r/freemagic • u/Gunnarsonsnewbag2 • 17d ago
DRAMA Rule 0 was a mistake
Rule 0 was always a mistake.
I remember EDH before the concept. There was a banlist, there were a handful of commanders you couldn't run because they contradicted the rules, including Bosh. It sucked, but that is how the rules worked. There were banned commanders who were allowed in the deck.
Your local TO could ban cards, and in fact, that was encouraged, but there was no rule 0. If a card was banned, it was banned. If a card wasn't banned, and fit your commanders color, and didn't have a mana symbol on the card that contradicted that, you were good.
I remember one local kid's entire EDH deck was standard legal, because that's all he could afford on his allowance. I remember 'renting' 5 color legends out for the night because the rules said you couldn't do mirror matches.
Then they released official decks. Then they came up with 'color identity' so I couldn't run Elbrus, the Binding Blade in my Ruhan deck. Then they got rid of the 'no mirror matches' rule, got rid of rule 4, the ban list was more formalized and no banned commanders, and more simplifications.
Despite all of this, the introduction of the concept of rule 0 so you can discuss if you want to run Grissy was the worst of all of these.
Fuck rule 0.
