Ben Brode

whew got it

dammit i moved my meetings around for the email time now I'll be in a meeting at 9AM 😭

somehow it got worse

wut

the best card in the new Avatar Set... is maybe Gran-Gran? 👀

ok so what are everyone's new halloweens resolutions

That’s why we start games with “hey we play with no sol rings. If you draw it, just remove it and draw again. Cool?”

That way when you play with folks who ain’t cool you can still have it

Happy Halloween!

People forget, or want to keep it for when they play against heathens.

This is the way

In the pods I play in. If someone draws a sol ring, they immediately exile it and replace it with something else. Because c’mon.

YouTube video by Commander At Home Ben Brode's heroic Spiders-Man take on the villainous CovertGoBlue | Commander at Home Episode 80

Your friendly neighborhood @benbrode.bsky.social is back, taking his Spiders-Man up against the villainous @covertgoblue.bsky.social!

Will the costumed commander damage hater take the day? Or will the Fluid Felon steal the show?

LIVE: youtu.be/53s-5RKAdGE

no, you're right. It's why i've taken out most board wipes and put in more win conditions. But most decks aren't winning with Commander damage even after 2 hours anyway. :-/

autospotters are game changers

But difference for difference sake doesn't feel quite right to me. I think each difference bears some cognitive load and we should analyze each one to decide if it's worth its cost. Hybrid Mana doesn't cross that line for me personally, regardless of where the right place on the spectrum is.

And to date, as it has removed rules to make it more similar to the rest of Magic, it has grown in popularity. Remember when you couldn't generate mana outside your color identity?

We could continue to differentiate it - I have long been a proponent of a Life Cap, for instance.

i often like to think about these things as a gradient. Is Commander better if it is less unique and different? Should it be more unique and different? What are the chances that it is exactly at the perfect point on that spectrum right now?

I’m not saying that’s good or bad. I’m just saying that this isn’t actually the wall we get to use to influence what cards they make or don’t make. Because they drive tanks.

I agree working within limitations is fun. But as designers it’s good to analyze whether these are the right ones, or would other ones be better. I think the rule that you couldn’t generate mana outside your identity was an example of a not great imitation. The removal didn’t hurt Commander.

I mean, they can brute force it if they want like with “this card can be your commander.”

They can make hybrid cards that say “can be used in decks with any color identity”

I don’t think Commander Committee has the power it used to.

Tutors - Colorless - None A deck created using Moxfield.

wait what? every color can tutor

moxfield.com/decks/gcH0ru...

how do you feel about colorless mana? it's the least restrictive of the mana symbols. If you don't like hybrid (which is designed to be OR), do you also not like colorless (which is designed to be ALL)?

Do you think designers should only be able to design AND and ANY cards but no OR cards?

Feels like they addressed these in the article

You’re thinking from the rules you already know. What you said isn’t weird at all from the broad perspective of MtG

Also this affects mostly mono color decks and maaaaybe 1-2 cards in those decks. It’s not gonna have much of an impact besides making it easier to understand and reducing the barrier to learn.

It was very weird to me that a card that is designed to be played in a mono color deck and is playable in a mono color deck in every other format suddenly couldn’t go in a mono color deck.

This was the most confusing part of the format for me because it works so differently than the rest of Magic. My brain just couldn’t parse why a card that only costs white mana can’t be in a white deck

Feels like great changes! Also the way hybrid mana currently works was one of the most confusing things about the format when I first started playing it. Definitely feels like a good thing to change.

Hell naw

Indeed, sir! And damn! Next time!

Loving it!!