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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ส.ค. 2023
- Commander has changed a lot over the years! We tracked specific moments that marked a shift in EDH design philosophy.
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It’s the best day of the week because it’s prerelease day AND new EDHRecast day
I can't wait for next week, when it'll happen again! (Sarcastic, but only a little)
I love how you phrase it like there's a prerelease every week, because we're THIS close to actually having new products every damned week...
Note for the primal surge challenge: First, primal surge is itself a may effect, so you can choose to stop going off before you deck yourself. Second, another popular card with mandatory draw is The Great Henge. However, Soul of the Harvest does have the ETB-draw clause, *and* it's a may.
Also, abundance can protect you.
As a random thought about primal surge, I would play a couple misses in my deck to induce variance and keep it interesting for me.
@@GerBessaI was just about to say that too. I love it when I can effectively use abundance.
1:01:30 I think that's why simpler designs have also seen a surge in popularity, such as the uncommons from SNC or Baldur's Gate. Recently, I built a Queza-Deck and it might have been the most fun thing I put together this year
As someone who has only been playing commander since maybe 2020, this was a fun and informative one for me!
Me too, did you get started during quarantine?
@@dominicsandoval2214 yep! I built maybe five decks before ever getting a chance to play any, thanks to in-person gaming being damn near impossible at that time.
I don't think this got touched on, but... I wonder how much Arena has complicated MTG card design recently. I feel like some of these damage/token doublers and triplers are super fun in digital Magic but a bit of a pain in paper.
Damage isn't so bad, it's just math, but god dang have they been making a lot of clone effects recently. I play digitally myself so it's not a problem, but I can't imagine the amount of placeholder tokens some decks would need to use in paper.
Those Early EDH days were wild, and by wild i mean painfully slow. I remember i was playing ShatterGang Bros. And matches would last 2-3 hours!
A continual highlight of my week for the past few years has been watching y'all's newest podcast episode. Truly a great production
Thank you so much!
I'll say, one of the changes over the years that has affected me was that at one point I had your entire library of episodes to watch for the first time! Now I have to wait a week to get the three of ya'll together for new content!
1:09:56 "No one's going to be impressed by how much I hate something"
There's a LOOOOOOOT of people who need to hear that and take it to heart.
IMO the format was significantly better when it wasnt been designed for and having 3 or 4 legends per set where one might be any good was better. Most people had decks of about the same strength and the mana curve basically started at around 4. Good times.
Idk as someone who played a lot then, I think modern commander is much more interesting.
I think both eras have their strengths, the old commander really was a format where you played random bulk rares and pet cards and they were effective, but at the same time, modern design means you'll get a commander for almost any strategy you'd like to make. Energy is a great example, had they been using modern design philosophy back then, we would have at least 1, probably multiple energy commanders
@jadegrace1312 of course it is more interesting now but there's always some nostalgic idiot who wants to go back to "Unga bunga caveman format" because they were young and with fewer problems back then.
Wow Matt that Rick Astley joke was amazing. You really didn't run around it!
Workout and listening to you guys, what a great day.
I think another reason for putting so much UB in commander is that its the safest "sandbox" for niche or hyper-specific card design. They can make four flavor-first decks that are fun to play and not worry as much about breaking competitive formats.
That doesn't make sense though... because UB cards do go into competitive formats, namely Legacy and Vintage, and have already done a good job of impacting them, leading to at least one ban that I know of.
If WoTC really cared, they would have printed all of the UB cards with silver borders (and also wouldn't do stuff like declare that the LoTR set is modern legal for some dubious reason), which would protect competitive formats while still giving people an avenue to play with the cards by simply asking if their pod wouldn't mind, which is a request most people would oblige
@@jinxed7915 impact isn't the same thing as breaking, and vintage and legacy already have the most powerful cards ever printed. The formats WOTC is actually worried about are modern, pioneer, and standard.
I sarted playing in 2020 in commander. And to be honest I think that if you play casual it's amazing. There's a lot of products so the meta cannot exist since it shifts so fast. And you see a lot of new decks across the table so you never know what to expect. It's fun and new. But if you play "serious" then you need to keep up with powercreep and that's hard to do
It's pretty easy to keep up with new sets if you're only interested in "playable" cards, WOE for example held about 10 cards for my casual edh decks compared to 3 for constructed and zero for cedh.
I find i can pick up playsets of everything from a set for modern, pioneer, standard and pauper pretty cheap other than outliers like sheoldred.
Ah pre 2011 EDH, i miss those days. I still remember when the 1st round of commander decks came out i was a part of my local stores EDH regulars and they held a Kaalia deck for me because that was the only one i cared about lol. Ended up getting Kaalia and Zedruu.
I think something to keep in mind is that making commanders more complicated is for a design reason. If you are increasing the number of commanders you are printing, the threat of running out of new design space is very real. If you increase the text on a card it's the same effect as increasing the number of digits in a license plate or phone number, meaning they simply have more room to work with before forced duplication.
The current era of design seems to have cards that “rotate” the format, not because people feel obligated to keep up, but because the new designs are genuinely exciting for people to brew around or try out in decks.
I'd feel better about it if I knew the player's feelings on the matter. I can only guess off my gut, but I can't shake the feeling that there are many that play those stronger commanders and cards not out of desire but a sense of obligation. I don't know if someone's playing Edgar because they love having an unstoppable swarm of vampires and every other card they play comes with bonus value, or if they just want a Mardu vampire commander and he's the only one on theme and they'd honestly tune him down if they could because the overbearing emminence ability isn't why they're running him. The former isn't exactly wrong, but I'd like to know the audience metrics to know how many people actually prefer such designs or just put up with it for the sake of their desired theme.
@@Tuss36Edgar Markov was 6 years ago, which to me feels an odd example of modern design? But maybe not.
It's worth pointing out (and I just reliazed this myself) that Primal Surge is a may for putting the card onto the battlefield. So it isn't even nessecarily a "don't run these cards," so much as it is a "don't just dump your library onto the battlefield, actually walk through it"
I think the concern is as much about the reduced overall combo effectiveness as it is about the risk of milling your own deck. The idea with Primal Surge decks is that you have few non-permanents, so you are going to put most of your deck into play. If you have to draw 2+ cards for every permanent that comes into play, you cannot do that. Instead of getting 60+ permanents into play, you get capped at maybe 20 permanents (and 40 cards in your hand) because those enchantments unlike Primal Surge are not optional.
Sure, that's very true. It's just that they specifically called out milling a decent amount. But reducing combo potential is definitely a better way of putting what I meant
@@chrisvanderheiden12 I agree. Their challenge the stats segment focussed too much on ‘drawing too many cards is bad’, without properly explaining why with primal surge decks that is such a problem.
@@Dragon_Fyre Indeed. I specifically run ETB draw effects in my "oops all permanents" Primal Surge deck, but it's Muldrotha and I have access to Lab Man, Jace WoM and Thoracle...Primal Surge is supposed to win me the game on the spot if it resolves, it's not a value piece.
I think that Dana’s point is that WotC Corp can’t allow nostalgia formats to just be nostalgia formats because they are in the business of selling new cards. Recently, I’ve built a few decks for which I just look forward to seeing how Wizards will power creep them (lack of a better word) with each new release, but I’m not sure it’ll keep my interest forever. I also struggle with the idea of having to put cards from IPs I actively dislike into my decks… Interesting episode!
Props to Dana on that mid roll ad read, that was a very long winded one! Well executed.
Magic should come with a gambling addiction warning, too
Id love for you guys to cover how content creation and websites like EDHRec influence the format. That sounds incredibly interesting
27:00 I reccomend Legion Loyalty. It triples and stacks with true conviction.
Very interesting topic, I think you explored important aspects that defined eras form mtg edh
I really loved how they gave boros the whole exile thing, I wish they sorta made that a key theme, not just on stryx.
Matt's Challenge the Stats reminds me why I played a Surrak Dragonclaw shell around Primal Surge - so I have access to Lab Man and Jace WoM for those compulsory draws
I'm so here for longer EDHRecCast episodes, that's rad!
I started MtG just about around 2011. Didn’t get into EDH immediately, but this is a fun walk down memory lane.
Also really don’t like universes beyond, but it’s also kinda whatever. I enjoy playing with friends and family and don’t pay as much attention to wizards/hasbro and what’s coming out most recently.
Going off of what Joey was saying about " A Moment In Commander ", I have to point out an article by Sam Stroddard on May 23, 2023 which told the magic community about the " Legends Rule Change " Up until this rules change, Clone was a " Removal Spell " and if you ran blue, you would run Clone just to have removal ( if only for commanders ) in your deck. I'm not sure about other metas of the time, but in my meta, it was common to have a secondary commander in a deck just in case someone else had a deck with the same legend. Did anyone else do this in the 2011-2013 era ?
Zeriam is my golden boi, it's such a fun deck
Great episode guys!!!
When you guys were talking about innitstrad standard, and said perfect storm. I'd say it was the perfect Rooftop Storm? 😂
i have not really predictions but hopes , i hope they will print legends and support for unused / less used themes and tribes and maybe controlled breakdown of the reserved list opening up old legendaries creating even more unique and different decks.
Legends (1994) came out *less* than a year after Alpha (1993), not 2 years after Alpha. But we all understand the general point that Dana was making.
While I dislike the product overflow, I wouldn't mind a - as unlikely as it is - World of Warcraft crossover.
Zhulodok came with Endless One in the precon. Now, I know, sounds like a bad include, but it's a good card for the secondary commander Omarthis.
Did I just learn a major life lesson? “The change doesn’t care what you do”.
I've loved watching the walls of the multiverse come down.
Like, mtg lore literally coincides with reality now. It's insane.
As soon as MOM tore the walls down, what started as a trickle became a flood of new content.
I haven't been this excited for magic probably since BFZ.
Your universes beyond section hit me. I get why it works because even though I hate it I’m gonna make an ezio commander deck if it exists lol
This is the first I'm learning of a final fantasy set.
I'm so stoked for that, the artifacts and equipments are going to be amazing.
I can't wait until we get our one of one black materia that post Malone will hoard in his loot collection.
Hope not to take away from the video too much, but I really don't think it's responsible to advertise gambling services in general. I understand y'all need money to function, and please understand that I am a big fan, just offering my criticism because I feel quite passionate about this
That's absolutely a fair concern. We agonized over this one a lot. I specifically decided to be the one to do the ad read because I've got a bit of a history with gambling. I'm no high roller, but I paid more than a few debts off in my youth with money I picked up playing blackjack at reputable places, and poker at less reputable ones. I personally don't love the notion of online betting for a ton of reasons, the first being it enables bad habits WAY too easily, and makes them WAY too abstract. That said . . . it's also something I personally have partaken in, and not casually. So while I don't necessarily love it, I simultaneously think if it's something I'm okay with personally then it's odd to draw a line in a sand over it professionally. If you don't agree I completely get it. Just trying to explain that it's not something we or I decided upon without thought.
Thank you for the reply, that all makes sense to me. I figured y'all would have put a lot of thought into something like that but still wanted to voice the concern as a viewer. Glad to know it was something that wasn't done carelessly
Magic the gathering is based around gambling The entire concept of buying packages of cards that have randomized content is just the first generation of loot boxes
@Zookmottin that’s why folks should buy singles!!
A way around decking yourself with primal surge is warstorm surge; sequencing triggers
"The change doesn't care" - Dana Roach 2023
Sorry guys but the “Eras” word instantly makes me think of TS, si here it is:
🎶Back when we where still shuffling for a better hand
Draft chaff was enough, for me it was enough
To trade basic lands for a rare, duck rule for the head of your deck
And say hey do you play EDH, so much for older sets
And part mulligan, game wasn’t mine to win
Game wasn’t mine to win 🎶
49:09 this is what I was reeeally scared of back when Commander 2017 came out. I made my C15 Swell the Host precon into a Snake tribal commander deck with Kaseto, Orochi Archmage at the helm, and C17 was going to be tribal commander decks. I was excited at first for the tribal synergies (and was later able to quickly buy some tribal staples before they spiked in prices), but quickly realized, wait what if they make a snake tribal deck, then I would stand in front of this weird split decision
Great episode,
Agree with Joey's point at the end, there is a split coming, its inevitable, just as has happened to other formats in the past. Commander players should welcome it. I feel like an aggressive and semi official ban list to split competitive/casual is the best way to go. A community managed point system could also work now that we are in the age of EDHREC etc.
I play warhammer 40K in addition to magic. Dana’s last comment about change is something I hear often in that game. People talk about how the game used to be and some of it comes from people who quit due those changes. The big thing for me is that these hobbies have many different ways for players to engage with them. Do the one that brings you joy. If that is no longer the case it is ok to put it down and to the side for as long as you want, If you want to put it on the secondary market or just into a closet that is fine. It was not a waste the bonds and memories you made have value too.
I do not like Universe Beyond. I will not say anything positive about a Universe Beyond product beyond liking a few card designs. I will not play with anything UB, be it D&D, LOTR, Warhammer, etc. But it’s here to stay, so much like the Legend rule, I’m confining my UB Boycott to my side of the battlefield. And I really only have an issue with the mechanically unique alternate IP cards, so if any cards get a Universe Within reprint, which several of them will probably need, I’ll be perfectly fine with those.
RE: Typal decks ending up being supplanted by precons- I would argue this is a GOOD thing, not a bad one. Not only does it give a good footing for new and casual players, it also means that that type was probably not well supported in the past. Of course all the UB Fairie decks are going to run the new UB Fairie cards, because there wasn't 20 something Fairies that were good enough to see play to begin with.
I found a pretty cool combo with spell crumple: there is this card called "Tunnel vision", it goes like this: "Name a card. Target player reveals cards from the top of his or her library until the named card is revealed. If it is, that player puts the rest of the revealed cards into his or her graveyard and puts the named card on top of his or her library. Otherwise, the player shuffles his or her library." so what you would do is, you would counter something that is cast right before your turn with spell crumple, doesn't matter that it is so long as it isn't the commander, then put that card on the bottom of their library, then it goes to your turn and you cast tunnel vision, naming that card you just countered, their whole library is gone and they draw the card and you pass the turn and they die.
Gavin has admitted, mistakes were made when designing some of these commander sets, like Eminance is a huge mistake. Personally, I think the partner commanders are a mistake too. They should have had "Partner with: " I think each commander deck in 2016 or whenever it was had 2 partner commanders in it is that right?
as much as I love Lord Windgrace, he is a mistake. Wizards tried to force planes walkers to matter in commander with these precons and I hate it, at that point they might as well have allowed all planeswalkers to be commanders or just outright ban them as commanders because they weren't creatures and yes, they should have kept the "banned as commander" list.
So, I came across something I consider a bug on your EDHREC page. the Average Rat Colony deck only has 1 rat colony in it, why is that? if I go to Marrow-gnawer and look up "average list" it has a tons of rats and only 1 rat colony. That is clearly not how you are supposed to build rat commanders I'm sorry.
Werewolves are such a sad creature type. the best commander for werewolves isn't even legendary, so when you play werewolves, you can ask your playgroup if you can please play your special commander instead of Tovolar. Tovolar is ok, don't get me wrong, but "Immerwolf" is so much better, the only restriction is that you have to play Human Werewolves or he doesn't work, luckily there are tons of those.
We are currently in the: "The deck builds itself" era. Decklist is basically printed on the commander.
Or printed entirely within the confines of a handful of subsequent sets
Part of that I think is they are trying to give us commanders for niche strategies because that’s what they think people want and niche decks tend to have a much more limited card pool that all need to be in the deck
I will absolutely be going all in for the UB Final Fantasy products when they come out. I could definitely see it having a huge amount of Legendaries on par with UB Lord of the Rings.
I used to have a kartthus, tyrant of jund primal surge deck that was oops all permanents. However in order to not lose instantly when I cast primal surge I put in a platinum angel which worked very swimmingly in my lower powered pod at the time.
Alright, Matt. That Challenge steal was clean!
I’m with Dana on his prediction for the future. The next era of edh will be called “Rotating Commander” where your deck is good for 1-2 years before being reskinned by a new precon or sub theme in a set or whatever.
The only concern I have for the game is that in the pursuit of widening consumer base and accessibility we will see wizards emulate the gaming industry. DLC in the form of supplemental sets, dumbing down the content as to not alienate the new consumers and as we've already seen throwaway attitudes to the product because of turnaround demands.
If I deck myself playing primal surge, so be it. I will go out of this world drawing cards, and I can’t think of a better way to go. 😂
Fair! 😂
1:02:17 Since food is on theme for Shelob, I am not concerned with the text add. As it builds tribal synergies that aren't otherwise used. More advantages for tribal jank is not bad.
Not related to the actual video but everytime they show the omnath shirt im always saddened to see it out of stock, my gruul heart wants it so bad
I wanted to build a dragons deck, but several of my friends already had either Tiamat or Miirym. Decided to go old school and built Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund. He's mostly there for the haste. The deck is a lot of fun and it can easily keep up with Miirym because they won't play it against the true lord of dragons.
I think the more feature-loaded commander design is less from an intent to rotate the format and more an attempt to give players what Wizards thinks they want. What player wouldn't want to draw cards or get a copy of all their cards or effect triggers? Such effects are common enough to also sort of feeds into the repetitive design you mentioned, and possibly a result of making so many legends. How do you make something splashy and value filled when you gotta make two dozen such designs a set?
Personally I find the old stuff to be just as viable, but I've just been lucky in my playgroups. It does make me sad to know some folks are in environments they feel they need to "keep up" in, when there's no competitive pressure unlike other formats.
Today you can pretty much spot if a person netdecked or used a search engine for cards. Only people who really know a ton amount of cards in commander know even the fun/jank/alternative cards and often tend to play them because its more fun. :D
Primal Surge itself is a MAY ability, so there's no issue, if you're drawing too much, you can just choose to stop the cycle.
Im a big fan of canlander and wish more people would have decks for it. Its like cedh but more than 2 strategies are viable
I’ve been playing EDH since 2007. At the time it was a way for me use my boxes of cards I never use. It’s so different now that’s it’s the most popular format. But honestly, it’s so much fun that I don’t care. Standard has become so stale since they stopped having blocks in 2018.
I started too feel like Joey had been quite a bit too long and so the steal was coming. I learned magic before 2016 but Breya was my first deck when receiving the precon as a gift, and the game has evoked like crazy since and been more expensive which makes me sad that I didn’t get to be more a part of the bulk rare area
I don’t see a problem with Guardian Project, Garruk’s Uprising etc. with Primal Surge as long as you are including a means to remove those enchantments once you are setup to cast it.
I have the same issue with my Marneus Calgar deck, where I don’t want it to be just another Thoracle deck, so I have to keep an eye on cards like Chasm Skulker when my commander is in play, so that I don’t get decked.
The issue isn't if those cards are out when you primal surge, it's when you flip into them as you primal surge and they trigger to draw after you resolve the surge, making surge read "lose the game if you can't stop the draw"
@@winter945 …and water is wet.
Edit: Note, you don’t lose, you just restrict the primal surge.
the "universes beyond explosion"? perhaps you should call it "the big bang"? ;D
Still rocking bird/wizard tribal w/ derevi in 2024.
That draft kings read was unexpected 😂😂
A few things. I adore the more niche design precons have as I already used them as toolkits to deckbuild and I always wanted to build a fairy deck so I got the new one and a handful of singles and now I'll have a fairy deck next week I wouldn't have made otherwise due to indisicion.
Also baulders gate is not universes beyond.the plane of Fearun shares the same multiverse as the planes of mtg. As magic planes are dnd setting books.
That's probably the best stolen segue of Challenge the Stats ever it was so smooth! Nice job Matt! LMAO
I have made a budget Shelob deck and it is quite underwhelming. I believe the issue is that the designers wanted to make a spider tribal commander however there isn’t really any spider support. So they compensated by putting alot of text on the commander which helps but even with Shelob and some spiders on the field i still felt like nothing was happening. It would have been much better if they had 5 or 6 cards dedicated to spider tribal rather then 1 big commander.
And yet, for three out of five of the 4-color combos, only 1 single commander even exists for each 😔
It is still shocking to me that designers AND developers of games do not know how to balance their games. NOT designing Fierce Guardianship, or Golos, or Chulane, or Urza, or Dockside Extortionist, or Hullbreaker seems like no brainer.
I still think Olivia's "play whatever cards you want no matter how powerful they are" can be a tricky philosophy to justify. Many people will end up overtuning their decks to make for unfun pod experiences. I would say a single person's experience as a result of card choice should only be part of the plan. Think about your group too and how to make their experience fun.
2022: 10,498 new printed cards, gross 15% of total cardpool 30 years of magic. Something to note...
I'm looking forward to Thunder Junction, Fallout, and Final Fantasy, and I'm hoping for a legendary blue-red faerie, red food, white faeries, and green faeries.
I am one of the people and I want to see joey challenge the stats a couple times
Whatever happened to the weekly streams? I think I missed it if the cast ever said anything about it, do you guys think you’ll ever start it up again?
Combo of summer scheduling craziness and just needing a break. We’ll be back soon, but prob not weekly just to avoid burnout
@@danaroach29 makes sense, definitely take all the time you guys need, we love the content, but we love you guys taking care of yourselves even more
So I have a question for everyone. How many people you know started to play Magic because of Universes Beyond?
Regarding the "this percentage of decks is running that card" issue with Zhulodok and Endless one; I'm not sure how EDHRec gets its data, but this combination is simply in the precon (and your first step should be indeed to remove it). So anyone adding their deck to a source that is scraped for data will result in this card showing up on EDHRec. If enough players do this, you get the frankly rediculous 28% :D Even if I choose an $$$ "as commander" with "eldrazi" as type, it's still 15% instead of 0 decks.
Is there a way, or is there a plan for a way, to filter out all "too similar" deck instances of data (or something similar, idk), so that you can funnel down to some more specific cards that have high/fun synergy, but are in fewer decks? I would love such a feature.
I am NOT beating the UB consumer allegations. I have a Drizzt deck (AFR), Volo deck (AFR), Mr House deck (Fallout), Cass, hand of vengeance deck (fallout), additionally all of the fallout precons, a 40k precon, and a LOTR precon. My most anticipated set is the Final Fantasy set and my most bought set was Baldur’s Gate… I am the problem child 😵💫
I would highly interested in playing "pioneer edh" exclusively. Like that I'm sure everyone is on similiar power level
When they released the pair of the UG Sea Monsters and WR Equipment deck in the same batch, I was actively sad as I'd built those decks from the ground up to be quite good. Then when I saw the lists, there was an 85% overlap in most relevant cards, so that I had maybe 1-2 cards from those precons that I added into my decks. I did feel substantially less special for having done all the work, then the company having to crap on my prior work. That said, I'm still glad that other people can more easily play such decks.
Will of the council from Conspiracy 2? Where is Rowan of the council?
Nah, Will and Rowan came from Battlebonds.
55:50
more like your golgari death touch deck won't be able to keep up until they print a golgari death touch precon
thoughts and prayers going out to the souls running Zeriam tribal
Jokes on you Trogdanite, my Muldrotha Primal Surge deck runs Tiagam and underrealm lich
Nice!
In the next era, abilities of cards will trigger from your deck and hand without being cast. The 100% Eminence era. No one casts a single spell.
'When this card etb's reveal any amount of cards from your deck...'
That segue steal was SOOOO smooth, that for a split second it put a shroud of kinship over the world and all of it's fear, menace and intimidation just withered away.
Did y’all stop making twitch content?
Every week the Challenge the stats segway gets stolen earlier, next week Mat will stole the segways for the rest of the year in one comment
I have to disagree about Shelob. I think it’s more a balancing act for having a 6 mana commander. There’s so much acceleration you’re not likely to have this out quickly. By the time you can get her on the board everyone else is already pushing past the mid game. And it is for spiders, which has few noteworthy members.
Without the balancing towards more later game stuff it’s just playing the same strong low mana cost spells.
As a Shelob player, I wish they made her Ward 3 or less expensive. Removal is cheap and the deck doesn’t do as well without her on board.
People did, and some few still do, play multiplayer before EDH was a thing. The game’s designers always had some few cards in mind for those types of games. Going all the way back to Alpha.
Not all multiplayer has to be EDH.
I think that we poopoo on commander specifics design alot because of the powercreep but we forget that it gave us so much, card draw in every color, commander for set specific theme and mechanics, underdog commanders for hipster like me to thinker with etc.
Primal surge has a may on it though
The enchantments referenced do not. So you are forced to significantly limit the primal surge.
Instead of getting perhaps 60-75 permanents, you might get 20-25 and have to draw (40-50 cards). It would still be a win-con but where having 60+ permanents is nearly a guaranteed win unless your opponents can board wipe, 20 or so permanents (a 3rd of that being land) while very powerful but may yet prove insufficient with 3 opponents.
Matt has reached a new level of segue theft 😂
as much as white is doing better, they really should be more or less equal to green in enchantresses and have the "enchant lands" style ramp. it lines up with their "less lands than you" theme and the card draw is right there. plus, I haven't seen any green deck use them over the classic land ramp unless it's going enchantress, which splashes white anyway
edit: the elegant design philosophy is definitely felt, a lot of creatures would be awesome without one of their lines
We need new formats.