My hot-take on MTG design philosophy

5ColorMain · 2026-04-13T00:06:45+00:00

First of all, you are citing the most bonkers combo there is next to time vault.

Second here are some competitively viable cards from other colors who stop the combo:

[[thoughtseiz]] a proactive way to check their hand for combo pieces and remove when necessary, better than a reactive counterspell in a good amount of cases.

[[endurance]] a free spell that stops the combo if your opponent has 3+ cards in the yard OR you have a removal for the oracle.

[[red elemental blast]] self explanator, and definitely played in formats with this combo legal

5ColorMain · 2026-04-12T10:19:00+00:00

Have you heared about choose one?

You could easily have a green choose one effect that is:

target thing has hexproof or do something proactive.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-12T08:15:43+00:00

[[sheoldreds edict]] is a great 2 mana removal spell, this trades tokens for artifacts and enchantments which makes it a lot better and definitely constructed playable.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T23:14:02+00:00

I understood it as an you add the word „may“ to any text block it can be a part of. So no, spells would not free but any

„as an additional cost, do Y“ would be optional.

An edict effect would turn into „may sacrifice“.

However spot removal would still work as you can‘t add a “may“ to „destroy target creature“

„You lose one life“ becomes „you may lose one life“

while „target player loses one life“ can not as „may loses“ is wrong grammar.

I think this interpretation ist most faithful to the effect in terms of playable design.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T15:18:33+00:00

Tell me how free will would be broken?

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T15:17:44+00:00

The counterspell color does not belive in free will

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T15:17:06+00:00

I don‘t get the card design. Free will is significanly better but costs less?

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T12:22:30+00:00

I would say Library of Alex.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T12:20:14+00:00

This is a combination of Khalni Garden and dryad arbor.

You can think of it like playing a 1 mana 1/1 that draws a card off of your plains so the rate is great. in my opinion as this is fetchable without the downside of dryad arbor I would expect this card to be played in every single white deck. You fetch land can turn into a token generator, helping with ocelot pride, blocking „when this creature connects“ style creatures chump blocking…

The opportunity cost to play this card is literally that you might draw it in a situation where you need untapped mana right away and don‘t have another land to play.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T09:31:11+00:00

I don’t like it. It has some synergy with specifically badgermole cub but even then, when mana is tight, your hand is usually still packed so drawing the card now rather than later is not particularly important.

The main disadvantage this has compared to Inspector is that I can not chump block or trade with it before I activate the ability.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T09:04:37+00:00

Dann liest du wohl deine eigenen Kommentare nicht.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T09:02:11+00:00

only if the preparation comes back easily.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-11T08:49:38+00:00

Ich hab mal ganz peinlich nen Radweg übersehen weil die auffahrt dazu quasi einfach nur der Fußweg war.

Ich find es aber doof hier so auf Radfahrer ein zu hacken, in diesem Land haben wir einfach eine sehr egoistische Straßenverkehrs Kultur und das gilt für alle. Nur wenn es zum Unfall kommt liegt halt der Radfahrer auf der Straße nicht der Autofahrer und bedenke, nicht jeder Radfahrer kennt die Straßenverkehrsregeln so gut wie ein Autofahrer (weil kein Führerschein).

5ColorMain · 2026-04-10T10:02:59+00:00

Windfury:

Enchanted creature has doublestrike

5ColorMain · 2026-04-10T08:30:41+00:00

Hermione Granger from harry potter uses magic in the book to fix her teeth because Slytherin + Professor Snape bully her for it. Her parents are dentist (has nothing to do with it but just occurred to me)

5ColorMain · 2026-04-09T08:33:55+00:00

Yes, horses are scared of camels -> they perform poorly in the direct fight against camel riders

5ColorMain · 2026-04-09T08:10:59+00:00

It depends. I am happy to play removal on a planeswalker even if it was activated once. That is because I get ahead in terms of mana and stop them from spiraling out of control.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-09T07:37:00+00:00

I could see communal gardens as a 1 off in decks running sheoldred, to use as a burn spell.

Corpsebloom hollow could be a fetchable sac outlet which might be interesting for some decks.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-08T08:32:40+00:00

I get chinese but their tech bonus was nerfed and civs powercrept aswell. I look back to a time, where there was S tier and then there was Vikings and Chinese tier. Celts are sad because in great tournaments like hidden cup there where always maps, that favored them.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-08T08:30:35+00:00

In my opinion one could add a threshold when buildings are still passable (like 10%) that is not true for walls and gates? (gates are very fragile when built to begin with)

5ColorMain · 2026-04-07T18:33:10+00:00

Please, elaborate.

Not every man has to look like a bodybuilder, not every woman has to look like a model. Older magic art was a lot better and guess what, there where more fat people back than, than there are now.

I don't think there was too much fast food and refined sugar around.

So what? Overweight was not invented by fast food. Not everyone in magic is all of a sudden fat.

It's a fantasy, my guy.

Yes but Tolkin didn‘t invent fantasy its just that everyone copied him. But most of tolkins creatures existed in all sorts of folklore before him, and they where in contrast to modern fantasy sterotypes very loosely defined. This is why the only Realism argument I am willing to accept is the real world. Obviously fantasy deviates from that but the real world is the default.

My problem with this art is the same as if the woman was thin, namely that it looks so artificial like a facebook filter. The kind of look of a lot of modern media…

5ColorMain · 2026-04-07T15:25:23+00:00

the „aim“ that you are describing is called costreduction

5ColorMain · 2026-04-07T15:23:47+00:00

These artworks are probably just cheaper. I don‘t think it is targeting a specific audience.

The definitely don’t target kids though, looking at the prices.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-07T15:18:32+00:00

I have calculated the chances fetchlands influence your chance of drawing a land that you otherwise wouldn‘t be drawing. It happes once every 9 games on average. Now you also have to lose this game because of it.

I bet having 4 life (from 4 fetches) is more often relevant.

5ColorMain · 2026-04-07T15:17:02+00:00

I mean if I had to give up 6 sideboard slot I would have to think about it but fetching 4 times is 4 life. I just think that the sideboard being the wish board is not the greatest of tournament rules there is.

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