All of your points are addressed in the wish thread.onering wrote: ↑4 years agoIt's obviously not a false equivalency. Battle of Wits is a card, that can legally be played and cast in commander, that does nothing because a rule specific to commander makes it not work. Burning Wish is a card, that can legally be played and cast in commander, that does nothing because a rule specific to commander makes it not work. Fae of Wishes is a card that technically does something in commander (as a crappy creature) but has most of its functionality turned off by a rule specific to commander. Squadron Hawk, and similar cards, technically do something in commander (they are crappy creatures) but have most of their functionality turned off by a rule specific to commander (or any singleton format). Those are completely valid comparisons. I'm saying, quite clearly, that Wishes aren't special, other cards get shafted by commander specific rules.Legend wrote: ↑4 years agoThe comparison between Wishes and cards and mechanics with effects that are useless in Commander is a false equivalency.onering wrote: ↑4 years ago
Is it though? There are plenty of cards that don't function as intended due to some facet of edh. Is Doubling Chant functionally banned by the Singleton rule? How about Squadron Hawk?
There's a difference between requiring a rule change to work and being banned. One major difference is that wishes used to be able to grab cards from exile (because before the exile zone those cards where removed from the game). If wizards ever decided to reinstate that original functionality (and there is precedent for that, see Winter Orb) then Wishes would be immediately available to play for that purpose without any action by the RC.
In Commander, cards with effects that are useless in Commander still function as intended by design. It's just that their purpose or potential can't be realized in the context of Commander because the format itself doesn't recognize them. This is not unique to Commander. Every format has cards with effects that are useless within the context of that format. The notion that "Battle of Wits doesn't work in Commander, therefore Burning Wish shouldn't either." is a case of apples and oranges.
I also didn't argue that Battle of Wits not working means that Wishes shouldn't work. I did not even argue that Rule 11 should remain. I argued simply that there is a lot more that goes into making Wishes work than simply unbanning a card, and that thus Wishes are not "functionally" banned. The rule that makes them not work actually, at this point, effects as many other cards as cards actually named wish, and those cards are already playable in commander (some suck, some actually have uses). That's a different ballgame than unbanning a card, or even multiple cards. Its more akin to making Battle of Wits work by changing the 100 card rule to a 100 card minimum, or relaxing the singleton rule for cards designed to fetch copies of themselves, or when they changed to color identity rule to allow cards like Bosh to work as commanders. I actually like the argument Dirk made in the Wish thread for 3 card wishboards, and have come to support that idea.
As an aside, comments from the RC regarding Wishes indicate that their opposition to sideboards, outside the game cards, and wishboards as a concept, stems at least in part from members of the RC seeing those things as fundamentally getting around the 100 card restriction. I'm not going to say its the only reason, as I think they also dislike the idea of subbing in cards against particular decks and possibly also using wishes as toolboxes for hate, but its something they have talked about. For them to make wishes work, they'd have to separate the concept of getting cards from outside the game and the concept of running more that 100 cards in your deck, or else they'd have to do away with the 100 card limit and let people run more, enabling Battle of Wits.
With all due respect, it is a false equivalency. Battle of Wits doesn't work because of the 100 card rule, which is a foundational, framework rule of Commander that applies to deck building. Whereas the wish rule only applies to a unique card effect. Not even close to the same thing. And the RC didn't make the 100 card rule to prevent BoW from working. Also, the RC talks about wishes once in a while, but not in a meaningful way. I appreciate them but they're like politicians when it comes to wishes. Proven by Companions.