Femme_Fatale Okay, sounds good.

Femme_Fatale I'm interested in that. It would definitely help streamline the selections and solve most of my problems with format-specific hubs. Do you have a specific list of archetypes worth locking to formats at this point?

Paralyzing Pain

Sorcery

Paralyzing Pain deals 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker. Until end of turn, whenever an ability of that permanent is triggered or activated, put a -1/-1 counter on it or remove a loyalty counter from it.

The specific back injury can come through in the art.

Create a tropical card.

Thantis, the Windweaver

Legendary Creature - Spider

Vigilance, reach

Creatures you control have reach.

Attacking creatures have flying.

: Thantis, the Windweaver deals 3 damage to target creature with flying.

6/6

Kellan is a character, and I will die on this hill. Please indulge me and create a card for Kellan. Kellan, the Fae-Blooded, Kellan, Daring Traveler, Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy, Kellan, the Kid

000CBomb000 This is great, thanks.

Tournament results aren't one of the major criteria that I use for hubs, and quite a few of the existing hubs don't see much use outside of casual play. Generally, I like suggestions that are

• unique. They shouldn't overlap too much with other hubs, or they need a specific defining feature that makes them a recognizable subset.

• varied. If an archetype shows up in different formats, colors, or other variations while still remaining identifiable, it's probably hubworthy. (When I started doing this, there were a few hubs where all the decklists were identical except for maybe one or two cards, and a few others that only showed up for one Standard season and got one deck every few years after that. I'm trying to keep those to a minimum now.)

• understandable. If it takes more than a couple of short sentences to describe how a strategy works, it probably won't make a good hub. If it's broader than the aggro-combo-control group, it's too vague to be a hub.

So Lion Dib looks pretty good, but it's not a slam dunk if it only shows up in one format. Sligh, I'm leaning toward it being basically proto-RDW and not unique enough to be its own thing, but I'm willing to be convinced to make it a hub. The biggest distinction there is the ratio of land destruction to pure burn, and even that seems pretty flexible. Robots is in the same boat as Lion Dib. I'll do more research on those.

Others you mentioned, like Deadguy Ale, Disco Troll, and Counterburn, are at the top of the short list. They'll get added soon, along with a couple of other recent requests. I actually thought Counterburn was a hub, but it's not on the list.

000CBomb000 Could you please help with a couple of these? I can't find any specific definition of Lion Dib, and my best interpretation is that it's straightforward Jeskai aggro/zoo. What makes Lion Dib distinct?

I know that historically, Sligh is the predecessor to Red Deck Wins, but may I suggest that Oldschool 93/94 + Red Deck Wins = Sligh? Or is there some defining feature of Sligh beyond the format restriction?

Similarly, Oldschool 93/94 + Artifacts = Robots? I see the influence of Su-Chi, Triskelion, and Mishra's Workshop, but I feel like there's some core interaction or combo I'm missing.

I'm usually pretty hesitant about adding format-specific hubs, but a lot of these look like they have range outside of Oldschool 93/94. Most of them can be added or shortlisted.

As everyone (including me) keeps comparing Bloomburrow to Redwall, I should mention that the Redwall series gets dark and gritty often enough. Off the top of my head, it includes

• kidnapping and child slavery

• severe PTSD

• cannibalism

• sadistic torture and murder

• violent paranoid schizophrenia

• manipulative betrayal

All of these show up pretty regularly--you can expect at least a couple of these to show up in each book, and all of them are used completely seriously and realistically.

DemonDragonJ There's incredible audience for for dark, grim, edgy, and gritty. There's tons of literature, music, movies, and all kinds of media dedicated to that. But most people don't want only darkness. Most people don't want only fluffiness either. After two and a half years of stories and sets on the darker end of the spectrum, though, a brightly-colored and gentler world with lower stakes reminds the audience that not everything is despair and world-threatening destruction.

Throne of Eldraine was Arthurian stories and fairy tales. While it wasn't a dark set, it still had a less-accessible theme for the courts, expecting a knowledge of courtly functions in general and the Matter of Britain in particular that many people don't have, and "knights doing knight stuff" isn't a universal draw. It doesn't help that it contributed to 's competitive dominance for that time. When Wilds of Eldraine shifted focus to the fairy tales, it also added the interpersonal drama between the Kenriths and a curse affecting the entire kingdom. So while these broke from the Bolas-Phyrexia-massive war storylines before them, they weren't as light and accessible as Bloomburrow appears to be.

My reasons (mostly overlapping with Crow_Umbra:

1. It's not Earth-but-with-magic. I expect generic European-style high fantasy, but it's not directly 1-for-1 lifted from an existing culture.

2. Redwall was and still is one of my favorite series, and I like the animal fantasy genre in general.

3. Expanded creature types. With humans/elves/goblins/whatever out of the way, there's room to explore and develop lesser-used animals that have mostly been set pieces so far.

4. Lighter tone. After a couple years of darkness, heavy drama, and yet another apocalyptic event, this looks like it's going to be a good breather set.

I think it's obscure, but pretty shallow. Shelkin Brownie removes the "bands with other" ability, and this post makes that a parallel with a hypothetical "partner with other" ability.

Obligatory yet interesting trivia: The "bands with other" is the benchmark for incomprehensible and pointless mechanics. No tournament-legal card natively has it; it only appears on tokens from Master of the Wild Hunt and the land cycle that FormOverFunction mentions. Old Fogey is an Un-card that has it, too. Despite the limited and restrictive usage, it received two dedicated hosers in Shelkin Brownie and Tolaria. So that covers the "pointless" part. The "incomprehensible" part comes from the rules text description. Banding by itself is a combat ability that changes based on whether you're attacking or defending. The basic summary is that you can group creatures together and decide how combat damage gets assigned, but evasion abilities become less relevant. "Bands with other" modifies how the band creation process works.

Kţ∑∫∑þar would be pronounced something like Kts-Ss-Sthar.

(o)mŋiπ∫ŧţπ is something like u(r)hm-ng-ipsth-thp. The first letter (not transcribing for me) is basically the vowel of "foot" in a Geordie accent, if you know what that sounds like.

(o)mŋiπ∫ŧţπ

Legendary Enchantment Creature - Avatar

You can't spend mana from permanents to cast this spell.

When (o)mŋiπ∫ŧţπ enters the battlefield, each player shuffles their hand and graveyard into their library, then exiles the top half of their library.

If a player would draw while their library has no cards in it, instead that player doesn't draw.

9/9

Create the delivery of an important package.

Yeah, Attraction cards and Sticker cards got banned from Commander a few days ago. If your group is okay with it, you could keep them, but officially that cards aren't legal and should be switched out.

Starting the hub inventory, I don't see any of the keywords or mechanics from MKM or OTJ: disguise, case, suspect, plot, spree, outlaw, mount, and commit a crime are all missing. Gate, battle, stickers, and attractions are also missing, as mentioned above, along with historic, performer, clown, employee and guest. (Stickers and attractions might fall off after the last round of bans.) I'm happy to add them manually, but if it's supposed to be auto-creating, it's being pretty slow about it.

Would Undercity fall into Venture into the Dungeon, or is it distinct enough to be its own mechanic?

TypicalTimmy for the acidomancy, may I suggest corrosimancer? Based on corrosion/corrosive. If this magical art isn't just used for fighting, but also used to clean bathtubs with the power of neutralizing reactions and make everything taste better with phenolic acids, maybe chemister would work. If you want to avoid just calling it chemistry, there's chemisturge and chemisturgy.

Anyway,

Mint Gel

Creature - Food Ooze

Flash

Whenever a Food enters the battlefield, prevent all noncombat damage that would be dealt by other creatures this turn.

2/2

A fresh cooling sensation, followed by an inability to stand upright.

Create a card with the phrase "If a player would sacrifice a land,..."

Unlucky Streak

Sorcery

Look at the top three cards of each player's library. Put any number of them into their owner's graveyard and the rest on top of their owner's library in any order.

Miracle

"It's not your fault. Sometimes everything just goes wrong."

Black miracle chaining FTW!

Create a multicolor Miracle.

I'm going to work on hub inventory in the very near future, so I'll see what's going on with those hubs.

Kind of disappointing that Horde Magic doesn't get any love... There's a handful of genuine Horde Magic format decks, but yeah, it's overwhelmingly misused. I'd like to think it would survive better as one of the niche format options.

I promise I'm not trying to be too petty re:Horde Magic, but formats like Heirloom and Noble don't seem to have even any legal cards, let alone legal decks. I just quickly skimmed some formats I didn't recognize, and those two stood out as having apparently no interaction on this site in over a decade, filled entirely with bright red decklists.

Trying to be proactive instead of just complaining, is there a way to remove or disable some of the little-used formats, and would anyone be upset if the format options were cleaned up?

Thanks for the reminder. Planning to fully catch up on this by the weekend. If you find anything else that could be a hub, post it and I'll check it out.

Would it be possible to change Horde Magic from a hub to a format? I know that the focus on tokens makes it weird, and maybe not viable, but it's much more of a unique deckbuilding and playing system than a strategy or archetype.

Thanks for these updates and new inclusions!

Final Preparations

Sorcery

Draw two cards. Put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target creatures.

Fateful hour - If you have five or less life, for each of up to two creatures, put a vigilance counter or a hexproof counter on that creature.

"Once we step down, there's no way to get back. We can only go forward. Make sure you have everything you need and nothing you don't."

Create a juggler. Bonus points if it's a goblin. More bonus points if it's actually a group of goblins.

Last_Laugh Double Trigger has been added. I'm going to review it for usage consistency once it's been up for a while, to make sure it's being applied correctly.

000CBomb000 I should be able to look into the 93/94 decks later this week. The last four weeks have been insane for me, but once I get everything in my life finished and locked in, I should have plenty of time.