A mechanic is a card ability or element that can be repeated on multiple cards, and it has no meaning in the Comprehensive Rules. It is merely a design concept in Magic: the Gathering, where individual cards carry instructions to be followed by players. Some mechanics include reinforcement, Renown, level up, double-faced, investigate, and cascade.
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt has several mechanics, such as Treasures, Food, and Blood. Investigate is the progenitor of an entire lineage of mechanics, including Treasures, Food, and Blood. Cascade is a spell that removes cards from the top of your library until you remove a nonland card that costs less. Basic lands are always the most common cards in any set that prints them, so we don’t even need to consider any other mechanics. Ability words are usually used for non-keyworded block mechanics, with some keyword descriptions referencing “power” or “toughness”.
Some common phrases you’ll encounter while playing Magic include “haste”, “exile”, and “flying”. New card types are often considered mechanics, such as Traps or Curses. Common traits that mechanics can possess include a random card of a specific type, like Seek, which uses AI to select a random card from your library and put it into your hand.
In summary, mechanics are essential in Magic: the Gathering, where players can learn and use various mechanics to enhance their gameplay.
📹 Is Companion the Worst MTG Mechanic in the History of Magic: the Gathering?
The companion mechanic from Ikoria has been one of the most contested and debated MTG mechanics in the entire history of …
What is a deck mechanic?
A deck mechanic inspects, maintains, and repairs mechanical equipment on ships or vessels, ensuring safety and code standards are met. They manage inventory control, maintenance scheduling, and may work on pipelay hydraulic systems, gas turbine engines, and drilling rig hydraulic systems. They may be certified in emergency response first aid and CPR. A deck mechanic typically takes 2 to 5 years to become a mechanic, including completing a certificate program in a relevant field, gaining hands-on experience through on-site training, and building necessary work experience in deck maintenance, repair, and operation.
Who is the best card mechanic?
Richard Edward Turner, an American card mechanic, was born in San Diego in 1954, known for his card trick performances. He was the subject of the documentary, Dealt. Turner was infatuated with the television show Maverick at the age of seven. His eyesight began failing at nine, and by thirteen, his vision deteriorated to 20/400. Over the years, his vision deteriorated to the point where he can no longer distinguish between a fully lit room and total darkness. Turner’s life was marked by his fascination with the television show Maverick and his eventual blindness.
What is a mechanic in Magic: The Gathering?
A mechanic is a card ability or element that can be repeated on multiple cards. It is a design concept and not a meaning in Comprehensive Rules. Mechanics are categorized into keyword abilities, keyword actions, ability words, and miscellaneous mechanics. Keyword abilities represent constant abilities with reminder text, keyword actions have special rules meanings, ability words group cards with common functionality without specific rules, and miscellaneous mechanics are not clearly classified and don’t need to be named.
What is a mechanic in a game?
Game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player’s actions and the game’s response to them in tabletop and video games. These rules are instructions on how to play and are an element of play, like the L-shaped move of a knight in chess. There are no accepted definitions of game mechanics, but some argue that they are “systems of interactions between the player and the game” that impact the play experience. All games use mechanics, but there are different theories about their ultimate importance.
Game design aims to create mechanics that allow players to have an engaging but not necessarily fun experience. The interaction of various game mechanics in a game determines the complexity and level of player interaction, and in conjunction with the game’s environment and resources determines game balance. Some forms of game mechanics have been used for centuries, while others are relatively new, having been invented within the past decade.
What is a card type in Magic?
Card type is a characteristic in the type line on every Magic card, found between the supertype and subtype if available. It can be influenced by spells, decks, and objects like tokens. Many spells and decks create synergies or change the card type of a card, while other objects like tokens have a card type but do not count as a card. Artifacts are permanent types that can be used on creatures or artifact creatures, allowing for the use of anything that affects an artifact or a creature. For example, Demolish can be used on an artifact creature.
How many mechanics are in magic?
The study employed a categorization system to group the over 300 mechanics into distinct categories, including Action, Mechanic, Ability Word, and mechanically relevant Subtype. A mere 35 mechanics could be classified as either kicker or split cards variants.
How do you tell common and uncommon cards apart?
The Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) is a popular trading card game with over 15, 000 cards printed worldwide. To determine the rarity and value of your Pokémon TCG cards, collectors need to identify rarity symbols, card types, and set numbers. Black circles are common cards, diamonds are uncommon cards, stars are rare cards, and promo cards are black stars with “PROMO” added. CGC Cards™ has certified over 3 million Pokémon cards, and their expertise can help determine the value of your Pokémon TCG collection.
How do you know if a Magic card is common?
The expansion symbol in a card set indicates its rarity. A red-orange symbol signifies mythic rarity, a gold symbol signifies rareness, a silver symbol signifies uncommonness, a black or white symbol signifies commonness or basic land, and a purple symbol signifies special rarity. Only the Time Spiral® “timeshifted” cards have purple expansion symbols. Prior to the Exodus™ set, all expansion symbols were black, regardless of rarity. A card’s rarity is indicated with a single letter following the collector number.
What is a common card in Magic?
Commons are the most abundant cards in Limited play and have the highest card impact. They are identified by a black-filled expansion symbol since the Exodus expansion, except in the Coldsnap and Dominaria expansions. In sets printed before Exodus, rarity was not denoted on cards.
Booster packs typically contain 11 commons, with some early expansions like Arabian Nights, Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, and Homelands packaged in 8-card booster packs with six commons. The Alliances and Chronicles expansions were sold in 12-card booster packs with nine commons.
In 2024, Play Boosters introduced changes to limited set design. The number of cards per pack was reduced from 15 to 14, and the number of common cards per pack from 10 to 7. The number of common cards in a set was increased to 81, keeping the frequency of seeing any one common at approximately the same rate.
Is Flying a common card mechanic in Magic: The Gathering?
Flying is a common keyword ability in Magic, allowing creatures without flying to block flying creatures. It has been present since the original Alpha set and was designed by Richard Garfield. Flying appears on over 1, 000 cards, mostly blue and white, and to a lesser extent in black and red. Green rarely has flying creatures but is the best color at destroying them. Some creature types, such as Angels, Birds, Sphinxes, Dragons, and Griffins, almost always have flying. Flying counters were introduced in the Mystery Booster test cards and Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths.
What is a mechanic in cards?
A mechanic or card mechanic is someone who has learned sleight of hand techniques to manipulate a card deck and can potentially cheat while dealing. 888 Poker is one of the best and reliable poker networks in the world, with a dedicated team of experts focusing on making poker fun and entertaining. They aim to create a platform that reaches as many players as possible, providing a secure and protected environment for players to enjoy poker.
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📹 Explaining ALL the Abilities in Standard! | MTG Arena Beginner’s Guide
Welcome to Magic: The Gathering Arena! This tutorial or tips & tricks video is a guide to all of the abilities currently in Standard!
They keep trying to get Commander players into Standard, first with Brawl and now this, and it blows up in their faces every time. Most Commander players just do not want to play Standard and we never will. I’ve been playing Magic on and off for 25 years now and I’ve NEVER played Standard. I will NEVER play Standard. I have no desire to dump a ton of money into a deck that is going to rotate out in a year. I will never be interested in the format no matter what lame attempts Wizards does to attract people like me. It’s just not going to happen. They need to give it up and focus on keeping Standard players happy and let us do our thing. I know they want that Commander-player money but they can’t have it all. If you want our money, make good Precons. Reprint some damn cards we want in affordable sets. Just stop trying to lure us into Standard because it just is not going to happen.
It’s ironic that the mechanic that was promoted before release, that was SUPPOSED to by the hallmark for this set was mutate. Yet as entertaining as mutate is as a mechanic, you’ll mostly find yourself matched up against previous strategies with companions bolted on (lookin at you Fires of Invention), or someone who is aggressively cycling into their next Zenith Flare.
To add to your second point, a fundamental part of magic is you both start the game with seven RANDOM cards in your hand; the companion mechanic allows not only an eighth card in the starting hand but for it to be a specific card one built the deck around. Imagine if you could play a Grishoalbrand deck and guarantee that every game one of your starting cards was Griselbrand or a Goryo’s Vengeance/Through the Breach? The deck could be built to be insanely consistent in either case since one no longer has to worry about digging through their deck for two different types of cards. One could tailor the deck to just find the A part of an A + B combo.
You know, I’d actually be a lot more into the “companion” mechanic if they had first just released “companion lands” as a common print. The biggest issue I’ve always had with MTG was that, no matter what deck you play, if you don’t draw lands you can’t win the game. Being able to sacrifice your available companion slot for a guaranteed basic land of whatever color you deem to be most important would be huge. Hell, we don’t even need a print of these. Just make a rule where, if the companion slot is empty, the player is allowed to place a basic land in that slot. You could even limit that feature to only when an opponent has a companion (ie. You can only have a land in the companion slot if an opponent has something in their companion slot). This is kind of a game-changer, in a way, but so is the companion mechanic we have today.
The exact thing I thought when I saw companions for the first time was, “Wait did they dont look at what happened to hearthstone?” For all who dont know, Hearthstone made companion mechanics about 2 years ago. It was only 2 cards, and they were just built of even and odd deck building rules. These cards broke the game. They were unenjoyable to play against, and they dominated the standard metagame. Due to this, blizzard ‘banned’ them from standard, which they have never done before in a rotating set, and havent done since. Even though these games are different, adding cards that effect the game before the game even starts is a recipe for disaster, and I dont know why Wizards didnt see this coming.
13:50 – Re Hexproof, Dredge interaction. I get really worried whenever I hear people talk about Hexproof in this way. The fact of the matter is that magic needs clear answers to hexproof creatures (edict effects, boardwipes) like it needs answers to indestructible creatures (unsummon, exile) or dredge (graveyard hate… and there’s a lot of silver bullets here… too many, in fact.) I believe the key to answers is to make them reasonably maindeckable; Scavenging Ooze is a better answer to dredge than Leyline of the Void… in that it’s not a dead card against other decks. Dropping a free Leyline on turn 1, or a Tormod’s Crypt, or Cage, etc. all do a better job of shutting down Dredge for a while, but Ooze does a better job across the metagame. The question of whether your answers work against their threats is especially relevant in storm, as w/o discard effects or strategic counters, Storm decks are just solitaire and win in one turn… like many combo decks. But combo decks aren’t inherently a problem for the game if there is a way to interact or race.
Player since 1998 here. I quit magic when I was a teenager and affinity was running rampant and seemed like the only thing you could play. Been back since 2014 and while I don’t plan on quitting because of companions (I mostly play pauper and canlander) I do see far too many similarities between the mistakes made in Mirrodin and the ones being made now. 🤷🏻♂️
I know this is more broad, looking at all of magic. However I think that another one to go on this list is Energy. I understand that it isn’t as big in other formats as it was in standard, but everything about the mechanic was done poorly. Cards that were too frugal with energy, being able to use it with no additional costs to you except energy, not having a way to interact with someone’s energy pool, an artifact that allowed for free casting off of Energy rather than mana. It has all the same problems that Seth points out, yet it doesn’t make the list because it didn’t shake up the rest of magic’s formats. I’d say that Energy was the last worst mechanic they made because of the reasons I listed and it did drive away a lot of standard players because it was so oppressive. I think its important that Wizards knows that they messed up on everything they do that makes people not want to play in every format. I was so disappointed that the theme of Aether Revolt was about the people taking energy and using it against their oppressors, and yet they didn’t implement that in the game at all. No cards let you siphon off of other’s energy, you couldn’t do a fire ball effect based off the opponent’s energy. Nothing in the slightest punished players for using energy so it went rampant. Sure I might just be a standard player complaining about a mostly standard mechanic, but shouldnt wizards be called out for every mistake they make so it doesn’t happen again? With the back lash of Oko, you’d think that making a whole mechanic that breaks how the game is played would be the last thing they make next.
Companion is almost like smugler’s copter where it’s SO good that it’s something every single deck/archtype should be playing. It’s most similar to phyrexian mana as a mechanic though doesn’t necessarily warp the color pie as much as just warp what each color pie is doing. White/Black (in any iteration) is now a recurrsion graveyard deck (thanks Lurrus). Blue White is now a blink deck (thanks Yorion). Given what happened happened to so many of the phyrexian mana cards, I would assume we will see at least SOME bans of companion. Given that Lurrus and Yorion are the biggest offenders, I suspect it will be either Lurrus or Yorion or both. The one concern is that, right now, folks may have paid up to a hundred dollars (the foil extended art Lurrus) for a card they will literally never even get to sit down and play with if it’s banned in next week’s announcement. Therefore, I suspect, we will see no bans for about three months so that folks get to play at least a little bit with the cards and the market can adjust to having more of them available (instead of all this inflated pre sale pricing). Then about the start of fall, Lurrus will be banned. I mean, MTG goldfish literally had to change the image associated with their decks on the modern meta because 8 out of 10 of them were all Lurrus for goodness sake. There is no timeline where he does not get the ban hammer.
As someone who exclusively plays Limited, I love companion — it works extremely well in Draft. But your article clearly focused on Constructed, and based on what you said, I agree with you. One point to bring up though is that all 10 of the Companions are rares, whereas not all Delvers are, so that could mess with your ratios a bit.
It’s a shame because Standard has so many amazing and interesting cards at the moment, yet we only see the same 3 decks at top level play. And the fact that they are printing cards like Lutri that get pre-banned in EDH seems very problematic. You should print cards with the intention of having them be playable in all formats at the start.
What if the ruling was changed so that you always started with it in your opening hand? Like you reveal it and everything, you put it into your hand, and draw 6 cards. If you mulligan it will always be in your starting hand as well. This makes it so that they arent giving you free card advantage and it can be interacted with by forcing discard.
I agree. Something notable to add; while the argument could be made to simply play with companion regardless of what deck you’re running (Kaheera in a superfriends deck), the fact remains that in turn it is hurting the playability and weakening the draw into magic for a lot of players. By essentially requiring every deck to run a companion you begin to homogenize the entire game and all play patterns within the game. For a lot of players (myself included), deckbuilding can be one of the most fun decision-making processes within the game. When you know your brew has zero chance unless you throw in a companion and build around that archetype, it deteriorates the complex nature of finding your build and gameplay style and forces you into a format that has only a few correct paths. Hence why I’ve almost exclusively played limited since the release of ikoria. I just dont find constructed magic fun right now
Mechanics are certainly influenced by the “rate” factor of their cards. If they were all weak, then a broken mechanic might have a harder time warping the game. Apparently the original design of Companions that Maro passed off were draft support uncommons. I’d imagine some would have broken through anyway, if they had similarly viable requirements to the ones that saw print, as a free include or value trade-off. I wonder what people’s reaction would have been to that, of it was inherently dangerous but didn’t upend competitive play? Companions being hybrid may also be a slight issue, letting them be easier to slot or splash into any deck, leaning a little into the Phyrexian mana problem. But making them two colors would only narrow the pool of empowered decks, not eliminate the problem.
Worst thing for me is that you not only start with 8 cards in hand. You get particular card in hand which also break “random draw” factor. In normal deck you not always have your key card at certain turn of the game, but with them you always have your Lurrus on turn 3 and only thing you need to achive is having mana for him.
I think the easiest two ways to deal with companions is to either A) Ban them, or B) Restrict them to one per deck, which includes sideboard. I think one is enough per deck if it is being played as a companion. I think Gyruda is a good example as to why they should be restricted to one per deck. Usually, I can deal with one Gyruda, but two or three is another story entirely. Spark Double is fine, because they are not always going to hit a Spark Double, and the same is true for Thessa. But when you are able to raise the crucial hyper-geometric distribution of cards to 12 that help you to do nearly the same thing again and again, or perform an action a second time or third time consistently, is when the problem begins. Again, Gyruda is a prime example of this. Notice how many cards are being ran in the archetype builds, 12, that allow them to do the same things nearly and almost every single time. They are technically running 8 Gyruda (i.e. count Spark Double, and then 4 Thessa on top of it). Cut them down to 9 (i.e. minus 3 Gyruda), and the builds wouldn’t perform the same anymore, because they must have Gyruda in play for Spark Double or Thessa to actually mean anything towards the combo. If you can stop that one Gyruda, now they must play fairly, and one is easily stopped. Think of it this way. 12 cards allowing them to do the same thing over and over. So that would mean that 12 is 100%. That turns into 1/12th portions of hyper-geometric distribution. Which 12 is the crucial number for any deck that wants to continuously do the same thing over and over almost consistently, or higher like 16 for greater odds.
Would Companion have been more fair or balanced if the rules were that if you met the requirements of the deck for your Companion you may reveal it from your sideboard. Then at the start of your first turn you may exile a non-land card from your hand. If you do you may put your Companion from your Sideboard into your hand. The same rule applying that you can only have one. It still effectively tutors a single creature to be consistently in your opening hand, but it isn’t an additional card and is still very open to being targeted with discard. Making it more interactive?
I agree 100% with your assessment about punishing fair magic. I’ve been a staunch legacy and modern player (Maverick and Jund) and the consistent intrusion of new bullshit cards is very disheartening. It takes the joy of winning with jank or playing a long interactive game away and honestly has me contemplating selling out of everything but EDH because of WOTCs consistent inability to print balanced cards in recent years.
Articulate. Thoughtful. Supported by stats with good interpretations of the numbers. Well done Mr. Olive. I believe this might be one of your strongest arguments for anything in mtg. I appreciate your thoroughness as well in how you defined your terms before entering the argument. That was incredibly important to do, and you did it very effectively. I would suggest, based on this, that banning a or limits or something will be forthcoming when Wizards acknowledges their mistake
Great article, but you miss a huge point Saff about Companion. Lutri, the spellchaser was prebanned before the set release. So the 100% hit rate is incorrect. It was predicted that one card would be too powerful because of its ability, but instead it’s the failure to identify it was the mechanic that is broken.
Ever since the spoilers i’ve been talking to a friend about how broken would lurrus be in a snapcaster deck. I hadn’t event thought through all the companions, but meeting them in arena a few times was enough to show how bad of an idea the whole mechanic is. Then I watch the Jim Davis article and find out that apparently Sam Black had warned WotC about the mechanic beforehand and they didn’t listen. Now every single piece of magic content I find is about how the cards are being toxic in multiple formats and creating an unhealthy meta. Like you said: it’s not just card advantage, which would already be bad. It’s card advantage with a key part of your deck’s strategy guaranteed in your hand and safe from interactions until you decide to cast it. So yeah, there’s no redeeming quality to the mechanic, companion needs to go.
Well WOtC said 2020 would be the year of commander… One of the best solutions I’ve heard to fix companions comes from Jim Davies: skip a draw step to take the companion in your hand and cast it from your there. This would require some planning to decide when to play the companion and partially remove the card advantage issue. Partially because you can still draw the engine of your deck whenever you need it. It also doesn’t solve the issue of companions being immune to discard. Something similar might be that you have to first move them to your hand by discarding a card. This can also be restricted to end step only if we want to make them discardable. Another idea might be that when you cast your companion, that can be the only spell for the turn. Although it only affects some of them (you already want to cast Keruga and Obosh on curve and Yorion would still generate huge value). I honestly really like companion cards and it’s sad to see WOtC design cool cards but then give them mechanics so unbalanced, that they warp all existing formats to the point where if you are not playing them you are at a disadvantage.
I think ypu also missed a valueable point.. part of the game is the RNG aspect. By a player starting with their companion in hand, they start with a possible combo piece in hand. Think of Gyruda decks.. instead of having to draw 2 combo pieces (Thassa, Spark Double, etc), ypu already have 1 of the combo pieces.. all you gotta do is hope yo draw into the other combo piece or draw enough lands to play em
Afaik besides “cards i own”, commander is the most famous to be played at home, commander also starts with a powerful card your opponent can’t interact with and it’s accessible multiple times, but people really enjoy playing this format. I think if companions would have started less powerful (like the uncommon planeswalkers from WAR compared to what we had before), and maybe even more accessible (lower restrictions on the deckbuilding part) companions could have ended up as a cool new addition to the game of magic.
Yes. It is known. From Rosewater himself, after making a weaker version of this mechanic: ‘DECK VARIANCE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE GAME AND UNDERCUTTING IT WITH THIS MECHANIC HAS LED TO THE MOST UNFUN PLAYTEST GAMES WE HAVE EVER PLAYED. IF THIS IS THE FUTURE OF MAGIC DESIGN, WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.’ And then he turned around did this
Here is the question though from those decks how many of them actually cast the companion regularly? Also what kind of Tournaments are these? Are the big SCG type or local FNM? Format specifics (bigger card pool allows things to be more broken)? The last question is what is the actual win rate of these companion cards? Sure they win tournies but consistency is better in my opinion. I have seen players still win consistently without having a companion against people that do. It isn’t like dredge where you NEED grave hate to beat it out. It isn’t like phyrexian mana where you get got by dismember and such. It isn’t like storm where you NEED to slow and disrupted them long enough to get your beats in. It isn’t like delve or affinity where you are cheating on mana. If anything I find the worse than affinity but even that is kinda pushing it. Don’t get me wrong Lurrus and Gyruda are like the Oko problem. Those cards are nuts in older formats but the mechanic as a whole isn’t that broken or bad.
Played a sealed on Arena when Ikoria was released. happened to get a Gyruda in my pool, and built my deck around it, mostly just to try the mechanic out. This was a sealed deck that did not use the best cards for the companion because I had to work with what I had in the pool. Over the next seven games, I destroyed every single opponent i faced, just off of the back of having that consistency with my guaranteed 6 drop. I managed to figure out the mechanic was busted by game three. I have no idea how wizard’s r&d didn’t come to the same conclusion.
I don’t like how Seth poses the question. It should be “What’s the most broken mechanic in Magic?” Or the question should be, “What’s the most banned mechanic in Magic?” since that seems to be the primary (if not the only) criteria he uses. We should all be allowed to determine our own criteria for our opinions on the “worst” mechanic in Magic.
This could all have been prevented by just printing a couple of Companion hate cards here and there… For example a cycle of lands that tap for color mana, entering tapped and saying something like “when this land comes into play, exile target companion (from companion zone or battlefield)”…. or maybe the same land cycle with a “when this land is in play, companion cards can’t be cast”….. I don’t know… I thought of this in like 5 minutes…. Even make them pay for bringing a companion… like making them also discard…. I mean, some downside to the mechanig. For gods sake!….
dont forget companions can be played without them beeng companions. just as any regular card. all of them are good cards that offer interestiog mecanics, but the question is, is it worth paying the companion price to have 1 of them garantied in your hand. sometimes yes sometimes no. honestly 90% of the time, they get countered, destroyed, burned, exiled … the moment they are cast or enter the game. and thats it, all your companion benefits boils downt having +1 garantied card at your starting hand. so you burned down one counterspell, destroy … ect. Greath! was it worth accepting the companion handycap to have 1 extra card in your starting hand? to me personaly the ansuer is usualy NO. i play cards with companion without using the companion ability in many of my decks, but very rarely find the companion handycap justified to have that +1 card at start.
Lots of comments! Couldn’t read them all — so apologies if I’m repeating. Seth left out potential drawbacks of the companion mechanic: information given away and deck-building restrictions. Information asymmetry isn’t just in type of deck but also specific cards you OP might be running. The restrictions in most cases also hamper deck building and also can throw off your curve (for Odd or Even, only). Don’t those matter?
This should be “universally hated mechanics” rather than “worst”. Maybe do a “worst forgettable mechanics”. I was expecting phasing. It was so bad… Edit: On another note, I think Planeswalker is the next “worst” mechanic. I think keeping Vanguard planeswalkers would’ve been more fun. Now I face off against 2 Narsets or 2+ Ashioks or 3 Chandras at ONCE! why they ever change the planeswalker rule I’ll never know.
One large issue with companion is that it lowers deck diversity. Because it is so powerful to have an extra card at the start, not having companion nerfs your deck too much. So now all decks have to follow asinine restrictions so their card pool is smaller or else they will follow too far behind in power. Then on top of these limitations, you have to make it fit with the companion, so it just makes decks feel very same-y.
My thoughts exactly!! I work as a game designer and as soon as I saw some cards from Ikoria, it was clear to me that they didn’t do proper R&D with them. It is not hard to balance it: if you use your companion as a companion outside the deck, you’d have to draw 6 to your starting hand, and you could not have any more copies of the companion within your deck. Even with those restrictions, the mechanic would be pretty strong, since the very limitations of the companions themselves are the conditions to combo them with other cards… they are not really restrictions. They are an archetype frame to put into your deck. It is very disappointing. I agree entirely with the arguments made in this article, especially with the one that was clear when they announced the mechanic: Companions change how the game is played. I’d also add the argument that they are mostly meant to combo with their restrictions as I said above. That feels very dredge like too. That ridiculous level of synergy between their effect and their cost/restrictions. Not to say that, now you can have the ridiculous consistency of having guaranteed combos in your first hand. You can have 4 copies of each card that combos with companions in your 60 card deck.. I think companion is also unhealthy to the game because they feel a lot like Hearth Stone’s class system. The single coolest thing about Magic is being able to put into your deck whatever you want and make it work somehow. Companions determine what cards you can have in your deck.
A very good argument and well made. Certainly the worst when you look at the numbers and impact it’s having on older formats like that… I’m more surprised that all 10 are seeing significant play. Regardless, this could have done with a simple improvement: calling them the most broken mechanics in magic. Worst as the intro shows has too many meanings in this context whereas broken, OP, pushed, or what have you are pretty inherent.
I would also say that they break the game because it’s so easy to put them in the deck (at least in my opinion). Like for exaple in dredge, or in storm, you have to build your whole deck around those mechanics, but not here. Take Lurrus for example, the only limitation is that you can’t have permanents that cost more than 2 mana in your deck, but a lot of decks don’t really care about that anyway, so for them, the only sacrifice is having one less sideboard card, which in my opinion is a hell of a deal for 1+ card advantage on turn 0 (not even mentioning all the aditional stuff this card does).
I still believe I could’ve liked companions, if they would give your deck a more harmful deckbuilding restriction. Lurrus, Yorion, even Kaheera, they all provide little to none. If I was forced to play a deck consisting out of 250 cards to play a 5 mana enchantment that wins me the game in my upkeep, it’d be a fun thing to do that isn’t gamebreakingly overpowered. Companions are too good by design. They wanted to make these cards that would see play, so they made them good. But making them good was simply too much. If Lurrus would cost 5 mana and entered with a Cat Nightmare Counter on him with the ability to remove all Cat Nightmare Counters from him to be able to cast that many spells from graveyard with CMC 2 or less, it’d be a wacky idea, might even make it into a few decks, but it’d be decent at best. If Yorion forced me to play 100 cards more than required, while costing 8 mana and blinking only one nonland permanent, it’d still be really strong, but not dominatingly strong. Of course the companion mechanic in itself is incredibly strong, but if the restrictions they gave your deck were larger, it could’ve been a fun mechanic without these issues these good cards now bring upon us. I’m just sad that companion was chosen to be as strong as it is. What I would’ve enjoyed seeing would be fun against the odds cards or commander cards, rather than insanely powerful cards.
I just finished my mono red storm in legacy. Now I either have to A) Sink $1000+ into splashing White/Black for Lurus because I already top out at 2 and run petals, OR B) Have a strictly worse deck than if I just ran four badlands and eight fetches. So that’s pretty cool. Luckily the cat won’t last long, but I hate that I’ve gotten used to saying that after every new set “Luckily Oko won’t last long.” “Luckily, Thassa’s Oracle won’t last long” (I was wrong about that one rip)
(Regarding somewhere around 0:50) I think a cycle of zero mana cost untapped and no downside mana rocks was the “worst mechanic”. It is really difficult to top that one. (Edit) Also regarding the whole article, I think your points are valid. I think one point you didn’t make strong enough is not all Companions are made equal. Some top tier Companion decks are enormously better than others. Maybe if the stronger ones didn’t exist say only the worst three or four existed or the other coloured ones were designed to be weak (like weaker mechanics like how Soulshift was intentionally weak, after mechanics like Affinity and Storm), I am not sure there would be such a fuss. For example if Lutri, Umori and the weakest of the rest were the absolute best Companions (or others somehow did not exist, if that could be possible), I think the mechanic would be seen in a different light.
Commander: We’ll ban Lutri from the beggining. Any deck with blue and red could run it as all the decks are already under it’s Companion requirement. This will create an unfair advantage in favor of decks that can run it and with no opportunity cost, as no card would be cut and no modification in the deck is necessary. This would make Lutri price go sky high. Vintage and Legacy: Wow. Lurrus can be played in almost all decks of the format as most of the permanents are already CMC 2 or less. This will create an advantage as it has very little opportunity cost (a slot in the sideboard) and no card need to be cut and no modification in the deck is necessary. (Lurrus’ price go sky high)
Conceptually, I think Companion is a fine mechanic; it’s good from a flavor perspective, and it imposes interesting deck building challenges. I just feel like most of the companions are too powerful relative to the restrictions they impose, and the inability to interact with them when they’re off the battlefield is certainly a problem.
19:00 I didn’t really care for you talking about how impressive it is that they messed up a mechanic again, not sure if that was supposed to be said as a joke or not? People complain about wizards card design constantly, and I can only imagine that it is actually quite difficult to fully test every card in a set. If it was as easy as people think, we would never have problems. I agree with the article though, really well constructed argument is usual Seth!
I few days late, but I’ll chime in with a serious point. Companions break the mana system, not during play but before play. When teaching a new player, just recently.. the question of ‘well which cards can you put in your deck?” came up.. a serious question we take for granted. Previously, the mana system determined what could be put into your deck as the primary guideline for deck design. Companions upend this: Your deckbuilding rules are upended and a bunch of cards are now unavailable because you need to follow the companion rule. This is a massive change. New cards will be evaluated by what companions they play with. Suddenly a 3 mana spell is could be better than a 2 mana spell because it works with Keruga and Obosh. The ‘Kaheera 5’ become a new set of creature types to watch for. Any two mana spell becomes ‘can I Lurrus this?” This is going to ruin and complicate things. There will be a new set up conditions to design around going forward. This is a ginormous problem. I think companions need to be banned in all current formats (or the companion option needs to go, they are fine on their own) and spun off into their own format, like conspiracy, planechase, etc. There is a fun element to companions and the challenges they present, but it’s almost a different game.
WOTC, “So a percentage of Magic player seem to like the stupid commander format. How do we get them the play standard? EUREKA! Let’s make an ability that functions like a commander.” WOTC tester, ” but sir this could fundamentally change all formats for the worst. We should test it thoroughly.” WOTC, ” you’re fired. Print the cards and consequences be damned.” Players, 🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I haven’t had a chance to play with companions as I don’t play online card games (I get stressed out by them). That said, I definitely agree with your points. But I also think companions could be made to not be so broken. First, they should have some kind of extra cost for being a companion. The deck has to be built a certain way but that isn’t normally a meaningful restriction. Lori might be the one exception because you have to lower the consistency of your deck. Second, there probably shouldn’t have etb abilities seeing as you don’t usually have a counter spell ready at every moment. Third, the overall power of the cards is too high and should be lowered. When you play the orzhov cat, its ability is fine for a standard 3 mana card. The power spike comes from the consistency of the companion mechanic and thus needs as e training cost. Limiting your deck to small creatures isn’t a restriction when you just make an aggro deck. The power, consistency, and costs aren’t balanced well in this case. Finally fourth, they probably should’ve made one or two anti-companion cards. A new mechanic is fine but when you make a new mechanic, you run the risk of the balance being off so you should have a safety net that counters the new mechanic.
I’ll agree with the other comments that the consistency and card advantage is an issue. These can be addressed too an extent, just like how Fae of Wishes was limited to Side board only in comp play. You can have it take a slot in your starting hand, so decks with hand-hate can try to remove it before it can be cast. They could treat the Companion zone as an Exile zone, so any Exile interactions can target them. Or yes that can just ban the Companion ability from working within comp formats. I think the concept for companions is fine in theory; with the amount of information you give up when using a companion. Honestly even lutri in Commander would have been fine if they didn’t amend the deck construction rules to allow Companions to break the play rule about abilities which bring cards in from outside the game (which is what companion does.)
The thing about companions dodging interaction is that they punish you a lot more for not interacting than for interacting. Lurrus + Bauble is good even if the Lurrus dies, but it’s 5-mana Teferi if Lurrus sticks around. As a result, it incentivizes decks to play interactive games instead of simply racing much of the time, as is often the case in older formats. Additionally, the types of decks that companions favor differ sharply from previous busted mechanics. Storm, affinity and dredge all only see play in 1 archetype built around them, whereas delve and phyrexian mana equally power fair and unfair decks. With the exception of legacy storm (but that format was busted anyways), companions give the edge to the kinds of decks that play the good clean magic Seth is so keen on.
Personally I would put it in the top 5 oppressive mechanics, but not top 3 (except Lurrus, you cheeky cat). While I agree that Lurrus is hella pushed and might have been fixed by changing each iteration of permanent in the card with creature; the other companions, while strong; are not as oppressive as the main offender. The arguments are pretty relevant for it being top 5, yet like others have suggested, some of these other mechanics made the list due to withstanding the test of time, especially storm (since 30% of modern’s ban list tailored around it), and delve to a lesser extent. Phyrexian Mana is another offender but also likely 3rd or 4th from the top (again, outside of misstep; giving everyone countermagic)
It will be kind of interesting to see if they go the route of banning only the Value/Combo companions in older formats. I have a hard time seeing companions like Umori, Kaheera, and Jegantha being worth their deck restrictions as they mainly just add stats to the board as opposed to the others which give immediate value/threaten to win. Granted, that’s only 3 of 10 which is a horrendous ratio (with Lutri also potentially falling into the “probably not worth it” camp outside of maybe Vintage despite being a value companion). I wonder if this mechanic as printed could have been balanced using French Vanilla-esque cards (maybe with simple stuff like firebreathing, stat buffs if you do x, combat abilities) so that you could only really get 1 body of value out of the deal, but they probably would have all been seen as boring and might have caused better ones to be printed later.
I feel like I agree with two of those points: yes the argument of having an additional advantage over someone not using a companion is akin to fast mana and yes by the numbers they are dominant because it doesn’t make sense not to play with 1 in your sideboard if you can. The one I don’t agree with is the arguement that they are difficult to interact with. The reason I disagree is mainly the interaction you suggest is hand hate and removal. Hand hate is predominately part of blacks cards, so you straight away lop every deck into playing black to have any chance of interacting with other decks. What about decks that don’t run black, having the card in their sideboard or in their hand at that point would make no difference. Yes, the positive aspect of starting with an additional card is still there however no other colour, at least to my knowledge attacks the hand. The 2nd point would be removal, all of these cards are very easily removed when they are in the play, the biggest body being a 6/6. Black has hard removal, White exiles, Blue bounces, Red deals damage and Green fights through with creatures. I would say causally these are great cards and it was a good space to attempt to work but competitively it warps peoples decks into being required to have that additional card to muster the same sort of value on curve. I feel If they never had an instant value when they came down on board it wouldn’t have been as bad having the additional card in ‘hand’ because the effects would be possibly too mediocre at best for older formats.
It feels like they were trying to invent an entirely new format but without actually making a new format and shoving it screaming and kicking into standard+every eternal format. Which is a shame, because as a redesign for commander? Different rules for the restrictions on deck creation seems cool — as much as I love commander, restricting deck creation based on color identity and nothing else feels a little bland at times. It’s disappointing how companion has gone.
And now you have to realize that the guys who designed the companion mechanic (mark rosewater) wrote an article 5 years ago that featured what mechanics you never should print. One of them (you might guess it) was a companion’ish mechanic that also forced you to start with 6 cards as a compensation for the guranteed draw of an relatively underpowered card. So they printed a mechnic that rosie pushed while he also knew that mechanics like that are toxic for the game…
Companions are GOOD. MAKE MORE, PLEASE. If Companions work, then they should make 50+ companions. It’s not about a mechanic seeing play. It’s about a new way to play the game. It’s like when Planeswalkers become a frequently printed card. They’re like enchantments, but can be attacked, and the cost is to increase or decrease the health of planeswalker — Don’t run for the hills just because Planeswalkers are being played. Now they’re a core go-to as a finisher for control decks. Companions aren’t really a mechanic. They’re basically extra rules. I really really hope wizards prints a fuck ton more companions. Give me a Companions Masters set or print 10 companions per year. Increase the variety in the pool. Companion will always be 100% play rate. It’s just how the game grows. Maybe, down the road, we’ll get some cards that are improved if you don’t have a companion.
It would be better if the casting costs for these cards were more restrictive. As is, you don’t need to adjust your mana base in order to support a companion even if that companion has a completely different color in its cost. The meta would be completely different if companions costed BOTH colors instead of either.
I was actually very suprised to see Companion mechanic in MtG, because there is already a well-known story of Hearthstone metagame suffering a lot from the “start of the game” legendaries that provided too much consistency. Genn and Baku were very dominant and annoying in the repeatable game patterns that they bring. Enough so to be “Hall of Famed”, which is HS’s equivalent of banning, a year earlier than they should be otherwise. It could be a good mechanic if, and only if, MtG has been shaped from the very beginning to be played with a Companion for each of the decks possible, with cards that would give you bonuses if you did not have a companion to promote several non-companion archetypes, with Companions present in every set and every environment in a lot of variety – but even then it would probably be “a worse alternative universe” because of the consistency issues that Companions bring. I was also very confused to see a Companion card with Commander restrictions on it. It was such a bad idea to give red-blue Commander decks a card that any deck with a red or blue would always play that Commander commitee banned it even before the packs hit the shelves. If anything, if a card gets banned in a very popular and supported format even before the set release, that is a sign that something happened completely wrong during the design process.
I think companion is fundamentally broken because it breaks a more fundamental rule that any other mechanic: the starting resources are the same. In Magic, your resources are your hand, your life total, your board, and your graveyard. Every other card in Magic, even the broken ones, just offers some way of trading between those resources. The other broken mechanics are broken because they violate some “rule” about how that exchange should work. For example, one of the most important rules is that aside from playing a land, every other exchange requires some prior investment on board. Fast mana violates this rule by letting you trade cards in hand for cards in play without needing any prior lands on board. Dredge violates this rule by letting you add cards to your graveyard without needing anything but cards in your graveyard. Phyrexian mana violates another rule by letting you play certain spells for free, and giving colors access to abilities they shouldn’t have. Other broken mechanics like Storm, Delve, and Affinity just offer absurdly good exchange rates. However, the one thing that has never changed is the starting totals. 20 life, 7 cards, no graveyard, and no board. Even leylines and chancellors are more akin to fast mana as they cost a card in hand to use. You don’t start with 6 cards an a leyline, you just trade a leyline in hand for one on the battlefield at the start of the game. Companions are the one exception to this rule and they thus break a more fundamental rule than any other mechanic to date.
I’d be willing to wager that wizards is going to put out ten companions every set from now on, and standard mtg is going to be like commander from here on out. Not necessarily broken or bad if every deck from now on has a companion as a standard feature. We just need more than ten to choose from. I remember when it was difficult NOT to play a mono colored deck, because the availability of “Dual” lands was so rare. Everybody whined and complained and said that everyone was gonna have to play multicolored decks forever now and it was going to ruin magic. Well here we are 17 years later…….. more players than ever. Just because its new doesn’t mean it can’t become normal.
What’s bad about companions is that you look at the deck restrictions and at first it seems like they would hurt deckbuilding, then you realize that with more constraints also means less creativity leading to the same deck over and over again. I think the biggest problem with companions is that the mana costs on them are way too low for basically a free card in your hand. Most should have had their mana costs jumped higher to like 5 mana minimum. If wizards were paying attention, they would have known how bad companions could be. Hearthstone tried something similar to these a few years back with Baku and Genn and ended up having to ban the cards cause they were game warping.
While I do understand how broken Companion as a mechanic is, I feel really distraught and sad about how people reacts to the new cards that pushes the power level higher in the game. I feel like everyone wants this game to be as stagnant as possible and I can’t bring myself to understand such line of thought.
I’m a little surprised Infect isn’t on here. As it breaks the 3rd fundamental rule of Magic. All players begin with the same starting life total. And it transcends across formats! Sure the infect creatures aren’t banned but in the same way as affinity, the spells that go with them are. It’s definitely a bummer we’re back with another affinity now in standard, no companion? No win basically :///
I don’t think they should be banned. A few cards that deal with them specifically & efficiently could balance their use. When Planewalkers came out, people went nuts, then effective ways kept coming to balance them out. No doubt, the lack of any anti-companion specific cards in Ikoria was a definite design flaw, and hey, power creep is always crawling up your leg (especially with hard right for more excitement in a set was taken by Magic after complaints on THB for the opposite) but to ban them outright would be shitty – especially if you spent money on a card or set due to the excitement they created and cashed in on, only to have your investment thrown in the garbage with not even a sorry (tricked ya! Thx for free cash). Hell, I think they should even double down on companion or the type mechanics. Let the game change. (Insert attacks… … …uh, here, now) 🙂
Just compare it to the partner mechanic in CEDH or wish effects in legacy decks (karn, burning wish), having access to an 8th card is busted. Because it’s either helping your game plan without affecting your consistency or a really specific hate card that just suddenly appear in game one. Two things make cards broken, consistency and fast ramp (mox, phyrexian mana, etc.).
Alright, this is pretty solid logic, but here’s my big question for you. If the “a player using this auto changes rules” where does infect/poison fall considering your opponent effectively has twice your life, the other issue I’m seeing is a matter of numbers. You want to use them by X number. but there’s the matter of percentage. If a mechanic is printed on a couple hundred cards and had the same amount of bans, no matter how bad the mechanic is it would look better then one where only 10 cards existed and say 6 or 7 of them were broken. As for the consistency/randomization argument. Where exactly do things like the endless effective reprints fall into that. Currently in standard you can stick 16 BB1 “Counter Target Spell” into a single deck. I suppose that’s not a “guaranteed to have 1 to cast.” but it seems pretty close. That’s just standard other more open formats can run effectively the same card in their deck so much that they are guaranteed to have it. So why is companions consistency an issue, while those instances are not?
Two things 1) Is the fact that companion brought back power level errata (If I’m not mistaken about the companion “rule change,” it essentially amounts to completely changing the text of the card for the sake of power level) relevant to how bad it is? 2) The big problem with dredge isn’t the mechanic itself, it’s cards with too high a dredge value. If there highest dredge value was three and all but one or two cards had dredge two or less, it would be a pretty fair mechanic. 2a) I honestly don’t even think dredge is that bad. The fact that someone figured out a way to completely change how a deck plays with it is honestly pretty cool if you ask me. That’s part of the fun of magic and I personally think it kinda blows how much WoTC created a bunch of niche cards just to hate on it. Especially since there are regular ways to deal with it already (specifically, low-cost board wipes like sweltering suns, but also “cast only” effects like containment priest, stall spells like propaganda or elephant grass, and so on). Just because stupid blue can’t counterspell dredge or discard effects (which are the lamest part of magic, anyway. Yes, even worse than land destruction) aren’t as effective, doesn’t make the mechanic broken. But god forbid a new innovative deck that thinks outside the box get to exist- better print out some tormod’s crypts and leyline of the voids to shut the shit right down.
The problem with Dredge is that the people who made it didn’t envision it being played unfairly. They saw Stinkweed Imp as: “I cast this and block every turn and get it back, so my opponent has to find some way through my board that kills a creature of his each turn.” That’s fine. The problem came when people figured out that casting cards with Dredge for their mana costs was for chumps. Life from the Loam is the only card with Dredge that people actually play for the card itself and not the graveyard mill. That’s bad.
I for one don’t have any problem if 90% of the decks include the companions (in the formats they are legal). I mean, people don’t seem to have the problem that fetchlands and shocklands are in 90% of the decks they are legal. Why is it a problem for companions? I’m ok with a world with 8 cards in hand and strong deckbuilding restrictions. But then again, when Genn and Baku showed up in hearthstone I was in the minority that thought that it was cool they were adding 18 new classes to the game, instead of thinking that it was problem that this two cards were showing up everywhere. I took my current jank deck and decided to look for what it’s perfect companion would be. Turns out I ended up with 4 different versions of the deck. And it’s not as if this is a sol ring or a black lotus that goes into any deck: each of the ten companions is mutually exclusive with the others (as companions) They each allow for a big design space within their restriction. If anything, I think the problem with companion is that 10 is too little. We need 20 more. But hey… I’m a commander fan so don’t take me too seriously
Maybe a way to fix this companions problem could be introducing something like the colour identity in commander. You can play your companion (basically a commander in non commander tournament) if your deck has only card matching their colours. Yorion with no fires only U and/or W stuff, big scary cat with no ancestral/remoras/ fow only W and/or B cards and so on
I think the issue with companion is that the ‘restrictions’ aren’t strong enough to balance off their consistency. For example: – Lurrus might be more difficult to play if all cards, not just permanents, in the deck has to be 2 or less. – Yorion with 40 cards and singleton restrictions, and flickering up to X creatures/enchantments but not both types – Zirda with activated abilities that cost {4} or more, OR contain at least 1 nongeneric mana. – Kaheera with ‘all creatures you control come into play tapped’. – Jegantha being a 2/2 so much easier to remove. – Keruga with creature/sorcery type restriction in addition to CMC 3 or greater – Obosh/Gyruda with nonland cards being sorcery/instants only in addition to CMC restrictions – Lutri with red or blue instant/sorcery only in addition to being singleton etc. Of course, they might be still broken even with additional restrictions depending on the decks they get played in…
Maybe because I’m not professional player, but I ‘m not suffering with companions at all. As sson as they enter the battlefield, I remove them. The only advantage for the adversary, is the turn the companion enters the battlefield and trigger their ability. Which don’t differ from a magic that soemone uses normally.
You forgot the “untap” mechanic seen in Palinchron and friends. It’s arguably the first broken mechanic ever printed, it impacted negatively on the game as much as the more recent ones and has a great historical value, although for all the wrong reasons. I don’t know if it actually fits among the top 5, but I’d have included nonetheless for completeness.
I believe companions are an interesting design space that I would like to see more printed. There are certain cards with companion are broken, but it isn’t ALL of them. I don’t see anybody complaing that Keerah, Jegentha or Umori. And saying that starting with one more card in hand is insurmountable is also wrong. How many people just consed when they muligan to six before Ikoria standard. One more thing. I’m an older player and I remember when Skullclamp was in standard. People wanted SKULLCLAMP banned. They didn’t want equipment to never be printed again.
I think they are fine for the fun of the game assuming someone else is playing with their own companion. They take away some randomness and that can make playing the game more fun. Unless wizards scraps companions altogether they’d either have to make a new format to play them in or be okay with every existing format essentially becoming a companion format because they bring so much value. If they are to continue to exist in any format then cards need to be printed to interact with them, like a two mana spell that exiles them before they are played. That would level out the playing field again.
I think the only way to understand and accept companions is precisely as a change to the fundamental rules in order to prevent flood (and consequently due to mulligan strategy also screw). This would require vanilla companions without deckbuilding restrictions that all decks have access to. Not sure if the overall effect is positive. Less games where you dont get to play magic but also more games that are the same. All decks must play at least one creature. Combo decks that can use a companion as a piece become much more consistent… I think it may be worth a try but only if understood in this context. This is not a normal mechanic and cannot be compared to them (more comparable to planeswalkers or to the London mulligan in that way). If it stays all decks will have to use it.
I’d say an immediate change to companions they could do is make sure that every card in your deck must adhere to the companion’s colours. Much like how it works in commander. Because companions are hybrid coloured, it makes it too easy to run a companion in decks where the card doesn’t even make sense (Why the hell does Lurrus need to be in W/R Burn?) Secondly, your opening hand may contain your companion instead of being in the companion zone. That way the opponent may discard it in the early game. It is still card advantage, which is annoying, but being able to discard it would be very helpful in formats where Thoughtseize is legal (even Thought Erasure in standard would make this fine if you ask me.)
Not even an energy counter honorable mention? It might not have the bannings and see the amount of play as the other mechanics once it rotated out of standard, but it was a resource created by one card that opponents couldn’t interact with that could fuel another card. Creatures with energy abilities could spend energy while summon sick. Attune with Aether into Longtusk Cub followed by Bristling Hydra was nigh unbeatable
I never really got the confusion of banding other than how it’s worded. Banded creatures act as one creature. The owner of the band determines how damage is split among creatures in the band. You can have as many creatures in the band as you want as long as all of them have banding, plus you can have one without it.
I don’t like the companions for a couple of reasons. 1) They resemble Baku and Glen Greymane in HS, that have a pregame effekt before the game starts if you have build your deck a certain way. They learned pretty fast that deckbuilding constrictions isn’t a good enough downside to not gain the value from that, and was put in the hall of fame a year before time 2) It has become either you run it or you are at a mayor disadvantage, and that’s dangerous for card design, every card in the future will be looked at and evaluated, is this good enough for Lurrus decks. 3) It limits Deck building choices. If you have a favorite deck to play in certain formats, you have to make cuts to fit the companions rule, cards that may be good in some archetypes ex. BBE and LotV in modern jund, but will not see play because of they don’t fit the rule. 4) You can just jam pack your deck with stuff that works well with your companion, in modern at least it seems the Essentials are Lands, 4 Mishra’s Bauble and Lurrus, to have a competative deck, and from there you can build a deck, but no permanents over 2 or more.
The worst mechanics in my opinion come down to you not interacting with your opponent. Either you kill your opponent so quick that they don’t interact with you, or you simply don’t interact (dredge etc.). Companions are on a whole new level of broken. It’s like forcing a completely different format onto other formats, it’s breaking any format by removing what they once stood for.
Like many here I like the mechanic but think the execution sucks. There are plenty of suggestions but I would have done it like a “devotion prerequisite.” So it’s just a card in your deck, but as a companion it would be searchable from your library if you’ve done x, I, z. Say Zirda: Companion: If you’ve activated an ability of a nonland permanent this turn, search your library for Zirda, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Obviously this is skeleton but could work for a lot of them. Garuda Companion: If 4 or more cards were put into a graveyard this turn search your library for Garuda, reveal it, put it into your hand. It’s still rather unique as an ability that triggers from the library. Makes sense in flavor as “finding your companion” in your library. Allows it to be interacted with. Dunno. Off the top of my head stuff.
I think companion is an attempt of Wizards to put commander in all other formats. They just realised how much people like commander (me included) and tried to pit it in. Honestly i won’t have problems with companion as long as wizards will print more different ones of them, to make sure that both players would always have companions, so that no-one would be disadvantaged.
I’d like to add that a fundamental problem is that even if the companion does nothing the turn it’s cast and you remove it, it’s still a 1 for 0 in resources. And if you’re holding an answer in hand to deal with a potential companion casting and they don’t cast it, they’re holding up one of you’re resources without even doing anything. So companions do work for you even if you never cast them, that’s a horrible mechanic. I have no idea what they will try to fix this, but I’m not going to play magic as long as you need to play a companion to compete in the formats I play. I’m not even doing it as a statement, I’m simply not interested in playing the game with this mechanic in it.
I think stretching the very reliable misuse of mana across the other mechanics to simply “breaks the fundamental rules of the game” was a terrible way to find support for your hypothesis without support. Every other mechanic misused mana; THAT is their shared theme, you can’t expand that without reason. Other cards break plenty of different rules of magic – such as leylines, or cards that let you play from other zones – yet they aren’t banned. In terms of “starting with an eight card”, that is literally the least amount of card advantage a deck can achieve; other cards that present that advantage aren’t breaking the rules of magic, or bannable. Equally, cards frequently have clauses protecting them from one mode of disruption, companions are still hit by both creature removal and counterspells, meaning they are easy to interact with. Literally only one of the five colours has one of their removal methods interfered with. Dredge is good against all of the main three forms of interaction (hand disruption, creature removal and counterspells), however, as is storm, which is why their value is unfair. You can still point at that stats, sure, but we are literally only a few weeks into their release so we have no idea how prominently they’ll stabilise. Also, this article did nothing to assess whether the prominence of these cards in the meta does good – these cards have seemingly revived countless old decks and are producing a healthy spread of the main give archetypes. Personally, I think the only thing that is making people consider this as the worst card in magic is the fanbase’s newly developed negative gut response to powerful cards being amplified by the echo chamber of constant negative coverage in these painfully slow times.
You know what the worst part is? In Vintage it is legit not possible to lower their impact at all! Cards dont get banned in Vintage, they get restricted. But because Companions are always only played once in the sideboard, restricting them will have no impact at all. That is right, they seriously printed a mechanic that cant even be fixed with restricting the card!
Well it all depends. If wizards has any intent of making the companion mechanic something recurring, it’s fine. We would see every single top tier deck having a companion and it’s not unfair from that point onward. Maybe we just need companions that fit in different kind of decks, for example we don’t have a good companion for flash decks (simic flash, dimir flash)
I think companions in theory could have been ok, like if most of them were like Jegantha without the tap ability. But the way wizards made most of them(Lurrus and Yorion being the prime offenders) is what ruined the mechanic. These cards are incredibly powerful on their own, and then you have the companion mechanic on top of that? Absolutely ridiculous
Companion could be less bad in standard if we were in a different time of the rotation. Right now there are 7 sets that are standard playable with an amount of power creeps that make the older kaladesh/shadow over innistrad standard look underpowered. That’s why the restriction that the companions have in deck building doesn’t matter that much: there are some many good card that you don’t actually feel bad for cutting some (or adding some) to play a companion. Like it’s just dumb how you can just slam 20 more cards your deck and not lose any consistency.
It will be interesting to see how WotC deals with this. They can’t ban all of the companions (probably the best solution tbh, but not realistic) and they are not trying to knock one single deck down. Storm and Drege were their own archetype. The phyrexian mana cards that were banned were the only real “problematic” cards that featured the mechanic. With companion, it is the non-interactability that makes it problematic (like dredge) where I don’t think you can ban just a few companions and be fine (like with Phyrexian mana). Also, unlike with dredge, you can’t just ban a few key cards in a certain deck because companions are not limited to just one deck. This is why I think it is almost better to just take the mechanic out by the roots and is deserving of the worst mechanic. I mean Lurrus got banned in VINTAGE (where basically nothing gets banned) of all formats.
No. Phyrexian mana is worse than companions and it’s not even close. Phyrexian mana means that I can be on the draw, not even have had a turn yet, and still play a mental misstep on my opponent’s first turn. I don’t even have a single land on the board, haven’t even drawn a card, but I can negate a turn 1 play? Companions can’t do anything near that degenerate
Companions shifted every formats’ metagames to the point im no longer thinking “nah, its just the novelty of the month, building around lurrus/yorion looks good but the non-lurrus/yorion version was good already and eventually we’ll see the classic decks winning again”. Some companions make for fun deckbuilding choices and arent as powerful as others, some even create new decks that seem fun jank, but who would have thought a little cat would become a nightmare for the game itself? I hope someone eventually demonstrates how a classic deck (lets say legacy delver) can be as good as its companion variant… cuz i dont know how will wotc get out of this otherwise.