I'm cutting down the quotes to the most relevant parts I'm responding to in an effort to save space, not in an attempt to take comments out of context. If you feel I glossed over something important just point it out and I'll try to respond.
Sharpened wrote: ↑4 years ago
I'm fine with the rules committee saying all games of Commander work that way, unless the players agree otherwise, which they are free to do so.
There seems to be some miscommunication, as this is basically what I'm advocating for. I don't think "Wishes get any card you own" is a feasible way to include them in the format because it is clearly a logistical nightmare. But I do think having 15-card Wishboards included in the official rules allows players to use Wishes similarly to how they would in basically any other format. And that is eminently doable without any serious problems.
tarotplz wrote: ↑4 years ago
Yes, one advances your own gameplan more consistently, while the other stops your opponents gameplan more consistently, but ultimately both will cause more games to end up very similar.
The point was that tutors are a problem because they effectively double your chance to draw your best card, and generally your best card in a given deck is the same 2-3 cards regardless of game state. For example, in my
Rith deck,
Eladamri's Call almost always searches for
Purphoros because in the vast, vast majority of games that is probably the single strongest card in the deck. Ergo, I basically have 2x Purphoros in my deck.
Wishes don't really work that way. Because, as we've already established, Wishes are pretty terrible at getting proactive cards (i.e. if I wanted to
Wish for Purphoros I would have to take Purphoros out of my deck which is obviously worse than just playing Purphoros normally) the general use for Wishes is to get reactive answer cards to solve whatever the current problem of the table is. This, by definition, means that the cards Wished for are a function of the game state. For example,
Wishing for
Path for an opponent's
Avacyn versus Wishing for
Disenchant for an opponent's
Doubling Season. This is significantly different from proactively tutoring for the same best card in my deck every game, regardless of what my opponents are doing.
tarotplz wrote: ↑4 years ago
Except if wishes were legal, the exact same thing is true for those who don't want them in the format. I don't just have to not play them, I also have to convince three other people that they shouldn't include them at all. That's effectively me having to implement a custom ban-list and going against the rules of the RC. Not many players are going to like that, my experience wil suffer. It's the same enourmous hassle for both sides.
Well technically you'd only have to convince players that would otherwise use Wishes. Even if Wishes were legal, it's still very easily possible for you to sit down at a 4 player game without a single Wish among you because you've all individually decided not to use Wishes for one reason or another. And even if someone at the table is playing a Wish, there's a pretty good chance you'll never even see it that game. And even if they do find it, they might do something very benign with it that you ultimately have no problem with.
Compare that to now if I want to play a Wish at a rando table; I cannot even start that game without first explaining that I intend to break the rules. And what happens if I forget to explain it and draw the Wish mid-game? Problems happen, that's what.
Ultimately you can't control what other players do. They might combo kill you with P Hulk, or T&N, or Kiki-Conscripts, etc. That's not a reason to ban those cards and insist that everyone pre-clear them with you every game. I firmly believe that the rules should always default toward individual player agency (i.e. you can play whatever you want and it's up to you to try and mesh that with the groups powerlevel) in all but the most extreme cases, where the card in question is essentially impossible to play fairly even if you try to (
Sylvan Primordial,
Prophet of Kruphix, etc.)
tarotplz wrote: ↑4 years ago
Over some time I believe this would lead to a significant decrease in overall strategy diversity in the format, as many players wouldn't want to play any decks that are especially susceptible to narrow hate pieces (graveyard, artifacts, enchantress, etc.) to not put themselves at a disadvantage.
...good? Is it better now if a mono-artifact deck just rolls the dice to see if they get blown out by a naturally drawn
Vandalblast? That's just poor deckbuilding. Nobody's strategy should be "play my stuff and hope nobody draws one of many cards that completely stops my deck". If players understand they're more likely to run into one of said cards that completely stops their deck, they'll build in a way such that they don't just scoop to a wipe. So encouraging better deckbuilding seems like a plus to me.
tarotplz wrote: ↑4 years ago
There would be a lot of "You only wished for that to spite me"s said if wishes were legal.
How is that any different than people complaining when you target their stuff with removal but not someone else's stuff? I mean, how often do you hear something like "why are you
Utter Ending my
Avacyn instead of his
Doubling Season?"? And regardless if the Utter End came from a Wish or not, the response should always be the same thing: "because I think you are the bigger threat right now".
Unless it is actually spiteful, in which case that seems more like a player problem than a game problem.
Sharpened wrote: ↑4 years ago
Wishes work in other formats because those formats have sideboards. Wishes cannot work the same way as they do in those formats in a format that has no sideboard.
Okay, but why doesn't EDH have a sideboard? The whole sideboards are a competitive construct thing is... a reason, I guess, but I don't give it much weight, especially when not having a sideboard necessitates Wishes doing nothing. Especially now because Arena, which I believe to be how many new players are going to start playing Magic these days, already demonstrates how easily best of one formats can integrate sideboards. Wishes pulling from the sideboard isn't some esoteric thing only whispered about by high level players that regularly attend GPs and such anymore. Even brand new players are being regularly exposed to it via Arena, to the point where I think most players don't even realize there's a difference between what Wishes do under the tournament rules versus what they do under the game rules; they just assume what Wishes do is pull from the sideboard. It feels like it's time for EDH to work like that too.
cryogen wrote: ↑4 years ago
Papa Funk is one of THE MOST knowledgeable people involved in the format. He is a level 5 judge and is the go-to guy on rules and rules logistics. If he says that the logistics of wishes in Commander has been discussed and mulled over, then you can rest assured that it was given due attention and thought. And I'm fairly certain that next to nothing has changed from a logistics standpoint since then. So it's not like a fresh perspective is needed, any more than we need to revisit
Balance to see if it is less busted now.
I don't want to seem rude, but often people most likely to miss systemic flaws are those who've spent significant time inside of the system and risen to the top. For example, a rich person is more likely to support unrestrained capitalism because it is a system in which they have mastered already, so changes to that system could have consequences for them. That's not to say I think Papa Funk is somehow stonewalling change because he is personally profiting from it, that's ridiculous, but I am saying that as someone who has worked deeply within the Magic rules system he can potentially be biased from seeing a flaw because that's just how it's always been for him. This is also why, let's say for example, the military tends to evolve pretty slowly in terms of worldview; the people that get promoted to the top do so because they're cut from the same cloth as those already in a position of power to promote them in the first place. To put it another, like tends to advance like, meaning that those who rise to the top do so because they appeal to the system already in place instead of pushing outsider perspectives.
Wasn't this basically the entire point of the CAG? To be outsiders with an ear to the ground that can bring in fresh perspectives? And that's a good idea. It's important to have multiple different viewpoints represented. So I don't think questioning whether the RC's reasoning from way back at the inception of the format still holds up today is in any way disrespectful.