Bracket Fun #2: Never Let Anyone Tell You to Pay the One

For someone who doesn't normally play the card, I have a lot of thoughts about Rhystic Study. 

Over the last few weeks since the February 9th Commander Banned & Restricted Announcement, I've been trying to navigate why Rhystic Study is so polarizing, how different environments of play result in different experiences of Rhystic Study, and why the burgeoning movement towards banning it in Commander is failing to take into account the full breadth of applications for the card.

Hi! I'm Heartwood, and I think Rhystic Study is really cool, actually. I don't think Rhystic Study needs to be banned. I don't even think it needs to be a Game Changer. What needs to be changed is how players play games that include it, and I have written this in the hope that it will provide additional prisms through which we can view Rhystic Study that will result in more mindful play with it. 

That's right: you are reading a vehement and passionate defense of Rhystic Study. 

Let's first talk about how the card Rhystic Study works. When you first encounter Rhystic Study and trigger its effect by casting a spell, you are given a choice: either pay one mana or allow its controller to draw a card. 

This might sound weird and perhaps a little basic, but I like having choices when I play Magic. I like being asking if I would like to pay the one, because it keeps me engaged in the game. It's the kind of interaction I crave in my games of Commander. I like Rhystic Study because it gives me agency over my experience of the game and the experience had by person who played Rhystic Study.  

I think we need to better about acknowledging that Rhystic Study is one of the most interesting card designs ever. It explores interactivity in a way that I wish was explored more throughout the game. There are a number of really great examples of cards that explore the same interactive design space, but Rhystic Study is most emblematic of cards that work at the intersection of agency and interactivity. 

Orzhov Advokist offers agency in the choice between increased power and toughness or being able to attack its controller (or planeswalkers controlled by its controller). 

Wandering Archaic offers agency in the choice between paying two mana or allowing its controller to copy an instant or sorcery spell you cast.

Ice Cave offers agency to each player, allowing them to counter any other player's spell by simply paying its mana cost.

And Clackbridge Troll offers agency to opponents faced with it the choice of either facing down the barrel of an 8/8 with trample or sacrifice a creature.

In games of Magic: the Gathering, agency is powerful and interesting. It's what drives games forward, as expressed wonderfully by C. Thi Nguyen in his 2025 book Games: Agency As Art:

"The players' actions emerge from choices and decisions they make during the game, as part of a complex feedback loop between their own choices and those of their opponents. What's more, the strategic space of particular playing comes in part from the designed decks that each player has brought. And each player's design choices come in response to the strategies that are currently live in the community, where those strategies have emerged through another long-term process of feedback and interplay." (155)

Most of the agency that Nguyen describes here is made possible merely by player decisions, so it's actually kind of uncommon to see choices explicitly presented on cards themselves. When choices do emerge because of actual rules text on cards, that's another layer of play emerging from the ludological phenomenon of playing Magic. 

Perhaps the emergence of additional agency is the source of the discomfort with Rhystic Study. When we play Magic, we are constantly being required to make implicit decisions: what to cast and when to cast it, what creatures to attack with, to block with, to sacrifice, which of 100ish cards to select with a tutor, or when to mulligan to six. Perhaps it is uncomfortable to be present with the simple, plain choice of Rhystic Study when we are asked, "Do you pay the one?"  

Of course, there is a typical response, especially in Bracket 4 and 5, to this question, which is to introduce and attempt to enforce a social contract predicated on the idea that is best to "Always Pay the One." But the collective decision and social pressure associated with always paying the one for Rhystic Study is fundamentally flawed because it asks players to practice less agency. It is not much of an abstraction to suggest that players pressuring other players to pay the one is to ask them to play less Magic. 

The "Always Pay the One" social contract is also a political tactic that most benefits the player who first suggests it. For me, it's a huge a red flag if someone starts berating me or another player for not paying the one, something they typically describe as "failing the skills test", which is an offensive and dismissive framing that should raise more eyebrows than it does. When a player initiates the "Always Pay the One" social contract, they are doing four things:

1. They are pressuring everyone to play less Magic. 
2. They are demanding each player subscribe to a fear of losing the game.
3. They are suggesting that you are less good at playing Magic if you don't pay the one.
4. They are requesting that you ignore your own agency in play. 

I find all these reasons to be suspicious, but I am most disturbed by the idea that I can be browbeaten into relinquishing the agency I have the right to practice in the kind of play with which I choose to engage. Though this social contract is typical of the most common play experience of Rhystic Study in Bracket 4 and 5, it is not one that encourages players faced with the enchantment to exercise agency, and I think it's difficult to understand undermining player agency without understanding the difference between Apollonian play and Dionysiac play. 

The dichotomy of Apollonian and Dionysiac approaches to artmaking is the central thesis of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872), but in a ludological context it is wonderfully summarized by Miguel Sicart in his 2014 book Play Matters: 

"The Apollonian and Dionysiac tendencies explain how players navigate the context of play. When playing, we struggle to make sense of a word by constructing our actions within a context. That struggle is not only with obstacles and needs that play imposes on us, but also with the permanent temptations that happen in play: the temptation of breaking the context, breaking the rules, corrupting play, or, on the opposite side, letting go of all the elements of rationality and structure and letting ourselves loose in the intoxicating pleasures of play." (9)

What Sicart describes here is two diametrically opposed attitudes within play, and just as Nietzsche suggested that both are required for effective storytelling in The Birth of Tragedy, both Apollonian and Dionysiac play are involved in our experiences of Magic: the Gathering. Though we can observe Dionysiac play and Apollonian play interacting in most games of Magic, here are some examples of what it looks like when one is prioritized above the other. 

The play experience of Bracket 5 is Apollonian in nature, often extrapolating additional rules and structures that make play more difficult, but not impossible. The appeal of the kind of Apollonian play on display in Bracket 5 is that of overcoming an obstacle, of navigating a complex system of actions and responses until a condition of winning the game solves the puzzle. Apollonian play in Magic is present in stax, countermagic, and combo. 

When you see the word "can't" on a Magic card such as Rule of Law, that card is achieving Sicart's notion of breaking the context as an ideal of Apollonian play. 

Stopping a player from playing with counterspells such as Force of Will helps facilitate the challenging structures within Apollonian play. 

Thassa's Oracle needs little introduction, but the task of finding both it and either Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact is emblematic of the kinds of puzzles to be solved that are most associated with Apollonian play. 

The play experience of Bracket 1 is Dionysiac in nature, often generating novel play environments that are more about creating interesting rules interactions than actually ending the game (I have made some very complicated judge calls playing Bracket 1). The appeal of the kind of Dionysiac play on display in Bracket 1 is that of agency, choosing less strategically optimal play patterns in the name of fun or theme or some other qualitative metric. Dionysiac play in Magic is present in cards that offer choices, group hug, and big, splashy, random effects. 

Admitted one of my favorite cards in the game, Endless Whispers offers all players choices of who will gain control of their nontoken creatures whenever they die, creating states of play that are pleasantly disorientating in a Dionysiac way. 

Tempt with Discovery (and all the Tempting Offer spells, really), allows players to practice a social reciprocity associated most with Dionysiac play. 

Though it has ended many of my games because a lot of people aren't cool enough to let it resolve, Thieves' Auction is the kind of splashy spell that transforms the entire game into an exercise in agency, fully embracing the chaos of the Dionysiac in Magic. 

Agency is the essence of Dionysiac play, and a lack of it is the essence of Apollonian play. Being able to make decisions, whether they are good or bad, strong or weak, optimized or silly, or of any other framing is emblematic of the experience of Dionysiac play. Where Apollonian play asks a player to overcome a set of obstacles in order to facilitate a winning condition, Dionysiac play asks a player to weigh options and choose that which provides the greatest enjoyment to everyone involved. 

In the metagame which has emerged in Bracket 5 through the aggressive centering of Apollonian play, it is possible that Rhystic Study is actually too powerful and too efficient. There is emergent behavior that does require skill when playing with Rhystic Study in Bracket 5 so as not provide too much opportunity to an opponent playing it. But Rhystic Study offers more agency than other, more oppressive cards offering explicit agency, and there is no more obvious case to compare Rhystic Study to other than Smothering Tithe. 

Smothering Tithe explores the same sort of agency that Rhystic Study and the other cards above do, but is much more oppressive and more difficult to navigate than Rhystic Study is. Making a treasure for each card drawn is a much more devastating effect, there is a big difference between one mana and two, and it's a lot easier to abuse than Rhystic Study is. There are arguments for Rhystic Study to be removed from the Game Changers list, but Smothering Tithe belongs there permanently. 

In fact, I think it's actually easier to make an argument for the banning of Smothering Tithe than it is to make an argument for the banning of Rhystic Study.

What is most problematic about Smothering Tithe is though it engages with agency, it doesn't feel like agency. You can't always control when you draw cards, and the controller of the Smothering Tithe is incentivized to facilitate more card draw, and that most likely means they are going to force you to confront the choice between paying two or allowing them to have more mana that they can use at any time without being able to exercise agency offered to you. 

You can't always control when Smothering Tithe is triggered, but you can control when Rhystic Study is triggered. This is Rhystic Study's second degree of agency (and what's making Bracket 5 players so apoplectic about its banning); first, you control when the trigger happens, and second, you control the choice between its controller drawing a card and paying the one.

I only build and play Bracket 1, but I find myself in a lot of situations in which there are no other Bracket 1 players. In these situations, I have no issue playing games of mixed deck bracket Since winning is not the primary goal of Bracket 1, I do not fear losing a game of Magic: the Gathering. I'm not here to win, I'm here to play. 

And in an environment where play is prioritized over winning, the concept of card advantage falls apart really quickly. Bracket 1 is about showing off one's deck, and frankly, all Rhystic Study does in Bracket is accelerates the facilitation of showing off one's deck. Rhystic Study is, frankly, totally fine in Bracket 1, because it helps us play more Magic. 

Making Rhystic Study a Game Changer is a huge disservice to Bracket 1 and Bracket 2, where there is a greater sense of the ability to exercise the agency offered by it. By choosing to only associate Rhystic Study with Apollonian play, we are robbed of the opportunity to play with a card that is fundamentally Dionysiac in its design. 

Because I play a lot of mixed bracket games, I do occasionally see Rhystic Study in play. When someone resolves Rhystic Study, I rarely pay the one, and I certainly do not entertain another player attempting to tell me that I should ignore my right to agency over how I play Magic: the Gathering by invoking the "Always Pay the One" social contract. 

I like having choices in Magic. It's the thing that keeps me coming back to the game, even if its parent company makes business decisions I don't agree with or its iconic yet infuriating blue magic continues to benefit from apparently indestructible plot armor. And the more opportunities we players have to exercise agency in our games, the better. 

If someone tells you how to play Magic and practice the agency offered to you by elements of the game, tell them you're allowed to make your own decisions. In other words, never let anyone tell you to pay the one. 

So, no, Rhystic Study should not be banned. I think it is weird to suggest banning a card that offers agency, because that suggest banning agency itself. Far from banning it, Rhystic Study should be made more ubiquitous and come off the Game Changer list, which would allow it to shine in play environments that center Apollonian play and those that center Dionysiac play. But most importantly, the agency offered by Rhystic Study should be exercised more, and we should recontextualize how we play with it, treating each time a players asks if we pay the one as an invitation to be more engaged and play more deeply with the rich tapestry of cards available to us when we play Magic: the Gathering, Rhystic Study among them. 

Next time on Bracket Fun: Another German word, a foray into museum studies, and my first deck tech. 

Works Cited:

Nguyen, C. Thi. Games: Agency as Art. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2025. 

Sicart, Miguel. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017.