[MCD] Wishes

[Sharpened]

...when you sit down to play a game of a specified format, you play by the sanctioned rules, unless otherwise specified.

Incorrect. The reverse is true. You might even say, "especially" in Commander.

What sanctioned rules do you not play by when you sit down to play a specified "regular format" (regular format being Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pioneer, etc)?
What sanctioned rules (other than wishing) do you not play by, without specifying in a rule 0 conversation, when you sit down to play Commander?

[tstorm823]

Incorrect. The reverse is true. You might even say, "especially" in Commander. The rules of any given format, though "sanctioned", do not make a game, match, or tournament "sanctioned".

So you're saying that if you sat down with a friend to play Magic with your standard decks against one another, and then cast Wish, you'd pull out your binder to pick from because the game wasn't sanctioned?

[DirkGently]

LOL okay sir. I am not saying that wishes present the ability to play more than 100 cards. My point was that you turn 3 marginal slots into a wish and now you have gained two slots. 100 cards is a restriction many of us would do without, so gaining 2 slots is pretty enticing.

That sounds like the same argument to me, just replacing "cards" with "slots".

If you're enticed, then by all means you should play them if they're legalized. I suspect you'll be in the minority, but people getting to play what they like is sort of the point of TCGs.

All upside is not exciting. Golos is not exciting. Sol Ring is not exciting. All upside skews commander.

Those things are not all upside either. They're really good (well, sol ring is absurdly good, Golos is just decent by comparison) but they are not all upside in the way that Lutri would have been. The difference between "really really good" and "pure upside" is a very significant one. I don't think we can progress the conversation without you understanding the fundamental difference between those things.

Wishes do not take a slot in your deck. They create two new slots.
And if your argument against wishes being ubiquitous is that Demonic Tutor is sometimes a bad draw, you can consider this conversation over. I am done with it. Demonic Tutor is one of the most powerful cards in the game. Sometimes Gaea's Cradle is a bad draw too.

My point, as before, is that no matter how good the card is - even demonic tutor, even gaea's cradle, even sol ring, even black lotus - all those cards do have a cost to putting them in your deck because they will always be replacing some other card that might be better in some circumstances, however narrow. Lutri as companion has no cost which is why it needed to be banned.

If you want to say "wishes would be too good" then fine, we can argue over that, but "wishes are pure upside" is objectively false.

Not even sure what this is about. I would laugh so hard if someone had a wishboard without wishes in their deck. I supposed you could always cast other people wishes off of a Chaos Wand so maybe it would come up, but it's just hilarious.

Okay, glad we don't have to argue over that one.

And now we return to taxes - 2 mana is just not that bad. Fae of Wishes // Granted would probably not get played but that's like comparing Demonic and Diabolic Tutors.

Demonic tutor can replace itself with 98 different cards, all of which were good enough to be in your deck. If we're talking 3-card wishboards, the power level of burning/living wish is not even close. I mean, Eladamri's Call is already stronger than living wish, let alone demonic tutor. Those type restrictions matter.

I'm not saying it wouldn't get played, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't fall in line with the power level of medium-strength tutors we already have access to.

Okay let's focus on this for a second. If someone doesn't put Sol Ring in their deck, would you say it is a mistake? 99% of the time it is.

"Mistakes" are not a meaningful concept in casual deck construction because there is no defined goal towards which the decision might be judged. If a goal exists, it's just to make a deck the builder likes. If they don't like sol ring, then I'd say it would be a mistake to include it, not a mistake to leave it out.

It will likely make their deck lower powered, but so does every decision that isn't "build a tiered cEDH deck". Every commander deck is built on a mountain of "mistakes". Whether or not to play wishes is hardly making a significant difference to the pile.

Now, I would argue that Mana Crypt should also be an auto-include, but it isn't because of the price tag.

Are you defining "auto-include" as "card that everyone includes" or "card that everyone SHOULD include for maximum power"?

Because if it's the latter, then availability/price is irrelevant. And if it's the former, then the whole concept of auto-includes are %$#%$#% because, sans sol ring, nothing is being played even by the majority, let alone everyone.

Now, unless they start reprinting wishes like crazy, what do you think would happen to the price of wishes if they were supported in Commander? It will present another feels bad situation where you can't play obviously powerful cards in every deck even though really you should.

They've already been printed a decent amount so I doubt they'd go that nuts. Maybe like $30 but who knows. Again, I think the power level is pretty medium (especially with 3 wishes) so it's no worse that, say, Sylvan Tutor being kinda pricey, which I don't think anyone is losing too much sleep over.

Just because a card is must-play doesn't mean people actually play it. I am betting a lot of people would not have played Lutri, the Spellchaser because of price and because of other reasons.

That is probably true.

The issue is the weird pressure to make people feel like they have to play cards. Doesn't mean play of Living Wish would be 100% of green decks. The issue is that 99% of the time, the right thing to do is to play a wish in your deck. And that's weird.

Idk where you're getting this weird pressure from, exactly. I've never felt any weird pressure. You got an ear infection maybe?

I can pretty much guarantee that it wouldn't be correct "99% of the time", and more than playing any number of other medium-strength tutors is correct (and I should put "correct" in quotes because it doesn't really even mean anything in this context). Being able to hit just 3 targets is so much weaker than hitting ~30 creatures in your deck with a normal tutor. There's a bit of advantage insofar as you can afford diverse effects since you don't need redundancy like you generally do in the 99. But we're probably looking at a factor of 10 in terms of raw options, so that diversity doesn't even begin to cover it.

It's been a while since anyone has mentioned it, but at least one person tested and said that 3-card wishes generally weren't even worth playing, let alone an "auto-include".

Tutors take up slots in your deck. Wishes create slots in your deck. I would play Burning Wish over Vampiric Tutor.

Then you'd be making a mistake. "Number of slots" is nearly irrelevant as a metric, and nowhere near as important as the massively improved options vamp tutor provides compared to a 3-card wish, even ignoring the type restrictions.

I'm trying to think whether burning wish would be worth playing in my Kaervek. Despite the pretty major ramp in that deck, I don't really think so. The diversity of effects available as a sorcery - from effects I actually want - is pretty low. I'd much rather run some crappy Diabolic Tutor so I could find a much wider array of proactive options, like ramp and equipment.

you like coming back to the added cost. In a format with as much ramp as commander, I feel like you overvalue the added cost. To me this is like saying 'don't play Craterhoof Behemoth because sometimes it will be stuck in your hand, instead play Overrun.' The value of wishes greatly outweighs the added cost.

The difference in effect between craterhoof and overrun (setting aside that it's much easier to cheat in hoof) is huge. Yes, it can get stuck in hand and that is a downside of the card, but the upside of turning 10 1/1s into board-wide lethal through blockers, instead of killing maybe 1 person, is worth that risk. The advantage of running burning wish or whatever over whichever sorcery you would have included instead is a lot less impressive. Flexibility is valuable, yes, but it's not THAT valuable. Whether it's worth it depends on what other options you put in there, and how often they're actually worth picking.

Also, you play one wish with a 3 card wishboard. So you pick the best one. Nobody is playing Fae of Wishes with a 3 card wishboard. In that sense, I think you have succeeded in making something more interesting than a bigger wishboard.

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

yes because flexibility is worth a lot. Why do you think commands and charms are so popular?

And are commands and charms so powerful that they need a special rule to functionally ban them?

In this case Down is so worthless is commander that the answer is no. But Eternal Witness is played more than Regrowth in my experience. A better comparison would be Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary, and yes, I think this is 100% better than regrowth.

Ewit doesn't offer more flexibility, it offers more value, both in terms of being a body on board and because many effects can manipulate creatures that can't manipulate sorceries (flicker, reanimation, etc).

Bala ged recovery is a pretty solid example though. I think it's roughly comparable in strength to regrowth, at least in this format. Having a free land is a really really useful secondary mode because it's useful at nearly the polar opposite time when regrowth is useful. It lets you keep hands that otherwise would be unkeepable, which otherwise is a significant downside of nearly every spell. For that amazing flexibility, though, it's still only a premium of 1 mana on the front face. The wishes have a premium of at least two, and none of them can act as a land as efficiently as the MDFC lands - you can't keep a 1 lander with a wish. So the flexibility does have to be really valuable to justify that tax. I think some decks could definitely justify it, and it might even be pretty strong, but it's definitely not an auto-include.

You don't think they're powerful but you are willing to spend hours a day arguing that they should be in commander.......

My goal isn't to ram my pet cards into the format. My goal is to make the ruleset better. I don't give a crap how powerful the cards are or whether I would personally play them. Rules shouldn't be used in place of a banlist, and cards should function as intended unless there's a damn good reason.

okay enjoy your playgroup where nobody plays stax or mld, but some of us encounter this regularly and have no issues with it.

Thanks, I will.

If you have no issues with MLD, idk why this would be such a problem. Especially with just 3 targets, putting in boil seems like a really questionable choice even aside from jerkishness, tbh.

First, Boil hits dual lands, shocklands, etc. Second, cEDH plays more tutors than any format. This is the format that plays Grim Tutor. So ya, I am sure that people would make use of wishboards.

It's definitely possible and it'd be interesting to see what happens. But I also don't think it should have any impact on how commander at large is managed.

And now we come to the part of your post I most wanted to address. Did you go back months to cherry pick this quote of mine from another thread? How long did you search for it?

Between 30 seconds and a minute. I was pretty sure you were on that side of the argument so I just hit control F for your name a couple times and that was the first thing I found.

Also, you miss my point. I want BaaC to come back for 2 reasons. Sure, I want to play braids. But mainly, I want the RC to feel more at ease banning problematic commanders like Golos and Kinnan. They feel bad banning cards, and I think BaaC is a good halfway measure so that people can still play with their pet cards, just not as commanders. I know this doesn't satisfy many people, but I think it is better than having ubiquitously strong commanders.

And how is 3-wishes not a halfway measure so people can play with their pet cards, just not digging through binders?

So ya, you want to play your wishes

Meh. I have some interest but it's not my driving motive. Mostly I just prefer the ruleset to be less ugly.

and I don't see the relation to BaaC, except you think I want 4 cards unbanned and you want 10x more, which is not something I care about, and also a completely fundamentally different kind of argument from any of the ones I have made against wishes.

You're saying "BaaC will let people play the cards they want to play, just in a limited capacity, and there is value in letting people play the cards they want to play". I'm saying "3 wishes will let people play the cards they want to play, just in a limited capacity, and there is value in letting people play the cards they want to play." It's pretty damn parallel.

That said, I think "people should get to play some specific number of favorite cards" is a pretty weak argument overall. But I do find it very hypocritical that you argue it when it related to baac but ignore it when it comes to wishing.

[Dunharrow]

All upside is not exciting. Golos is not exciting. Sol Ring is not exciting. All upside skews commander.

Those things are not all upside either. They're really good (well, sol ring is absurdly good, Golos is just decent by comparison) but they are not all upside in the way that Lutri would have been. The difference between "really really good" and "pure upside" is a very significant one. I don't think we can progress the conversation without you understanding the fundamental difference between those things.

Okay, I understand how you differentiate them. Now that we have moved past the nomenclature, my opinion still stands. Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Ancient Tomb... these are cards with such negligible downsides that they should be in every deck.

Okay let's focus on this for a second. If someone doesn't put Sol Ring in their deck, would you say it is a mistake? 99% of the time it is.

"Mistakes" are not a meaningful concept in casual deck construction because there is no defined goal towards which the decision might be judged. If a goal exists, it's just to make a deck the builder likes. If they don't like sol ring, then I'd say it would be a mistake to include it, not a mistake to leave it out.

It will likely make their deck lower powered, but so does every decision that isn't "build a tiered cEDH deck". Every commander deck is built on a mountain of "mistakes". Whether or not to play wishes is hardly making a significant difference to the pile.

Now, I would argue that Mana Crypt should also be an auto-include, but it isn't because of the price tag.

Are you defining "auto-include" as "card that everyone includes" or "card that everyone SHOULD include for maximum power"?

Because if it's the latter, then availability/price is irrelevant. And if it's the former, then the whole concept of auto-includes are %$#%$#% because, sans sol ring, nothing is being played even by the majority, let alone everyone.

Your commitment to your point is impressive, if not confusing.
Sol Ring should be in every commander deck. Sure, people can choose not to play it. Maybe they banned it in their playgroup. Maybe they forgot to include it in their list. Maybe their group doesn't allow cards over 1$. My point is, it should be in every deck, assuming the goal of the deck is to win games. Even if a person is not competitive, that is generally the goal, and Sol Ring helps that goal.
Sol Ring is comparatively cheap to other fast mana. And that is the reason why it is played way more.
Now, I am not so against wishes as to try to convince people that they would be ubiquitous.
But, I do think they would be considered for most decks, and that is because they are incredibly strong in a singleton format. Flexibility is very powerful. What would you play in a GW deck - Sylvan Reclamation or Return to Dust? And please, don't cherry pick about the slight differences between the cards. Just give you answer - which would you play? Most people would go for the more flexible card.
Wishes offer a ton of flexibility, and because of that, should be considered.
I will discuss later how they compare to tutors in this regard.

Wishes do not take a slot in your deck. They create two new slots.
And if your argument against wishes being ubiquitous is that Demonic Tutor is sometimes a bad draw, you can consider this conversation over. I am done with it. Demonic Tutor is one of the most powerful cards in the game. Sometimes Gaea's Cradle is a bad draw too.

My point, as before, is that no matter how good the card is - even demonic tutor, even gaea's cradle, even sol ring, even black lotus - all those cards do have a cost to putting them in your deck because they will always be replacing some other card that might be better in some circumstances, however narrow. Lutri as companion has no cost which is why it needed to be banned.

If you want to say "wishes would be too good" then fine, we can argue over that, but "wishes are pure upside" is objectively false.

Mr. Semantics at it again. Sorry, I meant to say that Wishes are super close to being pure upside. Yes, you are correct, they aren't free. I didn't know I had to spell that out.

And now we return to taxes - 2 mana is just not that bad. Fae of Wishes // Granted would probably not get played but that's like comparing Demonic and Diabolic Tutors.

Demonic tutor can replace itself with 98 different cards, all of which were good enough to be in your deck. If we're talking 3-card wishboards, the power level of burning/living wish is not even close. I mean, Eladamri's Call is already stronger than living wish, let alone demonic tutor. Those type restrictions matter.

I'm not saying it wouldn't get played, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't fall in line with the power level of medium-strength tutors we already have access to.

okay, tutors - I play Demonic Tutor in a deck. It is a card that has immense flexibility. However, it can only tutor cards that are in your deck. That means that you need to also put your GY hate, your storm hate, you narrow answers, etc, into your deck.
Wishes have the advantage of not eating up additional spots in your deck.
I don't think Wishes will replace Tutors. I hope that is clear.
But if I look at Living Wish - I could see that replacing Scavenging Ooze in many of my green decks. I hate drawing scooze when it is useless.
Wishes are not replacing tutors, they are replacing cards in your deck that are sometimes dead. That's the upside. I would replace Scavenging ooze, reclamation sage and something like Vizier of the Menagerie with Living Wish.
That's the advantage. You avoid dead draws for a small tax.
So that's my problem A - most decks would be advantaged by playing wishes, and it feels wrong to avoid them.

I have to run out now, but I feel like I've said my piece.

[Mookie]

Wishes are not replacing tutors, they are replacing cards in your deck that are sometimes dead. That's the upside.

This. Wishes enable you to run situational cards without the downside of drawing them when they're not useful. There are a lot of cards that I've considered running for my decks - Pithing Needle, Reap, Carpet of Flowers, Grand Abolisher, etc. - that I end up passing on because I'm concerned that they will be dead draws in a significant percentage of games. If they go in the wishboard, that's no longer a concern - the opportunity cost for putting a card in a wishboard is significantly lower than the cost of putting a card in the maindeck. And, as previously mentioned, if all the situational cards in a wishboard are dead, you can always default to whatever value card you've slotted in. The only way to make the opportunity cost for putting a narrow card in the wishboard too high is to limit the number of slots to an extremely small number.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

MY GOD, this is the most semantic thread I've read in months. Keep it up, gentlemen!


Here's my thoughts, anyway:

If you're afraid of wishes becoming legal, go grab some now. They're pennies on the dollar now compared to what they'd (theoretically) cost after the demise of rule 11. There, no more fear of being a have-not and it only ran you >20 USD and takes up 1/8 inch of space to successfully hedge. You don't even have to play them if you don't want to, but you could make some easy money.

If you're fighting the uphill battle against rule 11, create a wish-legal online league together (after a year of pandemic and online play, I'm sure this is trivial to achieve) and test a few different wishboard rule sets. We're all data fiends here and conclusions are better when they're not supported by sandy foundations of speculation.

I know I'd play in wish league just to try it (if my computer wasn't a circa 2015 toaster laptop with a bum mic, that is).

Edit: so this is the first time I've used a sticker on this site and I find it really creepy how they jiggle like that.

[pokken]

f you're afraid of wishes becoming legal, go grab some now. They're pennies on the dollar now compared to what they'd (theoretically) cost after the demise of rule 1

Done I have 4+ of all of them just in case this insanity somehow gets unleashed.

[Dunharrow]

An interesting thing is on Arena, they limited sideboards in Best of 1 games to 7 cards. 15 cards was too powerful for Karn, Learn, Fae of Wishes, etc.
There is merit to limiting the wishboard to 3 cards.
If it was 15 cards you would see a lot of Boils.

But this does not change the fact that you can cut down on 2-3 narrow cards that would be dead draws and make them accessible via wish, and that this is such a strong deckbuilding advantage that most deck would benefit from it.
Take your random Relic of Progenitus out of your deck. Put Karn. Add wishboard of Cursed Totem, Relic of Progenitus, and what? Mycosynthe Lattice? Shadowspear ? I don't care, something generically good in your deck.

It's very powerful and the extra mana investment is definitely worth it.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

f you're afraid of wishes becoming legal, go grab some now. They're pennies on the dollar now compared to what they'd (theoretically) cost after the demise of rule 1

Done I have 4+ of all of them just in case this insanity somehow gets unleashed.

I'm looking at picking some up now and most are >50 cents. Literally the only valuable one is Cunning Wish, and that's if you consider the price of a fastfood combo meal "valuable".

I honestly don't think they're all that scary. Wish is easily the best (that says something IMO), Golden and Death Wish are unplayably bad, Burning, living, and cunning are medium, and glittering is somewhere in there. Fae of Wishes // Granted is probably second best because of the reusability and generic fetch, but blue has better ways to spend 6 mana a pop too.

I still think 100 cards is more than enough to play everything I would ever need, but so long as people aren't going binder-diving for 10+ minutes, IDGAF. (I'd maybe play Living Wish in Selvala cEDH to trim some hate mainboard, but maybe collector ouphe is ass when it costs 4. I imagine it might be. 2 mana is a lot on turn 2-4 for a do-nothing tutor. I recently cut Sylvan Tutor for being slow/bad, so there's that. I really wanted it to work too, but sorcery speed is a dealbreaker, man. Worldly can be played in your upkeep to use your natural draw, sylvan says play a big guy or wait.)

Anyway, don't @ me, I ain't in this fight like some of you fine folk. I'm probably wrong somehow, one way or another. I ain't for, I ain't against, I just believe in hedging bets is all.

[pokken]

Living Wish is the absolute strongest in my opinion - the flexibility is just huge. Almost every creature combo has alternate pieces you can play and being able to serve as a Sylvan Scrying in a pinch is just too good.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Living Wish is the absolute strongest in my opinion - the flexibility is just huge. Almost every creature combo has alternate pieces you can play and being able to serve as a Sylvan Scrying in a pinch is just too good.

I think Wish is way better. It gets any type of thing,
doesn't commit you to a choice when you cast it, and has no vulerability to discard effects. Living can be no better than second best up against that.

[Ulka]

An interesting thing is on Arena, they limited sideboards in Best of 1 games to 7 cards. 15 cards was too powerful for Karn, Learn, Fae of Wishes, etc.
There is merit to limiting the wishboard to 3 cards.
If it was 15 cards you would see a lot of Boils.

But this does not change the fact that you can cut down on 2-3 narrow cards that would be dead draws and make them accessible via wish, and that this is such a strong deckbuilding advantage that most deck would benefit from it.

My group did a test with wishes years ago with a wishboard of 5 cards. if felt versatile enough without being able to just put Boil in it. Especially with companions and such using out of library space, I think 5 could be a solid way to accommodate that while still limiting absolute hoser cards to show up.

[pokken]

I think Wish is way better. It gets any type of thing,
doesn't commit you to a choice when you cast it, and has no vulerability to discard effects. Living can be no better than second best up against that.

3 is a lot more than 2, all things considered.

[Hermes_]

so, here's the kicker....what happens to groups in the "wild" or pick-up games. Based on hullbreacher and other cards that are on the banned list, I think hoping for the better angels won't work.

[DirkGently]

Okay, I understand how you differentiate them. Now that we have moved past the nomenclature, my opinion still stands. Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Ancient Tomb... these are cards with such negligible downsides that they should be in every deck.

The number of decks I've built where I haven't wanted sol ring and mana crypt are quite low, though not zero. Ancient tomb though? I mean yeah, it's really good, but there are tons of decks where I wouldn't run ancient tomb. Probably doesn't really matter to this discussion but it feels like a weird one to single out. I'd say, in terms of power level, there are plenty of cards with a higher usage rate within their colors.

Your commitment to your point is impressive, if not confusing.
Sol Ring should be in every commander deck. Sure, people can choose not to play it. Maybe they banned it in their playgroup. Maybe they forgot to include it in their list. Maybe their group doesn't allow cards over 1$. My point is, it should be in every deck, assuming the goal of the deck is to win games. Even if a person is not competitive, that is generally the goal, and Sol Ring helps that goal.

If the goal is purely to win games, then every step the builder took that led them away from building a tiered cEDH deck was a mistake, no?

But, I do think they would be considered for most decks, and that is because they are incredibly strong in a singleton format. Flexibility is very powerful. What would you play in a GW deck - Sylvan Reclamation or Return to Dust? And please, don't cherry pick about the slight differences between the cards. Just give you answer - which would you play? Most people would go for the more flexible card.
Wishes offer a ton of flexibility, and because of that, should be considered.
I will discuss later how they compare to tutors in this regard.

Weird choice of examples considering return to dust is used way way more than sylvan reclamation even accounting for CI - apparently the community at large would rather save the mana instead of have the flexibility. It's not a price thing either, both are quite cheap.

Maybe you should have checked EDHrec before saying "most people would go for the more flexible card" considering it proves you wrong?

Personally I think it's quite close - I've used both in Phelddagrif and I think I prefer reclamation there, because (1) he wants to hit his land drops every turn forever and (2) he really doesn't want to be constrained to playing the spell on his main phase in order to get the full effect. And relative to other decks, he's not too worried about mana costs. That said, I still cut it years ago and haven't missed it. Five mana is a ton, and makes it hard to keep up counterspells and whatnot around it. Also I've found the flexibility of cycling to be underwhelming with answers, because it can be difficult to know whether you'll need them or not. Landcycling is probably better than regular cycling in this regard, since whether you cycle can be dictated more by whether you need a land than by whether you need the answer, but still.

Not sure if that was too much "cherry picking the differences" but I've played both cards extensively and it's kinda hard to just give a snap answer without considering all the pros and cons. Yes, flexibility is valuable, but there are limits.

okay, tutors - I play Demonic Tutor in a deck. It is a card that has immense flexibility. However, it can only tutor cards that are in your deck.

That's a hell of a lot more than 3 cards.

That means that you need to also put your GY hate, your storm hate, you narrow answers, etc, into your deck.
Wishes have the advantage of not eating up additional spots in your deck.

Scavenger grounds is a solid piece of grave hate that can go anywhere and has, I would argue, a much smaller tax on it than wishing, since the only thing you're giving up is color production on one land. Same thing for something like relic of progenitus, which helps you cycle through your deck. Both those cards cost very little to run in your deck.
And once in the deck, they can be hit by all manner of tutors. Adding a wish with a different grave hate target would just be analogous to adding one more tutor for scavenger grounds or relic.

Now, something like storm hate doesn't generally merit putting into a deck because there aren't (afaik) any utility lands or other low-cost cards with that function. Most hate pieces for storm kinda require committing to playing a card that doesn't do much except hate out storm (and maybe make things a bit more annoying for non-storm-players), unless you count softer stuff like Mindbreak Trap (which I do run in Phelddagrif and can be hit by tutors). That said, if I had a wish package and put storm hate in there, I'd be basically wasting the slot. The number of times I run into storm is quite low, and even when I do, I'd need to be able to establish that the deck is a storm deck, establish that the storm deck is the threat, find the wish, cast it, play the hate piece, and then not have it get countered or removed. That's a hell of a lot of places to fail, enough that I doubt its presence in my wishboard would change the outcome of even one in a thousand games. So now I'm just weakening my wish by including it there.

If you think you're going to run into storm frequently in your meta, I think you'd have to consider running storm hate in the main so you can tutor for it. I have a hard time envisioning something that comes up frequently enough that you'd want to dedicate a wish slot to it, but rarely enough that it's not worth having in the main. I'm sure there's sort of sort of range where that would be true, but I think you'd have to be really really dialed in to figure out exactly where that range is, and 99% of commander players aren't even close to that level.

But if I look at Living Wish - I could see that replacing Scavenging Ooze in many of my green decks. I hate drawing scooze when it is useless.

Scooze isn't ever really useless, it's still a beefy boi on the battlefield that grows and gains you life. That's the reason it's a good form of grave hate - it's never dead. If you hate drawing it when you don't need grave hate and don't care about the body, just run Relic of Progenitus or scavenger grounds instead.

Scooze that costs 4 because you wished for it, on the other hand...I mean jesus, nobody would run that card. Doubling the cost is atrocious. I'm not saying it's not a reasonable wish target, but you've gotta realize that adding the wish cost makes an otherwise pretty efficient card quite inefficient. It's no longer a solid on-curve play in your opener that you can throw down and start putting on some pressure, it's a clunky piece of clunk that's going to gum up your hand until you figure out what you want to do with it.

Wishes are not replacing tutors, they are replacing cards in your deck that are sometimes dead. That's the upside. I would replace Scavenging ooze, reclamation sage and something like Vizier of the Menagerie with Living Wish.

That seems...fine? I mean, if you add 2 to the cost of all those cards, they're horrible horrible cards. Flexibility is valuable but paying 5 mana to destroy an artifact seems steep. Even in Phelddagrif I'd balk at that kind of cost.

That's the advantage. You avoid dead draws for a small tax.

2 mana is not a small tax.

And none of those cards are really dead draws - Scooze is a big beefy life-gaining beater, rec sage always has a target somewhere even if it's just a signet, and how often would being able to draw cards not be useful, especially when it comes with board presence? A big part of what makes those cards good is that they're already flexible and have added value. That's why people play them instead of Tormod's Crypt or Demystify.

So that's my problem A - most decks would be advantaged by playing wishes, and it feels wrong to avoid them.

Doubt it, but even if that's true it doesn't really matter because this isn't a solvable environment.

[RxPhantom]

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

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

If anyone but Legend can answer these questions, that would be great.

[DirkGently]

Would wishes actually make the format better?

I think having more flexible, less efficient, cards is almost always a positive. It's not fun to lose a game because you had a bad draw, and it's not fun to win a game where the other person had a bad draw. It's also not fun to lose a game because your opponent very efficiently ramped into Karn on turn 2 (though, having done that before...it's at least a little fun to win that way ). Wishes offer the ability to increase the number of good games by decreasing the number of games won/lost by bad draws while lowering efficiency and reducing the number of games decided by extremely early plays. They're like tutors, except that unlike tutors they can't find your best plays because those cards are in your deck, so the ability to combo with them or find your most-common-victory-condition is a lot lower. This increases variance in how games play out, while decreasing variance in terms of high/low rolls, and is overall positive imo.

I also think being able to play the new cool thing - like lessons - is generally a positive. Imagine getting into magic with Strixhaven, playing draft or casual with lessons and enjoying them, then looking into commander and then finding out lessons just...don't work. That's a bit a of a buzzkill. And I don't think lessons will be the last time WotC goes into the outside-the-game bucket in design because it's a pretty interesting place to go.

Finally, while I know most current players don't really care, I think having a more concise ruleset is better. I always hated the "your off-color mana is colorless" rule because it seemed vestigial and unnecessary, and rule 11 feels the same way to me. A product of a few bad games from 2003 that's still having an adverse effect on an almost unrecognizable format played by millions of people. Perfecting a format is about figuring out what makes it great and committing to those rules, while excising the ones that aren't necessary. Rule 11 should be excised.

Would their inclusion solve anything? Is their exclusion in and of itself the main problem?

I think they'd overall make the game better, but not in a specific "they'd fix this particular thing" sort of way. I also don't think that not being able to play any specific wish is a problem - as I've said, if any wishes end up being problematic post rule 11 I'm 100% down to ban the offenders. Even if those offenders were the few that I'd actually consider playing (Cunning Wish and Divide by Zero - forgot about that one earlier). But I do think that functionally banning a wide swath of cards just because some people think a few of them might cause a problem is not a good way to manage a format.

I was thinking about it last night, and I'd sum up my dislike of rule 11 with 3 main points, all of which start with the letter "U":

Ugly - It's a rule hack that functionally bans cards without actually banning them. At a minimum, as with Karn, it's a format-specific functional errata. While I guess it's a matter of opinion, I think that's super gross aesthetically. The banlist is the tool for removing problematic cards from the format, not the ruleset.

Unintuitive - Having wishes still be legal but functionally useless is just...strange. This might confuse new players, but aside from that it's just weird. Wishes are legal and haven't caused problems in other formats (it's been a long time since burning wish was banned), why are they so terrifying here? And why is the "solution" so convoluted?

Unnecessary - I really don't think wishes represent anything so dangerous as to necessitate a special rule. Even in the fully-unrestricted model, I think most people would naturally gravitate towards having a wishboard of reasonable size, and I don't think they're likely to put Boil in there either. Again, if some wishes end up being problematic then we can ban those, but preventing people from using lessons seems is clearly unnecessary, so why are we painting with such a broad brush?

[Dunharrow]

Is the solution really that convoluted?

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

Why is a rule about allowing a 3 card sideboard that can't be used as a sideboard but only to use for 'search outside the game' effects cleaner?

[Dunharrow]

okay, tutors - I play Demonic Tutor in a deck. It is a card that has immense flexibility. However, it can only tutor cards that are in your deck.

That's a hell of a lot more than 3 cards.

But those cards end up being in your deck, potential dead draws.

That means that you need to also put your GY hate, your storm hate, you narrow answers, etc, into your deck.
Wishes have the advantage of not eating up additional spots in your deck.

Scavenger grounds is a solid piece of grave hate that can go anywhere and has, I would argue, a much smaller tax on it than wishing, since the only thing you're giving up is color production on one land. Same thing for something like relic of progenitus, which helps you cycle through your deck. Both those cards cost very little to run in your deck.

So run them. I am not saying to put Scavenger Grounds or Relic in your sideboard. They are never dead draws. I am saying that you might want to put your narrow hate cards in the wishboard. Scavenging Ooze sucks in my opinion. It will die before it kills someone with combat damage. It is very mana-hungry and you have to leave up green mana to interact. I would much prefer to put it in my wishboard and get with living wish.

And once in the deck, they can be hit by all manner of tutors. Adding a wish with a different grave hate target would just be analogous to adding one more tutor for scavenger grounds or relic.

Depends on the deck. My RG deck has trouble tutoring for relic of progenitus. Scavenger grounds is great but single use (unless you run a bunch of deserts). I don't want to draw Scavenging ooze. Living Wish makes so much more sense.

Now, something like storm hate doesn't generally merit putting into a deck because there aren't (afaik) any utility lands or other low-cost cards with that function. Most hate pieces for storm kinda require committing to playing a card that doesn't do much except hate out storm (and maybe make things a bit more annoying for non-storm-players), unless you count softer stuff like Mindbreak Trap (which I do run in Phelddagrif and can be hit by tutors). That said, if I had a wish package and put storm hate in there, I'd be basically wasting the slot. The number of times I run into storm is quite low, and even when I do, I'd need to be able to establish that the deck is a storm deck, establish that the storm deck is the threat, find the wish, cast it, play the hate piece, and then not have it get countered or removed. That's a hell of a lot of places to fail, enough that I doubt its presence in my wishboard would change the outcome of even one in a thousand games. So now I'm just weakening my wish by including it there.

If you think you're going to run into storm frequently in your meta, I think you'd have to consider running storm hate in the main so you can tutor for it. I have a hard time envisioning something that comes up frequently enough that you'd want to dedicate a wish slot to it, but rarely enough that it's not worth having in the main. I'm sure there's sort of sort of range where that would be true, but I think you'd have to be really really dialed in to figure out exactly where that range is, and 99% of commander players aren't even close to that level.

I just mentioned storm hate out of hand. I mean, I think if you are playing Living Wish to throw Eidolon of Rhetoric is not a bad call if you sometimes encounter storm/eggs/etc. Do you really want a card like this in your deck though?
You know it doesn't even need to be hate cards. Are there cards in your deck to protect you from certain archetypes? Ex, a combat oriented deck might fold to Spore Frog + Karador. Malignus is an interesting card to get your damage through. Could be a good wishboard option. And then you can put Bane of Progress to combat pillowfort. Now your RG aggro deck has two living wish targets to deal with rare situations.
My point is that everyone can think of a couple niche cards that they want access to every few games, and the versatility of a wish is a great solution.

But if I look at Living Wish - I could see that replacing Scavenging Ooze in many of my green decks. I hate drawing scooze when it is useless.

Scooze isn't ever really useless, it's still a beefy boi on the battlefield that grows and gains you life. That's the reason it's a good form of grave hate - it's never dead. If you hate drawing it when you don't need grave hate and don't care about the body, just run Relic of Progenitus or scavenger grounds instead.

Scooze that costs 4 because you wished for it, on the other hand...I mean jesus, nobody would run that card. Doubling the cost is atrocious. I'm not saying it's not a reasonable wish target, but you've gotta realize that adding the wish cost makes an otherwise pretty efficient card quite inefficient. It's no longer a solid on-curve play in your opener that you can throw down and start putting on some pressure, it's a clunky piece of clunk that's going to gum up your hand until you figure out what you want to do with it.

How is playing a different tutor for Scavenging Ooze better than Living Wish? I think it's worse. I don't want Ooze unless I am playing against a graveyard deck. Why do I want a basically vanilla beater in commander?

Wishes are not replacing tutors, they are replacing cards in your deck that are sometimes dead. That's the upside. I would replace Scavenging ooze, reclamation sage and something like Vizier of the Menagerie with Living Wish.

That seems...fine? I mean, if you add 2 to the cost of all those cards, they're horrible horrible cards. Flexibility is valuable but paying 5 mana to destroy an artifact seems steep. Even in Phelddagrif I'd balk at that kind of cost.

But the flexibility of a tutor is fine? If I can tutor for a disenchant, why is it suddenly bad to wish for one? I don't get your logic. By your logic, tutors should not see play.

That's the advantage. You avoid dead draws for a small tax.

2 mana is not a small tax.

then why are tutors so highly played?

[Legend]

so, here's the kicker....what happens to groups in the "wild" or pick-up games. Based on hullbreacher and other cards that are on the banned list, I think hoping for the better angels won't work.

Well, that's what the ban list is for. Revoke or revise Rule 11, ban cards that are egregious offenders according to the Philosophy Document.

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

Do extra turns make the format better? Does the inclusion of wheels solve anything? Why has WISHING been singled out and held to a standard to which no other effect has ever been held?

then why are tutors so highly played?

He's already shown that they aren't.

[pokken]

then why are tutors so highly played?

Yeah, I do not understand the mana cost/inefficiency arguments. Living Wish is the same mana cost as Demonic Tutor.

Why has WISHING been singled out and held to a standard to which no other effect has ever been held?

Because it can be axed with a single rule and needs multiple special rules to support it in a non-awful fashion. It'd be way worse than wheels and time warps.

You can't really ban wheels without banning a pile of cards vs. a single rule.

Extra turn effects *could* be removed with a single rule but it would be rather awkward and it doesn't require any rules to just let them go as is (whereas Wishes require at least one rule but probably more than one explaining how wishboards function).

---

I can't help but think that the disconnect is that some of you guys who are pro-wish seem to think it'd be fine to just remove rule 11 and turn wishes loose.

It would be absolutely cataclysmic.

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

Wishes are Sylvan Primordial not Static Orb.

(And I am out on this topic)

[Legend]

What sanctioned rules do you not play by when you sit down to play a specified "regular format" (regular format being Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pioneer, etc)?
What sanctioned rules (other than wishing) do you not play by, without specifying in a rule 0 conversation, when you sit down to play Commander?

None. But that doesn't change the fact that Commander (if not every format) is by default unsanctioned. If it were otherwise, Rule 11 wouldn't be necessary or would just restate the Oracle Rule for WISHING. The idea that Commander doesn't have sideboards, therefore WISHES fail to find, is erroneous. That's why Rule 11 was contrived in the first place.

So you're saying that if you sat down with a friend to play Magic with your standard decks against one another, and then cast Wish, you'd pull out your binder to pick from because the game wasn't sanctioned?

Yes, and so would my opponent. I don't play 60 card formats anymore. But when I did, and I played all of them extensively until limited became my focus, my opponent and I would always ask if we were playing with sideboards or not, which was our way of asking "sanctioned or unsanctioned?" and we would play accordingly.

[Legend]

The sooner you just take an honest look at what wishes can do in Commander and realize that they are extremely powerful effects with interesting design impacts that a significant section of the playerbase would play whether they make good games or not . . .

It sounds like you aren't against WISHING as much as you're against WISHERS. That you've decided that the Commander community needs Rule 11 because they're too ignorant, too incompetent, too immature, and too inconsiderate when it comes to WISHING, but not when it comes to Rule 0. When it comes to Rule 0, you've decided that players are all manners and acumen. Does that sound like a straw man? Only to those who haven't read this thread and others like it.

Warning issued for Trolling - benjameenbear

[Sharpened]

What sanctioned rules do you not play by when you sit down to play a specified "regular format" (regular format being Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pioneer, etc)?
What sanctioned rules (other than wishing) do you not play by, without specifying in a rule 0 conversation, when you sit down to play Commander?

None. But that doesn't change the fact that Commander (if not every format) is by default unsanctioned. If it were otherwise, Rule 11 wouldn't be necessary or would just restate the Oracle Rule for WISHING.

So you play by sanctioned rules, but you say the default should be unsanctioned. But that goes against the philosophy that papa_funk and the rules committee already outlined.

Since you claim to like logic, let's consider the following tenets:

* It's a good thing to have the base rules of Commander be consistent across all play.
* The MTR defines "outside the game" in sanctioned play as being the contents of a player's sideboard.
* Commander does not have a sideboard.

There is sanctioned Commander.
"It's a good thing to have the base rules of Commander be consistent across all play."
As such, the base rules should be consistent with sanctioned commander.

The idea that Commander doesn't have sideboards, therefore WISHES fail to find, is erroneous. That's why Rule 11 was contrived in the first place.

A member of the rules committee has already stated that Commander does not have a sideboard, therefore wishes fail to find. It's not erroneous. It's exactly the justification. It's explicitly the justification. You can't just say it's not, when we have a direct statement from a person who wrote the rules that it is.

[Jemolk]

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

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

(btw, for anyone wondering how I justify being on the "free the cards!" side of this issue and the "keep them banned!" side of the BaaC argument, it's an issue of (1) rules elegance and (2) rules intuitiveness. Adding a BaaC list is pure added complexity, whereas replacing rule 11 wish a wishboard would be, imo, a lateral move in terms of complexity. And wishes just not doing anything is really clunky and weird. When someone looks at a wish and gets told "oh yeah, that just does stone nothing in commander" that seems weird and arbitrary. I know it does to me. Though I will be forthright and confess that while I have little interest in any of the banned commanders, I do have some interest in playing Cunning Wish in Phelddagrif, although that's probably the only wish I'd consider bothering with because I really don't think they're all that great and I also don't super feel like squeezing 3 more cards into my deckboxes. I don't think my slight interest in cunning wish is motivating my opinion on this issue, but it's hard to be sure.)

And now we come to the part of your post I most wanted to address. Did you go back months to cherry pick this quote of mine from another thread? How long did you search for it?
Also, you miss my point. I want BaaC to come back for 2 reasons. Sure, I want to play braids. But mainly, I want the RC to feel more at ease banning problematic commanders like Golos and Kinnan. They feel bad banning cards, and I think BaaC is a good halfway measure so that people can still play with their pet cards, just not as commanders. I know this doesn't satisfy many people, but I think it is better than having ubiquitously strong commanders.

So ya, you want to play your wishes and I don't see the relation to BaaC, except you think I want 4 cards unbanned and you want 10x more, which is not something I care about, and also a completely fundamentally different kind of argument from any of the ones I have made against wishes.

Not gonna lie, this exact claim was among the first things to come to mind while I was reading through your arguments with Dirk and catching up on the thread. And it is hypocritical. It's the same argument either way, but you're treating it as though it doesn't apply here. I found it compelling on the BaaC thread, too, which is why this stuck out to me so much -- unlike Dirk, I do think it's a decent argument, and for that precise reason, I take exception to your seeming willingness to simply not apply its logic here. If the logic functions at all, it functions everywhere. That's kinda the point of logic, no? Of course, if you've changed your mind on the argument in the mean time, that's another story, but also, if that's the case, you could have said that. And if you don't think the logic applies here, then going into why is in fact rather necessary. You could argue that you did, since you've made a few arguments as to why you think there would be notable downsides, but you also repeatedly claimed that you didn't understand how there was any gain at all, when at least one easy case for there being a gain quite neatly mirrors your own argument from elsewhere.

I can't help but think that the disconnect is that some of you guys who are pro-wish seem to think it'd be fine to just remove rule 11 and turn wishes loose.

It would be absolutely cataclysmic.

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

Wishes are Sylvan Primordial not Static Orb.

I know you said you're out, but I do feel like I have to address this point for the sake of anyone else reading.

This definitely strikes me as catastrophizing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they would be bad. But how can anyone be so absolutely, utterly certain that they would necessarily be incredibly destructive? Yes, there is risk. I, and the other people arguing for wishes, think the risk is worth it, and expect there to be more gain than loss. You're certainly free to disagree, and to argue, but stating as fact that it would definitively be awful seems premature at best, don't you think?

There is sanctioned Commander.
"It's a good thing to have the base rules of Commander be consistent across all play."
As such, the base rules should be consistent with sanctioned commander.

For the record, I would suggest that "assume sanctioned" leans even more heavily on the conventions of competitive play than the idea of sideboards, and more detrimentally so to Commander's nature as a casual format, precisely because it's being treated as a baseline assumption rather than spelled out in the rules. Baseline assumptions have their components go unexamined far more easily than things that are actively asserted, and are far harder to call into question. And "assume sanctioned" does come with baggage. So no, I do not think we can safely lean on this to make the rules on "outside the game" more intuitive at all.

---------------------

Now, some more general points, responses to the thread as a whole.

Some people have mentioned pickup games. Playing at an LGS is another case that's sort of similar, so I'm inclined to draw from my experiences there. You're not wrong to worry about people occasionally doing stupid and destructive things with them. Hell, I've had to deal with more than one case of people treating Iona, Shield of Emeria as a big dumb timmy card and shoving it into casual decks. And one of the reasons I'm glad Iona is banned is because I never want to have to have that particular post-game discussion ever again. I've also dealt with people (okay, one person) running Cataclysm as a generic wrath. (Seriously, WTF is wrong with some people? %$#%$#%.) Pickup games and similar can be really freaking weird, and not always in a good way. But the real answer to that absolute mess, above all else, is to talk about things beforehand, not just afterward. And again, I call back to my suggestion that not only do you have to limit what you can get, you have to show it to people in advance, too. Treat "outside the game" as a public zone, even. I think this sort of "here, look at what I've got going on" would overall not be too bad a norm even for the maindecks, either, but even just limited to wishboards, it normalizes discussion, which is incredibly valuable, especially for pickup games and similar, speaking from my experience at the very least. The problem with those tends to be that the people involved haven't talked enough to get an idea of what everyone's doing or at what level of strength, and the solution is to talk more, rather than go around taking a hatchet to everything that might be a problem in them. In fact, the more we normalize discussion as a prerequisite of games, the less we'll have to lean on the banlist to regulate things, too.

Oh, and to address all the people saying that you should always and forever run Sol Ring, and that wishes are bad because auto-includes -- I actively go around cutting Sol Ring from most of my decks that I build out of precons, and no, it's not a mistake. The loss of power is completely intentional. I also actively cut Arcane Signet in favor of old favorites like Fellwar Stone and Star Compass. Are they worse? Yes, of course. But I certainly get more of a kick out of using them, and that matters more than optimal power.

To address the comments about shunting certain kinds of answers to the wishboard, like graveyard hate -- you can definitely expect to be punished for that decision, given the additional tax combined with still needing to actually draw the wish. Some people will probably do it anyway, given that I've gathered that slowly cutting lands until you have something like 25 of them to make space for stuff is a thing, but many of those people would often enough probably just cut it entirely instead, and I'd rather that especially didn't happen. In this sense, wishes might actually improve things by getting people to stop cutting all their graveyard hate completely.

Also, more interaction happening is good IMHO, so I'm not even sure I understand the concern that people would run strong interaction in their wishboards. That sounds like a benefit to wishes, not a drawback. As long as it's not a wishboard of Boils and similar, I really don't see the problem. The artifact deck should still be capable of rebuilding after a Shatterstorm, given that it needs to still be able to rebuild after a Vandalblast often enough anyway, and the enchantment deck should still be able to rebuild after a Back to Nature, given that it already needs to be able to rebuild after an Austere Command on enchantments. Plus, the more often this happens, the more people will realize that it's actually fun to fight through disruption, rebuild, and still win, or to stop the big horrifying boardstate in its tracks, or just to have more back-and-forth in a game. In fact, the more I think about it, the better it sounds. If anyone is on this train of thought, I'd appreciate an explanation, because I genuinely do not understand what the problem is here.