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Gamers love to look for things that are 'broken'. That is, they find loopholes that game designers failed to account for. Magic: The Gathering has had a number of these over the years, but almost none of them have had as much longevity and acceptance on behalf of Wizards of the Coast than Lightning Greaves. 

The Lightning Greaves card is unique because it has a 0 equip cost, basically allowing you to equip this to any creature for free. As you might imagine, this has huge consequences for gameplay, and has made Lightning Greaves one of the most popular cards in Commander - with the popular site EDHREC saying its in roughly 25% of the 6.2m fan-built decks it has records of, and is the 28th most used card in all of those 6.2m decks.

That said, game designers at Magic: The Gathering didn't set out to introduce an entirely new variable into Commander when they created Lightning Greaves. In fact, on his Tumblr blog, game designer Mark Rosewater said that the card's "0 equip cost was a mistake." 

But Lightning Greaves has become a mistake that Magic: The Gathering and Wizards of the Coast has learned to live with. The card isn't legal in Standard, which makes sense, but it's still legal in Commander and Modern. It's been reprinted multiple times in Commander sets, including recent releases like Aetherdrift, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and Final Fantasy. It's even gotten the chance to be a part of an upcoming Secret Lair drop celebrating Latinx Heritage, reimagined as a chancla. 

So why lean into a card that was a "mistake?" One reason could be that, if Wizards of the Coast reprints more copies of it in new sets, the card becomes more accessible to more players. That keeps its value on the secondary marketplace down, mythic rare editions of it notwithstanding. With more copies of Lightning Greaves floating around at an affordable price, Commander and Modern players don't have to fork over tens or hundreds of dollars in order to benefit from the "mistake" that Magic's game designers made with the card's 0 equip cost. The playing field is more leveled out. 

Wizards of the Coast's decision to reprint Lightning Greaves was ultimately a prudent one. By containing Lightning Greaves to specific formats like Commander and Modern (among others), Wizards of the Coast didn't have to strike Lightning Greaves out of play forever. 

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