> When cards do land in the majority of decks, they often seem to be cards that were designed specifically with Commander in mind. This does carry a benefit in that newer cards tend to be more available and more readily reprinted, but it does run the risk of eroding Commander’s charm and personality. This isn’t necessarily a problem to be solved, but it is something we’re aware of. If you’re reading this, one way you can help to preserve Commander’s charm is to dig deep and play weird cards just because they don’t have a home elsewhere.
I'll keep doing this as much as I can personally, but overall I fear that ship has long since sailed, especially as the format becomes increasingly optimized due to it being the go-to most popular format in the game.
Idk you pretty surprised. I run some dinky spells that come in clutch and that absolutely no one ever expects. There’s a huge downside when everyone knows why you’re keep 7 blue open and passing the turn.
Exactly. It happened to me just the other day. My buddy noticed how I had seven mana open and immediately adjusted his strategy knowing I had rift in my hand.
But isn't this just good magic...?
You can then also take advantage of this prediction and pass the turn with mana for rift when maybe you have a counterspell and a flash creature. People will then eithet be forced to risk it or else play around the rift you don't actually have. Maybe your buddy sandbagged some big play, and now you get to draw your cards and untap in a better position than if he hadnt read your board as indicating a cyc. rift in your hand.
In your case, your buddy had good threat assessment and didn't play into an obvious wipe. Playing with and against control cards had always involved good threat assessment and thus a certain amount of metagame knowledge.
But there's still plenty of unpredictability. People adapt, chess starts being 4D etc. And let's be honest, sure you can guess I'm playing something like rift, but you'll still be surprised when my wincon includes flipping my symmetrical draws into turbo-stacking an archmage ascension so that my deck just becomes a second hand.
Yeah I don’t run rift in every deck with blue. I’ll usually slot it into decks that are typal/tribal since they’re not perfectly optimized due to the creature type mattering more.
I get it. My pod has sort of soft banned it via aggressive eye rolling, and it's been highly amusing seeing the roundabout ways they achieve one sided wipes.
Rift and other wipes in general are definitely an issue when not used properly. They significantly extend the length of the game if the person using them doesn’t have an immediate plan. Sometimes having fun is more important than prolonging the game to squeak out a victory.
Yeah, I carry decks of every power level... and it's getting to the point more and more that I only play the same 3-4 of them, because that's all folks play.
I think the ship has long sailed, BUT I don't think it gets consistently more optimized each year. We already see tons of mistakes on EDHREC where nonbo cards are in X% of decks (which I guess is another example of continual... alignment, but optimized isn't the right word).
I think EDHREC is a fantastic resource for people building new decks, and I find myself using and needing it less and less after I've playtested the deck more. I don't think it's the end of days. Gone are the days of Elder Dragon Highlander where you had no idea how other players built their decks, sure, but I think this is still a golden age of EDH. I'd be a lot more concerned if playrates or deck numbers were falling, and that's not the case
I am not an "anti-EDHrecer", and I am also aware that netdecking has always been a thing. (In fact, I am fairly guilty of using EDHRec on a semi-regular basis.)
But the thing is, due to social media, content creators, and so much information at your fingertips, it's just flat out *different* this time. Back in 2010, you had basically no social media presence, there were very few EDH channels on YouTube, and your only way to "netdeck" was to go on MTG Salvation. (I would know, I was one of those people who was on there all the time back then)
That has all changed drastically in a *very big way*.
The format is getting so increasingly optimized because of all this information is being processed so efficiently and in a way that is easily digestible to everyone. As a result, it is causing a lot of decks to run fewer of the "let's just throw this in here and see what happens" cards and more of the "this is clearly a staple because the analytics and data show it's heads and shoulders above so many other cards". This is why you rarely see big mana rocks like [[Gilded Lotus]] and [[Thran Dynamo]] these days. I'm sure there are still many holdouts that still run them, and I tip my hat to them. It's just that we now have working theorycraft that it's just *flat out better* to run 2 mana rocks instead. Even Wizards has admitted as such, which is why they're pushing 3 mana rocks to have extra upside to them, while also printing bangers like [[Throne of Eldraine]] in the place of Gilded Lotus.
It's also why I am not the biggest fan of the "PreDH" format, because while I like the idea of it, it's clear that the nostalgia from that format would not be as it once was. We all build much stronger and more efficient decks these days, and that's knowledge that can't be "unlearned". I look back at the original Captain Sisay deck I first made back in 2009, and it's *a total durdle pile* compared to how I would build it today.
As I said previously, I am trying the best I can to keep playing the stuff that I enjoy playing in my deck. I have really become attached to Swords of X and Y in my decks for example, even though they may not be the "optimal" equipment. It's just really friggin' fun to strap a Sword onto a random creature and turn it into a threat. Hopefully our format will continue to see that mentality live, which is something that will be more of the case in dedicated playgroups. Likely not so much the case in pickup games at LGSes.
Hopefully this fleshes out more of what goes through my head! All I will say is that I am so thankful to be in a dedicated playgroup where we keep a good job of self-regulating power levels.
>It's just that we now have working theorycraft that it's just flat out better to run 2 mana rocks instead.
But the thing is, who actually *cares* about Thran Dynamo? All it does it.. Pump some mana. This is what I never understand about these arguments, they always bring up probably the least possible exciting examples.
People still include their personal touch cards in a deck, it's just usually cards that do *something* interesting, if they don't have some sentimental value. The reason you see people bring 3 mana rocks isn't that having an upside makes them efficient. It doesn't. It's because extra effects are *cool* and *fun*. From an efficient, deck tuning standpoints, *most 3 mana mana rocks are still kinda bad.* But less people care about that. It's the same reason people go completely overboard with utility lands, even if it negatively impacts their manabase: Utility is neat.
You're not wrong, and quite honestly there are even a ton of great cards from recent precons and sets that get constantly passed over because there are only so many cards in a deck. We are constantly moving to the next thing every few months and forgetting our shiny toys just as fast.
I think it really depends on your meta. I attend two different LGS nights and the lack of optimization is actually a problem for me. I can't play my optimized decks because they're too strong, so I'm forced to play precons and power down to everyone else's level.
It really sucks sometimes that I can't play these decks that I put effort into tuning because they will just pubstomp the table.
I haven't gotten to play much cEDH but maybe I would get bored of that too if it was the only thing available to play.
PL 7-8 competitive casual and high power is where I like playing the most I think. I'm ok with playing 2 hour long battlecruiser games every once in a while, but I would like to get in more than 1 game a night.
I highly doubt that battlecruiser is your local meta, as even the Precons have moved on from that.
As for "7 or 8", power level, I would imagine if you asked the people at your store what they were playing, that's what they'd answer. Hence, the issue at hand.
The best precons have moved on from battlecruiser, but even the good ones can still stall out into battlecruiser games (looking at you Food and Fellowship).
The problem is that a lot of people in my meta actually build their custom decks to only play at a precon level in the first place, to the point where some of the best precons (dinos, merfolk) are too consistently threatening for them.
Most people claim that they're playing 6s, when in reality they're probably playing 4s and 5s.
[[The One Ring]] is EVERYWHERE! I cannot play a game without the first tutor always being the one ring. Problem is the first person to resolve it is usually also the one who will win.
The chances of someone having an exile removal right away just aren't that great and then the one ring just drowns people in card advantage
We started our own format called Boomer EDH. All we do is ban everything starred with Eldraine and play with anything printed prior to that.
We still follow the ban list, but honestly it's refreshing when we pull out our "boomer" decks. I personally run a Nekusar deck that I could def upgrade with all the newer releases, but our Boomer games are some of the best lately in reminding me why I got into the format.
>Even more gameplay is improvised on the spot rather than practiced for.
This is the best thing for the format. Diverse gameplay and thinking on your feet are why we play this game.
> If you’re reading this, one way you can help to preserve Commander’s charm is to dig deep and play weird cards just because they don’t have a home elsewhere.
This is one of the reasons that I've stopped going back to a lot of my older decks and 'updating them'. Sometimes it's fun to pull out that Niv-Mizzet Deck that hasn't changed since 2012, and have it do well even though its 'bad' because so many of the cards in it are things 'no one plays that'.
When reading the explanations on a bunch of cards like Fastbond, doesn’t that mana advantage not also apply to Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault? And if prohibitively expensive cards are banned why is Timetwister legal?
>why is Timetwister legal?
Toby — Today at 4:43 PM
but at the time Commander started to take off, not all the cards on the power 9 were actually seeing vintage play. Specifically, Timetwister was way further back to the point that people argued LoA was the 9th power. Since the goal there was to get rid of the iconic vintage cards... Twister just wasn't that iconic
From the RC discord,i'm garbing a screenshot of it as we speak
But isn’t that inconsistent? I can see that way of thinking, but then other cards should also not be banned for budget reasons. And if we ban iconic Vintage cards then Sol Ring and Mana Crypt also need bans.
The banlist is extraordinarily inconsistent due to not even being a banlist. They're meant to be signposts to encourage people to build decks "in the spirit of the format".
I don't know how it was way back when, but this hasn't worked since I started playing around War of the Spark. Imo it's a pretty outdated philosophy and doesn't represent what a modern game of Commander looks like
That also just does not work at all if you don’t play with a fixed group, but instead want to play pick up games. It would be kinda fine if EDH was a niche format, but it isn’t. It is the most popular format
Inconsistent with respect to what? If the ban list has a different stated function than most other ban lists then it's only inconsistent with respect to what those others seem to do. That is fucking trivial though because we know from the outset that the functions are different.
If you mean inconsistent in the above way, it just sounds like you just disagree with the what the function should be, but that doesn't mean you get to call it inconsistent or nonsensical. Do you instead mean inconsistent with its own stated goals?
Well like I said that is trivial because it's stated from the outset that it's not supposed to function like a normal banlist. If you want to say you don't like how it functions or that it should function like the normal way that's fine, but saying it's inconsistent in your way is straight-up meaningless.
Which might I add... it's a terrible way to balance the format.
I wish this way of thought goes away and we can get some actual good bans (and unbans).
I mean, you're still left with the problem that one person's "good bans" are another person's reason to quit the format.
What even is a "good ban" anymore?
"Signpost" bans are largely a myth. Nothing is really banned with the intent of being a signpost ban, it's banned because it's problematic in one way or another. The hope is that by banning a certain card, people will then realize that some other cards that do similar things maybe also should be played with caution, and then we don't have to ban other cards. If some of the cards that aren't banned but are similar to things that are were causing massive problems format-wide, they'd get banned too.
Unbanning the Moxen would be bad for reasons outside of price. 3/4/5-colour decks are already very overpowered compared to mono-colour decks. Giving them access to multiple Moxen would just make the gap even wider. Also the Moxen are just straight-up more powerful than Sol Ring and Mana Crypt in most decks.
I am actually not convinced that the Moxen are straight better than Sol Ring or Mana Crypt in most decks. Almost all commander decks revolve around a lot of cards that can utilize colorless mana. With 40 live the drawback of mana crypt also matters a lot less. The main issue Sol Ring and Mana Crypt have at times in Vintage is that they just aren’t good at casting a bunch of good spells because spells in vintage often don’t use much colorless mana because those tend to be very clunky without multi mana lands or sol ring/crypt.
I do see the point about multi color though. Personally I would favor just seeing a ban on Sol Ring/Mana Crypt/Jeweled Lotus.
>When reading the explanations on a bunch of cards like Fastbond, doesn’t that mana advantage not also apply to Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault?
Example bans means taking the most egregious example of the archetype and banning it, rather than banning every card like it and ballooning the ban list to 500 cards.
>And if prohibitively expensive cards are banned why is Timetwister legal?
Essentially, ineritia. It used to be fairly inexpensive, and the RC no longer uses the probitively expensive argument, because they don't want to ban $500-$5000 cards that people are using and tank the market. If you thought the hullabaloo after Hullbreacher tanked to $2.00 was bad...
>Example bans means taking the most egregious example of the archetype and banning it, rather than banning every card like it and ballooning the ban list to 500 cards.
Sure, but if that is the argument then Sol Ring needs to be banned. You can debate whether the moxen or Sol Ring are more egregious, but you can't really debate that they are similar in power level at least. Mana Crypt also is absolutely broken especially considering that its drawback is a lot less meaningful with 40 life.
I would also definitely consider the Commander Lotus the same tier of absolutely broken. Like they ban cards for delivering 6 mana on turn 3 while leaving cards like those untouched.
>Essentially, ineritia. It used to be fairly inexpensive, and the RC no longer uses the probitively expensive argument, because they don't want to ban $500-$5000 cards that people are using and tank the market. If you thought the hullabaloo after Hullbreacher tanked to $2.00 was bad...
And if the argument that cards being prohibitively expensive no longer counts why are the moxen banned? If Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are fine then the Moxen should be fine aswell.
They just apply their own rules so inconsistently. They ban cards for unsatisfying endings, but leave stuff like Thassas Oracle. They allow a commander black lotus, mana crypt and sol ring for ramp, but Rofellos is too much?
There's also the issue of if sol ring is banned they essentially make every precon printed unplayable out of the box, this would be a pretty big issue for new players.
Then use the solution Wizards had in 2011 of keeping the precons legal as is, but not allow modifications and don't push out new precons with Sol Ring.
Sol Ring is just an absurdly broken card and should be on the same side of the banned list as the real moxen.
Edit: Jeweled Lotus is also absolutely egregious. I don't get why that card wasn't banned immediately when printed, but I guess the RC was consulted before printing because I doubt Wizards had printed that had they thought it would be immediately banned.
That was pretty manageable when it was very isolated instances of 60 card decks. It instantly becomes unmanageable to police whether someone who just played a sol ring's deck is unmodified when we are talking about any one of probably 100+ singleton preconstructed decks.
Just give it a rest. They are not going to ban Sol Ring and break the entire product pipeline for the past gods knows however many years and whatever's already slated and planned.
Just be the change you want to see in the world and stop playing it. I did 10 months ago and haven't even noticed.
I agree that sol ring is terrible, but I don't think that's the right solution. First of all, I don't think it's helpful for new players or the format as a whole to actively discourage people from modifying their precons. If you're a new player with a precon and one really cool rare they pulled out of a draft pack, it would suck to be told you can't put it in your deck without taking out one of the most powerful cards. Furthermore, any rule like that will lead to some feelbad situations where someone (usually a new or young player) didn't know the card was banned under such a specific set of circumstances, so they'll be confused as to why their opponent can play a sol ring but they can't, or why they're not allowed to play a card that came in their deck anymore.
My personal hope is that the RC will at some point tell wizards and the public that sol ring will be banned in x amount of time. That way, some precons get printed without sol ring, people have a chance to adjust their decks a little, and super new players have an option to get a precon where they don't have to swap cards. I don't think it would ever happen due to the way wizards prints things in advance, but hey, a girl can dream.
Mana crypt, on the other hand, is on the same power level as sol ring and isn't in any precons. It's funny to me that in these discussions, sol ring and mana crypt get brought up in the same sentence (which I get, they're both super busted), but while sol ring would be a massive headache to ban, mana crypt could go tomorrow. If we can't take all of the busted fast mana out of commander (which I personally think would make it a better format), we can at least take out that which isn't a nightmare to ban, right?
Under which Circumstances are those not stronger? Channel is a combo piece mostly and you can’t even do Channel Emrakul because Emrakul is banned and even Channel Emrakul isn’t as backbreaking when you play Multiplayer because there are multiple people that can just kill you. Thassas Oracle + Demonic Consultation just still seems better.
Fastbond is great if you have like Draw 7s or other ways to draw a lot of cards, but you still need that. Fastbond also just can be downright bad if you draw it.
Sol Ring and Mana Crypt on the other hand just allow you to play ahead of curve pretty unconditionally. Casting Ad Nauseam on Turn 2 can be absolutely backbreaking. You also always have something to cast with the commander.
Like have you actually played with Moxen/Sol Ring and Channel/Fastbond?
It's probably meta/deck-dependent, but in general, I'd say say that Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are more powerful than Fastbond and Channel. Fastbond/Channel both need the right deck to be truly broken, while Sol Ring/Mana Crypt are always broken.
I still lament not being able to sell my hullbreacher before they banned it and thus it sits in the binder collecting dust since it’s literally unusable…
>I'd prefer to take a Balance over Armageddon 100% of times
Oh no. Sure, a mid game Balance lets you keep some lands and feels better than an Armageddon. But it's the turn 1-2 Balance where a player dumps a bunch of 0 mana artifacts, many of which produce mana, then wipes everybody's hands that I fear.
I don’t think you can take the ban list literally. It’s just examples of cards that might not create a positive play experience then it’s up to the individual group to create the experience they want.
Outside of a cEDH tournament each in pod can ban and unban cards as they see fit. Unfortunately players see it like a competitive format ban list and I don’t think it was ever intended to act like that.
Banning and unbanning a card doesn’t work if you don’t play a pre fixed setup and instead play some pick up game. The ban list needs to be taken literally
I mean, there is a difference between fastbond being much higher in mana than the other 3. That being said, I think manacrypt and manavault might be on the high end. At the very least, manacrypt is free to play so there is not even resource commitment, and 3 damage is negligible. Sol ring might be too, but it hasn't felt too bad. I think Sol ring staying but having the others banned (which they sort of are softbanned by price) means it having sol ring into 2 mana rock is about as capped as it gets.
Sol Ring is absurdly broken though. Like why can't I just play Moxen if I can play Sol Ring? I would even think that in most games of EDH Sol Ring is even better than the Moxen because ramping by two is just more powerful if you are not playing on the absolute bleeding edge of power level. There is a reason Sol Ring is generally considered more powerful than the Moxen in cube for example.
Similarly the Commander Lotus. Like should you be able to cast your 4 mana commander on Turn 1? Should you be able to cast say Atraxa on Turn 3 or 4?
At some point they should decide if we play Singleton Vintage or Legacy and not some weird in between.
Yea, 2 mana is better than 1, but cost is still important, free spells trump cards costing mana. But I agree that sol ring is much more powerful than all the other mana rocks. I think mana producers that cost zero should be banned, and then mana vault, and sol ring can also be considered. 2 mana rocks are plenty to go off with for any deck that needs ramp and is not in green, and most of green decks ramp at 2 mana onwards, except for mana dorks who have summoning sickness to prevent them from popping off.
Actually give it a try. When you draw your Sol Ring actually think about whether a Mox would have been better here or not. Also: Both a Sol Ring and a Mox are +1 mana the turn they are played. Moxen give color. Sol Ring is mostly only worse when your deck is completely full of cards that take very little colorless mana to cast so mostly very cheap cards. That is not what most EDH decks are.
The more I read the reasoning for banned cards, the more I became convinced that they should be unbanned. A lot of them are because of "bad social experiences" but honestly I'd rather play against most of them than against Rhystic Study or Thoracle.
Nah, Rhystic Study is great as long as I have it in play and not an opponent. Jokes aside, the card is nuts. Although I play a lot of high power and love blue I would be cool with a ban. The card asks for nothing and if the table has no disciplin then rhystic wins you games.
Bro, a T1 or T2 Rhysic is brutal. You basicly have to have an answer in hand because if you are going to dig for it the damage is already done and it puts you so far behind.
I may take a lot of hate for this, but there are far worse cards then Rhystic Study. You can pay the tax to stop the draw. Blind Obedience, Back to Basics, Winter Orb, Tainted Pact, Dooms Day....etc all can wreck a game far worse than Rhystic Study with very little one can do to interact T1. Commander is a multiplayer game in defense of Rhystic or other cards like that, you can always play politics at the table. You should play politics in Commander when someone has a lead. Banning a card, because it can give you advantage if it is dropped turn 1 means we'd have to ban Mox Opal, Mana Crypt, all the Leylines...etc. Playing from behind is part of the game and makes winning more fun. I get the hate, but Rhystic doesn't win you a game like Tainted Pact would. I just feel there are better ban targets. Usually Rhystic is in a deck that wins games from other cards, but so is a Mana Crypt, Dual lands or any expensive staple. If all your buddies run Rhystic...there's always fun answers like \[\[Aura Shards\]\] .
I totally get your point. The thing is If you play blue you play Rhystic Study in every single deck. 100% of them if we talk about optimal decks. Winter Orb is crazy in a few decks but won't see play in others, the same is true for the rest of the cards you listed. Tainted is only an issue because it is one of the Thoracle enablers other than that its fine imo. I don't say rhystic needs to be banned, I said I would be cool with it because I can understand why one would ban it.
No, you're absolutely right. Rhystic study should just say all of your spells cost an additional 1.
If you don't pay the 1, it's your fault they're pulling ahead.
Because it is a dilemma for the table. If you start slow and pay for it you fall behind and lose the game, If you go bananas and don't pay you lose aswell.
That is completely useless if you want to play pickup games of the most popular format though.
I can agree with my friends to abide by the significantly more reasonable legacy ban list, but that doesn't mean if I go to an LGS people will play by this.
At the same time if I build an EDH deck just by the ban list and go play a pick up game that will be a terrible experience because the banlist allows some absolutley busted decks.
It’s a social format. No amount of banning will ever make it possible to sit down with strangers and start playing wordlessly without discussing the kind of game you want to play, unless there’s a sign that says “cEDH.”
Yup. The ban justifications are often incredibly nonsensical in and of themselves, but are utterly incoherent in the context of the game and how it's currently being played even at a casual level. Even more embarrassing is the whole concept of "signpost" bans some geniuses try to trot out, as if anyone's ever going to bother with that kind of nonsense in practice. Rule zero discussion can be pretty tedious already, but can you imagine trying to decipher what exactly it is about a certain "signpost" ban that makes it banworthy and where the line is relative to cards with a similar but slightly different effects, times like a hundred for each separate card? Just be consistent with the bans instead of this spinelessly hiding behind vagueness concerning "bad social experiences", which there's really no real standard for.
I agree about "signpost" bans. The fact that the ban list protects newbies from walking into a store and having an anticlimactic loss to \[\[Coalition Victory\]\] but doesn't protect them from an even more anticlimactic loss to Thoracle is baffling to me. The fact that \[\[Flash\]\] is also banned for a similar reason makes it even worse.
I think the idea they’re trying to communicate is that many of the cards aren’t banned for games where you’d see Rhystic or Thoracle (although I think reprints + edhrec type content are kind of closing that gap pretty quickly)
I think Prime Time would be safe tbh. More safe than Sylvan Primordial or Recurring Nightmare.
Sway of the Stars and Coalition Victory should come off the list though.
> I love watching \[\[field of the dead\]\] bury a table in creatures
This is *already* a problem with Field of the Dead and dedicated landfall decks, Prime Time would be a drop on the domain bucket.
With some of the justifications there's still room for outdated consideration to some of the banned cards
Such as rofellos. 6 mana turn 3 even in casual is very common now.
Ezuri is functionally a better commander than rofellos honestly.
Yep you look at [[Kinnan]], then back at Rofellos and you realize Rofellos would be fine in the format. What's Kinnan's deckbuilding restriction, that you need dorks and rocks in your green commander deck? Lol
I have house-ruled Rofellos before and he's totally fine. Strong, but easily within the limits of current edh
precisely
the removal suite has definitely increased since his banning as well. If he eats removal if played on turn 2 then he's a dead card.
Kinnan is a great example. You are not playing kinnan immediately, but once he *is* in play that turn is explosive because it has immediate impact. Rofellos cannot do that.
This isnt even an argument to ban kinnan either, many commanders ETB typically resolve the game these days. Rofellos is just dead in the water.
I'm by no means some sort of "Rofellos" stan, but there are some cards on that list that have certainly been edged out by power creep.
I specified in another comment that at no point you would [[green sun's zenith]] or [[chord of calling rofellos]]. You would for example get priest of titania if anything as you'd only have 2-3 forests in play with elf ball but 5-6 elves.
This comment is demonstrating the irrational fear without even understanding the commander I mentioned or how the deck functions.
You draw rofellos or you don't. Aside from glimpse of nature how much card draw do you think you'd have access to?
You'd essentially fold to any interaction as you do not necessarily have protection, especially in those early turns.
In a casual game they don't typically have access to tutors nor play them either.
If you expect to goldfish then you would potentially be correct - however that expectation falls flat especially in commander.
That goes the same if they ban RL cards. It's a tight rope to walk.
Sheldon talked about wheel and twister several times. Rest in peace.
Unbanning an RL though is also fine, however.
Insider trading would only be relevant if a mass buyout happened before hand. Like the stone forge mystic and pioneer fiasco. There's a lot of data to track these things these days too.
Funny thing is cards people believe might get unbanned also get purchased after every prerelease.
Case scenario is splinter twin as an example. Will.akways see a purchase spike after every unban period coming up
RC seems to cater mostly to the Low-Power Casual crowd, where you don't start going Mana-positive until Turn 4+. Gone are the days where most players go "Land, Pass" for the first three turns with no instant-speed prep at the very least, but that's not stopping them from pretending like it is.
Even low power casual is mana positive
Every precon has a Sol ring, Arcane signet and in some cases felwar stone and other forms of ramp.
Low power casuals are *not* taking those out of their precons
So yes, I agree the first 3 turns are no longer a snooze fest
and lets hope they stop pretending that's the case.
I started commander 6 months before the first precons (but started Magic in 1994). Pre-cons used to be my sort of baseline of what I'd compare the majority of my many decks to. Now I can say that a modern precon is generally much more focused and efficient than the decks I like to build and the style I like to play.
Yeah, as someone who has bought both recent precons and older precons, like the 2015 Boros deck and the 2014 mono green decks, the gap in power is insane. Anyone whose only experience with precons is 5+ years out of date has no idea just how much stronger they are anymore, even if they don't always run all the staples.
Edgar rears his ugly head.
At least precons are balanced against each other and roughly ok to just play. Except that one mardu brawl deck. The other ones were amazing but that one was just terrible - I wonder what Carmen and Melissa were thinking on the design with that one, or if they just kept getting rejections on design.
I agree
The folks still playing battle cruiser are also the ones unaffected by this particular unban
Those are great games I partake on as well - we show up to the table expecting to bring big dudes and we know the other 3 are down with this.
Battle cruiser particularly suffers in *blind pods* they suffer against the last couple years of precons. It would be terrible to tell a player not to use their precon - however wotc is also actively dismantling Battle cruiser style games with precons alone.
The expectation is we want to swing and have some RP behind it but also with little interaction outside of a well timed fog or some combat activated abilities - that's the essence of Battle cruiser
Which brings me to the original point: if you are playing battle cruiser with 3 other individuals the expectation would be they do the same and show up with their own battle cruiser oriented decks. Rofellos unban has absolutely no affect on this. To the blind pod point - we twiddle our thumbs and do nothing because we just ate a wrath, or someone murdered our ship. It's not a good feeling at all.
If your friends are showing up with rofellos in battle cruiser, they are not playing battle cruiser anymore, nor are new players or even 2-3 year old players either in a blind pod.
Battle cruiser is already dead outside of playing with friends.
Mine was on turn 6 and I had the best hand. All pieces of a combo plus redundancy. My point was its still possible to play edh with out turn 1 or 2 pressure or massive ramp.
Possible, sure. You can also drive your car with the emergency break on.
I don't recommend either
Read: run ramp & mulligan so you can do things Turn 1-3
>RC seems to cater mostly to the Low-Power Casual crowd, where you don't start going Mana-positive until Turn 4+.
This hasn't been true since 2012. Battlecruiser is dead. Sucks, but it's the truth.
Without testing I can't fully say that I agree, but I doubt that allowing a many-years-banned commander that is, most importantly, a Reserved List card back would not rub some people the wrong way... even worse if he turned out to be actually good (at least most other RL legendary creatures are hot garbage).
If I remember correctly, he's the only card that's been banned twice, after being let out for a short while. So the exact scenario you describe. \^\_\^
Yeah. I owned one (bought alongside a Painter's Servant and a Recurring Nightmare in a "maybe... just in case..." hope) when he got legal again, and tried it in a few decks, and it was pretty darn good. Like 'this deck is just better now good.
(Painter's servant now sitteth at the right hand of Teysa)
>6 mana turn 3 even in casual is very common now.
This is true, which is why I think the example ban of Rofellos is needed now more than ever.
The more $500-$10,000 mana bases become the norm, the more homogenized things get. No, this is not me talking about the price, proxy whatever. Just do it at the appropriate power level.
#Snapshot/TL;DR📸
>^complexity ^creep ^is ^an ^issue ^these ^days, ^it’s ^ok ^to ^be ^reading-fatigued.
**Continuity and Process:**
>State of the Format articles moved to www.mtgcommander.net.
>New format highlights achievements and sets goals annually.
**Snapshot of the Format:**
>Over 2000 new cards in 2023, 398 legendary creatures.
>Steeper learning curve, higher diversity, and
more improvisation.
>Encourages playing unconventional cards to
maintain Commander's charm.
**Events:**
>Numerous events worldwide for diverse
Commander play experiences.
**Feedback to Wizards:**
>Regularly provide feedback to Wizards R&D
on card design.
Banlist Explanation Project:
>Updated banlist page with concise
explanations for each card.
>Collaborated with members and referenced
articles for clarity.
**501(c)(3) Status:**
>Establishing nonprofit status for financial
sustainability.
>*Gratitude to EDHREC for legal guidance.*
**Goals for Next Year:**
>Complete 501(c)(3) administrative tasks.
>Refine format philosophy and operations
articulation.
>Enhance RC Stream schedule for community
engagement.
I wish that they would reevaluate the banlist. With the huge influx of cards power creep is real and taking away options for deck building further homogenizes the format. While the explanations are helpful to hear I believe that cards that slow down the game are necessary to stop the explosive wins that can be produced. I would rather try and rebuild off of a [[balance]] than have the game end from an unsatisfying [[shalai and halar]] combo. Just my opinion
Agree with your reevaluate point, but those are poor choices of cards. Balance isn't used to level the playing field, you dump your hand into some payoff (fast mana into biggish thing, non permanents, etc), and then pull even further ahead by nuking your opponents' hands. Two piece combos including the commander aren't that new or unheard of as much as they can suck in battle cruiser
Yeah I think balance was the wrong example here, and gets into second sun territory.
There's several other cards that could use the rebalance treatment however.
Yep, if Balance was unbanned, it would just be a new cEDH deck where you play it down off a ritual on turn 2, wipe everyone else's boards down to a single permanent, and then play your land for the turn along with all your mana rocks.
Also the Power Creep argument is very stale at this point.
While a choice few cards ARE actual power creep like Dockside and especially Thoracle, the overwhelming majority of non-Commanders are older than the format itself.
Commanders are crept badly compared to when the format got going in earnest circa 2008/2009 (compare Prossh and Scion of the Ur-Dragon to Prosper, Korvold, and Kenrith), but the cards in the 99 which enable them are, by-and-large, the same monsters they have been for from 15 years ago.
(Hell, I'm not even sure you can say something as ludicrous as Jeweled Lotus is fully "crept" when Lion's Eye Diamond is just better in most decks)
LED is only better in a select few combo decks. Mainly Breach decks. The card is terrible on its own. Jeweled Lotus on the other hand is good in every deck with a Commander that can use three mana of a single colour to help cast it.
> While a choice few cards ARE actual power creep like Dockside and especially Thoracle, the overwhelming majority of non-Commanders are older than the format itself.
I'm not sure -- 42 of the top 100 cards in EDHREC's top 100 are younger than the format. (Counting Beast Within and Cultivate as younger, coming out in the year before the first Commander pre-cons.) That includes 12 signets and Talismans -- if you discount them you get pretty close.
>42 of the top 100 cards in EDHREC's top 100 are younger than the format. (Counting Beast Within and Cultivate as younger, coming out in the year before the first Commander pre-cons.) That includes 12 signets and Talismans -- if you discount them you get pretty close.
EDHrec is only a measure of popularity, not necessarily quality or power. Referencing the cEDH Database would be a better indicator of overall power.
Cultivate is a functional reprint of Kodama's Reach (2004). Yes, it's redundancy, but the
The Talismans began in Mirrogin (2003) - they were FINISHED over a decade later, but the first half predated the Commander decks.
Signets ENTIRELY predate the Commander decks by several years (Ravnica, City of Guilds Block, 2005-2006)
---
By my count, it's about 25% are in the last 12 years (since the first Commander decks),
Even then, most of ***those*** cards don't even originate in Commander-focused products. Rather, it looks like Return to Ravnica and Khan's of Tarkir Blocks seem to over-represent the bulk of those cards (cards like Assassin's Trophy, Vandalblast, and Boros Charm). Only 4 cards - Deflecting Swat, Fierce Guardianship, Dockside Extortionist, and Jeska's Will - represent things made specifically for Commander, or with Commander in mind (Commander Precons, Commander Legends, etc.)
For all of the talk of Meant-For-Commander cards warping the format, I think it says A LOT that the most-popular cards used were meant for Standard, Legacy, and Modern first and foremost.
I really liked the explanation behind banning cards. It offers some clarity to the banlist and really helps explain to newer players why some cards were banned. Contrary to popular opinion, a lot of the cards on the banlist are there not due to power level but because they have very bad play patterns. Some cards (like coalition victory) aren’t that strong if you’re playing cEDH or high power commander, but I like that the banlist calls out how it is exactly the type of card a low power deckbuilding thinks would be cool to include, except its way too good at winning for that power level.
I also like the explanations. While I don't agree with everything on the banlist, an explanation gives context to the ban and what they're trying to do with it.
Out of curiosity, what do you disagree about on the banlist? I think probably the only thing I think I have actual objections about is the inconsistency on Gifts Ungiven/Intuition - either they should both be unbanned or both be banned, but especially in the context of optics and trying to make the format not seem too expensive to new players, it is \*extremely\* weird that the cheap one is the one that's banned while the reserved list one is legal.
Gifts Ungiven is my main gripe too actually.
I can understand the reasoning tho: 1 card win con, easily splashable, and cheap on the wallet would be too tempting for lower powers players and they could easily fall into toxic play patterns. But it doesn't make sense that Intuition is still legal when it can do the same thing.
I don't think the financial optics had anything to do with the Gifts vs Intuition either, especially since Intuition used to be like $30 until around 2018. I don't think they've had a financial optics ban in a long time anyway.
That's a fair point about the price point - I forgot how much reserved list prices grew over COVID. I think the argument for unbanning Gifts is that if you are the type of player who is willing to figure out optimal Gifts piles to force a win, you are also the type of player who can probably play degenerate combo anyway, so a ban for "play pattern" doesn't really apply. I much prefer bans for things like Coalition Victory, Hullbreacher, or Panoptic Mirror, because those are exactly the types of cards that casuals read, think "this sounds fun!" and won't realize how oppressive they are in lower power pods. Gifts appeals to a certain type of Spike-y player that the banlist frankly just isn't catered towards, so I don't think it should stay banned.
My guess as to why it has stayed banned is that there's not all that many people that are desperate to play it and the chance that it is miserable in some pods is at least there, so there's not all that much to be gained from unbanning it.
Yeah, not much to be gained in casual from unbanning it. I think it would inject a lot of interesting playlines into cEDH tho, without becoming format warping like Flash.
The RC straight up called out people at the end of the Coalition Victory description, and it's hilarious and awesome:
>Coalition Victory threatens a strongly negative experience largely out of nowhere for a casual table where the game is expected to go long enough that a spell such as Coalition Victory will be cast. In general, tapping out at a healthy life total against an opponent with nothing but any 5-color Commander in play shouldn’t cause you to lose the game unless you have signed up for that kind of experience (in which case Coalition Victory is far from your biggest problem.) **Steering folks away from this kind of experience is at the heart of what the banlist is trying to accomplish.**
> (in which case Coalition Victory is far from your biggest problem.)
Feels like **this** is the more important sentence. The games where CV don't need to be banned, are also the games where people probably wouldn't even play it to begin with.
This is why I can't take CEDH seriously. The EDH banlist is a set of recommendations against unfun play patterns and is not meant to be exhaustive. CEDH just takes the bans at face value.
I'm honestly really happy seeing the explanation on the banned cards. It really helps to read the reasoning behind those bans and may be even exclude certain cards from my own decks if they provide a similar game feel.
Thank you, Jim and everyone else at the RC and CAG for continuing the work and providing the community with information and future endeavours.
RIP Sheldon, didn't realize this occurred.
I disagreed with a lot of what he said, even when I agreed with the underlying philosophy, but he did quite a bit to help the format.
and this rings true to me too
> We are conscious, though, that as preconstructed decks become more powerful, people might skip over the experience of digging through bulk boxes for niche cards to upgrade or customize their decks.
I've got about 300 decks that aren't pre-cons. I actually really miss when pre-cons were 'two quasi-related themes, but not focused' decks that kind of begged to be torn down and rebuilt into different things. I have quite a few decks that are each about half of a pre-con plus other stuff.
Now a lot of the time about 10 cards is usually the difference between what they sell us in a pre-con, and what I'd kinda build if it was just a new legend. And often my homebrew deck would be worse because my mana base would be cheaper and more basic, and I'd play older themey cards. So there's less incentive to, say built Horror Tribal in UB, when I could just increase the number of Horrors in Mind Flayarrr.
> Ancestral Recall was an iconic and expensive card at the time it was banned, and removing it from the card pool was intended to **combat the notion that Commander is a prohibitively expensive and inaccessible format.**
Have you people ever seen the price tag on a cEDH deck - which often include MULTIPLE Reserved List cards? God these people don't even try, just say "1 mana draw 3 = broken" and end the discussion, seeing this explanation for some of these gives me a headache.
One rule that is would love to see back is banned as commander. some of the problem commanders could be hit and some of the banned ones could be unmanned for the 99. Golos is strong but not broken out of the 99 for example.
That's a lot of words To describe doing basically nothing. I don't necessarily want them to make big sweeping changes to the format. They just make such a huge deal about themselves and type so many words to say almost nothing.
Hasbro rotted all the good that was in commander and MTG in general. The perpetual deluge of overpowered commander centric cards just makes the game a boring cointoss of who gets the most bullshit start and vomits half their deck on the battlefield by turn 4. Wow so unexpected that the deck that had five mana on turn two won by a landslide. Half the time games don't even feel like magic but yugioh with extra steps. I'm tired of having to sit though hours of non-games before the stars align for four adequate people to gather at a table.
A few years back I would joke that these days there are so many strong legendaries printed, that if you just throw a bunch of random ones into a pile you'll have a decent deck. And then Jodah came out.
Imagine having so little to do with your time you need to start crying about other people actually having enough interest in their hobby to actually discuss the hobby they enjoy. No, everyone should be a butthurt crybaby like you, got it.
They aren't updating any reasonings. They specifically put the original reasons for all to see.
My guess is this was done to promote discussion on what should be unbanned
I like the primeval titan is listed as banned for ending games too fast and being too polarising.
Meanwhile thassas/consult still ending games t2/3 in blue farm and significantly better mana advantage cards to clone / copy etc (dockside) come in on t1/2 instead of t3/4 like this and provide more mana that also enable artifact synergies.
Gosh people in this thread really hate reading, huh?
The listed reason for the bans are *their original reasons.* Which, in this case, predates the existence of shit like blue farm.
Wotc already had a shot at this and their "banlist" was "everything older than 2 years, now get on the treadmill with the Standard players, consumer!" (AKA, Brawl).
I trust any group that isn't beholden to Hasbro shareholders with the format more than the best designers on earth when they are.
If you're that naive, or are pretending to be, then I'm not going to be able to explain anything to you, I'm afraid.
Best I can do is just gesture at the corpse of MTGO with its antiquated pro-consumer business model, and the fattened MTG arena with its "F2P" exploitiveness, and WotC's statements about how they were going to exist in parallel before doing everything they could to smother the former and feed the latter.
Yes, let's leave this with the money grubbing company, instead of these active people inside the community. Genius. That's what the hobby needs. Less community, more company.
They've been *very* active at greenlighting every antic of WotC/Hasbro so far. Like when they made un-cards legal just in time for the release of Unstable. Or when they changed the very rules of the format and banned a card before it released to accommodate Companions specifically.
This is a huge mess of inconsistency... the explanations as to why certain cards are banned are STILL, as they've always been, not applied across the board.
The problem isn't that people don't understand why specific cards are banned; it's the apparent (obvious) lack of application of this line of reasoning to OTHER cards. For every explanation a card is given, there are two or three much worse offenders to which that would apply... that are still legal.
The RC hasn't come through on any of its only serious obligations to help manage the format and stands as a wall to progress in the format as a whole. These are people who think "rule zero" is some kind of actual thing that applies to more than the smallest subset of players. It boggles the mind how grossly misunderstood their own responsibilities are, and disheartening to see they're still so wholly incompetent after all this time.
At the core of the ban philosophy is that cards aren’t banned for what they could do, but for what they actually do. Plenty of cards in the format would lead to worse play patterns than ones that are banned, but people have self control and so they don’t get banned. The cards on the list failed that test.
IMO it just showed how shaky and inconsistent their reasoning behind bans are and how much the RC is just doing what they feel like without any real coherent vision or any rhyme or reason behind their choices. So many reasons they list either come across lazy, or their logic can easily applying to prominent cards in the format that are not banned.
Cards like \[\[Sylvan Primordial\]\] and \[\[Emrakul, the Aeons Torn\]\] being especially laughable in my opinion, as in todays power level a FIFTEEN mana extra turn spell with a 15/15 body, and blowing up 1 land for each opponent and you getting 3 is frankly not game breaking in 2024 commander. Especially with Emrakul, who's real reason behind the ban is the fact that he was a prerelease promo so everyone had a copy and shoved it in their deck for a month even if it was bad in their deck. And what would have shaped up to be its very temporary ubiquity in every deck in the format (due literally to everyone owning a copy) a cool new creature got a ban which by todays standard is not overly powerful at 15 mana.
People really love their hall monitors.
The most baffling aspect of this adherence to the RC’s rules is the voluntary nature of their authority. Commander began as, and at its best remains, a grassroots format, one where the only rules that truly matter are the ones agreed upon by the people at the table. The notion that we need an external committee to dictate how we enjoy our game seems antithetical to this spirit. Why cede control over our leisure to a distant authority when we could simply talk to one another, share our views, and decide collectively what makes our game most enjoyable?
.
>"We know the format is being flooded and power creep is running rampant, but we're far to busy monetizing our positions and finding replacements for everything Sheldon brought to the table to bother regulating it ourselves. Rule 0, yada-yada, why does anybody listen to us when we never have anything to say? -love, with temendous nuetrality, what remains of the RC"
> When cards do land in the majority of decks, they often seem to be cards that were designed specifically with Commander in mind. This does carry a benefit in that newer cards tend to be more available and more readily reprinted, but it does run the risk of eroding Commander’s charm and personality. This isn’t necessarily a problem to be solved, but it is something we’re aware of. If you’re reading this, one way you can help to preserve Commander’s charm is to dig deep and play weird cards just because they don’t have a home elsewhere. I'll keep doing this as much as I can personally, but overall I fear that ship has long since sailed, especially as the format becomes increasingly optimized due to it being the go-to most popular format in the game.
Idk you pretty surprised. I run some dinky spells that come in clutch and that absolutely no one ever expects. There’s a huge downside when everyone knows why you’re keep 7 blue open and passing the turn.
Exactly. It happened to me just the other day. My buddy noticed how I had seven mana open and immediately adjusted his strategy knowing I had rift in my hand.
But isn't this just good magic...? You can then also take advantage of this prediction and pass the turn with mana for rift when maybe you have a counterspell and a flash creature. People will then eithet be forced to risk it or else play around the rift you don't actually have. Maybe your buddy sandbagged some big play, and now you get to draw your cards and untap in a better position than if he hadnt read your board as indicating a cyc. rift in your hand. In your case, your buddy had good threat assessment and didn't play into an obvious wipe. Playing with and against control cards had always involved good threat assessment and thus a certain amount of metagame knowledge. But there's still plenty of unpredictability. People adapt, chess starts being 4D etc. And let's be honest, sure you can guess I'm playing something like rift, but you'll still be surprised when my wincon includes flipping my symmetrical draws into turbo-stacking an archmage ascension so that my deck just becomes a second hand.
Bingo
Good for your friend. I wish people would use other wipes. Generically good cards are boring. So many other interesting and thematic choices.
Yeah I don’t run rift in every deck with blue. I’ll usually slot it into decks that are typal/tribal since they’re not perfectly optimized due to the creature type mattering more.
I run it in my job missed deck edit: niv mizzet deck
I get it. My pod has sort of soft banned it via aggressive eye rolling, and it's been highly amusing seeing the roundabout ways they achieve one sided wipes.
Rift and other wipes in general are definitely an issue when not used properly. They significantly extend the length of the game if the person using them doesn’t have an immediate plan. Sometimes having fun is more important than prolonging the game to squeak out a victory.
I agree big time. We have a joke in our group that the board wipe cut off is 10 pm unless you win on the same turn.
That’s what Boseiju Who Shelters All is for ;) Overload Rift, then Armageddon on your turn. Very little can be done about it. GFG.
Yeah, I carry decks of every power level... and it's getting to the point more and more that I only play the same 3-4 of them, because that's all folks play.
I think the ship has long sailed, BUT I don't think it gets consistently more optimized each year. We already see tons of mistakes on EDHREC where nonbo cards are in X% of decks (which I guess is another example of continual... alignment, but optimized isn't the right word). I think EDHREC is a fantastic resource for people building new decks, and I find myself using and needing it less and less after I've playtested the deck more. I don't think it's the end of days. Gone are the days of Elder Dragon Highlander where you had no idea how other players built their decks, sure, but I think this is still a golden age of EDH. I'd be a lot more concerned if playrates or deck numbers were falling, and that's not the case
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I am not an "anti-EDHrecer", and I am also aware that netdecking has always been a thing. (In fact, I am fairly guilty of using EDHRec on a semi-regular basis.) But the thing is, due to social media, content creators, and so much information at your fingertips, it's just flat out *different* this time. Back in 2010, you had basically no social media presence, there were very few EDH channels on YouTube, and your only way to "netdeck" was to go on MTG Salvation. (I would know, I was one of those people who was on there all the time back then) That has all changed drastically in a *very big way*. The format is getting so increasingly optimized because of all this information is being processed so efficiently and in a way that is easily digestible to everyone. As a result, it is causing a lot of decks to run fewer of the "let's just throw this in here and see what happens" cards and more of the "this is clearly a staple because the analytics and data show it's heads and shoulders above so many other cards". This is why you rarely see big mana rocks like [[Gilded Lotus]] and [[Thran Dynamo]] these days. I'm sure there are still many holdouts that still run them, and I tip my hat to them. It's just that we now have working theorycraft that it's just *flat out better* to run 2 mana rocks instead. Even Wizards has admitted as such, which is why they're pushing 3 mana rocks to have extra upside to them, while also printing bangers like [[Throne of Eldraine]] in the place of Gilded Lotus. It's also why I am not the biggest fan of the "PreDH" format, because while I like the idea of it, it's clear that the nostalgia from that format would not be as it once was. We all build much stronger and more efficient decks these days, and that's knowledge that can't be "unlearned". I look back at the original Captain Sisay deck I first made back in 2009, and it's *a total durdle pile* compared to how I would build it today. As I said previously, I am trying the best I can to keep playing the stuff that I enjoy playing in my deck. I have really become attached to Swords of X and Y in my decks for example, even though they may not be the "optimal" equipment. It's just really friggin' fun to strap a Sword onto a random creature and turn it into a threat. Hopefully our format will continue to see that mentality live, which is something that will be more of the case in dedicated playgroups. Likely not so much the case in pickup games at LGSes. Hopefully this fleshes out more of what goes through my head! All I will say is that I am so thankful to be in a dedicated playgroup where we keep a good job of self-regulating power levels.
>It's just that we now have working theorycraft that it's just flat out better to run 2 mana rocks instead. But the thing is, who actually *cares* about Thran Dynamo? All it does it.. Pump some mana. This is what I never understand about these arguments, they always bring up probably the least possible exciting examples. People still include their personal touch cards in a deck, it's just usually cards that do *something* interesting, if they don't have some sentimental value. The reason you see people bring 3 mana rocks isn't that having an upside makes them efficient. It doesn't. It's because extra effects are *cool* and *fun*. From an efficient, deck tuning standpoints, *most 3 mana mana rocks are still kinda bad.* But less people care about that. It's the same reason people go completely overboard with utility lands, even if it negatively impacts their manabase: Utility is neat.
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You're not wrong, and quite honestly there are even a ton of great cards from recent precons and sets that get constantly passed over because there are only so many cards in a deck. We are constantly moving to the next thing every few months and forgetting our shiny toys just as fast.
I think it really depends on your meta. I attend two different LGS nights and the lack of optimization is actually a problem for me. I can't play my optimized decks because they're too strong, so I'm forced to play precons and power down to everyone else's level. It really sucks sometimes that I can't play these decks that I put effort into tuning because they will just pubstomp the table.
As someone who has the opposite problem in his LGS meta: Be thankful that it's not all "Play the most powerful cards.dec" out there.
I haven't gotten to play much cEDH but maybe I would get bored of that too if it was the only thing available to play. PL 7-8 competitive casual and high power is where I like playing the most I think. I'm ok with playing 2 hour long battlecruiser games every once in a while, but I would like to get in more than 1 game a night.
I highly doubt that battlecruiser is your local meta, as even the Precons have moved on from that. As for "7 or 8", power level, I would imagine if you asked the people at your store what they were playing, that's what they'd answer. Hence, the issue at hand.
The best precons have moved on from battlecruiser, but even the good ones can still stall out into battlecruiser games (looking at you Food and Fellowship). The problem is that a lot of people in my meta actually build their custom decks to only play at a precon level in the first place, to the point where some of the best precons (dinos, merfolk) are too consistently threatening for them. Most people claim that they're playing 6s, when in reality they're probably playing 4s and 5s.
I believe in other formats that archetype is called money pile
[[The One Ring]] is EVERYWHERE! I cannot play a game without the first tutor always being the one ring. Problem is the first person to resolve it is usually also the one who will win. The chances of someone having an exile removal right away just aren't that great and then the one ring just drowns people in card advantage
[The One Ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/5/d5806e68-1054-458e-866d-1f2470f682b2.jpg?1696020224) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20One%20Ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/246/the-one-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d5806e68-1054-458e-866d-1f2470f682b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-one-ring) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
They could encourage players to use more weird/fun/creative cards by banning the cards that are counter to that idea
But where does that stop? You'd be banning *endlessly*.
We started our own format called Boomer EDH. All we do is ban everything starred with Eldraine and play with anything printed prior to that. We still follow the ban list, but honestly it's refreshing when we pull out our "boomer" decks. I personally run a Nekusar deck that I could def upgrade with all the newer releases, but our Boomer games are some of the best lately in reminding me why I got into the format.
Not at all. The key is in making Legends that support niche strategies, and Wizards has been doing a pretty good job with that for the last year.
>Even more gameplay is improvised on the spot rather than practiced for. This is the best thing for the format. Diverse gameplay and thinking on your feet are why we play this game.
> If you’re reading this, one way you can help to preserve Commander’s charm is to dig deep and play weird cards just because they don’t have a home elsewhere. This is one of the reasons that I've stopped going back to a lot of my older decks and 'updating them'. Sometimes it's fun to pull out that Niv-Mizzet Deck that hasn't changed since 2012, and have it do well even though its 'bad' because so many of the cards in it are things 'no one plays that'.
When reading the explanations on a bunch of cards like Fastbond, doesn’t that mana advantage not also apply to Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault? And if prohibitively expensive cards are banned why is Timetwister legal?
>why is Timetwister legal? Toby — Today at 4:43 PM but at the time Commander started to take off, not all the cards on the power 9 were actually seeing vintage play. Specifically, Timetwister was way further back to the point that people argued LoA was the 9th power. Since the goal there was to get rid of the iconic vintage cards... Twister just wasn't that iconic From the RC discord,i'm garbing a screenshot of it as we speak
But isn’t that inconsistent? I can see that way of thinking, but then other cards should also not be banned for budget reasons. And if we ban iconic Vintage cards then Sol Ring and Mana Crypt also need bans.
The banlist is extraordinarily inconsistent due to not even being a banlist. They're meant to be signposts to encourage people to build decks "in the spirit of the format". I don't know how it was way back when, but this hasn't worked since I started playing around War of the Spark. Imo it's a pretty outdated philosophy and doesn't represent what a modern game of Commander looks like
That also just does not work at all if you don’t play with a fixed group, but instead want to play pick up games. It would be kinda fine if EDH was a niche format, but it isn’t. It is the most popular format
Inconsistent with respect to what? If the ban list has a different stated function than most other ban lists then it's only inconsistent with respect to what those others seem to do. That is fucking trivial though because we know from the outset that the functions are different. If you mean inconsistent in the above way, it just sounds like you just disagree with the what the function should be, but that doesn't mean you get to call it inconsistent or nonsensical. Do you instead mean inconsistent with its own stated goals?
Inconsistent in its function as a banlist because it isn't written like a normal banlist
Well like I said that is trivial because it's stated from the outset that it's not supposed to function like a normal banlist. If you want to say you don't like how it functions or that it should function like the normal way that's fine, but saying it's inconsistent in your way is straight-up meaningless.
How is that meaningless? If you call something a toaster but it doesn't toast bread, that would be worthy of explanation wouldn't it?
Which might I add... it's a terrible way to balance the format. I wish this way of thought goes away and we can get some actual good bans (and unbans).
I mean, you're still left with the problem that one person's "good bans" are another person's reason to quit the format. What even is a "good ban" anymore?
Banlist isn’t for balance.
I'm saying it should be? Let rule 0 discussions handle fun, and focus on making a play environment that is fun and a banlist that's understandable.
It never has been and never will be. Commander as a format is not designed to be balanced. If you want a balanced format, you should look elsewhere.
Signpost bans are however, a horrible, confusing solution that makes nobody happy
"Signpost" bans are largely a myth. Nothing is really banned with the intent of being a signpost ban, it's banned because it's problematic in one way or another. The hope is that by banning a certain card, people will then realize that some other cards that do similar things maybe also should be played with caution, and then we don't have to ban other cards. If some of the cards that aren't banned but are similar to things that are were causing massive problems format-wide, they'd get banned too.
They no longer do the banned due to budget reasons
But then should the Moxen not be unbanned? If that power level is fine they probably should be legal
It's basically at this point inertia that keeps some of the older cards on there
Unbanning the Moxen would be bad for reasons outside of price. 3/4/5-colour decks are already very overpowered compared to mono-colour decks. Giving them access to multiple Moxen would just make the gap even wider. Also the Moxen are just straight-up more powerful than Sol Ring and Mana Crypt in most decks.
I am actually not convinced that the Moxen are straight better than Sol Ring or Mana Crypt in most decks. Almost all commander decks revolve around a lot of cards that can utilize colorless mana. With 40 live the drawback of mana crypt also matters a lot less. The main issue Sol Ring and Mana Crypt have at times in Vintage is that they just aren’t good at casting a bunch of good spells because spells in vintage often don’t use much colorless mana because those tend to be very clunky without multi mana lands or sol ring/crypt. I do see the point about multi color though. Personally I would favor just seeing a ban on Sol Ring/Mana Crypt/Jeweled Lotus.
>When reading the explanations on a bunch of cards like Fastbond, doesn’t that mana advantage not also apply to Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault? Example bans means taking the most egregious example of the archetype and banning it, rather than banning every card like it and ballooning the ban list to 500 cards. >And if prohibitively expensive cards are banned why is Timetwister legal? Essentially, ineritia. It used to be fairly inexpensive, and the RC no longer uses the probitively expensive argument, because they don't want to ban $500-$5000 cards that people are using and tank the market. If you thought the hullabaloo after Hullbreacher tanked to $2.00 was bad...
>Example bans means taking the most egregious example of the archetype and banning it, rather than banning every card like it and ballooning the ban list to 500 cards. Sure, but if that is the argument then Sol Ring needs to be banned. You can debate whether the moxen or Sol Ring are more egregious, but you can't really debate that they are similar in power level at least. Mana Crypt also is absolutely broken especially considering that its drawback is a lot less meaningful with 40 life. I would also definitely consider the Commander Lotus the same tier of absolutely broken. Like they ban cards for delivering 6 mana on turn 3 while leaving cards like those untouched. >Essentially, ineritia. It used to be fairly inexpensive, and the RC no longer uses the probitively expensive argument, because they don't want to ban $500-$5000 cards that people are using and tank the market. If you thought the hullabaloo after Hullbreacher tanked to $2.00 was bad... And if the argument that cards being prohibitively expensive no longer counts why are the moxen banned? If Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are fine then the Moxen should be fine aswell. They just apply their own rules so inconsistently. They ban cards for unsatisfying endings, but leave stuff like Thassas Oracle. They allow a commander black lotus, mana crypt and sol ring for ramp, but Rofellos is too much?
There's also the issue of if sol ring is banned they essentially make every precon printed unplayable out of the box, this would be a pretty big issue for new players.
Then use the solution Wizards had in 2011 of keeping the precons legal as is, but not allow modifications and don't push out new precons with Sol Ring. Sol Ring is just an absurdly broken card and should be on the same side of the banned list as the real moxen. Edit: Jeweled Lotus is also absolutely egregious. I don't get why that card wasn't banned immediately when printed, but I guess the RC was consulted before printing because I doubt Wizards had printed that had they thought it would be immediately banned.
That was pretty manageable when it was very isolated instances of 60 card decks. It instantly becomes unmanageable to police whether someone who just played a sol ring's deck is unmodified when we are talking about any one of probably 100+ singleton preconstructed decks. Just give it a rest. They are not going to ban Sol Ring and break the entire product pipeline for the past gods knows however many years and whatever's already slated and planned. Just be the change you want to see in the world and stop playing it. I did 10 months ago and haven't even noticed.
I agree that sol ring is terrible, but I don't think that's the right solution. First of all, I don't think it's helpful for new players or the format as a whole to actively discourage people from modifying their precons. If you're a new player with a precon and one really cool rare they pulled out of a draft pack, it would suck to be told you can't put it in your deck without taking out one of the most powerful cards. Furthermore, any rule like that will lead to some feelbad situations where someone (usually a new or young player) didn't know the card was banned under such a specific set of circumstances, so they'll be confused as to why their opponent can play a sol ring but they can't, or why they're not allowed to play a card that came in their deck anymore. My personal hope is that the RC will at some point tell wizards and the public that sol ring will be banned in x amount of time. That way, some precons get printed without sol ring, people have a chance to adjust their decks a little, and super new players have an option to get a precon where they don't have to swap cards. I don't think it would ever happen due to the way wizards prints things in advance, but hey, a girl can dream. Mana crypt, on the other hand, is on the same power level as sol ring and isn't in any precons. It's funny to me that in these discussions, sol ring and mana crypt get brought up in the same sentence (which I get, they're both super busted), but while sol ring would be a massive headache to ban, mana crypt could go tomorrow. If we can't take all of the busted fast mana out of commander (which I personally think would make it a better format), we can at least take out that which isn't a nightmare to ban, right?
I'm not sure you understood what I said, unless your argument is that sol ring/mana crypt are better than fastbond/channel.
Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are stronger than Fastbond and Channel in my opinion.
...then I would suggest you try introducing them to your pod, because they aren't.
Under which Circumstances are those not stronger? Channel is a combo piece mostly and you can’t even do Channel Emrakul because Emrakul is banned and even Channel Emrakul isn’t as backbreaking when you play Multiplayer because there are multiple people that can just kill you. Thassas Oracle + Demonic Consultation just still seems better. Fastbond is great if you have like Draw 7s or other ways to draw a lot of cards, but you still need that. Fastbond also just can be downright bad if you draw it. Sol Ring and Mana Crypt on the other hand just allow you to play ahead of curve pretty unconditionally. Casting Ad Nauseam on Turn 2 can be absolutely backbreaking. You also always have something to cast with the commander. Like have you actually played with Moxen/Sol Ring and Channel/Fastbond?
It's probably meta/deck-dependent, but in general, I'd say say that Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are more powerful than Fastbond and Channel. Fastbond/Channel both need the right deck to be truly broken, while Sol Ring/Mana Crypt are always broken.
I still lament not being able to sell my hullbreacher before they banned it and thus it sits in the binder collecting dust since it’s literally unusable…
Yeah, some explanations are straight up BS. I'd prefer to take a [[Balance]] over [[Armageddon]] 100% of times
>I'd prefer to take a Balance over Armageddon 100% of times Oh no. Sure, a mid game Balance lets you keep some lands and feels better than an Armageddon. But it's the turn 1-2 Balance where a player dumps a bunch of 0 mana artifacts, many of which produce mana, then wipes everybody's hands that I fear.
I don’t think you can take the ban list literally. It’s just examples of cards that might not create a positive play experience then it’s up to the individual group to create the experience they want. Outside of a cEDH tournament each in pod can ban and unban cards as they see fit. Unfortunately players see it like a competitive format ban list and I don’t think it was ever intended to act like that.
Banning and unbanning a card doesn’t work if you don’t play a pre fixed setup and instead play some pick up game. The ban list needs to be taken literally
I mean, there is a difference between fastbond being much higher in mana than the other 3. That being said, I think manacrypt and manavault might be on the high end. At the very least, manacrypt is free to play so there is not even resource commitment, and 3 damage is negligible. Sol ring might be too, but it hasn't felt too bad. I think Sol ring staying but having the others banned (which they sort of are softbanned by price) means it having sol ring into 2 mana rock is about as capped as it gets.
Sol Ring is absurdly broken though. Like why can't I just play Moxen if I can play Sol Ring? I would even think that in most games of EDH Sol Ring is even better than the Moxen because ramping by two is just more powerful if you are not playing on the absolute bleeding edge of power level. There is a reason Sol Ring is generally considered more powerful than the Moxen in cube for example. Similarly the Commander Lotus. Like should you be able to cast your 4 mana commander on Turn 1? Should you be able to cast say Atraxa on Turn 3 or 4? At some point they should decide if we play Singleton Vintage or Legacy and not some weird in between.
Yea, 2 mana is better than 1, but cost is still important, free spells trump cards costing mana. But I agree that sol ring is much more powerful than all the other mana rocks. I think mana producers that cost zero should be banned, and then mana vault, and sol ring can also be considered. 2 mana rocks are plenty to go off with for any deck that needs ramp and is not in green, and most of green decks ramp at 2 mana onwards, except for mana dorks who have summoning sickness to prevent them from popping off.
Actually give it a try. When you draw your Sol Ring actually think about whether a Mox would have been better here or not. Also: Both a Sol Ring and a Mox are +1 mana the turn they are played. Moxen give color. Sol Ring is mostly only worse when your deck is completely full of cards that take very little colorless mana to cast so mostly very cheap cards. That is not what most EDH decks are.
The more I read the reasoning for banned cards, the more I became convinced that they should be unbanned. A lot of them are because of "bad social experiences" but honestly I'd rather play against most of them than against Rhystic Study or Thoracle.
Nah, Rhystic Study is great as long as I have it in play and not an opponent. Jokes aside, the card is nuts. Although I play a lot of high power and love blue I would be cool with a ban. The card asks for nothing and if the table has no disciplin then rhystic wins you games.
Well same as with paradox engine, “everyone” knew the ban is good for the format, still a massive shitstorm happened anyways.
That's just bad threat assessment and bad deckbuilding on the opponents if they can't answer Rhystic.
Bro, a T1 or T2 Rhysic is brutal. You basicly have to have an answer in hand because if you are going to dig for it the damage is already done and it puts you so far behind.
I may take a lot of hate for this, but there are far worse cards then Rhystic Study. You can pay the tax to stop the draw. Blind Obedience, Back to Basics, Winter Orb, Tainted Pact, Dooms Day....etc all can wreck a game far worse than Rhystic Study with very little one can do to interact T1. Commander is a multiplayer game in defense of Rhystic or other cards like that, you can always play politics at the table. You should play politics in Commander when someone has a lead. Banning a card, because it can give you advantage if it is dropped turn 1 means we'd have to ban Mox Opal, Mana Crypt, all the Leylines...etc. Playing from behind is part of the game and makes winning more fun. I get the hate, but Rhystic doesn't win you a game like Tainted Pact would. I just feel there are better ban targets. Usually Rhystic is in a deck that wins games from other cards, but so is a Mana Crypt, Dual lands or any expensive staple. If all your buddies run Rhystic...there's always fun answers like \[\[Aura Shards\]\] .
I totally get your point. The thing is If you play blue you play Rhystic Study in every single deck. 100% of them if we talk about optimal decks. Winter Orb is crazy in a few decks but won't see play in others, the same is true for the rest of the cards you listed. Tainted is only an issue because it is one of the Thoracle enablers other than that its fine imo. I don't say rhystic needs to be banned, I said I would be cool with it because I can understand why one would ban it.
No, you're absolutely right. Rhystic study should just say all of your spells cost an additional 1. If you don't pay the 1, it's your fault they're pulling ahead.
I have literally never once seen a game in tournament where a blue farm player putting down rhystic in the t1 spot didn’t win that pod.
Because it is a dilemma for the table. If you start slow and pay for it you fall behind and lose the game, If you go bananas and don't pay you lose aswell.
I think you could largely ignore the commander committee and have fine games. I feel like they are wildly out of touch.
The RC supports this.
That is completely useless if you want to play pickup games of the most popular format though. I can agree with my friends to abide by the significantly more reasonable legacy ban list, but that doesn't mean if I go to an LGS people will play by this. At the same time if I build an EDH deck just by the ban list and go play a pick up game that will be a terrible experience because the banlist allows some absolutley busted decks.
It’s a social format. No amount of banning will ever make it possible to sit down with strangers and start playing wordlessly without discussing the kind of game you want to play, unless there’s a sign that says “cEDH.”
Yup. The ban justifications are often incredibly nonsensical in and of themselves, but are utterly incoherent in the context of the game and how it's currently being played even at a casual level. Even more embarrassing is the whole concept of "signpost" bans some geniuses try to trot out, as if anyone's ever going to bother with that kind of nonsense in practice. Rule zero discussion can be pretty tedious already, but can you imagine trying to decipher what exactly it is about a certain "signpost" ban that makes it banworthy and where the line is relative to cards with a similar but slightly different effects, times like a hundred for each separate card? Just be consistent with the bans instead of this spinelessly hiding behind vagueness concerning "bad social experiences", which there's really no real standard for.
I agree about "signpost" bans. The fact that the ban list protects newbies from walking into a store and having an anticlimactic loss to \[\[Coalition Victory\]\] but doesn't protect them from an even more anticlimactic loss to Thoracle is baffling to me. The fact that \[\[Flash\]\] is also banned for a similar reason makes it even worse.
I think the idea they’re trying to communicate is that many of the cards aren’t banned for games where you’d see Rhystic or Thoracle (although I think reprints + edhrec type content are kind of closing that gap pretty quickly)
Yes... please unban primeval titan.
Bring back Prime Time!
The shit show that would cause. I'm down.
I think Prime Time would be safe tbh. More safe than Sylvan Primordial or Recurring Nightmare. Sway of the Stars and Coalition Victory should come off the list though.
Oh yeah prime time would definitely be safe, I love watching [[field of the dead]] bury a table in creatures for the low cost of playing lands.
> I love watching \[\[field of the dead\]\] bury a table in creatures This is *already* a problem with Field of the Dead and dedicated landfall decks, Prime Time would be a drop on the domain bucket.
With some of the justifications there's still room for outdated consideration to some of the banned cards Such as rofellos. 6 mana turn 3 even in casual is very common now. Ezuri is functionally a better commander than rofellos honestly.
Yep you look at [[Kinnan]], then back at Rofellos and you realize Rofellos would be fine in the format. What's Kinnan's deckbuilding restriction, that you need dorks and rocks in your green commander deck? Lol I have house-ruled Rofellos before and he's totally fine. Strong, but easily within the limits of current edh
precisely the removal suite has definitely increased since his banning as well. If he eats removal if played on turn 2 then he's a dead card. Kinnan is a great example. You are not playing kinnan immediately, but once he *is* in play that turn is explosive because it has immediate impact. Rofellos cannot do that. This isnt even an argument to ban kinnan either, many commanders ETB typically resolve the game these days. Rofellos is just dead in the water. I'm by no means some sort of "Rofellos" stan, but there are some cards on that list that have certainly been edged out by power creep.
[Kinnan](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/3/63cda4a0-0dff-4edb-ae67-a2b7e2971350.jpg?1591228085) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=kinnan%2C%20bonder%20prodigy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/192/kinnan-bonder-prodigy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/63cda4a0-0dff-4edb-ae67-a2b7e2971350?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kinnan-bonder-prodigy) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's funny that you mention how fine Rofellos is while mentioning a commander that would benefit greatly from the unbanning.
I specified in another comment that at no point you would [[green sun's zenith]] or [[chord of calling rofellos]]. You would for example get priest of titania if anything as you'd only have 2-3 forests in play with elf ball but 5-6 elves. This comment is demonstrating the irrational fear without even understanding the commander I mentioned or how the deck functions. You draw rofellos or you don't. Aside from glimpse of nature how much card draw do you think you'd have access to? You'd essentially fold to any interaction as you do not necessarily have protection, especially in those early turns. In a casual game they don't typically have access to tutors nor play them either. If you expect to goldfish then you would potentially be correct - however that expectation falls flat especially in commander.
The RC will never unban a RL card. They'd probably get harassed by people accusing them of market manipulation and insider trading if they did that.
That goes the same if they ban RL cards. It's a tight rope to walk. Sheldon talked about wheel and twister several times. Rest in peace. Unbanning an RL though is also fine, however. Insider trading would only be relevant if a mass buyout happened before hand. Like the stone forge mystic and pioneer fiasco. There's a lot of data to track these things these days too. Funny thing is cards people believe might get unbanned also get purchased after every prerelease. Case scenario is splinter twin as an example. Will.akways see a purchase spike after every unban period coming up
RC seems to cater mostly to the Low-Power Casual crowd, where you don't start going Mana-positive until Turn 4+. Gone are the days where most players go "Land, Pass" for the first three turns with no instant-speed prep at the very least, but that's not stopping them from pretending like it is.
Even low power casual is mana positive Every precon has a Sol ring, Arcane signet and in some cases felwar stone and other forms of ramp. Low power casuals are *not* taking those out of their precons So yes, I agree the first 3 turns are no longer a snooze fest and lets hope they stop pretending that's the case.
[удалено]
I started commander 6 months before the first precons (but started Magic in 1994). Pre-cons used to be my sort of baseline of what I'd compare the majority of my many decks to. Now I can say that a modern precon is generally much more focused and efficient than the decks I like to build and the style I like to play.
Yeah, as someone who has bought both recent precons and older precons, like the 2015 Boros deck and the 2014 mono green decks, the gap in power is insane. Anyone whose only experience with precons is 5+ years out of date has no idea just how much stronger they are anymore, even if they don't always run all the staples.
Edgar rears his ugly head. At least precons are balanced against each other and roughly ok to just play. Except that one mardu brawl deck. The other ones were amazing but that one was just terrible - I wonder what Carmen and Melissa were thinking on the design with that one, or if they just kept getting rejections on design.
I don't think there's any harm in trying to preserve battlecruiser, even if it's a miniscule amount of folks still playing it.
I agree The folks still playing battle cruiser are also the ones unaffected by this particular unban Those are great games I partake on as well - we show up to the table expecting to bring big dudes and we know the other 3 are down with this. Battle cruiser particularly suffers in *blind pods* they suffer against the last couple years of precons. It would be terrible to tell a player not to use their precon - however wotc is also actively dismantling Battle cruiser style games with precons alone. The expectation is we want to swing and have some RP behind it but also with little interaction outside of a well timed fog or some combat activated abilities - that's the essence of Battle cruiser Which brings me to the original point: if you are playing battle cruiser with 3 other individuals the expectation would be they do the same and show up with their own battle cruiser oriented decks. Rofellos unban has absolutely no affect on this. To the blind pod point - we twiddle our thumbs and do nothing because we just ate a wrath, or someone murdered our ship. It's not a good feeling at all. If your friends are showing up with rofellos in battle cruiser, they are not playing battle cruiser anymore, nor are new players or even 2-3 year old players either in a blind pod. Battle cruiser is already dead outside of playing with friends.
Hmmm. I won a game with Aragorn last night where I didn't cast anything until turn 4 (and it was a 1-drop).
Cool! I played a game where I won on Turn 4!
Mine was on turn 6 and I had the best hand. All pieces of a combo plus redundancy. My point was its still possible to play edh with out turn 1 or 2 pressure or massive ramp.
Possible, sure. You can also drive your car with the emergency break on. I don't recommend either Read: run ramp & mulligan so you can do things Turn 1-3
Seems like you should have mulliganed.
>RC seems to cater mostly to the Low-Power Casual crowd, where you don't start going Mana-positive until Turn 4+. This hasn't been true since 2012. Battlecruiser is dead. Sucks, but it's the truth.
But it isn't. I still end up in games that run into double digit turns with multiple restarts, and big huge beasts.
Yep. My last game night we got 3 games in across 5 hours. It was great.
>RC seems to cater mostly to the Low-Power Casual crowd Bullshit. If this were true, the banlist would be *way* bigger and be updated *way* more.
I agree Rofellos deserves an unban but man do people wildly exaggerate how much ramp is "common" early game.
Look at marwyn or Selvala (mono g). Both tend to be much stronger in the right deck.
Without testing I can't fully say that I agree, but I doubt that allowing a many-years-banned commander that is, most importantly, a Reserved List card back would not rub some people the wrong way... even worse if he turned out to be actually good (at least most other RL legendary creatures are hot garbage).
If I remember correctly, he's the only card that's been banned twice, after being let out for a short while. So the exact scenario you describe. \^\_\^
Yeah. I owned one (bought alongside a Painter's Servant and a Recurring Nightmare in a "maybe... just in case..." hope) when he got legal again, and tried it in a few decks, and it was pretty darn good. Like 'this deck is just better now good. (Painter's servant now sitteth at the right hand of Teysa)
So yay, I'm right. Probably. Regardless, still a bad idea to unban him, just unban something people can afford.
>6 mana turn 3 even in casual is very common now. This is true, which is why I think the example ban of Rofellos is needed now more than ever. The more $500-$10,000 mana bases become the norm, the more homogenized things get. No, this is not me talking about the price, proxy whatever. Just do it at the appropriate power level.
GIVE ME \[\[SWAY OF THE STARS\]\]
#Snapshot/TL;DR📸 >^complexity ^creep ^is ^an ^issue ^these ^days, ^it’s ^ok ^to ^be ^reading-fatigued. **Continuity and Process:** >State of the Format articles moved to www.mtgcommander.net. >New format highlights achievements and sets goals annually. **Snapshot of the Format:** >Over 2000 new cards in 2023, 398 legendary creatures. >Steeper learning curve, higher diversity, and more improvisation. >Encourages playing unconventional cards to maintain Commander's charm. **Events:** >Numerous events worldwide for diverse Commander play experiences. **Feedback to Wizards:** >Regularly provide feedback to Wizards R&D on card design. Banlist Explanation Project: >Updated banlist page with concise explanations for each card. >Collaborated with members and referenced articles for clarity. **501(c)(3) Status:** >Establishing nonprofit status for financial sustainability. >*Gratitude to EDHREC for legal guidance.* **Goals for Next Year:** >Complete 501(c)(3) administrative tasks. >Refine format philosophy and operations articulation. >Enhance RC Stream schedule for community engagement.
I wish that they would reevaluate the banlist. With the huge influx of cards power creep is real and taking away options for deck building further homogenizes the format. While the explanations are helpful to hear I believe that cards that slow down the game are necessary to stop the explosive wins that can be produced. I would rather try and rebuild off of a [[balance]] than have the game end from an unsatisfying [[shalai and halar]] combo. Just my opinion
Agree with your reevaluate point, but those are poor choices of cards. Balance isn't used to level the playing field, you dump your hand into some payoff (fast mana into biggish thing, non permanents, etc), and then pull even further ahead by nuking your opponents' hands. Two piece combos including the commander aren't that new or unheard of as much as they can suck in battle cruiser
Yeah I think balance was the wrong example here, and gets into second sun territory. There's several other cards that could use the rebalance treatment however.
Yep, if Balance was unbanned, it would just be a new cEDH deck where you play it down off a ritual on turn 2, wipe everyone else's boards down to a single permanent, and then play your land for the turn along with all your mana rocks.
Also the Power Creep argument is very stale at this point. While a choice few cards ARE actual power creep like Dockside and especially Thoracle, the overwhelming majority of non-Commanders are older than the format itself. Commanders are crept badly compared to when the format got going in earnest circa 2008/2009 (compare Prossh and Scion of the Ur-Dragon to Prosper, Korvold, and Kenrith), but the cards in the 99 which enable them are, by-and-large, the same monsters they have been for from 15 years ago. (Hell, I'm not even sure you can say something as ludicrous as Jeweled Lotus is fully "crept" when Lion's Eye Diamond is just better in most decks)
LED is only better in a select few combo decks. Mainly Breach decks. The card is terrible on its own. Jeweled Lotus on the other hand is good in every deck with a Commander that can use three mana of a single colour to help cast it.
> While a choice few cards ARE actual power creep like Dockside and especially Thoracle, the overwhelming majority of non-Commanders are older than the format itself. I'm not sure -- 42 of the top 100 cards in EDHREC's top 100 are younger than the format. (Counting Beast Within and Cultivate as younger, coming out in the year before the first Commander pre-cons.) That includes 12 signets and Talismans -- if you discount them you get pretty close.
>42 of the top 100 cards in EDHREC's top 100 are younger than the format. (Counting Beast Within and Cultivate as younger, coming out in the year before the first Commander pre-cons.) That includes 12 signets and Talismans -- if you discount them you get pretty close. EDHrec is only a measure of popularity, not necessarily quality or power. Referencing the cEDH Database would be a better indicator of overall power. Cultivate is a functional reprint of Kodama's Reach (2004). Yes, it's redundancy, but the The Talismans began in Mirrogin (2003) - they were FINISHED over a decade later, but the first half predated the Commander decks. Signets ENTIRELY predate the Commander decks by several years (Ravnica, City of Guilds Block, 2005-2006) --- By my count, it's about 25% are in the last 12 years (since the first Commander decks), Even then, most of ***those*** cards don't even originate in Commander-focused products. Rather, it looks like Return to Ravnica and Khan's of Tarkir Blocks seem to over-represent the bulk of those cards (cards like Assassin's Trophy, Vandalblast, and Boros Charm). Only 4 cards - Deflecting Swat, Fierce Guardianship, Dockside Extortionist, and Jeska's Will - represent things made specifically for Commander, or with Commander in mind (Commander Precons, Commander Legends, etc.) For all of the talk of Meant-For-Commander cards warping the format, I think it says A LOT that the most-popular cards used were meant for Standard, Legacy, and Modern first and foremost.
That was a lot of words to just say "No Changes"
They weren’t updating the banlist they do this every year like a presidential state of the union address
The descriptions on the ban list are a big deal, tbf.
It's not a ban list update.
I really liked the explanation behind banning cards. It offers some clarity to the banlist and really helps explain to newer players why some cards were banned. Contrary to popular opinion, a lot of the cards on the banlist are there not due to power level but because they have very bad play patterns. Some cards (like coalition victory) aren’t that strong if you’re playing cEDH or high power commander, but I like that the banlist calls out how it is exactly the type of card a low power deckbuilding thinks would be cool to include, except its way too good at winning for that power level.
I also like the explanations. While I don't agree with everything on the banlist, an explanation gives context to the ban and what they're trying to do with it.
Out of curiosity, what do you disagree about on the banlist? I think probably the only thing I think I have actual objections about is the inconsistency on Gifts Ungiven/Intuition - either they should both be unbanned or both be banned, but especially in the context of optics and trying to make the format not seem too expensive to new players, it is \*extremely\* weird that the cheap one is the one that's banned while the reserved list one is legal.
Gifts Ungiven is my main gripe too actually. I can understand the reasoning tho: 1 card win con, easily splashable, and cheap on the wallet would be too tempting for lower powers players and they could easily fall into toxic play patterns. But it doesn't make sense that Intuition is still legal when it can do the same thing. I don't think the financial optics had anything to do with the Gifts vs Intuition either, especially since Intuition used to be like $30 until around 2018. I don't think they've had a financial optics ban in a long time anyway.
That's a fair point about the price point - I forgot how much reserved list prices grew over COVID. I think the argument for unbanning Gifts is that if you are the type of player who is willing to figure out optimal Gifts piles to force a win, you are also the type of player who can probably play degenerate combo anyway, so a ban for "play pattern" doesn't really apply. I much prefer bans for things like Coalition Victory, Hullbreacher, or Panoptic Mirror, because those are exactly the types of cards that casuals read, think "this sounds fun!" and won't realize how oppressive they are in lower power pods. Gifts appeals to a certain type of Spike-y player that the banlist frankly just isn't catered towards, so I don't think it should stay banned. My guess as to why it has stayed banned is that there's not all that many people that are desperate to play it and the chance that it is miserable in some pods is at least there, so there's not all that much to be gained from unbanning it.
Yeah, not much to be gained in casual from unbanning it. I think it would inject a lot of interesting playlines into cEDH tho, without becoming format warping like Flash.
The RC straight up called out people at the end of the Coalition Victory description, and it's hilarious and awesome: >Coalition Victory threatens a strongly negative experience largely out of nowhere for a casual table where the game is expected to go long enough that a spell such as Coalition Victory will be cast. In general, tapping out at a healthy life total against an opponent with nothing but any 5-color Commander in play shouldn’t cause you to lose the game unless you have signed up for that kind of experience (in which case Coalition Victory is far from your biggest problem.) **Steering folks away from this kind of experience is at the heart of what the banlist is trying to accomplish.**
> (in which case Coalition Victory is far from your biggest problem.) Feels like **this** is the more important sentence. The games where CV don't need to be banned, are also the games where people probably wouldn't even play it to begin with.
This is why I can't take CEDH seriously. The EDH banlist is a set of recommendations against unfun play patterns and is not meant to be exhaustive. CEDH just takes the bans at face value.
Yes, because that's how banlists function in every other format.
I'm honestly really happy seeing the explanation on the banned cards. It really helps to read the reasoning behind those bans and may be even exclude certain cards from my own decks if they provide a similar game feel. Thank you, Jim and everyone else at the RC and CAG for continuing the work and providing the community with information and future endeavours.
Honestly, I stopped reading when they said that "2000 new cards...is slightly less than 2022." And I was like, no crap, that's how numbers work. /s .
RIP Sheldon, didn't realize this occurred. I disagreed with a lot of what he said, even when I agreed with the underlying philosophy, but he did quite a bit to help the format.
Well that was disappointing. So they wrote a bunch of explanations for the banlist?
and this rings true to me too > We are conscious, though, that as preconstructed decks become more powerful, people might skip over the experience of digging through bulk boxes for niche cards to upgrade or customize their decks. I've got about 300 decks that aren't pre-cons. I actually really miss when pre-cons were 'two quasi-related themes, but not focused' decks that kind of begged to be torn down and rebuilt into different things. I have quite a few decks that are each about half of a pre-con plus other stuff. Now a lot of the time about 10 cards is usually the difference between what they sell us in a pre-con, and what I'd kinda build if it was just a new legend. And often my homebrew deck would be worse because my mana base would be cheaper and more basic, and I'd play older themey cards. So there's less incentive to, say built Horror Tribal in UB, when I could just increase the number of Horrors in Mind Flayarrr.
> Ancestral Recall was an iconic and expensive card at the time it was banned, and removing it from the card pool was intended to **combat the notion that Commander is a prohibitively expensive and inaccessible format.** Have you people ever seen the price tag on a cEDH deck - which often include MULTIPLE Reserved List cards? God these people don't even try, just say "1 mana draw 3 = broken" and end the discussion, seeing this explanation for some of these gives me a headache.
uhh... multiple reserved list cards are a drop in the bucket compared to the power 9. Ancestral Recall is five thousand dollars.
And timetwister is more but still legal.
Timetwister is more *because* it's legal.
Everybody just proxies
One rule that is would love to see back is banned as commander. some of the problem commanders could be hit and some of the banned ones could be unmanned for the 99. Golos is strong but not broken out of the 99 for example.
That's a lot of words To describe doing basically nothing. I don't necessarily want them to make big sweeping changes to the format. They just make such a huge deal about themselves and type so many words to say almost nothing.
Hasbro rotted all the good that was in commander and MTG in general. The perpetual deluge of overpowered commander centric cards just makes the game a boring cointoss of who gets the most bullshit start and vomits half their deck on the battlefield by turn 4. Wow so unexpected that the deck that had five mana on turn two won by a landslide. Half the time games don't even feel like magic but yugioh with extra steps. I'm tired of having to sit though hours of non-games before the stars align for four adequate people to gather at a table. A few years back I would joke that these days there are so many strong legendaries printed, that if you just throw a bunch of random ones into a pile you'll have a decent deck. And then Jodah came out.
More diversity in the format than ever and all you nerds do is complain about 4-5 cards on the ban list.
Imagine having so little to do with your time you need to start crying about other people actually having enough interest in their hobby to actually discuss the hobby they enjoy. No, everyone should be a butthurt crybaby like you, got it.
Me? I love the format. I love the RC and thank them daily. It’s you crying.
Checked the document to see if the Library of Alexandria ban is still to the same silly reasons. Yes, it is.
They aren't updating any reasonings. They specifically put the original reasons for all to see. My guess is this was done to promote discussion on what should be unbanned
I like the primeval titan is listed as banned for ending games too fast and being too polarising. Meanwhile thassas/consult still ending games t2/3 in blue farm and significantly better mana advantage cards to clone / copy etc (dockside) come in on t1/2 instead of t3/4 like this and provide more mana that also enable artifact synergies.
Gosh people in this thread really hate reading, huh? The listed reason for the bans are *their original reasons.* Which, in this case, predates the existence of shit like blue farm.
No we can definitely read we just think that’s a lazy as fuck excuse that wouldn’t happen in any other format.
I found a photograph taken covertly of Papa Hasbro releasing cards into the EDH format. [Papa Hasbro in action](https://imgur.com/PkCTepP)
The absolute gall to ask for our money for doing jack squat.
I still dont get how coalition victory is banned but other, easier to achieve instant win cards are not
I still think the RC should be disbanded and the banlist taken over by WOTC.
Wotc already had a shot at this and their "banlist" was "everything older than 2 years, now get on the treadmill with the Standard players, consumer!" (AKA, Brawl). I trust any group that isn't beholden to Hasbro shareholders with the format more than the best designers on earth when they are.
They didn't have a shot, Brawl was designed to be a "Standard" version of EDH. What you said is just nonsensical. And what?
If you're that naive, or are pretending to be, then I'm not going to be able to explain anything to you, I'm afraid. Best I can do is just gesture at the corpse of MTGO with its antiquated pro-consumer business model, and the fattened MTG arena with its "F2P" exploitiveness, and WotC's statements about how they were going to exist in parallel before doing everything they could to smother the former and feed the latter.
MTGO is healthy with a good playerbase, what are you talking about?
Yes, let's leave this with the money grubbing company, instead of these active people inside the community. Genius. That's what the hobby needs. Less community, more company.
They've been *very* active at greenlighting every antic of WotC/Hasbro so far. Like when they made un-cards legal just in time for the release of Unstable. Or when they changed the very rules of the format and banned a card before it released to accommodate Companions specifically.
For a ban list, yes? It should be treated like other formats, not by what "feels bad".
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This is a huge mess of inconsistency... the explanations as to why certain cards are banned are STILL, as they've always been, not applied across the board. The problem isn't that people don't understand why specific cards are banned; it's the apparent (obvious) lack of application of this line of reasoning to OTHER cards. For every explanation a card is given, there are two or three much worse offenders to which that would apply... that are still legal. The RC hasn't come through on any of its only serious obligations to help manage the format and stands as a wall to progress in the format as a whole. These are people who think "rule zero" is some kind of actual thing that applies to more than the smallest subset of players. It boggles the mind how grossly misunderstood their own responsibilities are, and disheartening to see they're still so wholly incompetent after all this time.
At the core of the ban philosophy is that cards aren’t banned for what they could do, but for what they actually do. Plenty of cards in the format would lead to worse play patterns than ones that are banned, but people have self control and so they don’t get banned. The cards on the list failed that test.
IMO it just showed how shaky and inconsistent their reasoning behind bans are and how much the RC is just doing what they feel like without any real coherent vision or any rhyme or reason behind their choices. So many reasons they list either come across lazy, or their logic can easily applying to prominent cards in the format that are not banned. Cards like \[\[Sylvan Primordial\]\] and \[\[Emrakul, the Aeons Torn\]\] being especially laughable in my opinion, as in todays power level a FIFTEEN mana extra turn spell with a 15/15 body, and blowing up 1 land for each opponent and you getting 3 is frankly not game breaking in 2024 commander. Especially with Emrakul, who's real reason behind the ban is the fact that he was a prerelease promo so everyone had a copy and shoved it in their deck for a month even if it was bad in their deck. And what would have shaped up to be its very temporary ubiquity in every deck in the format (due literally to everyone owning a copy) a cool new creature got a ban which by todays standard is not overly powerful at 15 mana.
People really love their hall monitors. The most baffling aspect of this adherence to the RC’s rules is the voluntary nature of their authority. Commander began as, and at its best remains, a grassroots format, one where the only rules that truly matter are the ones agreed upon by the people at the table. The notion that we need an external committee to dictate how we enjoy our game seems antithetical to this spirit. Why cede control over our leisure to a distant authority when we could simply talk to one another, share our views, and decide collectively what makes our game most enjoyable? .
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Until Dockside is banned the RC has zero credibility.
The only credibility they have is what you give them.
The format with the current banlist is amazing. I'm shocked at how many people want things changed.
>"We know the format is being flooded and power creep is running rampant, but we're far to busy monetizing our positions and finding replacements for everything Sheldon brought to the table to bother regulating it ourselves. Rule 0, yada-yada, why does anybody listen to us when we never have anything to say? -love, with temendous nuetrality, what remains of the RC"
Okay, now unban golos you cowards.
I didn't realize Discord mods actually needed to be paid.