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| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Freeform | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Zhalfirin Decoy
Creature — Human Soldier
: Tap target creature. Activate this ability only if you had a creature enter the battlefield under your control this turn.
legendofa on What do you want more …
7 months ago
Can I offer something I'd like to see less of? There's been a huge surge of five-color legendary utility creatures. More than half of all legendary creatures with a WUBRG color identity have been printed since 2020, and it's starting to feel like there's a best option for everything. Why limit yourself to Sythis, Harvest's Hand or The Master of Keys
when you could have Go-Shintai of Life's Origin and just include them anyway? Kenrith, Returned King and Sisay, Weatherlight Captain simply do things with pretty much no opportunity cost.
I'll grant that they're tending toward a tighter focus. But sometimes, I don't want or need access to other colors, but the five-color's simply the best available option. I chose Enchantress up there because I've been waiting for a Enchantments commander for several years now, and other color sets have a couple of options. But five-color enchantments has two more options than Naya enchantments, and that frustrates me.
Caerwyn I'm going to poke at the hybrid rule here, since I see it as "letter of the law" vs. "spirit of the law". Sheldon Menery clearly took the "letter of the law" approach, in that Mourning Thrull is both fully a black card and fully a white card, and can't be used in an deck alongside Minister of Impediments. Similarly, the Minister can't be used in a deck.
However, the "spirit of the law" says that Sungrace Pegasus, Hushbringer, and Sky Crier can all be used in a deck, and Ballynock Trapper and Zhalfirin Decoy can be used in a deck. So it's an arbitrary decision that makes mana function differently in Commander-based formats than in any other format in the game. Further, cards like red enchantment removal and green one-sided board wipes, both self-avowed mistakes, are reasonably common. Why should an arbitrary restriction from decades ago allow overt color pie breaks while prohibiting extremely neutral cards that simply use effects available to more than one color?
I'm sure you've seen these arguments a million times by now. So I'll ask a different question. Are there any hybrid-mana cards that you see as being color pie breaks, that do something that one of their colors is fundamentally not allowed to do? The most frequent examples I've seen are the counterspell Guttural Response, which is a total break on the scale of Pyroblast for both colors so neither color should get it, and Augury Adept granting life gain, which I believe is undercut by Sugar Rush. (There's a counterargument regarding repeatable life gain in there.)
A slight ulterior motive for that last paragraph: One of the things on my gimmick to-do list is to try to build a pseudo-Commander deck that actually uses hybrid mana to break the game and do bad things. My current starting angle is Leyline of the Guildpact + Bloom Tender in mono-green or green + one other color. So if you have any thoughts, please send them over!