I agree very strongly with this. Well put.TheGildedGoose wrote: ↑3 weeks agoMaybe it's a semantic quibble over "reasonable." The problem as you present it here - that it's difficult to determine if a specific in-game action increases or decreases your chances of winning - applies to virtually all forms of interaction and card draw, though. It's true, moreso than other cards it's difficult to perceive whether defecting or cooperating with regards to Rhystic Study helps you or not in the long run, but you can't be sure it's the right call to use your removal spell on that Guardian Project, either. When you attempt to factor in things like your own deck construction, your own playskill, the deckbuilding and playskill of that opponent, the deckbuilding and playskill of the other opponent(s), the possibility for tabletalk, the psychological instability of some nerds... it's a melange of madness.
Making suboptimal choices is part of the game. It's a feature, not a bug, especially in EDH. That's what makes it exciting.
Rhystic study is a threat much like any other. Deciding how to react requires nuance. "Only bad players don't pay" or "RS player is always the archenemy" is simplistic to the absurd.
On a minor note, I'm no cEDH expert, but I expect it's a bad place to look for determining optimal plays outside of cEDH specifically. Most wincons in cEDH are much more explosive and require less setup than normal EDH, where development is more relevant and paying taxes or sitting out a turn under fish puts you more meaningfully behind.
A cEDH player can do nothing except play lands, and then play a cheap combo to win without any development. But if you want to play a bunch of creatures and attack people to death, you're going to need to cast a lot of spells, and that means you're either being massively slowed down or you're feeding the rhystic.
And even if you can get ahead while paying taxes, if your opponents can't pay the tax while holding you off, they're obviously going to skip taxes, undoing much of what you've paid. They're not just going to die because they're terrified of feeding the rhystic.
It's also harder to determine the threat in an environment where wincons are so concealed. Intentionally Feeding the rhystic of a player who is behind can be actively beneficial - my opponents did this to me last night when I was ahead (didn't save them though). In cEDH it's way harder to be confident you didn't just feed the guy who's about to combo off from nowhere and win.