Exile any card from hand

alextfish

One of the most surprising bits of the new update was the way that anyone is able to exile cards from their hand at no cost.

On the one hand, I can see this allows you to keep actually drawing 1 card per turn like in paper MtG, which clearly makes sense.

On the other hand... This is a very impactful change that nobody seems to be talking about. It affects a bunch of balance issues:
* is Worse. Liliana has lost a unique benefit she used to have - Corruption's ability to destroy the last card from your hand was a very useful way to keep cycling through your deck even ignoring the opponent's discard benefit. Now everyone has that power unlimited.
* is Worse. Similarly, Magmatic Influence was fantastic for digging for better burn spells when your hand filled up by ditching your not-currently-relevant creatures/artifact destruction/etc, but now that Chandra can do half of that for free, it's become a lot less of a useful card.
* In general, it makes high-cost cards a bit better than they were, because previously your hand would fill up while you were slowly charging a high-cost spell and you'd stop drawing useful cards. Now you can be ditching the worst of your inactive 5 every turn to keep digging for your best cards.
* is Better. Sphinx's Tutelage is better - you can keep triggering your "draw a card" effects even with a full hand, especially with things like Spiny Starfish or Artificer's Epiphany. I guess this goes a little way to making up for the nerfs to bounce and Claustrophobia

Unknown

I disagree with your black assasment. Lilliana can still use her power to get rid of the first card in opponents hand, that's why it's so good. And her ability discard puts the card in graveyard not exile allowing for activation of certain cards and her reanimate ability. I haven't tried it yet but I hope you can't remove form your hand a powerful creature and then reanimate it like you can if you use her power to discard one turn reanimate the next.

paralistalon

I have tested this in light of Dark Petition's upgrade. You can't reanimate cards that you drag to the exile bin, but you can reanimate cards that you discard to her first ability... and seeing as how it can be as cheap as 3 mana to activate, it's quite satisfying to reanimate a Kothophed or Hangarback Walker for only 9 colored mana!

Unknown

It definitely detracts from Liliana, no doubt about that. I'm not saying her ability is useless now, but she loses that unique advantage of being able to easily cycle through her deck, while burning her opponent's cards in the process.

EDHdad

I disagree that it makes red worse. It makes red much better. Red has the best spot removal in this game. It's the only color that can target creatures, destroy supports and do direct damage to the opponent. However, in Magic, removal is often wrong. You can have the best creature kill spell with no creatures to kill. Some effects like the supports don't stack, so having 3 of the same support doesn't help. The ability to pitch cards means that red can now cycle through their removal cards and charge the ones that are most relevant to the situation.

Magmatic Influence used to help you from clogging up your hand. But now you don't need to unclog your hand and you can spend that card slot and that 5 mana on a better card.

You can still use it effectively as 5 mana : Draw two cards, which would make it a better draw spell than any color other than blue currently has.

Black is in the same boat. It has removal, and removal is often wrong. You don't have to pitch your cards, but you can still pitch your cards and remove 2 from your opponent as well.

One thing to note is that the computer player doesn't currently seem to ever pitch any of their own cards and doesn't seem to play around Liliana's discard ability. So, you should have the same advantage you always had. Just with the added bonus that if your hand actually is clogged up and you really do want to pitch a card, you can do so without consequence.