Hybrid Mana

Hybrid mana is a contentious subject in EDH. People are usually of the opinion that the current rule isn't as fun as it could be, but I've also heard people talk about how restrictions breed creativity. The whole reason that color identity exists in the first place is to push people away from just playing the best cards. This is a hard partition. It exists to cut up the card pool and make things more interesting. This system works, but it does have a few faults. Hybrid mana just happens to be the most visible. I'm going to talk about the problem presented by Hybrid mana and my solution to it, but first I want to talk about why its important. Hybrid mana has been referred to by MaRo as being, "Not used in every set, but any set that needs it can have it." They are saying that Hybrid will crop up at any moment. In the set we just got, most of the marquee cards were hybrid. Not just two color hybrid, but three color Hybrid cards. These gold cards were made to be playable in two color decks as opposed to the two color Hybrids we had gotten in the past. They are going to keep exploring and doing more with Hybrid as time goes on. Magic is really all about the mana system and Hybrid is a novel way of trying different things with mana.

Now that I've established why Hybrid mana is important, lets state the problem with it. Hybrid mana is supposed to represent an OR state. (R/U) is Red OR Blue. The color identity rules currently treat it as an AND state. This is done, I think, for clarity and to keep the game as close to normal Magic rules as possible. In the expansion Eventide they had a cycle of Mimics that were Hybrid cards that had triggered abilities whenever you played a card that was both of its colors. A Riverfall Mimic, would trigger on casting another Riverfall Mimic. So even though the design goal of Hybrid was to make cards the were in the OR state, the game itself still treats them as an AND state. This is ok in normal Magic because there are no color identity rules and there is nothing stopping you from producing any color of mana. Going outside the box is cool, encouraged, and makes the game better as a whole since it comes with the risk of making your deck more unstable. However, we begin to see the problem emerge with the release of the most recent set. Mardu Hordechief is a great card that won't see any play in EDH because his cost is too restrictive. The same is true of virtually all of the Hybrid cards. The way that color identity works these cards can only be played in wedges. Since Commander is showing no signs of dropping off in popularity anytime soon, this means a few different things can happen. R&D shy away from putting Hybrid into places where it would be cool because Hybrid isn't fun for their EDH only players. This isn't likely, but they have begun paying attention to the format. The Primordial Cycle, the inclusion of more Legendary creatures, MaRo even talked about ensuring the cycle of wedge Commanders in FRF since it was unlikely that they'd get a chance to do more of them. The other possibility is that the rules committee just lets more and more Hybrid cards pile up without making any effort to include them. The number of Hybrid cards is relatively small right now, but that number is only going to grow. It will be a hassle to fix the rules, but in the end it will be worth it.

The easiest fix I can think of to solve the problem is to make this change to the Hybrid mana rules:
X.1 - A card with Hybrid mana is a legal card if removing one color from each of its Hybrid mana symbols causes it to match the color identity of the Commander.
Example: Removing the Red from the Hybrid mana symbol of  Soulfire Grand Master would cause its color identity to fit into Gisela, Blade of Goldnight.
X.2 - A card with Hybrid mana symbols that has removed one of its colors due to color identity rules loses that color.
Example: A Nightveil Spector in a Thassa deck would not benefit from a Bad Moon since it would be a mono-blue card.
X.3 - A legendary creature with Hybrid mana can't be matched to a Commander and must use its whole color identity.

These changes make it pretty intuitive and keep the spirit of the current rules. The current outgrowth of the rules are a function of the rule where you can't generate mana of colors outside your Commander's color identity. It was found that this rule didn't go a good job of stopping things like reanimation or Sneak Attack from putting in large creatures outside of what we know now as color identity. Its why MaRo's suggestion of repealing color identity was poor since the non-mana rule doesn't stop everything. Hybrid mana is caught by this rule since you can generate mana to cast the card, but you can't include it since you would technically be breaking the flavor by including outside colors. The color purge would ensure that the cards were only of the color identity that they should be. There are bugbears. What happens when the card is stolen? Is it still a mono-white Debtor's Knell when its confiscated by a Blue/Black player? How do you track the identity of the card? I don't know. I would have to test it, but I don't want to see a number of awesome cards not get played because of rules.

The real problem is the implementation. Commander is played everywhere, including on MTGO. Changing a rule of this magnitude could be a problem since it would require re-coding the online system and disseminating the information of how the new rule works. The truth is though, that if the identity rule is going to change we should change it soon rather than later.