#5. You have to be explained why a blatantly ridiculous, banned card is way too powerful for the format (and thus why it’s banned).

Before I go on, let me clarify what I mean by a Magic scrub. Magic: The Gathering is a hard game, no doubt about that. Mistakes will be made, even by the best of players. Some of these mistakes are bound to even be ones we know we shouldn’t have made. If you read this and say “Yeah, I’ve done that once or twice,” then you’re probably fine. You just might be a Magic scrub if you often make these kinds of mistakes. But it’s okay, because a lot of us are Magic scrubs. Some people might take offense to being called that, but I don’t. That’s why in each of these posts, the example of these marker mistakes (as they are markers of possible scrubness if you do them often enough) will always be a personal one.

“Hi, I’m sarroth, and I’m a Magic scrub.” (“Hi, sarroth.”) Here’s why this time…

I’ve been trying to design a 4th Commander deck. I’ve built a dozen or so on tappedout.net and deleted them as I keep trying to find the perfect combination of colors-I-don’t-play-often and play-style-different-from-my-current-decks for a 4th deck. Mind you, I may never build this deck - this is a “just in case I come into some money and can justify buying one last deck” kind of thing. Anyway, at first I thought it would be a Group Hug deck, but now I think it’ll be a combo deck. But it’s me, so it’ll be a janky combo deck. Specifically, its goal is to throw cards at players with Nin, the Pain Artist, Howling Mine effects and Forced Fruition, and hand cyclers like Teferi’s Puzzle Box and Jace’s Archivist, and then see if I can hit them with something like Vicious Shadows and Runeflare Trap. There aren’t many of these, though, and most target only a single player, so it’d be a pretty weak deck. I was searching for ways to power the deck up to an average power level, and of course found Mirari and Quest for Pure Flame, but then I found Panoptic Mirror. And then found out it was banned.

I was quite disappointed, as all I wanted to do was cast Gaze of Adamaro every turn until it gets Naturalized (“all I wanted to do”? That’s actually not bad in and of itself). Then I thought how Wrathing every turn could get annoying, so maybe that was why it was banned. It was only after reading the Gatherer comments that I realized Time Warp effects work with it too. Yeah, now I can understand why it’s banned.

Still, sad face. My janky combo could use some help.