Your main complaint against tutors (repetitiveness) happens have with or without tutors. Because the root causes of repetitiveness aren't tutors.
No... it's pretty clearly the tutors. I don't care how good Doubling Season is in your deck; when you can't easily tutor for it every game there is less repetition. This feels pretty self-explanatory.
I guess it's "rarely true" just because you say so. "10 tutors" is really pushing it. Can you name all ten of them?
I find that powerful legendary creatures from Commander sets has done more to damage deck variety than tutor cards by far. Demonic Tutor goes into all decks that have black and that has never limited the variety of decks that I see. But Meren merely existing means I see Meren everywhere.
Depending on the colors and how much disposable income one has access to (I see you, Imperial Seal), it's pretty easy to end up running maybe a dozen tutors. Even if one tries to avoid the "broken" tutors, there are still the "not-good-enough-for-cEDH-but-still-pretty-powerful" tutors like T&N and Diabolic Revelation that can end up warping more casual metas when every game ends with double-tutoring for a combo or something.
Of course it was. There was no intended nuance. Sol Ring is objectively one of the most powerful cards ever printed, it goes into every deck, and starting on turn 1 can entirely warp what would have been an otherwise fun and engaging game into Archenemy. All of these arguments have been made before. I feel no need to repeat them. It's obvious at this point that Sol Ring has been grandfathered into the format and is never going to be banned, regardless of the merit.
Are you on the RC or CAG? As I assume not, what exactly is your idea about 'doing something'?
It was a collective "we". It doesn't take a deep dive into this forum to see that almost regardless of the topic, the prevailing attitude boils down to maintaining the status quo. Every discussion inevitably ends in "if you don't like it just houserule it" leaving little room for any meaningful conversations.
So my personal idea of "doing something" is quite meaningless, seeing as I have zero power to actually influence any changes. The RC have admitted they don't take forum complaints seriously (I believe the exactly line was something like "nobody arguing on a forum has ever caused us to change our minds", it was from one of Sheldons old SCG articles). So here we are, doing nothing.
What a ridiculous reduction of the conversation being had. There are at least 2 or 3 other cards that easily sub into those scenarios with the same outcome.
I was being mildly facetious, but the fact remains if the problem is "Sol Ring is ruining our games" banning Sol Ring is an easy and efficient solution. Will other cards step in to fill the void? Probably. But they won't be Sol Ring. Ergo, Sol Ring won't be ruining any more games. If the other cards are also ruining games, ban them too. Problem solved.
But of course that would require actually doing something. Instead we'll continue talking in circles while nothing changes.
As pokken said, ask yourself what unbanning CV adds to the format. Are there going to be cool stories about how it got played?
It is a flavorful and unique card. As for cool stories, how about a deck that uses the crew of the Weatherlight to assemble the full Legacy, and using that to cause a Coalition Victory because that's the destiny of the Legacy.
I'm not going to get dragged into another bull***** "fair use" argument. The term is nonsense and people only use it to describe what they individually think of as appropriate. The fair use of a card is whatever is allowed by the game rules. Any distinction beyond that is personal opinion.
EtI, Tooth and Nail, Ad Nauseam, etc., are all similar in the sense that when you resolve these you SHOULD win the game on the spot if you are building your deck competitively, but they don't HAVE to win you the game.
Oh come on. It's high time we all stop pretending people put these cards in their deck to do anything except win. Nobody plays Palinchron as just a flying beater. Nobody plays Enter the Infinite just to draw their deck and then do nothing. Just because I have a single cool story about copying an opponent's Expropriate 30 times doesn't make Expropriate a fun card. The power creep in EDH is real. CV is just another drop in the sea at this point.
But that's just it. CV literally does nothing else and there isn't any interesting use for it. I don't know if that in of itself should merit banning, but most of the other "I win" cards that come up in comparison can at least lead to interesting game states that don't end the game.
Enter the Infinite ends the game the next turn, one way or the other. Either the caster does whatever they're trying to do and wins because they're holding their whole deck in their hand, or the caster fails somehow and mills out because they're holding their entire deck in their hand.
Can you map out for us the kind of start that would be problematic? Because if your worry is Urza tapping artifacts to activate his ability, I feel like you are just going to get a lot of 2-3 mana artifacts when you activate him.
That is why Rofellos is better. You don't need to put a ton of enablers in the deck. Just lands and spells. Urza is going to have a lot of duds if you just plan to play a million artifacts.
It is like Maelstrom Wanderer. If you always hit your great 7 drops, the card would be unfair. But you have the same odds of hitting Cultivate as you do Blatant Thievery.
There are only 2 artifact lands he can pay. There are only so many 1-3 mana artifacts you want to play that are not ramp.
The only problem Urza will have is the Orbs... and I just think people will tire of that the same way they tired of Derevi.
I don't think there is any particular start from Urza that is the de facto "problematic" one. Just like I don't think there's a certain sequence of cards that makes Tolarian Academy problematic. As has already been touched upon in this thread, the primary problem is how well these cards (Urza and Academy) synergize with what is already the strongest subset of cards in EDH: the artifacts. If you're playing Urza you're obviously playing the big three (Ring, Vault, and Crypt) because of course you are, he encourages you to play artifacts. Then once you're playing so many artifacts, might as well throw in Sai, so playing artifacts gets you more artifacts. Add a few ways to keep the value train going (Paradox Engine, Riddlesmith, Vedalken Archmage) and you've created a fast and resilient engine that snowballs out of control faster than I think a lot of groups will be comfortable with. And that's all without mentioning the cards that Urza in particular works well with, like the Orbs (of both the Static and Winter variety) or Howling Mine because of his ability to make them one-sided.
The comparison between Urza and Rofellos wasn't so much to say "hey look, Urza is better!" as much as it was to point out that Urza is uniquely stronger in that he is both ramp and a ramp payoff at the same time, and that he easily slides into what is already one of the stronger deck archetypes in the format (artifacts.dec). My guess is that Urza is too strong and they only reason he'll stay unbanned is because he'll see less play than he otherwise would due to social stigma.
Chandra is not more interesting then Jace. They are both generic.
Chandra is certainly more likeable than Jace, though. I fully support Chandra being the new face of Magic. The only thing I hope they change is upping her snark game a bit to be a little more reminiscent of Jaya.
True, but casting a random card from your library for 5 mana is not banworthy, nor is it even particularly strong.
The card as a whole is obviously strong, but that line of play isn't.
Except that's more or less Urza's fail state. Rofellos's best starts will be better than Urza's best but Rofellos's worst starts will be significantly worse than Urza's worst. That fact that Urza always has a decent fallback option if there's nothing better in hand to ramp out makes him particularly dangerous, seeing as how that overcomes one of ramp's traditional weaknesses: drawing either all ramp and no payoffs or all payoffs and no ramp. Urza pretty neatly bypasses that by being his own ramp and his own (admittedly moderate) payoff.
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Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, Fabricate, Trinket/Trophy/Treasure mages, Muddle the Mixture, Tezzeret the Seeker, Whir of Invention, Merchant Scroll, Spellseeker, Long-Term Plans
Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Grim Tutor, Imperial Seal, Diabolic Tutor, Buried Alive, Rune-scarred Demon, Entomb, Diabolic Intent, Dark Petition, Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Beseech the Queen, Increasing Ambition, Ad Nauseam, Mausoleum Secrets, Tainted Pact, Demonic Consultation, Insidious Dreams, Diabolic Revelation, Mastermind's Acquisition
Gamble, Godo, Bandit Warlord. Imperial Recruiter
Green Sun's Zenith, Worldly Tutor, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, Tooth and Nail, Eldritch Evolution, Protean Hulk, Woodland Bellower, Summoner's Pact, Primal Command, Natural Order, Fauna Shaman, Survival of the Fittest, Finale of Devastation, Defense of the Heart, Wild Pair
I got bored before I got to the multicolor ones like Eladamri's Call, but I think I proved the point. There are roughly a bajillion tutors in EDH.
Depending on the colors and how much disposable income one has access to (I see you, Imperial Seal), it's pretty easy to end up running maybe a dozen tutors. Even if one tries to avoid the "broken" tutors, there are still the "not-good-enough-for-cEDH-but-still-pretty-powerful" tutors like T&N and Diabolic Revelation that can end up warping more casual metas when every game ends with double-tutoring for a combo or something.
So my personal idea of "doing something" is quite meaningless, seeing as I have zero power to actually influence any changes. The RC have admitted they don't take forum complaints seriously (I believe the exactly line was something like "nobody arguing on a forum has ever caused us to change our minds", it was from one of Sheldons old SCG articles). So here we are, doing nothing.
But of course that would require actually doing something. Instead we'll continue talking in circles while nothing changes.
I'm not going to get dragged into another bull***** "fair use" argument. The term is nonsense and people only use it to describe what they individually think of as appropriate. The fair use of a card is whatever is allowed by the game rules. Any distinction beyond that is personal opinion.
The comparison between Urza and Rofellos wasn't so much to say "hey look, Urza is better!" as much as it was to point out that Urza is uniquely stronger in that he is both ramp and a ramp payoff at the same time, and that he easily slides into what is already one of the stronger deck archetypes in the format (artifacts.dec). My guess is that Urza is too strong and they only reason he'll stay unbanned is because he'll see less play than he otherwise would due to social stigma.