[MCD] Wishes

[pokken]

Except, and here's the important part, wishes can't get copies of cards that are in your deck. The point stands with tutors. If I want to play two copies of my combo piece, I run Demonic Tutor to grab it.

You're forgetting about functional duplicates and near-duplicates and saying 'because it doesn't get exactly another copy it doesn't really bypass the rule.' Well, no, on the most technical level it doesn't strictly let you play a duplicate card.

But it does let you play only one Restoration Angel in your deck when you have Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, but keep a Zealous Conscripts in your sideboard for emergencies. Or a Mikaeus, the Unhallowed to back up your Heliod, Sun-Crowned for Walking Ballista

Or the examples of near-duplicates I listed (Devastating Mastery with Hour of Revelation).

Wishes will reduce variance in decks that play them and allow them to do many of the things tutors do in ways that are even worse, since they also allow narrow silver bullets unless you get down under 5 (and even then, I expect you'll see a lot of Creeping Corrosion type effects that you wouldn't otherwise see).

More simply, Wishes becoming tutors, but not as good, is a pretty fair use and I'd be happy if that's how they played out. As Dirk pointed out, there's already a critical mass of tutors and so wishes are wholly unnecessary to anyone who wants to build tutors.dek,

I'm glad you are fine with it, I'm not.

There's critical mass of tutors *in black*. That's black's major advantage in EDH. Outside of black and green creature tutors, decks have to try pretty hard to find their cards.

Now list all the playable tutors in red decks and tell me how literally every mono red deck doesn't run Burning Wish. Even at 3 wishes it's a very powerful effect.

---

The bottom line is it doesn't really matter how much variance there is now either. Adding a new rule that reduces variance is not something I think we should be doing. Even if it's a tiny little bit.

Wizards introducing new cards is one thing, but making rule changes?

Ask yourself how you'd feel if the RC decided to reduce the card count in decks to say..98. Is anyone going for that? no, because changes that reduce variance are iffy.

(I had a thread a while back about considering reducing card count to 80 because 100 cards is frigging annoying, and reduction in variance was the chief argument against it)

[DirkGently]

You're forgetting about functional duplicates and near-duplicates and saying 'because it doesn't get exactly another copy it doesn't really bypass the rule.' Well, no, on the most technical level it doesn't strictly let you play a duplicate card.

But it does let you play only one Restoration Angel in your deck when you have Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, but keep a Zealous Conscripts in your sideboard for emergencies. Or a Mikaeus, the Unhallowed to back up your Heliod, Sun-Crowned for Walking Ballista

I'm not seeing where the problem lies here. Just substitute the wish for the conscripts and it seems like exactly the same thing in terms of annoying combo potential. The only difference with the wish is that you're paying a premium for the combo piece in exchange for the option to use it for an answer in a pinch. Idk, that doesn't seem like a bad thing to me but YMMV.

If there were, like, 20 wishes per color that were highly efficient then I could see it adding a lot of redundancy but I don't think there are nearly enough to do that. In almost all cases, I think if you're trying to build a powerful combo deck you'd rather just have the combo pieces in your main where they're easily accessible by a much higher number of cards. But even then, jerks gonna jerk. Anyone who wants to tutor the same combo pieces every game has plenty of opportunity to do so, I don't see wishes moving the needle very far in terms of their capacity to do that.

Or the examples of near-duplicates I listed (Devastating Mastery with Hour of Revelation).

I definitely don't see that as a problem. You're paying 6-8 mana instead of 3 for a symmetrical wipe. Seems almost painfully fair tbh. Are wipes really the sorts of cards you'd be annoyed about someone wishing for?

Wishes will reduce variance in decks that play them and allow them to do many of the things tutors do in ways that are even worse, since they also allow narrow silver bullets unless you get down under 5 (and even then, I expect you'll see a lot of Creeping Corrosion type effects that you wouldn't otherwise see).

I think if you're running narrow hate cards in a 3-5 card wishboard you'll end up with a lot of dead options in most games. There's way too much variance in terms of archetypes to reliably hit the person you wanna hit imo. I do imagine it could happen with bigger wishboards, but I don't see any reason why the general principle of "don't be a dick" wouldn't apply equally to wishboards as it does to mainboards, where the vast majority of people aren't playing armageddon, static orb, and other cards that tend to piss people off.

I'm glad you are fine with it, I'm not.

There's critical mass of tutors *in black*. That's black's major advantage in EDH. Outside of black and green creature tutors, decks have to try pretty hard to find their cards.

Now list all the playable tutors in red decks and tell me how literally every mono red deck doesn't run Burning Wish. Even at 3 wishes it's a very powerful effect.

Burning wish only hitting sorceries is a pretty major restriction tbh. There's not very many combo pieces that are sorceries relative to other card types. I'd assume you're mostly looking at playing answers and maybe one big conditional sorcery bomb like Insurrection or whatever. That's a hell of a lot weaker than the sort of options even a mediocre tutor gives you. Even in mono-red, you can set up a kiki + snoop combo with Goblin Matron, Goblin Recruiter, Moggcatcher, Gamble (probably) and if you're really desperate stuff like Planar Portal, Citanul Flute, etc.

Also I think the idea that "literally ever X deck runs Y" is absurd. Mono red decks run a wide gamut of archetypes and many may not have that much need for sorceries over something efficient and proactive - I doubt many Krenko, Mob Boss decks are itching to play burning wish over any given goblin lord or token producer, for example, and I think he might be the #1 mono-red commander (haven't looked it up but I'm sure he's at least close). Besides that, even if it was mathematically proven to be optimal, I guarantee that many many people wouldn't bother. I hope we can all agree that Burning Wish is far, far weaker than demonic tutor...well, demonic tutor has less than a third of decks using it on EDHrec. I'd be shocked and amazed if burning wish cracked 10%, let alone "literally every mono-red deck".

Btw I think wishes could be argued to increase variance. It makes your deck more consistent insofar as a wish gives you the effect most useful to you at the time, but it also opens the door to a wider variety of cards being played. It kinda comes down to which part of "variance" is important to you. Personally, I don't find moments when you're praying for a particular type of effect and brick for six turns to be the good part of the format, but I do think the variance between different versions of an effect printed on different cards that allow every game to play out differently even when decks are successfully "doing their thing" to be extremely valuable, and I think wishes help that more than harm it.

[RxPhantom]

We seem to be okay with some cards just being incompatible with Commander. Dragonlord Kolaghan will get you nowhere as your commander. Llanowar Sentinel can't find additional copies. Bronze Tablet won't do anything because, ya know, ante. Plenty of cards just don't work in the format. In the case of wishes, there simply isn't a sideboard from which they can pull. Why, then, is there so much fuss about them? They just don't work. Use the ~20,000 cards that do.

[DirkGently]

The question is why those cards are incompatible with the format (and I suppose to what extent - kolaghan is pretty mediocre but he's not a total whiff like Death Wish is). In order for Kolaghan to "work" we'd need to change a rule that I think most people view as extremely important to the play experience of commander. Same for Llanowar Sentinel (barring some llanowar-sentinel-specific rule, which seems unbelievably inelegant for a card no one will play). Allowing ante would create a horrible play experience, obviously.

Is "no wishing" a core part of the play experience of commander?

It's obviously a matter of opinion, but I really don't think so. If wishing were legalized I doubt it'd come up in most games, and even in the most egregious of no-limit-wishboarding circumstances it'd probably be pretty analogous to any random tutor you can already play. Having non-singleton decks would have an incalculably huge impact on deckbuilding across the format, and I don't even want to think about what ante would do.

Now, I do agree to a certain extent that it's not worth whining too much about just a few cards - hence why I think BaaC should stay dead - but that doesn't mean it's not worth discussing. I also think that, in comparison to BaaC, wishing already had a clunky inelegant rule to prevent it from working. Adding a 3-wishes rule is a bit clunky, but it's not really increasing the entropy of the ruleset since we already need a rule regardless. Besides which, with things like lessons, wotc has shown that they have an interest in designing wish-adjacent cards that don't function within the format and which would be fun to experiment with. Am I going to a lose a lot of sleep because we can't use lessons in commander? Nah, not really, but I do think the format would be a bit more interesting if we could.

[onering]

We seem to be okay with some cards just being incompatible with Commander. Dragonlord Kolaghan will get you nowhere as your commander. Llanowar Sentinel can't find additional copies. Bronze Tablet won't do anything because, ya know, ante. Plenty of cards just don't work in the format. In the case of wishes, there simply isn't a sideboard from which they can pull. Why, then, is there so much fuss about them? They just don't work. Use the ~20,000 cards that do.

This is a great point.

I believe two things about the rules. First, that for any change to be considered, it must most likely have a significant positive impact on the format. Second, if an idea is likely to significantly improve the format, it should be considered. The former, because I think the RC is correct that stability has inherent value, and this provides a weight on the scales in favor of no change that must be overcome before a change should be made. The latter, because sometimes change helps the format become better, either by getting rid of problems or adding new features.

I think it's important not to merely discount the positives outside the game effects could bring to the format. There is a significant loss not being able to play wishes, not having lessons function as intended, not being able to dump a bunch of Eldrazi with Spawnsire, etc. There's also a significant downside to allowing those effects it has to be balanced against. When there exists a workable solution to the problem that minimizes the downside and mostly allows the upside, it should be considered. That's what the RC did with Companions.

I think Dirk's 3 wishes suggestion is such a solution, even if it turns out 3 is too low and it goes up to 4 or 5. I'm not certain it's yet reached the point that its enough of a benefit to justify a change, but I've been convinced that it would be an overall benefit, which means that as more outside the game effects get printed, especially whole mechanics like learn/lessons, it will eventually become enough of a benefit to justify the change.

[Legend]

We seem to be okay with some cards just being incompatible with Commander. Dragonlord Kolaghan will get you nowhere as your commander. Llanowar Sentinel can't find additional copies. Bronze Tablet won't do anything because, ya know, ante. Plenty of cards just don't work in the format. In the case of wishes, there simply isn't a sideboard from which they can pull. Why, then, is there so much fuss about them? They just don't work. Use the ~20,000 cards that do.

Already covered in the OP (which nobody wants to read because of my course persona). Cards with effects that are useless in Commander still function in Commander. It's just that their purposes or potentials can't be realized in the context of Commander. This is not the case for Wishing. Instead, a special rule is in place to single out and suppress Wishing which would otherwise work as intended according to WotC's rule for Wishing because Commander is by default and unsanctioned format. Which means, when you Wish, you wouldn't need a sideboard, you'd just need to own cards that are outside of the game.

I still think using sanctioned / unsanctioned would be the easiest and fairest way to handle Wishing because it lets the cards do what they're intended to do and does so in sync with the official Oracle rule. Use the ban hammer to deal with problem cards. That being said, I might not rail against 3 wishes. It's safe and flavorful.

It also wish WoTC would stop making cards with effects that bring cards into the game from outside the game and instead make "wishing" create a copy of a card that you own from outside the game, and can cast whenever.

[DirkGently]

One thing I wanted to say about "stability" - I do think there's value in stability in general, however I do think there's a significant difference between rules changes that require action from players vs those that don't. Banning a card is going to require action from some percentage of the playerbase to update their decks. Banning a commander will require potentially a lot of action (from a smaller percentage). For good reason, those changes are done only rarely and with significant weight.

Legalizing wishes doesn't require any action, though. You can maybe argue that the cEDH crowd might "need" to update to stay optimized, assuming whichever implementation of the rules makes wishes optimal to play in some decks. But to your average commander player, no action is required and most almost certainly won't bother to modify their decks. So I think the barrier for modifying the rules in this case is significantly lower than modifying the rules in a way that does require action on the part of players, at least in terms of general stability. For instance, I think allowing wishes would be far less disruptive than banning a number of high-profile commanders, as has been suggested in other unrelated threads.

[Jemolk]

We seem to be okay with some cards just being incompatible with Commander. Dragonlord Kolaghan will get you nowhere as your commander. Llanowar Sentinel can't find additional copies. Bronze Tablet won't do anything because, ya know, ante. Plenty of cards just don't work in the format. In the case of wishes, there simply isn't a sideboard from which they can pull. Why, then, is there so much fuss about them? They just don't work. Use the ~20,000 cards that do.

I actually have Dragonlord Kolaghan in two separate dragon tribal decks as a mass haste source that can be found with Dragonstorm, now Orb of Dragonkind, and also (in one of the two) Scion of the Ur-Dragon. It's got a mostly dead ability, sure, but a dragon that gives all your dragons haste is pretty solid, and if you ever run into a Shadowborn Apostle or Relentless Rats deck, it could be incredibly painful.

Ante is another story entirely, and probably way too much work to make the cards function. If someone had a good way of doing it, though, I'd certainly be all ears. Old weird cards are my jam. The thing with wishes would be a relatively minor tweak, by contrast, for an effect that a lot of people consider fun.

[onering]

Ante is another story entirely, and probably way too much work to make the cards function. If someone had a good way of doing it, though, I'd certainly be all ears. Old weird cards are my jam. The thing with wishes would be a relatively minor tweak, by contrast, for an effect that a lot of people consider fun.

I want to talk a bit about ante because its interesting but don't want to derail, so I hope I'm doing the spoiler tag correctly

SPOILER

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The simple answer is to have the cards work as normal, and have ante itself work as normal, except ownership never changes. It ends up becoming a mechanic that randomly takes a card from your deck, and can occasionally exchange cards between players for the game, allowing other people's cards to go into zones (like opponent's gy's) that they should never end up. This raises a lot of other problems, from why would anyone agree to ante cards at the start of the game if they aren't running ante cards themselves, to the risk of accidentally shuffling other player's cards into your library, to these cards just having wildly varient levels of power. The other simple solution is to just replace ante with exile and change of ownership with change of control. That still leaves issues with cards going into opponent's gy's and the wild variation in power level. In practice, most of these cards suck, or do nothing if ante is ignored or next to nothing if its replaced with exile. Timmerian Fiends becomes an interesting if overcosted mono black artifact removal option, Jeweled Bird becomes another egg, and Contract From Below is a potentially banworthy spell, a 1 mana 1 sided Wheel.

[RxPhantom]

We seem to be okay with some cards just being incompatible with Commander. Dragonlord Kolaghan will get you nowhere as your commander. Llanowar Sentinel can't find additional copies. Bronze Tablet won't do anything because, ya know, ante. Plenty of cards just don't work in the format. In the case of wishes, there simply isn't a sideboard from which they can pull. Why, then, is there so much fuss about them? They just don't work. Use the ~20,000 cards that do.

Already covered in the OP (which nobody wants to read because of my course persona).

Nobody wants to read it because it's a two year-old wall of text full of dubious logic. Re: your 'coarse persona': I generally don't have a problem with you, but you get aggressive and mean-spirited in when it comes to this topic specifically. You don't know how to respond to valid, legitimate criticism of your position, so you resort to straw men and general condescension. You've even apologized for your behavior in the past, and instead of modifying it, you think it gave you carte blanche to just keep doing it. Interacting with you is a chore.

Legalizing wishes doesn't require any action, though. You can maybe argue that the cEDH crowd might "need" to update to stay optimized, assuming whichever implementation of the rules makes wishes optimal to play in some decks. But to your average commander player, no action is required and most almost certainly won't bother to modify their decks. So I think the barrier for modifying the rules in this case is significantly lower than modifying the rules in a way that does require action on the part of players, at least in terms of general stability. For instance, I think allowing wishes would be far less disruptive than banning a number of high-profile commanders, as has been suggested in other unrelated threads.

Emphasis mine. And how do you know that for sure? You may not bother with them, but it's quite a leap to assume that the majority of players will feel the same way. I can think of several decks that could benefit from conjuring up some silver bullets. Would the format be better off with expanded access to narrow answers and hate with little opportunity cost? I'd say no. Would it be the correct deckbuilding move? Almost definitely.

What would the replacement for rule 11 actually look like? It wouldn't be concise; it would be a paragraph or batch of bullet points that would have to cover number of cards allowed, where you can get them, color identity, whether or not they can be cards that you already have in your 99, etc. I think it would be confusing for some players. In my mind, the myriad rules stipulations that would have to be made, as well as the wider, mostly negative implications for games themselves, make wishes all downside and no benefit.

[DirkGently]

One more small benefit to the 3-card wishboard: you can probably fit 103 cards into your current deck box.

Emphasis mine. And how do you know that for sure? You may not bother with them, but it's quite a leap to assume that the majority of players will feel the same way. I can think of several decks that could benefit from conjuring up some silver bullets. Would the format be better off with expanded access to narrow answers and hate with little opportunity cost? I'd say no. Would it be the correct deckbuilding move? Almost definitely.

What would the replacement for rule 11 actually look like? It wouldn't be concise; it would be a paragraph or batch of bullet points that would have to cover number of cards allowed, where you can get them, color identity, whether or not they can be cards that you already have in your 99, etc. I think it would be confusing for some players. In my mind, the myriad rules stipulations that would have to be made, as well as the wider, mostly negative implications for games themselves, make wishes all downside and no benefit.

It seems like you're stretching my argument to make it say something it doesn't.

You literally are not required to take any action for your deck to remain legal if wishes are allowed. You do need to take action for your deck to remain legal if you're running a card which becomes banned. You personally might feel compelled to use wishes if they're legalized, but there's no requirement to do so.

I also find it irritating that you ask "how do you know that FOR SURE" when I explicitly said "ALMOST certainly". I never claimed certain knowledge because obviously that would be impossible. But based on current card usage trends I think all evidence points towards it being very likely that most players wouldn't use wishes.

Tome of the infinite isn't a real paper magic card and won't become one, so idk what the point of bringing that up is. Do we even know what it does? I'm pretty sure it's not just a wish on a stick. Seems like some hearthstone-adjacent "discover" sort of thing, but honesty who cares.

As far as whether most people will include wishes, I don't think I need to look much further than the 69% (nice) of people on edhrec who built black decks without Demonic Tutor. Pretty sure that qualifies as "most", and demonic tutor is way stronger than any currently-printed wishes, especially if we're talking about a restricted-size wishboard. You may feel the need to use them, but I doubt the playerbase at large feels the same, especially when wishes require some additional legwork compared to a tutor.

Narrow hate cards are just that - narrow. Trying to find a perfect hate card for every archetype is going to require a hell of a lot more than 3 slots. Besides which, I really don't buy the "people will play flashfires" argument when the vast majority aren't playing armageddon because of social stigma. Peer pressure works. People might play answers for some particularly annoying deck at their LGS - Rest in Peace for that Gitrog deck that always pubstomps them - and frankly I think that's fine.

As far as the rule:

"You may include as part of your deck a sideboard of up to 3 cards which are considered "outside the game" for cards that reference this zone. They follow the same restrictions as if they were in your deck."

I really don't think it's that hard to grok. Besides which, it's basically optional - if you don't intend to use wishes, you don't need to worry about it.

[RxPhantom]

Emphasis mine. And how do you know that for sure? You may not bother with them, but it's quite a leap to assume that the majority of players will feel the same way. I can think of several decks that could benefit from conjuring up some silver bullets. Would the format be better off with expanded access to narrow answers and hate with little opportunity cost? I'd say no. Would it be the correct deckbuilding move? Almost definitely.

What would the replacement for rule 11 actually look like? It wouldn't be concise; it would be a paragraph or batch of bullet points that would have to cover number of cards allowed, where you can get them, color identity, whether or not they can be cards that you already have in your 99, etc. I think it would be confusing for some players. In my mind, the myriad rules stipulations that would have to be made, as well as the wider, mostly negative implications for games themselves, make wishes all downside and no benefit.

It seems like you're stretching my argument to make it say something it doesn't.

You literally are not required to take any action for your deck to remain legal if wishes are allowed. You do need to take action for your deck to remain legal if you're running a card which becomes banned. You personally might feel compelled to use wishes if they're legalized, but there's no requirement to do so.

Tome of the infinite isn't a real paper magic card and won't become one, so idk what the point of bringing that up is. Do we even know what it does? I'm pretty sure it's not just a wish on a stick. Seems like some hearthstone-adjacent "discover" sort of thing, but honesty who cares.

As far as whether most people will include wishes, I don't think I need to look much further than the 69% (nice) of people on edhrec who built black decks without Demonic Tutor. Pretty sure that qualifies as "most", and demonic tutor is way stronger than any currently-printed wishes, especially if we're talking about a restricted-size wishboard. You may feel the need to use them, but I doubt the playerbase at large feels the same, especially when wishes require some additional legwork compared to a tutor.

Narrow hate cards are just that - narrow. Trying to find a perfect hate card for every archetype is going to require a hell of a lot more than 3 slots. Besides which, I really don't buy the "people will play flashfires" argument when the vast majority aren't playing armageddon because of social stigma. Peer pressure works. People might play answers for some particularly annoying deck at their LGS - Rest in Peace for that Gitrog deck that always pubstomps them - and frankly I think that's fine.

As far as the rule:

"You may include as part of your deck a sideboard of up to 3 cards which are considered "outside the game" for cards that reference this zone. They follow the same restrictions as if they were in your deck."

I really don't think it's that hard to grok. Besides which, it's basically optional - if you don't intend to use wishes, you don't need to worry about it.

Any distortion was unintentional. I brought up Tome because conjuring seems to occupy a similar space, insofar as it acting as a placeholder for multiple other cards. They feel very wish-adjacent. Demonic Tutor* isn't a fair comparison either when the cheapest printing is *checks notes* $35. Also, come on with that Gitrog pubstomp argument. If the heroic dismantling of pubstompers was the end of their usefulness, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Players should be running more grave hate anyway, but that's another matter.

You're correct that it would require nothing from players who don't want to use wishes, but it would require those players to accept their use by others, and all the potential degeneracy and anti-climactic lines of play that come with them. For many, many reasons previously discussed in this thread, I don't want to play them, and I don't want them played against me.

* lol at 69% (nice)

EDIT: When I bolded the word 'you' in my original reply to you, I didn't mean to look as aggressive as it did, so I edited it. I also needed to share that with everyone, apparently.

[pokken]

Emphasis mine. And how do you know that for sure? You may not bother with them, but it's quite a leap to assume that the majority of players will feel the same way. I can think of several decks that could benefit from conjuring up some silver bullets. Would the format be better off with expanded access to narrow answers and hate with little opportunity cost? I'd say no. Would it be the correct deckbuilding move? Almost definitely.

Just for your reference, there are two anecdotal cases in the forum of people who have allowed 3 card wishboards and "no one uses them because they suck."

While I think they are probably not thinking about it deeply enough and just opting not to deal with complexity or risk making their decks not work outside of their meta, I take that as a sign that it's going to be borderline impossible to pick a number that makes it worth playing but not too good.

That said I'm obviously on your side of the fence in the "if it ain't broke" area

[onering]

Emphasis mine. And how do you know that for sure? You may not bother with them, but it's quite a leap to assume that the majority of players will feel the same way. I can think of several decks that could benefit from conjuring up some silver bullets. Would the format be better off with expanded access to narrow answers and hate with little opportunity cost? I'd say no. Would it be the correct deckbuilding move? Almost definitely.

Just for your reference, there are two anecdotal cases in the forum of people who have allowed 3 card wishboards and "no one uses them because they suck."

While I think they are probably not thinking about it deeply enough and just opting not to deal with complexity or risk making their decks not work outside of their meta, I take that as a sign that it's going to be borderline impossible to pick a number that makes it worth playing but not too good.

That said I'm obviously on your side of the fence in the "if it ain't broke" area

I personally feel that 4-5 is probably a better number, because you want one generically useful card in there so the wish is never just dead, so 4 wishes would translate into 3 interesting cards and one failsafe. I don't think its impossible to find a number that makes them worth playing but not too good. I think its impossible to find a number that makes wishes worth playing in any given deck without them being too good, but finding a number where they'll be worthwhile for people who really want to wish and for certain decks is much easier. Mastermind's Acquisition has a much lower ceiling to be worth it, since its fail state is a Diabolic Tutor, which is overpriced, but a Diabolic Tutor that can grab one of a handful of narrow answers is much better. Given how few learn spells are actually decent (same for lessons) a 4 wishes or even 3 wishes board would be enough to make Learn/Lessons workable in commander. I think it would be impossible or near so to find a number that works if your goal is to make wishes viable in strong casual metas without becoming a problem, but if your goal is to make wishes a fun thing for 50% commander there won't be an issue.

[pokken]

I personally feel that 4-5 is probably a better number, because you want one generically useful card in there so the wish is never just dead, so 4 wishes would translate into 3 interesting cards and one failsafe. I don't think its impossible to find a number that makes them worth playing but not too good. I think its impossible to find a number that makes wishes worth playing in any given deck without them being too good, but finding a number where they'll be worthwhile for people who really want to wish and for certain decks is much easier. Mastermind's Acquisition has a much lower ceiling to be worth it, since its fail state is a Diabolic Tutor, which is overpriced, but a Diabolic Tutor that can grab one of a handful of narrow answers is much better. Given how few learn spells are actually decent (same for lessons) a 4 wishes or even 3 wishes board would be enough to make Learn/Lessons workable in commander. I think it would be impossible or near so to find a number that works if your goal is to make wishes viable in strong casual metas without becoming a problem, but if your goal is to make wishes a fun thing for 50% commander there won't be an issue.

And this argument is literally why I have no interest in it. Once you get 3 people will whine it's not good enough and we'll get 4 or 5 and then it'll be the damn default.

I promise you wishes will become borderline automatic right around 5. And that's the awful problem with them.

wishboard size...
1. trash
2. trash
3. meh
4. hmm
5. every deck in colors for burning, living, glittering or cunning wish has a wishboard (but multicolored decks can't play all of them obviously)
6. every deck thinks about wishes
7. every deck has wishes

The wishboard idea does heavily constrain still by preventing people in 5c decks from just jamming all the wishes and I appreciate that. But damn you are going to see a ton of glittering/living/burning.

Which brings me to yet another anti-wish point which is that creating more autoincludes is lame

[Legend]

Nobody wants to read it because it's a two year-old wall of text full of dubious logic.

Fair enough. I have been considering making it considerably shorter and more concise. There's a great deal of good material to draw from in this thread after all. Though, as I've stated before, if the logic is dubious, it would've been debunked two years ago in spite of its jaggedness.

You don't know how to respond to valid, legitimate criticism of your position, so you resort to straw men and general condescension.

Correction: I occasionally use hyperbole to mock arguments against wishing in Commander that were already straw men in order to expose that they are indeed straw men. I have never presented such an argument of my own design. Nonetheless, I hear you and will limit the practice. Hey, for what it's worth, I'm not trying to be rude here. For that matter, I never am trying. Well, rarely.

Re: your 'coarse persona': I generally don't have a problem with you, but you get aggressive and mean-spirited in when it comes to this topic specifically.

Personally, I find the smarmy verbosity that's so common in this thread more obnoxious than snarky brevity, but I generally don't speak of it because I prefer to critique substance instead of style.

Interacting with you is a chore.

You know what's a real chore? Reading the same old fallacious arguments against WISHING for years on end. There isn't a single argument against WISHING in this thread that isn't already debunked in the OP. And I lifted those arguments from forum debates that are 5-15 years old.

[pokken]

You know what's a real chore? Reading the same old fallacious arguments against WISHING for years on end. There isn't a single argument against WISHING in this thread that isn't already debunked in the OP.

What's more confusing to me is how you still don't really understand what a fallacy is after having it explained so many times.

You can't debunk opinions.

[Hermes_]

so, I've taken the step of asking on the RC discord about "wishboards" and limiting them to say 3-5 cards. If anyone from the RC or CAG responds, I'll post it.


EDIT:
Sheldon — Today at 2:11 PM
The size of the wishboard is not the issue. ( this was in response to Hermes_ — Today at 2:00 PM
With more and more cards getting printed that allows you to bring in more cards from outside the game, what about bringing back a limited wishboard like it's limited to say 3-5 cards?")

Sheldon — Today at 2:13 PM
Wishboards are starting to be like hybrid. When there's a new argument, we'll be happy to consider it.

[onering]

You know what's a real chore? Reading the same old fallacious arguments against WISHING for years on end. There isn't a single argument against WISHING in this thread that isn't already debunked in the OP.

What's more confusing to me is how you still don't really understand what a fallacy is after having it explained so many times.

You can't debunk opinions.

Hell, he hasn't debunked anything. He's made few actual points, and even then he confuses having a point with debunking other, equally legitimate points he disagrees with. His thinking is simplistic, and he gets frustrated when other people give longer, more thoughtful takes. He thinks someone disagreeing with him is a fallacy. His pov is entirely self centered, and he goes straight to attacking people or wishing them harm (where's his warning for wishing he could torture other posters to death?). He can't even be respectful to ideas that meet him halfway on what he wants. It's either agree with him fully, or you're an idiot, an attitude that's a clear sign of a stunted mind.

I mean, just look at the first page of this thread. There's been good discussion here, but that's been in spite of the OP. The whole shebang started off with him just dismissing any counterargument and being disrespectful to anyone who didn't see the "brilliance" of his screed, even going so far as to change what he wrote and then point a poster who had found a flaw in his original logic back to the original (now modified) post so he could act like he already answered the point. Its insane.

Warning issued for Flaming - benjameenbear

[pokken]

Sheldon — Today at 2:11 PM
The size of the wishboard is not the issue. ( this was in response to Hermes_ — Today at 2:00 PM
With more and more cards getting printed that allows you to bring in more cards from outside the game, what about bringing back a limited wishboard like it's limited to say 3-5 cards?")

Sheldon — Today at 2:13 PM
Wishboards are starting to be like hybrid. When there's a new argument, we'll be happy to consider it.

I'd love to hear what the actual reason is then - obviously I'm on the side against for non-board-size-related reasons. My reasons are, collected

* Don't like adding more things that search for specific cards, especially as they add more of them to the format (and the associated increase in consistency that's available)
* Don't like adding potentially more cards required than the 100
* Don't like the idea of silver bullets hosing people
* Don't like the idea of people being able to avoid playing overcosted bombs in their decks by sideboarding them and wishing for them (e.g. Burning Wish for Insurrection)
* Don't like the finance implications of adding a bunch of new potential autoincludes through intentional rules changes (very minor obviously)
* Don't like idea of enabling karn-mycosynth shenanigans (and whatever worse nonsense gets printed, Fae of Wishes // Granted was pretty damned awful)
* Don't like the rules clunkiness of a sideboard that isn't a sideboard
* Reaaaaally don't like the idea of it encouraging the concept of sideboarding in commander.

I'm sure there are some more but those are the main ones for me.

[onering]

I personally feel that 4-5 is probably a better number, because you want one generically useful card in there so the wish is never just dead, so 4 wishes would translate into 3 interesting cards and one failsafe. I don't think its impossible to find a number that makes them worth playing but not too good. I think its impossible to find a number that makes wishes worth playing in any given deck without them being too good, but finding a number where they'll be worthwhile for people who really want to wish and for certain decks is much easier. Mastermind's Acquisition has a much lower ceiling to be worth it, since its fail state is a Diabolic Tutor, which is overpriced, but a Diabolic Tutor that can grab one of a handful of narrow answers is much better. Given how few learn spells are actually decent (same for lessons) a 4 wishes or even 3 wishes board would be enough to make Learn/Lessons workable in commander. I think it would be impossible or near so to find a number that works if your goal is to make wishes viable in strong casual metas without becoming a problem, but if your goal is to make wishes a fun thing for 50% commander there won't be an issue.

And this argument is literally why I have no interest in it. Once you get 3 people will whine it's not good enough and we'll get 4 or 5 and then it'll be the damn default.

I promise you wishes will become borderline automatic right around 5. And that's the awful problem with them.

wishboard size...
1. trash
2. trash
3. meh
4. hmm
5. every deck in colors for burning, living, glittering or cunning wish has a wishboard (but multicolored decks can't play all of them obviously)
6. every deck thinks about wishes
7. every deck has wishes

The wishboard idea does heavily constrain still by preventing people in 5c decks from just jamming all the wishes and I appreciate that. But damn you are going to see a ton of glittering/living/burning.

Which brings me to yet another anti-wish point which is that creating more autoincludes is lame

Even your judgement of the sizes of wish boards is an argument to try something between 3-5, and against the idea that finding a balance would be nigh impossible. Meh is a fine place to be if your looking just to create a potentially fun but low-mid power new option, most decks having a wish board but it being not an auto include is fine if you want it to be viable in higher power casual without being dominant, and 4 wishes looks like its a sweet spot where people keep it in mind when deckbuilding but it often doesn't make the cut. Intriguing but only sometimes relevant would be an absolute win. Again, this is going off your estimation of each size. You even touch on a pro wish board point, that there would be diminishing returns in multicolor decks as running multiple wishes, especially ones that look for different things, would kind of suck, so its really about having 1-2 acting as modal spells, with maybe 2 cards that either could get then 1-3 cards only one or the other could get. This would be a rare benefit to mono or 2 color decks, or at least a rare area where adding more colors doesn't automatically make a deck better at something.

[pokken]

Even your judgement of the sizes of wish boards is an argument to try something between 3-5, and against the idea that finding a balance would be nigh impossible. Meh is a fine place to be if your looking just to create a potentially fun but low-mid power new option, most decks having a wish board but it being not an auto include is fine if you want it to be viable in higher power casual without being dominant, and 4 wishes looks like its a sweet spot where people keep it in mind when deckbuilding but it often doesn't make the cut. Intriguing but only sometimes relevant would be an absolute win. Again, this is going off your estimation of each size.

And I would 100% try it in a small playgroup and if anyone ever said hey my deck has a 3 card wishboard I would be cool with trying it.

I just think it's too damn risky at scale.

You even touch on a pro wish board point, that there would be diminishing returns in multicolor decks as running multiple wishes, especially ones that look for different things, would kind of suck, so its really about having 1-2 acting as modal spells, with maybe 2 cards that either could get then 1-3 cards only one or the other could get. This would be a rare benefit to mono or 2 color decks, or at least a rare area where adding more colors doesn't automatically make a deck better at something.

Multicolor decks are automatically better by having more selection of wish targets for the wishes they elect to play

[tstorm823]

EDIT:
Sheldon — Today at 2:11 PM
The size of the wishboard is not the issue. ( this was in response to Hermes_ — Today at 2:00 PM
With more and more cards getting printed that allows you to bring in more cards from outside the game, what about bringing back a limited wishboard like it's limited to say 3-5 cards?")

Sheldon — Today at 2:13 PM
Wishboards are starting to be like hybrid. When there's a new argument, we'll be happy to consider it.

I mean, there is a new argument in the question you presented. Wizards is using that space aggressively, which I personally like a lot. Pulling from a wish board is, I think, a far more elegant mechanic in paper than tutors, especially really specific tutors.

[RxPhantom]

so, I've taken the step of asking on the RC discord about "wishboards" and limiting them to say 3-5 cards. If anyone from the RC or CAG responds, I'll post it.


EDIT:
Sheldon — Today at 2:11 PM
The size of the wishboard is not the issue. ( this was in response to Hermes_ — Today at 2:00 PM
With more and more cards getting printed that allows you to bring in more cards from outside the game, what about bringing back a limited wishboard like it's limited to say 3-5 cards?")

Sheldon — Today at 2:13 PM
Wishboards are starting to be like hybrid. When there's a new argument, we'll be happy to consider it.

What a relief. I've been critical of the RC in the past, but considering what WotC's thrown at them lately (companions, Grist, etc.), I think they've done a good job and shown sound judgment.

Also, as an additional logistical argument against wishes in Commander, one would have to buy potentially excessive quantities of sleeves for these 103-107 card decks since they're generally sold in 80 or 100 per package. Or they could sleeve them as they wish for them, which sounds super tedious.

[Hermes_]

here's a comment from toby: Toby
no new insights. We have no interest in sideboards. Either rule 11 is there or it isn't. I'd actually be fine with it not being there, but I suspect it would cause quite a bit of unhappiness (given that that's what happened before we had it in there)