Save The Fish! Why Mystic Remora Should Not Be Banned
(Mystic Remora | Art by Kelogsloops)
Welcome back, readers! In case you missed it, my good friend and fellow Playing With Power teammate, Matt Sperling, made a YouTube video outlining his case for banning Mystic Remora in Commander. His case and the subsequent conversation on Twitter largely being in agreement about Mystic Remora being a card worth removing from the format but the approach to the ban list is the point of discussion instead. I saw literally no one coming to the defense of Mystic Remora and the play patterns it generates, so I'm here to do that today!
To kick things off, I want to respond directly to some points Matt brings up in the video with timestamps to address those directly then discuss some positives I believe the card brings to the format.
"Really low investment of one blue mana" - Matt Sperling
This is one of the primary points he uses to kick off his argument, and revisits it as a talking point throughout the video. While the initial investment on the card is only a single blue and as a result there are games where it is able to have an outsized impact for that single blue, that is not the case every single time, and within the same thought he brings up that one of the two dramatic effects the card can have on the game is to slow it down quite a bit! If the card is slowing the game down, the investment to keep that going gets steep very quickly, and there are games where Mystic Remora can be waited out and the game plays on from there, a possibility Sperling implies via omission as irrelevantly uncommon.
Truthfully, the games where Mystic Remora is only a single blue mana investment are most often games where the Mystic Remora player loses, in my experiences! Either a player combos through it or some permanent is added to the board that makes Mystic Remora less valuable to pay for than taking another path. Orcish Bowmasters, Narset, Parter of Veils, Notion Thief, Archon of Emeria, Deafening Silence, etc., are all among cards that are commonly played that can make Mystic Remora an embarrassing prospect to keep in play.
"Players often feel forced to feed it"
This is a perspective of a skilled cEDH player and Magic player at large that has played too many pods against Rog Si and other spell-heavy combo decks of the format. My experience outside the testing pods, that we have been in together for some amount of, has not been this lopsided towards feeding. In fact, I found people actually disproportionately do NOT feed the fish enough, which often face-up allows the player who simply plays through it the best to win the game instead. I found this pattern to be so common, in fact, that I wrote an entire separate article on the matter back in March!
While for a certain set of archetypes, primarily ones winning with Underworld Breach, are often priced into just egregiously feeding the fish and hoping to power through any interaction drawn, that is not the case for all the most powerful decks in the format. The format is still very much developing in response to the hostility to specifically noncreature effects, and this is extremely important to consider when assessing the impact the card has on the entire range of cEDH games.
"Contributes to the incentive to play blue"
Of the arguments Sperling makes, this one I am a little sympathetic to, but even in the same breath Sperling calls out this and cards like it, which indicates the high incentive to play blue in cEDH, and banning only Mystic Remora does precious little to move the needle on that metric. Mystic Remora is not independently part of the win condition of any of the top decks that include blue, and in fact plays fairly poorly in some of the decks that include it but don't have effective ways to deploy the burst of cards if the fish is fed. If we're talking about a single card ban as the change set you want made to the format in isolation, I think bringing up the incentive to play blue is really weak if there is not really going to be any tangible changes to the format moving away from blue's representation with just that single ban.
Why Mystic Remora Is Good For cEDH
While those three are arguments Sperling makes explicitly, this does not cover every single argument Sperling makes, and some amount of his positions are going to be covered in the reasons I think Mystic Remora is actually a good card to be heavily represented in cEDH.
My Argument: Something Different To Play With
As someone that has historically dabbled in the entire range of formats that are played competitively, I'm extremely sensitive to cards that are so powerful they warp every format they're legal in. There have been more of those than ever before in this era of card design and having an old card that is uniquely powerful to the format and only mostly ubiquitous adds a lot to the identity of the format. This is often the quoted reason Brainstorm and Wasteland have been allowed to exist for so long in Legacy, and while the face of Commander is arguably Sol Ring, having cards like Mystic Remora that don't see play in any other format in the game be defining pieces of the format does a lot to sell players on what makes this format different and unique over other ways to play.
My Argument: The Format Is Adapting
Over the last year, cEDH has seen unprecedented growth and development with the explosion of tournaments both online and in-person, and the format has developed and reacted to the results of these tournaments faster than we have ever seen before. Much of the recent developments have been things that directly render Mystic Remora irrelevant. Decks like Tivit, Seller of Secrets, Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, and Sisay, Weatherlight Captain are seeing huge rises in stock by being able to win without casting any spells that can be countered by activating the abilities of their commanders or leveraging the density of Silence effects that exist in the format to render Mystic Remora and the supporting cast of counterspells irrelevant on combo turns.
In the games I have both played and covered from the booth, Mystic Remora has been less and less of a defining feature and more something that comes up only when drawn. This is a deviation from previously, where I would see the card searched for by tutors of any caliber quite often, now Rhystic Study is more often the card that is searched for and even that has seen a decrease in frequency from the games I have witnessed!
My Argument: Slowing The Game Down Is Good, Actually
One of Sperling's arguments that I failed to address in the section above is his idea that slowing the games down is a negative thing. I think the direct opposite is true. So much of the power in cEDH and the cards that are considered staples of the format is centered in cards that are used to blow the doors off the pod and win as quickly as possible. Much of the ways to slow the game down that have historically seen play are cards that I would consider problematically slow, namely stax/lock cards that prevent any game actions from being taken at all. These cards make the game hard to track what is even allowed to happen in paper events, and it becomes increasingly difficult as turns slog on ad nauseam with no relevant game actions taking place, mistakes become frequent as frustration with the game rises. Mystic Remora is not a card that falls into this category thanks to the built in stop-gap that cumulative upkeep introduces. In my opinion, Mystic Remora is the "right way" to slow the game down a bit and give players lower in turn order, or that had to mulligan unfortunately low, a fighting chance against decks in the pod looking to win before that player can be a relevant factor in the game.
Games where Mystic Remora is sacrificed to its cumulative upkeep cost and the game proceeds on from there are similarly common as the games where it represents a win from sheer card advantage after investing only a single blue mana. While the games that you lose to the Mystic Remora player who drew all the interaction stick out more in your brain as a negative than the games you were able to wait it out or win through it, I believe they are similarly common, or at least much closer than Sperling represents. My experience on average is that Mystic Remora does slow the game down some, but not unbearably so, and that is something cEDH could use more of.
Point Your Ban Hammer Somewhere Else!
Mystic Remora is a defining feature of cEDH since the format's infancy, and those of you invested in the format became heavily involved despite the card's presence. I would advise you, if you find yourself sick of seeing Mystic Remora on the battlefield, to play any of the wide range of other formats where Mystic Remora is nowhere to be seen or another game entirely! Instead of pointing to a unique, fun-for-some card that is part of the identity of the format as problematic and attempting to wrest it from prospective players' hands before they can decide where they fall for themselves, take matters in your own hands and experience formats without it for yourself. Mystic Remora, and cards like it, continue to be one of the most thought-provoking features of cEDH and while ultimately they may prove too problematic in the future, reaching for the ban hammer now is far too premature as things continue to develop and the format continues to grow. Thanks for reading!
