[MCD] Wishes

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Jemolk
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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

Hermes_ wrote:
2 years ago
if you're used to chatrooms from the late 90s/early 00s it's like riding a bike lol imo
Chatrooms weren't usually public, fast-moving, or well-suited to long-form logical argumentation. Discord has its good uses, but this isn't one of them. The format actually, genuinely sucks for discussions like the one we're trying to have. Dealing with a terrible format in addition to all the other stuff, while stressed out and with not much free time, is not a reasonable thing to demand people do as a baseline "are you actually serious about this" challenge.
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Post by Hermes_ » 2 years ago

Well, i shared a link to the thread in the discord this morning, doubt anyone will come here to discuss it.
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Post by Impossible » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
Fundamentally I think a three card wish board is probably safe. That's where the line is for me. I think 5 lets burning wish and living wish get a little too close and 10 is where it's more powerful in enough circumstances that I draw a hard line.
Can you explain this? I don't see how a Wishboard of any size makes a Wish better than Demonic Tutor. DT is good because it is a functional second copy of the best card in a given deck. Because of the singleton rule Wishes are restricted to pulling from cards that weren't good enough to make the main deck to begin with.
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Impossible wrote:
2 years ago
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
Fundamentally I think a three card wish board is probably safe. That's where the line is for me. I think 5 lets burning wish and living wish get a little too close and 10 is where it's more powerful in enough circumstances that I draw a hard line.
Can you explain this? I don't see how a Wishboard of any size makes a Wish better than Demonic Tutor. DT is good because it is a functional second copy of the best card in a given deck. Because of the singleton rule Wishes are restricted to pulling from cards that weren't good enough to make the main deck to begin with.
Think about it like sideboarding in competitive formats. Back to nature is never maindeckable but it can completely turn a post sideboard game against an enchantment deck.

Having access to ten narrow cards that aren't maindeckable is more powerful than the best card in your deck right now in many circumstances. Notably when facing down narrow strategies like enchantments artifacts voltron tokens etc.

You can get cards like leyline of singularity that completely turn off a strategy but that you wouldn't play.

People are going to disagree with that take but I think it's mostly naïveté. I've spent a lot more time sideboarding in legacy and modern than your average commander player so I think my perspective is different.

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Post by Impossible » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
Think about it like sideboarding in competitive formats. Back to nature is never maindeckable but it can completely turn a post sideboard game against an enchantment deck.

Having access to ten narrow cards that aren't maindeckable is more powerful than the best card in your deck right now in many circumstances. Notably when facing down narrow strategies like enchantments artifacts voltron tokens etc.

You can get cards like leyline of singularity that completely turn off a strategy but that you wouldn't play.

People are going to disagree with that take but I think it's mostly naïveté. I've spent a lot more time sideboarding in legacy and modern than your average commander player so I think my perspective is different.
Sure but I think there are some important differences here, first being that EDH isn't a 1v1 competitive format. Rest in Peaceing dredge can win you a Modern game but in EDH just means you've made one enemy and done nothing to the other 2 players. Reactive cards can only do so much in a multiplayer setting. And I think this leads into the crux of the argument why Tutors will always be better than Wishes in EDH; in a multiplayer game it is infinitely better to be proactive than reactive. Tutoring for your combo piece or best resource engine is generally always better than trying to set one opponent back via specific hate.

The only exception, of course, is if that opponent is already the Archenemy and is about to win. And I think that leads to Wishes biggest strength, which is they encourage more interactive games by giving players the tools needed to prevent one player from snowballing an early lead into a crushing win. I'd much rather get all my artifacts destroyed by a Wished-for Shatterstorm if it leads to a fun back-and-forth game than simply winning on turn 6 because I vomited a critical mass of artifact synergies onto the board before anyone could find their one maindeck Vandalblast.
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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
Think about it like sideboarding in competitive formats. Back to nature is never maindeckable but it can completely turn a post sideboard game against an enchantment deck.

Having access to ten narrow cards that aren't maindeckable is more powerful than the best card in your deck right now in many circumstances. Notably when facing down narrow strategies like enchantments artifacts voltron tokens etc.

You can get cards like leyline of singularity that completely turn off a strategy but that you wouldn't play.

People are going to disagree with that take but I think it's mostly naïveté. I've spent a lot more time sideboarding in legacy and modern than your average commander player so I think my perspective is different.
You know, I still don't see this as a bad thing. When someone is in the position of arch-enemy, wrecking their board is absolutely correct, and I'm happy to see it happen. Even when I'm said arch-enemy. More back-and-forth, more answers, more interaction -- all that makes for better games IMHO. And getting a card that just wrecks someone who's already behind will be a serious mistake every time. If someone's doing that, I'd say the player is the bigger problem than the cards.

For what it's worth, I think 7 is a pretty good baseline number. Coheres with Arena BO1, offers enough slots that you can theoretically run two mutually exclusive Wish effects, but still a strict enough limit that you actually have to put some thought into what goes there.

I will also say, I fully approve of your suggestion that the wishboard be public information. I think sharing more information on our decks in general is a good thing for the social contract, and this is an easy way to take a step in the right direction within the rules. That's a distinct plus if you ask me, and a point that makes Wishes done that way actually preferable to the status quo.
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Impossible wrote:
2 years ago
Sure but I think there are some important differences here, first being that EDH isn't a 1v1 competitive format. Rest in Peaceing dredge can win you a Modern game but in EDH just means you've made one enemy and done nothing to the other 2 players. Reactive cards can only do so much in a multiplayer setting
Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
You know, I still don't see this as a bad thing. When someone is in the position of arch-enemy, wrecking their board is absolutely correct,
1. that's not all they can do, sadly, they can also find game winning bombs and extra sweepers and so on.

2. I disagree with you guys that anyone should get to play sideboard level power of cards without drawing them and having to have dead ass cards in their hand. There's a difference between focusing your removal on someone who is in the lead, and tutoring for special sideboard cards to hose their specific strategy.
Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
For what it's worth, I think 7 is a pretty good baseline number.
At that number wishes become an instant format staple so disagree with you there. :)
Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
I will also say, I fully approve of your suggestion that the wishboard be public information. I think sharing more information on our decks in general is a good thing for the social contract, and this is an easy way to take a step in the right direction within the rules.
Non-flippantly, I do think it's the only way it could ever work with a decent sized number of wishes, but flippantly the best aspect of it is that if someone reveals a wishboard I could just leave :)

I really just do not get why you guys are advocating to add so much complexity to the most complicated format to the most complicated game in the world. It doesn't compute.

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Post by BeneTleilax » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
the most complicated game in the world
I see you haven't played HYBRID.

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Post by Impossible » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
1. that's not all they can do, sadly, they can also find game winning bombs and extra sweepers and so on.

2. I disagree with you guys that anyone should get to play sideboard level power of cards without drawing them and having to have dead ass cards in their hand. There's a difference between focusing your removal on someone who is in the lead, and tutoring for special sideboard cards to hose their specific strategy.
1. Well they can't be that good as bombs if you're not main decking them. That's the point. Grabbing a proactive card that already wasn't good enough for your deck and adding 2+ mana onto the mana cost as well does not a threatening bomb make.

2. The problem is there are too many linear strategies that require specific answers, such that it is unfeasible for any reasonable deck to have enough answers to enough problems. Purphoros, God of the Forge springs to mind. Even decks focused on having hate cards run maybe 2 or 3 answers to an indestructible enchantment commander that can kill the table in just a few turns. And those are just the decks that are actually prepared. How many decks are completely outless to Purphoros beyond "just kill the Purphoros player faster than they kill me"?

It is simply a fact that power creep exists, and the larger EDH's cardpool grows, the stronger and stronger linear strategies get. Eventually we'll get to a point where any given pod is going to be 4 decks that completely ignore each other until one of them goes off slightly faster, simply because trying to fit the necessary number of required answers into 99 cards isn't possible so it's not even worth it to dilute from your own linear strategy.

Wishes help combat that by allowing players to maintain some semblance of interactivity without having to sacrifice the majority of their slots to random hate cards.
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
I really just do not get why you guys are advocating to add so much complexity to the most complicated format to the most complicated game in the world. It doesn't compute.
Because in practice I don't think it's actually that complex at all. I would wager the majority of players who have ever played any constructed format know how Wishes work in terms of grabbing cards from the sideboard. Especially now that Learn exists as a mechanic.

As for reasons why I advocate for Wishes:
  1. They're cool, mechanically unique, and offer a lot of decision-making opportunities both in deck construction and game play.
  2. They help fill an important niche by giving players a myriad of interactive cards without hampering personal expression in deck construction.
  3. It's clear that WotC is interested in using more "outside the game" design space, and the longer EDH holds out the more cards there will be that don't work as intended.
  4. It's dumb they're pseudo-banned with format-specific errata, especially while Companion and Learn exist. You can argue at me all you want that it's not technically format errata or whatever, but we all know that's what it is.
  5. I still haven't seen a solid explanation of why they were banned in the first place, just vague mentions that they caused problems but never any real discussion of what those problems were or if the past 20 years have changed anything. Numerous cards long thought to be problematic have been removed from the banned list without incident, and I think it's high time we take another serious look at Wishes.
  6. For real they're just super cool.
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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
1. that's not all they can do, sadly, they can also find game winning bombs and extra sweepers and so on.
Extra sweepers is one of the things I'm good with, and game winning bombs are already a significant presence. If those get shoved into wishboards, so much the better. If, instead, people just run the next most powerful in their wishboard... eh, given the frequent dropoff in power level after the first few of any given type, it's probably not making the problem too much worse than it already is.
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
2. I disagree with you guys that anyone should get to play sideboard level power of cards without drawing them and having to have dead ass cards in their hand. There's a difference between focusing your removal on someone who is in the lead, and tutoring for special sideboard cards to hose their specific strategy.
Put it like this -- if I'm playing my new 5c Shrine Enchantress deck, should I care if the enchantment wrath takes the form of Austere Command or Burning Wish for Tranquility? The main difference is that the latter can be played in White decks, and the former in nonwhite R/G/x decks. I consider that a good thing, though. More people are able to interact with an overpowering board. That means more interesting back-and-forth, and fewer nongames due to games ending before someone can really get into the game in the first place. And if someone in that position (trying to mess up the board of a dominant enchantress deck) in U/G uses a Fae of Wishes to get a Tranquil Grove instead? Well played. That kind of obscure nonsense is incredibly funny to me, and if someone feels the need to play it and fetch it against me, that just means I did my thing well enough to seriously affect the course of the game, which is really what I want to do most of all. Winning by doing that is just a bonus, assuming other people got to do the same -- and if other people didn't get to do the same, well, now I feel bad for them, way more than I feel good for winning. So if someone hoses my specific strategy with a sideboard-power card and thus keeps the game going to where more people are in it, and there's more back and forth? Good. I approve.
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
I really just do not get why you guys are advocating to add so much complexity to the most complicated format to the most complicated game in the world. It doesn't compute.
The complexity is a large part of what I enjoy about the game. One of my favorite experiences in EDH is blindsiding people with obscure old cards and mechanics, and my favorite mechanic in all of Magic is Banding. No, I'm not joking about that last one. For me, the mental exercise is a huge part of the fun, and while I have a few simpler decks as well for when I'm mentally tired, the option to complicate things even further appeals to me immensely. You're allowed to have different priorities, as well as different things you find fun, but is it really so outlandish that the complexity itself would be a draw? We are all playing a very complex format of a very complex game, after all, as you rightly point out. And the best part is, the added complexity is optional. Yeah, sure, wishes would probably be more powerful as a way to build, so that's a point against its optionality, but honestly, outside of cEDH, we already willingly optimize for fun in ways that are directly opposed to optimizing for power. So I don't see the cost as being overly high. The benefits, on the other hand, are very appealing to me.
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
And the best part is, the added complexity is optional
It's not really optional especially if it becomes staple-level. You may not build your decks with it but everyone else will and then you have to interact with the new metagame this brings about.
Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
Put it like this -- if I'm playing my new 5c Shrine Enchantress deck, should I care if the enchantment wrath takes the form of Austere Command or Burning Wish for Tranquility? The main difference is that the latter can be played in White decks, and the former in nonwhite R/G/x decks. I consider that a good thing, though. More people are able to interact with an overpowering board. That means more interesting back-and-forth, and fewer nongames due to games ending before someone can really get into the game in the first place. And if someone in that position (trying to mess up the board of a dominant enchantress deck) in U/G uses a Fae of Wishes to get a Tranquil Grove instead?
1. austere command costs 6 so you suffer for that modality
2. austere command requires you to choose two modes and you may not be able to completely insulate yourself.

Today you have to make sacrifices for flexibility by playing modal cards, or make even greater sacrifices playing very situational cards. That's a feature of the format.

If you're playing 5c Shrinechantress you should definitely care that someone played Burning Wish for Insurrection and beat the table with your board state, but could have just Burning Wish'd for Tranquility to knock you out of the game. That kind of flexibility should require you to *draw* these bricks in the early game and be stuck with them sometimes.

Running into decks you can't deal with is part of commander. It's a feature that you can't answer everything all the time.

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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
It's not really optional especially if it becomes staple-level. You may not build your decks with it but everyone else will and then you have to interact with the new metagame this brings about.
EDH doesn't really have "staples" in the same way other formats do. I actively choose things like Star Compass over Arcane Signet, and don't play Sol Ring in more than a couple of my now forty decks, and you know how much that negatively affects me? Barely at all, if at all. If it were theoretically "optimal" from a min-maxing standpoint to run Wishes at all times, I'd still only run them in a few select decks, and you know how badly I expect that to hurt me? Barely at all, if at all. And they're not going to become as pervasive as Sol Ring. Maybe as much as Cyclonic Rift, which I also ignore, but again -- not that big a deal. Someone plays a Rift, my biggest complaint is that it's a boring card. Someone wins with a Craterhoof? Yawn. Wishes are at least dependent on what you get with them, and that might even result in originality, quite contrary to most "staples" of the format, which has always been my biggest complaint about all of them.
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
1. austere command costs 6 so you suffer for that modality
2. austere command requires you to choose two modes and you may not be able to completely insulate yourself.

Today you have to make sacrifices for flexibility by playing modal cards, or make even greater sacrifices playing very situational cards. That's a feature of the format.

If you're playing 5c Shrinechantress you should definitely care that someone played Burning Wish for Insurrection and beat the table with your board state, but could have just Burning Wish'd for Tranquility to knock you out of the game. That kind of flexibility should require you to *draw* these bricks in the early game and be stuck with them sometimes.
Austere Command costs 6, yes. Burning Wish into Tranquility costs 5. That's not much of a discount. You're still paying the flexibility premium, just this time in the form of the cost of the Wish. Austere Command's two modes also frequently serves as an advantage. You get to knock out my shrines, and also knock someone else back a bit. You might even be able to ensure you're the only one with a notable boardstate left. All of which is to say, I don't know why it would be a problem if someone makes a build-your-own Austere Command in, say, Jund. You're still paying for flexibility, and you still may not be able to hit everything you want to hit without affecting yourself.

Also, let's be real, Insurrection is going to have a real hard time killing people with a boardstate of primarily noncreature enchantments, and Tranquility wouldn't completely knock me out of the game, because I have plentiful recursion. But it would definitely put someone else in the driver's seat for a bit, and I fail to see why that would be a terrible thing. And if someone does have an unanswerable lethal boardstate, turning the tables on them with an Insurrection is a perfectly legitimate and even humorous play, as long as it's not a constant thing.
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
Running into decks you can't deal with is part of commander. It's a feature that you can't answer everything all the time.
I consider it a bug that was just too hard to get rid of. Helplessness in the face of an opposing deck is a bad thing, not a good one. If you build your deck meticulously enough, you should at least be capable of significant counterplay against anything that you're likely to run into. "I didn't manage to knock you off your pedestal this time, but next time... next time, watch out!" is way more palatable to me than "Yeah, I just don't have any outs to that, at all. Guess you win." And I'd much rather have the former be a common response to me and my decks than the latter. I don't want to have people just be unable to answer my stuff ever. Sure, you can't always answer everything, but if there's any one thing that you can never answer, that's actually bad. Bad for the game, as much as for the player or the deck, even. I wouldn't even call that a hot take.
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
I consider it a bug that was just too hard to get rid of. Helplessness in the face of an opposing deck is a bad thing, not a good one. If you build your deck meticulously enough, you should at least be capable of significant counterplay against anything that you're likely to run into. "I didn't manage to knock you off your pedestal this time, but next time... next time, watch out!" is way more palatable to me than "Yeah, I just don't have any outs to that, at all. Guess you win." And I'd much rather have the former be a common response to me and my decks than the latter. I don't want to have people just be unable to answer my stuff ever. Sure, you can't always answer everything, but if there's any one thing that you can never answer, that's actually bad. Bad for the game, as much as for the player or the deck, even. I wouldn't even call that a hot take.
Having a strategy that counters your deck is, in fact, a feature of Magic the Gathering. It was part of the original design and key to creating a game where a variety of decks can thrive, otherwise there would be one best deck. Its not that hard to build a deck that can answer most strategies. Pretty much any control deck can have an answer to any given strategy unless its locked out of an answer by the color pie. The question is, how streamlined do you want your own strategy to be vs how well do you want to be able to have answers vs a wide variety of strategies. Wishes fundamentally change the math by letting you stick X-1 niche answers in your wishboard, where X is the size of the board, rather than putting them in your deck, letting you have your cake and eat it too. A wishboard of limited size solves this by making X-1 small enough that it will never cover enough, so you still have to make a tradeoff between flexibility of answers and the consistency of your game plan, and the choice of cards in the wish board is more important because of the limited real estate. Make it too big, and it becomes too easy to cover too many bases, to the point that you have room to add harder hosers just to be a you lose button against certain strategies, or the wish becomes whatever you need at the time with little or no thought going into deckbuilding (especially with unlimited wishing).

Of course, this has all been said before, and so has your argument, repeatedly. Same old crap. But you did bring up something interesting, offering 7 as a good number for a wishboard. There's a nuanced argument to be had about what size a wishboard should be, and while I favor 3 and think 7 is too much its not completely absurd. If it was adopted, I think it would cause problems, but at the same time I think there's a realistic, albeit small, chance that it wouldn't. We've heard a lot of arguments for 3 wishes, for no wishes, and for wishes generally including unlimited wishing, but few arguments for mid size wishboards, like 5 or 7. Since that's actually some newer ground that could add to the discussion, and since you suggested 7 as a good size, why don't you explain why you think 7 would both be enough cards to make wishing good enough to play yet not too many to cause the issues wish skeptics are worried about (without just denying those things as issues). That would add to the conversation more than anything posted in more than a year, and might actually persuade people.

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Post by Impossible » 2 years ago

Because 7 is what WotC settled on for best-of-one on Arena and there's no real reason to not follow WotC's lead in this matter.
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Post by duducrash » 2 years ago

I think you all should try. Rule 0 it and experience wishes for idk a month and then report back with results. Theorycrafting gers nowhere real fast

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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Impossible wrote:
2 years ago
Because 7 is what WotC settled on for best-of-one on Arena and there's no real reason to not follow WotC's lead in this matter.
That's not an argument, its an appeal to authority fallacy. There may or may not be reasons to deviate from their lead, depending on their reasons for choosing that number and the context, all of which you leave out.

But I won't. They settled on 7 because of Learn and Lessons, to weaken them in best of 1 since that format doesn't need flexibility in the sideboard and there was no cost to sideboard space from filling it with lessons. Since this was created for an entirely different context, a different format and focused on the weakest outside the game mechanic, when you could run 4 of the best lesson and learn cards, its not really applicable to EDH and either its needs or concerns.

None of this means that 7 wouldn't be good number for a wish board, just that there really isn't any reason to blindly take WotC's lead. If 7 is the right number, it will be for entirely different reasons, since this is an entirely different format with entirely different concerns. I'll throw a bone and say being able to run more lessons is a small point in its favor, but it just plays into the argument that larger boards allow for more flexibility and choice.

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Post by Jemolk » 2 years ago

So, I've been a bit sluggish to take up @onering's challenge here. Have been operating on too little sleep to feel comfortable in my reasoning. Now that I feel more able, I'll see how well I can explain my position.

So, first off, I do think having a number in common with another format is helpful, in that it's easier to remember one relatively arbitrary number than to remember two. And it means nobody needs to keep track of "wait, which format was 5 and which was 7 again?" So that's an advantage over numbers like 5 or 10.

So why a middling number, rather than, say, 3? For me, this boils down to wanting people to include more niche pet cards, over feeling obligated to make primarily value choices. I think somewhere in the 5 to 10 range is a pretty good number for this specific purpose. Contrast this with charms, where having two of the options being super niche basically kills their usefulness unless the third mode is worthwhile all on its own, and note that here, if one option is sufficient to carry the build-your-own charm, you may as well just run that in the maindeck. So you can have one niche pet card at most with three wishes unless you're actively weakening your deck for the sake of options that you usually won't even get to show off, which might be a tall ask for a lot of people. I expect three card wishboards to be filled with "value" plays a lot, rather than interesting obscure cards that we don't really get to see very often.

Now, the point has been raised that niche cards can mean, for example, Rest in Peace or Tranquil Grove. I don't see this as a particularly large problem, but perhaps more importantly, they can also be things like Blood Reckoning, Cower in Fear, and Mindclaw Shaman. I have a number of pet cards that I quite like, that I jam into decks despite them being outclassed, and that I would like to fit more of in my decks. I would like to see more people playing obscure nonsense in creative ways. This, for me, is the primary upside of Wishes, and I think it would be lost by restricting the Wishboard to 3 cards.

Meanwhile, on the other extreme, unlimited or functionally unlimited Wishes could very easily also undermine creative deckbuilding. "Restrictions breed creativity" is definitely true, and some meaningful restrictions will encourage people to select a handful of cards that fit the deck's concept during deckbuilding, rather than grabbing whatever fits the requirements at the moment in time when the wish is cast.

TL;DR --
The reason I have for desiring Wishes to be a thing is to carve out a niche for cards that are just not worth playing 99% of the time, but which are fun/interesting/flavorful, rather than relying on the existing most versatile versions of the various effects which are often far less amusing and fit the flavor of a Vorthos-y deck far worse. For those specific purposes, something in the range of five to ten cards is the most reasonable, and given on top of that that there is precedent for seven cards in specific, I think that it is best to adopt the same number for ease of remembering.
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Jemolk wrote:
2 years ago
So, I've been a bit sluggish to take up @onering's challenge here. Have been operating on too little sleep to feel comfortable in my reasoning. Now that I feel more able, I'll see how well I can explain my position.

So, first off, I do think having a number in common with another format is helpful, in that it's easier to remember one relatively arbitrary number than to remember two. And it means nobody needs to keep track of "wait, which format was 5 and which was 7 again?" So that's an advantage over numbers like 5 or 10.

So why a middling number, rather than, say, 3? For me, this boils down to wanting people to include more niche pet cards, over feeling obligated to make primarily value choices. I think somewhere in the 5 to 10 range is a pretty good number for this specific purpose. Contrast this with charms, where having two of the options being super niche basically kills their usefulness unless the third mode is worthwhile all on its own, and note that here, if one option is sufficient to carry the build-your-own charm, you may as well just run that in the maindeck. So you can have one niche pet card at most with three wishes unless you're actively weakening your deck for the sake of options that you usually won't even get to show off, which might be a tall ask for a lot of people. I expect three card wishboards to be filled with "value" plays a lot, rather than interesting obscure cards that we don't really get to see very often.

Now, the point has been raised that niche cards can mean, for example, Rest in Peace or Tranquil Grove. I don't see this as a particularly large problem, but perhaps more importantly, they can also be things like Blood Reckoning, Cower in Fear, and Mindclaw Shaman. I have a number of pet cards that I quite like, that I jam into decks despite them being outclassed, and that I would like to fit more of in my decks. I would like to see more people playing obscure nonsense in creative ways. This, for me, is the primary upside of Wishes, and I think it would be lost by restricting the Wishboard to 3 cards.

Meanwhile, on the other extreme, unlimited or functionally unlimited Wishes could very easily also undermine creative deckbuilding. "Restrictions breed creativity" is definitely true, and some meaningful restrictions will encourage people to select a handful of cards that fit the deck's concept during deckbuilding, rather than grabbing whatever fits the requirements at the moment in time when the wish is cast.

TL;DR --
The reason I have for desiring Wishes to be a thing is to carve out a niche for cards that are just not worth playing 99% of the time, but which are fun/interesting/flavorful, rather than relying on the existing most versatile versions of the various effects which are often far less amusing and fit the flavor of a Vorthos-y deck far worse. For those specific purposes, something in the range of five to ten cards is the most reasonable, and given on top of that that there is precedent for seven cards in specific, I think that it is best to adopt the same number for ease of remembering.
I disagree that the precedent of best of 1's is all that relevant, because its relatively obscure. It's completely irrelevant to anyone who doesn't play best of 1s on Arena, which I'd wager is most people who play.

While I really doubt that most people who would play wishes would be sticking things like what you listed into their wishboards, because of how insanely bad those cards would be once you tack on the cost of the wish, the larger point about people being more likely to through in goofier cards if they have some space compared to if the space is extremely limited is intriguing. I'm not sure I buy that would be the typical way wishes are used, again since the extra mana cost of the wish means you really want the card your wishing for to be relevant, I could see a 7 card board making Learn more fun to run (and Learn cards make up the majority of cards referencing outside the game) and jamming 7 random Eldrazi in the sideboard for Spawnsire to find is a lot better/more fun than him just grabbing 3 (I mean, it is a 20 mana activation cost). I still have doubts about it making wishes too good though and verging them into auto include territory, especially Living Wish, but perhaps banning Living Wish outright would be enough to solve the problem, and keeping the door open to banning others that might be a problem (like Karn, although Karn's problem doesn't rely on the size of the wishboard).

I think any group that would want to trial run this should do a month with 3, then a month with 7, then a month with 5.

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Post by Legend » 1 year ago

A note about Comprehensive Rule 108.5 has been added to Spoiler 2 of the OP. Either 108.5 was added to the Comprehensives after the OP was edited, or I just wasn't aware of it at the time. Spoiler 12 has been updated.
“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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