If commander is going to be a largely casual format, wishes should get cards from your collection. In "competitive" edh I have no opinion.

But that's exactly what the Wishes were - they were a cycle of cards that made you say "wow, we can do THIS?" Just because MaRo thinks some mechanics are sacred doesn't mean that they ought to be.

This I agree with, kind of. Instead of petitioning the RC to change the way Wishes work in this format, those of us who feel Wishes ought to behave differently should be petitioning WotC to errata Wishes to restore their original function.

But, that's kind of contrary to your previous argument that exile is effectively supposed to be a forbidden zone. And, in fact, it's the zone that is now referred to on all cards that previously said "remove from game".

To put it another way, do you think it was just an unintended loophole that Wishes could get a Swords'd creature back? That WotC somehow didn't realize that's what they were making, and that creating the exile zone was a handy opportunity to fix that bug?

No, I think they wanted something that got something from your general collection, something you didn't bring to the game, but "wish" you did.

I think them creating the exile zone let them then 'redefine' what they meant by that, as they didn't update the wordings to let you get something from the exile zone. So I think, due to the lack of errata on them, that this was close the original intent. There is a chance that the original intent did mean to get things from the "removed from game" area, but they didn't errata the original wishes because the card still worked in some form, and they didn't want to change the wording (similar to how Master of Arms still *does something* -- just not what it originally did as the rules changed around the card.)

But unless someone has some proof one way or another, I'd be betting harder on the "wasn't intended to get things that were removed-from-game" interpretation and the exile zone simply let them realize their original intent.


I just want to comment on this bit, becuase the part you're responding to is me talking about how the wishes are intended to work -- as such, noting how the exile zone is intended to work is extremely relevant. You can't pick and choose which cards/rules you want to have to work as intended and which you don't at the same time. Either original intent matters, in which case the intent of how Exile is supposed to behave matters, or original intent doesn't matter at all, in which case my whole post is useless as I was responding to something that doesn't matter at all.

Do you believe that should be unrestricted? (as in able to violate any and all deckbuilding restrictions otherwise in place - color ID, singleton rule, etc)

OK, but I mean that MaRo's opinion is not the only one in WotC. Additionally, Wishes were cards that broke the expectations for what a card can do, like Biorhythm or Narcomoeba or Doran, the Siege Tower or Future Sight or Mirror Gallery. So the intent of how exile is supposed to be treated can matter, but also be deliberately re-defined by a few select cards. Heck, we're on the Commander forums, you know that format where "exile" just means pay 2 more than you did last time?

It can -- but where do you have evidence that these cards were intended to redefine it? Ever since it's existed, they've not (the original wishes at least) interacted with that zone at all.

That's a gross mis-categorization. You know very well that would only apply if we're talking about the player's commander card -- which I'm not even sure is a majority of times that things are exiled in an average Commander game.

Also, note that for returning the commander, the rules have it skip the exile zone -- so they stand by how the exile zone (generally) works. So please don't try to weaken my argument by something that doesn't have any relevance to what we're talking about.

It has relevance because we can see that we can create situations where exiled does not mean gone forever, and the game is still fun. This is only relevant because you brought up MaRo's criticism of the Eldrazi Processors (which did in fact see print regardless of his feelings around them) as an argument against appreciating the (speculative) original intent of Wishes, and I'm pointing out that argument's flaws.

The original Wishes did interact with what became the exile zone before it was named and treated as a zone. If Swords to Plowshares hadn't been printed until after the exile zone was named, I would be more inclined to consider that Wishes weren't intended to interact with cards that had been RFG'd.

Except -- as noted, we don't let commanders come back from exile, we have a rule that skips the exile zone completely.


It's not a flaw. Just because some things go against the intent does not matter in the argument I'm stating. The part I'm arguing against is that the original wishes were intended to get things from the removed-from-game area which then turned into the exile zone. If you're arguing based on design intent -- then design exceptions simply don't matter. Because either the original intent matters or it doesn't.

If you are saying that there are design exceptions to how the exile zone is intended, then you are implying that the original intent of the exile zone doesn't really matter because they either change their minds or for other reasons. If that's the case, then the original design/intent of the wishes don't matter either. Pick one and stick to it, you don't get to pick and choose when intent is valid and when it isn't.


Semantics, but no. The "Removed from game" was outside of the game -- it was no longer part of the game, it wasn't a zone, it was just no longer in the game. Exile by contrast, is a zone in the game. It is something they added to the game, and then altered other cards to reference. How do I know they're not the same? Because some cards interact with things not in the current game being played, and some things interact with the exile zone. Thus those two concepts are different. And I'm talking about cards that are still being printed. Vivien, Arkbow Ranger can get a creature from outside the game, but not from exile. As such, they are not treated as the same place even though some cards were updated to refer from one place to the exile zone.

Let's put it this way: When arguing the "intent" of the original wishes, I have examples on why there was never any intent that they get things from what became the exile zone because of the changes (and lack of changes) when the zone was introduced, as well as examples of currently printed cards showing that they differentiate between the two 'places' still. So, under what "intent" should the original wishes affect anything in exile?

How and when do you decide if the game is casual or competitive?

I am saying intent is a valid consideration (although we can only speculate) in both cases. One doesn't contradict the other. I don't know how I can make it any clearer.

I know what cards say. Vivien just says 'outside', Riftsweeper just says 'exile', Karn says both. I am not saying "the rules DO treat exile and outside as the same," I am saying "the rules DID allow Wishes to get things that had been RFG'd, and they should maintain that function."

Because that's what they did before it was named 'exile', and WotC generally avoids power-level-based errata. If Wishes don't work the way they used to because they would be too broken (I'm not even sure they would, but it's been suggested in this thread), then the correct solution is to ban them, not rewrite what they do.

Just to be clear, I am not saying WotC should change ALL cards that refer to outside the game, just the ones that could still get an Extracted card when they were printed.

This is a link to a summary given by Maro for the M10 Rules changes. It does a good job of explaining why the “removed from the game” zone was changed to the “exile” zone and the effects of that change. At the very least it’s an interesting read and apart of Magic’s history. In my opinion, the wishes are better and more unique cards with this update. I personally don’t think they should be able to get things from exile, because in reality that was never their actual intent, but rather a consequence of an unfortunate consequence of repeated design terminology at the time.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2009-06-10

(emphasis mine)
So according to WotC themselves*, the original intent wasn't what I have been saying. I'm still unhappy with the change.

*(btw the article says it was written by Forsythe, not MaRo, with the passage I quoted having been contributed by then-Rules Manager Gottlieb)

Which is completely outside of what I was arguing. I was arguing from the basis that someone said that the wishes were intended. If you're arguing from the point of "they used to do it, so why shouldn't they do it now?" then all my arguments shouldn't be applied to that because that is not the point I was arguing for or against.


Okay, ignoring original intent, we still have evidence that WotC has no interest in them affecting the exile zone (the what... 9 years in which they've not updated the text on the card to include it.) Which I believe has spanned multiple rules managers - so there's been consistency and not simply one person's opinion on how they should work.

The printed text of Ring of Ma'Ruf:


The bolded text makes clear that they anticipated the possibility of cards leaving the game, and specifically wanted to allow you to get such cards--in fact, that is exactly the thing you do with the Ring itself in its immediately following sentence.

Okay, I give you Ring of Ma'Ruf. Nice find

Now what about the first cycle of wishes?