Every single MTG card from Mystery Booster Commander edition has been revealed all at once, and my head is spinning trying to take in all the designs and references, the sorceries that can be your commander and the deep cut characters that haven’t appeared on a card for a decade or two.
But if you’re not there for the nostalgia, the most exciting cards from Mystery Booster Commander have got to be the eight rulebreaker creatures, commanders that fundamentally alter Magic’s deck building rules.
Magic designer and brains behind Mystery Booster Gavin Verhey just released a video explaining the thought process behind these rulebreaker cards, most of which let you play specific card or creature types from outside their color identity. Seluma, for instance, is a mono-white angel that lets you run any angel cards, while a deck led by the colorless Everforger can have artifact creature and equipment cards of any color.
“A request I get all the time is: hey, can you do this creature type, but a five color commander,” Gavin explains in his Good Morning Magic video. But while Verhey views this as a noble goal, he also says, “It does have a problem.”
Because the Ur-Dragon is five colors, it can play all the dragons, which is great, but it also gets “all the best ramp, all the best card draw, all the best removal spells”, as well as powerful game changers like Rhystic Study and Smothering Tithe.
“While you are playing dragons, you’re propped up by the power level of all the cards around you,” Verhey says, citing Ashling the Limitless as a recent example of a commander that suffers from the same problem.
Rulebreakers are an experimental way to solve this problem, allowing brewers to build decks with a larger subset of relevant cards, without giving them access to every single card that is Commander-legal.
It’s worth noting that several of the rulebreaker designs have more interesting effects than letting you play phyrexians or angels outside of the normal color identity.
Grizzlegom, Hurloon Hero for instance lets you play any lands you like, and has different effects for each basic you control. It seems like there are many different ways you could build this, though I immediately want to just shove every triome into the deck. I hope you like spending money on lands! Wherever you go with Grizzlegom, though, you’re going to have to think way harder than normal about what to grab with Rampant Growth.
There’s also Maular, the Next Evolution – the ultimate Timmy commander – which lets you play any 7+ mana creatures. And then Whtz the Bibliophile, who lets you play with any deck size, not limited to 100 cards. Suddenly, Yorion Sky Nomad is a viable companion and Battle of Wits instantly wins you the-
Oh, oh my god I just got the joke.
Verhey ends his video by saying these are something new and experimental. “We only did a small number of them and wanted to get opinions and feedback before putting any more out into the pipeline,” he says.
I strongly suspect the opinion on these is going to be extremely positive, which means we might get to see more in a couple of years!
What’s your favorite rulebreaker card, and is there a design space you want this mechanic to explore? Let us know over on the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
