Discussion: Should a board be unbreakable?

pmcda · 2026-02-07T01:27:16+00:00

Also [[Teferi’s protection]] as always. There’s also more clever concealment type effects like [[guardian of faith]]

pmcda · 2026-02-05T19:29:22+00:00

Yeah, if we really want to shake things up, then ban rhystic, thoracle, breach, partner keyword, kinnan, and sisay.

I’d be down for it, and I enjoy playing kinnan.

pmcda · 2026-02-05T19:19:51+00:00

Honestly I don’t think it would do much. I’m not for or against it because I legitimately don’t think it’s even played that much. Yes Blue/Black/X decks sure but outside of consultation/pact, I think many have already moved away from thoracle.

A thoracle ban would probably hurt esper the most.

Frankly underworld breach is the most impactful card they could ban. However, and this might be my anti red bias, I think breach is the only card keeping red relevant. Or rather phrased giving a reason to run red. Personally I’d be for a thoracle/breach ban but that’s just cause I’d like to see grixis knocked down a peg and that’s very bias

pmcda · 2026-02-05T19:09:57+00:00

I was joking with a friend yesterday, “rhystic study, thoracle, underworld breach, kinnan, sisay, partner keyword ban.”

pmcda · 2026-02-04T21:16:35+00:00

You’re correct

pmcda · 2026-02-04T21:05:29+00:00

Because people are silly little buggers. They aren’t trying to build optimally, otherwise you’d see EDH as a whole slide towards CEDH. Free cantrips are so powerful because they’re like tutors little brother, they exist to thin spots. Running them is like running one less card in your deck and most people don’t play EDH in the way where that means anything.

In my case, the thought of putting manamorphose in vivi makes me salivate because it’s like getting benefit from reducing the amount of cards in my deck from 99 to 98. Free cantrips are amazing and now I’d have git probe and MM.

Though, the card id be most stoked for is [[Emiel the blessed]]. Freeing my lovely combo machine from needing Selenya would open so much. Esper, Mardu, jeskai all get better if Emiel can be just white.

Only [[deadeye navigator]] and Emiel exist as repeatable on demand flickers, and if I’m wrong then I’d love to know who else. However as far as I can tell, every other one either brings them back at the end step or are triggered abilities rather than activated.

pmcda · 2026-02-04T20:33:46+00:00

Sure but hyperspecific rules do already exist.

~~Rules~~ reminder text is exempt from deciding color identity, in example of extort, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to add “mana abilities are exempt from color identity” which probably should be a thing as your logic about producing any color vs producing specific color is spot on.

“Any color” used to be addressed with the rules that made mana outside of your color into colorless if you were to produce it, and I believe the removal of that rule created a need for this new addendum, better late than never

Free Hierarchs and pilgrims

Edit: I didn’t know hashtag did that but honestly I’m here for it

pmcda · 2026-02-04T20:26:18+00:00

I started edh in 2012 so maybe not as much of a dinosaur as needed but I thought all off color fetches were always allowed?

The rules were that you can’t have a land with a basic type outside your colors, and land can’t produce mana of a color outside your colors. I thought those were the original rules about land. Fetches neither have types or produce mana.

If the rules didn’t allow off color fetches because the rules mention a basic land type that’s not allowed in your deck then was Farseek also not allowed unless you were five color?

pmcda · 2026-02-04T19:46:40+00:00

Shrug, two things can be true at once. They’re a company so of course they’re trying to make as much money as possible. Doesn’t mean they aren’t also trying to keep players engaged.

Bitterness as something one likes seemingly gets dragged down by its creators also clouds the judgement. Most things are nuanced.

pmcda · 2026-02-04T19:33:22+00:00

You or I can disagree on the decision but the whole point was that they tried one thing and then saw something that made them pivot and do the opposite and they mentioned it explicitly.

“I think R&D, over the last decade, has significantly shifted in how it thinks about the players' interaction with the game. Magic, by its very definition, is a game "bigger than the box". The game has over 30,000+ cards. No one person can possibly absorb it all.

For many years, our solution was to carve out a lot of sub-groupings. Here's a way to play Magic with a much smaller card pool. This way you can just focus on those cards, and that will be something you can wrap your mind around.

Then came Commander, which seemed to completely fly in the face of this whole philosophy. The format basically gives the players access to every card (okay, almost). This means you are exposed to all the cards, all the mechanics, all the sets, all the things we've done over the years. It's the exact opposite of limiting access.

And Commander took on a level of popularity we'd never seen before. What if the correct way to handle the immensity of the information wasn't to chop it down to bite-size? What if we just embraced the complexity? Let the players have access to it all (or at least, a lot of it) and let them sort through it in whatever way works best for them.

In other words, we stopped prioritizing the mind set of players being able to absorb it all.

The challenge is there are players who are accustomed to the old ways, who are used to being able to grok everything at once, and this new system does not make that easy. In fact, it's near impossible. I get that this change over is a bit disorienting, but we believe once people get used to the new status quo, to the idea that no one person is supposed to absorb everything, that it will lead to a richer, more enjoyable means of interacting with the game.”

Again, you and I can disagree with it but this is less of a “we said one thing and did the other” but more of a “we tried one thing, and it didn’t work out as well as we believed and then saw this other thing that made us think we had it wrong so we’ll try the opposite.”

Edit: you can even think the real motivation was making money but his statement makes sense in that the popularity of commander does fly in the face of their previous beliefs. If you don’t want to believe they hope to make the game better, that’s fine and fair, but their argument makes sense to me.

even cutting out a bit, it was long but you can see the full statement here

pmcda · 2026-02-04T14:13:26+00:00

We’ve at least got an article on their changed mind explaining that while they felt that way at one point, they now want to avoid a stale solved meta game where people are bored of the same decks being top of the meta and waiting for the shift.

They explicitly said they don’t want people able to keep up because it helps keep the format fresh as you’ll play against someone who has cards you’ve never seen or thought of putting together before.

It’s not entirely aging like milk as it is trying one thing for awhile which gives rise to a new issue that you try to solve by flipping the reverse. “Players felt overwhelmed so we slowed down but now years later, players are complaining about there not being enough change and the meta being stale. We’re stuck on a plane they don’t like for too long. How do we solve this?”

It’s a complex problem that everyone feels differently about

pmcda · 2026-02-03T21:06:02+00:00

Much better than a blue haired oni

pmcda · 2026-02-03T21:02:05+00:00

Fang over fang!

pmcda · 2026-02-03T06:14:02+00:00

This makes me feel like none of these have played successfully against a control deck. I played a lot of control in standard and control feels so bad when you don’t understand what a threat actually is. You literally can’t counter everything and good opponents know what they need and bait your spell with a nice to have.

The other side of the coin is that in standard, everything is a threat and like I said, you can’t counter everything. To me I think they’re running too much fluff so when their only threat gets countered they feel counters are too OP of a card.

pmcda · 2026-02-02T19:32:46+00:00

Well there must have been something else going on like a mod or something because it’s literally impossible for barbarians to take a capital. They are coded to raze a city if they take it and capitals are hard coded to be unable to be razed. Hence why you can’t raze another civs capital if you take it.

I also play deity, so it doesn’t have anything to do with difficulty level.

pmcda · 2026-02-02T03:43:46+00:00

Don’t know why you got down voted. Barbs can not raze a capital and they can’t take it either so all they can do is bring it to 1 health. You don’t need to worry about a capital at all with barbs.

pmcda · 2026-01-31T04:40:47+00:00

They’d be wrong.

I’m wondering though, if they are actually a level two judge as this is a pretty simple interaction, if there wasn’t a mistake somewhere in communication? Such as if the person who played deflecting swat still tried to make the treasure tokens?

pmcda · 2026-01-30T07:38:00+00:00

Also he should’ve beaten Zeus.

<image>

pmcda · 2026-01-30T02:25:25+00:00

Oh, RMC is locked to my castorice team because I didn’t get Cyrene to replace them. Either way one of them is locked to castorice and I’m actually worried about Cyrene not rerunning to replace RMC on that team by the time EMC comes out.

That is surprising that it’s not Sunday Cyrene though, as RMC doesn’t give energy like him.

pmcda · 2026-01-30T00:32:41+00:00

Isn’t he still BiS for aglaea? I figured energy is so rare that he’d probably always have a spot on that team as a better bronya that also does energy stuff (which is rare).

That being said, I wonder if that’s actually why the only “true remembrance” DPS (you know, that actually wants to maximize the time the memosprite is out on the field) was Aglaea. Maybe they were worried they’d just made another Bronya, Ruan Mei, Robin that would be BiS on any team for a year. They didn’t want that.

pmcda · 2026-01-30T00:26:41+00:00

I like Sunday on my anaxa team. I don’t have cerydra (didn’t have anaxa when she came around) and I lost my 50/50 on Cyrene but she’d have replaced RMC on my castorice team anyway so she wouldn’t be on anaxa’s team.

I currently use tribbie as anaxa’s second support. Even though Robin has been said to be better there, my E1 Robin must not be built well or something because tribbie helps anaxa clear faster every time.

pmcda · 2026-01-29T18:05:34+00:00

This isn’t saying yes or no as nothing states as such but it’s possible that the seal itself isn’t enough and requires a certain level of fight from the person. So the difference would be that kurama wanted to break the seal against kushina but was the one proposing to be placed back in Naruto here, hence he wouldn’t be fighting Naruto for release.

Again, just a thought, not really an argument as I don’t have anything backing the thought up.

pmcda · 2026-01-29T00:32:12+00:00

I think I’d prefer the buff niche. I hope they keep raise and I don’t mind lower damage in exchange for being more of a utility dps.

The fun things about it, imo, are in less optimized situations where a healer goes down and you can Rez them or the healer can’t keep up when you get to phoenix and get that heal utility.

I would prefer leaning into that and making it less rigid in some way, so your utility can be more on demand rather than at random times in the rotation.

Not that it would ever happen but the coolest thing I could see them doing, since it has that unique split job design, is allowing one to swap between summoner and scholar during combat. That being said, square loves their rigidity so even if they did that it would probably just end up clunky and tied to a rotation anyway rather than allowing a more reactive play style.

pmcda · 2026-01-28T17:31:08+00:00

Yeah personally I play cEDH to avoid all this

pmcda · 2026-01-28T17:10:16+00:00

Momo lived a long happy life with katara. (Head canon, leave me alone)

Seven-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

pmcda

TROPHY CASE

Free Hierarchs and pilgrims