Besides what's already been said, I think people are overselling the danger of modern silver-bullet cards. Someone pulls a
Torpor Orb out of their wishboard to slow down your etb deck when you were in a dominant position? Idk, try running some removal? Idk why people think they should get to run roughshod over everyone without pushback. Almost all "silver bullet" answers are dead to
Disenchant and then you can move on with your life.
Anyway, it's not like a small wishboard would enable people to run answers to super niche decks. There are way too many archetypes. Maybe they'd run them for the most dangerous and common archetypes. I think that's a positive thing.
I think the social contract handles more egregious cards like
Flashfires, but I also think it would be fine to ban flashfires and co if that's a concern. Nothing of value would be lost. I'd certainly rather have them banned than de facto banning all wishes, no matter how innocuous.
TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑2 years ago
I could swallow 3 card wishboards if I had to. Once someone starts going on a 5-10 minute binder hunt though, I would scoop up my stuff and find another pod/go home if other play was unavailable. I think my core issue with wishes is that I value my time more than the freedom to wish. There's a lot of things in life worth waiting for, but not that.
Basically any size of fixed wishboard is going to be faster than any normal tutor under most circumstances.
I dunno if the binder hunt situation is likely to come up super often in the unrestricted wish meta...but I do know that, if I knew the card I needed to win the game and had a wish to get it, you can bet I'd go digging for it if I had it on me. I might be exceptionally competitive though. And exceptionally encyclopedic in my knowledge of cards.
But yeah, I don't favor unrestricted wishes. But assuming we're talking restricted wishes, I don't think time consumption is a relevant concern.
onering wrote: ↑2 years ago
You really want to run as many lessons as you can, and 3 lessons just isn't worth it.
I don't really think that's true. There aren't a lot of relevant diversity among lessons imo - you're probably going to put in a removal spell, a draw spell, and either another removal spell or maybe a token making spell if that's in your strategy. I don't think having more, less good removal spells is going to make much difference unless you're playing multiple lessons and might need redundant targets. The main thing is simply the value of getting an additional card, even if it's not a great one. Having a fourth card that you use some tiny fraction of the time you learn isn't going to make much difference to the overall strength imo.
Most of them aren't good enough to play even if they fully drew a card anyway, so I doubt redundancy would be a big deal.
Divide by Zero and
Sparring Regimen could be pretty decent - the rest are niche at best. But I think I'd run Divide by Zero even if I only got to have one lesson.
edit: just for fun, I'll think it through.
mono-white:
Reduce to Memory is your best removal spell easily, and then
Mascot Exhibition if you want a big board or
Expanded Anatomy if you're voltron, and your choice of
Environmental Sciences or
Introduction to Prophecy as a (terrible) fallback option.
mono-blue:
Teachings of the Archaics if the easy best draw spell, so then it's
Introduction to Annihilation as your removal and mascot/anatomy for board presence.
mono-black:
Necrotic Fumes as long as you can spare a creature, and probably throw in annihilation and a crappy draw spell. Maybe
Confront the Past for niche decks.
mono-red: no options are good really.
Start from Scratch is cheaper than annihilation but so much narrower, and
Illuminate History really blows. I think I'd got annihilation for versatility, mascots, and then you can go illuminate history over the colorless draw options if you want but they're all trash and you'll probably mostly be getting annihilation or mascots so who cares.
mono-green: both of greens cards are okay.
Basic Conjuration is probably your easy draw option, and
Containment Breach could be worth running over annihilation, or next to it if you don't want mascots.
WU: reduce, mascot/anatomy, teachings.
UB: teachings, and 2 from annihilation, necrotic fumes and mascots depending what you want.
BR: tricky. if you like fumes, them probably fumes, scratch, and mascots (or pick-a-crappy-draw-spell if you don't value mascots). If you don't like fumes, then annihilation, mascots, and pick-a-crappy-draw-spell.
RG: same as mono-green.
GW: reduce, conjuration, mascots.
WB: same as mono-white.
BG: For tokeny decks I could see going fumes, containment, and pests/mascots/conjuration. Otherwise probably same as mono-green.
GU: annihilation, teachings, conjuration/breach/maaaybe
Fractal Summoning for some decks?.
UR: same as mono-blue. God red sucks.
RW: same as mono-white. God red sucks.
WUB: same as WU
UBR: teachings, and either annihilation + mascots or fumes + scratch/mascots depending if you can use fumes and/or like mascots
BRG: same as BG.
RGW: same as GW.
GWU: probably same as UW tbh unless you want the minor upside of breach as an alternative to reduce (so then reduce breach teachings).
WBG: same as GW
BGU: teachings, breach, fumes, or same as GU if fumes is bad (or maybe niche builds use one of the summonings).
GUR: same as GU. Even red's summonings are useless jfc.
URW: same as UW, thanks again red.
RWB: somehow it's still the same as mono-white. Reduce OP.
4-color: idk, reduce teachings mascots probably.
5-color: reduce teachings mascots.
Idk I think compared to having every lesson available, most of those are leaving a pretty small amount of value on the table with just 3 wishes. At the end of the day, reduce invalidates all the other removal and teachings invalidates all the other draw. If you don't have access to those, then just pick your subpar removal option and whatever value option suits your strat best and you'll be fine.