yep, but as others say, you run a whole ton of draw spells and selection spells, and you run a deck with an average cmc below 2 probably (I have seen some decks go up to 2.5, but those often run 30 lands and not 28 like the super sleek ones). And one thing people often ignore: if you add up the mana sources in a cedh deck, you probably end up somewhere around 45 up to 50. Because despite the super low land count, you will find all the efficient rocks and dorks and land enchantments and whatnot, that help you to give you the needed mana. I might even go as far as saying that many cedh decks run more mana sources than many casual decks.

If I budget down a cedh deck, if I take out a super efficient mana rock, I don’t throw in a bad rock or value spell, I thrown in a land at first – it is crucial to hit your mana. You can get away with low numbers of lands, if you bring in two mana sources (a land and some acceleration) every turn, because if you end up with 6 mana T3, you are probably much better suited than the casual deck that played a tapped worn powerstone at that turn. And some cedh lists have quite a bit more than just 6 mana T3.

BTW: that’s why Pyroclasm can be the worst thing happening to a cedh deck in the current meta, it wipes out the dork based mana. Of course a cedh deck not only has the fast mana, it also has the fast interaction, so don’t just assume slamming a T3 pyroclasm or Anger of the Gods will resolve 😉

I just assume that it is more the frustration as a developer talking in the case of Maro – he tries to address some design aspects, but the most popular format goes completely counter that design aspect. I can totally understand him – they built those cards to be treated as “either/or” and this silly community format just decides to treat them as “and”. I don’t think he fixates on some specific cards, it is probably just a general thing that rubs him wrong from his perspective on game design. I mean, the guy does for a living what Sheldon and gang do just for fun.

And I totally see his point – the hybrid cards and abilities are explicitely meant to be used in either one of the colors. It is what you do in mono-red goblins, playing Murderous Redcap without issues and without adding swamps. And I am totally not building a Grumgully goblin deck that would love to run Murderous Redcap instead of the rather lackluster Skuzzback Marauders as a goblin with persist 😉

well, that’s not just Maro, that is exactly what other formats to do to fill in missing pieces – if there is a hybrid card, you can easily run it in your mono color deck. It is just EDH that handles this part very differently and poses those problems.

That too. And [[Turnabout]] can turn into a solid draw spell if you don’t need it’s ritual capability. Or [[Gigadrowse]] still being a nice scaling tap-down-and-draw option. And well, the decision on what to tap for [[tangle wire]] get’s really “fun” with verity circle out 😉

Another nice and budget way to sometimes draw a ton of cards is [[Verity Circle]] – there are lots of situations where creatures want to tap without attacking (just think about the load of mana dorks in many pods) and you drawing off that can really help. It just doesn’t help against that 100-strong goblin army coming at you.

The job of the CAG is to give the RC insights on the reactions out in the field. The RC don’t need the CAG to teach them rules, they are all deep-rules-knowledged people. What they were lacking was wider spread connections to the community, and that’s what that specific CAG member provided: most of the community probably didn’t know it either.

The more irritating thing is that the rules got more complicated by the change. I would have preferred to take a “the rules stay, we clarify” stance instead. The new wording just treats the “if it changes zones, decide to move it to the command zone instead” beauty in a two paragraph monster, that treats target zones differently. Not a fain.

I understand WHY they made the change, but to me personally those few commanders just aren’t worth the clunky rules change. But then, I am not playing any of those commanders …