I couldn’t find this discussion, so there is a chance I’m misremembering this, but I think it was around a year ago, when SaffronOlive tweeted something along the lines of WotC not understanding Commander. I believe it was Blake Rasmussen who answered that with the success of the products, they must understand it at least somewhat.
And isn’t that the real problem.
I don’t know how I feel about Wizards simply taking real Norse mythology and just painting it over, but I guess that’s what’s largely expected from them, so they can’t really avoid it.
Eligeth seems like a commander I would enjoy, but where to find a good partner? There’s two other potential partners that have the word scry printed on them, so that does limit certain aspects quite a bit. Thrasios seems like the better one simply due to the extra color, although the activated ability of Thrasios has limited utilty with Eligeth, as the ramping aspect is more random than usual if you draw the first card instead of scry.
Tormod seems interesting, if underpowered, but than again, all partners should be underpowered, because you do get two. Looking at the various potential partners, the only one I found fun enough is Ghost of Ramirez DePietro, another underpowered commander. I do also like how Ghost enables a certain amount of diplomacy, even if that is kind of hard to utilize.
WHat to do with this pair? Madness? I guess it doesn’t actually work due to the new rules. Delve? That’s are handily largely in blue and black. Both also have plenty of self-mill and cycling, which are helpful.
So, hear me out: If you have both of these on the table, each time you deal combat damage to a player, that damage gets copied to other opponents as well by Kediss. But Breeches doesn’t require combat damage, any damage is enough. Also, Kediss states that the original source is also the source of the new damage. So, you can get three cards exiled in a three player game. Not that you can count that as three card advantage, since there is no way you can play all of them, but it will give you plenty of options.
Feels weird that this is uncommon as it seems very powerful and interesting to build around. I could easily see this as a mythic. I guess the requirement for three cards to exile makes this somewhat clunky, but potential is definitely there.
Like so many other Magic players, I’ve been thinking about why the whole game is so messed up right now and what could be done about it. That lead me into thinking about all the analytics one could get from Arena.
I was reminded of this by Crim and The Professor: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/fire-it-2019-06-21
TL;DR: Last year they told us that they had decided to make Magic better by introducing a new design philosophy of F.I.R.E. I’m not feeling it.
Are sweepers fun? No.
It just feels like there’s no one at the wheel of Historic. They just print cards and add them with no consideration for the environment.
