Should These Commander Cards Be Banned? 

That Maxx "C" rant followed by seeing Rhystic Study was truly something poetic.

Rarran is a stax player in the making given how fondly he talked about winter orb and rhystic studies crushing the opponents will to live

This is like if Rarran was in one of those infomercials - he's filmed in black and white and just perpetually failing to open a cabinet door, spilling spaghettio's on himself repeatedly. Giant red X's all over the footage.

I definitely understand the Golos argument. when I played Magic as a kid my thing was this Solar Eruption deck, colorless artifacts that got stronger if you paid diverse mana. So a few years later my friends hit me up about commander and my first thought is "damn lets commandify that old solar deck." But when I look up rainbow decks, its all Golos. Sure, I didnt have to play him , but it immediately made sense to me why he was the best card for the job. Even the most specific artifact buffing cards just dont compare to those general effects. And what happens if you take Golos? You start to think "I should put more 10+ cost spells into this deck, dont wanna exile a 1 cost". I think its that combo of having a very desirable universal effect AND warping your decklist in ways you might not want that makes him so problematic.

26:42 It's hilarious that Raran thinks people communicated by letters in 2009 😂

The "Community College Guy" Professor mentioned in a Mesa Falcon Guy collab!

I don't think it was obvious to Rarran that a 5-color commander satisfies the "creature of each color" requirement of Coalition Victory, since the wording suggests having 5 creatures.

I'm surprised no one has discussed the wacky "fail to find" trick with Gifts Ungiven. For the uninitiated, the rules of Magic state that when you search a hidden zone, such as a library, for a card with a specific condition, you can fail to find a card that meets the condition. This happens all the time with fetchlands, lands that can be sacrificed to find other lands with specific land types. Its not unheard of for a player to sac a Flooded Strand, look through their deck then realize they have no more Island or Plains. So, going back to Gifts Ungiven, the wording says "search your library for 4 cards with different names & reveal them. Target player then chooses 2 of these cards. Put those in the graveyard & the rest in your hand." In a sneaky play first pioneered by Frank Karsten, the caster of Gifts can choose to only find 2 cards, saying they failed to find any other cards with different names. That forces the target opponent to place those cards in their opponent's graveyard, presumably exactly where the Gifts caster wants them.

"You need 15 mana to get Emrakul" Quicksilver amulet: "Allow me to introduce myself"

55:18 let’s just ignore that there are multiple ways to ‘cast’ for free…hell, darksteel monolith is there specifically FOR eldrazi… then there’s forsaken monument which effectively doubles your ramp (so if, when ramping, the goal is typically to get to 7-8 mana, monument doubles the colorless mana you produce so that 7-8 instead becomes 14-16)

By the way, the moment Rarran's cat started playing in the background i stopped paying attention to anything else

Maxx "C" talk into Rhystic Study is perfect

For Winter Orb I think it needed to call out the unwritten text there - the 'as long as Winter Orb is untapped'. Without that provision I think Rarran's view is a little more reasonable (though it neglects that it can come into play with the other players tapped out, so it could be a lot more debilitating than he thinks). But with that provision it's much easier to lock enemies down and just play normally yourself, which makes it more frustrating. Edit - also the banlist changing over time is, to me, a reflection of the format becoming mainstream. When it's a niche format that few people play it's a lot easier to justify banning a card - but when it's a quasi-official one and the most popular one in magic, you kind of need a little more justification.

If you make a follow-up to this one, I'd really love to see the format you used a while ago for bans in the Urza/Mirrodin blocks, where Rarran had to choose between 3 cards for which one(s) were banned. There are a lot of interesting groupings you could do like: Gaia's Cradle - Serra's Sanctum - Tolarian Academy Library of Alexandria - Reliquary Tower - Inventor's Fair Flash - Sneak Attack - Defense of the Heart Yawgmoth's Bargain - Necropotence - Peer into the Abyss Balance - Cyclonic Rift - Impending Disaster Azusa, Lost but Seeking - Fastbond - Burgeoning

Not bringing up mana dorks and mana rocks when talking about winter orb is a crime

"You can't cheat something into play from your command zone." - CGB "Hold my beer." - Yuriko

Saying Winter Orb sounds fun is the most HS Warlock-main take Rarran has ever had.

This really makes me want to see rarran play an commander game with precons just to watch his reactions to politics and shenanigans

Another thing about Gifts Ungiven: in commander, you could probably usually politic someone into picking the cards you want them to pick. That would make it a lot more powerful than intended. That’s probably why it’s banned. Kind of like how Trade Secrets can get out of hand when you politic it in a multiplayer format.

Golos absolutely deserved the ban hammer, it was by far the most popular commander of all time when it was banned, more than doubling the 2nd place commander Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice. It paid for it’s own commander tax on ETB, by searching any land out and usually that land made more than one mana, so removing Golos didn’t hurt the deck, it sometimes made it stronger to recast and get another land. The (2)WUBRG ability was the most broken part, giving it 5-color identity and it doesn’t shuffle like Urza, Lord High Artificer does, so you can stack the top card(s) and guarantee a bomb spell every time. The amount of online commander games with 1 Golos player was insane, more than half the time in my experience, and there were a bunch of games with 2 Golos players at the table. It was a very oppressive card in that aspect of the game, which is what the RC said they banned it for.

The problem with "Just tech in a card to deal with it" in commander is that a) there is such a huge number of cards legal that you can't possibly tech for every situation. And b) you have a hundred cards in your deck, so you have to DRAW that tech card. If you want to consistently deal with something you need 2 or 3 if not more tech cards, not 1.

Honestly, the fact that Rarrans answer to the question "Did you have fun? Would you wanna do another video like this" was "This video idea is really good so you should do more" made me respect him so much. Like sure, it's contentpilled gen z behavior at it's finest, but man, imagine having a friend who when asked if they had fun with your idea goes "dude, idc about that, we're 100% doing this again cuz it's a brilliant idea"! I would kill to have friends with that kind of energy :D

He described commander so much better than most commander players would. It is more emotionally driven than any other form of Magic

I think the main point of Coalition Victory is that it makes it so that every single 5-color commander single-handedly creates a game-winning board state and makes it so players playing "nice" 5-color commanders are always the archenemy. Now, it's even worse because Leyline of the Guildpact exists, so you can win by Coaliton on turn 2.

You and Rarran get me my nostalgia fix for both MTG and HS simultaneously! These videos are some of my favorite things to watch on youtube and look forward to. Please keep these videos coming, they are so fun! Thanks again for all the laughs and good times

Emrakul isn't always ramped out. It's often cheated into play for free, for small amounts of mana with things like Joira which was popular then, reanimated at instant speed, snuck into play with things like Golem's Eye, there was even the Animar temur deck that could make Emrakul free.

One of the problems with emrakul is that IF you can cheat it out, it's almost impossible to deal with. You losing the extra turn doesn't matter if he comes out early because that protection from colors stops most normal ways of dealing with it. You have to have even more specific destruction cards to handle it, if you can even get them early enough to be usable to effect it.

Ironically, "I just lost to this card, BANNED!" was how the original EDH banlist began.

Coalition Victory, well worded explanation Since it's a free for all, you now have to assume "every" 5 color deck will run this for a free win. It is the easiest thing to cheese in the game. Pick Child of Alara, remember this deck can have, demonic tutor, imperial seal, mystical tutor, merchant scroll, enlighted tutor (prismatic omen/prismatic lantern), crop rotation, then every retrieval spell. You also have worldly and sylvan tutor Put the game in a state of board wipe or I win almost every turn, also your only way to full stop counter the coalition victory win is mind break tutor. Remove Child of Alara? Board state is reset to 0 you just repeat this over and over.

"15!! mana? how is no one stopping you to ramp to 15?" *laughs in Jodah, Eternal ArchMage* *wheezes in Neera, The Wild Mage*

It’s actually crazy how once Rarran talked about “the mana colors on the top right” I knew it was coalition victory lol

Okay so original Emrakul. A) She's obviously the best possible creature to cheat into play, which has only gotten easier over time. Some of those ways to cheat her into play even count as casting so you get the extra turn, because why not. B) It's best not to imagine we're fair ramping into her, we're doing nonsense and casting her for 15 on turn 4 or some garbage like that. C) There's just never a time when you're going to see an Emrakul hit the table and think 'yeah she sure improved this game, it's good this happened'. It's just always going to be flipping the grill and turning the fourth of july into the fourth of nonsense.

I love love love love love love CGB and Rarran collabs

Golos Yarok was my favorite MTG Arena strat with the Zombie lands.

Ram Ranch 🤝 Mesa Falcon Guy 🤝 Community College Guy

One thing worth mentioning for Golos, much like Rusko on arena, or Roxanne, Starfall savant, is that commanders that ramp into themselves are just incredibly strong because if you remove it, there’s no downtime in it coming back if they have the land, which ramps them even harder into casting those game winning spells.

@1:28:00 I can see the easy ban on Golos. There's a lot of "This Commander is fun and okay, let me just run it IN the Golos deck, rather than build around it as a Commander... so then I can just put whatever in the Golos deck". It very much kills the fun and flavor of the deckbuilding, and you can't rely on players to voluntarily NOT take the cheap and easy route.

showing rarran UN-set cards would be pretty entertaining

As a grand arbiter player, every game theres a rhystic study and winter orb, Mine.

Thinkin emrakul should not be banned is crazy That can only come from the perspective of either someone that only plays cedh, where it is infact a non-problem, or from someone who doesn't play casual commander at all

For Rhystic Studies versus some of the other cards on the ban list, I think the key question is "what's the counterplay to this?". In the case of a card like Coalition Victory, the answer is basically "have a counterspell", which not every Commander deck can do. Rhystic Studies typically plays out like a Sphere of Resistance, where everyone just pays one more mana for their spells. Sure, there's an asymmetrical tempo drawback from it, but it's not egregious, especially in a format so known for being heavy on ramp and big mana.

Golos also had a problem with the Commander Tax as well (which I was surprised never got mentioned in this video). His ETB ramp also lets him cheat on half the tax for the next time you have to cast him, even if you arenxt getting something like Cabal Coffers.

The thing about commander is if you’re playing for fun it’s hard for it to be all about winning. If winning is the only way you have fun, you’re only going to have fun 25% of the time. You have to get enjoyment out of the experience in some way. Even cEDH players enjoy the act of trying to play optimally and solve the puzzle of their table. They have to. If not they don’t last long in the format.

I honestly think the time walk reasoning is pretty fair. If you see a 500$ card that is super strong being played, that can DEFINITELY stop you from getting into mtg commander if you haven't played magic.

With a hearstone template Golos would have 'battlecry : gain a mana crystal' and 'if you don't have wondrous wand in hand add a temporary 7 mana wondrous wand to your hand.'

As a guy who brought Biorhythm to multiplayer games before the Commander Banlist existed, as a guy who almost always lost because he didn't really understand Magic due to just starting out -- I will say it was an amazing experience being the guy causing ragequits for a change. It was with Biorhythm that I first tasted the twisted joy of being toxic.

Man, Dark Ritual into Braids on turn 2 was so brutal...

The way CGB looks into the camera while Rarran goes through his thought process stares into my soul.

"I wasn't doing anything busted" "I was tutoring for astral dragon" a yes, the notoriously fair snd not at all broken card

12:00 as a person how has exclusively played commander for years now I find this answer very interesting. I don't count games by time I count games by actions and turns. If the game has tons of fast turns and is over in like a half hour (I honestly don't pay enough attention to even have a frame of reference on time) I would enjoy that more than say a super long game but I didn't do much because I was hard countered or got bad draws or whatever. The only short games I dislike are when the person wins and I didn't even get to do much more than play a few lands 46:00 I prefer this 500000000 times over winter orb since people only use winter orb in decks that use mana rocks and thus don't get effected by it. winter orb makes me not able to do stuff while normally not doing much to the deck running it and thus feels much less fun than just rhystic study, it might help them win far more that the orb but at least I can still play the game 52:20 emrakul is very easy to play you will never cast it for full cost and even if you do, it is very possible to rapidly ramp into her cost as I've seen from landfall decks. You could cheat it out with things like 'fist of suns' which makes it 5 mana to play as a for instance, or using the ninja commander that lets you ninjutsu anything for 4 mana 1:08:30 for some it is not wanting to be unfun, but for others its less about not wanting to be unfun and more about not wanting to get targeted as you have 3 other players that might decide to end you because they don't want to deal with your deck being on the board

As soon as hullbreacher was teased I called it being banned and my playgroup said it'd not that bad, it isn't ban worthy. I proxies it before it even released and built a deck arround getting it into play as fast as possible then spamming wheel effects and my playgroup changed thier minds really quick.

Winter Orb is a lot like the Celestial Alignment deck in Hearthstone. It bills itself as a symmetrical card but really it lets you play fairly normally afterwards while restricting your opponent to 1 mana afterwards.

Showing Rarran winter orb without the updated oracle text seemed a little unfair. Of course he got it right but it would have been even more funny if he understood that you could make it asymmetric when judging the card.

I feel like they really didn't consider how easy it is to cheat out Emrakul in commander without necessarily ramping to 15 mana. Elvish piper, show and tell, reanimate, and specifically through the breach made it so that basically every color combination had some way to cheat out emrakul on turn 2-3 without really going that hard into it. It also made this kind of perverse incentive where literally every deck of every color had to justify NOT running some kind of emrakul setup.

54:32 I used to play with my uncle a lot a couple of years ago and he had this card from winning a local tournament. He built a deck around this card and it was absurdly hard to beat. It was a mono green deck and it relied on a couple of mana building effects and card draw. Unfortunately I don’t remember everything but the main Mana builders were creatures that tap for mana. Specifically one that taps for as much mana as you control Wall Creatures, which obviously helped the deck in two ways because you couldn’t aggro it. I believe it also did something with Eldrazi tokens or something. But I could not beat that deck for quite a while until I build a 5 color Ally deck which was able to win maybe 30-40% of duels. To be fair neither one of us really played competitively at that point but I fondly remember those days because even though it was difficult to beat it was fun to play against since it wasn’t salt inducing (don’t know how to describe it better). Once I actually managed to win with this card on the board. So even though it’s stronger than you make it sound, I agree that it shouldn’t be banned

Im really impressed with Rarran's logic/questions throughout this. It just shows how subjective a lot of these bans are too.

What is important to take into mind is: If you play a really unfun card, it not only make that experience bad. It makes you a target. And if you do that a lot, you become a permanent target in your playgroup.

I have experienced winter orb and study and it was a casual game. The whole tone of the table changed. We murdered that guy. He instantly became arch enemy. He drew 20 cards and we didn't care. It is as painful as you can imagine it to be. Re: The gifts ban - the other thing about gifts is that you can just look for two cards and put them into the graveyard. It's very strong in a singleton format where your commander can also be part of a combo piece. Combo in some ways is easier to execute in commander because the commander is always available. So I get gifts.

I've been at a table where Winter Orb and Rhystic Study were both in play. But owned by different players. It was still an awful experience for everyone but the owner of Rhystic Study

The thing with Golos, and i imagine, about any commander who ramps and is cheap enough (around 3 to 5 mana cost), is that the ramp effect halfway pays for commander tax. Back then in MTGA i remember slamming it ASAP regardless of my ability to protect it, or use its activated ability. And as long as you hit your land drop, you can keep doing it, until everything else is cheap. It was so dominating you had to use a Golos deck to beat a Golos deck.

Rarran on Time Walk: "Lmao how could you ban a card for being too expensive" Time Walk: *Is $3500* That's how.

on the emrakhul ramp part: I've seen players turn 3 this fucker when we had a weekend of all banned cards allowed. With only emrakhul not banned, I've seen it turn 4 regularly, till we re-banned it in our group again

54:21 One if the biggest issues I saw with Emrakul, was that every game basically turned into players passing around Emrakul and the game was won by whoever kept Emrakul.

big problem with golos, the only answer was to play blue, and that should not be the answer in commander, since we build around a card that might not have blue

Gifts being banned when Intuition is legal will never make sense to me.

Lmao Rarran would have better luck flipping a coin than trying to deduce the RC's ban logic.

“We’re gonna teach you some rules” sounds like Justin Wong trashing that kid in Mortal Kombat. You gonna learn today!

Your kitten made a grown man go "hehehehe" at work when kitty jumped on the cat tree bed and started playing with that toy.

I want to see Rarran build a commander deck live. Instead of "Is this banned?", do "Should we play this?". Let's watch him cook.

The bigger part of Gifts is that since you're searching in a hidden zone, you can fail to find two cards and then force your opponents to put those two cards into your yard. That means you could search, say, Jin-Gitaxis and Unburial Rites, then you can get your Jin for 4 mana on the following main phase. Not to mention, there are cards like Vedalken Orrery so that you can play the cards you tutor immediately.

Yes, another Rarran colab Thx, Mesa Falcon Guy, that's the good news I did not even know I needed for today

I'm going to take a guess on Golos - the real kicker is the fact that he searches for ANY land you want and puts it into play. So you play on turn 5, put a 6th land in play and then he immediately gets destroyed. You play your 7th land and just immediately replay him, putting in your 8th land. He gets destroyed, you play your 9th land and replay him etc. He always gives you a powerful effect and helps to pay for his own commander tax, and if he ever isn't answered, then you just trigger his ability to draw 3 cards and play them all for free. If one of those is a land, then he has already paid for his own commander tax. The end result is that he is always efficient to play and just wins you games by ramping and tempoing your games.

I can confirm. I’ve played Winter Orb and Rhystic Study on the same board, and players don’t like it very much. Just as much as War’s Toll and Mana Web on the same board.

I think 2 important things about Winter Orb that wasn't explained is 1) If the player has ways to tap it they get to untap all their lands while no one else does cause of old artifact rules 2) the sheer amount of mana rocks in the format helps mitigate the effect

something i want to add is rule 0 of commander: all other rules are sugestion and you should talk with your group before the game to agree on the experience everyone wants. the banlist is a sugestion you can convince the table to let you play with ban card or to ban others, the cards in the banlist are some representatives(but not all) of traits that can make a card unfun to play with

Ran-Ranch and the Falcon is my new favorite drive-time radio show.

One thing of note with Winter Orb is you didn't use the version of the card with updated rules text. Winter orb only applies while winter orb is untapped. I can be made asymmetrical especially with Urza as the commander.

I once played a game of commander where one of the opponents played winter orb. It was just after a card called Smothering Tithe was added to the game and I added a copy to my deck just before coming to the game night. To those who don't know Smothering Tithe it is a 3W enchantment: Whenever an opponent draws a card they may pay 2 mana, if they do not you create a treasure token. I managed to save up my mana against the winter orb, i skipped a few turns playing spells to do so, and was able to get the Tithe down and therefor was making at minimum 3 extra mana per turn cycle. I used this extra mana to shut down everything the orb player tried to use to combo with it to get ahead and make extra mana, so that only I was benefitting while the other three players were untapping 1 land per round, I probably should have destroyed the orb and become the hero of the table... I did not do that, I became the orb player and I don't even own the card, that was a long and sorry game that broke some friendships, I didn't even deck build myself into this situation and still got some salt thrown at me, I just thought it was funny in the moment and a good lesson for the orb player in how their card made people feel, i think he was still laughing with me though, orb players are true bastards through and through.

I still don't understand why people think Emrakul shouldn't be banned. It's a card that can be easily abused, especially if she's in the command zone and can easily just give you infinite turns.

Almost all the reasons given for bans in this video are not about card power, but preventing certain play patterns. This is hard for certain players to understand. Emrakul, for example. Might be the best creature ever printed. Was not designed for Commander in mind. You're almost never hard-casting this, there are way more ways to put it onto the battlefield without paying it's mana cost. Let's say, turn 4 on average. You give it haste, it attacks and that person is basically out of the game. In a purely competitive sense, this is great! But, since this the best creature to do this with, all decks that were using a similar strategy before now swap to using Emrakul. It's the best, after all, so why weaken yourself by not playing the best card for your strategy? Now all those decks revolve around this single play pattern: Cheat Emrakul > win game (eventually). But Emrakul isn't limited by colors, rights? Well I might as well throw it in my deck, if other people are going to try and cheat it into play; if they play symmetrical effect, expecting to take advantage, now I have a trump card: Emrakul! Now Emrakul gets put into more and more decks, especially as people see it winning games. A decent percentage of games come down to "Who has the Emrakul?" or "How do I deal with Emrakul?". There's a video game design term called "dominant strategy": the best play pattern, that beats all others, at accomplishing a goal. Players will use the dominant strategy, *even if it isn't fun*, to achieve that goal. People will also spread this information, and soon most players are using the dominant strategy. If this is not fun, now the "best way to play" sucks. Emrakul is a "dominant strategy". Edit: Golos is another example of this; it's presence in the format warps everything around it. Why play anything else when you can just play Golos? There was a point where Sol Ring could have been banned, b/c "every deck needs a Sol Ring"; now you're building a 98 card deck instead. Wizards has printed that card to oblivion, so that's not going to happen, but years ago it could have been argued.

The comparison to Commander Groups to DnD Parties is a good one. Who you play with can make or break the experience

Some commander specific rules that Rarran may be missing (it at least didn't come up in this video) is commander tax, which is a big part when considering Golos who ramps himself halfway to his next cast.

Important missing context: the game of commander was almost fundamentally different 20 years ago. Cards were NOT printed with multiplayer or commander in mind. Decks were unoptimized piles a lot of times to see what crazy situations would happen. If you wanted to play a commander that was more than 2 colors before the first commander set, it was usually terrible. The commander was typically less important and something like coalition victory would be much stronger than anything anyone else was doing. It was different time and legendary creatures were rare.

You missed the worst part about winter orb. The card mechanically reads "As long as Winter Orb is untapped, players can’t untap more than one land during their untap steps." So with a way to tap winter orb on the endstep right before your turn you get to untap all of your lands.

Oh yes! Get Rarran to play Commander! that would be great to see!

Emrakul never came at 15 mana but was cheated easily on the field

How is nobody talking about how amazingly CGB's hexes align with the Norn in the background???😮😮😮

I wish I could explain properly to both these players why emrakul is COMPLETELY busted. It's the same problem as mirrodin, all the cheap artifacts that make mana casting more cheap artifacts that make mana. and your entire deck IS artifact ramp. emrakul can come down as early as turn 2, and around turn 5 on average. and if you kill it(with your sorcery speed removal?) it just comes back from the command zone.

CGB's response to Rarran's question at 12:23 is GOLD. Pure comedy gold and also completely true.

In my pod we all have one "no banlist" deck, and my buddy has an emrakul deck. He regularly casts it turn 5 or 6. Waste, sol ring, arcane signet, ancient tomb, mana crypt, gilded lotus, hedron archive, waste is 16 mana. With that hand, you have emrakul turn 4. Turn 4. some people have 3 lands and a draw engine.

The single biggest issue with the commander ban list is that it need to cater to MTGOs terrible code. MTGO is the reason "banned in the command zone" was removed, and why lutri is banned instead of simply banned as partner.

Played a game of magic every day of high school at lunch. One friend built a Naya deck setup for Emrakul to come out really quick. After a week straight of them winning every game, I decided to buy cards and made a mono-white that was built to kill. It was the start of meta vs counter meta at our magic table.

last night we played a commander game that lasted 2.5 hrs, due to Wild Evocation + Knowledge pool + Hive Mind. we called judge on a ruling and she came over and began to cuss out all of us for destroying magic.

Rarran manages to be entertaining even while trying to bite his tongue. I love these collabs, guys.

This was an excellent video CGB I loved hearing the thought process of an "outsider" on the ban process. I think you gave good context afterwards, too ... besides the gaslight for content. lol jk that was a good switcheroo ... you're cool

Why didnt you tell him winter orb is asymmetrical

Okay the discussion on Emrakul irks me. I have been playing this game fore 25 years, I play almost exclusively commander at this point. 15 mana? You can do that in your sleep by turn 4-5 in a LOT of decks, in some cases even earlier. Even at the time Emrakul was printed/banned there was still a LOT of fast mana to cheat him out early. Sneak attack, Gorios vengeance, necromancy, the list goes on. In fact turn two Darkrit+Entomb+Necromancy was my go to to get it out and reduce the game to a single question "does anyone have removal?" also using the 1 out of 99 is a terrible argument when there are so many ways to find any single card in your deck, especially if it's your go to win condition. This really feels like like a discussion from someone who doesn't understand the format. If people want to cast something, no amount of mana is going to stop them. There is a reason EVERYONE wanted this thing gone.

The thing about Winter orb (besides the missing text) is that it isn’t used to add a “fun” layer to the game, rather to abuse of it. The one playing it plays it because they have a way around it. And the “everyone must have a destroy artifact” while truth, most of the decks playing this card and blue, and they won’t let you touch their precious if they can.

"I'm sure there is a card in Magic that lets you rearrange the top three cards of your library." Lol, Oh yeah.

It's that moment where they want Rarran to play commander, and by about 45 minutes there is ALOT of regret asking him to xD Oh and yes, I have played on a board where Orb/Rhystic was in control of the same player. We all played a game two. They didn't.