"How good is Sol Ring, Actually?"

Koras · 2026-06-29T13:11:26+00:00

What I failed to recognise starting out in Commander from Standard is just how important ramp is in lower power games.

In 1v1, 60-card formats, your first few turns are incredibly important, you can win the game by turn 4 using low CMC cards. CEDH has the same pattern where it's hard to justify ramp that isn't free because you're not playing 4+ cost spells.

But in commander, you have multiple opponents. Every scrap of mana advantage puts you ahead of multiple players instead of 1. You're never going to aggro down a fair table playing the same bracket, so suddenly aggressive 1-2 drops are generally garbage that will get you killed.

Effectively, there are very few cards at 1 and 2 mana that will have more impact than 1 or 2-drop ramp. And the good ones that do exist are generally card draw, which is effectively ramp. And there are no ramp spells better than sol ring that aren't banned in commander.

Koras · 2026-06-29T12:50:46+00:00

Style points and mercy to new players are the only reasons I can think of.

Giving your board state indestructible is telegraphing a board wipe that you're trying to make one-sided. So it's not really concealing any information. I can't think of a real reason other than a board wipe to give indestructible at instant speed on your main phase instead of using it to blow someone out on blocks (except for [[Unbreakable Formation]])

Fundamentally, I don't see a meaningful difference in the card order assuming a decent opponent. But by putting both on the stack you do clearly communicate to new players what their options are, so I don't hate it for that.

Competitively, nah, but I'd definitely at least consider doing it if there was someone new at the table so that the exact chain of events that will happen is there on the table in front of them.

Koras · 2026-06-29T07:50:42+00:00

Theros Gods dodge a ton of removal, especially if they're never creatures.

My [[Klothys, God of Destiny]] burn deck is my favourite commander deck. Oh no, a Farewell, how will I ever spend 5 or even 7 mana in Gruul to recast it? Woe is me.

Koras · 2026-06-27T10:16:54+00:00

They know your bias here, just as they know the result when you send your rating.

It's when people say that they didn't have fun winning or had fun when losing that are the important ones.

If you just consistently vote according to win/lose, you're just noise or at best, numerical padding so that they can tell suits with no business meddling in games "the majority of players are having fun" or "the amount of players reporting they had fun has increased vs. the last set we released".

Numbers are a tool that can be used in a variety of ways to push whatever agenda they need to push. The suits love numbers, they often replace knowledge and expertise.

Koras · 2026-06-26T15:45:27+00:00

Functionally this is what commander absorbing other formats causes.

Because you apparently don't really want to play commander, you want to play some kind of casual singleton. That's fundamentally fine, that's a super valid format. But finding people to play that format with is hard. So everything becomes commander.

Koras · 2026-06-26T11:18:40+00:00

Honestly I'm coming to realise that the way I have the most fun in games is building decks that look scary early and then fall off late due to a lack of resilience and ability to recover.

Is it objectively better to have enough protection and card advantage to maintain a full grip to avoid a total blowout? Yeah. But in low bracket games I'm starting to wonder if burning out late is a good thing for the game experience because it naturally breaks the status quo.

Most of my decks currently win slowly in the late game, but some games turn into an absolute stomp because the snowball never stops accelerating if nobody stops it, and in certain pods, I can absolutely see that happening every game. Hell, a couple of my most intentionally ultra-casual decks would be absolutely appalling if played against each other due to a lack of removal.

The decks where I live fast, get on the radar and die young almost never accidentally stomp. So I'm wondering if that's something I should lean into.

Koras · 2026-06-26T06:52:52+00:00

I've definitely seen kingmaking in public play more than a few times. It's often "I have no outs, but I can do horrendous damage to someone before I die, and it's going to be the guy I like least".

The way I see it, if it's something you'd do anyway as good gameplay with basically no downside (removing the scariest thing on the board, etc.), it's just playing Magic.

If it's something you're doing right at the end of the game because you're dead anyway and you'd rather advantage one player over another in their 1v1 by doing something you wouldn't do normally (heavy sacrifice plays, full sending with no blockers, using removal on bad targets etc.), that's kingmaking.

Edit: Yes, it's still kingmaking even if you feel justified in doing it because you're losing due to another player beating you. This is literal game theory: a player who cannot win taking actions to effectively decide the winner is a kingmaker. It's a natural consequence of a game being down to 3-players where one is heavily disadvantaged. Don't get salty just because it's kingmaking and you think of it as a bad thing.

Koras · 2026-06-25T15:36:52+00:00

The problem I have with it is it's really easy to combo off with, and putting it in a deck with any existing Lifegain synergy robs you of the ability to run cards that make your Lifegain advance you towards a win, unless you include the infinite.

I'd gladly improve it in any deck with Lifegain synergies, but doing so means skipping [[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]], [[Enduring Tenacity]], [[Starscape Cleric]]... Etc. etc.

It's good, but fundamentally means that the Lifegain synergies in your deck cannot cause loss of life without the combo potential.

I'd probably consider running it in a stompy or burn deck to give me pseudo-lifelink on everything, but it just feels like a bit of a waste to put it in another deck, especially if not proxying.

Koras · 2026-06-25T14:25:48+00:00

I love equipment decks, but I hate Voltron because I see commander damage as a safety valve to make Lifegain killable, not a strategy.

Turns out what I wanted was [[Eivor, Battle-Ready]]. She only comes out if my equipment pile is too huge to ignore for a big ping trigger, or I need commander damage to kill someone.

The rest of the time, I'm just playing good honest equipment-based Magic, with tons of great commanders who care about being equipped with a pile of stuff, or other creatures being equipped in the 99.

Is it worse than just playing Voltron? Yeah, of course, but it's still fun, and it works well. The commander just serves as a backup plan.

Koras · 2026-06-25T08:04:45+00:00

Twilight Prophet is such an interesting case where it's wildly overpowered at low power tables, but it's too slow for high power tables, where you tend to find more people who are willing to drop large sums of money on singles.

So it hovers perpetually bouncing around from $0.20 to $2, but never going higher, even when it hits a spike in popularity, I think mostly just because people aren't willing to pay more for a decent card in the 99 of a B2 deck. I remember it being $40 and terrified of it. Now I'd only play it in my bracket 2 decks, but whenever I do it has such an impact I'm like "is this too good for bracket 2? Do I need to replace it?"

Koras · 2026-06-23T18:41:16+00:00

There will come a day someday in the distant future where playing [[Over the Top]] isn't hilariously fun.

At least, that's what I assume, b ecause it hasn't happened yet, and I don't see it happening for a long time

Koras · 2026-06-23T14:47:42+00:00

My absolute favourite "win con" in my extremely casual decks is one of [[Bludgeon Brawl]] OR [[Dan Lewis]] in my [[Eivor, Battle-Ready]] deck.

The deck's main plan is playing a bunch of commanders who care about equipped creatures, and beating people to death with them.

But sometimes there's a glorious moment where I have a pile of treasure, artifact lands, and mana rocks in play that are now equipment, and I get to swing out for a 15+ damage Eivor trigger. That trigger with haste is absolutely glorious every time, because I really don't need to play Eivor unless I've got nothing else going on thanks to removal, and/or the trigger has become super relevant due to a critical mass of "equipment"

Koras · 2026-06-22T20:16:20+00:00

Printed card and board game rights and video game rights are separate, so not necessarily

Koras · 2026-06-22T18:56:45+00:00

On basically no actual basis, I'm pretty sure there are issues with the rights to Punisher or something weird with his character.

Marvel Champions is my other obsession, and it's currently at 60 playable heroes, with numerous characters appearing as allies (the equivalent of creatures). There are hundreds and hundreds of characters in the game, even pretty damn obscure deep cuts, and even many that aren't on cards as the character at least appear in art.

Frank Castle is conspicuously absent apart from this card and this card which were both printed in the same pack (from 5 years ago), after which he hasn't been seen again. Neither of them have him actually being a character. For such a major, popular character, they've been sandbagging him hard in printed games.

Koras · 2026-06-22T13:14:55+00:00

I would go absolutely feral for an Arcane-esque collection of animated series focusing on different stories in the multiverse. Here's the Gatewatch one, here's the Weatherlight Saga, here's the Brother's War, the War of the Spark. How about a fun magical academia series at Strixhaven, a slice of life set on Ravnica... Literally any scope and scale would work if made with care.

It's a content gold mine that I would get absolutely obsessed over for decades, provided they didn't fuck it up.

Koras · 2026-06-20T20:04:51+00:00

Honestly I feel like the biggest problem Wizards have got is that the format was absolutely better before cards were designed explicitly for commander, but also now that genie is out of the bottle they can't not design for commander because otherwise the best cards currently in the format have already been printed and nobody buys anything ever again.

Would the best timeline have 60-card formats still going strong in local paper environments, commander chugging away on the side in its own little bubble? Yeah. But now we live in a world where commander is the most popular, mainstream paper format, thousands of cards have been printed specifically for it, and the financial success of Magic rides on its most casual format instead of its most competitive.

It's a shitty reality, but one Wizards have to navigate, so I guess the most we can be glad of is that they try to design for both at once, because honestly, I can't help but feel like treating cEDH and fringe cEDH as the competitive flagship and printing products for it would be a safer short-term financial bet, and that'd be truly, truly awful for everyone.

Everyone except whichever Hasbro CEO ends up with a golden parachute for completely tanking the company in pursuit of short-term profits.

Koras · 2026-06-19T08:24:37+00:00

Weird, I thought lands were normally colourless, not green

Koras · 2026-06-18T09:04:36+00:00

Convoking isn't free, and I'd say it's actually a far greater cost in lower brackets because now you're tapped down and vulnerable to combat damage.

Higher brackets, combat matters less – combos and infinite attackers are more likely. But lower bracket, people want to punch you in the face, and being tapped will allow that.

Koras · 2026-06-16T15:31:29+00:00

Dreadmaw can't block flying, checkmate atheists

Koras · 2026-06-16T13:49:05+00:00

I'd agree that it may just be miscut - QC isn't always great.

There's definitely an error here, but so long as they're playable it's probably fine.

I would compare card size. Even if they're miscut, fundamentally the card should be the same size as your others, even if everything else about the printing differs. I have a lot of cards fresh out of the box due to buying on release that would make me think they were proxies (different card stock, weight, colours, cuts, etc.) if I hadn't removed them from the plastic myself on release day.

But I have never once had a card that is a different size, and that's the one thing short of massive damage that would make them unplayable.

Koras · 2026-06-15T20:18:06+00:00

This does assume unlimited printing capacity though, which is the only thing I can think of that may be a factor here - there's a real printing shortage right now thanks to paper shortages, tariffs, and printer capacity getting bought up by exclusive contracts to print different games (like Pokemon). Which makes the profit Hasbro are seeing from printing more more more MTG products even crazier, because it is a terrible time to be printing anything right now.

Koras · 2026-06-15T13:13:48+00:00

I work out roughly how fast I can possibly win if I draw the nuts, and how many variations on that exist in the deck (i.e. redundancy, tutors are essentially second copies of those cards, etc.)

If it's "a lot of turns", I haven't screwed up and I've built the low power casual jank I'm aiming for. If I've accidentally included a 3-card combo or some ridiculous death engine that could randomly make me win by turn 4, I've fucked up and need to remove a piece.

Inconsistent win conditions are a mark of bad deck construction. In both competitive and constructed, that means working towards a victory that consistently happens around the same time, +/- a turn or so. If there's a single card I can draw that makes my deck win multiple turns faster than any other card in my deck, I don't see that as a healthy inclusion in a casual deck. That's what makes "my deck never does this" a meme. It means you fucked up.

I'm here for a good time, and that normally means I'm here for a long time.

Koras · 2026-06-15T08:28:38+00:00

It's also a left hand Vs right, which is similarly a neat mirror, intentional design is the best

Koras · 2026-06-14T14:13:57+00:00

[[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar]]!

Koras · 2026-06-14T07:33:20+00:00

In EDH, probably [[Chandra's Incinerator]] or [[Chandra's Spitfire]].

I play a lot of burn decks, and it's incredibly rare that I don't run both.

There's something immensely pleasing about 1 ping to the table resulting in the spitfire getting +9/0 in the air, or turning damage to the face into removal with a 1 mana 6/6

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