I'm not much of a Modern player and I don't play Pauper so these bans don't directly affect me, but I really don't like the anti-combo stance WotC are taking in recent years - they're killing off a popular and long-established part of the game.
As someone who has played Pauper almost exclusively for the last 4 years or so this is definitely the impression I'm getting. First they banned every card that could possibly make Storm combo a viable strategy, then Infect, and now Esper Familiars/High Tide (the latter for the paper Pauper players). Every time a combo deck consistent enough to become competitively viable enters the format they ban a core card essential to make the deck work.
I'm pretty disappointed in Wizards for basically saying "Pauper must be an aggro and control only format. No combo will be allowed." I haven't played Modern myself, but the last few years of bannings certainly make it look like they're trying to remove combo from that format as well. Thank goodness for Legacy... Oh wait, Legacy costs a small fortune to play and Wizards has all but completely stopped supporting it. =P
Twin has evolved HUGELY from being the "eot flash creature, untap cast twin...I win?" deck into a much more grindy deck, that can just win at any point.
Is turning a turn-four deck into a turn-six or turn-eight deck really doing anything though?
When that deck becomes insanely efficient at everything it does, and then just wins with a 2 card combo, all the while having the ability to just win on turn 4, it's a little oppressive.
I'm not much of a Modern player and I don't play Pauper so these bans don't directly affect me, but I really don't like the anti-combo stance WotC are taking in recent years - they're killing off a popular and long-established part of the game.
I am a Prison player. Think about how I feel.....!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
I'm not much of a Modern player and I don't play Pauper so these bans don't directly affect me, but I really don't like the anti-combo stance WotC are taking in recent years - they're killing off a popular and long-established part of the game.
As someone who has played Pauper almost exclusively for the last 4 years or so this is definitely the impression I'm getting. First they banned every card that could possibly make Storm combo a viable strategy, then Infect, and now Esper Familiars/High Tide (the latter for the paper Pauper players). Every time a combo deck consistent enough to become competitively viable enters the format they ban a core card essential to make the deck work.
I'm pretty disappointed in Wizards for basically saying "Pauper must be an aggro and control only format. No combo will be allowed." I haven't played Modern myself, but the last few years of bannings certainly make it look like they're trying to remove combo from that format as well. Thank goodness for Legacy... Oh wait, Legacy costs a small fortune to play and Wizards has all but completely stopped supporting it. =P
But your cards retain value (until the point where proxies are so good everything is five bucks), the format is brilliant, and those who want to play combo/prison/whatever can. Who cares about support? Legacy is thirty guys in a room playing for whatever prize, not for SCG prize walls, not for anything other than enjoyment of the game at its very best. Simply not playing the "new players do not like counters, mana denial, uncounterables, removal, discard or anything else that is not a pox-ridden creature" standard is good enough reason to play Legacy.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
This could actually be the best thing for Twin long run IMHO. The die hard twin fans now have serious motivation to focus on fixing the problems keeping it from being a viable option in Legacy. Between mana accelerants and better cantrips/filtering I could see UR Twin resurface in a year or so as a serious Tier 2 Legacy deck. Without even trying Legacy Twin goes off a turn earlier, and if you want to push it to all in combo could probably be brought up to Turn 2 with a god hand (T1 Volcanic, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, flash exarch end of opponents turn, T2 Ancient Tomb, Twin, win.)
New member here, never posted but I'm on the boards relatively often. I've played Magic on and off over the last twelve or so years but I'm quite inexperienced in regard to the subtlety and nuances in a number of formats (Modern being one). That being said, I just had a question for those with more experience with the Modern format as well as the implications and complexities of bans/unbans. The premise behind my question boils down to what I interpret as a linear approach to bans where a single card (Pod, Twin, etc) is selected as being too "oppressive" and is then eliminated from the format. Could it not be slightly less abrasive to the player base for them to ban co-occurring cards in decks, for instance not allowing Splinter Twin to be played in conjunction with Deceiver Exarch/Pestermite, or for them to limit the number of cards required for a certain combo? If they restricted Splinter Twin to 2 in a deck and Pestermite/Exarch to 2/3 of in a deck, would it not curb the reliability and near-inevitablity of its dominance without needing to eliminate a deck completely?
Again, I'm a de facto novice when it comes to Modern for the most part, but I'm just wondering if the extrapolation of WotC's behaviour in regards to bans doesn't just lead to a ban list as long as my arm that essentially has no rhyme or reason beyond stamping out the flavor of the day. I'd also question whether it isn't time for the community to start policing the ban list themselves, as a few people have mentioned that bans may "coincidentally" occur to push a deck utilizing different, i.e newer, cards. The Eldrazi list is likely to capture many an imagination and encourage mass consumption of OotG product, while Twin may have been a deck that could have kept up with and restricted its potential dominance? The community is who plays the game at their LGSs, perhaps it's time for the community to decide whether they find SFM, Birthing Pod, Bloom, Twin, etc prohibitive in their environments?
I find it interesting that they chose to ban bloom rather than amulet. Killing amulet would have been a death sentence for certain, whereas nixing bloom leaves possibility. Bloom gives the most explosive draws, but keeps the core of the deck intact. I wonder if the deck survives upping the azusa count and slotting in some number of explores or journey of discoverys? It definitely slows things down, the question becomes is it still good enough if it isn't ever stealing the game on turn 2?
The twin ban is actually a huge shakeup though. While in some aspects, twin is the fairest of combo decks in that it was rather easy to interact with the combo, it was also a deck that fundamentally changed how decks were built. You are no longer nearly as constrained by your inability to tap out from turn 3 on. There isn't a deck in the format currently that punishes three drops or tapped shock lands on turn 3-4 the way that twin can. While I don't think that the ban was needed, and in fact I would rather that nothing had been banned and many things brought off the ban list, I am interested to see what happens to the format as a result. Many pros just had their pro tour deck yanked out from under them unexpectedly. Even those that aren't on twin certainly used it in any gauntlet testing done so far and will have to reevaluate what the format is going to look like. This is most likely the reason that they did not also unban anything.
I am highly disappointed in the lack of unbans for modern. This certainly calls the stoneforge promo into questionable territory, but more than that, there are many cards on the list that testing has shown do not need to be there. Some of those people have been asking to come off for a long time now. There is one card though on the list that I now find much less likely to come off as twin was one of the big reasons why it would have been safe- Jace, the Mind Sculptor. With one of the most common ways to punish tapping out for Jace banned, even a simultaneous unbanning of Bloodbraind Elf is likely not enough to let him free sadly. Regardless, I find that with quarterly B&R changes, they should be more liberal in their unbans to see where the format shakes out.
Shifting the comvo just a bit, a lot of the pros (okay, Kibler and LSV) are of the opinion that if there weren't a modern pro tour, wizard would be MUCH more laissez fair with the bannings.
I don't know if I agree or disagree with it, because I'm not sure how to evaluate the statement at all. Essentially, they believe that if modern was just a GP and FNM format, it could be a little bit more degenerate and unbalanced? Because people playing at FNM are going to play the cards they like/own. And GPs arent as high profile and are more about everyone getting together to play their favorite decks. It's... an interesting theory. If it's true, then I feel bad for *****ing about all standard pro tours. Can we switch to all standard pro tours?
Sooo much salt going on in this thread. Like it or not Twin is gone and wizards wants it that way. They believe it's percentage was high enough and it was powerful enough that it shouldn't be in modern. MM15 was probably made a year before it's release, and this ban list has probably been decided upon in the last 3 months. They didn't reprint Twin with banning it in mind. It probably wasn't even on their radars until 6 months ago, long after the contents of MM15 were unchangeable.
Also, Bloom certainly should be banned and I'm glad they did. I like Amulet and feel as a card ot has a space it can fit into one day. Banning Hive Mind (as someone locally was discussing) would work temporarily, but they would just find another win-win.
They're all competitive, so I say just kill all the things. Slash and burn, start fresh, and put all the players over a barrel for a little while. Honestly I feel like it's better than slow playing things picking off a deck at a time at this point, which has been a bit agonizing in my opinion.
Though, I'm sure with that list someone will find an archetype or two I forgot about and tell me how that will dominate the format and what a terrible person I am.
As a modern player, I'm very happy with these bans. I agree with the commenters here that Twin wasn't oppressive from a power level perspective, but it was pretty stifling from a diversity standpoint (I often ran into the question "why not just run twin?" and rarely had a compelling answer). Additionally, losing to twin often just felt bad because the window for interaction was so brief.
Bad feelings abound today, but I'm willing to bet that modern is in a better place following these changes.
I'm not much of a Modern player and I don't play Pauper so these bans don't directly affect me, but I really don't like the anti-combo stance WotC are taking in recent years - they're killing off a popular and long-established part of the game.
As someone who has played Pauper almost exclusively for the last 4 years or so this is definitely the impression I'm getting. First they banned every card that could possibly make Storm combo a viable strategy, then Infect, and now Esper Familiars/High Tide (the latter for the paper Pauper players). Every time a combo deck consistent enough to become competitively viable enters the format they ban a core card essential to make the deck work.
I'm pretty disappointed in Wizards for basically saying "Pauper must be an aggro and control only format. No combo will be allowed." I haven't played Modern myself, but the last few years of bannings certainly make it look like they're trying to remove combo from that format as well. Thank goodness for Legacy... Oh wait, Legacy costs a small fortune to play and Wizards has all but completely stopped supporting it. =P
When storm was a deck in Pauper, it warped much of the format around it. Without counterspells, you were racing a clock. That forced people to play blue, and this isn't like Legacy where you can splash a color easily. Pauper has basic lands and tap lands, every color you add only slows your deck. Storm definitely needed to be banned.
As for the Cloud of Faeries ban, blue delver decks that ran CoF and Esper Familiars made up 50% of the meta at one time. That is absolutely ridiculous for two decks to dominate a format with many archetypes to choose from. Esper Familiars had nearly no bad matchup. WotC isn't banning combo, they're banning a deck that had the answer to every problem. At WORST Esper Familiars would have matchups against decks where they only won 50% of the time.
Delver needed to be knocked down a little as well. As the explanation said, nine of the top ten played cards in Pauper are blue. Mono blue delver in Pauper has cards banned in Modern: Ponder, Preordain. Blue is very powerful in pauper, and this helps other colors take a foothold. Overall, this CoF ban is healthy for the format.
Obviously you have some sort of bias towards combo. If combo is what you want to play so badly, they are plenty of combo decks. Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond. (The Splinter Twin of pauper ironically) You can also pull this combo on turn 4.
There are plenty of combos to work with. The only difference is that these can be disrupted. Esper Familiars was nearly impossible to disrupt when had infinite mana, to give them infinite card draw, to let them counter anything you have, or kill you with the combo.
I really disagree with Splinter Twins ban. WotC seems to think that it will free up blue based control, under the assumption that the combo is just better and any player considering blue based control would end up just running the combo. They couple this with stating that it takes up too much of the meta. Other posters have already addressed the fact that its share of the meta isn't that large, and that it adheres to the no win before turn 4 rule. What WotC also ignores is that Twin decks play like traditional blue based control decks, and they just happen to use a combo rather than a strong creature or planeswalker as the win con. What they have done here is make blue based control weaker, which will empower linear combo decks and Tron.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I think everyone may be overreacting a little to how much Twin is getting nerfed. If you straight up go -4 Twin +4 Kiki-Jiki, the deck is still probably Tier 1.5, because it plays similarly aside from losing the turn 4 win (which is definitely huge).
A big point about this change is that it makes lightning bolt a viable answer against the combo regardless of the Twin/Copy target; where lightning bolt was blank against Exarch/Twin lines, Exarch/Kiki-Jiki can still be disrupted.
When storm was a deck in Pauper, it warped much of the format around it. Without counterspells, you were racing a clock. That forced people to play blue, and this isn't like Legacy where you can splash a color easily. Pauper has basic lands and tap lands, every color you add only slows your deck. Storm definitely needed to be banned.
As for the Cloud of Faeries ban, blue delver decks that ran CoF and Esper Familiars made up 50% of the meta at one time. That is absolutely ridiculous for two decks to dominate a format with many archetypes to choose from. Esper Familiars had nearly no bad matchup. WotC isn't banning combo, they're banning a deck that had the answer to every problem. At WORST Esper Familiars would have matchups against decks where they only won 50% of the time.
Delver needed to be knocked down a little as well. As the explanation said, nine of the top ten played cards in Pauper are blue. Mono blue delver in Pauper has cards banned in Modern: Ponder, Preordain. Blue is very powerful in pauper, and this helps other colors take a foothold. Overall, this CoF ban is healthy for the format.
Obviously you have some sort of bias towards combo. If combo is what you want to play so badly, they are plenty of combo decks. Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond. (The Splinter Twin of pauper ironically) You can also pull this combo on turn 4.
There are plenty of combos to work with. The only difference is that these can be disrupted. Esper Familiars was nearly impossible to disrupt when had infinite mana, to give them infinite card draw, to let them counter anything you have, or kill you with the combo.
The ban was framed as a ban of Familiars but you know MUD was a way bigger force and a much larger target than Familiars.
1-land spy is fun but it never did well enough to see any real play after that first week it was out. There is another Songs of the Damned deck looks similar to Modern's Living Death deck that may see more play. Banning Cloud knocked so many counter spells out of the game that risky 1 shot decks should fare better, but probably just more Elves and Jeskai.
New member here, never posted but I'm on the boards relatively often. I've played Magic on and off over the last twelve or so years but I'm quite inexperienced in regard to the subtlety and nuances in a number of formats (Modern being one). That being said, I just had a question for those with more experience with the Modern format as well as the implications and complexities of bans/unbans. The premise behind my question boils down to what I interpret as a linear approach to bans where a single card (Pod, Twin, etc) is selected as being too "oppressive" and is then eliminated from the format. Could it not be slightly less abrasive to the player base for them to ban co-occurring cards in decks, for instance not allowing Splinter Twin to be played in conjunction with Deceiver Exarch/Pestermite, or for them to limit the number of cards required for a certain combo? If they restricted Splinter Twin to 2 in a deck and Pestermite/Exarch to 2/3 of in a deck, would it not curb the reliability and near-inevitablity of its dominance without needing to eliminate a deck completely?
Again, I'm a de facto novice when it comes to Modern for the most part, but I'm just wondering if the extrapolation of WotC's behaviour in regards to bans doesn't just lead to a ban list as long as my arm that essentially has no rhyme or reason beyond stamping out the flavor of the day. I'd also question whether it isn't time for the community to start policing the ban list themselves, as a few people have mentioned that bans may "coincidentally" occur to push a deck utilizing different, i.e newer, cards. The Eldrazi list is likely to capture many an imagination and encourage mass consumption of OotG product, while Twin may have been a deck that could have kept up with and restricted its potential dominance? The community is who plays the game at their LGSs, perhaps it's time for the community to decide whether they find SFM, Birthing Pod, Bloom, Twin, etc prohibitive in their environments?
Letting the masses decide anything is always a bad idea. This doesn't just apply to Magic either. People are resistant to change, and refuse to believe that change might be good for them in the long run. They just want things to be easy.
Reading through this thread I think I've come around to understand these bans, and hopefully some of these will point to certain unbans in the future.
Reading Forsythe's Twitter last night was pretty interesting. He answered some of the questions posed in this thread pretty well in my opinion. He discussed future unbannings, and said they would look hard at unbanning Visions. They just didn't want to make such a huge change by banning two top decks and also unbanning at the same time (which is the right decision). It doesn't sound like he is in favor of unbanning Sword though.
As someone who has played Pauper almost exclusively for the last 4 years or so this is definitely the impression I'm getting. First they banned every card that could possibly make Storm combo a viable strategy, then Infect, and now Esper Familiars/High Tide (the latter for the paper Pauper players). Every time a combo deck consistent enough to become competitively viable enters the format they ban a core card essential to make the deck work.
I'm pretty disappointed in Wizards for basically saying "Pauper must be an aggro and control only format. No combo will be allowed." I haven't played Modern myself, but the last few years of bannings certainly make it look like they're trying to remove combo from that format as well. Thank goodness for Legacy... Oh wait, Legacy costs a small fortune to play and Wizards has all but completely stopped supporting it. =P
When that deck becomes insanely efficient at everything it does, and then just wins with a 2 card combo, all the while having the ability to just win on turn 4, it's a little oppressive.
Check out http://www.mtgbrodeals.com/author/john-murphy/ for my EDH articles!
I am a Prison player. Think about how I feel.....!
But your cards retain value (until the point where proxies are so good everything is five bucks), the format is brilliant, and those who want to play combo/prison/whatever can. Who cares about support? Legacy is thirty guys in a room playing for whatever prize, not for SCG prize walls, not for anything other than enjoyment of the game at its very best. Simply not playing the "new players do not like counters, mana denial, uncounterables, removal, discard or anything else that is not a pox-ridden creature" standard is good enough reason to play Legacy.
I don't know, but I definitely won't be playing the format when that happens.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
none
Modern
UBG B/U/G control
BBB MBC
WUR Control
WWW Prison
RRR Goblins
Legacy
BBB Pox
UBG B/U/G Control
UWU StoneBlade
UW Miracle Control
Again, I'm a de facto novice when it comes to Modern for the most part, but I'm just wondering if the extrapolation of WotC's behaviour in regards to bans doesn't just lead to a ban list as long as my arm that essentially has no rhyme or reason beyond stamping out the flavor of the day. I'd also question whether it isn't time for the community to start policing the ban list themselves, as a few people have mentioned that bans may "coincidentally" occur to push a deck utilizing different, i.e newer, cards. The Eldrazi list is likely to capture many an imagination and encourage mass consumption of OotG product, while Twin may have been a deck that could have kept up with and restricted its potential dominance? The community is who plays the game at their LGSs, perhaps it's time for the community to decide whether they find SFM, Birthing Pod, Bloom, Twin, etc prohibitive in their environments?
The twin ban is actually a huge shakeup though. While in some aspects, twin is the fairest of combo decks in that it was rather easy to interact with the combo, it was also a deck that fundamentally changed how decks were built. You are no longer nearly as constrained by your inability to tap out from turn 3 on. There isn't a deck in the format currently that punishes three drops or tapped shock lands on turn 3-4 the way that twin can. While I don't think that the ban was needed, and in fact I would rather that nothing had been banned and many things brought off the ban list, I am interested to see what happens to the format as a result. Many pros just had their pro tour deck yanked out from under them unexpectedly. Even those that aren't on twin certainly used it in any gauntlet testing done so far and will have to reevaluate what the format is going to look like. This is most likely the reason that they did not also unban anything.
I am highly disappointed in the lack of unbans for modern. This certainly calls the stoneforge promo into questionable territory, but more than that, there are many cards on the list that testing has shown do not need to be there. Some of those people have been asking to come off for a long time now. There is one card though on the list that I now find much less likely to come off as twin was one of the big reasons why it would have been safe- Jace, the Mind Sculptor. With one of the most common ways to punish tapping out for Jace banned, even a simultaneous unbanning of Bloodbraind Elf is likely not enough to let him free sadly. Regardless, I find that with quarterly B&R changes, they should be more liberal in their unbans to see where the format shakes out.
I don't know if I agree or disagree with it, because I'm not sure how to evaluate the statement at all. Essentially, they believe that if modern was just a GP and FNM format, it could be a little bit more degenerate and unbalanced? Because people playing at FNM are going to play the cards they like/own. And GPs arent as high profile and are more about everyone getting together to play their favorite decks. It's... an interesting theory. If it's true, then I feel bad for *****ing about all standard pro tours. Can we switch to all standard pro tours?
What do you guys think about this?
Also, Bloom certainly should be banned and I'm glad they did. I like Amulet and feel as a card ot has a space it can fit into one day. Banning Hive Mind (as someone locally was discussing) would work temporarily, but they would just find another win-win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqY
At this point I would have almost rather seen an announcement of:
The following cards are now banned in Modern:
They're all competitive, so I say just kill all the things. Slash and burn, start fresh, and put all the players over a barrel for a little while. Honestly I feel like it's better than slow playing things picking off a deck at a time at this point, which has been a bit agonizing in my opinion.
Though, I'm sure with that list someone will find an archetype or two I forgot about and tell me how that will dominate the format and what a terrible person I am.
Want to be a better Magic player? Read the rulings forum and check out the comprehensive rules!
Bad feelings abound today, but I'm willing to bet that modern is in a better place following these changes.
When storm was a deck in Pauper, it warped much of the format around it. Without counterspells, you were racing a clock. That forced people to play blue, and this isn't like Legacy where you can splash a color easily. Pauper has basic lands and tap lands, every color you add only slows your deck. Storm definitely needed to be banned.
As for the Cloud of Faeries ban, blue delver decks that ran CoF and Esper Familiars made up 50% of the meta at one time. That is absolutely ridiculous for two decks to dominate a format with many archetypes to choose from. Esper Familiars had nearly no bad matchup. WotC isn't banning combo, they're banning a deck that had the answer to every problem. At WORST Esper Familiars would have matchups against decks where they only won 50% of the time.
Delver needed to be knocked down a little as well. As the explanation said, nine of the top ten played cards in Pauper are blue. Mono blue delver in Pauper has cards banned in Modern: Ponder, Preordain. Blue is very powerful in pauper, and this helps other colors take a foothold. Overall, this CoF ban is healthy for the format.
Obviously you have some sort of bias towards combo. If combo is what you want to play so badly, they are plenty of combo decks. Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond. (The Splinter Twin of pauper ironically) You can also pull this combo on turn 4.
Freed from the Real + Axebane Guardian + Another defender.
Ivy Lane Denizen + Safehold Elite (Or any Green Persist creature) + Carrion Feeder (Or any other sac outlet)
There are plenty of combos to work with. The only difference is that these can be disrupted. Esper Familiars was nearly impossible to disrupt when had infinite mana, to give them infinite card draw, to let them counter anything you have, or kill you with the combo.
Edit: Thinking about it, I realized I missed a pretty big combo deck in 1-Land Spy. Balustrade Spy + Deck with only one land(And cards like Gitaxian Probe, Manamorphose, Simian Spirit Guide, etc.) + Songs of the Damned/Haunting Misery. There are plenty of combos out there for you to play
They have, it's called kiki-jiki
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
A big point about this change is that it makes lightning bolt a viable answer against the combo regardless of the Twin/Copy target; where lightning bolt was blank against Exarch/Twin lines, Exarch/Kiki-Jiki can still be disrupted.
The ban was framed as a ban of Familiars but you know MUD was a way bigger force and a much larger target than Familiars.
1-land spy is fun but it never did well enough to see any real play after that first week it was out. There is another Songs of the Damned deck looks similar to Modern's Living Death deck that may see more play. Banning Cloud knocked so many counter spells out of the game that risky 1 shot decks should fare better, but probably just more Elves and Jeskai.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Letting the masses decide anything is always a bad idea. This doesn't just apply to Magic either. People are resistant to change, and refuse to believe that change might be good for them in the long run. They just want things to be easy.
Check out http://www.mtgbrodeals.com/author/john-murphy/ for my EDH articles!
Reading Forsythe's Twitter last night was pretty interesting. He answered some of the questions posed in this thread pretty well in my opinion. He discussed future unbannings, and said they would look hard at unbanning Visions. They just didn't want to make such a huge change by banning two top decks and also unbanning at the same time (which is the right decision). It doesn't sound like he is in favor of unbanning Sword though.
Check out http://www.mtgbrodeals.com/author/john-murphy/ for my EDH articles!