Hello and happiest of days to you! Today, I thought it would be fun to talk about four changes I'd like to see made in Magic: The Gathering. A few are flavor changes, one is a mechanic swap, and then one is a change to Commander since that's the current dominant format. All of these I offer to you freely, whether you like them or not!

#4. Adding Indestructible to Vampires and Lords

In fiction or movies, Vampires are very tough to kill, only having a few ways to fully destroy them. In the modern era of Magic, that's best represented with indestructible, though Black did have Regeneration back in the day. You don't often see Indestructible today, with some exceptions granted to temporary indestructible granters such as Yahenni, Undying Partisan or Immersturm Predator. Nonthing really has it permanently anymore, with the game's designers preferring things like Hexproof and Ward, or letting something return from the graveyard when it dies. Why no indestructible, Wizards? Let's bring it back and give it to Vampires! And let's give it to some Lords too, since there's something flavorful about making a powerful political or social figure untouchable!

#3. Moving Counter Removal from Black to Red

When it debuted on Aether Snap or Spike Cannibal, there wasn't an obvious place for removing counters from things, flavor wise. I agree that this mechanic seems Black, and I'd keep it as secondary there, but I really do think it belongs in Red primarily.

First, there are flavor reasons! Let's take a step back: What are counters on something, conceptually? Over time, counters build up and grant modifiers, or they grant some kind of effect or ability. In some ways they represent preparation and planning for the future on planeswalkers and The One Ring. Well, planning and preparation aren't really Red's thing. No color is more about embracing the now than Red! It would make sense, flavorfully, for Red to pull counters off permanents or players and force you to embrace the now. You can also combine this nicely with other Red mechanics like Burn spells or Artifact removal. For example, you could have a card that pulled counters off of something and then shoot that thing's controller for damage equal to the counters removed.

Also, Red is the color missing from the four-color legendary proliferate Angel. Atraxa, Praetors' Voice sends her regards.

The second reason Red should be able to remove counters is just that Red needs another ability! It's allo dorks with haste, first strike, pumping power, burn, artifact removal, land removal, and such like impulse card draw and Rummaging. We need something new to push the color forward!

#2. Creating an Ability Called Kindredfear

Intimidate was created to be a replacement for Fear since Fear only specifies Black creatures and Artifact creatures while creatures with Intimidate can only be blocked by creatures of its own colors and artifact dorks! That being the case, I've always wondered why Intimidate never really showed up on Dragons. In classic literature, "The Hobbit", and the D&D game too, Dragons provoke an innate fear that made them rough to even engage with. Most folks flee in terror. I initially thought that adding an ability called "Dragonfear" where only Dragons or artifact dorks could block something made sense. Then I realized that there are many of those Types out there too, like Rogues that can only be blocked by Rogues since they know the tricks of the trade, or Spirits that are insubstantial and can only be blocked by other Spirits.

So, this ability would read "This creature can only be blocked by creatures that share a creature type with it or artifact creatures." Make sense? We could use this is so many ways. Changelings can block anything! You could make an enchantment or artifact that chose a creature type when played, and then gives this ability. Embrace it!

#1. Remove the 100 Card Cap on Commander

Last up is this fun change. Commander is an amazing and awesome format with a 100-card cap, unique color identities, the Command Zone, and a singleton restriction. All great stuff right? It's a fun, casual, multiplayer format too with tons of opportunity that embraces kitchen table and relaxed play, and encourages folks to talk about their decks ahead of time to make sure everyone is on the same page. It's a great, creative format where each deck should be very, very different. Now that WOTC is in charge of this format, I'd like to propose a change.

Before, when I would make changes to the format, like proposing a raise to the card limit cap or allowing for Wishboards, I'd get tons of pushback from folks since "That's not the rules." We talk about the social contract of the game, but most don't really embrace the Rule Zero mantra. Thus, I propose this rule change!

The format often has tons of homogeneity and many feel like it's "solved." With countless cards printed every year, each set often has just one or two cards good enough to make your deck. Most decks will include cards like Sol Ring and Lightning Greaves or staples for their color that are just good like Rhystic Study or Consecrated Sphinx in Blue to draw tons without doing anything mana-wise, or Cultivate for mana and Farseek and for ramp. There are tons of staples, and many decks that share color identity can look very similar in card loadout, even though they have different Commanders. Since only the best new cards from each set are added to the pool of staples, this also can create a power curve where most cards in new sets don't make the cut. Tons of Commander staples massively rise in price over time, which can create an us vs. them mentality if you can't afford to stack your deck with powerful all-stars.

I feel there are two ways to help. The best is to increase the minimum card count of Commander decks. If we moved to a card count of 125 or 150, we'd decrease homogeneity, and increase people's creativity. I think we could get in tons of great cards that way. Just keep adding cards until it's no longer an issue with folks, right? Right!

Another way to help would be to remove the maximum card cap. This is the only format with a hard card limit, right? By just making decks be 100 cards minimum, you'd be helping in a similar way to increasing the deck size. For example, I once built an illegal Commander brew around Battle of Wits since that wins with a deck bigger than 100 cards. This change would allow that kind of thing to be legal! And, ideally, we'd do both of these things!

There we go! Do you want indestructible Vamps? Do you want counter-removal in Red? Do you want a Kindredfear ability? Do you want the Commander card count cap to rise or the max deck size to be gone? I hear you! Are there other ways you would want to change Magic?