck though?
If my deck wouldn't be adversely effected by Eidolon of Rhetoric, I'd at least think about mainboarding it. It's a very powerful effect against a lot of things, and mainboarding it makes it a lot easier to access when I need it, especially if we're assuming GW which has both creature and enchantment tutors (with virtually no sorcery tutors).
You know it doesn't even need to be hate cards. Are there cards in your deck to protect you from certain archetypes? Ex, a combat oriented deck might fold to Spore Frog + Karador. Malignus is an interesting card to get your damage through. Could be a good wishboard option.
I chump block malignus with spore frog and sac it.

But sure, if you want to shore up your weaknesses you might put answers in the wishboard. Ideally I'd rather put a card that incidentally shores up my weaknesses while also being a reliably good card in general, though. For example, scooze can eat spore frog from the grave and is also a solid beater. Having a wish can be kinda clunky if you draw it early in an aggressive combat-oriented deck. It's a complex decision with a lot of factors and options. How each person decides these sorts of conundrums is how we create the incredible diversity this format has.
And then you can put Bane of Progress to combat pillowfort. Now your RG aggro deck has two living wish targets to deal with rare situations.
Bane is also a very broadly useful card, far more than just pillowfort. I'd probably be happy to main it if my deck had few artifacts and enchantments, and reap the efficiency and reliability of having it there instead of the sideboard.
My point is that everyone can think of a couple niche cards that they want access to every few games, and the versatility of a wish is a great solution.
I can think of a thousand cards I wish I had access to occasionally, but when I narrow it down to just 3 and have to pay a premium for the flexibility...idk. I tend to favor flexibility over efficiency, so there's a good chance I'd build some decks with wish packages in the future. But I think a lot of people will make different decisions.
How is playing a different tutor for Scavenging Ooze better than Living Wish? I think it's worse. I don't want Ooze unless I am playing against a graveyard deck. Why do I want a basically vanilla beater in commander?
You're talking about replacing scooze with a wish. That means in the games where you draw that card and want scooze, instead of paying for your scooze you're paying . On games where you draw your Demonic Tutor and want your scooze, instead of paying you're now paying . Ouch. Flexibility is expensive. Personally I might consider that kind of line, but I think a lot of people would rather include a few pieces of grave hate that also fulfill other functions - to prevent it being a dead draw - and are significantly more efficient. Other people might favor efficiency even MORE strongly, and believe that grave hate is consistently important enough that it doesn't need to have alternative function, and include something like Tormod's Crypt. That might sound unusual, but it might make a lot of sense if you're a deck that reliably draws a ton of cards and thus cares more about efficiency than flexibility because you'll always have a ton of options anyway.

Or, more commonly, not include any grave hate at all, and focus on their own plan instead of their opponents'. Personally I think that approach is less effective in terms of winning, but hey, it's a casual format and people can play what they wanna play. A lot of people don't think control is fun so they don't play it even when it's effective.

Every deck is different and every builder is different. These decisions are complex, and not remotely clear-cut the way you seem to think they are.
But the flexibility of a tutor is fine? If I can tutor for a disenchant, why is it suddenly bad to wish for one? I don't get your logic. By your logic, tutors should not see play.
Most people are running tutors to get Deadeye Navigator, or at least Cyclonic Rift, not Disenchant. 9 mana DEN is still pretty efficient if it wins you the game. If you tutor for disenchant, it was probably a desperate, last-choice option because you needed to in order to avoid losing.

But even if we're assuming people are usually tutoring for answers instead of wincons, (1) a tutor usually gives you a hell of a lot more than 3 options, (2) a tutor lets you hit the cards that were good enough to make it into your mainboard.

I'm not saying that flexibility isn't ever worth the tradeoff in efficiency - obviously demonic tutor is a very powerful card. But demonic tutor has 98 mainboard-strength targets with no restrictions on type. Living wish has 3 targets that weren't mainboard-strength and are type restricted. Do you see why this comparison is a tad unequal?
then why are tutors so highly played?
See above.
Yeah, I do not understand the mana cost/inefficiency arguments. Living Wish is the same mana cost as Demonic Tutor.
see above.
pokken wrote:I can't help but think that the disconnect is that some of you guys who are pro-wish seem to think it'd be fine to just remove rule 11 and turn wishes loose.

It would be absolutely cataclysmic.

The sooner you just take an honest look at what wishes can do in Commander and realize that they are extremely powerful effects with interesting design impacts that a significant section of the playerbase would play whether they make good games or not, the better experience you're going to have just dealing with the fact that they are outlawed.

Wishes are Sylvan Primordial not Static Orb.
...based on what?

Honestly I find this comparison so confusing. You're basing it entirely on the assumption that commander players would (1) all want to play wishes and (2) would abuse them as much as possible. But where is the evidence for any of this? It's trapped in 2001, apparently.

THAT SAID, while I think "cataclysmic" is a gross, fearmongering overexaggeration based on absolutely nothing, I do favor a cautious approach. 3 wishes, baby. 3 wishes all the way.
Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
You have made the same assumption as Dirk, unfortunately.
I don't care about rules elegance. I am not against wishes because of the rules being too convoluted (though it would be messy).
I am against wishes because I believe it will lead to ubiquitous play. They will be played as much as any other card that has been banned.
Honestly I don't think the banned cards - with maybe some exceptions - have been super highly played. Not on the level of Swords to Plowshares for example, a card that nobody wants banned. How many people were playing Worldfire before that got banned? There's cards like griselbrand that were probably seeing fairly high numbers but we didn't have EDHrec to tell us how many(I don't think?). But I'd still bet that they were less than 30%. As strong as gbrand was, he's no demonic tutor in terms of being reliably useful - he's a freaking 8-drop, after all. While cards do generally need to reach a certain level of popularity to get banned - why stasis isn't, for example - ubiquity alone isn't enough. And since I don't see 3-wish wishes being remotely problematic in effect, even if they got up to 30% (they won't) I don't see why that would be a problem.

Ubiquity isn't a problem in itself, it's a multiplier onto how problematic the effect is. Stasis hits 10% it gets banned instantly because the effect is so annoying. Rakdos Signet hits 100%, nobody gives a %$#% because it's fine.
Unless Living Wish is in all the precons I don't want to hear about wishes.
Your absurd assumptions about ubiquity aside, why would wotc put wishes in precons before they got unbanned? Does this mean we can never unban cards unless WotC randomly decides to put them into precons first?
Karn can go in every deck and it's a mythic!
Karn would go into...probably zero of my decks. Definitely not Phelddagrif or Golos, and too inefficient for Zirilan. Maybe Kaervek as a standalone card that doesn't synergize with anything but is fine. He's just a random decent planeswalker, it's just that now he actually works as intended? Instant auto-include apparently.

Also he's not even mythic...might wanna double check those facts before you post...
Wishes are strong and that is where my position lies. You would legalize them and then have to ban the good ones.
Yeah okay, let's do that.
If it wasn't the case where I think they would be ubiquitous, I could not care less. I want people to play with their pet cards.
Oh good, then you'll be happy to hear that they won't be.

But honestly idk why you think ubiquity alone is a problem. Do you wanna ban STP? It's the most popular card outside of sol ring. Is that ubiquity a problem? Cultivate, how about that one? Ooh, Counterspell, better ban it. This is ridiculous.

If you think we need a special format-specific errata to save us from the scourge of Living Wish, but don't support banning Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, hell even Grim Tutor...then I don't even know what to say to you.
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Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote
Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena
Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6

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Dunharrow
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Post by Dunharrow » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
The point there is that "it's a fun effect that people are attached to" is one reason to include something in a format, and you've argued that there was no such reason for wishes.
I didn't mean to make this argument and I am not sure when I did. If I did, I retract it. It's really not something that factors in my being against this. I suppose you could say it is an argument for this, but in my opinion it is not enough on its own.
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Dunharrow
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Post by Dunharrow » 2 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
2 years ago
Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
But those cards end up being in your deck, potential dead draws.
Everything is potentially a dead draw. But when they're not, they're significantly more efficient. Weighing efficiency vs flexibility is a common dilemma in deckbuilding. You've gotta decide for yourself when you favor one over the other.
Clearly, from our discussion, I think flexibility is very powerful. Also, in more casual games, I have always favoured flexibility over efficiency. I don't believe I am alone in this. Certainly, reading this thread I have the impression others feel the same way.
Depends on the deck. My RG deck has trouble tutoring for relic of progenitus. Scavenger grounds is great but single use (unless you run a bunch of deserts). I don't want to draw Scavenging ooze. Living Wish makes so much more sense.
Living wish is very difficult to hit with other tutors in a RG deck compared to a creature, so you're significantly limiting how reliably you can access your grave hate.
My land tutors can get Scavenger Grounds. My RG deck has a LOT of land tutors. But I cut scooze because I have a proactive deck and I personally do not see a lot of GY decks (outside my own decks that is).
And yes Klothys, God of Destiny could be a better inclusion - I don't own one as of yet.
You know it doesn't even need to be hate cards. Are there cards in your deck to protect you from certain archetypes? Ex, a combat oriented deck might fold to Spore Frog + Karador. Malignus is an interesting card to get your damage through. Could be a good wishboard option.
I chump block malignus with spore frog and sac it.
Trample. Also Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp is probably a better option these days for things like Spore Frog and Solitary Confinement.
And then you can put Bane of Progress to combat pillowfort. Now your RG aggro deck has two living wish targets to deal with rare situations.
Bane is also a very broadly useful card, far more than just pillowfort. I'd probably be happy to main it if my deck had few artifacts and enchantments, and reap the efficiency and reliability of having it there instead of the sideboard.
Of course you would, if you didn't have artifacts and enchantments. But let's say, you do! Then Bane of Progress is a decent wish target, but not a great main deck card.
How is playing a different tutor for Scavenging Ooze better than Living Wish? I think it's worse. I don't want Ooze unless I am playing against a graveyard deck. Why do I want a basically vanilla beater in commander?
You're talking about replacing scooze with a wish. That means in the games where you draw that card and want scooze, instead of paying for your scooze you're paying .
Come on, are you being stubborn on purpose? What about the majority of games where I don't want scooze. Yes, I would pay an extra 2 mana so it isn't a dead draw. I am not replacing a card I want every game!
On games where you draw your Demonic Tutor and want your scooze, instead of paying you're now paying .
Again, stubborn on purpose. Use your demonic tutor to get Relic of Progenitus or Scavenger Grounds. I am not saying Ooze is your only GY hate you have access to.
But the flexibility of a tutor is fine? If I can tutor for a disenchant, why is it suddenly bad to wish for one? I don't get your logic. By your logic, tutors should not see play.
Most people are running tutors to get Deadeye Navigator, or at least Cyclonic Rift, not Disenchant. 9 mana DEN is still pretty efficient if it wins you the game. If you tutor for disenchant, it was probably a desperate, last-choice option because you needed to in order to avoid losing.[/quote] Oh boy. Are you a person who refuses to Demonic Tutor for a land? Sometimes you can't tutor your win condition and you need to stop your opponent.
Also, I am saying cut a marginal card, or 2, for a wish, and make your 3rd wish target a card that is always good, but maybe not as good as other main deck options. For example, Terastradon would always be good in my RG deck (because I have insane amounts of ramp), but I don't play it over Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.
I'm not saying that flexibility isn't ever worth the tradeoff in efficiency - obviously demonic tutor is a very powerful card. But demonic tutor has 98 mainboard-strength targets with no restrictions on type. Living wish has 3 targets that weren't mainboard-strength and are type restricted. Do you see why this comparison is a tad unequal?
In a vacuum, this has merit. In reality, I think most of my decks have about 10-20 cards that are good enough to be included but cut due to 100 card limitation. My RG deck would play living wish instead of Caustic Caterpillar. I have other disenchant effects, but I think this is the weakest. I would also add to wish board something like Scavenging Ooze, and probably Terastadon (but maybe card draw). I think my deck is massively improved like this.
And when others catch on to it the wishes will become too strong to ignore in deckbuilding.
Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
You have made the same assumption as Dirk, unfortunately.
I don't care about rules elegance. I am not against wishes because of the rules being too convoluted (though it would be messy).
I am against wishes because I believe it will lead to ubiquitous play. They will be played as much as any other card that has been banned.
Honestly I don't think the banned cards - with maybe some exceptions - have been super highly played. Not on the level of Swords to Plowshares for example, a card that nobody wants banned. How many people were playing Worldfire before that got banned? There's cards like griselbrand that were probably seeing fairly high numbers but we didn't have EDHrec to tell us how many(I don't think?). But I'd still bet that they were less than 30%. As strong as gbrand was, he's no demonic tutor in terms of being reliably useful - he's a freaking 8-drop, after all. While cards do generally need to reach a certain level of popularity to get banned - why stasis isn't, for example - ubiquity alone isn't enough. And since I don't see 3-wish wishes being remotely problematic in effect, even if they got up to 30% (they won't) I don't see why that would be a problem.
You pick cards that were banned because the RC thought they would be problematic, not because they are problematic.... Why not mention any cards banned recently? Prophet of Kruphix? Hullbreacher?
You know you are being disingenuous to suggest that ubiquity is not grounds for banning. But obviously that is not always enough (see StP and Sol Ring).
Ubiquity isn't a problem in itself, it's a multiplier onto how problematic the effect is. Stasis hits 10% it gets banned instantly because the effect is so annoying. Rakdos Signet hits 100%, nobody gives a %$#% because it's fine.
exactly
Unless Living Wish is in all the precons I don't want to hear about wishes.
Your absurd assumptions about ubiquity aside, why would wotc put wishes in precons before they got unbanned? Does this mean we can never unban cards unless WotC randomly decides to put them into precons first?
Lol. Obviously unbanned, then price jumps. Then people feel like they can't compete without spending money on wishes. And either WOTC starts printing them as often as they print StP and Sol Ring, or the price stays pretty high.
Karn can go in every deck and it's a mythic!
Karn would go into...probably zero of my decks. Definitely not Phelddagrif or Golos, and too inefficient for Zirilan. Maybe Kaervek as a standalone card that doesn't synergize with anything but is fine. He's just a random decent planeswalker, it's just that now he actually works as intended? Instant auto-include apparently.
I said Karn CAN go into every deck. Not SHOULD. I just meant to say that even without access to the better wishes, Karn is still an option and a pretty good one too.
If you think we need a special format-specific errata to save us from the scourge of Living Wish, but don't support banning Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, hell even Grim Tutor...then I don't even know what to say to you.
I have said many times that I want the best tutors banned. I think they should be for many reasons:
1. They go against the spirit of a singleton format
2. They make games more repetitive
3. They are often too expensive to be considered auto-includes, which I think hurts the format. Playing Diabolic Tutor because Demonic is too expensive feels bad.

But honestly idk why you think ubiquity alone is a problem. Do you wanna ban STP? It's the most popular card outside of sol ring. Is that ubiquity a problem? Cultivate, how about that one? Ooh, Counterspell, better ban it. This is ridiculous.
Ubiquity is not enough. But nobody wants to sit down to a game, have their opponent cast Wish, and then lose to a narrow hate card in the wishboard. That feels bad on so many levels. And if wishes become as played as I think they would be, it would be unbearable.
Also, you won't see Living wish at 50% of decks. People will only play 1 wish per deck, so an RG deck would have to pick from one of 3-4 wishes the one they like best (assuming 3 card sideboard).


Look, all this to say that I think it would be a mistake. But if the RC made wishes legal with a 3 card sideboard, it would have a better chance at working. I would certainly make use of it.
Seems weird to argue against something I would play with. But this is the internet, and this is where we argue hypotheticals for years.
Still salty over Paradox Engine and Prophet of Kruphix (though I understand why they were banned).

Admittedly, one of the reasons why wishes leave such a sour taste in my mouth are that when the rules were vague, I was adamant that my opponents not use wishboards. I thought it was very unfair that they could play with the advantage while I didn't because I adhered to official rules.
So if wishes were made 100% legal, it would be way better than it was before.
But I think also a bit worse than if they were left as non-functional in commander.

The other option, and tell me what you think - is to let 3 card sideboards exist, but premptively ban the best wishes. I don't care about Learn cards. I don't care about the two cards that search outside the game for Eldrazi.
I would just say preemptively ban Living Wish, Burning Wish, Glittering Wish, Wish... and to keep the 4cmc options closely watched.
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
Still salty over Paradox Engine
Amen, brother. Amen.
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Dunharrow, would a 3 wishes world really be that bad? I understand the potential nightmare scenario from an unlimited wishing situation, because in such a world there is no opportunity cost to running all the backup hate and narrow hosers you want as the wish can find them all, and you can run multiple wishes without running out of targets. But in a 3 wishes or even 5 wishes world, are there really enough slots for a wishboard to cover enough of the format to pack such powerful narrow hosers? There's an opportunity cost, at that point, to every card you can wish for because each takes a valuable wish board slot. You'd need at least one generically good card as a fail safe to ensure that the wish is never a dead draw, and then your remaining 2-4 slots have to be well chosen cards that are likely enough to be relevant to be worth it. Shatterstorm would be a reasonable inclusion there, for instance, because it can hose artifact decks but also just be good value against regular decks when everyone has rocks out, yet dead often enough that you'd rather have other options. That sort of thing seems fair, and seems the right power level to be playable without being an auto include.

At 3 wishes, each wish becomes a Charm, basically a modal spell where every part of it is overcosted and not worth it but the package becomes playable. At 3 wishes, the wish cards are de facto limited to one per deck (unless you want to risk a wish being a dead draw). Since most wishes look for different things, with only a little overlap, its very difficult to build a 3 card wishboard that can serve multiple wishes without one of them having only 1 target (or being garbage like Death Wish). If you're running Living Wish, your only other option is basically just Wish, and even then you face diminishing returns. A 5 card board would probably be enough to support 2 wishes, and do better for Learn and the Eldrazi, and I still don't think it would make the worst narrow hate options reasonable includes or make wishes auto includes.



On an unrelated note: Wizards manages the Brawl format, and wishes don't work there for the same reason they don't work in commander. Now, partly, this is because Brawl piggybacks on commander, but that's a choice of convenience to avoid simply replicating the rules within the comp rules when simply adding a modifier can work. This has of course not stopped Wizards from modifying the rules in several significant ways beyond just limiting it to the Standard card pool, including reducing the deck size to 60, the life total to 30 (and 25 in 1v1), allowing all PWs as commanders, etc. If Wizards wanted to, they could allow wishes in Brawl, or allow sideboards. Instead, they defer to the commander rules for that. This should really put a nail in the coffin of the argument that Rule 11 should be changed to make the rules consistent with other formats. If Wizards doesn't care enough to make the change for its own format, then the consistency argument holds no merit. Brawl is, after all, the closest format to commander.

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Post by DirkGently » 2 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
Clearly, from our discussion, I think flexibility is very powerful. Also, in more casual games, I have always favoured flexibility over efficiency. I don't believe I am alone in this. Certainly, reading this thread I have the impression others feel the same way.
Of course. So people who favor flexibility tend to play wishes, and people who favor efficiency don't.

I don't see a problem here?
My land tutors can get Scavenger Grounds. My RG deck has a LOT of land tutors. But I cut scooze because I have a proactive deck and I personally do not see a lot of GY decks (outside my own decks that is).
And yes Klothys, God of Destiny could be a better inclusion - I don't own one as of yet.
okay well if you have a lot of land tutors and a scavenger grounds then it seems like you're pretty well covered on grave hate anyway? Maybe run more deserts if you want multi-use scavenger grounds, they're a pretty low commitment to run and there's a fair number of options. I do it that way in my Phelddagrif deck.

Idk why you're running scooze if scooze is bad in your deck. Don't run it if you hate it so much? There are a ton of grave hate cards and/or strategies to find and use them, just pick something else, whether it's klothys or not. Most decks can find at least a few cards with incidental grave hate that do something proactive they care about.
Trample.
Malignus doesn't have trample...?

Or is there some complete board state you're imagining in your head that you're not telling me about giving him trample? Well fine, in that case I'm imagining that the karador deck has Phyrexian Splicer to disable the trample. GG2EZ.
Also Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp is probably a better option these days for things like Spore Frog and Solitary Confinement.
Seems like a more reliable solution, yes. Although I think grave hate would be even better, and more versatile. Look at us, building a deck together :halo:
Of course you would, if you didn't have artifacts and enchantments. But let's say, you do! Then Bane of Progress is a decent wish target, but not a great main deck card.
I think I'd rather have targeted removal in the main if I'm worried about collateral damage. And probably a global wipe like Oblivion Stone that can solve a wider array of board-clogging problems. Sure, sometimes bane would be a better tool because I don't have any artifacts/enchantments, or because I really don't want to blow up my creatures with o-stone but you can't always have the perfect answer for everything. You put bane in your wishboard, and if that particular case doesn't come up often enough, then you're wasting a wish slot. And if you're wasting your wish slots, then the extra cost of the wish becomes not worth it.

It's really down to the specifics of the deck, whether it cares about tempo or efficiency, which kinds of answers it wants and how often it wants them, which proactive plays can be wished for and how viable those plays are with extra mana attached...these are all really complex things to think about when building a deck. So why oh why oh why oh WHY are you acting like wishes are some extremely simple, one-size-fits-all solution that's an easy include for everyone?

Wishes have seen 60-card play but afaik they've never been remotely close to an auto-include. Why should commander be any different?

(And 60-card has the advantage of being able to turn wishes into additional copies of a single crucial card, which doesn't really work in commander - tutors and functional reprints are the only way to functionally increase your number of copies)
Come on, are you being stubborn on purpose? What about the majority of games where I don't want scooze. Yes, I would pay an extra 2 mana so it isn't a dead draw. I am not replacing a card I want every game!
Ugh, more scooze stuff. Look, scooze is good because it offers a body, lifegain, and grave hate in one package. It already has versatility baked in, that's why it's good. If you only care about the grave hate, then you should probably play something else. Stop acting like you including the wrong grave hate option for your deck means that somehow wishes are OP. Just find a better grave hate piece that isn't a "dead draw" when you aren't playing against grave decks.
Again, stubborn on purpose. Use your demonic tutor to get Relic of Progenitus or Scavenger Grounds. I am not saying Ooze is your only GY hate you have access to.
Then cut the scooze for %$#%'s sake! If you hate it so much then cut it! :cussing:
Oh boy. Are you a person who refuses to Demonic Tutor for a land? Sometimes you can't tutor your win condition and you need to stop your opponent.
The last time I played demonic tutor it was for a turn 2 Snuff Out on an Orvar, the All-Form that had been ramped out via sol ring. So don't go preaching to me about how to use tutors responsibly. And I don't even play win conditions, haven't you read my title?

My point about wishes is that a lot of the strength of tutors - and a lot of what's problematic about tutors - is that they can hit the same win conditions over and over again. They're a functional second/third/etc copy of your combo pieces (even if sometimes they'll need to get other things). Wishes don't - generally - work like that, because your combo pieces are in your mainboard.

Also you usually can't wish for a land so that's another knock against them relative to (black, and some green) tutors. You can put one into your pile with living wish, ofc, but then you only get 2 creature targets, so now you've only got one reactive and one proactive card available. Three wishes really makes you carefully consider every single card you put into your wishboard.
Also, I am saying cut a marginal card, or 2, for a wish, and make your 3rd wish target a card that is always good, but maybe not as good as other main deck options. For example, Terastradon would always be good in my RG deck (because I have insane amounts of ramp), but I don't play it over Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.
Sure, do it.

It seems like you're under the impression that suggesting a reasonable approach to using one wish in one specific deck means that wishes are therefore unfairly powerful in every deck and will engulf the entire format.

And, uh...no. That's not how that works.
In a vacuum, this has merit. In reality, I think most of my decks have about 10-20 cards that are good enough to be included but cut due to 100 card limitation. My RG deck would play living wish instead of Caustic Caterpillar. I have other disenchant effects, but I think this is the weakest. I would also add to wish board something like Scavenging Ooze, and probably Terastadon (but maybe card draw). I think my deck is massively improved like this.
And when others catch on to it the wishes will become too strong to ignore in deckbuilding.
See above. Maybe your ramp deck is just so rampy that it makes the mana tax of wishes irrelevant (which it doesn't, but whatever), but that doesn't mean those costs are irrelevant to every deck. They will merit inclusion in some decks but not all of them, depending on what those decks care about, much like every other card in existence.

Also idk that having 2/3 of your slots be dedicated to blowing up noncreatures it really the best way to benefit from the versatility of a wish, but that's part of the fun. Try out different combinations until you find a trio that reliably has a good target.

Maybe I'm wrong and the difference in mana costs justifies it, even though you're ultimately paying 5 to kill something with caterpillar which seems pretty steep. But who knows!
You pick cards that were banned because the RC thought they would be problematic, not because they are problematic.... Why not mention any cards banned recently? Prophet of Kruphix? Hullbreacher?
You know you are being disingenuous to suggest that ubiquity is not grounds for banning. But obviously that is not always enough (see StP and Sol Ring).
I think if you'd read my whole response you could have saved yourself some typing here.
Ubiquity isn't a problem in itself, it's a multiplier onto how problematic the effect is. Stasis hits 10% it gets banned instantly because the effect is so annoying. Rakdos Signet hits 100%, nobody gives a %$#% because it's fine.
exactly
exactly.

I highly doubt that wishes would pass 10%, but let's assume they do for sake of argument. Why is that a problem? They're just card selection. If Impulse gets to 50% usage, do you give a crap? I know I wouldn't.
Lol. Obviously unbanned, then price jumps. Then people feel like they can't compete without spending money on wishes. And either WOTC starts printing them as often as they print StP and Sol Ring, or the price stays pretty high.
Price has jumped on all the other cards that got unbanned too, and it's fine. The sky has not fallen. There's a hell of a lot more living wishes out there than Metalworker, I'll tell ye that. And they'd probably reprint them again fairly quickly (as quickly as they do anything at least).

Imperial Seal is pretty damn expensive, are people freaking out that they can't compete without it? I rarely even hear people talk about it. Hell, Mana Crypt is literally the most powerful card in the entire format and it has only 14% use almost entirely from price (and that's on EDHrec - irl my experience says it's much, much lower). Honestly, I hear very little complaining. There's always cards that are out-of-budget for most people, and wishes don't even come close to the power and utility of mana crypt or seal.
I said Karn CAN go into every deck. Not SHOULD. I just meant to say that even without access to the better wishes, Karn is still an option and a pretty good one too.
I don't see how there being another planeswalker which is a "pretty good option" is problematic to the format.

I could imagine getting karn getting axed for his synergy with lattice, but if he gets banned I'm 100% a-o-fine with that.
I have said many times that I want the best tutors banned. I think they should be for many reasons:
1. They go against the spirit of a singleton format
2. They make games more repetitive
3. They are often too expensive to be considered auto-includes, which I think hurts the format. Playing Diabolic Tutor because Demonic is too expensive feels bad.
As to the first two, I think wishes don't have those problems at all, though. As far as being singleton, they're more like SUPER-singleton, since each card in your wishboard is only 1/3 of a card, from a certain perspective. They also make games even less repetitive, since you can't search your most-common-wincon, and increase the number of possible cards which can be played.

Can't speak to the third one as it relates to wishes, but I think any opinion on it is pure speculation.
Ubiquity is not enough. But nobody wants to sit down to a game, have their opponent cast Wish, and then lose to a narrow hate card in the wishboard. That feels bad on so many levels.
Ugh, back to this again. What "narrow hate cards" are you so worried about? All the ways you've said that you would use wishes were generally in the format [semi-narrow targeted removal that would be reasonable in the main] [general purpose value card] [flex slot? but generally something else that would be viable in the main]. I think that's a pretty reasonable approach, pretty close to what I'd do and what I think most wishers would do. So tell me, where are we fitting in Flashfires, Boil, and acid rain? And why are we assuming players would suddenly love playing those cards when they see virtually zero play? Sure, they're sometimes bad draws in the main, but there are plenty of commanders like Anje Falkenrath who could just loot them away when they aren't helpful, and they don't get played there either.
And if wishes become as played as I think they would be, it would be unbearable.
You know what they say about assumptions. And catastrophizing. It makes a...cat...out of...the greek letter phi...and...zing?

brb flagellating myself.
Also, you won't see Living wish at 50% of decks. People will only play 1 wish per deck, so an RG deck would have to pick from one of 3-4 wishes the one they like best (assuming 3 card sideboard).
You have successfully found another reason that wishes are fine.
Admittedly, one of the reasons why wishes leave such a sour taste in my mouth are that when the rules were vague, I was adamant that my opponents not use wishboards. I thought it was very unfair that they could play with the advantage while I didn't because I adhered to official rules.
So if wishes were made 100% legal, it would be way better than it was before.
I'm 100% in agreement with this. I haaate asking for special allowances and I hate letting other people have them too. I'm fine with people using MLP promos or whatever, because I would never choose to use an MLP promo even if they were officially legal (and I've never seen an MLP deck be remotely good), but when someone wants to use a banned card or "some un-card somewhere in their deck" they can GTFO. If I knew we were playing that way, I would have taken advantage of it myself. Start a special rules-optional league, invite me, give me a week to build a deck, and then we'll talk.
But I think also a bit worse than if they were left as non-functional in commander.
You're allowed to have that opinion.
The other option, and tell me what you think - is to let 3 card sideboards exist, but premptively ban the best wishes. I don't care about Learn cards. I don't care about the two cards that search outside the game for Eldrazi.
I would just say preemptively ban Living Wish, Burning Wish, Glittering Wish, Wish... and to keep the 4cmc options closely watched.
Personally I think the actual scariest wish might be Mastermind's Acquisition, simply because you don't need to dedicate any slots to general-purpose value/answer cards since they're already in the deck. If I wanted to build a douchebag niche-hate wishboard, that's how I'd do it.

But I'd be absolutely fine with that as an implementation. I think over time people would chill and unban those cards too, but even if they didn't I think it'd still be fine. It's the errata that gets my hackles up way more than the overestimation of wishes - it's just that the overestimation of wishes is how the errata is justified.
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Phelddagrif - Kaervek - Golos - Zirilan

Flux Decks
Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote
Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena
Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6

Legend
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Post by Legend » 2 years ago

tstorm823 wrote:
2 years ago
It's not often that the correct answer in an argument is to call someone a liar, but I'm gonna have to call you on this one. I don't believe for a second that you (or frankly anyone) has ever built a deck capable of being played in a sanctioned event, added wishes to the deck, designed an appropriate sideboard to use those wishes, sat down to play a game in the format the deck was made for, cast a wish, and fetched a card not from the carefully planned sideboard.
It wasn't a regular occurrence, but it did happen. Primarily when playtesting.
onering wrote:
2 years ago
On an unrelated note: Wizards manages the Brawl format, and wishes don't work there for the same reason they don't work in commander.
Because Sheldon was annoyed by them 20 years ago?
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
You can't debunk opinions.
Debunking someone's opinion may not change their mind, but it's no less debunked.
“Comboing in Commander is like dunking on a seven foot hoop.” – Dana Roach

“Making a deck that other people want to play against – that’s Commander.” – Gavin Duggan

"I want my brain to win games, not my cards." – Sheldon Menery

onering
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Don't expect people to respect your takes when you say simplistic and false things like that.

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Post by tstorm823 » 2 years ago

Legend wrote:
2 years ago
It wasn't a regular occurrence, but it did happen. Primarily when playtesting.
Why would you playtest a competitive deck and actively decide to use non-sanctioned rules? If you're not playtesting your sideboard in a deck with wishes, you aren't actually playtesting your deck.
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."

kirkusjones
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Post by kirkusjones » 2 years ago

This discussion has been both entertaining and informative. As a result, I bought some wishes today, just in case. Well done, all.

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Post by Wallycaine » 2 years ago

tstorm823 wrote:
2 years ago
Legend wrote:
2 years ago
It wasn't a regular occurrence, but it did happen. Primarily when playtesting.
Why would you playtest a competitive deck and actively decide to use non-sanctioned rules? If you're not playtesting your sideboard in a deck with wishes, you aren't actually playtesting your deck.
Likley because they were still in the process of deciding what would go into said sideboard. If you know that your sideboard package needs to be 7 cards, but you've got 12 candidates, you might make allowances to fetch any one of them to see how much said card affects the matchup.

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Post by Legend » 2 years ago

onering wrote:
2 years ago
Don't expect people to respect your takes when you say simplistic and false things like that.
I wouldn't if what I said wasn't absolutely true. Rule 11 exists because 20 years ago, the concept of WISHING was so colloquial that even level 4 &5 judges couldn't straighten it out. It made sense to ban them at the time. In Sheldon's own words, "the first thing" he did was ban the WISH cycle because of the rules disagreements they caused - not because of any of the reasons people present in this thread. If I remember correctly, in his first Commander article ever, the "5 WISHES" are listed as the only banned cards. About 2 years later, they were removed from the ban list to allow players to WISH for cards from the "Removed From Game Zone". At the same time, a rule was added to begin games with the Generals in the Removed From Game Zone, and all Generals cost 6 mana to cast the first time no matter the actual mana cost. What the heck? Wow, so much has changed in 17 years.
tstorm823 wrote:
2 years ago
Legend wrote:
2 years ago
It wasn't a regular occurrence, but it did happen. Primarily when playtesting.
Why would you playtest a competitive deck and actively decide to use non-sanctioned rules? If you're not playtesting your sideboard in a deck with wishes, you aren't actually playtesting your deck.
I preferred to playtest the deck instead of the sideboard. It helped me to figure out how to better play first games and what should be in the sideboard. I'm not sure what my opponent's motivations were. Maybe they did WISH for cards in their sideboard. I can't recall those minute details from 5-25 years ago.
“Comboing in Commander is like dunking on a seven foot hoop.” – Dana Roach

“Making a deck that other people want to play against – that’s Commander.” – Gavin Duggan

"I want my brain to win games, not my cards." – Sheldon Menery

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Post by tstorm823 » 2 years ago

Legend wrote:
2 years ago
I preferred to playtest the deck instead of the sideboard. It helped me to figure out how to better play first games and what should be in the sideboard. I'm not sure what my opponent's motivations were. Maybe they did WISH for cards in their sideboard. I can't recall those minute details from 5-25 years ago.
So you played best-of-one without wishes. Got it.
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."

onering
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Legend wrote:
2 years ago
onering wrote:
2 years ago
Don't expect people to respect your takes when you say simplistic and false things like that.
I wouldn't if what I said wasn't absolutely true. Rule 11 exists because 20 years ago, the concept of WISHING was so colloquial that even level 4 &5 judges couldn't straighten it out. It made sense to ban them at the time. In Sheldon's own words, "the first thing" he did was ban the WISH cycle because of the rules disagreements they caused - not because of any of the reasons people present in this thread. If I remember correctly, in his first Commander article ever, the "5 WISHES" are listed as the only banned cards. About 2 years later, they were removed from the ban list to allow players to WISH for cards from the "Removed From Game Zone". At the same time, a rule was added to begin games with the Generals in the Removed From Game Zone, and all Generals cost 6 mana to cast the first time no matter the actual mana cost. What the heck? Wow, so much has changed in 17 years.
tstorm823 wrote:
2 years ago
Legend wrote:
2 years ago
It wasn't a regular occurrence, but it did happen. Primarily when playtesting.
Why would you playtest a competitive deck and actively decide to use non-sanctioned rules? If you're not playtesting your sideboard in a deck with wishes, you aren't actually playtesting your deck.
I preferred to playtest the deck instead of the sideboard. It helped me to figure out how to better play first games and what should be in the sideboard. I'm not sure what my opponent's motivations were. Maybe they did WISH for cards in their sideboard. I can't recall those minute details from 5-25 years ago.
Yes, a lot has changed in 20 years, duh. Like relevant things to this argument, such as sideboards becoming optional for a bit before being eliminated entirely, and the rules surrounding outside the game changing in a way that made wishes simply no longer work in commander, and other reasons stated by the RC IN THIS THREAD for keeping things the way they are. Saying that wishes are only inactive in the format because of Sheldon's opinion 20 years ago is categorically false. Whether you are incapable of understanding this, or simply arguing in bad faith, neither is a good look for you. Papa_Funk put that crap argument to rest two years ago. Did you forget, or did you just find it inconvenient to your arguments? Should I quote his two year old posts to you, or do you think you can circle back to them on your own?

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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

onering wrote:
2 years ago
Yes, a lot has changed in 20 years, duh. Like relevant things to this argument, such as sideboards becoming optional for a bit before being eliminated entirely, and the rules surrounding outside the game changing in a way that made wishes simply no longer work in commander, and other reasons stated by the RC IN THIS THREAD for keeping things the way they are. Saying that wishes are only inactive in the format because of Sheldon's opinion 20 years ago is categorically false. Whether you are incapable of understanding this, or simply arguing in bad faith, neither is a good look for you. Papa_Funk put that crap argument to rest two years ago. Did you forget, or did you just find it inconvenient to your arguments? Should I quote his two year old posts to you, or do you think you can circle back to them on your own?
TBH, I'm not sure how much stock I put in those arguments, because I don't think they're very good arguments. In fact, I think they're so incredibly weak that we would have a hard time taking them entirely seriously as anything but random hypotheticals that go absolutely nowhere were it not for the fact that they support what is already the status quo. Humans are very good at rationalizing our beliefs after the fact based on what we want to be true, and the smarter a person is, the easier it is for them to do this, often without even realizing it's what they're doing. I'm not suggesting @Legend is correct to say something else, and particularly a specific something else, is the "real" argument, necessarily -- calling people liars, even implicitly, is generally a bad move in my book unless you have strong evidence for it. However, I also can't blame people for assuming there must be a better argument there somewhere, or at least that there must at one point have been one -- after all, we're talking about some rather smart, knowledgeable people here in terms of the RC, and the arguments as presented are absurdly weak if we try to apply them in any capacity to the present state of the format. Hell, even applied to the past state of the format that I'm familiar with, having switched over to playing EDH as my primary format around the release of the original Theros, the RC's arguments that I've seen are beyond weak. I think the real answer at this point is that the RC -- like most humans, to be reasonable -- is reluctant to change anything if they don't feel like they absolutely must, and most of the more recent explanations are post-hoc justifications more than actual rationale. Otherwise, how would such otherwise clever people be convinced by such weak reasoning?

To be clear, I don't mean to say that all the reasoning in this thread by people who are afraid of what wishes would bring is weak. I'm talking specifically about the reasoning stated by papa_funk back on page 2 of this thread, and the responses from the RC that people have quoted from elsewhere later; I'm not sure I could come up with something less compelling if I tried. Which is why I find the idea of looking for what the "real" reason is so understandable, even if I think it's probably a mistake, because it will come off badly and inadvertently derail the discussion -- yes, @Legend, even if it's more accurate.
39 Commander decks and counting. I'm sure this is fine, and not at all a problem.

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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago

TBH, I'm not sure how much stock I put in those arguments, because I don't think they're very good arguments. In fact, I think they're so incredibly weak that we would have a hard time taking them entirely seriously as anything but random hypotheticals that go absolutely nowhere were it not for the fact that they support what is already the status quo. Humans are very good at rationalizing our beliefs after the fact based on what we want to be true, and the smarter a person is, the easier it is for them to do this, often without even realizing it's what they're doing.
I've seen this a lot from the pro wish side, and I've addressed it before, but I will again. Every such argument from an anti wish person is conjecture, as is every similar argument about what unbanning wishes would be like from the pro wish side. Nobody here has enough experience to speak beyond their own playgroups. Any doomsayer on here who thinks unbanning wishes would be Armageddon is either speaking solely from personal experience or blind worry, and anyone arguing that it would be great or even not that bad is similarly speaking solely from personal experience or blind hope. I put no more stock in your or Legend's opinions about what it would look like than I do Pokken's or Dunharrow's. EVERYONE is speaking from conjecture or an extremely limited sample size. I've tried to provide some perspective on my own experience in my playgroup, were we've been able to use outside the game effects without problems and make other rule 0 modifications easily, and contrast it with what I've seen with pick up matches on mtgo and how difficult it is to get people to adhere to the game descriptions. But even that is a very limited amount of experience, which is why I hedge my take on what unlimited wishing would look like and fall back on a risk benefit analysis that could be flawed.

The only people on here who probably do have a decent grasp on what it would look like are the RC, and that's because unlike you or me or Legend or Pokken or Dirk or Dunharrow or anyone else on here, they actually field A LOT of email, DMs, etc from the public, and can thus get a bigger, more representative view of the format than any of us ever could. Its also not just one person, but a committee with varying opinions, as well as an advisory group. To suggest that the entire reason wishes work (or rather don't work) the way they do now is because of what Sheldon felt 20 years ago is either insipid or disingenuous. I've said before that there's a pattern with that particular poster of flippantly dismissing arguments he disagrees with out of hand without actually countering them, and this is an example of him setting up a strawman to joust against because its easier than admitting that people who disagree with him have equally valid opinions.

That's the core of this problem, this isn't an issue with a correct answer, the disagreement is one of how to value the benefits wishes bring against the detriments they bring. People who want wishes disagree with people who don't want them about the value added to the format by being able to use the cards, about the value of bringing EDH (and Brawl!) more in line with other formats, about the value of rules clarity, about the value of restricting the ability of decks to run narrow hosers, about the (negative) value of wishes being able to contribute to unfun and anti social play patterns, about the value of rules continuity, etc. This isn't an issue that can be done away with using logic, as there are logical arguments both for and against changing the current rule and it is how you value each of those arguments that determines what side you end up on. You seem to get this, and have the capacity to just say that you don't value certain arguments rather than pretend that only your beliefs are logical.

But that being said, what do you feel is a weak argument from page 2? That at one time they allowed wishes to work unrestricted and changed it because it played out poorly? You mean, they actually had access to a lot more information than any of us, a lot more recently than Legend's repeated 2002 fallacy, and they decided based on that information to further restrict Wishes? That they don't outright ban them because they believe that individual playgroups that can agree on how to use them should be able to? That the CR leaves the outside the game zone nebulous and undefined except in sanctioned rules, in which its defined as a sideboard, which commander lacks? That they don't want to leave it undefined because it led to arguments over what people can grab? Do people really believe this all didn't happen?

I agree that they tend to defer to status quo, but that's a feature not a bug. It means that there needs to be a good reason to make a change, and this promotes stability. Given how low impact the benefits of allowing outside the game effects to work is, and how high impact the detriments could be, no change should be made (although, as I've said, if the detriments could be prevented, as with a 3-5 card wishboard, that would change things in my mind). This does indicate that, had wishes always functioned as they do in 60 card casual, then outside the game rules would have never been changed. Its a mistake to think that's a certainty, however much you may disagree with the reasoning for the status quo, because the RC does listen to player input, and they have a judge mentality. Outside the game being so ill defined means that there is a lot of room for disagreement, and thus a lot of instances where people will be unable to resolve the disagreement and call in a 3rd party opinion (ie: "JJJJJJUUUUUUUUUUDDDDDDDDDDGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!). Sheldon in particular was a high level judge for a long time, and values being able to give definitive answers. This format has a lot of that baked into it. I suspect the "real" answer for why the RC prefers the status quo is similar to their given answers, but a bit more to the point: with unlimited wishing, if a player were to ask them to resolve a disagreement, they wouldn't be able to. Questions like "If I'm at a store, can I cast a wish then quickly buy a card, or trade for it?" are real concerns, and apparently things the RC actually encountered (unless we're to believe that papa_funk was talking out of his ass). I value this certainty less than the RC does, but I don't discount it entirely. The bottom line is that they would either have to define what wishes could grab or allow unlimited wishing and deal with people having disagreements that the RC can't resolve. Because they are basing this on experience, not conjecture unlike everyone in this thread who isn't on the RC (myself included), I'm inclined to believe them. For the benefit of the people who don't understand logical fallacies, this ISN'T an appeal to authority, its listening to people who have more experience and expertise than I do and valuing their take more because they've actually dealt with the situation before. Its the same as saying "you shouldn't flush that, my plumber said its bad for the pipes."

Where I disagree is their insistence on making it an all or nothing proposition. This doesn't actually come from mere inertia, but from them (ironically) overvaluing rules consistency with other formats. By basing their outside the game definition on sanctioned rules, they keep some consistency with the overall rules. The only change they had to make was disallowing sideboards. For anything else, from wishboards of various sizes to setting basic parameters on "unlimited" wishing (must not already be in the deck, must adhere to color identity, must be owned at the start of the game, you can't drive home to grab something), they would have to create additional rules that appear nowhere else. Unlike kitchen table casual, which is the only format where wishes naturally work "as intended", commander is a defined format (as is Brawl, even if both are casual first and foremost). That would create, in actuality, a greater degree of rules inconsistency than the status quo. And while many of those scenarios may seem absurd, when you are running the show you have to account for absurd people. Again, this is why they said they didn't just ban wishes, because they believe that playgroups would know if they can handle them and come to a conclusion about the parameters. Now, you're probably thinking "Yeah, so why don't they just write out those basic parameters to prevent the absurdity?" and I agree! But, if they're going that far, why not just make wishboards and solve a lot more of the potential issues with wishes? The short answer, not elaborated on, is that optional 10 card sideboards were a thing for several years before being eliminated in 2016 (so, 3 years before Legend made this thread, not exactly ancient history at the time or even now). That's what I'd like to hear more about. What were the issues with this? Was it just confusion, and a desire to leave the optional rules section open ended rather than to suggest certain optional rule and thus give them additional weight? Or were there actual gameplay issue related to sideboards being reported? That could help explain why the RC views this as an all or nothing proposition, or on the other hand reveal a problem with their analysis of this issue or that the problem was unrelated to wishboards per se, but to the optional nature of the rule.

In my opinion, though, its only a matter of time before they reevaluated. I don't think there's any number of actual wishes that could be printed to change their minds, but every time a mechanic like Learn/Lessons sees print its going to be another weight put on the benefit side of the scale, and eventually that scale is going to tip, even for the RC. Whether they'll stick to their all or nothing approach once that happens remains to be seen.

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Post by DirkGently » 2 years ago

@onering - a well-balanced response, and one I largely agree with. I do have two small quibbles, though:

1) I don't see much substantive difference between rule-0-ing "outside the game" and rule-0-ing the banlist. If the RC is actually leaving wishes unbanned but useless "because they believe that playgroups would know if they can handle them and come to a conclusion about the parameters" then that seems like pointless justification to me. If you're in a rule-0-able situation then you can theoretically change any rules you like - if anything, I think rule-0-ing the banlist is a more intuitive change to make than actually modifying the rules of the format, and I suspect that a lot more groups experiment with banlist modifications than rules modifications (though I could be wrong, ofc).

2) I don't remember exactly what the rules document said in 2016, but I mostly remember there being some vagueness along the lines of "your playgroup can modify these rules, such as using a 10-card sideboard or whatever". Which doesn't really feel like it has any meaningful weight behind it. It was basically just prompting a direction that rule-0 talks might go, not actually proposing a variant. I don't think rules variants are a good idea anyway - the question is, when you show up to play commander, what are the expectations? And the expectations have always been that no wishing was allowed. If you start adding truly optional rules, where some significant portion of the community does it one way and another significant portion does it another, you're just asking for the format to splinter - anyone who is following a rule isn't going to want to play with someone who isn't. At the end of the day, you've gotta either commit to everyone getting wishes or nobody getting wishes.
Perm Decks
Phelddagrif - Kaervek - Golos - Zirilan

Flux Decks
Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote
Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena
Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6

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