Mark has been talking recently on his blog about color identity. He suggests that if hybrid existed when Commander rules were made, that the rules would treat hybrid the way they do in other formats.

Is he correct? I am not privy to the discussions, but if he is wrong, he needs to know it. He keeps defending his design, but the thing is, Commander is someone else's design and they deserve to use the cards the way they best see their format working. After all, if all the formats were the same, vintage would king. Anyone playing type 2 would just lose which is why it was created.

Probably not - from a philosophical point of view, MaRo is absolutely right distinguishing between hybrid and gold, but try to phrase the rules of color identity such that Kitchen Finks can go into mono-G.
You would probably end up making an exception - but does that mean I can now play Beseech the Queen in mono Red? Or why not?

I believe you may be referencing this Blogatog post, so let's do Maro a favour and quote him:



Now, he's not asserting for a certainty it would've worked this way. He just says he believes it would have.

If you're asking "is he correct hybrid would've worked differently in an alternate timeline", well, sure, he might be—if we're looking at alternative timelines then there's some where where hybrid existed already when EDH was created, and in some of those timeslines we would have the current hybrid rule and in some we would've had a different one.

I'll leave it to the RC to confirm/deny exactly what was discussed, but there was a lot of debate within the RC and Genomancer mentions some of the reasoning here in a confirmation of the hybrid rules.


Let's pump the brakes here a bit. That's being a bit too intense. “Your speculation about vague possibilities is wrong!” — ok, but it's just speculation.

Mark knows the Commander format is someone else's design, and he and Wizards of the Coast respect that. They always have. He's not “defending his design”—he's talking about how he thinks the Commander rules should work differently, which is what a lot of us do, and that's fine and healthy discussion to have in the format. He can go ahead and keep talking about it the same way any of us can. He's not even the only one to do so; in the MTG Nexus Climate survey 2019 20% of people thought off-color hybrid cards should be allowed.

I am talking about that MaRo post. I wanted to come to the source to see what the folks that actually know the answer have to say if they'd be kind enough to let me know. I wasn't attacking Maro, but this is as close to him seeming to indicate he has inside information that defends his position that Commander shouldn't have unique rules for how it deals with hybrid color. And that isn't as opinion, its having information about an alternate time line. But it implied he's had a conversation about an alternate time line.

EDH technically is the format that invented color identity. If it is true that outside factors had been different, then the rule would be different, I would like to know that. I see it differently than Mark. If I am wrong or he is wrong it is nice to have the facts. That is all.

I think color identity as it is written is a really important part of making this format what it is. Just as being able to play with more than 4 copies of a card in limited is part of what makes it what it is. Vintage is the only format that maintains a restricted list. I am not sure why Mark is drawing this line other than he is defending his vision of his design that just doesn't align with this format like he hoped. If we can maintain different formats with different visions in other areas, why would he believe the color identity format would exist differently in this alternate time line other than having actual inside information? I didn't see it that way, and am happy to know I am wrong if I am.

Commander doesn’t have unique rules for dealing with hybrid mana, which works exactly the same as any other format. It simply has the only color-based deck building restriction in a major format (I’m discounting commander variants like brawl and oathbreaker here). I get the reasons people might want off-color hybrids to be legal, but it’s as difficult to write hybrid mana into CI as it is to write off-color Fetches out. Add to that the aesthetic considerations and I think it’s the right choice.

The other problem with what MaRo would like to see, is that standard magic doesn't treat it the way he wants it to be.

In regular magic, a mirrorweave spell is blue and white and can be pyroblasted even if the caster only put white mana into it.

MaRo wants it to be an 'or' when looking at the symbols, which it is ... but only when the spell is cast. At all other times, it is both (or however many) colours. Since we play in a format that cares about things like colour during deck building -- then it gets treated as an 'and' instead of an 'or' ... just like every other format treats it.

Mark's completely wrong, and I've had extensive emails with him about this explaining the reasons why it's the way it is. He just doesn't like it. He also fails to see it for what it really is - a deckbuilding restriction that has roots in aesthetics designed to make people be more creative.

Inertia has nothing to do with it. We've spent a whole lot of time discussing it and believe that the rule we have is the correct one.

Thanks for that response. It is very informative.

The only thing that would put the nail further in this coffin would be a mic drop. I'm going to add this statement to my FAQ, so thank you for the input.

If we agree that colour identity is important, which I am at this point assuming we do, then the issue you were suggesting has to do with not allowing a GW hybrid card, for example, in a mono white deck. Even if you ignore the aesthetics of having a green card sitting in your white deck, even if you ignore the philosophy component or the history of the game component, the mechanics of the rules to cover it kills this idea alone.

Try to re-write the colour identity rule such that it allows hybrid mana symbols in deck which contain all the cards you want them to, excludes all the cards you want to be excluded and is not excessive and clunky.

If you could solve this then there could be a conversation if it is an appropriate change for the format.

I've tried sending this "ask" in his blog for some days by now but he didn't respond it, so I'll post it here.

"Mark, your proposal for an alternative color rule for Commander aims for allowing hybrid cards to fit in more decks and to simplify things a little, but have you considered that it would also bring along Phyrexian Mana cards to all decks regardless of color, and with it all the color pie issues that we already know? It would be nice to cast a Boros Reckoner with a monoWhite EDH deck, but Dismember would seem quite bizarre..."

I can guarantee you that he has fully considered that, and it's exactly his intention to allow that, and not bizarre or an unexpected glitch.

Mark's approaching the situation from this angle: in any format, a mono-white deck can play both Dismember and Boros Reckoner; they're just have less options about how to cast them. A mono-white EDH deck should therefore be able to do that as well. Mark talks about that stuff here: hybrid mana, phyrexian mana. The thought process is something like this: “a mono-white EDH deck should be able to play spells that are playable when I only have white mana available.” This means mono-white can play off-color hybrids, any phyrexian card, any 2brid card, etc.

IIRC implementing that would involve removing the color identity rule while re-implementing some form of the old mana generation restriction rule (if you would add mana outside your commander's color identity, it becomes colorless instead). The outcome is a format that's different from what the RC is pursuing though as papa_funk says.

I'm speculating here but I suspect he'd also be fine with the idea of allowing a mono-white deck to include Sunblade Elf — you can use your white mana to cast Sram's Expertise, use that to cast the elf, and away you go. The same way, Kaalia would be able to include Destructor Dragon because she's got a way to get it down without casting it — you could do this in any other format after all.

Heck, by that logic there would be nothing wrong with running Atraxa in an Ilharg deck or Niv-Mizzet, Parun in a Teneb deck.

I forgot to cite a couple of other blog posts, this one on Fire//Ice and this one about the mana rule:




So if we're just removing the CI rule and adding back the mana rule, then yep, what you describe there with Teneb and Ilharg is a direct consequence. Maybe Mark would add a rule like “cards in your deck have to have at least one color in common with your commander's color identity” if he were to implement these rules for realsy, but we'd still have almost-as-severe breaks. I don't know how he'd actually implement preventing you from casting Ice in a mono-red deck — I could still cast it if I could cast the spell without paying for its mana cost. Anything that stops me actually doing that is going to shut down Daxos of Meletis and other similar cards.

You do have the trade-off that using Ilharg is probably your only way to get Atraxa out (you can't just cast her for her normal cost), or you have to find a way to get Niv-Mizzet into your graveyard then use Teneb to reanimate him, but I think those hoops will be worth jumping through for the right cards.

It's definitely got very far reaching consequences under some commanders. I like how the CI rules function right now and wouldn't ask for these changes.

That's a lot of hoops to jump through to tell me that you should be able to play Beseech the Queen in your Mizzex deck but I can't play Jin-Gitaxis in my Chainer deck.