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Mark being the one who designed Hybrid Mana, it's hard to think he "misunderstands" it.

He may have designed it, but he does misunderstand how it fits into Commander, a format he neither plays nor particularly likes. There are already hundreds or thousands of posts on this subject, so we shouldn't delve into it too much here, but I'll respond in brief.

Quote from Trifas »

So, while in any format a monoblue deck can play U/R, U/G, U/W and U/B hybrid cards. In commander, none of these cards can be in a monoblue deck. So it doesn't care about what cards you are able to cast, but about other qualities of the card.

Not to play semantics, but is a mono-blue deck with red, green, white, and black cards in it really a mono-blue deck? You may only have Islands, but if your card can be countered by Blue Elemental Blast or Lifeforce, destroyed by Deathmark or Noxious Grasp, searched for with a Sunforger or Natural Order, or is an illegal target for Doom Blade because it's black, it aint mono-blue!

Now, in most formats, you may call a deck a certain color based on its mana-base, sort of like how a "mono-black" reanimator deck can run Avacyn, Angel of Hope or Inkwell Leviathan even though it has no way to cast said card and must rely on discarding and reanimating them.

But Commander cares about the color of the cards during deckbuilding, and this is where Mark fails to understand.

Quote from Trifas »

They could very well have chosen to rule that the color identity of hybrid mana is either or both of the colors, but they've chosen to make it always be both. Maro says that he would've chosen differently, and that's all to his point.

They didn't choose it to always be both - the rules say that. They did choose to have it matter in deckbuilding and not just game play. Mark may have chosen otherwise, but A) he's not in charge of the format and should give it a rest, and B) his way would lead to more confusion.
"Here's my mono-white deck. I tap five plains and cast Divinity of Pride."
"I hit it with Doom Blade."
"You can't do that, it's black."
"You said it was mono-white. You tapped all white."
"Yeah, but it's both. At all times. In every zone."
"So your deck is white and black? But your commander is mono-white."
"It is, but I also have a green Kitchen Finks, a red..."
"This game is stupid and makes no sense!"

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Briarblade Adept gives me hope for encore - not because I think it's a particularly good card, but because it has a cheap encore cost (even cheaper than it's regular cost). I was worried they might all be outrageously expensive like Phyrexian Triniform.

Dude, color and color identity have never been the same thing. Every single effect in the game treats Alesha, Who Smiles at Death as a monored creature, but she hasa Mardu color identity. Doom Blade kills her, Lifeforce doesn't counter her, etc. Why is the reverse, multicolored cards having monocolor identities, so absurd when hybrid was designed that way?

Whenever I see this argument, I bring up my good friend, Rosheen Meanderer. If the hybrid symbol goes to meaning "Or" instead of "And", does that mean that legends with a single hybrid symbol in their cost have to choose which color they are instead of being both?