Our group's been successfully playing with no banned list for some time now (well, almost - Channel is still banned). We have our reasons, and it's worked really well for us - we see a lot of very diverse decks, lots of exciting games, and surprisingly little degeneracy.
So I began to wonder why that might be. Why was our decision to remove the banned list so successful?
And it dawned on me - we play quick games. I mean, "quick" by EDH standards is still 30-45 minutes, but that lets us play 5-6 games in a sit-down. As a result, we see LOTS of decks (people rarely want to play the same deck more than once per session, so people both build and play a variety), so there's automatically more diversity, more uniqueness.
Second, the fact that the games are a bit quicker means that you're actually LESS likely to see the degenerate card at all! Think about it - the longer a game goes, the more likely someone is to draw Tooth & Nail (or tutor for it). If every game you play goes 20 turns, it's almost guaranteed that you'll see that card every game as long as at least one player has it in their deck. But with better decks and quicker games, the very cards we unbanned become LESS dominating! I mean, I've never even SEEN someone cast Biorhythm (pro tip: because it sucks), and the one time someone cast Coalition Victory, their five-color creature (the Maelstrom Angel they used to cast it for free - SO AWESOME) got Word of Seizing-ed in response and nothing happened.
Even when you factor in tutors, quicker, more intense gameplay increases the likelihood that you'll need to tutor for something else, like an answer, and thus again the power of Emrakul is lessened. In our group, if someone actually manages to pull off ol' Emmy (and we don't have answers; most of the time, we do) and swing for the win - awesome!
Glad to see clearer heads in your area are prevailing. My groups take the banned list as gospel. Its sad really. Sure there are some wtf cards, but for the most part, a lot of them aren't really good cards, just annoying cards.
Yeah, most of the people in my group didn't even know there was a banned list until I showed it to them. And they were really confused by most cards on it. They were like "Don't the people who design this list have removal in their decks?"
We believe in answers. Most people around here run one or more Jester's Cap-type effects, and if it's in color, they run counters, exile effects, nevermore-type effects, discard and land destruction. You know... Magic cards? Cards designed to be played in Magic? That keep otherwise degenerate cards in check?
I mean, no one forces you to - but those cards hardly "dilute" your deck. They're versatile answers to any card you don't like.
a lot of us don't want to play against emmy or borken mana accel cards. I am one of these people. but I guess everyone has a way of enjoying the game.
No degenerate that what is already possible with today's commander decks, and those type of decks are generally kept in check by the social interaction of "get that **** out of here".
I'm really happy to hear that your play group works FponkDamn, but I would still keep Shahrazad out. That card's a troll. If I remember correctly, there is a combo that chains like 50 copies of that card in order to force rage quits. Not to mention it gets ridiculous with Hive Mind, ad Eye of the Storm.
Yeah, most of the people in my group didn't even know there was a banned list until I showed it to them. And they were really confused by most cards on it. They were like "Don't the people who design this list have removal in their decks?"
We believe in answers. Most people around here run one or more Jester's Cap-type effects, and if it's in color, they run counters, exile effects, nevermore-type effects, discard and land destruction. You know... Magic cards? Cards designed to be played in Magic? That keep otherwise degenerate cards in check?
I mean, no one forces you to - but those cards hardly "dilute" your deck. They're versatile answers to any card you don't like.
And they keep you from needing a banned list.
The problem with this is that people new to the format don't want their favorite cards exiled from their deck so they can't play them. They also won't know what cards to pull from another persons deck. I find that most people at my LGS don't understand threat assessment, let alone knowing what cards are combo pieces and know which ones to pull and exile out of a players deck. Furthermore I don't want to sit there while someone who doesn't know what they're doing to look through my deck for ten minutes before they finally let me take my turn. I could see this in a very tight meta, but when you play different people every week it seems less like a useful idea and more like a pain in the ass to sit through. EDH is also considered a 'casual' format, those that play cut throat standard every week want a relaxing reprieve from the grind of Standard / Legacy play and want to play a long exciting EDH game aren't going to enjoy this either.
With that said, I have my more spiteful decks and my more casual decks and we seldomly run into degenerate cards or combos.
in my group the ban list is practically essential, as we tend to gun for big splashy spells and plays. So, as is almost always the case, when someone brought out TAN, Emrakul was sure to follow. After we banned it (before it was officially banned), only then were we able to look towards a more different experience all around
A lot of stuff on the banlist could reasonably come off. I'd still leave some of it on though, or you could see a lot of degeneracy. Think 5c Hermit Druid is bad now? Wait until it adds a full set of power.
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Shaharazad probably would be bad, but no one's played it. I do believe someone mentioned wanting to use Enter the Dungeon, though.
Here's my experience with new players. New players might care a little about Jester's Cap exiling their "favorite" cards, but they care about arbitrarily not being allowed to even run those cards a LOT more. Most new players to EDH that I've met have never seen the banned list, and many are quite upset when they find out they can't run Painter's Servant or some such garbage because they had a cool Dromar, the Banisher deck and wanted to use his ability.
And I'll never, ever believe in playing "soft" on a new player. I won't be a jerk; if I'm playing a new player, I'll be courteous and explain why I'm doing certain things, give strategic advice, etc. - but I will always play my best. That's how people get good.
Remember - there's no universal definition of "casual" except to mean literally, not playing for prizes. For us, "casual" means play whatever cards you want (moxes, protean hulk, recurring nightmare, whatever), drink beers, and try your damnedest to kill the other players. Bonus points if you're hilarious.
Personally, I think before any group should consider a banned list, they need to VERY clearly and specifically list what they want the banned list to accomplish. What are their actual goals? You can't just say "prevent degeneracy" because that's WAY too broad. You can say, "I want every game of EDH to last a minimum of 2 hours, I want combat damage or creature-only combos to be the only way anyone wins, and I don't like infect." Then you can make a banned list. But if you just say "I want the game to be fun," you haven't said ANYTHING helpful towards creating a policy.
I mean, look at the RC's banned list. What's their actual "mission statement?" What have they claimed to have wanted to accomplish with this specific list of cards? Is it to eliminate all combo? Obviously they failed. Eliminate the "worst" combo? Define "worst." Eliminate "un-fun" cards? Define "un-fun."
You see my point? They say the banned list is needed for the health of the game. Well - I challenge you to define "health of the game!" Is it number of people who play? Number of groups? Diversity of decks? The RC doesn't even have a way to measure any of that junk, let alone determine objectively if the banned list is "helping." I mean, I feel our playgroup is pretty healthy!
That was always my beef with the banned list; it's not that one card should be on it, but this other card shouldn't, or what have you. It's that if you have an entire format designed to be played with your buddies for no stakes whatsoever, there's not much point in having a tournament-format-style banned list. In Legacy, a turn-1 hulk win means a game loss and a potential step towards losing a tournament. In EDH, is just means... new game? And that only took one minute? Also, we're just going to keep our hands. You reshuffle.
Sounds like your play group has a firm grasp on their own abilities to govern themselves. Kudo's to you. Most of my play group would be building stupid, un fun, master-comb0-nator decks in a heart beat. You are hard pressed to find a group of players who can collectively build decks without the ban list (which is only suggested) and not throw hissy fits. Hell, that happens here all the time...
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The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, ****s, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dikheads — they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.
EDH DECKS:
BGWKarador: Rock out with your **** out RGBorBor Unragey: Lightning bolts for everyone BGUMimeoplasm: +1/+1 counters RWUZedruu- Free off the top forging
The problem with this is that people new to the format don't want their favorite cards exiled from their deck so they can't play them.
You mean most players don't understand that without a tutor a card in your library might as well not exist. Or that most players don't know how to build a deck that survive with a few cards being exiled.
Being "unable" to play your favorite card is purely psychological and until they get beyond that they are restricted from much of the game.
People still run combo decks. The best of them use combos that aren't banned now, anyway. Rings/Monolith is still the easiest infinite mana combo around, and can be done on turn 1 with ease, banned list or no. And again... so? Turn 1 combo-outs are meaningless when you're not playing for stakes and there's nothing keeping you from playing another game.
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
So you have no ban list, except channel cause that's busted. That sounds like you actually let a few cards off the list rather than no list at all. I guessing you started with no ban list and then channel got back on after a second turn eldrazi. Power will be unbanned until someone brings them to your group and crushes the table with a turn 1 balance. Or anything with limited resources. So in effect there's still a ban list players are deliberately not building decks that can go off through a whole table of hate.
So you have no ban list, except channel cause that's busted. That sounds like you actually let a few cards off the list rather than no list at all. I guessing you started with no ban list and then channel got back on after a second turn eldrazi. Power will be unbanned until someone brings them to your group and crushes the table with a turn 1 balance. Or anything with limited resources. So in effect there's still a ban list players are deliberately not building decks that can go off through a whole table of hate.
This seems to be the most true. As much as I really hate the ban list in a 'casual' format, some of the cards on it are extremely warranted.
Are people also using Un-cards and ante cards as well(I'm assuming you'd ignore the ante clause)? I'm a pretty huge advocate of some of the Un-cards but not the Ante ones.
a lot of us don't want to play against emmy or borken mana accel cards. I am one of these people. but I guess everyone has a way of enjoying the game.
you played against it until the council told you not to. Here here soldier.
I love what you are doing and Ill try to start this trend with my group. I love unbanning cards, even in modern and legacy. Lets so how this turns out!
Other than cards like the Power 9, most of the cards on there shouldn't be.
EDH is already full of broken quick-kill combos anyway. There's no point to keep other ones on the banned list if games are already made dumb by things like Basalt Monolith + Rings.
I once farted during the final match for prizes at an FNM. It was a tense moment, everything was quiet, control vs control, I was about to mana leak, thought about it.. and farted. Then mana leaked.
I am just more impressed to see a playgroup understand that they don't need some "council" telling people how what is broken and isn't broken, because their group doesn't have the will power to just NOT play stupid cards.
That's what this boils down too. Their group (edh council) started out with dbags, and so they had to make the list. Instead of just saying, there are no banned cards in this format, though we would recommend your group come to an agreement on what works for YOUR group rather than tainting the card pool.
I once farted during the final match for prizes at an FNM. It was a tense moment, everything was quiet, control vs control, I was about to mana leak, thought about it.. and farted. Then mana leaked.
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So I began to wonder why that might be. Why was our decision to remove the banned list so successful?
And it dawned on me - we play quick games. I mean, "quick" by EDH standards is still 30-45 minutes, but that lets us play 5-6 games in a sit-down. As a result, we see LOTS of decks (people rarely want to play the same deck more than once per session, so people both build and play a variety), so there's automatically more diversity, more uniqueness.
Second, the fact that the games are a bit quicker means that you're actually LESS likely to see the degenerate card at all! Think about it - the longer a game goes, the more likely someone is to draw Tooth & Nail (or tutor for it). If every game you play goes 20 turns, it's almost guaranteed that you'll see that card every game as long as at least one player has it in their deck. But with better decks and quicker games, the very cards we unbanned become LESS dominating! I mean, I've never even SEEN someone cast Biorhythm (pro tip: because it sucks), and the one time someone cast Coalition Victory, their five-color creature (the Maelstrom Angel they used to cast it for free - SO AWESOME) got Word of Seizing-ed in response and nothing happened.
Even when you factor in tutors, quicker, more intense gameplay increases the likelihood that you'll need to tutor for something else, like an answer, and thus again the power of Emrakul is lessened. In our group, if someone actually manages to pull off ol' Emmy (and we don't have answers; most of the time, we do) and swing for the win - awesome!
Next game?
a lot of us don't want to play against emmy or borken mana accel cards. I am one of these people. but I guess everyone has a way of enjoying the game.
We believe in answers. Most people around here run one or more Jester's Cap-type effects, and if it's in color, they run counters, exile effects, nevermore-type effects, discard and land destruction. You know... Magic cards? Cards designed to be played in Magic? That keep otherwise degenerate cards in check?
I mean, no one forces you to - but those cards hardly "dilute" your deck. They're versatile answers to any card you don't like.
And they keep you from needing a banned list.
No degenerate that what is already possible with today's commander decks, and those type of decks are generally kept in check by the social interaction of "get that **** out of here".
The problem with this is that people new to the format don't want their favorite cards exiled from their deck so they can't play them. They also won't know what cards to pull from another persons deck. I find that most people at my LGS don't understand threat assessment, let alone knowing what cards are combo pieces and know which ones to pull and exile out of a players deck. Furthermore I don't want to sit there while someone who doesn't know what they're doing to look through my deck for ten minutes before they finally let me take my turn. I could see this in a very tight meta, but when you play different people every week it seems less like a useful idea and more like a pain in the ass to sit through. EDH is also considered a 'casual' format, those that play cut throat standard every week want a relaxing reprieve from the grind of Standard / Legacy play and want to play a long exciting EDH game aren't going to enjoy this either.
With that said, I have my more spiteful decks and my more casual decks and we seldomly run into degenerate cards or combos.
Sharazad - people would be pissed off when I try to play it.
Yawgmoth's Bargain - Someone asked if he could put this in his deck. We said no.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Here's my experience with new players. New players might care a little about Jester's Cap exiling their "favorite" cards, but they care about arbitrarily not being allowed to even run those cards a LOT more. Most new players to EDH that I've met have never seen the banned list, and many are quite upset when they find out they can't run Painter's Servant or some such garbage because they had a cool Dromar, the Banisher deck and wanted to use his ability.
And I'll never, ever believe in playing "soft" on a new player. I won't be a jerk; if I'm playing a new player, I'll be courteous and explain why I'm doing certain things, give strategic advice, etc. - but I will always play my best. That's how people get good.
Remember - there's no universal definition of "casual" except to mean literally, not playing for prizes. For us, "casual" means play whatever cards you want (moxes, protean hulk, recurring nightmare, whatever), drink beers, and try your damnedest to kill the other players. Bonus points if you're hilarious.
Personally, I think before any group should consider a banned list, they need to VERY clearly and specifically list what they want the banned list to accomplish. What are their actual goals? You can't just say "prevent degeneracy" because that's WAY too broad. You can say, "I want every game of EDH to last a minimum of 2 hours, I want combat damage or creature-only combos to be the only way anyone wins, and I don't like infect." Then you can make a banned list. But if you just say "I want the game to be fun," you haven't said ANYTHING helpful towards creating a policy.
I mean, look at the RC's banned list. What's their actual "mission statement?" What have they claimed to have wanted to accomplish with this specific list of cards? Is it to eliminate all combo? Obviously they failed. Eliminate the "worst" combo? Define "worst." Eliminate "un-fun" cards? Define "un-fun."
You see my point? They say the banned list is needed for the health of the game. Well - I challenge you to define "health of the game!" Is it number of people who play? Number of groups? Diversity of decks? The RC doesn't even have a way to measure any of that junk, let alone determine objectively if the banned list is "helping." I mean, I feel our playgroup is pretty healthy!
That was always my beef with the banned list; it's not that one card should be on it, but this other card shouldn't, or what have you. It's that if you have an entire format designed to be played with your buddies for no stakes whatsoever, there's not much point in having a tournament-format-style banned list. In Legacy, a turn-1 hulk win means a game loss and a potential step towards losing a tournament. In EDH, is just means... new game? And that only took one minute? Also, we're just going to keep our hands. You reshuffle.
End of Line
EDH DECKS:
BGWKarador: Rock out with your **** out
RGBorBor Unragey: Lightning bolts for everyone
BGUMimeoplasm: +1/+1 counters
RWUZedruu- Free off the top forging
(U/B)(U/B)(U/B) JUMP IN THE LINE, ROCK YOUR BODY IN TIME
(R/W)(R/W)(R/W) RISING FROM THE NEON GLOOM, SHINING LIKE A CRAZY MOON
(U/R)(R/G)(G/U) STEALIN' WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUYIN'
You mean most players don't understand that without a tutor a card in your library might as well not exist. Or that most players don't know how to build a deck that survive with a few cards being exiled.
Being "unable" to play your favorite card is purely psychological and until they get beyond that they are restricted from much of the game.
I just wanna play with Recurring Nightmare... is that too much to ask?
Experimental Kraj
This seems to be the most true. As much as I really hate the ban list in a 'casual' format, some of the cards on it are extremely warranted.
Are people also using Un-cards and ante cards as well(I'm assuming you'd ignore the ante clause)? I'm a pretty huge advocate of some of the Un-cards but not the Ante ones.
you played against it until the council told you not to. Here here soldier.
I love what you are doing and Ill try to start this trend with my group. I love unbanning cards, even in modern and legacy. Lets so how this turns out!
EDH is already full of broken quick-kill combos anyway. There's no point to keep other ones on the banned list if games are already made dumb by things like Basalt Monolith + Rings.
That's what this boils down too. Their group (edh council) started out with dbags, and so they had to make the list. Instead of just saying, there are no banned cards in this format, though we would recommend your group come to an agreement on what works for YOUR group rather than tainting the card pool.
agree or disagree, i don't care, its true.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Cards are not broken, players are broken.
Nah, cards are pretty broken.