On paper, the Commander format is built upon creativity, with over 3,300 legends to build around. In reality, however, many Magic: The Gathering players are often only interested in the cream of the crop. While this can give a deck the edge it needs to win, it does diminish the format’s variety, especially as decks trend toward good stuff soup.
Thankfully, despite exacerbating this issue in recent years, it now appears Wizards has turned a corner. In Mystery Booster Commander Edition, Wizards introduced a new rule-breaking mechanic that’s specifically designed to combat this issue. They might seem a bit boring, but as MTG Designer Gavin Verhey recently explained, the new Rulebreaker cards are a stroke of genius.
I’m at Soup
Of all the soups in Commander, five-color soup is easily the most egregious. Even if they’re not designed to be overpowered, even a literally useless five-color Commander makes for an insane deck. With all of the best creatures, card draw, ramp, removal, even bad five-color decks rarely have any weaknesses.
While the simple solution to this problem is to stop making five-color cards and Commanders, MTG players do love them. Not only are they often alluringly powerful, but they’re perfect for typal decks, especially for underrepresented archetypes. As much as this seems very fun and exciting, it’s equally rather boring, as you simply throw in all of the best cards.
For better or worse, deckbuilding in Commander is at its best when you’re up against the format’s restrictions. Previously, these color-based restrictions also meant limiting the archetypal fun, too, but Wizards has now fixed that problem. As Gavin Verhey explained in a Good Morning Magic video, Rulebreaker cards have all the fun but none of the soup.
Seluma, Light of Aysen, for instance, allows players to run all of the Angels they want, but only run mono-white support cards. This keeps all the fun of an unrestricted typal deck while keeping support picks interesting and complex. Even if this doesn’t hit quite the same spot as true five-color Commanders, it does fix a major weakness of mono colored Commanders.
Through this lens, it does seem that Rulebreaker cards are all upside; however, they’re still not perfect. Even if it’s not five-color soup, Seluma is still potentially homogenizing, for instance, since it’s the perfect Commander for Angel Typal decks. While not every Rulebreaker card falls into this pitfall, these cards could easily limit creativity if they’re too strong.
A Clear Test
During his video, Gavin Verhey highlighted how these first Rulebreaker cards effectively serve as a test. For Mystery Booster Commander Edition, Wizards only made eight of these to see what players thought. From the sounds of things, if the reaction is positive overall, then we may well get more in the future.
Realistically, given the problem that Rulebreaker cards solve, it feels inevitable that we’ll get more of these cards. Not only do they combat good stuff soup, but there are tons of interesting deckbuilding possibilities, as Whtz, the Bibliophile proves. Considering the immense price spike that Battle of Wits has seen recently, clearly this Commander is already loved.
Sadly, even if both Wizards and players want more of these cards, we won’t get them overnight. With the development cycle of MTG sets taking from three to four years, we’ve got a long, long wait ahead. Even then, there’s no guarantee Rulebreaker cards will start popping up in precons or Standard sets.
Ultimately, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens in the not-so-near future. Hopefully, if, or rather when, more Rulebreaker cards get released, they don’t end up pushing boundaries even more and being truly broken. Whether or not that will end up happening, however, remains to be seen.
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