Hi all
It’s been a while. It was a wild ride from end of 2019 through to the first few months of 2020, but there hasn’t been as much going on in silver-bordered Magic over the past few months. However, with Ikoria, and now Core Set 2021 and Jumpstart, there have been a few changes that filter over to UnCommander. I figured that it was high time to make another post to let you all know what we’ve been up to.
Dogged Determination
Magic R&D’s long-standing hound vs dog debate has a new victor! Dog is now an official creature type, replacing Hound. You can read more about the history of the issue on Wizards of the Coast’s website. All UnCommander card entries have been changed accordingly. Ruff, Underdog Champ can rest easy now, his vision a reality. Ruff’s first ability is nonfunctional, now that Hounds have already been converted to Dogs. Unfortunately, he is still banned in UnCommander, as his “Underdog” ability refers to other games in a match, which is currently against the rules.
The Right Mill to Die On
Milling (putting cards from the top of a library into a graveyard) now has its own keyword action: mill. Another change foreshadowed by a Mystery Booster playtest card. Truth or Dare was ringing the changes this time. We have changed UnCommander Card entries to match the updated oracle, and also rolled it out to cards without a Gatherer entry. Borg Cube and Forest Gump are getting in on the action.
Other EDH Silver Website Stuff
We have been working on a few other things in the background. In addition to some general work on messy UnCommander card entries, we’ve done the following-
Merge (Mutate) Rules Templating
As soon as I saw Mutate teased on Surgeon General Commander in Unsanctioned, I was very curious about what it would be. It looked like a black-bordered successor to combined permanents and host/augment. The Ikoria release notes showed that Mutate was built on a new mechanic- merged permanents. Merged permanents use the characteristics of the topmost component and only the abilities of all other components. On the other hand, combined permanents from Unstable share all their constituents’ characteristics, like a fused spell. This left me at a bit of a loss of how to design a framework to allow these two systems to interact intuitively.
It took me a while, but in May I updated the UnCommander Rules List page with a section on merged permanents. Since then, I’ve gone back to it and made some minor edits to tidy things up. You can see the results for yourself on the rules page. It’s cumbersome, but hopefully can help sort out interpretation issues. If you have some thoughts, let us know on the EDH Silver Discord server.
Putting “Removed from the match” Outside the Game
When we started the UnCommander project, it became apparent to us that several cards mentioned removal stronger than just “exile” (or “removed from the game” for you Magic veterans out there). These effects wanted those cards gone, dammit. We figured that it made sense to choose a consistent term that we could refer back to in the rules. The card AWOL from Unhinged refers to the “absolutely-removed-from-the-freaking-game-forever zone”, but that was a hard pass. The updated Oracle of Look at Me, I’m the DCI used the more concise “removed from the match”, which we ended up using. It seemed good at the time, as this helped differentiate it from the old term “removed from the game” which has been long since retooled to “exile”.
However, as time passed, it became apparent that “removed from the match” wasn’t the best choice for UnCommander. We had even used it on cards like AWOL where the the official Oracle only mentions a single “game” not a whole “match”. UnCommander’s rules don’t currently allow effects to carry over between games, but this was still unnecessary confusion.
Another term was needed. In the end, “put outside the game” was chosen. The first reason for this was that the card is clearly only removed for one game (and it will be put back if the game re-starts). The second reason was that it is still important to prevent confusion with “removed from the game”, so the templating of Wish effects (“card you own from outside the game“) was used. “Put outside the game” certainly doesn’t have the same punch as other options, though. All relevant UnCommander card entries have been updated with this new wording.
The Horizon
What does the future hold? I’m no prophet, but I can proudly say that we are planning to add the final Un-set to the website over the summer. What’s that, you say? We’ve already added the cards from all Un-sets ever released? Exactly! There is one more, an Un-set that never went to print.
Click the image below to learn more, if you dare…
As ever, if you’ve got any talking points from this post, hash it out over on our Discord server. Until next time, stay safe vegibuddies!
-Hamster
