My 5 Cents on… the 1/17/2016 Rules Updates

I don’t normally comment on rulings updates. The only times they’ve really ever bugged me were when they Banned Tolarian Academy the week after I started playing EDH (which was a corner-stone of my Kangee Deck and my Niv-Mizzet deck) and when they Bannned Emrakul right after I bought one for my Brother as a Christmas present (And we just house ruled her to be legal when we play together).

This most recent set bugs me though, so I thought I’d vent here.

  1. The Mulligan Rule Change  (now it’s Vancouver instead of Paris): Doesn’t bother me, since I never did Partial Hand Sculpting.  I will continue to mulligan as I always have: Draw 7. If it’s not playable (at least 3 lands or 2 lands and something that could be cast by turn 3) check the top card, and if it’s  not a land, Shuffle and repeat.  I don’t Sculpt. I look at lands and for a playable card.  I’ve kept 6 land hands because of this. I don’t care if other people want to sculpt scry or whatever.
  2. The Mana Color Generation Rule Change:  I think it’s a flavor fail and it waters down the color-identity rules a bit.  Kozilek-Mana (cards requiring colorless costs) are not going to be that prevalent beyond this one set.
  3. I fear that the Mana Color Generation rule change is going to lead down the Slippery Slope that MaRo is in favor of: letting hybrid cards into decks where they don’t belong.
  4. Prophet of Kruphix Banning: is dumb.  There are far worse cards out there (which I don’t think deserve banning) like Praetors, Consecrated Sphinx, Deadeye Navigator, Skittles, the new Eldrazi that mills 2 when a player land-falls.  Not a hard card to deal with either (2/3, not huge like Prime Time or Sylvan Primordial, and she didn’t hurt other players ability to play the game (like Sylvan Primordial, or Iona) or give them direct consequences to their actions. Most importantly she was a budget replacement (with less playabilty) for Seedborn Muse, who:
    1. Costs over $10
    2. Is playable in 12 deck combinations (instead of 5)
    3. Untaps artifacts  (and the usually less relevant, Planeswalkers and Enchantments) too.
    4. Is harder to Kill
    5. Is easier to Cast.

    And the art on the card was really cool.

  5. Henceforth, in all of my decks that run a Prophet of Kruphix, I am now considering her to be a Proxy for Seedborn Muse. I only have one or 2 Muses (and they’re in non-blue decks) and I can’t affort to buy more Seedborn’s to replace the Prophets that I have in my UG decks, and I don’t feel like digging them all out and looking for other replacements.

So that’s that. I see the the first two changes as more WotC’s normalizing influence (Which has other slippery slope implications) but the banning was just dumb.

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